#I wish my feelings and fears were unfounded but they never are

[catcatb0y]

Does anyone else hit that point in conversation where it's like. Everything is a wall.

Not because everything actually IS a wall, but because you hit a wall once and that makes you suddenly doubt /everything/ you have to say?

Like, 'well I picked the wrong answer once, and I don't want to do it again-' it's like the equivalent of picking the same answer bubble too many times on a test, but you can't take the answers back and the first time you used that letter it was a guess (and it told you immediately after that you were wrong).

With every minor mistake, that wall just gets higher and higher and you get smaller and smaller...

[flowerandblood]

The Price of Pride (6/?)

[ canon • Aemond x Royce • female ]

[ warnings: kissing, mutual masturbation, infidelity, smut, the angst, sexual tension, imprisonment, abuse of power, manipulation ]

[ description: Prince Aemond finds a solution to the disproportion in the number of dragons between Dragonstone and King's Landing: he decides to find dragon blood and, like his half-sister, train dragon riders. He takes as his target the daughter of Daemon Targaryen and Rhea Royce, whom he abducts and imprisons in the Red Keep. Slow burn, darkish, insolent, arrogant Aemond. I have combined several requests here: (dragon blood female & prisoner female). ]

* English is not my first language. Please, do not repost. Enjoy! *

Next chapters: Masterlist

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Never before had the wooden ceiling of a bed seemed so interesting to her.

The Maester was trying to be gentle and his touch was respectful – she knew that, but still what he was doing, the fact that there were other people around behind the cream curtains made her tense, even though she knew the verdict would be one.

When the examination was finally completed she sighed quietly and swallowed hard, rising on her elbow – she lowered her skirt down thinking she wouldn't give them the satisfaction and cry – Maester's voice and what he said was like honey to her ears.

"She is a maiden, My King. I have no doubt."

A moment later, she heard the sound of a door opening and closing with a loud slam.

Prince Aemond gave everyone an expression of his fury at this obviously unfounded accusation.

She took a quiet breath as someone pulled aside one of the veils – the king's face seemed satisfied, as if not the end result but the fact that he had once again shown his brother who had the last word was his reward.

"I am relieved, dear cousin, that you have come to no harm under my brother's care. I hope you understand that in no way did I mean to offend you or undermine your virtue." He said lightly, knowing that she could not reply anything other than to confirm his certainly sincere and good intentions.

"I am grateful to you for your concern, Your Grace." She replied, looking him straight in the eye, to her surprise feeling neither bitterness nor regret.

This would at least cut off any further gossip about her and the tongue of the servant who had given her pleasure that day, as promised by the prince.

She guessed he would not leave it at that.

"I wish to see your dragon and judge for myself the value he will bring to the upcoming battles. I also want him to stay in the Dragon's Pit with the rest of the dragons and not with Vhagar." He said, and she nodded, knowing that there was no point in standing up.

This brother or another, what difference did it make.

"He is still wild and untamed, my King. Accustomed to freedom. I fear that sudden confinement may kill his spirit." She replied softly.

Aegon nodded.

"I may yet change my decision. For now, I want to see him."

In accordance with his desire, he, she and a retinue consisting of several members of the Kingsguard, including Ser Criston Cole, set off on horseback to Vhagar's lair where the two dragons rested.

When they arrived, she felt joy, or rather a new kind of it, one she had experienced for the first time when she saw Sheepstealer.

Her dragon squawked happily at the sight of her, coming quickly up to her on his paws, watching her from all sides, intrigued, paying no attention to the other newcomers.

He was as sweet as a baby, she thought with tenderness, lonely for long years, craving tenderness, understanding and attention as much as she did.

He was everything she was, which is why the moment she first looked into his eyes she knew she would succeed in taming him.

She knew what he needed and she was able to give it to him, and he reciprocated.

Her dragon was the only man she needed.

"Magnificent. Fierce. And large indeed. Bigger than Sunfyre. Very well." Exclaimed the King with a smile, clearly pleased and reassured.

When his brother was not next to him he felt in control of the situation again.

She stroked the muzzle of her dragon, for some reason also smiling, its scales under her skin hard and rough.

"We are at your service, my King." She replied, wanting to be sure they would leave her alone.

She just wanted to be close to her dragon, nothing more.

"Good. You and my brother will take turns patrolling the sky daily. This will relieve the burden on Vhagar and allow the prince to attend to other, equally important matters." He said, and she nodded.

"Present our subjects with our new dragon. Show them that we are stronger than ever." He commanded, and she held back the smile of amusement that pressed across her face.

Is that so?

Outside? Maybe.

But inside, they were one rotten fruit.

"My King."

Flying over King's Landing was a kind of liberation for her – she felt she was showing not only the world what she had become, but more importantly her father.

She hoped, feeling the wind in her hair, whirling on the Sheepstealer in the skies with laughter, that Daemon was throwing his cups in Dragonstone out of rage, cursing the day she was born.

Although she hated her heritage and her name, it was the dragon that saved her and gave her life meaning.

It felt like they understood each other without words, that one move of hers was enough to make him change his flight course to where she wanted or dive down.

Once they landed, she always spent a bit of time with him, lying on the grass beside him, stroking his muzzle – she wanted him to know that he wasn't just her tool that she used.

No.

She felt something completely different that filled her heart wonderfully.

Love.

Looking out of the corner of her eye at Vhagar lying in the distance, plunged into a deep sleep, completely ignoring them, she wondered if these were the feelings that Prince Aemond had for his dragoness.

You should fall to your knees before her, you fucking whore, not laugh.

This was not an expression of his pride then.

It was an expression of his deep affection for her.

She smiled at this thought, recognising that at last she understood him.

Her expression was gentle and contented when, walking down the corridor of the Red Keep with a guard who did not leave her side, she came across him, apparently heading for Vhagar's liege.

"Where have you been?" He asked disturbed, seeing her riding attire.

She sighed quietly, pulling her black leather gloves from her hands.

"The King ordered that we take turns patrolling the skies. I have done that duty today. You may rest." She said, and he swallowed hard, something expression in his face as if he felt discomfort.

Another thing he was taking away from him, she thought.

"Leave us." He directed his cold words to the guard. He nodded and walked away with the quiet clang of his steel armour.

The prince moved away towards the cloisters, and she moved with him.

He didn't want anyone to hear their conversation.

"What did you say to him?" He asked, looking sideways, as if he couldn't bear to see her.

"To whom?"

"To my brother. Did you betray me?" He asked coldly, throwing her a drawn-out, stern look.

She sighed heavily and shook her head, closing her eyes, tired after the physical exertion, not having the strength for his baseless accusations.

"How?" She asked, his jaw clenched, his body upright and tense.

"Don't play a fucking fool. You know perfectly well what I'm referring to."

She laughed at his words, shrugging her shoulders, bringing him to the brink of fury.

She could see it in his wide-open eye, in his feral, furious gaze.

"I know, but I haven't told him anything and I won't. It's not in my nature to complicate a situation where I'm comfortable. Being your enemy is not my desire. The lack of your unity drastically reduces my chances of survival, and having tamed the dragon, its value in my eyes has increased greatly." She said lightly, looking him straight in the eye, seeing that his hands entwined behind his back were clenched into fists.

He hated it when she spoke to him like that, but he couldn't do anything to her in public.

"I also wish for you to continue to teach me the language of Old Valyria. In return, I will report to you on what I am asked and what the King tells me to soothe your troubled soul." She hummed with a smile, watching with satisfaction as he drew in a loud breath and licked his lower lip, apparently trying not to use his hands on her long neck.

"Do we have an agreement, my Prince?" She asked, cocking her head.

He sighed, glancing sideways, and shook his head, clearly not believing that he had consented to such humiliation.

"In the library. Every day, right after supper."

She learned of Lady Floris Baratheon's arrival in the Red Keep from her maid – braiding some of her hair at the back of her head, she told her of what she had seen.

"Lady Floris arrived in a brown gown embroidered with gold thread. Her hair is black and long, pinned up in a braid, smoothed down in front, her forehead high, her gaze proud and solemn. Her smile, in my opinion, has no lightness or conviction." Said Lysa, and she giggled under her breath, looking at her and herself in the reflection of the mirror.

"What a harsh judgement. Perhaps it was that smile that the prince found so charming that he chose her." She replied lightly, thinking with amusement that her cousin was surely writhing in agony right now, entertaining his betrothed.

Good, she thought.

Let him suffer.

"Perhaps, however, the memory of that day must spend his sleep." Said Lysa, gracefully weaving one of her strands in with the rest of her hairstyle.

She blinked, intrigued.

"What do you mean?"

Lysa looked at her surprised, as if snapped out of her reverie.

"Don't you know, my Lady? It was on this day that Prince Aemond killed Prince Lucerys. That poor boy. His mother searched for his remains in madness and despair, but apparently there was nothing left of him but his cloak. He was devoured by Vhagar." She explained, and she swallowed hard, feeling a cold sweat run down her back.

He says that Luke's death was an accident, but I don't know if I believe him.

I don't recognise him anymore and I warn you that he's unpredictable.

She was sure she would eat her supper as usual in solitude, but it turned out that the King had held a small banquet and she was to attend.

Aegon wanted to show off her dragon and what she had done, while humiliating his brother and his betrothed, she thought wryly, walking there reluctantly.

When the door opened in front of her, she saw a long table, on either side of which sat the royal family and their loyal lords with their relatives.

She did not know where she should sit or what to do, the King, however, decided to take pity on her.

"Ah, here is my dear, fearless cousin. Come here, my Lady, I have assigned you a seat next to my brother. Perhaps your presence will lift his spirits." He called out, and she swallowed hard, lowering her gaze, knowing that she couldn't react to this, that she just had to survive it.

She sat down in the only empty seat, between her cousin and the king's wife, Helaena – she was pale and sad, staring off into the distance somewhere with empty eyes.

She still had not come to terms with the death of her son.

However, as she sank into her grief and sorrow, the King, on the contrary, was bubbling over with a desire for revenge, ready for action.

When she glanced sideways, all she saw was his hand clenched into a fist, his familiar scent reached her nostrils – she swallowed quietly, twisting in her seat, feeling a pleasant pulsing between her thighs, for some reason remembering how pleasant the touch of his fingers was there, sinking into her damp folds.

She reached for her wine cup and took a loud sip from it, not bothering to look to the side, her gaze fixed on the Queen Alicent who sat opposite her.

"My Lady." She heard an unfamiliar female voice directed in her side and she let out a quiet breath, taking another sip from her goblet, hearing her cousin twist restlessly in his chair.

She looked at Floris Baratheon and forced herself to give her the kindest, warmest smile she could afford. Floris was also smiling; had it not been for her gaze, she might have found her expression even sympathetic.

However, her eyebrows arched in some sort of compassion, a sign that she wanted to show her false understanding.

"I congratulate you on taming a dragon. No one expected you to succeed." She said softly, shaking her head as if filled with sincere admiration.

The corner of her mouth twitched, but she managed not to laugh.

"I didn't believe it myself, my Lady. I was convinced that I would burn and become dust." She replied lightly, not taking her eyes off her.

Several people at the table chuckled at her words as Floris watched her for a moment, playing with the small gold ring on her heart finger.

"The gods have spared you. Will you stand to fight your father?" She asked, as if giving her a challenge of sorts.

"Enough." She heard her cousin's impatient voice between them directed at his betrothed.

She, however, found that she was happy to answer her.

"My dragon lacks experience and composure. I will be a mere support for the King and the Prince." She replied, and Floris leaned back, intrigued.

"Support indeed needed." Aegon added, popping a grape into his mouth, biting through it with a loud crunch. "On which we all agree. Now, music!"

For the rest of the feast, she pretended to be very focused on her piece of roast, which she ate slowly, knowing that she couldn't flee immediately if she didn't want to offend the King – she didn't hold him in special esteem but she knew that he held her in some sort of affection, and after what he had accused her of after his son's death, she feared that one wrong move on her part would be enough for her to fall back into his disfavour.

True, the responsible parties had been found and the King himself had brought them justice, however, she could not let him begin to think again that she had helped her father let them into the keep.

He had to be sure that she was faithful to him.

They both had to be sure of it.

Him and his brother.

She swallowed hard, pulled out of her reverie, feeling a shudder when her cousin's knee pressed against hers. She was sure he simply wanted to change position, he, however, spread himself out comfortably, leaving his leg where it was.

Should she move away?

Do nothing?

What was that supposed to mean?

She glanced sideways at his hand out of the corner of her eye – she could see that his fingers were tapping the tabletop in some nervous, impatient gesture.

Their lessons.

Was he trying to tell her to leave and go to the library before he did, so as not to frustrate his betrothed?

She wanted to ask him that, but couldn't, so she decided she would do what she thought appropriate and simply stood up, nodding her head at the King.

"Your Grace. I will retire now, if you will allow me." She said softly, and Aegon nodded.

"I allow it." He replied, his voice through the amount of wine he had managed to drink like a babble.

Gods help me, she thought as she bowed to him and the Queen Dowager, without bestowing even a single glance on the prince or his betrothed.

She waited in her chamber for half an hour, changing in the meantime into the more comfortable, casual silk robe the Queen had given her, throwing it over her nightgown, tying it around her waist.

When she finally stepped outside her guard furrowed his brow and shook his head.

"Prince Aemond wanted to meet me in the library. Take me there." She said – the man hesitated and sighed heavily, indicating with his hand for her to go ahead.

Her cousin was already waiting for her – he gave her one protracted glance from over his open books, his eye open wide as if he was surprised by her appearance, candles all around him.

He nodded at her to sit beside him in the chair, and she did so, leaving her guard outside the door.

He moved one of the books towards her and opened it to a page he apparently wanted to discuss with her.

"We'll start with the basics. The most important and simplest terms." He said matter-of-factly, sliding another book towards her and leaned in, his clearly defined cheekbone close, too close, pointing his finger at one of the words.

"Jelmor." He hummed. "North."

"Jelmor." She whispered, feeling the tension in all the muscles of her body.

"Ñāqon. East."

"Nāqon."

"No. Roll your tongue at the n." He said, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, something in his gaze from which her heart struck harder.

It seemed to her that his iris was black.

There was something obscenely intimate in his bent figure, in his slightly parted lips, in his proximity, the place between her thighs all swollen, increasingly moist and warm.

"Ñāqon." She whispered.

"Better." He hummed, his gaze never leaving her face even though his finger moved on to the next words, as if he knew this book by heart. "Vēzor. South."

"Vēzor."

"Endia. West."

"Endia."

"Muña. Mother." He said, something flashed dangerously in his gaze, as if he knew exactly what her reaction would be and he was not wrong.

She froze, clasping her hands on her thighs, feeling her heart begin to pound like mad, the tightness in her throat indicating that she felt pain.

"Muña."

"Mmm. Kepa. Father."

She swallowed hard, looking at him with eyes glazed from tears, feeling her body begin to twitch. His lips parted slightly, as if what he was doing to her, the fact that she was vulnerable aroused him.

"Repeat." He whispered.

"Kepa." She said, feeling a single, heavy tear run down her cheek.

Kepa.

She shuddered, looking up at him in horror as his hand rose to her cheek, his thumb lazily rubbing the wet mark from her face.

"Trēsy. Son." He continued, his voice like the sound of water, calm and quiet.

Tender, as if he were moved.

Why?

She sighed as his hand traveled lower, his index finger running over her jaw.

"Tresy."

"No." He said. "Trēsy. The letter 'ē' needs to be read deeper, as if you want to sing."

"Trēsy."

"Tala. Daugther."

She shook her head, pressing her lips together, feeling that she couldn't do it, the feeling as if he was driving needle after needle into her heart made it difficult for her to get anything out.

