#Finally paying for my hoarder tendencies

[i-am-literally-deranged]

ough I'm going through my stuff to cut down rn and I HATE that I have such a weird size because I would love to pass some of this stuff down to somebody but I simply do not know anyone who wears my same sizes

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for stealing jewelry and a few other items from my hoarder aunt?

This was a few years ago now, I wanna say maybe 2018? My dad has two sisters, Z and K. K is married to a hoarder and has some hoarding tendencies herself so their house and particularly their garage is a mess. Not biohazard levels of mess but for sure just dusty, dirty, and stuffed with with ancient unusable garbage. K and her husband don’t have any kids, they’re both in their mid-70’s and both are in pretty poor health, so Z flew down from Florida and asked my father and I to come help clean. We agreed and came down for a day.

I have a weird relationship with my aunts. K took care of their mother until she died, and until she died my father would be at his sister’s beck and call. He would frequently abandon his own family to go help K and his mother. I don’t blame him for this, he wanted to help his sick mother, but I do blame K for using him as free labor. He built the house K is hoarding in, destroying his body in the process. Now that I’m an adult I don’t really speak to either aunt, like I had no contact with Z since Z’s second wedding in 2013. K is much closer location-wise but I don’t speak to her either because she’s just kind of off putting. The last time I spent time with her we went shopping and she kept telling me stories of her miscarriage and how annoying her husband is and pointing to someone and loudly asking “you think that’s a man or a woman?” Like I understand we are family but K and Z are as close to strangers as family can get to me. This doesn’t even cover my mom’s opinion of them and their treatment of her. Both Z and K have a history of manipulation, deception, and are both very vindictive and ignorant. She hates them both to the point of paranoia. My sister and I have a similarly low opinion of them both, but we both are more tolerable, myself especially.

So we arrive and we clean, Z and I working together to throw away a bunch of shit and my father worked on installing a new dishwasher. I stumble upon this gorgeous hanging lamp that looks like a large full moon. I text my mom about it and she flips. “That’s mine,” she says, “your father and I found that on the side of the road one night when we were first married.” So I load it into my dads car because it’s so pretty and it belongs to my parents. “Hey, you better ask if you can take that” Z says and I flat out tell her that it belongs to my mom. She shrugs and we continue to work. I find another really cool set of hanging lamps and a solid wooden lamp base carved to look like a gazelle that probably belonged to K’s husband’s parents and I took those too, with no input from Z.

These items weren’t lovingly packed and carefully stored away. They were sitting in plastic bins stuffed with dozens of boxes disintegrated plastic gloves and tools that were more rust than anything else. Towards the end of the day we discover some jewelry boxes and I take those inside to go through with K. A lot of it was junky costume jewelry but there’s some incredible pieces including a pair of 14k gold hoops that look like rams heads, a cool brass ring with an enameled signet with the Sagittarius archer, and a huge silver heart pendant. I carefully set aside the items that I would like to take home and K didn’t say anything, either because she didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Finally when we got home I showed my mom all of the cool stuff I found and she kind of scolded me, saying I should have asked to take this stuff and I brushed it off by joking that this was payment for my cleaning services. She was very happy that I rescued her moon lamp though.

I’m wearing that chunky silver heart pendant today and am thinking about it again. K doesn’t have any children so the only people who would ever inherit this junk would be either myself or Z’s kids, but Z’s daughter is no contact with Z and Z’s son lives on the other side of the country. We own the property that K lives on, pay for the taxes on it and pay for the maintenance on it all without charging K anything, so even when she and her husband die my family is going to have to clean it anyway and I can assure you I would be the only person who would actually want to sift through the garbage to find cool stuff. I feel like I saved this stuff from the landfill. I wear the jewelry I took, we have that really cool gazelle lamp displayed in our living room, and my sister said she was going to use the hanging lamps I brought home for when she has her own home. But of course I technically stole all of it and for sure will not be giving it back, even if she noticed it’s missing. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[abybweisse]

LONG VENT POST: Family issues, part 1 of ?

So, a bit ago I said I’m not as active right now, due to family issues. I didn’t want to fill the thread of that post with all the long, sordid details.

Right now I’m trying to get my mother into an “assisted living and memory care” community (nursing home, basically) and doing everything I can to stop her credit union accounts from hemorrhaging from all her incompetence (she’s been scammed a bunch and generally taken advantage of).

Yesterday’s biggest takeaway was the discovery of numerous scams she fell for over the past few years... plus three months worth of fraudulent Uber and Uber Eats charges... and the fact that she pays about $550/mo on car insurance but the last couple times (at least, maybe more) she got collision repairs done? She didn’t file claims and pay a $500 deductible. No, she paid in full, out of pocket. Out $7k instead of $1k for two repairs in just a few months’ time. How can you pay huge insurance premiums and never notify them when you need collision repairs?!

Found out just recently that about a couple years ago, someone scammed her for an easy $5k. Found out she never deposits the full amount on car payments I send her. She never makes full deposits on the rent a tenant pays her. Instead, she cashes much of them out, and I have no idea what she does with the cash.

She buys stuff in bulk but cannot use most of it before it goes bad, but she refuses to toss out expired foods. Her hoarding tendencies have gotten worse. Even though she tells my sister and I not to send her gifts that would add to the clutter in the house, I found out yesterday she’s been dropping $200-$300 on random stuff from places like TJ Maxx and Tuesday Morning just because they made her “happy”. She hasn’t even unpackaged the hanging glass butterflies or other things. I told her she can take them to the “home”....

She’s wrecked two brand new Priuses (about $30k each, each paid up front/in full with inheritance money from my dad, who died five years ago) within about two years’ time. The first was “totaled”, but I have yet to verify whether she ever opened a claim to get money for it. This one hasn’t been officially declared totaled or repairable. I had to file the claim on it on her behalf. For all I know, the $550/mo premium might be on both cars. I’ll know for sure soon. If she’s been paying insurance on a car that was “totaled” two years ago instead of getting market value of about $22k, I will definitely break down and cry. For at least the 50th time in the past few days. Seriously, if she just found out the previous one couldn’t be fixed and walked away from it without filing a claim and getting the huge payout... and is therefore also still paying for insurance on it? I’ll probably scream, too.

The latest (and last ever) car wreck was last Wednesday. We’ve been telling her for over a year she shouldn’t be driving. Her doctors have told her the same for at least 6mo. My sister and I were planning to visit her and take away her keys, but the wreck happened before we could even finalize our travel plans.

This time, she was trying to get to dialysis (she goes three days a week), and she couldn’t use Uber anymore, so she was determined to drive herself. Just before 5 am, she was driving down her own residential street and blacked out (apparently) and hit three parked (and unoccupied) vehicles. Police showed up and she got out of her car and told them she needed a ride to dialysis. One of the officers took her. She can’t recall hitting three cars. Told me she hit a curb and one car. Later told someone else she only hit a curb. I don’t know anything about the curb, but probably. However, I definitely believe the police report that three parked cars were hit badly and had to be towed away, too. After the police spoke to her tenant, they said they’d make things easier for us and revoke her license. Phew.

I convinced dialysis staff (actually, they completely agreed without question) to send her to hospital afterwards instead of letting yet another friend take her home. Good thing, too, because before dialysis was even up that morning, she was in a lot of pain; she had told them earlier she didn’t need to be looked at. Well... no broken bones, no major injuries, and her labs were ok except slightly low potassium. However, a brain scan showed something I already knew just by dealing with her: it showed ischemic changes associated with dementia. Monday of that week, I had called her renal doctor to tell him I worried about her mental health and wondered if it had anything to do with the renal failure. He said he didn’t think so; it’s got to be something else causing the mental decline we are seeing. When I told him she’s still driving sometimes, he became furious and said he’d refer her to get a full dementia evaluation. Well, before he could even get the referral to her, she’d wrecked again. He’s seen her now, but I haven’t heard any updates from him. Mom says she hasn’t done the evaluation (that she knows of), and she heard someone at the hospital mention “dementia”, but she doesn’t recall what they said about it. 😔

I didn’t take photos when I finally saw her car, but I’m going back up to Dallas tomorrow and staying in a Motel 6 overnight (with my dog) to take care of as much financial matters for her as I can in these next two days. I’ll get another chance to see the car (to clean out items), so I’ll take pics then. I might not get back to Austin until sometime Wednesday. Not sure about Wednesday yet, but I already requested Monday and Tuesday off from work by email and left a vm with coworkers. I’m about to run out of annual leave because of this. I know I’ll be making many weekend trips coming up until my sister and I have gotten her moved into the nursing facility. And for a while afterwards, too, since we have to clean out the house, put some of her stuff into a storage unit, and sell the house ASAP. Plus, we need to visit often, at least at first, to make sure she’s settled in, isn’t hating it too much, and is being taken care of properly.

It’s a good thing my sister is paying for my hotel charges and has also offered gas money (though I haven’t asked for gas money... yet). This is still way cheaper for her than booking herself flights back and forth between Olympia, WA and Dallas, TX. The more leg work I do on this, the happier my sister is to help with my travel costs. Honestly, she really doesn’t want to come down here until it’s time to move our mom, clean the house, and put it up for sale.

And, since we have so little time to get her affairs in order, we are placing her in the only community my mom and I have toured, so far. I told her if it turns out to not be a good place (at all) once she moves in, we can keep looking at others (while she still lives at that one) and move her again. But, honestly, this place does seem nice enough, and none of these places are perfect. Plus, it’s right next to the hospital where she always goes... the one where her doctors are associates. I joked that if they needed to send her to the hospital, they could put her on a gurney and wheel her down the street. She laughed at that and said the location is perfect.

Sigh. She’s being compliant and has even said thanks for us (her two daughters) stepping up to help her and get things taken care of. We were afraid she would refuse to leave her house of almost 40years. She’s not even batting an eye at us deciding to sell the house to make sure she can afford the rent and services (the suites at the community are rented out like apartments, but with three meals a day and unlimited snacks, weekly cleaning service, weekly laundry service, landline phone, cable, and internet included. We will have to pay more for “memory care” and probably for medical transport they provide (unless that’s included, too), plus whatever else. She might take her cat with her, or she might leave him with a friend of the family. But it’s a one-time, non-refundable fee of $500 if she keeps him. I kind of hope she gives him up, and they just bring him along on visits to her. She would have trouble taking care of him.

She’s never shown me her finances before. We had no idea how bad (completely uncontrolled) her spending was. It was probably bad enough before our dad died, but afterwards, she started going downhill fast. Now she’s in renal failure and requires dialysis three days a week. She’s recently lost an unhealthy amount of weight in a very short time, apparently because she can’t remember to eat and sometimes she’s too disoriented to get up. She can’t cook anymore, and she’s hardly done cleaning chores since she had kids (that’s what us kids were for: housework). So she’s a money-wasting hoarder in a house full of dirty dishes, dirty clothes, clutter everywhere, and $100’s — maybe $1000 worth — of groceries she can’t get through but won’t throw out when they go bad. And she won’t let anyone else touch them while she’s still living there.

I have so much to do the next couple days, I had to write a list of each thing I need to look into and take care of before I return home. I still have some stuff to get ready for the trip, so this is the end of the first vent post.

I hope I get more sleep tonight than I have the past week....

[welllpthisishappening]

Where You Can Still Remember Dreaming (10/35)

Killian Jones, former crime reporter, was not happy to be home. It hadn’t been home in a very long time, after all. Home was an abstract construct that existed for people who didn’t know as many adjectives for blood as he did. Home wasn’t New York City, but it certainly wasn’t Boston or New Orleans either and he’d always gone where the story was. And he was positive Emma Swan was one hell of a story.

Emma Swan, pro video game player, desperately wanted to find home. She thought she had, a million years ago in the back corner of a barn and a town and faces she trusted. But that had all blown up in her face and it didn’t take long for her to decide she was going to control the pyrotechnics from here on out. So now she was in New York City and a different corner and she kind of wanted to trust Killian Jones.

Neither one of them expected a year of of video games and feature stories to dredge up old enemies and even older feelings, but, together, they made a pretty good team.

Rating: Mature AN: Talking! Coffee orders! Wawa! Someone come talk to me about Wawa, because I’ve got way more feelings about Wawa than the average person. That being said, we’re finally in Philadelphia and there are people there and...elevators. Thank you guys for continuing to click and read and stuff is starting to happen. It’s the absolute nicest of you.  || Also on Ao3, FF.net and Tumblr ||

“You did what?” “Mary Margaret, if you keep asking the same questions, I’m not going to explain anything.” Emma sank into the corner of the couch like that explained that and it absolutely didn’t. It didn’t explain anything.

Like why she’d kissed Killian Jones. Two weeks ago. That was two weeks ago and he hadn’t come to practices or even sent Will to practices and Emma hadn’t responded to half a dozen text messages or done anything that made much sense at all.

In the last two weeks.

And now they had to go to Philadelphia. For the entire goddamn weekend and she wished her stomach would stop doing whatever it was doing.

“Ok,” Mary Margaret said, flopping down next to her and swinging her legs onto the coffee table and if that wasn’t a sign then Emma wasn’t sure she understood anything about the world. It might have been the later. “Go over it one more time.” “M’s, we honestly don’t have time for this,” Emma sighed. “They’re all going to be here soon and I’ve…” “Got to figure out a way to ignore Killian Jones for two hours?” “That’s if traffic is perfect.” “You know you don’t actually have to ride in the car with him.” Emma rolled her eyes, dropping her head back against the top of the couch and Mary Margaret couldn’t even try and work a smile onto her face. “Yeah, yeah, I guess that’s probably true. What if you steal a car?” “You want me to steal a car?” Emma asked. “I already have a criminal record, M’s. We don’t need to add onto that before the season even starts.” “Ok, that’s not even what I meant at all.” “I know it’s not.” Emma needed to stop sighing. It wasn’t helping her stomach or the several different knots it had been in for the better part of the last two weeks.

God, he was good at kissing.

He was incredibly good at kissing her.

“I don’t know what to do, M’s,” Emma muttered and there it was. That was the crux of the problem. Emma wanted the plan and answers and that control she was slightly to moderately obsessed with and she didn’t have any of that when it came to Killian or how goddamn good he was at kissing her.

It made her head spin and her heart rate pick up and there was still a container of cinnamon sitting in her compound and a map she couldn’t quite bring herself to throw away.

She’d become a sentimental hoarder in the span of two weeks and one makeout session on a fountain. God, he brought her uptown and places he went with his brother and she couldn’t quite stop thinking about the way his voice had cracked slightly when he talked about any of it, quiet mentions of a story Emma still didn’t quite understand, but knew was, unquestionably, good.

And maybe he was good.

Jeez.

Heavy-handed. Way too heavy-handed.

Emma groaned, grabbing a pillow and crushing it to her chest as she slid along the back of the couch, an uncomfortable mess of a human who was much better at ignoring problems than dealing with them.

Mary Margaret glanced at her – a knowing, sympathetic look that Emma didn’t entirely appreciate – and they had a schedule. They had to be in Philadelphia by four o’clock and there were meetings and league rules and some kind of actual cocktail party thing that included other teams and socializing and Emma wondered, not for the first time, if she could get out of it.

She absolutely couldn’t.

“One more time,” Mary Margaret said again, resting her hand lightly on Emma’s shin. “For me. So I understand what’s happening.” “Do you not understand what’s happening?” Mary Margaret shook her head. “Honestly? No, I don’t.” “M’s, there are rules. Journalism ethics or something. He can’t just...we shouldn’t have…” “Made out in Central Park,” Mary Margaret finished and Emma tried to kick her way out of her friend’s grip. She was deceptively strong.

“See, you’re proving my point. You know what’s going on and you just want me to rehash.” “I want you to tell me why you said you kissed him.”

God, she had said that – had blurted the words in Mary Margaret’s face twenty minutes before when it actually felt like one of her organs was going to snap in half if she didn’t tell someone and she could only tell Mary Margaret.

That was a bit of a lifelong trend.

Emma groaned again, but Mary Margaret was so used to all of this by now it was like they were hitting the high-points of some conversational schedule. “I don’t know,” she mumbled, wondering if it would be almost too immature to just push her face into the pillow. Probably. Definitely.

“Liar, liar,” Mary Margaret accused, tapping her fingers on Emma’s jeans again. “You know what I think?” “I shudder to imagine.” “Rude. I think you’re absolutely terrified that this could mean something and you’re using ethics as a way to deflect.” “I’m not, and even if I were, it’s not like he’s...” Emma argued, but it was kind of true and both of them knew it and she couldn’t seem to stop replaying the way his fingers felt on the back of her neck. Mary Margaret didn’t say anything, just lifted her eyebrows and that was, absolutely, worse. “God, you’re good at that,” Emma grumbled. “Alright, I just...I wanted to.” Mary Margaret’s eyebrows shifted again – practically flying off her face and Emma sat up quickly, the pillow forgotten as she braced herself for the onslaught of romantic tendencies. “No, no,” she said quickly, waving her hands in the air like that would get Mary Margaret to stop planning out her entire life. “Stop. Stop whatever you’re thinking and whatever you’re assuming because it absolutely, positively can’t happen again.” “Why not?”

