#GRIEF CW

[icaruspendragon]

i’ve been trying to figure out something profound to say in regards to grief and the holidays, but i'm coming up empty.

it just sucks.

i thought november was the cruelest month. speaking of change yet unable to whisper the same promises april brings.

i was wrong.

turns out december's cruelty is unmatched, brimming with irony. void-full and heavy with absence.

but i don't think that's particularly profound. maybe big feelings don’t always mean revelation. like how sometimes things ending doesn’t always mean salvation.

maybe what’s profound is how unspectacular something so big can feel. or how simply simple sadness is able to hide in complexity’s clothing. maybe it’s the difference between “painful tenderness” and “painstaking tenderness.”

i had been told, "if it bleeds you can kill it” and yet, somehow, my bleeding heart still grieves. i have found no weapon that can pierce the armor which grief has crafted from my love.

you cannot kill what can never die.

[trans-eddie]

steve's not a religious man, for all the years he spent being dragged to mass by his parents. but if he was, he'd want to ask god why he let someone like eddie die for this piece of shit town that didn't deserve him.

steve had watched from across the room as dustin handed over eddie's necklace, in tears. as wayne clutched it in his hand and brought it to his lips, like a rosary, eyes closed in prayer; and steve had broken a little.

growing up the way he had, he was no stranger to guilt. guilt was a steady undercurrent, a familiar beast he long learned how to wrangle, to compartmentalize.

but not this.

this guilt is a serpent, rearing its ugly head in his chest and constricting around his lungs until he can't breathe. it makes him uneasy, agitated. like he's filled with an energy he needs to expell.

the same kind that made him pick a fight with jonathan byers.

the same kind that made him crash his car into billy hargrove.

he knows there's something wrong with him, but he's never learned how to handle his emotions; he just does his best for having been a kid who was handed a bat studded full of rusty nails to solve his problems.

but guilt is not a thing you can beat down like some bloodthirsty monster from another dimension, no matter how it eats him.

so steve does what he does, and he swings his fists at the next best thing.

it's some buzzcut, blonde asshole from the local church, the older brother of one of carver's guys. a few years older than steve, even. he's mouthing off, worked up and angry. if steve was more rational, more gracious, he'd give leeway for the man's own grief, his own emotional response to loss and terror. steve's been through enough to know what it's like, to crave control.

but he's feeling neither of those things, and the man is sending specks of spit out of his mouth as he yells about searching the rubble of the town for eddie munson, the murderer, the satanist.

steve's jaw tenses. his hands clench tight, and before he knows what he's doing, he's rounded on him and socked him square on the jaw.

there's a beat where he processes, where he makes the conscious choice whether to step back and assess his actions, or to follow through.

the man snarls at him, and the moment passes. steve takes two fistfuls of his shirt and slams him to the ground, shouting as he goes.

"don't you dare open your mouth about him again, you ungrateful -" he cuts off with a growl, slamming the man forcefully against the earth again. "you'll never know, you'll never fucking know what he did for you! nobody will fucking know, they won't ever know now, they won't-!"

steve stops when he feels warm, wet trails run down his cheeks, tastes the salt on his tongue.

he stumbles back off the man, hands touching his face.

he hasn't been able to cry yet. it hasn't come, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how many times steve played that last look eddie gave him, over and over in his head, thinking about the fact that the next time he saw those eyes, they would be vacant and lifeless.

he could never cry, because he blamed himself, and what right did he have to cry over what was his own fault?

he'd had crying beat out of him at eight years old, when his father was on edge from his mother's nagging, and steve had been upset about something or other.

he'd smacked him, pinched the bridge of his nose, and shaken steve's head until he'd stopped, wide eyed and scared.