She sighed, closing her eyes as he leaned lower, in some natural reflex pressing his forehead against hers, his hand sinking into the skin of her neck, his warm, excited breath enveloping her face.

She involuntarily clenched her thighs together, feeling the wonderful, familiar pulsing and tickling between them.

"Tala."

"Hāedar." He exhaled, something in his voice from which she felt her nipples harden, peeking through from under the fabric of her robe. "Little sister."

She opened her eyes, feeling a shiver run down her spine.

And that was a mistake.

He was looking straight into her face.

She sighed when she felt his other hand on her knee, moving slowly up to her thigh.

"Hāedar." She exhaled, feeling her cunt begin to leak with desire against her will.

"Lēkia." He said, as if he had done something definitive, a quiet moan breaking from her throat as his hand closed over her womanhood. "Older brother."

"Lēkia." She moaned and whimpered as his lips pressed against hers in an aggressive, loud, sticky kiss full of their saliva and panting, her palm touching his scarred cheek, drawing a low murmur of delight from his throat.

She touched him.

She sighed as she let her hand sink into his smooth white hair, for some reason seeking comfort in him, an escape from the cold, bleak loneliness and emptiness that filled her heart.

They sank again and again into each other's soft, fleshy skin, his tongue bursting between her teeth as his hand lifted the fabric of her robe, the other clenched in her curls.

She would have cried out in shocking delight had it not been for the fact that his lips muffled all the sound she made of herself as the tips of his fingers dug into the silken folds of her womanhood, dripping and throbbing with lust.

He groaned into her throat when he felt how unashamedly wet she was for him, and she gasped when his free hand slipped from her hair to her wrist, grasping it, drawing her to his body, pressing it against the bulge in his breeches.

He murmured and licked her encouragingly as her fingers tentatively ran over the outline of his swollen manhood, hidden beneath the leather material, hard, long and twitching.

He let go of her hand, embracing her around the waist and pulling her closer as he made sure she was going to give him what he wanted, their sighs of desire melting between their plump lips as his fingers pushed against her hot slit.

She spread her legs wider, wanting to feel it, wanting him to do it to her, but they both jumped away from each other as if burned when they heard the creak of the door opening.

Her cousin wiped his hand, sticky with her moisture in his breeches, looking at his betrothed's figure, pale, and she lowered back the material of her robe, staring blankly at the books open before her.

Was she able to see by their faces, by their quickened breaths what had happened?

She felt shame at the thought that she shouldn't have done this.

She was his betrothed.

She was the one he should be touching like this.

She was the one he should spend the evening with, learning about her body.

"The guards told me I would find you here, my Prince. I did not know you would have company." She said calmly, however, disappointment and understandable annoyance could be heard in her tone of voice.

She swallowed hard, feeling that the material beneath her buttocks was wet with her moisture, her swollen walls pulsing greedily around nothing, begging to feel his fingers again, her nipples hard and sore, clearly outlined beneath her robe.

"I am teaching my cousin the language of Old Valyria. It is the only way she can communicate with her dragon." He said, feigning composure, looking ahead but not at her even though she stopped right beside him.

She touched one of the books and flipped a page, remaining silent for a moment.

"May I join you? I would also like to learn the language of your ancestors, my love." She said, her hand on his shoulder.

She looked at him and saw that he had closed his eye, as if he felt discomfort the moment Lady Floris touched him.

He swallowed loudly and opened his eyelid, his gaze helpless and childlike, filled with pain.

"I will not be able to concentrate with you standing by my side, my Lady." He whispered, his voice weak, as if he had run out of strength.

Floris's hand slid from his shoulder to his forearm, his figure tense, his lips clamped into a tight line.

He didn't look at her.

"Does my presence disturb you, my love?" Floris asked, and she twisted in her seat, deciding that this conversation was too private.

These were their problems, their betrothal, their worries.

Why was she allowing herself to be dragged into this?

"I'll leave you alone. With your permission." She said quickly, wanting to get up, his gaze shifting to her, sharp and angry.

"Daor, hāedar."

She froze in mid-motion with her hands on the table, looking at him in disbelief, feeling her walls clench around nothing at his words.

No, little sister.

Little sister.

She swallowed hard feeling her lips part involuntarily, her eyebrows arching in helplessness, the heat that spread across her chest strangely pleasant and reassuring.

Floris looked at him then at her and shook her head.

"What did you say, my love?"

"I don't allow it. We are not finished yet. Soon her dragon will move to fight at my side and she must be ready. I ask that you never interrupt us again. If you wish, we will take a walk around the royal gardens tomorrow, just as you desire." He said emotionlessly, as if trying to calm a whimpering child.

Floris swallowed hard and looked at her in a way from which she felt discomfort in her stomach, a sense of humiliation, frustration and irritation in her gaze.

"Is it because she is your cousin? Like any Targaryen you prefer your own kin?" She asked quietly, both of them bouncing when his fists slammed into the table, and he sprang from his seat, towering over his betrothed as if he wanted to tear her apart.

She too stood up, grabbing his arm in some helpless, naïve gesture.

"Lēkia." She said pleadingly.

Floris's lips clenched looking at the fact that she dared to touch him, that her prince looked at her and not his betrothed, that it was her opinion that counted, her word that could stop him.

And then Floris' gaze fled lower, to his breeches, and she froze, pale, seeing exactly her answer to all her concerns.

Her hand let go of him when his nostrils stopped twitching with rage, when his jaw relaxed into an expression a little softer, though still frustrated.

He finally looked at his betrothed and licked his lower lip, as if trying to control himself.

"I will consider that you never said it, my Lady. Otherwise I would have to recognise that you intended to insult me and my family. And that would mean, in turn, that my betrothed is a fool. Is that how it is, my Lady?" He gasped in a voice filled with mockery, from which she swallowed hard, lowering her gaze.

Floris Baratheon looked at him with eyes full of tears, and then her gaze turned to her, her lips quivering with rage and grief.

"No, my Prince. I am not." She said, turned and walked away, leaving them alone.

She was unable to look at him – the silence in the chamber, his taut silhouette standing beside her made her feel like her wetness was dripping from between her thighs straight onto the stone floor beneath her feet.

"You may leave." He said finally.

She nodded and moved towards the door on soft legs, walking out into the corridor, thinking that they had both accomplished some amazing feat by not simply fucking each other on that table.

She sighed loudly, running her hand over her face, thinking that maybe she wasn't such a bad person.

She figured that during their next lessons she wouldn't sit so close to him, that she wouldn't look at him or tempt him.

That she wouldn't let him touch her anymore.

She blinked, looking around, only noticing after a moment that there was no guard who should be watching her.

She turned when she heard the rustling of a gown behind her, something long and hard hit her head with all its force, and she fell to the floor with a thud.

It seemed a moment before she lost consciousness that she heard the breathy voice of her cousin's betrothed above her, only a quiet hiss left her lips.

"Whore."

[sfehvn]

new religion part 7

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

A/N: Thank you all for being so patient! This has been sitting in my drafts half-done for a looong time. Hope you enjoy! Xx

Rating: M (18+ minors DNI)

CW: Pregnancy

Word count: 2,347

Characters: soft!ascended!Astarion x fem!au!Tav

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The agony that coursed through cold veins was not unfounded. Astarion watched on with helpless eyes as you lay in bed, your condition only worsening through the days that had passed. Skin that had previously whispered the touch of light seemed much paler than it had before this sickness befell you. Hadn’t it? Yes, he was certain of it. Deep bags kissed under your eyes like bruises of a cruel fate, hair once silken to the touch had become brittle and flat. An emaciated picture of what you had been just days prior lay curled on the bed. If Astarion hadn’t known better, he would assume you hadn’t moved at all from your position since climbing into that bed after returning from the boutique. He had been the one to force you to bathe and stroll through the garden; of course you’d moved. The pain hung deep in his stomach but he refused to let it take him prey. What you were experiencing was far worse than any discomfort he may be feeling.

Three days.

It had only been three days, yet it felt like an eternity. It felt as if he had borne witness to your undoing in such a mercilessly short amount of time. A sadistic reminder of how fragile mortals were. Of how fragile his flower was. How barbarous the outcome; Astarion finally felt so deeply for a being other than himself, only to have it ripped away from tightly grasped hands. He had restrained the urge to maim and destroy you, allowed his love for you to flourish in its haste, yet had still proved to be your inevitable downfall. The wretched thing dwelled in your womb. The disgust ebbed and flowed deep in his gut. All the while he knew the culprit of your condition; he wouldn’t dare utter a word until it had been confirmed. An unspoken battle; should he be forthright with the circumstance? No doubt you would wish to brave the godsforsaken gestation, your longing for motherhood had been made abundantly clear. Stubbornness had been one of the many traits that had made Astarion’s unbeating heart grow fonder of you; in this plight, it very well may be your undoing.

From Astarion’s peripheral, a chambermaid enters the room, awaiting permission to address him. He nods silently in approval, eyes never leaving your debilitated form. “Master, he is here. Shall I see him here?”

His eyes falter from you to glance at the thrall. “You may. Clear the halls on your way out. I expect not a single interruption from anyone while he works. I trust you’ll let the others know of the agonizing centuries to follow if my request is disobeyed.” Though his voice was firm, there was a hint of fear masked beneath the threats. Fear of what fate awaits his lover, fear of what has yet to come, fear of the unknown.

“Yes, master.” She agreed before swiftly seeing her way out. There were no games when it came to Astarion and she did not wish to be in his line of fire if the matter at hand didn’t resolve to his liking.

Astarion steps up to the bed, stroking disheveled pieces of hair from your sunken face. “He is here, my treasure.” Soft words were met with a weak nod, eyes shut in an attempt to stop the spinning you felt in your head. An unwelcome thought made its way into his mind, which he hastily pushed down as far as he could. A corpse you began to resemble.

A tall lanky man makes his entrance. Dressed in a robe that looked centuries too old, wiry hair wisped from the sides of a misshapen ignoble hat, and shoes that seemed to be worn through the soles. He looked every bit a beggar who Astarion would pay no mind to under typical circumstances. Magic radiated in powerful lulls from the stranger, an aura of importance despite his unseemly appearance. “Sir Ancunin, a pleasure.” The man regards him nasally, though his eyes are fixed on you. They seemed to scatter over your frail body in assessment. “May I?”

Edvund Luoguarde. Every piece of unbiased literature regarding dhampirs Astarion had managed to scrounge up had been written by the man in front of him. Not a stone was left unturned in search of the scholar; all the while he had been holed up in a makeshift home on the edge of Rivington. The notoriety Edvund possessed had not affected his simple way of life. It was something Astarion might have found humor in if he had come across the strange man under different conditions. The man slinks towards the bed once Astarion approves, lips pursed as he looms over your unmoving figure.

“Poor child, barely hanging by a thread.” Edvund muses out loud. While there is empathy in his words, the firmness spoke to the weight they held. Astarion eyes his hand cautiously as it comes to hover over your midsection. “I will need her on her back.” He states. “Are you able to move, dear?”

Your eyes open barely a sliver in response. You open your mouth to respond but your voice is lost to the dry ache in your throat and on your tongue. Looking to Astarion in a silent bid for help, he obliges by carefully moving your body into position.

“This will do nicely. You’re doing wonderful, dear.” Edvund reassures. He places his hand on your clothed stomach, a pale blue light illuminating from his palm. His eyes bear the same blue light as he stares distantly at the wall. “Very interesting.” He murmurs after a few minutes pass, but does not remove his hand. It shifts purposefully from your sacrum up towards your ribcage. It was a brief moment of relief, as if whatever magic he yielded offered numbing to the visceral blows you had been experiencing.

Edvund removes his hand and the light in his eyes flickers in tandem. “You would be wise to rest while you can.” He pats the hand that lay lifelessly at your side. Unsure if it was a trance or from the fleeting comfort you finally had after three days of torture, you drifted away. The man turns his attention to Astarion once he’s sure you’re asleep. “A dhampir of not one, but two.” He riddles. “To be born of fruitful womb and abject seed. To shed light as great as thee.”

“What in the hells are you saying?” Astarion’s brow creased. It seemed more likely that Edvund was reciting poetry rather than providing a diagnosis.

“A dhampire of not one but two; to be born of fruitful womb, abject seed. To shed light as great as thee. Cast darkness into light, and light into lead. A union thick as thieves.” His hands move in an unfounded performance, fingers coming to lock in front of his chin once he is finished. “A prophecy greater in age than you or I.” He clarified, bringing his hands to rest on the edge of the bed. “It was foretold a pair of dhampirs would be born to a pure soul and a heinous….” He trails, eyeing Astarion before continuing. “They will materialize to our plane of existence. The gods have willed it so and so it will be.”

“Are you suggesting there are two?” Astarion’s jaw clenched as he eyes Edvund. “Remove them.”

“I cannot.” Edvund was unphased by Astarion’s aggressive demand, instead he stared him down with the same determined look in response.

“You will. This will kill her. Are you mad?”

“She will recover.” Edvund muses, looking back down at your sleeping form; no doubt the most divine rest you’ve had in your life with the help of his own magic.

Astarion steps around the foot of the bed, making his way toward the man with a fire blazing in his red eyes. Edvund glances at him, whispering a quiet incantation that seemingly relaxed every nerve in Astarion’s body. In a daze, he sits limply in the chaise at the end of the bed. He felt powerless. For the first time in his many years, he was indeed. Completely, utterly, entirely not in control.

Edvund steps in front of him, crouching until he is eye-to-eye with him. “You’ve felt this is destiny, yes? You and the girl?”

Astarion feels that blaze return, but it is quickly simmered once more. Edvund effortlessly defies his rage, pouring his own magic into keeping Astarion sedated. “Get out of my head.” Astarion murmurs, gritting his teeth uncomfortably.

Edvund proceeds; he already knew the answer to his question. “You do not want to anger the gods, Sir Ancunin. This has been foretold. Of course, nothing is stopping you from finding someone else to get the job done; I for one will have no part of it. I’d rather not deal with the wrath of any all powerful deity, let alone all of them. I suggest you heed this warning. It will not be pretty if you interfere.” He purses his lips tightly, furrowing his fluffy brows together as he speaks.

Astarion’s mind felt convoluted as the reality of the situation weighed heavy on his shoulders. This was bigger than you or him, but he refused to stand by and watch you crumble.

The air in the room hung heavy with the weight of destiny as Astarion grappled with the revelation. Edvund's cryptic warnings and the ominous prophecy left Astarion torn between the fate dictated by higher powers and the desperate need to protect you. The clash of emotions within him mirrored the conflict that unfolded in the dimly lit chamber.

Astarion's eyes, once ablaze with defiance, now flickered with uncertainty as he considered the implications. The revelation of a dual heritage, the prophecy, and the insistence on non-interference pressed upon him. Yet, the fierce love he felt for you surged as a counterforce, compelling him to challenge the preordained path.

The room bore witness to a silent struggle—one man navigating the treacherous waters of divine prophecy, the other tethered to the mortal realm by love's unyielding grip. As Edvund continued his mystical work, Astarion's internal turmoil mirrored the external tension, a tempest brewing in the shadow of fate.

In the midst of this cosmic chess game, your frail form lay suspended, caught between realms. A pawn in a game played by unseen hands, her fate intricately woven into the fabric of prophecy. The dichotomy of despair and determination etched across Astarion's face painted a poignant picture of a soul at war with itself.

The room, once a sanctuary for quiet moments and stolen glances, now bore witness to a profound struggle that transcended the mortal and the divine. It was a clash of wills, a dance of destiny, and a tableau of emotions that would shape the course of lives entwined in a tapestry woven by forces beyond mortal comprehension.