“M’s, we’ve been over this. It was a mistake. A misplaced idea and decision and he bought me coffee.” “He’s done that before.” “Yeah, but….” “Yeah, but what?” Emma tugged her lip tightly between her teeth, pressing her fingers just under her eyes and she had no idea how she was going to make it to Philadelphia when it already felt like her head was going to snap in half.

They were absolutely going to hit traffic. She just knew it.

“This can’t happen,” Emma said and it wasn’t an answer, was another deflection and refusal to talk and it was almost so obvious it felt kind of insulting to Mary Margaret. “It’s not. There’s not anything happening. It was one kiss.” Mary Margaret didn’t look convinced. “Yuh huh.” “It is! Was! Continues to be. Whatever tense you want to use.” “I mean, I think you covered most of them right there. Although you might have missed future.” “Bull. China shop. Just barreling through with all your thoughts and plans.” “I have neither thoughts nor plans,” Mary Margaret said evenly and Emma realized, rather suddenly, they’d never really done anything like this. That was almost strange, all things considered. Mary Margaret and David had been part of every single major moment in Emma’s life – had tried to pay for her lawyer for God’s sake – but there’d never been a moment in any of that when Emma actually sat down and had some kind of talk about boys.

She’d never tried to talk about Neal with either one of them and that probably should have been a sign, but she was seventeen and angry at the world and now she was not seventeen and not quite as angry, but, maybe, more cautious for ever.

And Killian Jones could absolutely ruin everything.

Or…

No. That train of thought was dangerous and unacceptable and he’d been way too good at kissing. She was a mess.

“Ok,” Mary Margaret continued slowly, ducking her head and staring at Emma like David had just found her in a goddamn barn with hay in her hair. “So, nothing happens, but has anything happened? Past tense. What I mean is has he tried to...I don’t know, apologize?” “Why would he apologize?” Mary Margaret looked a little stunned and Emma’s stomach clenched again. “Em, for real? Oh my God, you have absolutely no idea, do you?” Emma shrugged, but she definitely did have an idea and it made that same stomach flip and flop and maybe float away on the wings of several dozen butterflies. “He’s absolutely stunned by you. Floored. Overwhelmed. A slew of other adjectives that I bet he’d used in a well-crafted lede.” “Jeez, I shouldn’t have told you anything,” Emma sighed, but she didn’t mean it and she wanted to kiss Killian again. A lot. A questionable amount.

“He came here,” Mary Margaret continued. “He sat on the couch and answered David’s questions and explained his hand and didn’t even blink when you awkwardly asked him out. That’s what happened, by the way. You asked him out. The making out almost makes sense in that vein.” “M’s, there are no veins. There are no arteries or capillaries. He’s writing stories about us! He wrote another one about Elsa and the sponsorship thing last week.” “You know what they say about arguing too much.” “That people are trying to dispute overly romantic clichés and china shop metaphors?” Mary Margaret laughed, nodding slightly. “Yeah, exactly that,” she agreed. “Ok, can I ask one more question and then you can go absolutely dominate Philadelphia?” “There is nothing to dominate in Philadelphia except maybe the traffic on I-95, but, yeah, ok.” “You said you wanted to. That’s why you kissed him. So...do you think you’ll want to again? And with people you may want to avoid nearby?” “That was two questions,” Emma pointed out and Mary Margaret scrunched her nose. “I don’t know, M’s,” she admitted softly. “He’s...I mean he brought me uptown and we both bought each other coffee and he talked about his brother. His dead brother. Like we were...friends. And he’s just…”

Emma wished she could finish a sentence. If she could just come up with one complete thought when it came to her feelings for Killian, she might not be quite so terrified at the prospect of the weekend and two hours in a car.

“You’re trailing off again,” Mary Margaret muttered, that same, encouraging smile on her face and Emma felt some of the argument in her deflate.

“Yeah, I know,” she mumbled. “He’s nice, right?” “Who? Killian?” Emma nodded and Mary Margaret’s smile looked almost sad. God. “Yeah, I think he is. And that story about Elsa was really good. Don’t read the comments though.” Emma made a noise, something that felt a bit like a growl and actually hurt her throat. “Please, I’m not an amateur.” “I know that,” Mary Margaret promised. “And I don’t think he is either. That’s why I think you’ve got to talk to him. You guys can’t just keep dancing around each other. Listen, I know there’s a lot riding on this and you’ve got all this pressure to win now and you’ve got all these other teams to deal with, but…” Emma grinned. “Look who’s trailing off now.”

“I’m just saying. You said you wanted to. That’s not a bad thing.” “You’re a hopeless romantic.” Mary Margaret shook her head, eyes flitting towards the door when the buzzer from downstairs sounded. “He came here. And played video games. With you. Friends is the last word you should be using here.” The buzzer sounded again and Emma thanked some sort of god who controlled buzzers and timing and the chance to get out of a conversation she didn’t have a response to. Because friends didn’t make out on the edge of Central Park fountains – historical or otherwise. And they certainly didn’t write feature stories about each other and pointedly ignore each other after said makeouts.

That was just Emma.

She was the only one ignoring anything.

Everything.

Mary Margaret swung open the door, nearly knocked over by an enthusiastic Ruby and apologetic Belle and they were both already grabbing Emma’s bags and talking about traffic and Emma wondered if it was actually biologically possible for her heart to be in her throat.

“You ok, Em?” Ruby asked, stepping into the living room and she hadn’t even heard them knock the partition on the floor.

“Yup,” Emma said sharply. “Fine. Great. How’s traffic look?” Ruby narrowed her eyes, but she didn’t actually say anything and maybe Emma’s patron goddess extended her work to include buzzers and normally-inquisitive friends. “Getting out of the Lincoln Tunnel might suck, but we almost planned for that. You ready to go? Jones is downstairs with just a ridiculous amount of coffee.” “He brought coffee?”

“Texted me about my order preferences and everything. Above and beyond.” Emma bit her lip tightly and her heart was on the floor or maybe on the sidewalk in front of a journalist who, she assumed, was wearing far too much leather and black and she needed to move. “Ok,” she mumbled, just a bit more breathless than she intended and she refused to look in Mary Margaret’s direction. “I’ll be right down.” Ruby hummed, slinging Emma’s bag over her shoulder and marching back down the stairs. Emma sighed, her whole body heaving forward with the effort and she nearly hit her forehead on her knees.

The floorboards creaked when Mary Margaret moved – a hand on the back of Emma’s neck and the curve of her shoulder and this was a disaster. “Deep breaths,” she mumbled and Emma let out a strangled sound she hadn’t made since Providence and Maine and she didn’t have time for a complete emotional breakdown on the couch.

“I told him about school,” Emma whispered. Mary Margaret’s hand froze for half a second. “I told him...I told him I wanted to go back to school. Maybe when this was all over?” “Emma,” Mary Margaret breathed, a look of disbelief on her face that spoke volumes about history and deep-rooted trust issues and Emma couldn’t remember the last time she’d wanted so much and felt so greedy for it.

“Right?” “Talk to him. Stop ignoring his text messages.” “How do you know that?” “Please. I know you. Better than anyone, but don’t tell David that. Also, I have eyes and you have a very loud vibration setting on your phone. Made it tough to miss.” Emma let out a shaky laugh and Mary Margaret was smiling at her again, that soft look in her eyes that made everything seem to settle into place, back into order and control and she could do this. Absolutely. Onward or something less ridiculous.

“You are the absolute best, you know that?” Emma asked and Mary Margaret clicked her tongue. “I’m serious. I don’t...I can’t imagine any of this without you.” “Sap,” Mary Margaret accused, but her eyes were just a bit glossy and Ruby was shouting for Emma from the bottom of several flights of stairs. “Go get your coffee.” “Subtle.” Mary Margaret shrugged, pushing on Emma’s shoulder and she nearly tripped over her own feet on her way out the door.

He was leaning against one of the cars pulled up in front of the building and Emma wondered when the apartment just became the de facto headquarters of the team, but she barely had time to think of any of that when she was far too busy trying to look at Killian without actually looking at Killian and it didn’t really work when she saw his smile.

She bit her lip again.

“Swan,” he said softly, only one cup of coffee left in his hand.

“Hey,” Emma mumbled. “Is, uh, is that for me?”

Nailed it. Job well done.

Killian’s smile widened and that wasn’t fair – she’d drawn blood on her lip. “It is,” he said, holding his hand out expectantly and his fingers were probably warm from the coffee and not just because he was him or something absolutely impossible. Emma needed to stop thinking like Mary Margaret. “So is this,” he added, tugging something out of his jacket pocket when Emma pulled the cup out of his hand.

Cinnamon.

He’d stolen her more cinnamon and Emma wasn’t sure what a loss of gravity would do to her body, but it kind of felt like she’d just lost some kind of tether. “They’re going to start hanging your photo in post offices,” she said. “Killian Jones, cinnamon thief of New York.” “Good name,” he grinned.

“You really didn’t have to do that. The cinnamon or the coffee in general.” Killian shrugged, glancing behind him when Will and Ruby started arguing about luggage placement and seating arrangements. “Children,” he chuckled and his eyes widened slightly when he looked back at Emma. “And I wanted to. The coffee and the theft. Although I don’t think they hang up wanted posters anymore, even if it’d probably spark some kind of vigilante movement across the entire city. All of them clamoring to bring me in.” “Really got a high opinion of yourself, huh?” “And my petty theft skills.” Emma laughed – easy and simple and it felt so goddamn natural, there had to be a reason for that. Maybe he was just incredibly good at getting under her skin and that wasn’t really right either. It didn’t feel like that. It felt like he was trying to get her to laugh and maybe smile and her eyes had already fallen back towards his lips, at least, four times in the span of the conversation.

“Thank you,” she said and that felt natural too. “For the coffee. And, well, mostly the coffee, but I read the story the other day. I should have…” “It’s ok, Swan.” “No, no, it’s not. I mean. You’re doing your job and I didn’t even know you talked to Elsa.” Killian narrowed his eyes slightly, licking his lips and he didn’t have his own coffee. “I wasn’t aware interview requests had to go through you.” Emma bristled at the comment, frustration shooting down her spine and this wasn’t going how she planned at all. She hadn’t really planned for anything.

She’d ignored it. Completely. For two weeks.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said.

Killian sighed, tugging on a piece of hair behind his ear and scuffing his foot on the sidewalk. Emma flinched when a trunk slammed shut. “Swan, listen,” he muttered, taking a step towards her and, naturally, someone interrupted.

She wasn’t sure which one of them groaned louder.

“What, Scarlet?” Killian asked, glaring at the photographer. He was weighed down with equipment again, three cameras on one shoulder and a bag on the other and he didn’t seem the least bit put out by the look on Killian’s face.

“We’re leaving,” Will said evenly. “Now. So either get in a car or walk to Philadelphia, Hook. Hey, Emma.” “Hey, Scarlet,” Emma mumbled, taking another sip of coffee. Will smiled at her, hitching up cameras and kicking at Killian’s ankle familiarly. “If you guys want you could come with me and Rubes. I can’t promise she’ll let you control the music, but it might be entertaining to see Will and Ruby fight in the backseat.” She glanced back over her shoulder at Killian – an apology without actually saying the words and Emma wasn’t sure it worked when his face was just as impassive as ever. “Emma are you telling me I’m going to have to sit in the backseat of a car I actually rented?” Ruby asked, disbelief in every single syllable. “Yeah, thanks, but no thanks.” Emma’s stomach was going to fly out of her body if it kept doing whatever it was it was doing on 3rd Avenue. “Ruby,” she said and it sounded exactly like the plea it might have been. There was plan. There was a music schedule and none of them had really discussed where Killian and Scarlet would go, but Mary Margaret’s voice was ringing in Emma’s ears and she was trying to put herself out there or something, so naturally Ruby wanted to ride in a different car.

“Elsa can go with you guys,” Ruby suggested, glancing at the other woman who looked a bit stunned to hear her own name. “Right, El? That’s cool. Right? Yeah.” “I mean, you just answered your own question,” Elsa said and she was holding a coffee cup too. Jeez, they’d been efficient that morning. “Yeah, that’s fine. I don’t mind sitting in the backseat as long as Scarlet doesn’t kill me with photo equipment.” “I make no promises,” Will grinned, swinging the back door and nodding towards Elsa. “Your chariot, ma’am.” Killian groaned and Emma turned in just enough time to see him rolling his eyes skyward and Ruby made some kind of significant face – like she could read minds or knew about conversations she definitely wasn’t a part of and maybe Mary Margaret was right.

Emma took a deep breath, trying to draw on some sort of self-confidence she only really had when there was a video game in front of her. “You know how to navigate?” she asked, taking a step towards Killian.

“Excuse me?” he asked, but there wasn’t the bite in his voice she expected. Maybe they’d all get to Philadelphia in one piece.

“Navigation. To Philadelphia? Mostly just making sure my phone doesn’t send us into the Atlantic Ocean or something.” “I think we can avoid the ocean, Swan.” “I mean, if possible.” “I guarantee that.” Emma nodded, rocking forward slightly and she dug her fingernails into her palm so she wouldn’t be tempted to do something ridiculous like try and touch him again. Or kiss him.

This was going to be fine.

It took nearly an hour to get out of the city and it was not fine. It was the opposite of fine. It was silent and tense and Emma kept switching lanes like that would get her through traffic easier.

“Left,” Killian muttered as soon as they saw daylight again and Emma couldn’t remember the Lincoln Tunnel ever feeling longer.

“What?” she snapped, frustration boiling over and Will snickered in the back seat. She glared at him in the rearview mirror.

“You have to go left. The phone says so. And also the signs.” “I know how to read. Scarlet, I swear, if you don’t shut up and stop switching songs ten seconds in, I am going to stop right here and kick you out of the car.” “You’d ruin the car,” Will pointed out, seemingly undisturbed by threats of walking to Philadelphia. Emma went left and Will changed the song again. “That’s the last time,” he promised, but she’d heard that thirty-two times already and this was already the longest car ride in the history of the world.

Elsa was very clearly trying to fall asleep.

“It’s because he’s got no sense of self worth,” Killian said, practically ripping the AUX cord out of the stereo. Will made some kind of exclamation behind them, mumbling a string of curses under his breath.

Emma had traffic to worry about and cars merging on either side of her and they were almost absurdly behind schedule at this point, no idea where the other car was or what it was about that the Lincoln Tunnel that just seemed to breed traffic jams.

Will fell asleep eventually, camera equipment on the floor at his feet and Emma could see the jumble of limbs that was him and Elsa in the back seat. Killian hadn’t said a word, gazing out the window with just the quiet hum of the radio in the background.

“I’m sorry,” Emma said suddenly and maybe just a bit louder than she intended and Killian seemed to move in slow motion, eyebrows pulled low when he turned towards her.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “For suggesting you needed interview requests or that you guys had to come in this car or, you know, any of that.” “Any of that.” “Why do we just keep repeating each other?” Killian laughed, leaning his head back against the seat and he couldn’t have been comfortable, one leg tugged up and his elbow resting on the window. “Nervous about saying the wrong thing?” “Are you?” “Am I?” Emma sighed, but he grinned at her and this was flirting. Decidedly. Obviously. Ok. “Nervous about saying the wrong thing,” she muttered. “Because that’s kind of stupid.” “A rather pointed opinion. Enlighten me, why is that so stupid?” “Because you’re….you.” Killian raised an eyebrow at her, one side of his mouth pulled up and that was kind of stupid too. “You obviously know what you’re doing and, I mean, words are supposed to be your thing, right? You shouldn’t have to be worried about impressing me.” “You think I’m trying to impress you?”

This was not the kind of conversation they should have in the car in some unknown section of New Jersey. This was the kind of conversation they should have with drinks and dim lighting and something that might feel a bit romantic because maybe Emma wanted a bit of romance and maybe Emma wanted him and she didn’t know quite what do with any of this.

“No,” she said quickly. “Obviously not.” Killian didn’t say anything for at least several miles and they drove by three different Wawa’s. “I might be,” he said suddenly and she nearly drove off the road. “Trying to impress you, I mean.”

“Yeah?” “Yeah.” “Why?” Emma asked, eyes flitting towards him and he sat up straighter in the rental car seat.

“Because you’re you,” he said simply.