"men don't cry," his father had sneered, dragging rough thumbs across steve's eyelids, drying them of the evidence.

steve turns his head up, up, up, now, bare and facing the heavens, where god looks disinterestedly on from, and he screams. he runs his voice hoarse, the sobs tearing violently from him, wracking his body with sorrowful tremors.

his face is wet, and it's too salty to be rain.

he doesn't feel like a man.

not when he'd left eddie behind and run off to play hero, only to watch helplessly as the people he loved were choked by vines.

not when eddie had been left to make the hard choice, the sacrificial play, just to get them the win; and they hadn't even defeated vecna, only bought them all some more time.

he's not a man, but a failure.

somehow, in the midst of this, steve drags himself back home. manages to climb into his bed, and pull out what he'd stuffed underneath.

he sits there, numb fingers clutching a swathe of bloody denim, and he cries.

he cries until there's nothing left, until he feels like his whole body is dried and and empty, a husk curling in on itself.

he fades into sleep, too quickly to catch the reflective, red glint that enters his bedroom as the the sun sets, or to catch the way a figure moves through the shadows, perching at the end of his bed.

he doesn't hear the low rumble of a voice, raspy and trying to whisper.

"I thought I was the animal now," eddie says, sharp teeth flashing. "but you're a regular guard dog, aren't you, harrington?"

his eyes glow in the moonlight as he watches the sleeping figure below him with intensity.

"will you fight everyone that badmouths me, I wonder?" eddie laughs mirthlessly. "your work will be cut out for you."

his eyes travel over steve's full form, pausing with surprise when he catches the vest he's clinging to like a security blanket.

steve doesn't wake to see the winged body take off out of his upper story window.

he does wake, however, and find that the item of clothing he fell asleep with is conspicuously missing; and, even more alarming, what's been left in it's place: his yellow sweater, the one abandoned to the upside down, swallowed up when lover's lake split apart.

the one he never expected to see again, because things don't just come back when they've been lost like that.

except, maybe, he thinks, running over the golden fabric with disbelieving fingertips...maybe, there is a chance that they sometimes do.

[lifeinpoetry]

that’s all grief is, really. realizing that you are too sad to sit with the other sad kids. i know this because, when i say it out loud, no one corrects me. but still they stay and watch me eat, eyes following the juice dripping down my chin.

— Ollie Schminkey, from "my father is dying," Dead Dad Jokes

[brbabcs]

often times in the brba and bcs universe, we see grief and loss through the individual that remains in the aftermath of the actual death. but something that compels me about nacho’s trajectory is that we see his grief before he dies. we see this last phone call with his father, mourning not even just himself but the fact that this will be it. that the loss is not something he can avoid or navigate around, but instead something he just has to choose the best option from. he’s looking around at these future-dead men, hearing his father through the phone, knowing that there are only so many endings available to him — and more than that, that he is at the end of the line. he’s in these desolate landscapes, filled with disconnected individuals (who, only one truly is rooting for him in any capacity,) and knowing that the air he breathes, and the people he loves, and the world he’s surrounded by, will be something that, soon, he will no longer be able to see or hear or touch or love. grief is devastating when there’s this phantom image of a person in the aftermath that can never actually be there, of course it is. but grief before the actual loss has occurred is gutwrenching. we see grief for his father, grief for his life, grief for young nacho varga who, only a few years prior, was seemingly on top of the world and only climbing upward — and inevitably, now falling quite a long ways down. and all he can hope is that, afterwards, the impact he takes will be enough to stop the damage from shattering outward. that it can be his last act of love

[where-our-stories-start]

[westerosiladies]

Love no one but your children. On that front a mother has no choice.

[kaesaaurelia]

Apparently my former boss has died, which I found out in the process of him being contacted as my one and only professional reference. So I'm a little numb. Have an alternate reference and am working up the nerve to contact some other people but also his wake is this Saturday and. Idk I'm just kicking myself for not texting him pics from Chicago TARDIS.

[swollenbabyfat]

Dia starts off by keeping a lot of things of Laverne's at first, but through the years and moves she has left things behind or taken polaroid's of them to have physical representations without all the bulk.