“The gods have orchestrated this all, Astarion.” Edvund loosened the invisible grip he had on Astarion, allowing a sliver of distance between them as he stood. “I’d heard of you, you know. The ruthless vampire lord.” Edvund quirks his head. He didn’t need to say it aloud as it was unspoken; love had made Astarion soft in a lot of ways. Specifically for you, but for the way you lived life as well. The way you simply loved.

For a brief moment, Astarion wondered if you would have been anything more than a meal and quick fuck without the interference of higher powers. He couldn’t dwell on the thought, though. It made him sick to think about.

Edvund's words cut through the tangled web of Astarion's conflicted thoughts. The acknowledgment of his reputation as a ruthless vampire lord served as a stark reminder of the life he led before you entered it. The juxtaposition of his past and the vulnerability that love had brought forth in him loomed over the room.

As Astarion grappled with the unsettling realization, Edvund's gaze lingered on him, a silent understanding passing between them. The enigmatic scholar seemed to grasp the intricacies of Astarion's transformation, not just as a vampire but as a being touched by the profound force of love.

“I hope you don’t mind, I’m not really in the mood for chit chat.” Astarion replied back coldly, his eyes stone as he looked at Edvund. Edvund held his hands up in a show of understanding.

“I’d better get going. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, but see to it that she rests adequately. There will be days where she feels like she can conquer the world, but she mustn’t overexert herself.” Edvund states as he walks towards the door. He leaves with a parting reassurance. “She will live. The gods are not as cruel as you would believe them to be right now.”

With that, Astarion sat alone. The air hung thick with magic and tension.

Astarion's gaze remained fixed on your slumbering form, the delicate rise and fall of your chest a comfort amidst the tumult within him. The cold, stoic exterior he had worn for centuries cracked, revealing the vulnerability that love had etched into his undead heart.

As he sat in the quiet chamber, a myriad of emotions churned within Astarion—fear, love, defiance, and an unsettling acceptance of the cosmic forces at play. The room, once a witness to stolen moments of intimacy, now bore witness to a solitary figure grappling with the intricacies of mortality and the influence of gods.

Time seemed suspended in that moment, the force of the future pressing down on Astarion. The journey ahead, fraught with uncertainties and divine machinations, loomed large. Yet, in the hushed solitude of the room, Astarion found a quiet resolve to face the impending challenges.

The vampire lord, once driven solely by self-preservation, now stood on the precipice of a destiny entwined with love and sacrifice. As the shadows deepened and the room embraced its newfound solitude, Astarion remained a sentinel, guarding not only the frail form on the bed but also the fragile threads of a fate spun by gods themselves.

[manstrans]

I didn't want to make the reblog chain too long lol. But there are things I genuinely have a hard time wrapping my head around when it comes to saying trans men don't have male privilege.

It's been my experience that people interact with gender on a visual basis. I was able to transition (1 point) in a liberal area (1 point), so folks can be aware of my trans status and still treat me like a man. The trans guy who looks like Kratos may get called a girl (transphobia) but cis dudes wouldn't do shit to him because he looks like the kind of guy other guys don't mess with.

If we insist trans men don't get male privilege because trans, then the only thing that would bar me from male privilege is being afab.

Personally it feels gross to define myself by my private parts, not to mention that's what terfs do (though I'm not trying to call anyone here terfs!). While I can possibly get pregnant (-1 point) I don't have the issues with transphobic gynecologists other trans men report (1 point). But most people aren't seeing me naked, so they aren't thinking of me that way. I have a residual fear of being sexually harassed, but it is unfounded. My female coworkers get sexually harassed; I don't (1 point).

The whole conversation kind of assumes that if I were to (for instance) interrupt a woman, it wouldn't be "a man interrupting a woman" because no one is actually seeing me as a man. Which, since I pass as male (1 point), simply isn't true.

In solidarity with anyone who faces the misogyny I no longer do, I'm not willing to say I don't have male privilege and an obligation to account for it. I am also proudly trans (-1 point), so it's not like I'm choosing one at the expense of the other.

Trans men who don't have the privilege of being seen as men are valid in talking about all the privileges they don't have. But if we're not counting trans men with 3 privilege points or more as part of the group, then I wish we'd just say so.

It's not that there's never any access to it, it's that it's extremely situational and uncommon imo. I could have phrased the question better originally, but some trans men being stealth/mistaken for cis men doesn't mean trans men as a whole inherently have that privilege. Stealth/passing also doesn't account for the fact that the trans man who looks like Kratos likely still needs to go to the gynecologist or just has different needs from a cis man. This isn't even getting into factors like race

I also don't know how to unravel the implications of trans men et al being privileged because some of us who pass are seen as cis men

I appreciate you sharing your experiences though! Ty!

[anonymityisfunwriter]

The Twin Flame - Chapter 36: "Exile"

"You're not my homeland anymore, so what am I defending now? You were my town, now I'm in exile, seein' you out..."

Pairing: Sunshine!Reader x Grumpy!Bucky Barnes The Twin Flame Chapter List | The Grumpy x Sunshine Universe

Sam POV

"Karli!"

"Karli!" Sam bellows, seeing Karli kneel over you, her hands covered in your blood.

With the last strength and energy you can muster, you force your heavy eyelids back open, reeling yourself back in for the last time. 

"It's okay. She's helping me." You hold out a weak, shaky hand to him, stopping him dead in his tracks. Sam's blood runs cold. His heart pounds against his rib cage, so loudly he can hear the blood roaring in his ears. He felt frozen, numb, and yet, he's certain he's never moved faster in his life. You chuckle, a tear slipping from the corner of your eye, "Hey, Sam."

Sam's eyes frantically rake over your body, trying to process everything all at once.

"It's fine. You're- you're gonna be fine," he promises, though he's not quite sure if it's more to you or to himself. 

There's so much blood. Blood everywhere. Pooled on the ground. Covering your hands. It rapidly seeps out from the wound beneath Karli's hands. There's so much blood he can't even find the wound anymore. 

"Would you believe me if I said it was a flesh wound?"

He knows you're hurting. He hears it in the labored breaths you take. He can see the fear in your eyes. And still, you're doing anything to make Sam feel better, to make this easier on him. 

He halfheartedly laughs, tears welling in his eyes, "No."

"Barely even hurts."

It's not a very good lie. You both know that. It's the most unfounded, foolishly hopeful lie he's ever heard, and still, he holds onto it like it's all he has.

Because it is all he has.

"Just a scratch," Sam chortles, a tear slipping down his cheek.

You look up at him, once again attempting to console him, "I'm gonna be okay."

He gulps, nodding his head as he furiously wipes away the tear, "Yeah, yeah, you're gonna be fine. It's not that bad. We're gonna get you all fixed up."

You softly exhale, "Okay."

You're unable to bite back the pained whimper that leaves you mouth when Sam scoops you up from the ground, "Just hold on, alright?"

The muscles in Sam's jaw ticks as he tries to keep any more tears from spilling down his cheeks. This couldn't be happening. Not again. He couldn't lose you. Not like this.

He takes off, his muscles straining as he holds you in his arms, doing his very best to keep from jostling you around.

"I fought back Sam, I swear I did," you quietly murmur, just barely loud enough for his ears to pick up. 

"I know. I know," he hushes you. "You're gonna be okay. Don't worry about that."

His assurances don't stop you from trying to explain. If this is it, you want him to know that you did everything you could to come back from this. "There was too many of them. I- I couldn't-"

"It's okay. You did so good. I'm so proud of you." Sam finds the words pouring out of his mouth. They're not words of resignation but he knows they may as well be. By all standards of the definition, those words would be very, very nice last words. He just needs you to hear this, even if it is just this once. "I've always been so proud of you."

You give him a weak smile. It's all you've ever wanted to hear him say. 

He hated how he'd never said it before.

It only adds insult to injury. 

He watched life put you through the wringer. Watched it chew you up and spit you back out. It seemed like Sam had a special front row seat to your suffering in this world. And as he raced his way through corridors, he wished he would've told you that.

This feeling was not unfamiliar to Sam.

It wasn't even really unique to you. He'd lost a partner before, lost a best friend exactly like this. It never got any easier. The pain never quite went away, only dulled with time. 

This was a wound he wasn't sure would ever dull. He wasn't sure how exactly he could learn to live with this, learn to live in a world where you simply didn’t exist. All he knew is he'd done this before, braced himself for the worst, waited with bated breath, felt the anticipation crush him from the inside out. 

He wasn’t over exaggerating when he said you did this a lot. Didn't fight back. Allowed yourself to be hurt. He'd almost lost you one too many times. 

It didn't matter how many times he told you that there was no virtue in suffering, that you had nothing to atone for. You never quite believed it. You never believed that people would see the good in you. You convinced yourself that you had to be a hero, that you had to make your life worth something. He only wished he told you that it was worth everything.

It hurts more because this time he knows in the depth of his bones that you did, you did fight back. He doesn't need a play by play to know you did everything you could to come back from this. All he knows is that, tonight, that might not have been enough.

And that hurts even more. 

As that sinking feeling swells in the pit of his stomach, he wished he told you that. He wishes he told you that you were worth so much more than you thought, that you deserved everything this world had to offer, but mostly, he wished he told you what he knows no one else ever had, something he knows you'd never believe, that you deserved so much more than you got. 

It was interesting to Sam, how moment like these seemed to stop time, to bring it to a screeching halt. Soaring through the night sky, running through the underground maze, time ceases with your life hanging in the balance.

There was no forgetting those life or death, stomach knotting, heart stopping moments. The feeling radiates from his bones, sending chills and goosebumps up his skin and trailing down his spine as he wills himself to stay calm. 

But there was no erasing the feeling of holding your best friend's lifeless frame in his arms from his memory.

He's seen this film before. He knows how it ends. 

It was a film reel that would never fade. One that had a permanent residence in his mind for moments just like this. Moments that he knows all too well. After all, who would know better than the person that had a front row seat to it all? 

The memories rush forward, pummeling Sam over and over again:

"Rumlow's headed for the Council," Maria Hill shouts into her comms device. "41st floor, Sam."

"I'm on it," Sam grunts, sprinting up the staircase of SHIELD headquarters. He flies through the doorway, throwing a fist right into Brock Rumlow's jaw without a second thought. "Where is she?" 

Sam goes for another quick jab, only for it to be deflected. With a strong lunge that knocks Sam off his feet, Rumlow chuckles, "Doesn't matter anymore. You're too late."

"What did you do to her?" Sam seethes, his anger and worry only compounding with every single minute of radio silence since you'd walked into SHEILD headquarters and never walked out.

"She just wouldn't shut up," Rumlow taunts, rolling his eyes. "She told us that she'd never stop fighting us, that her friends were coming, something about justice, I wasn't really listening, she just wouldn't stop talking... so we threw her brain in the blender. She doesn't even know who you are anymore."

A pained gasp leaves Sam's mouth. It feels like his lungs were being squeezed of all oxygen, "You're lying."

"You never should've let her walk into the meeting with Pierce, she walked right into his trap, you know?"

"Shut the hell up," Sam bellows, tackling the man into the glass control panel behind him. He pins Rumlow, "Tell me where she is."

"I was there, you know?"

"Tell me where she is!" Sam demands. 

"HYDRA doesn't take prisoners, Wilson. We only accept order. And order only comes with pain." Rumlow slips out of Sam's grasp, landing several punches into Sam's sides. Rumlow menacingly snickers, wiping the blood pooling from the corner of his mouth as the two of them stand up. "You should feel so honored. She respected the hell out of you, swore up until the very end that you were coming for her."

"She got all weepy." Rumlow punctuates every antagonizing sentence with a sharp punch. "She screamed for you. Cried when we strapped her down. But you never came."

Sam would later come to learn that it wasn't true, just a lie to get into his head.

He was fairly sure that was exactly what they were going to do to you given the chance, but thankfully, Maria Hill had smuggled you out of SHIELD headquarters just in the nick of time. 

His muscles burn with exhaustion, still running to get you out of this forsaken place. He can't help but remembering. There's nothing to do but remember. Remember each and every time you'd almost lost your life, every time he'd almost lost his long lost sister. 

It was probably the closest you'd ever come to the point of no return. And still, the most brutal blow came from a person you both called a friend.

Sam had a front row seat to the whole altercation, even mid-battle, he'd seen it, every moment, every detail. And to this day, he couldn't erase the feeling of holding your lifeless body in his arms, your blood, still warm, staining his hands. Deja vu washes over him, reliving the painful moment all over again.

It was exactly like this. 

He flew over the collapsing flight tower at the airport in Berlin, Rhodey trying to shoot the Quinjet down, Sam chasing him down to stop him. He looked back for a split second to find you standing in front of Tony Stark, begging Tony to reconsider, begging him to let Steve and Bucky go. 

He couldn't make out the words Tony was saying to you, he could only hear your words through your comms device, "You know what they'll do to me."

"I'm sorry."

The moment those words left your mouth, Sam's head snapped over his shoulder just in time to see the person you both called a friend raise his canon and take the shot.

He still remembers what was running through his head as Tony took aim at you: there was no way you were going to actually let him shoot you, you wouldn't do that, you were going to jump out of the way, you were going to realize that your life meant more than winning this stupid battle for this stupid civil war.

"What are you doing?" Sam frantically speaks into the comms device, trying to reach you before it's too late, "This is not the plan. I repeat, this is not the plan."

But it was clear to Sam that you were both too gone to hear anything anyone else was saying. Tony too angry. And you too willing to give yourself up as the sacrificial lamb.

It happened so fast, yet the moment seemed to last a lifetime. 

The blow sending you hurling back, your body skid against the pavement, only for your head to smack against the ground with a sickening crack. It seemed like the moment stopped everyone, he could almost hear the collective gasps from his team mates. It seemed like everyone watched in abject horror. No one could believe it. No one could believe that this is what had become of your team, your found family.

He remembered trying to convince himself that you were just going to pop back up, that you would stand up and bellow an assurance to your team that you were okay.

None of those things happened.

Before he knew it, he was diving to dodge a blast from Vision, one that send Rhodey hurling to the ground. 

It was all a blur, scrambling across the airfield to make it to you. And what he found would forever imprinted in his memory. He found you all alone, sprawled out on the pavement, unmoving.

"Oh God," he quietly gasped, awkwardly landing on the ground. He barely landed on his feet, too focused on making sure you were okay.

"Hey, hey, you have to get up now," he frantically nudged you. scooping you up in his arms. Completely unresponsive, your head slumps back. He tapped at your cheeks, shook you as hard as he could, still no response. He raised his two fingers to check your pulse, and relief only incrementally came when he felt your pulse still beating underneath his fingertips. "Please, you have to get up. Come on, please, get up." 

He removed his head from the back of your head, only to find his hand now covered in your blood. 

"Help, we need help over here!" he screamed, pleading with whoever would listen. "Please, please, please, we need help!"

Help never came.

Instead, he had to helplessly watch as your unconscious body is thrown with the rest of Team Cap onto an armored truck to haul you away to the Raft. 

"Don't touch her. Don't you touch her!" he recalled screaming as they tore your unmoving body from him. Then, he watched them throw you on the floor of the truck like you weren't an actual human being.

For that split second, he hates Tony Stark.

For that split second, he hates Bucky Barnes.

For that split second, he hates Steve Rogers.

He hates everything and everyone that brought you that close to death.

The last time it happened was a pain that he shared with half of the universe. He couldn't deny that he felt more protective of you in the aftermath of the Blip.

But, he supposes that watching your best friend disappear into thin air would do that to a person.

“Sam?” you call, stumbling through the Wakandan forest. "Steve? Where are you, guys?"

“Over here,” he frantically shouts back. He looks to Steve, who also searches the forest for any signs of Thano's destruction, "What just happened?" 

“Hey, Sam,” you shakily exhale, finally in Sam’s line of sight. You stop a few feet away from him, a strange, distant look on your face as you stumble. He catches you before you hit the ground. “Sam, I don’t- I don’t feel so good.”