“That was repeating again.” “Yeah, I realize that. Plagiarizing the conversation.” Emma laughed under her breath. They drove by another Wawa. “And I’m sorry too.” “For?”

“I’m not looking for permission to interview, but I should have let you know. It’s your team and your story as much as it’s mine. I did need another story though and we needed to drive some interest before Philadelphia. It's doing ok.” “I’ve got no doubt.” Killian’s head nearly snapped her direction, eyes wide and shoulders moving and Emma gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles went white. “I just, well, you said I should trust you, right?” He nodded. “I do. And maybe I’m kind of impressed. By you.” “I think you’re giving me far too much credit, love.”

Her fingers were going to snap in half if she held onto the wheel any tighter. And that was the first time he’d used that since she’d walked out of the building. It felt important. “I don’t know about that,” Emma said. “They’re good stories.” “Charmer.” “Turn tables or something.” “Exactly that.” They fell into silence again, but it was almost comfortable and they drove by two more Wawa’s and six full-service gas stations before Emma could bring herself to say anything else. “I looked it up, you know,” she said softly, glancing in the rearview mirror to make sure the rest of the car was still asleep. “This guy and the sponsorship and Elsa asked me before she agreed, but I was mostly just focused on the money and not being the one team that didn’t have a corporate name that I agreed without really even thinking about it.” “Elsa mentioned that,” Killian said, keeping his eyes trained ahead of him. “Off the record she’s not a huge fan of this guy either, but he’s got money, right?” Emma nodded, that certainty that something was wrong still sitting in the very center of her. “But…” Killian prompted.

“But, what?” “You brought it up, love,” he laughed.

“Yeah,” Emma sighed. “Well, they’re New York based, right? And that’s where most of the corporate stuff is, offices and the big shipment plans and everything, but you know where else they’re located?” “New Orleans,” Killian said immediately. Emma’s grip went slack. “I can look stuff up too, Swan.” “That seems weird, right? I’m not suggesting there’s some great conspiracy here or anything, but it’s weird. It’s definitely weird.” Killian nodded. “I’m not debating the overall weirdness of it. But I’ve never seen any of those names before. Definitely not when I was in New Orleans and I knew just about everything that happened there.” “That ego again,” Emma laughed, but the sound nearly died on her tongue when she saw the look on Killian’s face. “What?”

“I think you have the wrong idea of what I’ve done, Swan,” he said softly and it sounded like he was admitting to something. She tried not to push, pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t just start shouting questions in the rental car and she wished she had more coffee. “When Liam died I...lost everything. I���d never even thought about leaving the city before then and as soon as he was gone I couldn’t imagine staying another second. I packed as soon as the funeral was over, barely said goodbye to Gina before I was on a plane and on the other side of the country.

I didn’t care what I wrote as long as I got paid and when I got to New Orleans I figured I’d just be there for a few months again and move on. Then this story fell in my lap and I thought I was, well, I thought I was doing something good. Exposing crime and names and writing until I couldn’t see straight. And there was so much, there were angles everywhere and I just kept writing. I didn’t…”

He sighed, eyes falling back down towards his the prosthetic resting on his thigh and Emma couldn’t breathe. “I ignored them, all the calls and the warnings and I kept writing and reporting and I was so sure. I was positive I could get to the top and if I could just get a few more names, then I could crack the whole thing. I didn’t.” Killian blinked, taking another deep breath and Emma nearly drove off the side of the fucking road when she realized. “You got hurt,” she whispered and he nodded slowly. “That car…” “I have no idea,” Killian admitted. “Seems almost too coincidental, right?” “Killian, I….”

He shook his head, but his eyes widened when Emma’s hand moved, fingers landing just above the brace at the end of his arm and maybe if she just told him, everything, the barn and the family and the distinct lack of family, he’d understand.

She almost believed he would.

She wanted to believe he would.

“Don’t, Swan,” he cautioned. “It’s...we’ve been over this. I’m fine. And I’m definitely trying to impress you with my ability to write feature stories.”

She sighed or laughed or maybe just tried desperately not to cry in the middle of fucking New Jersey and none of this made sense. “It’s working,” she admitted softly. “Even if I’m fairly certain we’re absolutely fucked with this sponsorship.” “He’s never actually been charged with anything. I looked that up too. So did Elsa. And she said her parents worked with him all the time when she was a kid. Shipped very expensive antiques all over the world.” “I know, I know. And I trust Elsa’s judgement and her not-quite-working law degree. Or I know that I should, at least.” “Seems fairly simple, Swan. Either you do you or you don’t.” “Eh, there’s that gray area though. Reserved for special cases and coincidences.” “Oh,” Killian muttered and Emma’s whole body seemed to recoil at the pity in his voice. God damn. “Yeah, I kind of figured.” “You figured what, exactly?” “Where’d you actually grow up, Swan?” Emma bit down tightly on her lip, heart hammering against her chest and she couldn’t squeeze her eyes shut because she was driving a rental car and they couldn’t screw over the sponsor. “You can talk to me, you know.”

“Everywhere,” she said eventually and it felt like the biggest word in the entire world.

“And Maine?” “Not until I was fifteen and David found me trespassing in his mom’s barn. He taught me how to drive, you know, eventually. And made me come inside so I could eat.” Killian hummed, like it was the obvious answer it absolutely was. “Of course,” he said, eyes focused on her like she was a story he couldn’t quite unravel. “Did you run? Is that what happened?”

“How could you know that?”

“You’ve got that look,” he said and Emma tilted her head. He was still staring at her. “Like you know what it’s like to be alone. Even now, when you know you can trust your team and David and Mary Margaret. What did you call it? Special cases and coincidences? An orphan’s an orphan, Swan. They all look the same.” “That’s an awfully direct way of looking at it,” Emma muttered and her lungs had shrunk. Or maybe just disappeared. She couldn’t seem to take a deep breath.

“Ah, easier to deal with that way, don’t you think?” “Yeah,” Emma admitted. “I guess it is.”

Will woke up twenty minutes before they got to Philadelphia, demanding the music and the AUX cord and Killian only gave in on the promise that he’d shut the fuck up and it was the first time he’d said anything since whatever that conversation had been in New Jersey.

Emma’s lungs had recovered, but her mind was still racing a mile a minute and it was some kind of miracle that she didn’t actually kill them before they reached the hotel. The other car was already there – Killian muttering something about your phone, Swan and Ruby sent sixteen text messages. All in caps lock.

“God, we’re here, we’re here,” Emma sighed, stepping into the lobby to find the rest of her team already changed and, presumably, checked in. “How much time do we have before this thing?” “You’ve got, like, twenty minutes. Tops,” Tink answered. Emma groaned. “It’s here though, so there’s that.” “Right, right, ok, well, you guys...don’t go anywhere and El and I will go get changed and...” She spun towards Killian, the back of his hair slightly askew from his fingers and this was ridiculous. He lifted his eyebrows, an unspoken question and he couldn’t just know things. Open book.

“Swan?” he prompted, taking a step into her space and they’d both lost any concept of lines.

“Are you coming to this?” Killian smiled, the force of it making Emma’s breath catch and she wished she’d said off the record before. “Wouldn’t miss it,” he muttered.

“Ass,” she mumbled, but it wasn’t the insult it probably should have.

Elsa coughed pointedly behind them, her own bag making her look a little lopsided. “We should probably go, right?” “Yeah, yeah,” Emma said quickly. “Yeah, ok, back here in twenty, tops and then we go take the entire goddamn world by storm.” “Inspiring,” Ruby drawled, but Emma barely heard her as she tried not to think about three hours in the car with Killian Jones.

Emma had been to more events like this than she cared to remember – rented rooms in hotels across the country with shitty appetizers on not-quite-full trays and t-shirts that they were all supposed to wear while they competed and it was just as ridiculous as it sounded, but it paid and, really, that’s all she ever cared about.

Until now. Maybe. Definitely

She was doing a God awful job of lying to herself. And she was almost painfully obvious.

“You’re fidgeting,” Elsa muttered, elbowing her lightly in the elevator and they’d taken twenty-two minutes to get ready. “It’s going to be fine.” “I know,” Emma promised. And Elsa was, apparently, taking face-type reaction lessons from Mary Margaret. “You really think we can trust this Weselton? I mean we’re not going to get thrown out of our rooms because the cards have been declined, right?” Elsa looked at her appraisingly and this was the longest elevator ride in the history of the world. “No,” she said and every single one of Emma’s muscles tightened at the word. “I don’t think we’ll get thrown onto the streets of Philadelphia, but I don’t trust Weselton as far as I can throw him. If we can find a different money, I’d walk away from this without a second thought. It doesn’t make sense for him to agree to it, but we’re new and unproven and we got in on a qualifier.” “So what are you saying?” “That we need to do well here. We need to drive up interest, get the hits on that latest story, don’t read the comments by the way, and then we start drumming up support from companies that are actually interested in streaming rights and branding merch.” “You think we can brand merch?” Elsa shrugged. “I think we can do anything, honestly. And so does Killian.” Emma rolled her eyes, but the tension in between her shoulders loosened slightly she still couldn't quite get the idea of kissing him out of the back of her mind. “Have you been taking subtlety lessons from David?” “No,” Elsa laughed. “It’s just almost painfully obvious.” “God.” “It’s also not bad, you know, by default.”

Emma pressed the button in front of her again, like that would, somehow, make the elevator move quicker and Elsa laughed again, the soft sound practically ricocheting off the walls. The doors opened – the sounds from the conference room on the other side of the lobby already filtering through the space. Emma took a deep breath and tried to push the small ocean of feelings she could still feeling in every inch of her into the back corner of her mind.

“Alright,” she said. “Let’s play.”

It was crowded already and they were definitely late, but it didn’t take long to find Ruby or hear Anna’s laugh, pushing their way through the room towards the telltale sounds of Will’s camera shutter clicking.

“Ah, fearless leader,” Ruby called, pushing up on Will’s arm to try and catch Emma’s attention. “Come here and get interviewed, Jones is on a roll already.” Emma shook her head, trying to push her way in between a crowd that looked like two teams and she’d already spotted half a dozen people she knew. They weren’t a very big community – with the same faces popping up as different games got popular and then less popular and shifted from consoles to PCs and back again. Several times.

Victor Whale was already trying to make his way towards Ruby, two glasses of what appeared to be champagne clutched in his hands, and he’d won the very first Halo tournament Emma played in.

Graham Humbert, and his questionably good Call of Duty skills, were on the other side of the hall, eyes finding Emma’s as soon as she looked towards him and she didn’t hesitate to smile in response. That, however, was a mistake.

She knew he was on his way over as soon as she heard the footsteps and even Elsa clicked her tongue, something that felt a lot like revulsion radiating off her. “Who is that?” she asked, nodding towards the thin, brown-haired man approaching them.

“Walsh Simia,” Emma said, tugging Elsa with her as she tried not to trip over her own feet. “I didn’t know he was going to be here too. Shit. It’s like a parade of these are your mistakes Emma Swan.”

Elsa hummed and Walsh didn’t follow them towards the table. Thanks a lot buzzer-controlling goddess. “He played Warcraft when it was cool to play Warcraft,” Emma explained. “Tried to get me to join his team, play the girl card and was not pleased when I didn’t.” “Oh, I bet he’d enjoy a lot of the comments on Killian’s stories.” “Why are you reading those?” “I almost find them funny.” “You’ve got a twisted sense of humor.” Elsa shrugged and Ruby wrapped an arm around Emma’s shoulders when they reached their designated table, pushing a glass into her hands without asking if she was going to drink that night.

She wanted to do nothing but drink all night.

And ignore how much she wanted to kiss Killian again.

They ran the gamut of introductions for the next few hours – a seemingly endless supply of champagne in Emma’s hand at all times – and Killian kept holding his recorder, eyes flashing every time he learned something new.

God.

Emma had no idea what time it was by the time the room actually started to spin and she wondered how long she could actually just sit in the corner until someone noticed. Or tripped over her outstretched legs.

It took five minutes for him to find her. With a glass of water in his hand.

“You disappeared,” Killian muttered, sliding down the wall and sitting next to her without an invitation. Emma nodded – and her hit head on the goddamn wall. “Here,” he continued, holding the glass out expectantly. “Drink this.” “You don’t need to take care of me,” she hissed, but she took the water anyway.

“I’m not. I’m merely ensuring that my best quote continues to be my best quote tomorrow once we get into rules and explaining tournament procedure.”

“God, that’s going to suck. You know we have to get up at like seven in the morning? That’s insane. These are professional video game players. They live in basements and never see the sun.” “I think you’re being kind of hard on them, Swan,” Killian laughed and her arm was touching his again. She wasn’t sure he meant to do that. She didn’t care.

She also wasn’t sure if it was the questionable amount of champagne she’d had to drink already or the water he’d gone out of his way to get her or how he smiled at her when Victor recounted a particularly dramatic Halo event that ended with Emma cursing out every player in a twenty-five foot radius, but whatever it was, she’d forgotten about rules and tension and anything that wasn’t getting the information she wanted.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

Killian smiled – like it was inching across his face and Emma was absolutely drunk because everything seemed to be happening in slow motion and her arm felt like it was on fire where it touched him. “You just did, Swan.” “Oh, don’t be a jerk.” “Ask your question then.” “Before. When we were in the city and taking the great fountain tour, you said you were someone else’s something to deal with and that Liam used to bring you there to plan for everything. Did...well, an orphan’s an orphan, right?” Killian froze, staring a hole into Emma and maybe if she just moved, she could kiss him or keep explaining things she’d only told four other people in the entire goddamn world and she hadn’t mentioned off the record. He pressed his tongue to the corner of his mouth, gaze tracing down from her eyes to her lips and back up again and it wasn’t nearly as crowded anymore, but it was still loud and she could hear him when he took a deep breath.

“Yeah,” he said. “It is.” “When?” “When what?” “When did everyone else leave?”

His eyes flashed towards hers, but he kept his back trained against the wall and maybe they should stop having conversations like this. “Not all of it was on purpose,” Killian muttered, tugging the glass back out of Emma’s hands and she got the distinct impression he needed a distraction. “My mother died when I was eleven. Liam had just been named an officer, barely finished packing and, suddenly, he was a guardian to a kid and a ramshackle apartment on 120th Street.” The room suddenly felt very small.

“I’m sorry,” Emma whispered and she saw the quick quirk of his lips.

“I’m fairly certain it isn’t your fault, Swan.” “Even so. I didn’t...I didn’t realize.” “You weren’t supposed to,” Killian said, finally turning his head to look back at her. “That was the point of trying to impress. Distract appropriately with feature stories and several thousand hits and it almost looks like I’ve got it all together, huh?” Emma nodded. “Almost,” she mumbled, twisting her arm slightly and that was absolutely not the alcohol. That was...something else in entirely. “Follow-up?” Killian asked cautiously. Her heart picked up again, but she nodded anyway and tried not to actually hold his hand. “If you ran how did you wind up back with David and Mary Margaret again?” “No mind reading part this time?” “There’s no mind reading, Swan. You’re just, occasionally, easy to read.” “Only occasionally?” Killian did something absurd with his eyes – all blue and meaningful and he hadn’t had anything to drink. Probably something about the job. And how much he wanted to prove. She didn’t mention that. “David found me,” she said and the words weren’t nearly as hard as she expected them to be. “Mary Margaret’s not great at letting go. So even after I ran, she...kept at me, like I was some DIY project she wasn’t finished with yet. I was in Providence, trying to figure out how to turn a video game talent into a career without a degree and he showed up at my door and brought me back to school with him.” “Ah, that explains the coffee shop, but not being in class with Ruby.” “Connecting those dots.” “It helps when I’ve got a little background to go on.” “That’s not really my strong suit.” “Yeah, I know. You know some guy tried to ask me to talk to you about him.” Emma groaned, squeezing her eyes shut and it wasn’t possible to get a hangover while still drunk, right? God, was she drunk? She might have been. A professional liability. “Let me guess,” she sighed. “Walsh? Wanted to give you some exclusive about how I turned down, how would he put it? The opportunity of a video game lifetime?” “That’s exactly what he said, actually.” “He’s the human embodiment of a broken record. Are you going to quote him?”

“That you turned down a spot on a Warcraft team that doesn’t even exist anymore? No, Swan, I’m not.”

“Generous.” “It’s not part of the story.” Emma wasn’t sure if he meant to say it that way – like he didn’t care how she got there, just that she was there and her arm kept touching his, but it certainly sounded that way and maybe she’d lost complete control of the conversation. “What is the story, then?” she asked.

Killian turned, bumping his knee with hers and he didn’t try to touch her again, but he stared at her intently and Emma tried to consider how many brain cells would suffer if she didn't breathe soon. “What happens next,” he said.