100 or so years after Laverne's death she has only a chest full of her personal things, and in those things she keeps tightly sealed some of her blouses, which her perfume only lightly hangs on to now. She is afraid of losing her scent, her face and voice are still so clear in her ears she thinks - she thinks. It hasn't been that long, but she would have died of old age twice since then.

One day, maybe a 150 years after her death, the smell is faint, her voice is blurrier, but she knows she still loves her wife. The ring on her finger - marriage, something belonging between mortals, has become heavier on her mind than its physical weight. She slips it off for first time other than bathing in centuries.

She kisses it, she places it in the chest, and walks outside for the first time in months. Its raining, and Dia feels lighter.

[khaotunqs]

thinking a lot about my mom--she would have been 70 today.

we didn't have the best relationship towards the end of her life, but she was my mama, she was my foundation, and i loved her so much.

i still love her. i still miss her. and i know, in spite of her demons, that she loved me too.

happy birthday, mom. ❤

[memesomething]

one thing i DO think is pretty much everyone deserves a free pass when they are grieving. grief does weird things to the best of us. you are not weird or bad if you hurt in a way that people don't recognise. light a bonfire and throw all their property on it. destroy a kitchen. hurt the people you love so that they can't be someone you care about and you can't lose them. cry. shrug it off and keep going like nothing happened. clean a mansion (something to do). grief is grief is grief, there is not a wrong way to grieve

[highfunctioningflailgirl]

Empty

There’s nothing abstract about death. No grappling with mythical concepts. No vague hopes, built on blind faith. Not for Dean Winchester, anyway. Death is a gut punch, immediate and real, and he feels its shock in every bone as he sits on the bunker’s cold floor, head in his hands.

And afterimage of Cas plays on repeat in his head. The sucking, slurping noise of the Empty taking him. Castiel’s teary smile - serene, accepting.

He’s gone.

He’s gone, and with him the chance to reply to his confession. To man the fuck up and say something, anything instead of just standing there like an idiot and, tail tucked between his legs, going for a stupid “Don’t do this.”

Love.

Loss.

He can handle both, but not like this, not in this sudden, heady, terrible mash-up of something ending when it could just have begun.

Castiel’s death cuts through Dean like an axe. He’s cleaved in half and bleeding out. No strength left to pick up the phone and answer Sam’s call. No oxygen in his brain to process that the world is ending. His muscles are deflating, skin cold, and everything that hurts is slowly growing numb.

Cas is in the Empty. Dean is empty. Hollow. Drained. A shell.

Death isn’t abstract. It’s physical. Sticky, black and consuming.

Dean cries into his hands.

Take me as well.

[icaruspendragon]

I know you've really struggled with the passing of your brother (and I'm sorry if this reminder is too painful) but if I may ask a personal question?

How do you motivate yourself? Because I look at you and I see that your life is hard and you maybe be struggling at times but you're still pushing forwards- and I want to be able to do that. I want to try to better myself but it's like every time I start, I spiral deeply and I have to crawl my way back up, never truly making progress.

So how do you motivate yourself?

cw for discussions/mentions of suicide, death, and grief:

it was 6:30 am on my twenty-fifth birthday when i woke up to my mother standing in my bedroom, my husband already awake and dressed and next to her. i knew something was wrong. she wished me a happy birthday and then said she had to tell me something. the first words out of my mouth were “is this going to ruin my day?” and she said, “yes, it is. your brother is gone.”

i still have not found the words to describe the everything that happened inside of me in that moment. i don’t think they exist. despite this, i continue my search.

at the time, i had just embarked on my mission to create meaningful chaos (which can be summed up as doing good things in weird ways) because i had realized my platform on tiktok gave me the privilege to have more of an impact than most. and i wanted to use this privilege to help who and where and how i could. my entire plan for my birthday was to commit acts of chaotic kindness and ask my followers to do the same. instead i had to try and come to terms with my brother killing himself.