His breath catches in his throat when he sees your hand start to dust, little particles floating away in the air. “No!”

“Awww,” you whine, looking down at your hand slowly disappearing. “Why is it always me?”

And then you were gone. Right before Sam’s eyes. 

Even though he blipped just moments after you, he would never forget the heart-stopping helplessness he felt in that very moment. 

And here it was once again. Down to the depths of his soul, he's not sure how much more either of you could take. He couldn't keep watching you be torn apart. There was no world in which he would be okay with that, no war worth winning, no victory worth claiming.

For a split second, he wonders if it might be better like this, maybe this was the only way the universe would allow you to rest. He regrets it immediately.

This wasn't for the best. Not at all. 

Whether you believed it or not, the world needed you. Not as a weapon or a hero, but as the beacon of light you were. In a world without hope, with darkness constantly looming just over the horizon, you were needed. He needed you. His family needed you. Bucky needed you. 

He soars through the air, cutting through the chaos and straight to the sounds of ambulance sirens. 

"She needs help," Sam immediately tells a paramedic the moment his feet touch the ground. 

"Sir, we've got a full-" A small gasp slips from the paramedics mouth when they see the pale pallor and pool of blood staining your favorite shirt, your lucky shirt. That was never a good sign.

They immediately nod, sprinting to grab a gurney. Relief only comes in a small dose for Sam, but at least he was close to getting you the help you needed. 

"Thank you." Sam decisively nods at the EMT running back with a team of paramedics and a stretcher in tow. He gently places you on the gurney, the sirens blaring above him, "You're gonna be okay." 

You reach for his hand as he sets you down. Sam has to bite back the sob that builds in the back of his throat at the feeling of your once warm hand turned ice cold. You softly call out for him, "Sam?"

"I'm here," he promises, squeezing your hand. 

"Karli..." Your singular word sounds more like a question rather than a statement. Even as you lie against the gurney, relishing in the warmth of the paper thin sheets, your wild eyes bounce back and forth as you search for her in the frenzy. "Karli."

"They've got her," Sam assures you. "Don't worry, they got her."

"No," you weakly object, his assurances alarming you more than soothing your worries. You clumsily try lifting the oxygen mask off of your face. You frantically shake your head as you fail to sit up. You feel utterly helpless as your vision whirls around, splotches of darkness and bout of dizziness swell as you feel consciousness slipping away from you. You can barely lift your head, fervently shaking it.

A pained groan leaves your mouth as you try to will yourself to focus on the kid that you know desperately needs your help right now. She was just a kid. You couldn't let them have her, too. 

"You need to lie back," one of the EMTs sharply instructs. "Just relax, you've lost a lot of blood."

You keep shaking your head as Sam stands over you, keeping a firm hand on your arm to keep you down, "No, Sam, we've - we have to help her- can't let them have her."

It hits him in that moment. You don't have to say anything more. It all clicks into place. You don't want what happened to you, to happen to Karli. You don't want them to have her. 

It practically tears him in two. He knows you're right. If they get their hands on Karli, she would never know freedom again. They would turn her into a weapon, a tool at their disposal, or they'd lock her away for the rest of her life. 

But you needed him, too.

He looks down and sees his best friend dying before his very eyes. You're slipping away and he's so acutely aware of that. You needed help, help that couldn't be given if you were out tracking down Karli. And he's not quite sure that you or him would ever be able to forgive yourselves if you didn't save Karli from that cruel fate.

He looks down at you, pleading, "We have to get you to a hospital."

Your hand twitches, he guesses that was your attempt to squeeze his hand back. You're fading a lot quicker than you're letting on, and still, you're fighting.

You'd always fight.

It's your fatal flaw and greatest strength.

You'd always get back up. You'd always fight, until your very last breath.

"She's just a kid. Please."

"Ma'am, we need you to relax and stop moving," the EMT orders.

"Sam," you beg. "Please."

In Sam's peripheral, he sees Bucky darting through the crowded, chaotic street looking for you. "Sam!" Bucky shouts the moment he sees Sam. "Sam, did you-"

A shocked breath leaves Bucky's mouth, "Oh God."

Sam's eyes dart between you and Bucky for a moment. There isn't a lot of time, for you or for Karli. His eyes flicker away from you and onto Bucky. He silently begs Bucky, pleading with him to take care of you, "Stay with her?"

Bucky firmly nods, swallowing the lump in his throat, "Always."

Sam's eyes flicker back to you, squeezing your hand one last time, "Stay alive."

"I think I've seen this film before and I didn't like the ending..."

The Twin Flame Chapter List AnonymityIsFun Masterlist

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[moonlit-trolls]

Restless Child

[Posting the docs for ease of acess]

You? Who are you? A red blood with no power to call their own. With a life harder than most. You dodged the bullet of joining the cult to the owl god. but you stand in front of a congregation of purples led by a man who bears no colors.

In front of giants. Who look at you as if you were food for the taking. Something they should pick out from their teeth and look with disgust, you ask. voice trembling.

— Father, They stand there. wishing to devour me and my kind. Why should I join your congregation? —

The man stands atop heightened ground, behind a pulpit. As you notice, he leaves this position of power, of height to stand with you on the same level.

— Child of grief. You had a troubled life. The folk in my congregation bow to my word. I say Kneel — And as the words leave his lips. you see the bloodthirsty clowns taking two knees and bowing — And they do. — as he speaks, a hand lands on your shoulder, it feels cold and yet gentle. — Child of Grief. Be not anxious for what is to come. Sit with us, Enjoy this day for what it has to offer. Let the troubles of tomorrow be then. — 

His smile is sweet and inviting. behind the veil. The sharp teeth he hides seem. rounded from where you are. as you kneel to his command, the fear and anxieties leave your body. as the Subjuggulators hold their stare. it feels welcoming in a way you have never seen.

But you are not of this world are you? Restless child you are a thief, a crook, someone with nowhere to be and nowhere to go back to. Restless child born in the wild you are a dog to the wolves. and a deer to the stags. You are a child of the world that never cared for you, and thus, you must not care for it. Churches have, from your knowledge always had one thing, Gold. and gold sells.

In the dead of the day, shining as bright as when you saw it for the first time, You run by the shades, near the walls and climb through the window into the hall of promise of the clergy of butterflies. The smell of flowers stings your nose. it is pleasant in an unpleasant way. and… you see him, kneeling behind the holy symbol of the moon.

— Child of Grief? — His voice speaks in no surprise. as you are taken aback — Come to say goodbye before leaving? — As the man stands you notice he commands more presence than you first thought. He is not tall by any metric, nor is his frame impressive. But his location with the moon behind him, as the lights shine through the stained glass windows you look, and you see his eyes, Stained fury red but his voice does not change

— L-look… i, i, have- haven’t been totally honest. i. look, i’m just trying to get out of here okay… I thought I could get some cash before dipping… — You didn’t mean to speak those words, truth as they may be they are not yours. but, you feel sorry for having said them. 

— I understand. I cannot say I condone, but I understand. Go then, steal from me, take what you need, it will not be theft, consider a gift from the congregation. — He smiled through the veil, and that felt scarier than anything he had done before. You are too frightened to speak any words, but out they come the same. your thoughts come out in soliloquy 

— Listen. I’m Scared, okay. you have people that would kill me for, existing in the wrong spot, at least two dozen of em — You cover your mouth, but you feel as if he kept listening to them. nodding in acknowledgment

— I understand your woes child, But were you to love only those who love you back. What would be the credit in that? Your fear is not unfounded. And I shall not fight you for your stay. Leave with what you acquired. or stay. — as the words left his mouth he extended a hand towards you. offering a light out of the life you had lived.

Alarm bells ring true in your mind. as you grab all and run away from there. you can’t stay, child of the wild, you are not for this place.

Your mind races as you run. Where are you going? who 's out there? but the questions that do not stick are why is the sun not killing you? When you look up it is hitting you  and hurting. but. not enough to stop your racing. the blush on your face does not tone red. It tones jade. To the vision of all who are not you, You are a daywalker. racing through the sunlight with enough money to feed yourself for a year. 

The man who you just stole from did this, And, he did not care that you stole from him. He did not care who you were when you entered. and he actively helped you leave. Is this man really the evil the people say he is?

well. That is not a question for you to answer Restless child

[a-world-of-whimsy-5]

Given all the recent, glorious fics involving monsterfucking, I have decided to set free a particularly dark bee that has been buzzing in my bonnet for quite a while.

Themes: Dark

Warning: Monsterfucking | Interspecies breeding | Dub-con/Non-con | Thralldom/Slavery | Death

Minors DNI | 🔞| You are responsible for the media you consume.

The tales say werewolves were bred of wolves and inhabited by evil spirits, but that was just a ruse devised by elven elders in order to protect the true source of werewolf offspring.

The werewolves were in fact sired by Maiar/Fay like Sauron and Thû while in werewolf form, and the mothers were captive she-elves that had been brainwashed and conditioned to accept such advances. Those who successfully carried such offspring to term and delivered healthy young were given adequate care, decent rooms, food, clothing, and drink. While Thû never kept elves as favorites, some did enjoy the status of being Sauron’s favorites while in captivity. Those who failed to do what was expected of them and were too weak to be saved were left to die. Those who survived were still given some care and then made to spend the rest of their days toiling in the kitchens and the mines and far, far, worse.

Those who escaped, or survived long enough to be freed, were brought to the elders, who, after hearing such harrowing tales, agreed to concoct a lie in order to protect the future prospects of survivors. The healers all had to swear oaths of secrecy before they were allowed to see these particular elves.

From an Angbang POV: Now, I do not have the energy to write this up into a full multi-chapter fic, but anyone else is free to do so if they wish. (Please tag me if you do.)

Mairon approaches Melkor and suggests they make use of the captive she-elves to breed a new species of wolf that is larger, more powerful, faster, and would be loyal to their cause.

Melkor is initially reluctant. Some of the elves are exceptionally beautiful, and he fears Mairon will develop feelings for one of them and perhaps, cast him aside in time. Mairon insists this will not be the case, that he only sees the elves as a means to end, nothing more than that.

Melkor reluctantly agrees and gives Mairon his blessing.

Mairon goes ahead with his plan, brainwashing the thralls by offering them gifts and trinkets crafted by his own hands, and feeding them with many fine, but false, promises. Soon, he is able to find a suitable amount of captive she-elves that could be used for his purpose.

Melkor insists on being present to both witness his beloved second-in-command’s plan being put into action, and to satisfy himself that he truly has nothing to fear.

In time, he realizes his fears were unfounded and that the elves were indeed nothing more than a means to an end. He even actively participates some times, instead of sitting by and watching.

Draugluin is the oldest and strongest to be borne from Mairon’s line. Once both Mairon and Melkor are satisfied they have enough to form a healthy population, they breed werewolf with werewolf instead.

[nerdgirlriot]

The plagiarism video and my brain

I need to gather up my thoughts because my brain has done some really heavy lifting with some of my past experiences and it's a wild ride. Not sure how coherent this is going to be, but! I'm going to try and unpack some of it.

Hbomberguy, a video essayist on Youtube, recently released a hefty video (it's, like, 4 hours long) about plagiarism on the platform, focusing on a few other content creators before getting to the bulk of the video, which is about James Somerton, a commentator who does videos about LGBTQ+ representation in media. hbomberguy has come with ALL the RECEIPTS proving without a shadow of a doubt that Somerton stole most of his content from other writers, reading their words and claiming them as his own. It's shitty, but unfortunately not inherently illegal, particularly since Somerton almost always backtracks when accused and then reups those videos with the barest of efforts to credit the original writers.

So, I have no idea who Somerton is. I sort of(?) recall some sort of controversy about a Youtuber who stole from The Celluloid Closet (a famous documentary about homosexuality and Hollywood) but I do remember that the person apologized and pointed out that there was very little research in the way of queer people in American media so of course he HAD to borrow heavily from Celluloid Closet. I sort of shrugged at the time and moved on, never thinking about it again until I watched the hbomberguy video

And hoo boy it's a lot to pack. Somerton apparently never had an original idea in his head. All the great points he's made in his videos were made by other people whom he stole words from, and when he DID have original content in his videos, it was largely misogynist and...rather racist too? Ouch.

So in the middle of the video, hbomberguy points out that Somerton did a video about the fascist themes in the anime Attack on Titan.  And I started to freak out. I, myself, wrote an op-ed for syfy.com about fascism and anime, and I mentioned Attack on Titan. it was originally posted in October of 2018, a full 4 years before Somerton did his video, so i was rather worried that he'd also plagiarised ME (this is how my brain works, and considering the full extent of obscure sources Somerton used for his videos, I don't think my fear was unfounded). The original article doesn't exist on syfy.com anymore, as they decided that Fangrrls as a vertical just wasn't working for their brand and they stripped years of work from female writers from their site. I have a backup of the article here for reference. 

As for whether Somerton plagiarised me, I feel icky but I ended up downloading the transcript for the video in question and perused through it. I don't THINK he stole any of my words, because the bulk of the video is about the anti-semitic elements in Attack on Titan's later seasons. When I wrote my piece, the fascist elements were still fairly subtle and the big reveal about the Eldians being treated as second class citizens, a once great power (given holy gifts by "God" no less) reduced to living in ghettos and wearing armbands and definitely being coded as Jewish people, hadn't come in yet. My op-ed was about fascism in anime in general, and I mentioned more than just Attack on Titan. I imagine that if my article were still widely available, Somerton might've taken from it. But is that my ego talking? It's probably my ego talking. But I know for SURE that this particular piece still sent a ripple through the larger anime community.

I know this because I am a woman who dared share an opinion on the internet and suddenly anime weebs were spreading the article through twitter and facebook and calling me out for writing a shitty take. 

Was my take shitty? IDK, I still got paid for it and I actually wish I'd written more about it but my editor said that it was fine and the article's like 5 years old at this point and waaaaaaay out of date now since AoT's fascist themes have grown so much more blatant. I only scratched the surface, while newer takes on AoT have the benefit of more story to make their arguments more sound. Some of THESE articles, the more recent ones, Somerton definitely stole from because hbomberguy proved it in his video. I'm just watching from the sidelines right now, very bemused and my brain is coming up with what-if's by the truckload.

I'm just unpacking this now because I don't think I ever fully faced the criticisms I received because of my initial op-ed. My editor warned me that my work could be inflammatory and that I should brace myself. I locked down my Twitter account (as my editor suggested) and ignored any messages from people I didn't recognize for about 2 weeks after the article was posted. Sure enough, the article was spread tens of thousands of times on FB and Twitter. Some of the comments I'd seen called me "misinformed" (fair), "ethnocentric" (I suppose), a "dumb bitch," (possibly?), a "woke SJW" (thanks!), and, most horribly, "white", which for some reason offended me more than the ones calling me a dumb bitch.

One big argument against my op-ed boiled down to the fact that I, as an American, am not aware of the subtleties in Japanese media and I didn't understand Japan's own relationship with its past and I put a Western viewpoint on it (ethnocentrism at its finest). Me...a Filipino-American. Me, a descendent of people (Filipinos) who were subjected to Japan's imperialist expansion in Asia. The Philippines became a battleground between Japanese and Allied forces in WWII. Bataan Death March? Hello? I know my history, but I didn't place this in the article. I thought my mentions of Japan's occupation of China and Korea were enough to show that Japan definitely had imperialist and fascist tendencies in its history and MAYBE that might provide a throughline to why Japanese media is still fascinated with this stuff but it wasn't enough, I guess. It is...a puzzle.

Oh and the original idea for "srsly what's up with Nazis and anime?" came from J, my significant other, who is Japanese-American.

Where's my brain going this? I don't know, but I think I'm happy I'm getting this off my chest now?

I'm sorry and if you read this all the way through, I'm grateful to ya'll.