One of them moved. They must have because Emma was closer to him than she remembered being and she was fairly certain she hadn’t ever learned how to teleport because she certainly wouldn’t have spent an hour in traffic if she could do that, but she couldn’t remember actually moving. She was just there.

And so was he.

Right in front of her.

“Em?”

Her whole body sagged forward, frustration and disappointment and that flash of concern in Killian’s eyes shooting through her. “Swan?” he asked, reaching his hand out and the world was just one giant joke because they couldn’t seem to find even ground and the room kept spinning and the voice a few feet away from them was inevitable.

Emma pulled her lips back behind her teeth, trying to take a deep breath through her nose and she didn’t actually get off the ground when she saw Neal Cassidy for the first time since she was seventeen years old.

She wasn’t sure what she expected. She knew it was going to happen. She just didn’t really expect to be champagne-buzzed and sitting on the floor with Killian’s hand wrapped around her shoulder when it, finally, did happen.

He looked older. There were crinkles around his eyes that hadn’t been there when Emma found herself in the backseat of a cop car and his hair was far shorter than she remembered it being.

“Hey,” Emma said and Neal actually laughed and smiled and looked at her like he hadn’t let her sit in jail for a year. “We’re leaving.” The smile faltered for half a moment – nearly dropping off his face entirely when Killian stood up and offered Emma his hand. She took it without a word or an argument and neither one of them made a move to let go of the other.

“No, no, come on wait two seconds,” Neal said quickly, stepping in front of Emma and Killian’s hand tightened. “I wasn’t trying to interrupt or anything. I just, well, I’ve been trying to find you all night. I wanted to say hey.” “And you’ve done an admirable job of that.” “How’ve you been?”

Emma rolled her eyes, disbelief in her laugh. She was still holding onto Killian’s hand. “That’s how you’re going to start this?” “I mean, not really. I started it by telling you I’d spent most of my night looking for you. I think I drove my team insane.” His eyes flitted back towards Killian and Emma could almost hear him thinking. Maybe that was a side effect of the champagne too. “Hey,” Neal continued, jerking his hand out in front of him. “Neal Cassidy.” Killian tensed, glancing at the outstretched hand in front of him and Emma brushed her thumb over the back of his palm – some kind of misplaced encouragement that probably didn’t work and crossed that line she’d drawn in the metaphorical sand in the last two weeks.

“Killian Jones,” he said, taking Neal’s outstretched hand.

“Are you playing?”

They were drowning in metaphors. And unspoken meaning. And a shit ton of champagne. Maybe that meant the League was financially stable. That would be encouraging.

“No,” Killian answered. “I’m a reporter, actually.” Neal blinked, staring at Emma like he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard. “Em, for real?” he asked. “You’re hooking up with a reporter?”

Killian looked like he was going to kill Neal. Emma felt like she was going to kill Neal, fury shooting down her spine and settling in the pit of her stomach until she was fairly positive that every inch of her was actually on fire. She took a step forward, appreciating the quiet way Neal muttered under his breath at the move.

“Don’t try and find me again,” she said softly, far too aware of Killian behind her. “Don’t talk to my team. Don’t talk to anyone that isn’t directly associated with whatever shitty Peter Pan pun you’re playing underneath. I’m done.” Neal gaped at her – the words practically hanging in the air and there were still a few stragglers in the corner of the room, but she could barely hear him when he mumbled ok .

“C’mon, love,” Killian muttered, hand landing on the small of her back as he tugged her towards the double doors. “Let’s get out of here.” She didn’t argue or try and pull his hand away and Neal didn’t move an inch as soon as they stepped around him, Killian nearly punching the elevator button when they moved into the hallway. Emma wished she’d stop getting scared by elevator dings, but she walked when Killian pushed lightly on her back and they’d lost all concept of personal space.

He hit another button and she really was the worst team captain because she had absolutely no idea how they booked these rooms or who made sure they were all in some kind of clump, but Killian seemed to know what he was doing and maybe that’s what changed everything.

She nearly lost her balance when she moved and if Emma was the kind of person who believed in signs, she probably would have been frustrated by that one, but Killian’s hand tightened on the back of her dress and held onto the front of his shirt like some kind of cotton-anchor and he was just as good at kissing in an elevator as he’d been while sitting on a fountain.

He was taller than her.

She knew that before, of course, but between the alcohol and the introductions and how goddamn good he looked all the time Emma nearly forgot about height differences and even in heels she had to push up on her toes to reach his lips.

He helped.

Killian’s arm wrapped around her tightly, tugging her up until her right foot nearly popped out of her shoe and she wasn’t thinking, just moving and feeling, arms wrapped around his neck until she was fairly positive she could feel him everywhere. Emma stumbled when he tried to move, to push her back towards the wall and she gasped when her back hit against metal.

“Swan,” Killian groaned and she smiled at the wrecked sound of his voice. He took a deep breath, tongue sneaking between his lips when she tried to balance on one heel and managed to cant her hips. “God, fuck, Emma, love...you can’t…” He didn’t say anything else and for one vaguely terrifying moment she thought he was going to say something about being a gentleman or the questionable amount of champagne only one of them had. He didn’t

He kissed her.

He kissed her.

He kissed her like he would have been content to do nothing else for the rest of his life.

Emma sighed against him, fingers carding through the end of his hair and one hand moving back towards his jaw and she’d probably to have to thank several different deities for wherever he’d learned to do that thing with his tongue.

Part of her knew it was insane. Part of her knew she’d just seen Neal Cassidy for the first time in more than a decade. Part of her knew Killian was desperately trying to do his job and maybe trying to impress her and several different ghosts, but Emma couldn’t bring herself to consider any of that and she wanted far too much to be worried about anything except the feel of his hands on her back.

Both hands.

The elevator dinged again and Emma mumbled under her breath, goosebumps breaking out on her skin from the wall and that tongue thing.

“We’ve got to move,” she muttered, not bothering to pull away from Killian’s mouth and she could feel the smile on his lips.

“Yeah we do,” Killian agreed. Neither one of them moved.

She tried to catch her breath and remember when she’d just become a completely different person – probably sometime after the second Wawa and before Killian could read her mind – and Emma stepped out of her other heel, grabbing them both off the ground and nodding towards the hallway when Killian gaped at her.

“You coming?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He stayed half a step behind her, like he couldn’t quite decide how to fall into rhythm with her again and Emma tried not to glance over her shoulder every two seconds, tugging a keycard out of her pocket and coming up just short of the door.

“Swan, I...” Killian started, but Emma shook her head and she heard his jaw click when he snapped his mouth closed.

“What happens next, right?”

“Exactly that.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” He nodded, fingers trailing over her arm and there were more goosebumps and his eyes were just way too blue. It was distracting. “I’ll bring the coffee this time. No doubling up on orders.”

Killian smiled, Emma’s toes curling against the hotel carpet when his hand fell back to her hip. “Good night, Emma,” he said softly. He kissed her again – quick and brief and he’d called her Emma.

Again.

Tag List: @jamif ; @alicerubyfloyd ; @courtneyshortney82 ; @jennjenn615 ; @artistic-writer ; @onceuponaprincessworld ; @kmomof4 ; @resident-of-storybrooke ; @whumped-natascha-remi-ronin ; @strangestarlighttree ; @tiganasummertree ; @game-of-once-upon-an-outlander ; @followbatb (Let me know if you want to be tagged or not or what you’d order at Wawa during Hoagie Fest.)

[beauty-grace-outer-space]

Pardon my rant post, but I need to vent. Some triggery stuff under the cut. 

For context, my grandmother is bipolar. I believe she also has narcissistic personality disorder. I think my father may also have narcissistic personality disorder. 

Nearly 3 years ago now, my grandmother and I were talking when she told me she was having trouble affording her anti-depressants. I offered to pay for them, and to schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist to get her dosage confirmed and her prescription renewed. I told her I’d take care of everything.

A few days later, when I called to tell her I had an appointment scheduled for her, she told me not to bother and that she’d decided to kill herself months prior and had actually been storing up her pills to do so. She told me my grandfather knew, and they were making arrangements for him to go on without her. She kept me on the phone for over an hour, in hysterics and hyperventilating, begging her not to die. 

I got my mom and my aunt involved (since I was pretty young and had no idea what to do) and we were able to get her to meet us at a nearby place; we had paramedics waiting to evaluate her. 

Despite 4 nurses and 2 doctors saying she was a danger to herself and should be kept for a mandatory 72 hour hold, she was released less than 5 hours later by a county representative. 

Thus began months of emotional and verbal abuse. She told me she hoped no one would ever love me, because I don’t deserve it. She told me that “the way I am” must be “the result of my warped upbringing” and that she hoped my friends “saw who I really was”. Etc. etc. 

In the midst of this, I found out that when she had called me and told me she was going to commit suicide, she was already back on her pills. I can only assume she wanted an emotional response, but never thought I’d actually try to get help involved. 

Four months later, she decided we were going to pretend it never happened. She went back to being a loving, cheerful grandmother-- though still making snide comments here and there. 

But our relationship has changed forever. I don’t trust her, and I see when she’s being manipulative. She decides who to call-- of me and my cousins-- based on who’s most likely to give her the reaction she wants. 

Two months ago she had a series of small heart attacks. Upon her release from the hospital, she and my grandfather temporarily moved into my aunt’s house while my family and I set to work trying to clean and declutter her home. She’s an extreme hoarder, so this has been quite the task. 

This weekend was the last weekend of cleaning. She and my grandfather came and sat with neighbors while we worked 11 hours a day cleaning, and I overheard her making comments. 

“I don’t have a single person I’d call family.”

“No one cares about me.” 

“I guess we’ll just go to a shelter.” 

“My ‘family’ never does anything for me.” 

Things like that. For two days. 

I was already worn thin from the cleaning, the fact that in taking care of things for her I haven’t seen a single friend in over 3 months, the fact that I haven’t had a weekend, or a bit of free time in 3 months. And then I hear her being manipulative, lying about us, about me... 

That’s how Saturday and Sunday went. Then comes Monday. 

My father has always had problematic tendencies. When he was younger (20s and 30s) he punched holes in the walls when he was mad. When his father died when I was 4, he disappeared without a word to my mother for a week. When he gets mad he throws things, he kicks things... just... a whole host of things that I have only realized with a lot of therapy are not ok. 

For the past several years, he picks fights with me over political differences. I have begged him repeatedly not to bring up these topics because we don’t agree and no matter what I do, he ends up yelling at me how stupid I am. 

If i walk away or stay silent, I’m too stupid to form an opinion.

If I try to have a calm discussion, he pushes until I’m no longer calm, and then tells me that I don’t have opinions, I have emotions, and this is why no one can have a conversation with me. 

If I tell him I don’t want to talk about it, he continues to do so anyway.

He’ll push me to the point of tears, yelling at me that I’m stupid or uninformed, but if someone else enters the room, he switches topics mid sentence. All cheer.  

It hit a point where my mom had to light into him to get him to back off by saying, “You have to stop treating my kid like this.” 

He realized he was being an asshole, and actually apologized, and things... calmed down for a while. The only conversations we’ve really had are, “You should find a nice Christian boy and get married”. Which... yeah right. 

Monday night, he picked a fight with me at a restaurant, yelled at me all the way home about how I don’t listen and only hear what I want to hear, and then once we got home, acted like nothing was wrong. All smiles and cheer in front of my mom.  

I went to my room in tears, and he followed me and knocked on my door. I ignored him. He knocked again. I ignored him. He came in anyway and proceeded to tell me that I’m emotional and misinformed and if I would just listen to him, we’d agree. 

I told him we don’t agree and I do listen, but I’m not going to agree because of the things he was saying. 

He asked for examples and I gave him some from the “conversation” we had just had. 

His response was: “I don’t know where you make this crap up in your delusional little head. I NEVER said that, I’ve never said anything like that!” 

And it pushed me over the edge so I just sat on my bed staring at my comforter and sobbing, “I don’t want to talk about it. Please just leave me alone.” 

He finally huffed out, “FINE!” and left my room. 

My therapist phrased it well when she said it was a “torrent of emotional assault”.

I’m exhausted, and that’s why I’ve been sad/vague posting. I’m so worn out. I’m so tired. I just want to cry for three days. 

I don’t know what I was hoping to achieve with this post. I just... needed to rant. 

[theliterateape]

I Can't Drive 55 | Lessons Learned in the 55th Year

By Don Hall

In my thirty-second year I felt incredibly sorry for myself. I was getting my first divorce, was living in a one-room studio in Uptown, my theater company was imploding over ego-driven bullshit. I drank myself into a state of suicidal yearning. It was a rough year. 

I called my mom. Mom is that voice of reason in good and bad times.

"This has been a really shitty year. Maybe I should move back to Kansas."

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-two."

"And in thirty-two years you've lived on the planet, how many of those years were bad?"

I thought about it for a moment. "Really bad? Two. No three. Three years. Why?"

"Well, three out of thirty-two is a pretty solid track record. Seems to me that you weathered those other bad years and had good years to spare. Maybe you decide to quit wallowing in how bad this year has been and get to work on next year because based on your experience you probably have another cluster of good years in store."

Some have the Dali Lama. Others have a priest or a shelf of self-help books. I have my mom.

My fifty-fifth year (or the specter of 2020) was a rough year for so many people in the world it's almost a joke. The whole year has been covered in shit—from the campaign to unseat the least capable and most destructive president in my lifetime to three months in a pandemic shutting down the planet and economic hardship most of us have only read about in Steinbeck novels—2020 looks like the toilet bowl moments after a morning constitutional from a night of White Castle and rum.

Sure, the act of comparing one's life with those around is a narcissistic self-loathing experiment best suited for recently jilted lesbians and Instagram junkies, but while the entire world has been burning down in both literal and figurative ways, fifty-five has been a damn good year for me.

In January, I was well into my year and a half managing a casino on the corner of I-15 and Tropicana. I had done my due diligence in training and had hit the sweet spot of knowing enough about the business to be an effective leader on the floor. I knew my high rollers and had figured out the best approach to dealing with the meth-addicts and prostitutes. I could fix 90 percent of the machines and could process a jackpot inside of four minutes consistently.

Then came the pandemic and the economic shutdown of Las Vegas in March. Most were laid off and in free fall but I had stumbled into working for one of two gambling corporations in Nevada that committed to keeping the payroll rolling despite losing millions per day.

The three months of closure saw me coming in to work every day, cleaning the bar and the machines, and hanging out to make sure no one ransacked the place while it was closed. I did a lot of writing in my office during that time. 

In terms of personal tragedy, my nineteen year old nephew overdosed in a parking lot in April and, virus be damned, Dana and I flew out the next day to help my sister.

We re-opened the casino in June. 

Seven months of balancing life in a pandemic with idiots motivated to gamble, arguing with people about the necessity to wear masks, and submitting essays to everyone. Getting paid to write (even in small increments) was a genuine drug.

Over the summer both Dana and I were asked to write for an anthology of essays. Las Vegas writers writing about Las Vegas. It was a boost, man. Don't get me wrong, the casino gig was solid and, for the most part, enjoyable. Getting paid to write words and sentences was fucking delicious.

The book came out in October launched with a Zoomesque gathering.

The casino gig, while solid and simple, was becoming dull. Rote. Combining the fact that my best (and meager) talents were not usable during a pandemic in a struggling casino, I told my General Manager that I needed more money for such routine grind and that I’d start looking aggressively for something more in tune with my skills that also paid a bit more on my year-and-a-half mark.

Six days after I started the search, I was hired by a Denver-based firm as a Senior Copywriter.

Turns out I’m pretty good at it. Getting a salary for writing words and sentences is sweet and working from home as the pandemic continues to rage on is smart and comfortable. No longer a slave to the swings shift, my schedule is my own.

I can, for the first time in my life when asked what I do for a living, answer “I am a writer.” In a career path marked by ten year gigs followed by "gotta pay the bills" gigs, it looks like Casino Manager is the latter and "Writer" is the former. Now it’s time to write some books, yeah?

It’s been a year, my friends.

Here are the lessons that landed in my 55th annum.

Always Leave ‘Em Wanting More

Over the course of my bizarre career as a “Writer. Teacher. Storyteller. Consultant.” to refer to my donhall.vegas website, I’ve had a tendency to overstay my welcome.

Instead of leaving circumstances on good terms, by the time I was ready to go, I was all Fuck these people! What a bunch of dickseeds! and at least a few of the people were Fuck him! What a dickseed!

I stayed one year longer than I should have as a public school teacher. I stayed at least a year too long in my second marriage and, despite some incredible shows toward the end of the WNEP Theater years, I stayed too long with that company. I should’ve left WBEZ at least a year earlier and I waited until things got weird in the storytelling scene before leaving Chicago.