i had to start planning a funeral.

i made a video sharing what had happened because i had been hinting at my birthday plan for weeks and wanted to give my followers an explanation as to why it was no longer going to. and because i felt compelled to make sure that something good came out of that horrible day.

and to my bittersweet amazement, tens of thousands of people took heed my call for chaotic kindness. in the days and weeks that followed my brother’s suicide thousands of dollars were donated to a plethora of charities. thousands of dollars were sent to me. day after day after day my po box was overflowing with cards and letters and offers of comfort. an incomprehensible number of strangers saw my sorrow and my hurt and my pain and they decided to try and counteract it by putting as much good into the world as they could. they eased the weight of my grief by picking some up, not because i asked them to or because they had to, but because they saw an absence of good and decided they could create some.

it was these acts of kindness done by strangers on the internet that gave me the strength to put one lead laden foot in front of the other. their kindness gave me the strength to spread my own. these people gave me the determination to try and return some of their kindness to the universe and those in it who desperately need it. i needed something good to come out of my brother’s death. even if it were one life saved or one person helped with the story of him taking his own, it would be enough.

then, i got a card in my po box that kinda changed my life.

the card was sent by a stranger as most of the mail i receive is.

this is what they wrote:

in my almost 24 years of existence i have searched far and wide, for an answer. i have looked and looked, for a while, long before i even knew what i was looking for. the answer to the question that every Human Being has at some point asked.

Why?

“What Is The Meaning of Life?”… why are we all here…. what is it all for… yada yada yada

and time and time again, i have failed to find one. the best i can come up with is that we are just here for shits and giggles and you should try not to be a dick. just have some happy moments when you can and don’t actively cause damage.

however you, dear berklie…

you have decided to break through neutrality. you, in your quest to spread Meaningful Chaos have entered the terrifying realm of Positivity. you, in this cold, dark universe that is constantly trying to snuff out the light, have fished in you pocket, pulled out a lighter and started committing arson.

and for that, you have my utmost respect, awe, and if i am being honest, envy. it is no easy task to stand up and say ‘fuck this. there can be good. and where i cannot find it, i will create it.’

that last sentence has rattled about in my brain every single day since reading it. the words this stranger wrote for me, about me were so incredibly profound. i wanted to be the person they wrote about, so i started looking everywhere for ways to create good.

i will say, the projects i come up with to help with my creation of good are also distractions so i do not have to be left alone with my thoughts and my grief, so they’re not entirely for selfless reasons.

with every single word tenderly crafted and given to me about how i have helped someone in someway somehow my need to do more for more people, grows.

so anon, here are some words tenderly crafted for you.

this world is awful and terrible and overwhelming and isolating and in desperate need of change.

in terrible need of good.

but how can i, as one single person, change anything? there’s just too much.

i am here to tell you that you canchange this world or change yourself or change something because you’re not alone.

if enough one single persons get together, everything looks a lot less awful and a lot less lonely, and all of those one single persons doing what they can becomes an entire group of people making what they think are meaningless little changes, but are meaningful acts to be both seen and felt.

in the six months since my brother took his own life, i’ve had dozens and dozens of people tell me that my grief was their sign not to do the same to their families. i’ve had hundreds and hundreds of people tell me that seeing my grief was helping them feel less lonely in their own. i’ve helped raise over 20,000 for charities all across the globe not because i had 20,000 dollars to give, but because i exist in a community of people who want to do good. it is easier to get one hundred people to give five dollars than to get one person to give five hundred dollars. the change enacted because of that act will be felt the same by the people who need it. they don’t care that it was a hundred people doing what most would consider to be nothing. they care that it happened at all.

it matters not the size of the gesture, it is the effort in doing something at all.

i’m motivated because i know i’m not alone in my attempts to make good where i cannot find it.

neither are you.

i hope this helps you in some way.

i’m rooting for you. we all are.

and just know, i have a spare lighter for you.