EDIT: and America is as guilty of burying the sins of the past as much as any other country. Think about the historical revisionist movements which claim that African slaves liked working in plantations because we need to tell American kids these lies to feel better about themselves and not hate their own country. When my views were called "ethnocentric", what POV did my critics think I SHOULD have used? Or are we looking at a case of me "interrogating the narrative from the wrong perspective"?

[greagors-breath]

Non-spoilery FF7 Rebirth thoughts

So, I finished watching Rebirth and after having a few days to marinate on it, here are my thoughts. (I'm not gonna talk about the ending here for the sake of the folks who have not gotten to it yet.)

Regarding the parts that adapt the original story, I think they were pretty well-handled. Most of the changes they made made sense and added more to the characters and their relationships. Everyone in the main party felt important in their own right and I really got the sense that these people like and care about each other.

I like what they did with Rufus and the Turks too - on one hand, they felt much more like proper antagonists and an actual threat now, whereas in OG they felt more like an obstacle in the post-Midgar story. On the other, they also felt more like a proper, coordinated team now. I'm so glad they actually let Rufus be a villain while also giving him some humanizing aspects - I'm curiously awaiting his development in the next part.

Of course, as a Tseng fan I was very anxious about how he will be handled but I am pleased with what we got for him. I definitely got the sense that he has more thoughts about everything that's going on than what he lets on, which makes sense for his character and I love how they portrayed that with his subtle body language. My only wish is that we got more of him but that is my very personal bias.

Speaking of little screen time, Vincent was amazing in the short time he got to be there. I love that his past as a Turk was made more relevant, as that was never really brought up outside of his backstory before. Cid, on the other hand, was kind of just there? I guess they're saving most his character development for the next game but he really didn't get to much to do in this one.

Zack's storyline interfered a lot less with the main plot than I expected and I think the way it was eventually tied in fit with the themes and rules they have established in the story.

As a Before Crisis fan, I was geeking out over the new added lore for Kalm.

I've only two big gripes with the game; one is that my fear of it being too over-packed with minigames and side-quests was not unfounded. Only watching through them got tedious sometimes, I can only imagine what it's like to actually having to play through them. And when I think about how all that time and memory space could have been used for more story-relevant things... yeah. (I only recommend the protorelic quest in Gongaga if you're a Turks fan.)

Another was this insistence of the story bringing up the Tifa-Cloud-Aerith-Zack love rectangle. Like, they will be just interacting and all getting along, then someone would ask "does x like y?" and I was groaning and rolling my eyes. I am not strongly invested in any of these ships and this constant focus on the romance started to make it feel like their bonds don't matter if they're platonic. Not to mention how this will further fuel the seemingly endless ship wars.

Overall, I think if you're someone who liked Remake, you'll probably like Rebirth too. If you didn't, you might not like this either. When I first got into Remake, I didn't know anything about FF7 other the names of the 4 main characters and a couple of plot points. Having now played the OG and consumed the rest of the compilation, I have a better understanding of the frustrations ppl had with changes Remake and Rebirth made. Even some of the things I liked got changed. But in the end, I did enjoy Rebirth, I got what I wanted out of it and its good parts outweigh the bad for me. I'd give it an 8/10.

[den-of-the-jadewizard]

Whumptober: Day Three: No-one there except the moon

A/N: So, this one is a rain world fic, yay. Don't feel very nice today for reasons, but I had this written some time ago so here you are. <:3

BSM: Date: X/XX/XXXX

I wish I labeled each of these journal entrees when I started so long ago. I don't even know the date anymore.

I suppose it doesn't really matter now, does it?

This transmission is nothing but a text file in what is left of my files, I'm not sure anyone other than myself is reading this. As usual I will leave a note so that I will not forget who I am and what has happened.

I am Looks To The Moon, I'm an iterator, the eldest of my local group. I had collapsed when, as No Significant Harassment would've put it, Five Pebbles stole my drink. I only pity him now, as he suffers as much as I have.

I'm uncertain if the others are still active or not, but I know Pebbles is still functional, but for how long? I do not know. The rot is a cancer that eats away at everything, it's hunger never truly sated.

His Overseer sometimes visits, but that's far and few between, as if he is awkward around me, wanting to speak but yet unwilling and unable to. That's fair considering all that has happened.

A sense of nostalgia for a time long since passed came to me recently, I'm uncertain as to how or why. I remember scolding of a young ancient who had snuck into my chambers to put cheap decals on my walls. 

The memory was only bittersweet now, I found myself morosely musing that I would not mind if someone defiled my ruined chamber with stickers.

It's quite lonely out here, unable to communicate with the outside world, stuck waiting for something to happen, for someone to visit me.

It's been a long time since I've seen one of those relatives of the Pipe Cleaners. I quite missed the feeling of their soft warm bodies resting against my side as I read them a pearl they had found.The cycles seemed to blend like paint, mixing together into a dull grey.

I would boot up when the water drained from my systems enough and then I would do nothing. Just simply sit on my small island and wait. 

There was not much to do, I would be there until the rain started once more to flood my systems yet again. I had researched about drowning victims' experiences and strangely they were accurate, even to an iterator like myself. This would send me into shut down until I woke the next cycle, and it would all repeat ad nauseum.

However, something very peculiar happened a few cycles ago.

I saw the moon.

No, the irony of my name is not lost on me. Through my ruined chambers I could see the sky up above, free as if taunting me while I was still trapped in this husk. 

Sometimes I could see the sun...but never the moon. The rain often came before the night.

I was alarmed when it didn't. The world had changed to dark, the sky a brilliant dark blue among the clouds above. 

I had gone from fear of not having enough water, to having too much and now back again to fear of never having another drop. The fear was unfounded as the rain started again late into the night.

Warnings and error screens popped up in my head as I cringed from the pain of my systems being flooded again. I could never get used to it, the feeling of every fiber of your being screaming that it wanted to live despite not being able to do a single thing about it.

But it only lasted for a moment, before the strange tranquility washed over me. Caught in the silent in-between of life and death.

It's through this haze that I noticed its light shining through my ruined interior and through the water's depths.

I gazed up and saw it...the moon.

The scene was clear, crisp, a beautifully morbid painting on a sliver border deep in my psyche. I couldn't stop thinking of its magnificence. I had seen my same sake many times before but never in person.

It brought back an ancient longing I had buried quite some time ago. I wanted to be free, to venture into the open world and leave the ruins of my dying body.

Sometimes I find myself wishing I had been born as something else, perhaps a slugcat? A scavenger? Or even a lizard?

The world was dangerous, the fight for survival the only thing that kept them all running. 

I could take the risks and the numerous pains. I would take it all in stride. I would never take for granted the freedom I had then.

But alas it was only a dream, a mid-day musing on a lonely cycle.

I think I've wrote down all that needed to be mentioned. I've nothing else to add, should I need to I'll be back again, perhaps sooner than I thought.

-BSM

[emilywaters]

Forever

(picture does not belong to me)

Forever is a long, long time away, Where rainbows dance and dandelions sway, In a far unfound land of joy unknown, A place I wish to call home.

Forever is the time you look into me, A moment, a glance, but forever seems To pass as untold words dance in your eyes, Will I hear them all before I die?

Forever is the song that played in the room, I danced and twirled and my eyes fell on you, Were you watching me sway, did you enjoy the view? Did you know I was watching you too?

Forever is a blue moon, I'm waiting to see, It's the time I want you to spend with me, It's the number of words I want to hear you say, Forever is how long I'll to wait.

Forever is a memory, blurred on the edge, Back when we were only friends, A time of laughter I'll never regret, Did you know I'd love you back then?

Forever is a confession whispered to the dark, The anxious fears that Cupid missed his mark, Dreams of a life I know not to expect, Yet still hoping for the best.

Forever are fingers pressed close, A silent thrill, a mental boast, A giddy giggle to my nearest friend, a feeling I never want to end.

Forever is trying to take the next step, But too scared to jump off this ledge, Freefalling down to drunk cloud nine, To rooted on the ground, too scared to fly.

Forever is a smile that never quite disappears, A bad joke that chases away my tears, It's doing everything I can do, To spend the rest of my forever with you.

[acacia-may]

💙💖💕 for Minerva from Fairy Tail.

MILADY!! 😭💖 I have been just squealing over this ask, Anon-friend! I love Minerva and all of Sabertooth honestly, and I'm almost finished reading the Twin Dragons manga so this group has definitely been on my mind recently. Minerva honestly had one of my favorite character arcs in all of Fairy Tail, and I wish we got more of her. I hope you'll like these headcanons. I had a lot of fun with them! Thank you so much for the ask!

Questions from this "Bye Bye Writer's Block" Ask Game

(Warnings: Spoilers for Fairy Tail and some vague mentions of childhood trauma and related nightmares)

Minerva Orland Headcanons

💙-- Hurt/Comfort

Given the way Minerva was raised (and conditioned to hide her pain and weaknesses), she has a lot of difficulty opening up about her feelings especially when they are grounded in fears and insecurities. While she suffers a lot of aftereffects of trauma, she buries them because she sees them as a sign of weakness. For instance, she hides the fact that she frequently has interrupted sleep due to nightmares, by trying to occupy herself around the guildhall when she is up in the middle of the night. This often involves cooking and/or preparing "midnight snacks" for herself.

Surprisingly enough, she soon begins to run into Yukino in the kitchen in the middle of the night. Yukino has a secret talent for baking and somewhat shyly asks if she can join in. They start cooking their "midnight snacks" together and slowly become friends. Eventually, Yukino shares with Minerva that she has trouble sleeping due to recurring nightmares about her sister. Minerva is shocked but also comforted to know that she isn't the only one who has upsetting dreams, and she admits, for the first time, that she has nightmares too. Though Minerva doesn't share any details about her dreams, Yukino understands and gives her a tender hug.

💖-- Alternate Universe (AU)

In a Regency-Era England AU...

Lady Minerva is the daughter of the Earl of Orland (Jiemma) and is incredibly independent despite the strict societal norms of the time--secretly publishing adventure books for children under a penname. She survives the London social season with the help of her dearest friends: Lady Yukino, the quiet but sweet younger daughter of a viscount (occasionally her more boisterous elder sister, Lady Sorano, tags along), The Viscount Eucliffe, the exuberant and outgoing heir to an earldom and the only one of the group who ever really enjoys himself at any of the parties, and The Most Honourable The Marquess of Cheney, who has newly inherited his title and gets dragged along to all of the parties by The Viscount Eucliffe when he would much rather be at home in his library with his beloved cat (Frosh).

💕 -- As a Parent

After everything Minerva went through in her own childhood, she had a lot of fears about becoming a parent herself, but they were all entirely unfounded. She truly loves her children and wants to give them the world. Minerva is usually not an overprotective or coddling parent, but she can definitely go into a "Mama Bear" mode and will fight to protect her children if need be.

Given the harsh environment she grew up in, Minerva can have a lot of worries when it comes to disciplining her kids, especially since she tends to be a bit more stern, just by nature. However, she strikes a good balance between being firm but kind with her kids, and her discipline always stems from a place of love and wanting what is best for them. If anything, her children tend to bring out a softer side of their mother, and while Minerva does not spoil them, she will sometimes surprise them with little treats and fun activities and really does her best to make sure they have the happy childhood she never got to have growing up. Expressing her love with words does not come easily for her, but she goes out of her way to tell her children she loves them because it was something she never heard as a child and she never wants her kids to doubt that they have a mother who loves them no matter what.

(A/N: I had never really given Mama Minerva much thought before this ask, but it really is such a wholesome idea after everything she has been through. Thank you so much for that, Anon-friend!)

[fierceawakening]

Hey, Fierce! I’ve been somewhat following your discourse on “is there such a thing as bad foods” (in the sense that I follow you and your posts about it keep showing up on my dash). First I just want to say that I appreciate how respectful and well-reasoned you are in your arguments, and it’s been interesting seeing everyone’s different takes on the issue and considering where everyone’s coming from. I don’t know if you really want to engage in any more discourse on this topic, so feel free to entirely ignore this ask if you so choose, but if you’re okay with it, I’d like to share my perspective.

It seems like while most people agree that eating a lot of junk food is not the healthiest, we all have a bit different ways of conceptualizing what that means, and different ways of conceptualizing things work well for different people. Personally I would characterize it not so much as “junk food is inherently bad” (from either a moral or a health perspective) and more as “junk food is bad for you when you eat too much of it,” though I definitely see your point about it being specifically designed to encourage overeating. This is a useful understanding for me, but I also have a different relationship with food than you, and I’m glad your conception is useful to you.

I also think it’s interesting to think about how our ideologies and our interpretations of different concepts are often formed in response to our environment. For example, I probably have a less charitable view of “alternative medicine” than a lot of people because I’ve had significant exposure to questionable information from naturopaths and chiropractors and didn’t realize how flimsy or outright contradictory the evidence was for some of the things they presented as fact until a long time later. Especially with the way the internet allows us to so easily pick who we interact with, but even outside of the internet just based on our real-life communities, two different people can end up with very different perceptions of not just how the world works, but also how other people think about the world, and form different values and beliefs in response—and neither are necessarily wrong or unreasonable, but they are responding to different things.

So I guess what I’m saying is this has been a very thought-provoking discourse and I’ve enjoyed thinking about how words and concepts can mean different things to different people and how important the context in which we form our opinions can be and also how that context is often stripped away in conversations because you just can’t and probably wouldn’t want to expound upon every single thing in your life that has led you to form those opinions, and I wish you the best.

Thank you!

I dunno. Maybe I’m just strange but I feel like there are a lot of people in the world who just.. don’t want to let things suck a little? It feels to me like people can be very… how dare you say that we’re not all fine? About things.

And that’s never made sense to me. Like, take the conservative old saw “facts don’t care about your feelings.” It’s mean and it’s often used by people who are also mean to argue that things are facts that very much actually aren’t. But the reason it works as a hook is that it’s actually in one sense true. There’s a lot of shitty crap that’s true and isn’t going to stop being true because we say it’s not. Like… I gained more weight than I planned to in part because I was in an online environment I do think was kinda controlling, and I really did get the sense that if I didn’t enjoy the foods I liked whenever I wanted them, I was letting fatphobia, literal unfounded fear becoming fat, due to propaganda about it, win.

When my doctors started noticing me gaining I had ready defenses: you’re fatphobic, and my blood pressure is only doing that because I have ptsd.

Ultimately I decided, feeling scared as this kept getting worse and maintaining the belief that others were fatphobic and I was fine became more difficult, to test whether MY weight and MY blood pressure are correlated.

FOR ME? They are. I've seen them increase and decrease together enough that I'm satisfied there is a correlation.

So when I hear “fat people can be healthy,” it’s not so much that I think that’s clearly wrong and people are lying, but I get very interested: which fat people? Do we know which people have this blood pressure thing and which don’t? Can we predict it, even roughly? Cos I spent like a year wrecking myself for political cred and it didn’t really get me much, and who knows, there might even be some damage.

But when you start asking what is pseudoscience, some people can take it super personally, and that’s… I don’t know what I do about that really. I mean if I was the kind of person who was more concerned about avoiding conflict than about trying to fact find I would stop talking, but I’m not that kind of person, fortunately or unfortunately for all concerned.

And my thing is toxic positivity lately I think, again, because my own work in therapy lately has been learning that it’s okay to say things aren’t fine. Like I know it’s okay to say, but I have a lot of experience with being judged for being the one who says it, and that’s… that’s hard, because I don’t know how to not mention truth when I think I know it.

And the truth I think I see here is, hey, some of us actually do need to make diet changes for health. Some of us don’t. But letting those of us who don’t talk over those of us who do for politics is (clutches pearls) BAD. It literally got me hurt.