With the casino, I left long before things become too rote or sour. I found the new gig, jumped on it, and was told if it didn’t work out, I always had a place to land. That I was a part of the Station Casinos “family.” My staff bought me booze and when I swung by just to see them, they are happy to be seen.

Hell, the GM even gave me one of the chairs from the Craps Table for my home office!

As I get older, recognizing the signs that perhaps it’s time to go is an essential skill. At fifty-five, maybe I’m finally into that.

Family is Always More Important Than Work

Last year, working the first 24/7/365 job in my life, I was told I had to work on Christmas. It was the first Christmas in decades I hadn’t spent with my family in Kansas. It wasn’t bad—Joe flew in from Chicago, he took Dana and I to see Penn Gillette at Rio, Kelli joined Dana and Joe on the casino floor while I worked.

This year, especially after the death of my nephew, it became obvious that family had to come first. Months before I landed the writing gig, I let my GM know I was taking the week of Christmas off, COVID be damned. I was clear that if the company couldn’t pay me for the time off I understood and if I was to be let go because of it, then that was fine, too.

The casino was incredibly cool about the request that wasn’t really a request. In fact, even though I gave my two week’s notice before the Christmas vacation pay would kick in, my GM allowed me to be paid for it anyway (see that first lesson again).

It was in every possible way the correct call. My sister needed me. I needed my mom and dad. We got to reconnect with a cousin I hadn’t seen in years. Turns out she’s a professional copywriter in Austin, TX. It was a soul-filling holiday and I’ll never miss Christmas in Kansas again.

It’s Pointless to Argue with Zealots

Maybe it’s in part due to my new-found desert surroundings or my distance from the increasingly Woke Chicago Arts scene but this last year of Trump and the ridiculous nature of angrier social media has pushed me closer to Left Center than Full-On Progressive.

As a younger man I decided that religion was simply not for me. Too emotionally charged without a sense of rationality. At the distance Nevada gives me I can see how irrational both the Extreme Right—the overtly white nationalist taint with the individualism bordering on sociopathy—and the Progressive Left—the quasi-religious circular logic of white privilege, erasure of women as a category, and focus on tribalism over all—have become. Or maybe they were always this way and it took some time away from a major urban center to see it.

Whichever the case, arguing with either side has become synonymous with filing my teeth with a dremel. Besides being as productive as screaming into an Amazon Box, taping it up, and shipping it to Congress, it’s fucking annoying.

If there is a resolution I’m attempting to adopt in the latter half of my fifties, it is this: find common ground with everyone and if I encounter someone so far into conspiracy territory that I cannot, walk away and don’t look back.

Social Media Enables the Very Worst in Us (and Me)

I can’t remember if I shed myself of Faceborg, Twitter, Instagram, and the host of social media this or last year but I’ve spent most (if not all) of my fifty-fifth year absent the noise and it was an excellent decision.

Mobs of imbeciles canceling professors, trolling J.K. Rowling, threatening violence to strangers, and organizing a breach of the Capitol all using tools for communication that should be extraordinary made me hate people I had never met. This cannot be a good ‘chicken soup for the soul’ arena to spend time in.

I’ll admit that I do feel left out of the mix some yet I’m happier for it. I jumped back recently with a new LinkedIn account (which is sortof  like social media but with jobs) and the only good thing about that has been being able to message with Rob Kozlowski.

I’m a Social Distancing Jedi

Five years ago, Dana threw me a birthday party and there was a room full of friends in attendance. This year, I’ll be lucky if even Dana remembers my birthday.

The culling effect of both getting rid of social media and the pandemic has been like a hoarder finally ridding himself of boxes of empty Altoid tins and those square plastic bread ties. Always a bit of a misanthrope, this year has cleared out so much noise and my new gig at home has me isolated from the wash of the unwashed.

Turns out I’m good with this. My interactions with people are more intentional rather than surface level and while life has made me more cautious when it comes to whom I genuinely trust, those whom I do choose teach me things I wouldn’t know and enrich my dwindling time on the planet.

Your Reality is Dictated by Your Optimism

Optimism isn’t merely hope. It isn’t happiness or a cheery disposition.

Optimism is an act of resilience against the brutal harshness of living the existential crisis.

It’s darkest just before the dawn implies that there will be a dawn. What if there won’t be? What if it’s just more darkness? If the implacable timpani of human greed, a self correcting planetary environment, and the algorithm that defines our modern interaction has no end, should that result in giving in to the despair?

As optimism is a breeze when things are going your way, despair is the path of least resistance when things turn to shit. Seeing through the mist at a better future takes effort and commitment like a solid marriage or a massive novel you’ve committed to writing. It’s a project to be managed not a feeling to languish within.

One cannot truly call himself an optimist who refuses to see the horror. Pretending that people are essentially kind and generous is stuffing the ostrich head in the sand. People are apes with higher brain functions and follow the rules of the jungle. Tribalism, essentialism, war for resources, the history of brutality of all humanity goes far beyond Hannah Jones 1619 Project. Taken in whole, we aren’t a very enlightened and forgiving species.

Further, optimism is an individual choice. It’s not something that can be enforced but it is something that can be inspired. The American Experiment, despite its many missteps and flaws, is grounded in a belief that humans can govern themselves justly and effectively. Given the larger picture, belief in democracy is only slightly more delusional than the guy playing slots so he can pay his rent. The odds are astronomically against success and yet the choice to persevere is made.

When you see someone who has one of those death camp tattoos on their arm you are witnessing a genuine, tried and true, bona fide optimist.

Optimism is hardest when things turn to shit but it is then when it is most necessary.

Becoming Antique is a Journey

For the first time I see that more of my life has been lived than I have left to live.

I recognize that I wish I could give the years I have left to my nephew because I have done a lot in my five and a half decades and he didn't get the chance. I wonder, absent the obsessive drive to achieve I had in my younger days, what I have to offer in the next ten years? What value does my existence provide to others and how do I manifest that value in pragmatic terms?

Like an old car or a pair of worn-out shoes, we all must acknowledge a certain sense of obsolescence. The pandemic has up-ended so many of the fictions we lived with up until this point and finding North on the compass is a challenge these days. Becoming irrelevant is like that boiling frog—slowly and without even recognizing the boil—we all find ourselves as vintage. 

Perhaps that's what I've become. Not the rusted Coca Cola sign in the corner but the "like new" vinyl Def Leppard album with slightly tattered and stained liner notes.

In my next ten years (if I have that much time in store or more) I'd like to read more. Write a lot more. Listen to more live music. Be a better husband. Become that cool old man on the block with good advise and a snort of rye in case it's a little chilly. Christ, I already smoke a pipe.

There is so much more to learn that, in order to avoid feeling useless, I need to learn more.

In a Pandemic, Look For the Simple Things to Keep You Sane

A really well-made sandwich

A cold beer in 115˚ weather

A road trip with your Soul Mate

A book by a new author

A slideshow of you and your Soul Mate doing things together

A long walk

Recognizing that you have a Soul Mate

Sometimes I wonder if there’s anything else. I wonder if I’d miss anything important if I simply ceased to breathe on the couch I bought back in Chicago as it sits in Nevada.

In those moments of melodramatic existentialism, I remind myself that the experience of living is this annual letter to you. A summation of the things I’ve learned and the life I’ve lived.

If I had finished this race last year, my mettle wouldn’t have been tested by a pandemic. I wouldn't have found my sister again. I wouldn’t have seen Trump slink away to Florida. I wouldn’t be sitting in a Craps Chair in a home office of my design. 

I wouldn’t have learned anything at all (you know, because dead people stop moving forward).

Here’s to another year and what adventures I will have!

[elee-thesis]

A Revelation? (Or Maybe What I Always Knew)

This week has been fairly productive! My illness somehow turned into something full-blown and I've been feeling pretty awful the whole weekend unfortunately, but at least sick days in bed mean that I don't have much else to do. This week I've begun experimenting with additional prompts from my "How might [INSERT TECH HERE] express [INSERT QUEER HERE]?" series:

1.  "How can Close Buttons express Connection ?"

I thought about the act of "closing", something I had incorporated into my MS2 project quite a bit as a ritualistic “ending” of a digital experience, or even a cleansing of sorts. Closing, especially in the context of the internet is done so casually, but also carries a lot of weight. An accidental closing of a page with information that might be lost can be devastating. This led me to think about the life cycle of a tab, or a browser window. I realize that I often carry some sort of sentimental feelings toward browser windows (hoarder tendencies?) and often hesitate to close tabs just in case their cumulative presence is meaningful to me in some ways. Though I don't think of them quite as anthropomorphically, what if they were? The image above depicts a scenario in which all browser windows were "named” and delivered a short message to you containing their last "memory" and a brief thank you for their birth and death. Would we feel indebted to them in some way? Would we adapt a new ritual around opening and closing windows?

2. Shutdown, Restart, *Sleep*

(Apologies for the horrible quality, tumblr and their gif size limits!!)

My second project didn't quite follow my format, but instead thought about what a bedtime ritual might look like, specfically for our desktop icons. What if, at the end of an evening, we quite literally "put our computers to sleep". In the above gif, I set my desktop background to depict a room with the sun setting. As my time on the computer came to an end, I took my icons (distributed amongst the virtual shelves, floor cushions, etc) and put them in their virtual bed, one by one. When all icons had been put in bed, I then reduced the brightness as low as possible, and closed my laptop.

3. How might Switches/Levers/Buttons(etc) express Purposelessness?

The above gif depicts an interface (I used a classic Windows 95 interface) and tried to render some of the visual input mechanics useless. What would it look like if the levers that existed were there for play? Or perhaps made people frustrated, or maybe laugh? What if these input systems didn't take in any meaningful input, or perhaps only dispensed meaningless output? How might that change the way we navigate our interfaces/ make decisions? What role would these input devices play?

4. How might Push Notifications express Promiscuity?

What if our push notifications, while containing information (something new is happening here!/ This number of new things are here for you to pay attention to!) also moved around freely amongst other push notifications to engage in some sort of intercourse. While, I didn't really try to define what that might look like in the above gift, I tried to capture the ways certain notifications might develop a relationship with other notifications, or perhaps how some might seek certain partners over others. How might we interact with these notifications that no longer provide information but instead live freely to be "intimate" with one another in a way that doesn't quite carry the stigma that it doesn’t among humans.

The Big WHY?

I think these projects gave me a bit of a grasp on the big why of my project and further convinced me that my methodology should continue to take the form of experimentation and play. Through these experiments I had the chance to think more deeply about how our relationships might change with the devices that help us navigate our journey on the computer. I think experimentation is so important regarding this topic because the radical reimagining of technology just doesn't have a concrete outcome. We can't be quite certain what would happen in world containing this kind of technology because of its impossibility (at this very moment); America operates under a capitalist system that necessitates technology that is speedy and efficient to ultimately commodify time. My project can't change that, and I don't expect it to, but my question, rather, lies in the what ifs? What *if* our technology purely mirrored our humanness, over its tool-ness? What would that look like? What effect might that have? Who might benefit from it? What problems might it tackle? Etc, etc, etc. I'm not sure if that is the *right* reason to pursue a project, but knowing that my thesis will not be complete in one year, but rather is the start of a life-long pursuit/ I think it makes sense that my thesis project grants me permission to investigate deeply and make freely. I understand that this might sound a bit cheesy, but you get the gist.

This leads me to my new question "How might queering our relationship with the internet begin to erode its oppressive tendencies?". My prototypes thus far don't quite focus on the internet (just yet), and they also don't really *focus* on their oppressive tendencies. Overall they aren't quite solution-focused at all, and I think that's ok!

This week I plan to work on the narrative of my thesis midterm presentation and work on discussing it in a structured, engaging way, finish my paper, and then finally start to recover from my illnesses. My birthday is on Friday and I hope to feel a bit lighter by then :)

[dreadhaus-literature]

{Collection} 10 Shots in the Dark.

Telling tales of love and obsession in the blink of an eye.

1.) Dance

“P-Please,” you begged quietly, fingertips trembling against the corded muscle of his forearm, as the music swelled and spurred him into another four-step twirl around the bedroom. “I-I’m tired, can’t w-we stop now?”

“Stop? Sweetheart,” Lou looked disappointed in you, but there was a sparkle in his deep brown eyes, a hint to his teasing nature and just how much he was enjoying himself. “It’s our wedding night! We can’t stop, not yet!”

The whisper of your white wedding dress against his black slacks would have been a reminder to you if he hadn’t spent the last 15 hours celebrating your “wedding”--a wedding you had no hand in planning, a wedding you hadn’t known you’d be having, especially since Lou had kidnapped you.

Your unhinged groom hummed along to the waltz, one strong arm around the small of your back, the other hand gripping yours as if he was worried you’d try to pull away again. But after your exhausting day, you barely had the strength to hold yourself up and when you finally broke and moved closer to rest your head against Lou’s broad chest, he nearly crushed you in a lover’s possessive embrace.

“My wife,” he breathed against your hair, the strong beat of his heart a telltale thump against your ear. “Mine, mine, mine,” he continued, his fingers rubbing your back, stubbled cheek resting on the top of your head.

You were too tired to fight, and that was exactly what he wanted. For months he’d been watching you, stalking you, loving you and finally, finally you were here in his arms, ‘til death do you part. It was what he’d planned and it had all gone off without a hitch.

After all, today had to be perfect--it was the story you’d be telling your children someday.

2.) Aid

“Hurts, doesn’t it?”

Amour watched you blink back tears with a sadistic smile on his pale face. Dark black hair framed sharp cheekbones and wide, blue eyes that scarcely blinked as he didn’t want to miss a moment of your exquisite agony.

“Tell me,” he moved closer, his nose brushing against the crest of your cheek as you turned from him. His warm breath ghosted across the shell of your ear. “Tell me it hurts.”

You rolled your lips under and shook your head, trying to refuse him what he wanted but he pressed the blade deeper against your neck and you felt it bite into your skin at his insistence--and the warm trickle of blood that followed had a whimper echoing in your throat despite your best attempts to stay quiet.

“That’s it,” his tongue traced the tear up your cheek, the hard evidence of his arousal grinding against your thigh as he rocked against you with a groan of need. “I know it hurts, angel, but you’re so fucking pretty when you cry. I just can’t...help myself...”

He moved the knife, distracted as he balled the handle in his fist to grip, then bent his head to drag his tongue along the cut marring the delectable skin of your throat. He made a sound deep in his chest before latching onto the wound, suckling lewdly and you were torn between the sting of pain and the rasp of wet pleasure. The hand holding that wicked knife moved to cup the side of your throat to hold you still, to pull you deeper into his mouth so you could spill deeper down his throat and when you bucked against him, the friction made him shudder. This was a terrible game your captor liked to play with you--hurt you, so he could kiss it, lick it, fuck it all better.

He won the game, every single time.

3.) Purring

Shiloh knew you were asleep, could tell by the even, rhythmic whisper of your breathing as it ruffled his russet curls. From his place on your chest, he stared up at you with a smile of loving satisfaction, his arms tight around your middle--there was no fear you’d pull away but it didn’t matter, not to Shiloh. He held you like a life preserver, sometimes so tightly you bruised.

Not that you...ever knew where the bruises came from. Tranquilizers have a funny way of making your sleep so heavy you lost half your days, sometimes, but it was a price Shiloh was willing to make you pay just for a chance to hold you, to be close to you in a way you’d never let him be if you were conscious.

Shiloh nuzzled closer, inhaling your sweet scent and dragging you into his lungs as if he could keep you there forever, nestled against his heart. His fingertips brushed your bare sides, your shirt hiked up so he could feel your skin at his leisure. Was it wrong? You’d likely think so. Shiloh knew you’d call the police if you discovered just how many times a month he drugged you, broke into your house, and slept with you. The count just kept climbing because like an addict, the more he had you, the more he had to have you.

His bright green eyes lifted from you at the deep sound of purring at the foot of your bed. Your cat was settled, half-lidded in contentment, by your legs intertwined with his, already dozing off. The feline was not at all disturbed by the intruder--your cat’s comfort level with Shiloh was a telltale sign of just how often Shiloh invaded your home. He took it as a good sign. If your cat could accept him, one day you would, too!

And until then...well, he’d take you any way he could get you.

4.) Bodyguard

Your fingers trembled as you reached for your make-up brush, the shiny handle catching the room lights as you lifted the soft bristles to your cheek. The rose petal blush was applied feather light, highlighting your cheekbones to Ciprian’s hungry, unwavering gaze.

Standing with his broad back against the door, your bodyguard had been staring at you the entire time you’d been applying your make-up and now that you were about ready to start on your hair, you steeled your spine and spoke.