[karinrebloggardjur]

(Twt)

😢😭😫

[lifeinpoetry]

i want everyone else to grow up. i want them to ask me about it without turning it into an interview. i want them to feel sad but not for me. i want them to feel sad for me.

— Ollie Schminkey, from "the Band-Aid in the pool filter," Dead Dad Jokes

[where-our-stories-start]

1x01 vs 1x06

[andejoe]

Please write about The straw that breaks the camels back. A generally calm collected Human is having a terrible day (or week or month) and the crew has been asking if they are OK, because who would be at this point, but the Human says it's all good. Then something happens, something small and insignificant, a mild inconvenience at most, but it's the straw that breaks the camels back and all hell breaks loose as the Human goes on a rampage. Your stories are amazing and I've thought about it for years but have zero creative writing abilities.

And if you do please tag me so I can read it as soon as you post!

I’m new to tagging so forgive me if I do this wrong. @lazykingtyrant

Onwards to the story.

—

I was surprised to see Olive at breakfast. She just returned from leave to attend an obsequy for a family person, and I read that for species who bond with family, those rites were quite draining both physically and emotionally. But to look at her, you wouldn’t know it. She appeared exactly the same.

I watched from afar, concerned about my associate but not careless enough to get too close. Olive shared some brief but pleasant words with several others who wished to verify her well-being.

Everything seemed to be ordinary.

And then her straw bent instead of piercing her beverage.

The air around her seemed to darken and slow as she stopped moving.

She tried again, fruitlessly attempting to get a defective straw to break through a functional lid.

On the third try, the straw broke.

She appeared completely fine, but my long dormant instincts warned of danger.

She set down the broken straw, took a breath, and screamed.

Several crew fainted immediately, a long ingrained response to a predator cry. Olive, who normally was the most equable human, did not notice or seem to care.

Other human crew-mates were moving quickly towards the danger.

Olive stood, slamming her hands down on top of her drink cylinder, making a primal and terrifying growl. The drink bent, popping and spraying liquid under the staggering force of the relatively mild human.

Now wet with sticky drink, Olive’s next scream sounded pained, as if wounded. Her crumpled cylinder flew through the air and slammed against the far wall.

More crew scattered, rushing to escape a human with engaged predator instincts. It was a rare sight, and not one normally survived.

Other human crew finally reached Olive, but not before she had thrown her breakfast tray to the floor. They grabbed her arms to stop her, but she slammed her fists down onto the table.

I jumped, falling backwards out of my chair. My instincts may have been dormant, but they were still ingrained. There was only so much I could see before my body reacted.

The other humans were attempting to speak with Olive, and her anger screams were becoming more anguished, and she began to cry.

“Olive, you’re gonna give someone a heart attack! Just talk to us!” Sheryl commanded.

“He cheated on me!” Her wail caused the other humans to pause, but they did not release her. “My grandmothers funeral, and I found him with my cousin!”

Olive became overcome with her own tears. The danger she presented seemed to have passed as she now collapsed in to herself.

“H-he admitted he f-failed his placement test on purpose. He wanted to, to break up with me. He was too chicken to actually go through with it, so he pretended to be supportive and was sleeping with with my cousin the en-entire time.” Olive took a shaky breath. “Everyone knew, and no one told me anything.”

The other humans consoled Olive, holding her close. She wasn’t done though, and kept them at arms length, as if her words wouldn’t come with them too close.

“He sold my car to pay for their house! I built that car with my grandmother! It was the last thing I had of her, and he sold it!”

The humans succeeded in closing around Olive this time, holding her and her words in. Her cries could still be heard. The humans shuffled Olive out of the common areas, rushing her to a predator only space where she wouldn’t trigger the rest of us.

I’d never personally seen a human angry, nor heard a human struggle for air. I doubt I will be able to forget anytime soon.