I might have some of the facts wrong, that’s very possible, but I CANNOT possibly be the only one.

[miswaken]

@peuronoia asked: 🔮 CRYSTAL BALL — what is a core memory from your childhood that you think defines you today? in character development questions || accepting

Childhood feels like ten lifetimes ago now. Everything before the Dark Place does. It's easy to forget the surface when your head's under the water, but Alice knows how important it is not to lose yourself in a place like this.

"I wish it was something specific. Some... snapshot moment, the kind of crystal clear flashback you see in movies." She huffs a small laugh from her nose.

"It's not exactly one memory, but when I got to high school and could finally take a photography class, I had a really great teacher. Mrs. Matthews. I'd gotten my first camera as a birthday gift years before that, and I already knew it was something I loved -- I filled my schedule with whatever art classes public school had to offer until I got to the tenth grade and could sign up for Photo 1. And in those other courses, I was... not very good." It's something she can grimace about now with a smile tugging at her lips. The memories of crumpling up projects that would never emerge from the bottom of her backpack have become less cutting with age. But at the time, it was devastating. "Drawing, painting -- I even took a single semester of ceramics and only made a couple lumpy ashtrays. I had such an appreciation for art, all forms of it, even then, but it was like I couldn't translate what was in my head onto paper. Or clay. The only medium that let me make what I saw in my mind real was photography. But honestly, by the time I got to the class, I doubted how true that was. Every time I got a roll of film back from the drugstore I wanted to throw it out. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't an artistic prodigy or anything, but the passion was fading. I almost stopped loving it completely."

She might not be able to picture the days themselves so clearly, but Alice can recall the feeling of nervous dread in those first sessions of the photography course. The sinking worry that this teacher would treat her like her other art instructors -- not unkindly, but with the sort of that's a great effort, Alice attitude that really meant you're not very good at this, but I'm giving you participation points.

"And if this was like a movie, this would be the part where I reminisce about how my fears were unfounded, and the whole class wept upon witnessing my first eight-by-ten floating in the tray of fixer." Alice shakes her head with another breathy laugh. "I had a complete meltdown the first time in the darkroom, and I ruined four other students' film when I ripped the door open. But Mrs. Matthews was just... kind. Encouraging. She taught me how to use a changing bag for developing so I wouldn't have to deal with the completely dark room. Never said anything about it, just... brought it in the next day for me to use. After that, her class was the first time I got genuine feedback. She told me how I could improve because she knew that I could, and she wanted me to know that I was capable of more, too."

"At the end of the year, the schools in the area put on an art show and contest for all the grades. Mrs. Matthews set aside a few of my prints from the year and said it was up to me what I submitted. My first reaction was to tell her that none of my work was good enough. I couldn't tell you exactly what she said to me, what the inspiring teacher speech was that changed my mind, but I know she changed it. I ended up submitting a photo I took of Lake Michigan frozen over, and it won third place after the work of two senior photo students. That was the proudest of myself that I'd ever been before."

The fond smile softens, a pinch between her brows as she swallows the lump in her throat. Maybe it's a silly thing to get emotional about, but it can't be helped. Photography had been an unbridled joy once, a child's hobby that became an open door towards the art-focused life she wanted so badly to live. Simple, in hindsight. So much more raw and real than what the medium has become for her.

"When I got into my first gallery in New York, I sent her an invite. I didn't think she'd show up, honestly, but she did -- and I sold my first piece on opening night to her. Of course I told her how much it all meant to me, but... I hope she really knew."

[jodilin65]

THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1997 I don’t believe this fucking shit! Tom’s got yet another cold. What’s he gonna do? Get a cold every two months? How convenient, too, that he gets this when I hit mid-cycle. As if he’d rather come up with some excuse as to why he can’t screw at such a scary time for him, rather than play games. Once again, I sit here and I wonder - does he really have a cold? Or is he just acting? And how much of this is God-related?

Even if he really did want more sex, and I know he doesn’t, there’s always one thing after another and he’s always got a problem. I may have a screwy schedule, but there’s no way we could have sex regularly if we both wanted to, cuz there’s always something right there to make sure that we don’t. Is this my punishment for the letter? I mean, I just cannot depend on this man for sex. I can depend on him for food, to pick up my meds, and other things I need, but not for sex. It’d just be so much easier if we could be on our own sexually. Like I said, the sex with him is getting old, it’s too damn predictable, it can’t make a child, so if I just took care of my own damn self, I don’t have to worry about any game playing, or him or God interfering, and this can be done regularly.

Tom says he thinks it’s cuz of lack of sleep that’s brought on this cold. You can’t get a cold after only one or two days of lack of sleep. I know what it is. He’s so sure I’m fertile, that he’s scared shitless and feels that this is his only way to avoid sex. He’s also trying to spare me the grief of reality being further rubbed into my face, too, by avoiding sex now, but that much I can appreciate. All this worry over nothing, though. If he’d just quit being so stubborn and so obsessed with his games and with disagreeing with me, and see that I am truly sterile, he’d have a lot less stress hanging over him and he wouldn’t have to worry so much and make up excuses to dodge this and dodge that. There’s nothing to dodge. Therefore, I don’t know why he and God act like there is something to dodge most of the time. Every now and then God and Tom allow Tom to get off at the right time, but most of the time they both act like there is a pregnancy to avoid. Tom’s fears are totally unfounded and a part of me wishes he would get off 5 days in a row at the right time for many months, so he could see this, but he’s just too damn scared to. And he’ll never admit this, either.

I just went and looked and from what the journals say, Tom’s last two colds were in March and June. So every 1-3 months he’s gonna have a cold, huh?

Later…

For the first time in my life, I wish drugs didn’t come with the complexities they come with. I always thought that those who turned to drugs were wasting their time and only hurting themselves, cuz drugs don’t solve people’s problems. However, what about those whose problems don’t or can’t get solved even sober? Not taking drugs didn’t make me the singer I once wanted to be. It didn’t give me the woman I wanted. And it certainly won’t unsterilize me. So, sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be nice to take something that’ll bring up your spirits and mood while calming your emotions. It’s not that simple, though. Where would I get the drugs? What drugs would I take? Where would I get the money? What would I do about its addiction and side effects?

Nothing’s ever that simple. There are simple facts, but never simple solutions or simple answers. My being sterile is a fact, but there’s no solution to fix that. There aren’t any sure answers as to why, either, but only theories.

Tom always says that life will go on no matter what, but it hasn’t. It has, being the fact that we’re still both alive, but it hasn’t. We get new gadgets and things like that to improve the house, the computer, the animals, things like that, but that’s where life stops. I can be with Tom for the rest of my life and get new things here and there, which is great. I can always do my hobbies, but is there anything else after this? No. Not at all. We’re gonna get this bed, but what does it mean? It means feeling a little more normal since most couples do sleep together. It means having the convenience back of being able to walk right up to the side of the bed and lay down. It means being able to have a nightstand by the bed, instead of a little shelf. But does it mean more sex and more normal sex and a child? No, of course not. No way. Nothing else will change. Life will still go on with our lives being exactly as it has been - sex in spurts, problems with sex, sterility, his job and my place in the house. The only difference is that we’ll be sleeping together. Sometimes, though, he’ll have to sleep on the couch, cuz us sleeping together means me being woken up by his snoring every night. Therefore, I’m gonna need to catch up periodically. He understands this, though.

Later…

For the last few days, I haven’t heard any car doors from next door, but I’m sure he’s still there.

Earlier I did some reading, played some computer games, listened to music and just now, I rearranged Teddy Bear’s cage again.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 1997 OK, now that I’ve had time enough to have fun making tile sets, I can get on with the updating.

First of all, Tom’s being the typical hypochondriac he usually is, but again, I don’t think it’s him so much as it is God. Still, he’s always got a problem - not enough sleep, something hurts, a sore throat, etc. And with this happening right before prime time (even if there is no prime time for me), it makes me wonder if he’s decided that instead of playing games with me this month, by pretending he’s all gung-ho on screwing, then pulls away, maybe he’s gonna avoid me this time around.

For the millionth time, he said again how he wants more sex. Then why doesn’t he do so? I got up last night at 8:00 when he said this. He didn’t have to leave till 12:30. So if he wants more sex, then what happened last night? Why didn’t he initiate it last night? I’m just so sick of this shit as I have been for years now and between him and the fact that sex itself is getting to be old news and nothing new and exciting, I couldn’t care less how little we screw. Or how little he gets off. He’s never complained about not getting off, it can’t make a baby, so we may as well keep the sheets clean.

Yesterday, we talked about taking almost half of our loan money for that bed we want. That’d be great. I need anything I can get to give me a sense of normality. I’d love for us to sleep together, even if his snoring will always drive me nuts and even if our sex life will always be abnormal, and even if I’ll always be sterile. It’s also nice to see this loan money going to something realistic and practical, rather than for a doctor-made miscarriage.

Speaking of babies, God’s not caring, Tom’s lack of desire and motivation and the message I heard from Linda, are really doing a good job of helping me deal with my sterility, among other things, too, of course. Andy played me a message she left and she really sounded miserable. Totally horrible and I’m sure she’s wondering why she spent 8 Gs just to make her life the hell it is. She’s tired, been going non-stop 24 hours a day since her twins were born in May, and she just has no life whatsoever.

Once again, do I really want this kind of life, too? Did God not sterilize me to curse me, even though I’ve felt that way? Did he do it out of love? Did he simply want to protect my health, my sanity, my life and my marriage?

Andy’s bad memory can really be frustrating. I showed him the little waterfall from my folks, yet last time, he asked what it was. I told him and showed him how I went about finding Shelly, but yet just the other day, he asked me how I found her. Is it the pot? Or is it that he just doesn’t care enough to pay attention to what I say?

At around 10 PM, I went to go outside to get some fresh air and there was a dead pigeon right outside the door. Tom, thankfully, put it in the dumpster. While we were out there, I heard that dog. He still says he can’t tell which house it’s at, but it seemed obvious that it is coming from next door for sure. So if he’s supposed to be better with telling where sounds are coming from (and he is), this tells me he’s just covering for them. Typical old protect-thy-neighbor thing he’s all about. He tried to tell me the other day that I’m lumping too many cars together and assuming it’s only him blasting music. He says that every Sunday morning, there’s a car that comes in (maybe to take her to church) with music going. I’ve never heard it. So right away I thought, Oh, he’s just covering and sticking up for him, just like with denying he said he saw him in that maroon car when my parents were here, so I don’t go chewing him out, and to try to ease my stress.

Well, trying to ease my stress is one thing, but there haven’t been other cars that played their music since last summer. All other times since last summer, it was him, but I haven’t heard any music since that one time I told you I had heard it at an OK volume at 5:30 PM one day.

If you ask me personally, I think they swapped in the music for the dog, but if so, then that’s great. I’ll take that over the music anytime. It can’t wake me up.

I changed Teddy Bear’s cage around again yesterday and I’ve already got new ideas for the next setup.

TUESDAY, JULY 29, 1997 The reason why I haven’t written much is that I’ve been having a field day designing my own tiles for the tiles game. I didn’t know this, but Tom pointed out to me that this comes with the program. In the paintbrush program is where you can load up a blank set, then design them. The only thing about it is that you’re limited to only 16 colors. I’ve made shapes, colors, inserted text to make a names game, drawn my own little pictures of flowers, and have airbrushed stuff, etc. It’s amazing what can be done and it’s so much fun.

I’m gonna make this a really quick entry cuz I want to go do more tile sets and other things. I’ve really been neglecting my reading and my proofreading, but oh well.

The weekend went over without a problem at all from next door, so that really eases my nerves.

Andy came over last night to go for a swim and to bring us a present. A pie, some cake and some cookies from work. They make all their desserts fresh at Coco’s, so whatever’s left over at night, goes to the employees, or else it’ll just get dumped.

For the first time since we’ve lived here, Tom began straightening up his little room, which I was shocked to wake up and see him doing, but it’s looking good so far. He also straightened out and organized where he puts all his mail and that, too, looks nicer than just strewn all over the footstool and the end table.

I don’t know if I mentioned this, but Tammy said that the stuff I want for my dry, dead frizzy hair, is not called Gold. It’s called Liquid Hair. So, one of these days I’ll have to look for it.

I have a few more things to write about, but I’ll do so another time.

FRIDAY, JULY 25, 1997 She didn’t get in till around 9 PM next door and I believe he came in later. The fact that all lights went off and she went to bed at the usual time of around 10 PM and the fact that his car was there, gives me 3 theories. 1. She didn’t get the letter today. 2. She got it, laughed at it, told Mike, “It’s OK. I believe you. I know this is a joke. Let’s go to bed.” 3. That’s not Mike she’s now with and who owns that car and that also explains why there are no music problems.

I set up Teddy Bear’s cage in yet another and really cool setup. I’ve got Mary’s little cage inside the aquarium and from one side of it are all the tubes. I have them running up out of the cage and around into the kitchen and at the end of his tubes, is the purple wheel he sleeps in. Now that he’s taken to sleeping in this wheel, which is easier to clean than tubes, I don’t have to worry about having tubes set up at certain angles. The other hole in Mary’s cage hasn’t got anything attached to it, cuz that’s his way into Mary’s cage, then into the tubes.

Later…

As of today, Tom’s dad has been dead for 1 year. I told Tom that anytime he wanted to go to the cemetery, I’d go with him, of course.

So, what kind of weekend will I be in for? I wonder. Anyway, I don’t know if there’s a car there now, but I’m sure there is, and thought I heard a door earlier. I also thought I heard that dog again, but this time, even I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, yet pretty sure it was next door. There are a lot of things that point to that not being Mike that drives that car and that’s living there, but I’d still guess it is him. There are some new things here like the dog, the boxes, and the U-Haul he never used to move out before, and the quieting of the music. Although, he kind of quieted down many months ago when he’d come just to visit. In fact, I think it’s been since the end of last year or the beginning of this year since he’s stopped blasting in real loud. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens and if we ever see or hear the driver of that car, meanwhile, the guilt over the letter has gone just as quickly as it came. Especially since I know she’s a bitch who doesn’t give a shit about anyone but herself and since I can see that this letter has had no apparent effect on her life. You’d think she’d either take off to someone’s house if it upset her that bad, or that this car would disappear (if it’s his), or that company would be coming in to console her, but nothing’s changed, so she knows the letter was bullshit.

Tom and also decided that next weekend, which will give us time to spruce the pool up, we’re gonna film Bunny swimming and send it to America’s Funniest Home Videos. If they accepted my dad with his bird’s head in his mouth, then maybe they’d like a swimming rabbit. I won’t say anything to any family members on my side, until and if we get a letter saying they’ll air it. Just like Dad didn’t tell me till they got their air-approval letter from America’s Most Wanted, as Larry, others and I still call it.

There was a light on next door earlier, but there isn’t one on now, so she either went out or is in bed early for a Friday night.

If she got the letter yesterday, she didn’t get in till 9 PM, as far as I know. She usually goes to bed at around 10 PM, cuz that’s usually when all the lights go off over there. So another sign that says she laughed the letter off, was how she could go to bed and actually sleep, or think she could, just one hour after getting this letter. I’d think that anyone who got this kind of a letter that believed it would be too riled up to go to bed an hour later.

Of course, there’s also always the possibility that God made sure it never got delivered.

THURSDAY, JULY 24, 1997 Tom just got up to take a couple of Rolaids cuz of an upset stomach. I hope he’ll be better and able to fall back asleep.

I talked with Andy today and told him about Shelly.

Later…

OK, now I can write.

I just went to clip Piggy’s nails before I forgot yet again.

I’m getting a little nervous as we get closer to the weekend, never knowing what to expect from next door.