“You...can wait outside.”

Ciprian’s head inclined to one side, the light from your vanity table highlighting the deep scar that bisected his left cheek. His large, tattooed hands shoved into his pockets, and the smirk he gave you was amused. “Don’t think so, dollface.”

“Your job detail wasn’t to stand over me while I get dressed.” You stressed, meeting his azure gaze in your mirror. He made no move to leave.

“There’s a lot that’s not in job description,” was his bemused response.

“Just going to take any liberty you want, then?” You slammed your powder brush down, reaching for your hairbrush in the next instant. “Delightful.”

“I know you requested someone else for tonight.”

That made you pause, the bristles of your brush resting against your scalp as you raised your eyes to Ciprian’s. He was still smirking but the humor had gone from his eyes, turning them to ice and as he pushed off the door, long legs devouring the distance between you, your throat ran dry. Rough fingers were surprisingly gentle as he took the brush from you, finishing the stroke through your hair like the touch of a lover--and if Ciprian had his way, he would be.

Yours, as he considered you to be his.

Ciprian brought your brush forward, sweeping another section of your hair back from your face, revealing your ear and as he did, he bent his proud spine to whisper against the shell.

“Don’t make me jealous, baby.” The warning in that baritone was as clear as a gun in broad daylight. Ciprian straightened up, resuming brushing your hair with affection in his touch and on his scarred face. “There’s no one else that’s ever gonna take care of you like I do. You’ll see.”

That’s what you were afraid of.

5.) Seduce

You knew you had power over Triston.

And...maybe you were abusing it. It was just so...intoxicating, the way he loved you, needed you, worshipped you.

“Kiss me again,” he was breathless, his long fingers grasping your hips, his face tipped up to yours as you balanced on his lap. Copper strands of hair fell into his baby blue eyes and as you brushed them onto his forehead he openly moaned. “Please, baby, give me another kiss.”

You smiled slightly, shaking your head as your fingers slipped to cup his cheeks and as he leaned up to try and kiss your smile you leaned back. His disappointed, wanton whine sent a shiver down your spine.

“Don’t tease,” he all but gasped, and you could feel his desperation as he swelled to meet you. Seated upon his lap like a princess upon a throne, he was at your mercy and you ate it up. His head turned, lips and teeth seeking your fingers and palm, scraped against the inside of your wrist as if he had to have some part of you or he’d go insane.

“Do you love me, Triston?” Your tone was teasing, playful, but he rose to meet the question immediately like a puppy wanting a treat.

“I do, I love you! I love you so much!”

Your fingers traced his smiling, adoring mouth before closing the distance to give him his kiss as a reward. He made a happy noise, deep in his chest, as his arms crushed you to him and when you pulled back that noise bled into needy disappointment. He was already straining up to kiss you again. It was never enough for Triston and a part of you really, really liked that about him. There was another part of you that was a little afraid of just how much he loved you, needed you, worshipped you but as long as you always, in the end, gave him what he wanted, you’d be safe, right?

“Kiss me again,” he breathed, grinding his hips up into yours with throbbing insistence you could feel. “Please, baby, I want another kiss.”

Power over someone else is a terrible seduction that might have tricked you into playing a game for keeps that you can’t possibly win.

6.) Dusty

It had been years since you first moved into the house, but you just never really got around to using the attic. You weren’t old enough to inherit hoarder tendencies from the older generation of your family, and with money the way it was? You just didn’t have extra stuff and thus, no real need for storage space outside of the main levels of your modest, yet comfortable home.

That was why it had been living up there, undetected and unbeknownst to you, the entire time you had been making this house your home.

You coughed as you neared the top of the attic ladder, a plume of dust shooting away from you with the force of it. With a box precariously perched in one arm, you waved away the particles with your other as you found steady footing, stepping off the ladder and deeper into the attic. It was the middle of the afternoon and thankfully a circular bay window was pouring sunlight into the dingy, unused space so you didn’t have to be creeped out by your own home. Having never really used the attic before now, you were curiously surprised to find a random assortment of furniture and other odds and ends around the space that was more than tall enough for you to stand without stooping.

“Who knew all this stuff was up here?” You mused aloud, sounded somewhat amused at yourself for not having explored your own home in it’s entirety--until now. You moved a little deeper into the attic and bent to set the box of out of season clothes by a support beam.

Out of the shadows at the far end of the attic, it watched you. Curious, gleaming silver eyes were desperately hungry as you straightened, tracking your every movement through it’s territory, it’s home. In this form it had no way of communicating with you but your sudden decision to come up to the attic hadn’t given Cadmus much time to prepare for your arrival. The middle of the day meant sunlight and sunlight meant danger to it’s monstrous body. Short, cropped black fur covered it’s long torso but abated along it’s arms; thin membranes forming wings stretched down from it’s arms to it’s sides and Cadmus hunched, connected fingers resting against the floor as it moved silently along the far wall, always staying across from you. His wealth of dark hair hung half over his face, and would have given you peek-a-boo glimpses to two sets of elongated canines.To you, Cadmus would look like a humanoid bat, his facial features overtly masculine but bestial all the same--but he was much more than that. He was something ancient, something other than human, and he had enough experience in his centuries of life to know you wouldn’t welcome him with open arms...as much as he’d like you to.

It had always been Cadmus’s dream, since the day you bought this house, to claim you. He’d watched you for years, lurking in the shadows of your home, falling ever deeper in love as you two shared a life side by side--but of course, you had no idea he was here. Cadmus was now so deep in love with you he couldn’t stand the idea of your rejection and so he never gave you a chance to reject him. He stayed locked in your attic, watching you through the vents, the floorboards, the deep shadows at night, pining after you in a way most terrible. To see you in his space, now, running your soft fingers over his furniture he could almost feel the way you’d touch him, stroke his hair, his fur, and his heart thudded with sadness at how he wanted something he could never have.

All too soon, you turned to descend from the attic and as you folded the ladder back up into the ceiling and shut the door, Cadmus lowered his head, for a moment nearly broken-hearted with unrequited love and need. It passed, like an ocean wave, before he ambled over to your box of clothes. Large hands and long fingers separated the cardboard to pull a shirt from within and he pressed it to his nose, inhaling your beautiful scent with a deep, rumbling purr locked in his furred chest.

Cadmus would stay up here for an eternity, collecting dust like your other unwanted items, and he would love you all the more with each passing day.

7.) Glasses

“Theo.” You bit out, giving the young man a pointed look behind your glasses. “Are you paying attention?”

You had no idea how much attention Theo was paying you, but he wasn’t about to clue you in on that. Your student cleared his throat, sitting up straighter as he nodded, sending his dark hair bouncing with the motion.

“Yes, ma’am.”

You maintained eye contact with the young man for a few more seconds, sizing him up as if weighing the truth of his words, but when he cocked an almost inviting grin at you, you set your jaw and turned back to the whiteboard and your lesson.

It was exactly what Theo wanted, because your A-line pencil skirt hugged your curves so lushly he was already forgetting the subject material. It wasn’t his fault! Theo had had every intention of paying attention this semester, the first few steps into university were important to lay a proper foundation but he hadn’t expected you to be his professor. How the hell was he supposed to focus with your sexy voice reading to him, those shapely legs walking the aisles of the classroom, the way your short hair framed your beautiful face? Oh, and your eyes, fuck you had beautiful eyes. Anytime you looked his way, Theo felt you were nailing him to the chair--and it made him want to nail you against your whiteboard.

Of course, you dismissed him. Theo had tried every way he could think of to get your attention, from coming to all your office hours for private tutoring on subject material he knew perfectly well, to attending your independent lectures off-campus. He’d sent you emails, gotten your number from the directory and text you, invited you out to dinner or for drinks but you always diverted his advances with the same response.

“I’m your professor and you’re here to get an education. Focus, Theo.”

Oh, he was fucking focused, all right, and he was growing more and more determined as the days passed. You could think it was a silly schoolboy crush if you wanted to, that was fine, Theo would prove to you it was much more than that eventually. You couldn’t say no forever.

“Theo,” you turned from the board to find your problem student already staring at you, that same grin on his boyish face. Fighting to ignore the beating of your heart and the heat behind his brown eyes, you lifted your chin and adjusted your thin-framed glasses with one hand. “What can we learn from this particular passage, since you are so keenly paying attention?”

Theo watched your fingers, in that moment wanting nothing more than to cup your face and pull you in for a searing kiss that would brand you in front of all his other classmates. It was a want so badly he had to shift in his seat to get comfortable and as he did, he met your gaze evenly. Unfazed, undeterred, and absolutely still in pursuit.

“Not to give up,” he answered smoothly, smile widening to show teeth. “It’ll all pay off, in the end, when you’ve finally got what you want.”

8.) Evade

Sascha knew, before he was told, that you’d gotten away again. Slipped through his fingers, and the young man was left glaring at the incompetent men he’d hired to track you down and bring you back. The men were understandably nervous; Sascha wasn’t known for being the most forgiving when it came to you. The memory of him having one of their crew blinded for looking at you “for too long” was still very fresh in all of their minds.

“I...I’m sorry, sir, she’s--”

“Mine,” Sascha ground out, hard, jet black eyes unblinking. “She’s mine, and she isn’t here. Do you understand my frustration? Do you...see why that’s a problem?”

The leader of the crew nodded quickly, not wanting Sascha’s impatience to sway his ruthless hand. “We’ll find her. We’ll bring her back.”

It was unforgivable, the way you treated him. Sascha loved you, provided for you, would have given you the world on a silver platter and he had the money and resources to do it--but you hadn’t returned his love and affection, no matter what he did or tried. The first date you’d gone on with him had only been to get him to stop calling you but while you’d politely made conversation to get through the ordeal, Sascha had fallen head over heels for you at that candlelit table. When you refused a second date, the unhinged young man began to pursue you relentlessly, using all of his family’s vast wealth and resources to do so. Your life was turned upside down by him, and no matter what you said or did it didn’t matter to Sascha. He wouldn’t listen until you finally said I love you, too.

So yes, he’d kidnapped you. To you, that had been unforgivable, but Sascha finally had you in his home. Granted you were often chained or drugged to keep you compliant, but the selfish heir to the Niklasi fortune didn’t care how he had you, as long as he did. It made no sense to you, perhaps, as the young man was handsome, wealthy, and could have anything and anyone he wanted--except you. You didn’t want him, and it was slowly driving Sascha to the brink of insanity.

“Why won’t she love me?”

The entire room went ice cold at Sascha’s quiet question, as if all the air had been sucked out. Sascha spoke as if talking to no one, but the crew were left with the uncomfortable task of answering. One thing no one wanted was Sascha more upset than he already was.

“...She’ll...come around, sir.”

Sasha’s dark eyes nailed the crew leader to the floor, but he made no move to retaliate or lash out. His tumultuous emotions writhed beneath the surface of his skin like snakes bound in barbed wire and the only time he ever felt better, that he ever felt good, was with you. Why couldn’t you see that? He needed you, and he’d do anything to have to need him back.

Anything.

“...Find her. But the rule stands,” Sascha pointed one long finger at the leader, his eyes glittering with menace. “Not a hair on her head is to be out of place. I’ll punish her for running myself.”

If he broke your goddamn legs, next time you’d think twice about running away from him.

9.) Moan

Rorie shuddered as his cheek slid over yours, felt you pant as his fingers slipped between your legs.

“R-Rorie, don’t, please I--”

“Just once,” Rorie felt the strands of his hair tangling with yours the same way his left hand caught your fingers, pinned you against the wall. “Just once, I want you to moan my name like you do his.”

You squirmed, pushed off the wall in protest but all that did was bring you closer to your boyfriend’s best friend. Rorie’s tall form was lanky but he over-powered you easily, and as his fingertips brushed your clit you had to stifle the noise of pleasure. It shouldn’t feel good, but your body was betraying you and giving Rorie exactly what he wanted.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” Rorie groaned, sounding a little choked up, as if he’d spent so much time fantasizing about what it would be like to touch you like this. “I know this is fucked up, this is wrong and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry but I can’t...I can’t stay away from you...”

Rorie inhaled against your throat, dragged your perfume into his body before his lips and teeth sampled the unmarked skin and he knew better than to leave marks behind, but what he said was true. He couldn’t stop himself, he couldn’t stay away from you. His phone was full of your pictures, swiped from social media and your boyfriend, his best friend. That was how much he needed you, wanted you, loved you--that he would betray his closest friend just for the chance to feel you beneath him, to hear you say his name and tell you how much you loved him. Rorie wanted you desperately. He’d been in love with you just as long as his best friend had, he had just been too shy to do anything about it.

But watching you two together, he couldn’t stand it. It broke his heart. He never blamed you, how could you have known? But that didn’t stop Rorie from spiraling, driven to the point of madness by a broken heart and a need of you so great he couldn’t sleep at night.

“R-Rorie,” you whined, feeling shameful at how wet you must feel against his fingers.

“God, baby, yes,” he moved his greedy, seeking mouth up to yours in a frenzied, desperate kiss. “Again, just like that. Please, baby. Please.”

You breathlessly moaned his name, giving this poor boy what he wanted and your reward was another deep, searing kiss, Rorie’s fingers splitting you cleaning and pushing knuckle-deep.

“Tell me you love me,” Rorie whispered against your mouth, desperation deepening his tenor voice.

“N-No, I can’t--”

“I don’t care if it’s a lie,” Rorie’s green eyes bored into yours, watery with emotion and a love so deep it scared you. “Just...say it, please. Tell me you love me.”

You swallowed thickly, Rorie’s fingers never halting their relentless push. “I-I...love you, Rorie.”

Rorie’s forehead came to rest against yours, his entire body shaking with need, his breath slamming from his lungs as you felt his insistent arousal pressed against your side.

“I love you too, baby. I love you, I love you, I love you...and I’m gonna show you how much.”

10.) Compare

Diederich sneered in disgust at the woman in front of him. “You look nothing like her.”

The woman opened her mouth to say something but was cut off.

“Don’t you dare,” Diederich snapped, his deep baritone like a guillotine. “You don’t look like her but you sound even less like her and I won’t have it.”

The escort’s lips met so quickly her teeth clacked, but Diederich was already checked out. He waved a large hand, dismissively. “Remove the clothes. Then get out.”

The sound of her retreating heels was almost music to Diederich’s ears. His servants would ensure his orders were followed, so he needn’t spare any more time on the trash that had been tarnished bronze in comparison to the shimmering gold of your memory.

Where were you?

“Sir,” Diederich’s head butler bowed at the waist before entering the bedroom, giving his Master an almost sympathetic look. “The young miss was not to your standard?”

“No, Nicolas.” Diederich snapped, impatience and desperate need rubbing him raw. He shoved a hand through his slicked back blond hair. “You know who I want.”

Nicolas hesitated a moment before responding, “We haven’t been able to track her down, Master. I apologize.”

Diederich’s fingers worked at a kink in his neck as the tall male sank to the edge of his bed. No matter the resources and money Diederich had to spend, he had nothing to show for it. He’d spent one night with you, a hired date for an event he had to attend as the high elite of society--hired because he was a busy man, too busy to date but showing up alone to events wasn’t always a viable option. What he hadn’t expected was to fall in love with you--and he had, the moment he’d laid eyes on you that evening. You were...perfection. Living perfection wrapped in expensive silk, with diamonds in your eyes and a siren’s song in your voice. You’d spent the night with yourself wrapped around him and he’d gone to sleep with you locked tight in his arms but when he awoke the next morning, all he had to show for you was a lipstick kiss on his cheek and your name seared into his heart. He’d called the agency immediately and tried to track you down but it seemed you’d moved on. It had devastated him, left him a broken shell of a man lovesick and with no way to assuage the pain he felt.

Diederich didn’t care how long it took, how much money he had to spend, he would find you and make you his.

Until he did, his staff tried to satisfy him and his terrible need by hiring women who looked enough like you to try and take his mind off you--but it never worked. They never compared to you, like weeds next to a rose garden and he was growing increasingly more unhinged the longer this went on. Nicolas could see it, and it worried him.

“We’ll have the clothes washed and brought in for you, Master.”

Diederich made a quiet noise in response, some of the tension seeping out of his broad shoulders at that. The clothes were what you’d had on the night he’d taken you out, and he slept with them every night. The escorts hired to try and fill your shoes often tried to wear them to impress Diederich but it never worked. All he could see was you.

“Was there anything else I could do for you, Sir?” Nicolas prompted, wanting to ease the suffering so clear on Diederich’s sharply-cut features.

“Next time...” Diederich’s deep voice sounded distant, as he slipped just a little further into delusion. “Next time, call them by her name.”