Of course, I’m also thinking about that letter. There is a chance that she won’t get it till tomorrow, but I doubt that. I just hope she opened it and that he doesn’t go opening her mail. I still can’t see it breaking her heart or that she’d even believe it for a minute, let alone go and kick him out. I think she’ll laugh at it when she reads it and will know it’s bullshit.

I only heard a car door yesterday once or twice, but none so far today. I quit spying to see if there’s a car there each day. I know he lives here now.

I sit here and I wait for my punishment, which I’m sure will have something to do with either them being noisy, or with sex and my sterility being rubbed in my face and me having a hard time with that, but how do I know I wasn’t sent by God to send her this letter to punish her for something’s she’s done wrong? I very highly doubt that God went through me to get to her, even though it happens. The reason I doubt this theory, although it is something to think about, is cuz God doesn’t work that way with me and cuz I’m still sure she won’t buy a word of the letter.

Speaking of letters, the quacks at that prayer thing I called that I saw on TV did send me some bullshit literature after all. It was only about shit they were having on TV, but they got a reply back from me in their NPN they enclosed. I don’t know why there was an NPN enclosed, I didn’t care to look, but I took advantage of it by letting them know what quacks they are.

Also, US West finally updated the voice mail service and now we have those new features where we can get our messages quicker.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 1997 God, what did I do to my shoulder? I must’ve strained a muscle somehow, but I’ve been taking ibuprofen to bring down the inflammation and am sure it’ll be fine soon enough.

Due to the heat and monsoon humidity, the pool is like bathwater. It’s actually kind of warm.

The Humane Society sent me 3 animal cards that say “thank you” on them. The ones with the cats and dogs went on my boring sketchbook cover and I’ll send the lamb to Mom and Dad.

When I got up Tom was on AOL researching medical stuff for Ma whose white and red blood cell counts aren’t too good and sending a message to someone with a computer question. I asked him if he was typing me a letter and he said no, but he would. So he sent me a nice and funny little message and I replied later.

Ma made it back from CA safe and sound and Mary and Dave drove in safe and sound last night, but I guess there was a little more to their plane ordeal. Mary told Mom who told Tom who told me that as soon as they took off, there was trouble. I guess they knew they had to come right back right away and they couldn’t get above 3000 feet and one of the engines caught fire. It was on the news all over the country and Bill heard about it (I told my mom and Tammy and Bill over the phone and in a letter Larry). Due to Tammy’s ex-asshole who was a pilot, we came to learn a lot about planes. And you know me, unlike most people, I love flying and am not afraid. Therefore, I’d have been like Mary who was cool, calm and collected, cuz I know that a plane can fly just fine for a while on one engine and that most problems can be dealt with safely. Meaning, most of the time, you can survive. Even most crashes are survivable. Mary said she didn’t get scared till she saw all the fire trucks and ambulances as they landed, but again, they always go out as a precautionary measure. That’s standard. Dave, though, really lost it. He was crying, leaning on Mary as they left the plane and not only will he never fly again, he’s now afraid of elevators. And also, as they were driving through the mountains to return here, he was very tense and nervous, the poor guy.

I just thank God for not killing them.

Nothing major has broken out yet next door, but boy I’ll tell you, they must’ve slammed their car doors at least 15 times a day in the last few days. That I know of, he’s only played his music once at an OK volume. There will be something breaking out, though, tomorrow. Believe it or not, I feel terribly guilty for this, but what’s done is done and the letter’s already gone out. I thought about telling Tom but then decided not to since he doesn’t need to know about it, cuz it’s not something that’ll affect his life. So, using my best judgment, I’d say it’s best to keep my mouth shut. He’d just be disappointed in me, but like I said, if it were something I did that’d affect him or us, then of course I’d have to speak up.

I know I’m in for severe punishment for what I’ve done, but I expect that and will accept it maturely. I sometimes pray to God about non-baby stuff, cuz I know there is a chance he’ll listen to anything else but cries for a baby. I told him that I knew what I did was wrong and that if he must punish me for it (even though denial of a child is punishment enough), I’ll take whatever he must dish out to me.

I sent a letter to Joely with no return address, saying that I met Mike a handful of months ago, he said he hadn’t been with anyone for a while, had no kids, we got serious, he got me pregnant with twins, etc. Then I found out through someone who saw us in a restaurant and knew him, when I went into the bathroom and ran into this person again, that he had been with her on and off, had a kid, was told where they lived, etc. I wouldn’t give my name, cuz I thought it was best not to and neither did the woman that told me all about Mike give me her name. I said I told Mike he must leave, I’ll raise the kids alone, he couldn’t see them, and that I felt she had a right to know about this, my heart went out to her, she’s a victim too, etc.

I don’t know why I bothered to do such a thing since God will make sure she believes him and that they get noisy. I should’ve known this and known better. I’m really in for it now, cuz I know she’s been with him on and off for years, so she’s not gonna toss him out for good now. No way. She’ll believe him and he’ll stay.

Later…

Just one ibuprofen when I woke up and one more 4 hours later, hasn’t done much for my shoulder. I’d like to think that this is my punishment for that letter, but I know better. I know God knows that a sore shoulder ain’t shit compared to having them bass in and party more often, but now I wonder something else. Is this really Mike driving that maroon car? He didn’t need a U-Haul to move out last fall, but I could’ve sworn that while my folks were here, Tom told me he saw he was now driving that, but last night he said he didn’t say that. Well, if Tom’s not covering for and protecting him, could this be a new boyfriend? I thought I saw some guy I’d never seen before in their backyard last weekend. If this is a new guy, which I doubt, is this why there’s been either no music or soft music? If it’s him, and if she’s ordered him not to blast it so as not to see me for fear that he’d like what he saw, then yes, this letter might get to her if she’s the jealous, paranoid type.

I thought I heard a car door there just now, but I can’t be sure cuz it was soft this time, but I wonder if I’ll hear car doors up till 10 PM like last night. This could be either in regard to me, more company cuz of him, or the asshole keeps getting things from his car, but who knows? Earlier, I did see the security door wide open again, like maybe Mikey, or whoever, was moving more shit in.

I also haven’t heard one bark from over there since the two times I last did and since the one time Tom thought he did.

I’m still pretty sure that that’s him driving that car and living there now and that that letter may cause a reaction out of her, but it won’t get him kicked out.

I also am still sure that I’ll be in for a hell of a punishment, as we all know I’m not one of those rewarded for wrongdoings by God. It’ll be much much more than a sore shoulder, too, but I asked for it. I must take it and deal with it.

Next, I have an update on Shelly, but let me go down two ibuprofen first.

Later…

Last night Shelly came into my mind and this whole thing of not hearing from her nagged me. I thought once again about Tom and my initial theory that I reminded her of a bad time in her life, but something was off about that. Shelly just seemed too strong for that to be such a problem with her and knowing how she has never had a problem with speaking her mind, it seemed she would’ve told me if she had a problem with me contacting her up front. Then I started to feel that maybe something was wrong. I couldn’t resist settling my curiosity any longer, so I called. I began by telling her that I understood if it was a case of my representing a bad time in her life, bringing back bad memories and opening old wounds. I just wanted to thank her for looking out for me back then and was glad to know we were both the happiest we’ve ever been in our lives and this is true for me, even if Tom and I have a strange sex life and even if I can never have a kid.

Yeah well, something was wrong, all right. She is not happy. Far from it. Her typical male of a husband has been cheating on her and she’s probably going to be going through a messy divorce and is scared, depressed, confused, hurt, angry, frustrated and is going through all those emotions, feelings and beliefs right now that I only know so very well.

Later…

God, I’m sick of these sales calls! I’m tired of getting up to see the box say it’s just some asshole salespeople that hound us every day and that just don’t give up, so if the phone rings again - fuck it.

Anyway, Shelly said she didn’t call cuz she not only had nothing but bad news but cuz of her emotional state and that it had nothing to do with me.

She said she’d love to get away just for a weekend and come see me, but it doesn’t look like she’ll be able to afford it till she figures out what she’s doing from here. She made it sound like she’s gonna be leaving him, cuz she knows the statistics on cheating and that once a cheater always a cheater. Yes, it’s just like with rapists and molesters. She said she didn’t think this would happen and was so sure she found the perfect guy and that this wasn’t the first time he’d cheated. She said it started when she was pregnant with her second kid which she had with him, then again after it was born. Another case of a marriage falling apart due to pregnancy and having a kid, not that it’s her fault at all. As much as I’d still have a kid if I could, perhaps my sterility really is more of a protection thing than a curse. Anyway, she said he was also in jail for attempted rape and that she’s getting ripped off as far as their stuff goes since she trusted him and had most everything in his name. She says she may have to move into an apartment. Also, her mother is siding with him and her brother has crashed at their place cuz he just left the woman he was with for 4 years.

Her kids are taking it hard, naturally, and she says she doesn’t know how she’s gonna start over. She says she knows she can go it alone, but feels that at 31 she’s lost everything, all her hopes and dreams and that she’s got to start all over again from God knows where.

They just decided to start slamming car doors so I lost my train of thought. Now, where was I? I guess I could say that I’m very sorry for her and to see that this great life she seemed to have gotten has fallen apart on her. My heart really goes out to her, but at least I know now what’s been happening and am no longer wondering.

I told her to never hesitate to call me anytime, no matter what news she has, and I’ll listen to her and help in any way I can and that I know all the emotions she’s going through. I reminded her that I’ve had plenty of times where I was trapped and things looked hopeless and how they do now, as far as a baby goes. I reminded her that I can never have that and that sometimes that’s very hard to deal with, so I know all about hopeless dreams.

She’s got a restraining order on him now, is back in counseling, and I guess she’s gonna be in court a lot. She feels like she has no family support and that he’s pinning it all on her and won’t come clean and own up to his own faults.

She said she got the pictures and said I looked just how she pictured I’d look. I told her I’d back off and give her space from the phone and from letters if she’d like, but she said it was OK to call her and that she needed stuff through the mail and to write jokes and funny stuff to make her laugh. Oh, I sure did that, alright. She should be getting a wonderful letter from me on Saturday.

I even got her to laugh a few times when I told her some jokes and she said she wanted all the dirty and funny jokes I could send her, so I’ll send her a few in each letter. I also told her about the calls Andy and I used to make and about the tapes and how I could play her some over the phone sometime, or mail her some.

We even had our funny argument about how many floors those assholes had that we lived with. I’m still sure it was 3 floors.

I’m also sure that there’s more to our conversation that I’ll remember over time and when I do, I’ll jot it down.

TUESDAY, JULY 22, 1997 Yesterday I had the most cramps and the most flow I’ve had in years. I had to take 4 ibuprofen. Yes, 4 of them and I was still flowing and still had some cramps. Without the ibuprofen, though, which did make it 90% better, it’d probably have been as bad as it was when I was a teenager.

Was this period so bad cuz I had prayed harder than ever for nearly two months for the child I could never have? It seems the more I pray, the more of a period I have. As if something’s trying to reinforce what’s meant to be.

Yesterday Tammy called wanting to know if I got carpet in the mail using Bill’s name. Now why would I do that? Well, I hope they figure out what it’s about.

I just went on AOL to delete my 20 pieces of junk mail and now all that’s left to update on is just that Ma safely returned home yesterday, Mary and Dave will probably be arriving tonight in their rental car, and now I’ll discuss next door.

Yes, he’s definitely moved back in and that explains the U-Haul and boxes. As usual, he seems to come and go about 3 times a day. I think he has a job where he can go home for lunch.

Anyway, I had hopes that they didn’t ever want to see my face again (and the only times they did was when I’d bitch about their music), so they’d feel it was well worth it to keep things quiet, but I’ve got a bad feeling about the whole thing. Tom says they’re not plotting against me and I’ve got nothing to worry about. I know they’re not necessarily plotting against me, but these people don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves and I know it’s just a matter of time.

So far, whenever they’d leave, they’d do so quietly, but yesterday he came in at 5:30 and I could hear the music. It was at a reasonable volume, don’t get me wrong, but he’s testing me. Just like before, they’d be quiet for a while after I’d bitch about it, but after time, the music would slowly escalate in volume. So, I know that it’s just a matter of time before it’ll be like it was last spring and summer where he comes blasting in real loud a few times a day and I am not gonna return to the old days. It’s just a matter of time before I’ll be forced to forever end this problem and it will be a problem again. I just know it. After all these months I’ve got this stress thrown right back on me (as if dealing with never having a child isn’t enough), and now I’m never gonna know what I’m in for each weekend. There will be more cars pulling in and out of there, sporting events will be chaos over there and they partied last Labor Day, so I’m sure they will again this year.

He left quietly not too long after he pulled in at 5:30 with the music at an OK volume and when I went to bed at midnight, there was no car there. He must’ve come in later, then left this morning, then returned at around lunchtime, cuz his car was there when I checked shortly after noon, then he quietly left a few minutes ago. If he’s got a set schedule, then he’ll be back just after 5:00 and I can’t wait to hear how he’ll make his entrance.

Yeah well, Mike, just as soon as you come in at your old volume that fucking rocks this house, you’ll see me for the last time.

Even though I will put a permanent end to this (then God will go do something else), I’m gonna miss those days of them being out of sight and out of mind for weeks at a time. They say, though, that once broken up, always broken up, so he’s bound to be thrown out again. That may take 6 months at the least, but I don’t see why that shouldn’t happen sooner or later.

MONDAY, JULY 21, 1997 Well, both yesterday and today sure have been depressing. Let me give you my weird news first. I always believed that if there could be life as smart as your average human, or maybe even smarter on this planet, why not other planets? Others far away from this galaxy, I mean. Well, last night I saw the weirdest thing in the sky, even though it turned out that there was a perfectly logical explanation for it. I went out just after midnight and if you picture headlights shining through a deep fog - that’s what I saw. The only thing about it is, is that there were 4 lights. They’d circle a little wider than the house, then join together in the center. These 4 beams of light kept doing that over and over as I stood there thinking, what the hell? I noticed that it appeared to be coming from above the clouds and that the beams of light weren’t stemming from the ground.

I was completely mystified and called 911. I told the woman who answered that it wasn’t an emergency and told her what I saw. She said she could see it, too (so it was wider than it appeared to be) and that she’s been getting lots of calls about it, doesn’t know what it is, and was waiting for a response from the Air Force or some military outfit. She gave me the number of the Phoenix aviation people to see if I could find out from them, but they were closed.

I went back outside and saw a helicopter fly nearby, then called her back later to see if the source of it was known yet. It turned out that the lights were coming from Sky Harbor due to the bad weather we’ve been having. It drizzled on and off yesterday and we sure did have a lot of nasty clouds and humidity.

Anyway, Tom said something to me that makes no sense at all and I forgot to mention it yesterday. You know how I said that he thinks us going to a doctor now would ruin our marriage cuz of our opposing views and bickering? Well, he thinks that after not getting pregnant from this normal sex he says we’re gonna have, that the risks would be decreased, but that there’d still be risks. Well, I’d think that having a child would be most risky to a marriage, not going to a doctor for help on making one. Once again, if you ask me, it’s just another excuse to cover for his fears and for his not wanting a child and yes, I’m 100% sure we’ll never see a doctor. I told Tom that in my belief, if two people love each other, nothing should jeopardize that love, but since that’s just pure fantasy and if he’s gonna be feeling the slightest threat to his sanity, happiness or our marriage about seeing a doctor at any point in our lives, then I don’t want any part of it. Even if it didn’t hurt our relationship, it sure as hell ain’t gonna give us what we want, either.

So, the bottom line is the same and I told him how it is and how it’ll be - I cannot have a child and I just want to try to forget the words child and doctor and just move on, even if there’s nothing to move on to. That’s all I can do. That’s the only choice God’s given me. All else is his and not in my hands.

As far as next door goes, he slept there last night, and if he returns to sleep there again tonight, then yes, he’s definitely moved back in.