Nicolas’s spine stiffened slightly but he didn’t object. “As you...wish, Sir.”

“Yes...I’ll call them her name and if I close my eyes, it’ll be as if she’s here. Loving me as I love her...” Diederich sounded lost in thought, deep in the fantasy of having you that it wouldn’t matter who warmed his sheets. In his warped, lovesick mind, it would be you.

It would always, always be you.

[dragons-in-bowties-blog]

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

When I was a senior in college, my dad's hoarding began to hit its peak. I was embarrassed to invite even my closest friends over, including the ones who had messy homes and spare rooms filled with junk of their own. They didn't have piles of untouched, dusty paperwork from eight years ago all over their kitchen tables. They didn't have multiple old, useless computer monitors crowding the doorway to their bedrooms. While our one-bedroom apartment was about as crowded with stuff as it could be (my dad's room transformed into the living room), it didn't quite qualify as Hoarders-level.

I'm not an organized, neat person by nature, but my dad's hoarding tendencies frustrated and challenged me when we lived together. I have ADHD, so it really helps me to have a system in place. When certain things go in specific places, I don't have to worry if I have my debit card on me because it's always in the same spot, and so on. I couldn't control my dad's decisions about what to keep, but I could at least control my own space. I worked hard to keep my room as free of hoarding as possible, and to build habits that would prevent me from getting to that point.

Hoarding runs in my family on both sides; I also noticed it when I visited a cousin in Texas a few years ago, and saw all the stacks of books and photos in her spare room. A few years before Marie Kondo's book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up came out in 2014, I began a DIY process of my own: Whenever I received something new-anything from a free brochure at the library to a Christmas gift-I asked myself whether keeping it would bring me joy. If the answer was no, I found kind and compassionate ways not to keep it.

Marie Kondo's decluttering techniques have been a life-changing trend for people worldwide, and in her new Netflix show Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, she helps people through the process in their own homes.

The show is as emotional and vulnerable as the tidying up process is in real life. It took me months to get around to the decluttering process for the first time, but after I was raped at a college dorm party in 2012, I decided I needed to get to work. I came home for winter break and went through all of my possessions by category, making a particular pile for things that I associated with my rapist, who was someone I'd known in high school.

Decluttering can be a really harrowing process, and Kondo's show has an episode that focuses on a widow working through her late husband's belongings. I grieved similarly when my dad and I went through my mom's things after she died, moving stuff we wanted to keep into our new home and also ensuring that other family members and friends got to take pieces of her memory, too. I still remember sitting with my two childhood best friends on the floor of my old living room, sorting through my mom's library to figure out which of her books I should take with me.

Now I live with my fiancée in our own apartment, and I have a Marie Kondo-esque process for deciding whether I'm going to keep things. It isn't entirely joy-based; some of my decisions are based on necessity or the knowledge that I should hold onto an item because it will give someone else happiness in the future. I'm also conscious of how my purchases and decisions impact the environment, so I opt for plastic-free packaging, online-only receipts, and electronic account statements and bill pay. I try to print out as little papers for my work as possible, unless I'm editing the manuscript of a book (because I just can't work through 200+ pages in Microsoft Word).

I also take a very joy-based approach to acquiring new items so that I don't just buy any discounted shirt when Black Friday sales tempt me. I only get new things if I really need them-like when I finally outgrew a 10-year-old beige winter coat from middle school-or if they truly bring me joy-like the Betsey Johnson phone purse I bring with me everywhere. This method gives me a wardrobe and jewelry collection that really feels like me, and it makes choosing an outfit so much easier. I'm not compelled to “refresh” my wardrobe with new stuff every season, even though the fashion industry wants me to.

My clutter prevention system helps me keep my hoarding tendencies in check.

Experts are uncertain if hoarding is genetic, a learned behavior, or some combination of the two. But 30 to 40 percent of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have it, like my dad. If I default back to not having a system for what to keep, I find that I start to hoard things I definitely don't need. A few years ago, I had a folder of every receipt I'd ever gotten in the last five years, including ridiculous things like M&Ms. Whenever I bring new things into our apartment, I take time to sort through them and decide whether to keep, donate, recycle, or give away. And if I'm keeping, I'll find a spot for the items and store them there.

Tidying up can be an exhausting process, but finding your way around a maze of your own stuff-piles and piles of things that may even look somewhat organized but are actually impossible to navigate-is even more exhausting. I'm not perfect and I'm still learning; I've got an entire ottoman full of family photos and letters that I need to declutter. Maybe watching Tidying Up will be the exact inspiration I need to spark my motivation.

The post I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me appeared first on HelloGiggles.

[typhoonprecious-blog]

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

When I was a senior in college, my dad's hoarding began to hit its peak. I was embarrassed to invite even my closest friends over, including the ones who had messy homes and spare rooms filled with junk of their own. They didn't have piles of untouched, dusty paperwork from eight years ago all over their kitchen tables. They didn't have multiple old, useless computer monitors crowding the doorway to their bedrooms. While our one-bedroom apartment was about as crowded with stuff as it could be (my dad's room transformed into the living room), it didn't quite qualify as Hoarders-level.

I'm not an organized, neat person by nature, but my dad's hoarding tendencies frustrated and challenged me when we lived together. I have ADHD, so it really helps me to have a system in place. When certain things go in specific places, I don't have to worry if I have my debit card on me because it's always in the same spot, and so on. I couldn't control my dad's decisions about what to keep, but I could at least control my own space. I worked hard to keep my room as free of hoarding as possible, and to build habits that would prevent me from getting to that point.

Hoarding runs in my family on both sides; I also noticed it when I visited a cousin in Texas a few years ago, and saw all the stacks of books and photos in her spare room. A few years before Marie Kondo's book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up came out in 2014, I began a DIY process of my own: Whenever I received something new-anything from a free brochure at the library to a Christmas gift-I asked myself whether keeping it would bring me joy. If the answer was no, I found kind and compassionate ways not to keep it.

Marie Kondo's decluttering techniques have been a life-changing trend for people worldwide, and in her new Netflix show Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, she helps people through the process in their own homes.

The show is as emotional and vulnerable as the tidying up process is in real life. It took me months to get around to the decluttering process for the first time, but after I was raped at a college dorm party in 2012, I decided I needed to get to work. I came home for winter break and went through all of my possessions by category, making a particular pile for things that I associated with my rapist, who was someone I'd known in high school.

Decluttering can be a really harrowing process, and Kondo's show has an episode that focuses on a widow working through her late husband's belongings. I grieved similarly when my dad and I went through my mom's things after she died, moving stuff we wanted to keep into our new home and also ensuring that other family members and friends got to take pieces of her memory, too. I still remember sitting with my two childhood best friends on the floor of my old living room, sorting through my mom's library to figure out which of her books I should take with me.

Now I live with my fiancée in our own apartment, and I have a Marie Kondo-esque process for deciding whether I'm going to keep things. It isn't entirely joy-based; some of my decisions are based on necessity or the knowledge that I should hold onto an item because it will give someone else happiness in the future. I'm also conscious of how my purchases and decisions impact the environment, so I opt for plastic-free packaging, online-only receipts, and electronic account statements and bill pay. I try to print out as little papers for my work as possible, unless I'm editing the manuscript of a book (because I just can't work through 200+ pages in Microsoft Word).

I also take a very joy-based approach to acquiring new items so that I don't just buy any discounted shirt when Black Friday sales tempt me. I only get new things if I really need them-like when I finally outgrew a 10-year-old beige winter coat from middle school-or if they truly bring me joy-like the Betsey Johnson phone purse I bring with me everywhere. This method gives me a wardrobe and jewelry collection that really feels like me, and it makes choosing an outfit so much easier. I'm not compelled to “refresh” my wardrobe with new stuff every season, even though the fashion industry wants me to.

My clutter prevention system helps me keep my hoarding tendencies in check.

Experts are uncertain if hoarding is genetic, a learned behavior, or some combination of the two. But 30 to 40 percent of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have it, like my dad. If I default back to not having a system for what to keep, I find that I start to hoard things I definitely don't need. A few years ago, I had a folder of every receipt I'd ever gotten in the last five years, including ridiculous things like M&Ms. Whenever I bring new things into our apartment, I take time to sort through them and decide whether to keep, donate, recycle, or give away. And if I'm keeping, I'll find a spot for the items and store them there.

Tidying up can be an exhausting process, but finding your way around a maze of your own stuff-piles and piles of things that may even look somewhat organized but are actually impossible to navigate-is even more exhausting. I'm not perfect and I'm still learning; I've got an entire ottoman full of family photos and letters that I need to declutter. Maybe watching Tidying Up will be the exact inspiration I need to spark my motivation.

The post I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me appeared first on HelloGiggles.

[fuckyeahslightlyamusing-blog]

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

When I was a senior in college, my dad's hoarding began to hit its peak. I was embarrassed to invite even my closest friends over, including the ones who had messy homes and spare rooms filled with junk of their own. They didn't have piles of untouched, dusty paperwork from eight years ago all over their kitchen tables. They didn't have multiple old, useless computer monitors crowding the doorway to their bedrooms. While our one-bedroom apartment was about as crowded with stuff as it could be (my dad's room transformed into the living room), it didn't quite qualify as Hoarders-level.

I'm not an organized, neat person by nature, but my dad's hoarding tendencies frustrated and challenged me when we lived together. I have ADHD, so it really helps me to have a system in place. When certain things go in specific places, I don't have to worry if I have my debit card on me because it's always in the same spot, and so on. I couldn't control my dad's decisions about what to keep, but I could at least control my own space. I worked hard to keep my room as free of hoarding as possible, and to build habits that would prevent me from getting to that point.

Hoarding runs in my family on both sides; I also noticed it when I visited a cousin in Texas a few years ago, and saw all the stacks of books and photos in her spare room. A few years before Marie Kondo's book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up came out in 2014, I began a DIY process of my own: Whenever I received something new-anything from a free brochure at the library to a Christmas gift-I asked myself whether keeping it would bring me joy. If the answer was no, I found kind and compassionate ways not to keep it.

Marie Kondo's decluttering techniques have been a life-changing trend for people worldwide, and in her new Netflix show Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, she helps people through the process in their own homes.

The show is as emotional and vulnerable as the tidying up process is in real life. It took me months to get around to the decluttering process for the first time, but after I was raped at a college dorm party in 2012, I decided I needed to get to work. I came home for winter break and went through all of my possessions by category, making a particular pile for things that I associated with my rapist, who was someone I'd known in high school.

Decluttering can be a really harrowing process, and Kondo's show has an episode that focuses on a widow working through her late husband's belongings. I grieved similarly when my dad and I went through my mom's things after she died, moving stuff we wanted to keep into our new home and also ensuring that other family members and friends got to take pieces of her memory, too. I still remember sitting with my two childhood best friends on the floor of my old living room, sorting through my mom's library to figure out which of her books I should take with me.

Now I live with my fiancée in our own apartment, and I have a Marie Kondo-esque process for deciding whether I'm going to keep things. It isn't entirely joy-based; some of my decisions are based on necessity or the knowledge that I should hold onto an item because it will give someone else happiness in the future. I'm also conscious of how my purchases and decisions impact the environment, so I opt for plastic-free packaging, online-only receipts, and electronic account statements and bill pay. I try to print out as little papers for my work as possible, unless I'm editing the manuscript of a book (because I just can't work through 200+ pages in Microsoft Word).

I also take a very joy-based approach to acquiring new items so that I don't just buy any discounted shirt when Black Friday sales tempt me. I only get new things if I really need them-like when I finally outgrew a 10-year-old beige winter coat from middle school-or if they truly bring me joy-like the Betsey Johnson phone purse I bring with me everywhere. This method gives me a wardrobe and jewelry collection that really feels like me, and it makes choosing an outfit so much easier. I'm not compelled to “refresh” my wardrobe with new stuff every season, even though the fashion industry wants me to.

My clutter prevention system helps me keep my hoarding tendencies in check.

Experts are uncertain if hoarding is genetic, a learned behavior, or some combination of the two. But 30 to 40 percent of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have it, like my dad. If I default back to not having a system for what to keep, I find that I start to hoard things I definitely don't need. A few years ago, I had a folder of every receipt I'd ever gotten in the last five years, including ridiculous things like M&Ms. Whenever I bring new things into our apartment, I take time to sort through them and decide whether to keep, donate, recycle, or give away. And if I'm keeping, I'll find a spot for the items and store them there.

Tidying up can be an exhausting process, but finding your way around a maze of your own stuff-piles and piles of things that may even look somewhat organized but are actually impossible to navigate-is even more exhausting. I'm not perfect and I'm still learning; I've got an entire ottoman full of family photos and letters that I need to declutter. Maybe watching Tidying Up will be the exact inspiration I need to spark my motivation.

The post I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me appeared first on HelloGiggles.

[tothe-tooth-blog]

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

When I was a senior in college, my dad's hoarding began to hit its peak. I was embarrassed to invite even my closest friends over, including the ones who had messy homes and spare rooms filled with junk of their own. They didn't have piles of untouched, dusty paperwork from eight years ago all over their kitchen tables. They didn't have multiple old, useless computer monitors crowding the doorway to their bedrooms. While our one-bedroom apartment was about as crowded with stuff as it could be (my dad's room transformed into the living room), it didn't quite qualify as Hoarders-level.

I'm not an organized, neat person by nature, but my dad's hoarding tendencies frustrated and challenged me when we lived together. I have ADHD, so it really helps me to have a system in place. When certain things go in specific places, I don't have to worry if I have my debit card on me because it's always in the same spot, and so on. I couldn't control my dad's decisions about what to keep, but I could at least control my own space. I worked hard to keep my room as free of hoarding as possible, and to build habits that would prevent me from getting to that point.

Hoarding runs in my family on both sides; I also noticed it when I visited a cousin in Texas a few years ago, and saw all the stacks of books and photos in her spare room. A few years before Marie Kondo's book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up came out in 2014, I began a DIY process of my own: Whenever I received something new-anything from a free brochure at the library to a Christmas gift-I asked myself whether keeping it would bring me joy. If the answer was no, I found kind and compassionate ways not to keep it.

Marie Kondo's decluttering techniques have been a life-changing trend for people worldwide, and in her new Netflix show Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, she helps people through the process in their own homes.

The show is as emotional and vulnerable as the tidying up process is in real life. It took me months to get around to the decluttering process for the first time, but after I was raped at a college dorm party in 2012, I decided I needed to get to work. I came home for winter break and went through all of my possessions by category, making a particular pile for things that I associated with my rapist, who was someone I'd known in high school.

Decluttering can be a really harrowing process, and Kondo's show has an episode that focuses on a widow working through her late husband's belongings. I grieved similarly when my dad and I went through my mom's things after she died, moving stuff we wanted to keep into our new home and also ensuring that other family members and friends got to take pieces of her memory, too. I still remember sitting with my two childhood best friends on the floor of my old living room, sorting through my mom's library to figure out which of her books I should take with me.

Now I live with my fiancée in our own apartment, and I have a Marie Kondo-esque process for deciding whether I'm going to keep things. It isn't entirely joy-based; some of my decisions are based on necessity or the knowledge that I should hold onto an item because it will give someone else happiness in the future. I'm also conscious of how my purchases and decisions impact the environment, so I opt for plastic-free packaging, online-only receipts, and electronic account statements and bill pay. I try to print out as little papers for my work as possible, unless I'm editing the manuscript of a book (because I just can't work through 200+ pages in Microsoft Word).

I also take a very joy-based approach to acquiring new items so that I don't just buy any discounted shirt when Black Friday sales tempt me. I only get new things if I really need them-like when I finally outgrew a 10-year-old beige winter coat from middle school-or if they truly bring me joy-like the Betsey Johnson phone purse I bring with me everywhere. This method gives me a wardrobe and jewelry collection that really feels like me, and it makes choosing an outfit so much easier. I'm not compelled to “refresh” my wardrobe with new stuff every season, even though the fashion industry wants me to.

My clutter prevention system helps me keep my hoarding tendencies in check.

Experts are uncertain if hoarding is genetic, a learned behavior, or some combination of the two. But 30 to 40 percent of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have it, like my dad. If I default back to not having a system for what to keep, I find that I start to hoard things I definitely don't need. A few years ago, I had a folder of every receipt I'd ever gotten in the last five years, including ridiculous things like M&Ms. Whenever I bring new things into our apartment, I take time to sort through them and decide whether to keep, donate, recycle, or give away. And if I'm keeping, I'll find a spot for the items and store them there.

Tidying up can be an exhausting process, but finding your way around a maze of your own stuff-piles and piles of things that may even look somewhat organized but are actually impossible to navigate-is even more exhausting. I'm not perfect and I'm still learning; I've got an entire ottoman full of family photos and letters that I need to declutter. Maybe watching Tidying Up will be the exact inspiration I need to spark my motivation.

The post I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me appeared first on HelloGiggles.

[inkundu1]

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

When I was a senior in college, my dad's hoarding began to hit its peak. I was embarrassed to invite even my closest friends over, including the ones who had messy homes and spare rooms filled with junk of their own. They didn't have piles of untouched, dusty paperwork from eight years ago all over their kitchen tables. They didn't have multiple old, useless computer monitors crowding the doorway to their bedrooms. While our one-bedroom apartment was about as crowded with stuff as it could be (my dad's room transformed into the living room), it didn't quite qualify as Hoarders-level.

I'm not an organized, neat person by nature, but my dad's hoarding tendencies frustrated and challenged me when we lived together. I have ADHD, so it really helps me to have a system in place. When certain things go in specific places, I don't have to worry if I have my debit card on me because it's always in the same spot, and so on. I couldn't control my dad's decisions about what to keep, but I could at least control my own space. I worked hard to keep my room as free of hoarding as possible, and to build habits that would prevent me from getting to that point.

Hoarding runs in my family on both sides; I also noticed it when I visited a cousin in Texas a few years ago, and saw all the stacks of books and photos in her spare room. A few years before Marie Kondo's book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up came out in 2014, I began a DIY process of my own: Whenever I received something new-anything from a free brochure at the library to a Christmas gift-I asked myself whether keeping it would bring me joy. If the answer was no, I found kind and compassionate ways not to keep it.

Marie Kondo's decluttering techniques have been a life-changing trend for people worldwide, and in her new Netflix show Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, she helps people through the process in their own homes.

The show is as emotional and vulnerable as the tidying up process is in real life. It took me months to get around to the decluttering process for the first time, but after I was raped at a college dorm party in 2012, I decided I needed to get to work. I came home for winter break and went through all of my possessions by category, making a particular pile for things that I associated with my rapist, who was someone I'd known in high school.

Decluttering can be a really harrowing process, and Kondo's show has an episode that focuses on a widow working through her late husband's belongings. I grieved similarly when my dad and I went through my mom's things after she died, moving stuff we wanted to keep into our new home and also ensuring that other family members and friends got to take pieces of her memory, too. I still remember sitting with my two childhood best friends on the floor of my old living room, sorting through my mom's library to figure out which of her books I should take with me.

Now I live with my fiancée in our own apartment, and I have a Marie Kondo-esque process for deciding whether I'm going to keep things. It isn't entirely joy-based; some of my decisions are based on necessity or the knowledge that I should hold onto an item because it will give someone else happiness in the future. I'm also conscious of how my purchases and decisions impact the environment, so I opt for plastic-free packaging, online-only receipts, and electronic account statements and bill pay. I try to print out as little papers for my work as possible, unless I'm editing the manuscript of a book (because I just can't work through 200+ pages in Microsoft Word).

I also take a very joy-based approach to acquiring new items so that I don't just buy any discounted shirt when Black Friday sales tempt me. I only get new things if I really need them-like when I finally outgrew a 10-year-old beige winter coat from middle school-or if they truly bring me joy-like the Betsey Johnson phone purse I bring with me everywhere. This method gives me a wardrobe and jewelry collection that really feels like me, and it makes choosing an outfit so much easier. I'm not compelled to “refresh” my wardrobe with new stuff every season, even though the fashion industry wants me to.

My clutter prevention system helps me keep my hoarding tendencies in check.

Experts are uncertain if hoarding is genetic, a learned behavior, or some combination of the two. But 30 to 40 percent of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have it, like my dad. If I default back to not having a system for what to keep, I find that I start to hoard things I definitely don't need. A few years ago, I had a folder of every receipt I'd ever gotten in the last five years, including ridiculous things like M&Ms. Whenever I bring new things into our apartment, I take time to sort through them and decide whether to keep, donate, recycle, or give away. And if I'm keeping, I'll find a spot for the items and store them there.

Tidying up can be an exhausting process, but finding your way around a maze of your own stuff-piles and piles of things that may even look somewhat organized but are actually impossible to navigate-is even more exhausting. I'm not perfect and I'm still learning; I've got an entire ottoman full of family photos and letters that I need to declutter. Maybe watching Tidying Up will be the exact inspiration I need to spark my motivation.

The post I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me appeared first on HelloGiggles.

[cowgirluli-blog]

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

When I was a senior in college, my dad's hoarding began to hit its peak. I was embarrassed to invite even my closest friends over, including the ones who had messy homes and spare rooms filled with junk of their own. They didn't have piles of untouched, dusty paperwork from eight years ago all over their kitchen tables. They didn't have multiple old, useless computer monitors crowding the doorway to their bedrooms. While our one-bedroom apartment was about as crowded with stuff as it could be (my dad's room transformed into the living room), it didn't quite qualify as Hoarders-level.

I'm not an organized, neat person by nature, but my dad's hoarding tendencies frustrated and challenged me when we lived together. I have ADHD, so it really helps me to have a system in place. When certain things go in specific places, I don't have to worry if I have my debit card on me because it's always in the same spot, and so on. I couldn't control my dad's decisions about what to keep, but I could at least control my own space. I worked hard to keep my room as free of hoarding as possible, and to build habits that would prevent me from getting to that point.

Hoarding runs in my family on both sides; I also noticed it when I visited a cousin in Texas a few years ago, and saw all the stacks of books and photos in her spare room. A few years before Marie Kondo's book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up came out in 2014, I began a DIY process of my own: Whenever I received something new-anything from a free brochure at the library to a Christmas gift-I asked myself whether keeping it would bring me joy. If the answer was no, I found kind and compassionate ways not to keep it.

Marie Kondo's decluttering techniques have been a life-changing trend for people worldwide, and in her new Netflix show Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, she helps people through the process in their own homes.

The show is as emotional and vulnerable as the tidying up process is in real life. It took me months to get around to the decluttering process for the first time, but after I was raped at a college dorm party in 2012, I decided I needed to get to work. I came home for winter break and went through all of my possessions by category, making a particular pile for things that I associated with my rapist, who was someone I'd known in high school.

Decluttering can be a really harrowing process, and Kondo's show has an episode that focuses on a widow working through her late husband's belongings. I grieved similarly when my dad and I went through my mom's things after she died, moving stuff we wanted to keep into our new home and also ensuring that other family members and friends got to take pieces of her memory, too. I still remember sitting with my two childhood best friends on the floor of my old living room, sorting through my mom's library to figure out which of her books I should take with me.

Now I live with my fiancée in our own apartment, and I have a Marie Kondo-esque process for deciding whether I'm going to keep things. It isn't entirely joy-based; some of my decisions are based on necessity or the knowledge that I should hold onto an item because it will give someone else happiness in the future. I'm also conscious of how my purchases and decisions impact the environment, so I opt for plastic-free packaging, online-only receipts, and electronic account statements and bill pay. I try to print out as little papers for my work as possible, unless I'm editing the manuscript of a book (because I just can't work through 200+ pages in Microsoft Word).

I also take a very joy-based approach to acquiring new items so that I don't just buy any discounted shirt when Black Friday sales tempt me. I only get new things if I really need them-like when I finally outgrew a 10-year-old beige winter coat from middle school-or if they truly bring me joy-like the Betsey Johnson phone purse I bring with me everywhere. This method gives me a wardrobe and jewelry collection that really feels like me, and it makes choosing an outfit so much easier. I'm not compelled to “refresh” my wardrobe with new stuff every season, even though the fashion industry wants me to.

My clutter prevention system helps me keep my hoarding tendencies in check.

Experts are uncertain if hoarding is genetic, a learned behavior, or some combination of the two. But 30 to 40 percent of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have it, like my dad. If I default back to not having a system for what to keep, I find that I start to hoard things I definitely don't need. A few years ago, I had a folder of every receipt I'd ever gotten in the last five years, including ridiculous things like M&Ms. Whenever I bring new things into our apartment, I take time to sort through them and decide whether to keep, donate, recycle, or give away. And if I'm keeping, I'll find a spot for the items and store them there.

Tidying up can be an exhausting process, but finding your way around a maze of your own stuff-piles and piles of things that may even look somewhat organized but are actually impossible to navigate-is even more exhausting. I'm not perfect and I'm still learning; I've got an entire ottoman full of family photos and letters that I need to declutter. Maybe watching Tidying Up will be the exact inspiration I need to spark my motivation.

The post I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me appeared first on HelloGiggles.

[ungracefulswan-blog]

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

When I was a senior in college, my dad's hoarding began to hit its peak. I was embarrassed to invite even my closest friends over, including the ones who had messy homes and spare rooms filled with junk of their own. They didn't have piles of untouched, dusty paperwork from eight years ago all over their kitchen tables. They didn't have multiple old, useless computer monitors crowding the doorway to their bedrooms. While our one-bedroom apartment was about as crowded with stuff as it could be (my dad's room transformed into the living room), it didn't quite qualify as Hoarders-level.

I'm not an organized, neat person by nature, but my dad's hoarding tendencies frustrated and challenged me when we lived together. I have ADHD, so it really helps me to have a system in place. When certain things go in specific places, I don't have to worry if I have my debit card on me because it's always in the same spot, and so on. I couldn't control my dad's decisions about what to keep, but I could at least control my own space. I worked hard to keep my room as free of hoarding as possible, and to build habits that would prevent me from getting to that point.

Hoarding runs in my family on both sides; I also noticed it when I visited a cousin in Texas a few years ago, and saw all the stacks of books and photos in her spare room. A few years before Marie Kondo's book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up came out in 2014, I began a DIY process of my own: Whenever I received something new-anything from a free brochure at the library to a Christmas gift-I asked myself whether keeping it would bring me joy. If the answer was no, I found kind and compassionate ways not to keep it.

Marie Kondo's decluttering techniques have been a life-changing trend for people worldwide, and in her new Netflix show Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, she helps people through the process in their own homes.

The show is as emotional and vulnerable as the tidying up process is in real life. It took me months to get around to the decluttering process for the first time, but after I was raped at a college dorm party in 2012, I decided I needed to get to work. I came home for winter break and went through all of my possessions by category, making a particular pile for things that I associated with my rapist, who was someone I'd known in high school.

Decluttering can be a really harrowing process, and Kondo's show has an episode that focuses on a widow working through her late husband's belongings. I grieved similarly when my dad and I went through my mom's things after she died, moving stuff we wanted to keep into our new home and also ensuring that other family members and friends got to take pieces of her memory, too. I still remember sitting with my two childhood best friends on the floor of my old living room, sorting through my mom's library to figure out which of her books I should take with me.

Now I live with my fiancée in our own apartment, and I have a Marie Kondo-esque process for deciding whether I'm going to keep things. It isn't entirely joy-based; some of my decisions are based on necessity or the knowledge that I should hold onto an item because it will give someone else happiness in the future. I'm also conscious of how my purchases and decisions impact the environment, so I opt for plastic-free packaging, online-only receipts, and electronic account statements and bill pay. I try to print out as little papers for my work as possible, unless I'm editing the manuscript of a book (because I just can't work through 200+ pages in Microsoft Word).

I also take a very joy-based approach to acquiring new items so that I don't just buy any discounted shirt when Black Friday sales tempt me. I only get new things if I really need them-like when I finally outgrew a 10-year-old beige winter coat from middle school-or if they truly bring me joy-like the Betsey Johnson phone purse I bring with me everywhere. This method gives me a wardrobe and jewelry collection that really feels like me, and it makes choosing an outfit so much easier. I'm not compelled to “refresh” my wardrobe with new stuff every season, even though the fashion industry wants me to.

My clutter prevention system helps me keep my hoarding tendencies in check.

Experts are uncertain if hoarding is genetic, a learned behavior, or some combination of the two. But 30 to 40 percent of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have it, like my dad. If I default back to not having a system for what to keep, I find that I start to hoard things I definitely don't need. A few years ago, I had a folder of every receipt I'd ever gotten in the last five years, including ridiculous things like M&Ms. Whenever I bring new things into our apartment, I take time to sort through them and decide whether to keep, donate, recycle, or give away. And if I'm keeping, I'll find a spot for the items and store them there.

Tidying up can be an exhausting process, but finding your way around a maze of your own stuff-piles and piles of things that may even look somewhat organized but are actually impossible to navigate-is even more exhausting. I'm not perfect and I'm still learning; I've got an entire ottoman full of family photos and letters that I need to declutter. Maybe watching Tidying Up will be the exact inspiration I need to spark my motivation.

The post I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me appeared first on HelloGiggles.

[theinternetismylyfe-blog]

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me

When I was a senior in college, my dad's hoarding began to hit its peak. I was embarrassed to invite even my closest friends over, including the ones who had messy homes and spare rooms filled with junk of their own. They didn't have piles of untouched, dusty paperwork from eight years ago all over their kitchen tables. They didn't have multiple old, useless computer monitors crowding the doorway to their bedrooms. While our one-bedroom apartment was about as crowded with stuff as it could be (my dad's room transformed into the living room), it didn't quite qualify as Hoarders-level.

I'm not an organized, neat person by nature, but my dad's hoarding tendencies frustrated and challenged me when we lived together. I have ADHD, so it really helps me to have a system in place. When certain things go in specific places, I don't have to worry if I have my debit card on me because it's always in the same spot, and so on. I couldn't control my dad's decisions about what to keep, but I could at least control my own space. I worked hard to keep my room as free of hoarding as possible, and to build habits that would prevent me from getting to that point.

Hoarding runs in my family on both sides; I also noticed it when I visited a cousin in Texas a few years ago, and saw all the stacks of books and photos in her spare room. A few years before Marie Kondo's book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up came out in 2014, I began a DIY process of my own: Whenever I received something new-anything from a free brochure at the library to a Christmas gift-I asked myself whether keeping it would bring me joy. If the answer was no, I found kind and compassionate ways not to keep it.

Marie Kondo's decluttering techniques have been a life-changing trend for people worldwide, and in her new Netflix show Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, she helps people through the process in their own homes.

The show is as emotional and vulnerable as the tidying up process is in real life. It took me months to get around to the decluttering process for the first time, but after I was raped at a college dorm party in 2012, I decided I needed to get to work. I came home for winter break and went through all of my possessions by category, making a particular pile for things that I associated with my rapist, who was someone I'd known in high school.

Decluttering can be a really harrowing process, and Kondo's show has an episode that focuses on a widow working through her late husband's belongings. I grieved similarly when my dad and I went through my mom's things after she died, moving stuff we wanted to keep into our new home and also ensuring that other family members and friends got to take pieces of her memory, too. I still remember sitting with my two childhood best friends on the floor of my old living room, sorting through my mom's library to figure out which of her books I should take with me.

Now I live with my fiancée in our own apartment, and I have a Marie Kondo-esque process for deciding whether I'm going to keep things. It isn't entirely joy-based; some of my decisions are based on necessity or the knowledge that I should hold onto an item because it will give someone else happiness in the future. I'm also conscious of how my purchases and decisions impact the environment, so I opt for plastic-free packaging, online-only receipts, and electronic account statements and bill pay. I try to print out as little papers for my work as possible, unless I'm editing the manuscript of a book (because I just can't work through 200+ pages in Microsoft Word).

I also take a very joy-based approach to acquiring new items so that I don't just buy any discounted shirt when Black Friday sales tempt me. I only get new things if I really need them-like when I finally outgrew a 10-year-old beige winter coat from middle school-or if they truly bring me joy-like the Betsey Johnson phone purse I bring with me everywhere. This method gives me a wardrobe and jewelry collection that really feels like me, and it makes choosing an outfit so much easier. I'm not compelled to “refresh” my wardrobe with new stuff every season, even though the fashion industry wants me to.

My clutter prevention system helps me keep my hoarding tendencies in check.

Experts are uncertain if hoarding is genetic, a learned behavior, or some combination of the two. But 30 to 40 percent of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have it, like my dad. If I default back to not having a system for what to keep, I find that I start to hoard things I definitely don't need. A few years ago, I had a folder of every receipt I'd ever gotten in the last five years, including ridiculous things like M&Ms. Whenever I bring new things into our apartment, I take time to sort through them and decide whether to keep, donate, recycle, or give away. And if I'm keeping, I'll find a spot for the items and store them there.

Tidying up can be an exhausting process, but finding your way around a maze of your own stuff-piles and piles of things that may even look somewhat organized but are actually impossible to navigate-is even more exhausting. I'm not perfect and I'm still learning; I've got an entire ottoman full of family photos and letters that I need to declutter. Maybe watching Tidying Up will be the exact inspiration I need to spark my motivation.

The post I come from a family of hoarders, so “tidying up” is more than just a trend to me appeared first on HelloGiggles.