SUNDAY, JULY 20, 1997 This morning, a whole 3 days early, I got the period that I absolutely should not have gotten. Hey, what did I expect? A miracle? It was just about right on the money too, as far as it being 14 days since he laid his last big load in me. I’m just as sterile as can be, but does my husband see and believe it yet? No. Of course not. Even he admitted that he didn’t know if he’d ever see what I see. I’m sure he won’t. Not that it’d do me any good and not that one can fight fate, but I asked him if he thought I was a cop-out for not going to a doctor and he said no. Of course he doesn’t think that. He doesn’t really want a child to begin with. Never has, never will. That’s why he doesn’t see what I see. He doesn’t want to see it cuz he doesn’t want to try fixing it (even though we can’t fix it), so that’s why he’s in a fine mood and everything’s all well and good and just about perfect, as far as he’s concerned. Things are going his way and God’s way, alright. He says it’s not that he doesn’t believe that I believe I’m sterile. He says it’s just that in his opinion and in his belief - I’m fine. Yeah, so fine that this is about the 6th period I should not have gotten. Then again, maybe I am fine. God can do anything. Therefore, he wouldn’t need to sterilize me to keep me from conceiving.

Later…

I’m so frustrated and mad right now! Tom left for Mary’s. He told me to call there if I needed anything. I needed to talk, so I called him and then what does he do? He gets on my case about it and says he needs to get things done and now’s not the time to talk. All he went over there to do was to fill their pool, feed the hamsters and play on their computer.

I’m not only right about my sterility, I’m still right about the fact that he doesn’t want to deal with it and that he just doesn’t want a kid.

I called to tell him that I know a doctor can’t fix me, but that I thought it’d help if we at least got tested so he could see what I see. I want him to know what I know - that I’m sterile. I thought that maybe that’d at least help, even though fate can’t be changed. But then he said that that’s giving up what he wants and that that’d affect our relationship. What about me? I don’t get to have what I want. Only he gets to have what he wants. And how would it affect our relationship? Cuz he wouldn’t want to deal with me crying over a confirmed reality and belief? Is that it?! So, to hell what I want, right? Only what he wants matters, huh? Then why’d he say that if I really felt that I needed and wanted to see a doctor, that that’d be OK? When is he ever gonna want to see a doctor or believe me and deal with what a doctor would tell us? Never. He’s never gonna want that and therefore, this man is truly full of shit when he says he wants a child. OK, fine. If it’ll make him happy, I’ll just run around saying I’m OK and that we don’t need a doctor. Then, when I hit menopause, he can keep saying that I was OK and that we didn’t need a doctor - we just never hit it right.

Later…

Tom got in a while ago and we talked and it didn’t really get us anywhere. I’ve got to stop this talking to him, I mean really. All it does is make things worse and 9 out of 10 times he just can’t deal with it and it just starts fights. So for once and for all, I’ve got to just know what I know and shut up. Talking about it won’t change fate.

He had said it was OK to express my feelings, but he doesn’t like it when I get angry at him.

But sometimes the things we need to express are things that others do that make us angry.

He then said that that’s not what he said. It’s when I get angry at his opinions that he doesn’t like. I’m not angry with him for his opinions, just frustrated. It’s the insensitivity coming from him that angers me. And the way he makes me feel like all that matters is what he wants when it comes to sex/kid. To hell with what I want.

And then I felt hurt even more after telling him that I’m just reacting the way a woman would in my shoes and he goes and tells me I was behaving badly and it wasn’t normal for me to be emotional and unstable about it. Yeah, well, let him come back as a sterile woman in his next life and we’ll see if he says that then. If this is how he feels, though, then why did he agree my feelings and actions were normal about a month ago? He had told me he understood and that this was normal then, so why not now?

Then I got more insensitivity from him when he said he was trying to prevent this from happening every other day and that whenever he makes progress (he was very productive over the weekend and did the yard, etc.), I pull him back, and then he went on about how he’s trying to get our finances set. How did I pull him back? My talking with him didn’t undo the yard or other things he’s done and I didn’t fuck him out of any money. He wasn’t working today.

He’ll never understand me. No man could ever understand me and neither could most women. Most women can have kids, so the only people who could understand me would be other women who are infertile, too.

He says that the reason he’s afraid that going to a doctor now would ruin our marriage is cuz of how we disagree and would answer questions differently and would bicker. Why couldn’t we just say what we felt, even if it was the opposite of what the other felt, not bicker and then just take it from there? Well, he still says that once our sex life is normal, then after a period of time in which I’m still not pregnant, then we’ll go to a doctor. But when will it ever be normal? He still implies that it’s cuz of me and says that once he gets me to work through my emotions and stabilizes me, then we can have a normal sex life. Oh, so it’s me, huh? Well, I reminded him that he told me I couldn’t control his dick and therefore, that it was him that’s caused us to not have a normal sex life. I’ve never done anything to stop him from cumming more often. All I can do is lay there and spread my legs, but the rest is up to him. I never expected him to cum all the time, but 9 times in 7 months is way too little (not that I need any more proof of my sterility). So, I told him God decides whether or not we have a kid, and even though I know the answer to that decision - you decide whether or not to cum more. Not me. Not anyone else but him. He said OK and I don’t know if this was an admission that yes, he has been stalling for time or what.

Until and if I ever see differently, and even though nothing and no one can ever grant us our wish for a child, this man is controlling the amount that he cums and he doesn’t want a kid that bad and he doesn’t want to deal with proving me right about my sterility. When it comes to sex/child, everything’s up to him and God. Not me. I have no say at all and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

I asked him how I could know that if he did decide to cum more often, then in a year or so from now when he saw I still wasn’t pregnant, he wouldn’t bail out and make excuses as far as seeing a doctor goes and even he said I couldn’t know. No one can know what the future holds. Well, I do know as far as a kid goes. I know that he and God will see to it that I never have one.

Later…

After talking some more, we went into the pool. This year, there have been fewer bees that I’ve seen, and more drowned. It’s weird, but nice for a change. While we were out there, I told him I’d be patient while he made his decision (to cum more or not) and he said there was no decision to make. Oh, so here we go back into denial again, while he implies that he’s not blaming me, but that the reason we haven’t had a normal sex life yet is cuz of me and my emotions and the way I behave. But he’ll get me through it and all will be normal. Right! Then he said he didn’t want to fight anymore. I wasn’t trying to fight with him. Why is it that every time I go to talk about my feelings and beliefs, he always thinks it’s got to be a fight? There’s just no talking to this guy. He takes everything too personally, turns it around on me, and doesn’t tell me the truth. He’s only truthful when it comes to anything that’s not related to sex or a kid. All I know are two things. I’ve got to stop talking to him, and we’ll never have a kid.

Mary and Dave had themselves quite a scare this morning when they took off from Syracuse. They were to layover in Detroit. They made it there OK, but when they went to take off for here, they had to return due to engine trouble. Meanwhile, Dave’s always been terrified of flying and he refuses to get on any plane ever again, so they rented a car and are driving back.

Next door were perfect angels over the weekend, but I sure did hear a lot of car doors on and off these last two days. They had at least 3 different cars there and I’m still not sure if he’s moved back in. Only sure that she’s not moving out. If he’s there tomorrow, and especially Tuesday then yes, he’s moved back in and that’d explain all the boxes Tom said he saw them put out by the dumpster. Unless she got a roommate.

As for the dog, the next day I heard 3 little barks and Tom said they could have a small dog there, but cuz the houses are so close, it could’ve been where those two dogs are. I’m pretty sure it was next door and not where those two dogs are cuz they’d eat the little thing alive. Other than that, I haven’t heard it, so maybe it was visiting. However, it won’t be a problem.

I’ll check for any cars over there around midnight-1 AM and hopefully there won’t be, cuz like I said, if there were any, that’d mean he lives here again and it’d just be a matter of time before the music starts and God knows what else, too.

SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1997 Early this morning, we got our first real rain in several months. It’s cooled things off significantly which is great, cuz yesterday was really hot and the dew point was up big time due to the oncoming monsoons. So, yesterday was when we took down the shower curtains and switched to the AC and with good timing, too, seeing that it’s cooler, but muggy out and it will be muggy till mid-September. At least this year, we were able to get through till late July without having to switch to the AC, which as you know, is way more expensive than an EC. Last year, though, we didn’t start off with a mild summer and we had to switch in June.

Things are going well with us and we had fun earlier. We started with him on top with no problem. I’m still hanging in at 104 pounds and am having a good PMS mentally, but physically, my tits are sore. I’m surprised, though, that I’m not bloated or seriously watery. I wish I knew what suddenly caused my tits to get so sore when the vitamin E seemed to be helping so well. Tom suggested that maybe it’s the calcium pills I began taking. I doubt that, but I’ll live and have only got about 4 days until my period. Then, I’ll start the vitamin E earlier in my cycle and I’ll really watch the caffeine intake.

Now I have an update on next door. Last night, after Tom went to bed, I came to my conclusion of what was going on over there, but this morning Tom told me his version and maybe he’s right. Just before 8:00 last night, I saw his car in the carport and then saw his old Jeep (he must’ve given it to someone he knows) parked in the driveway and also a big white car parked there. I couldn’t believe I didn’t hear these cars bass in, but I did hear car doors. Then just after 8:00, the Jeep and white car left. Not one note of music. All I heard were voices for a few minutes.

Then I peeked out back (I can only see a little bit of their backyard) and noticed a fairly big box that was open and something that I thought at the time was to be used to make a gate.

Then at around 9:00, I could’ve sworn I heard a dog over there out back. However, it was a dog with a measly little bark, that I could tell wasn’t the type to bark much and that I knew wouldn’t be a problem, since dogs out here aren’t only let out to pee and for a few hours on and off. They live outside.

Then I put two and two together and figured it out. The cars…first time in about a year there have been that many cars. Well, she wasn’t the one who ever had that much company. It was him they came to see and that had to be when the dog was dropped off (they must’ve had it leashed down somehow). His increased visits - for the last several months, his pattern was to visit about once every 2-3 weeks. Suddenly, he’s here last weekend, then two or so weekdays, and then again this weekend. The U-Haul - why rent a U-Haul to move and still be here a few days later? Cuz he’s moved back in and he obviously had gotten something from where he’s been staying that was too big to move in his car. The box - well, it was open, not closed with something packed in it and why would you pack a box to move and put it outside? It was an empty box that had contained the stuff he moved in with and the box was waiting to go out to the dumpster. The dog - why would you get a dog and then move?

The last time they had two cars visiting them, they all blasted in and out and so I had a thought - maybe they decided to stop the music, but then get a dog in regard to me, hoping and figuring it’d bother me. Well, I hate to disappoint them, but they’ll never hear a complaint from me with a dog with this kind of bark and I wish to hell the two dogs had this kind of bark.

Tom’s belief is this - well, he said that that thing was an old box spring or mattress and not something to make a gate with. He also said that there was no sign of a dog over there in their yard when he went on the roof to make sure things were working right up there. Well, maybe they actually took the thing inside, which would be a major shock to know that someone out here would even consider allowing a dog in their house, but I could’ve sworn it was coming from their yard. He thinks the U-Haul was to bring in a new bed for her and that he just helped her with that and is only visiting. If he is visiting, and if there really is a dog over there, then maybe it’s his dog and he brings it over when he visits.

I don’t know for sure, but I am sure that they’re not moving. My honest guess is that OK, she got a new bed, but he’s been here too much lately to not have moved back in and two cars of people coming to visit is his thing and not hers, so I think he’s moved back in. I’m sure he cheated on her and that’s what got him kicked out last fall and that within a handful of months, he’ll get booted again for another handful of months.

I realized something else, too, not that I didn’t know it deep down. Well, you know how they refer to God as He and Him and all that? They refer to him as a man and yes, he really is truly a man, and how I know this is cuz no female God could give females such raw deals and so many more problems in life than men get. Any God that could be cruel and heartless and insensitive enough to sterilize a woman has got to be a male. How could any God do that to a woman if he wasn’t a male, huh? No female God would have such a thing as sterility or miscarriages and go and get a woman all psyched up by having her find out she’s pregnant, then maliciously take it away and crush her heart as if it were an old used-up piece of paper.

FRIDAY, JULY 18, 1997 Well, this is weird, but they left their U-Haul parked next door all day yesterday. Tom thought it odd that they’d do that too, cuz usually, you rent it and use it to move whatever, then bring it back. However, sometime in the late afternoon, it was gone. I didn’t hear it leave, but early in the evening right before I was falling asleep, I thought I heard some car doors over there and just now, too. All day yesterday and as of today so far, too, there’s been no car there and I don’t really know now if they really are moving.

Andy left his work pants on the door last night for me to sew on a new button and I did that when I got up.

I also put up a couple of old shower curtains across the archway separating the back room from the rest of the house. This will hopefully act as a good tarp so we can close the back room vent, now that it’s so hot out, and use the EC for all the other rooms, but use the wall AC for the back room.

Tom asked me to wake him up at 8:00 last night so he could see me before work. When he says it that way, that’s usually saying so we can screw before he leaves for work. However, I had been up 16 hours by then and was just too beat, so I crashed. Before, though, he said something about not yelling at him tomorrow (which is now today). I intended to ask him what that meant, but the first thing that popped into my head was - don’t yell at me if I tease you and play sex games by deliberately botching things up, cuz you were too tired last night. Why, though? This man can live without sex just fine. I mean again, he’s not your typical male and whenever something’s come up that’s prevented us from getting together, there’s never seemed to be any hard feelings on his part, but I’ll find out for sure what he meant by what he said.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he botched things up at a time when it’s not possible for a woman to conceive, to try to throw me off of my belief that he’s afraid to have a kid and that he just doesn’t really want one that much.

Another thing is, Tom said next door doesn’t hate whites, cuz he saw her gabbing with both kids and adults at the house next to them on the other side with those lovely dogs. Oh, so it is personal, then? Something about me, huh? I’m sure that I came up in their discussion, too. I’m sure that one of them mentioned surrounding neighbors and that she let them know all about me and how I’d bitch at their music, but oh well.

THURSDAY, JULY 17, 1997 When we came back from Mary and Dave’s yesterday, I saw that their security door next door was wide open as if maybe they were moving something large, then I noticed his car deep in the carport. At least I think it was his car. When I saw this at 11:30 in the morning, I realized with dismay that this could mean he was moving back in. And also, that he had to have been there overnight, and for him to be there two weeknights in a row, well, it hasn’t been his usual pattern for quite some time.

Later in the afternoon, I peeked through the blinds in the back room’s alcove and saw him walking from the carport to the backyard. Then later I heard metal sounds scraping. Tom heard it too, when he got up in the early evening and he went out back and saw a U-Haul.

Tom thinks someone’s moving out and that it’s got to be her, since we never saw or heard him move furniture out last fall and there certainly wasn’t a U-Haul then, either. Not that this doesn’t mean they didn’t buy a couch and a loveseat, or some huge thing, but this is the same U-Haul I saw there right before and around the time they moved in. Our theory at the time we saw the U-Haul in early ‘96 was that the driver noticed the place was vacant and used it just to park there to take breaks, but that makes no sense, so if that U-Haul wasn’t freeloader-connected, who knows what it was really doing there?

Well, from what I can see, the grill they had over there, as well as this little metal chair, is gone, but if she’s moving, then why isn’t there a For Sale or For Rent sign?

Anyway, I got up at 4 AM and saw the U-Haul still there. His car is gone, though. I guess that since she obviously doesn’t drive, he drove his car to the U-Haul lot, left his car there, and then drove the U-Haul here.

I just called and left Andy a message, telling him that if they are moving, then I want to sabotage the fuck out of that basketball hoop whenever the hell that place is noticeably vacant. I told him that they’re not home most of the time and that the mini lock that wouldn’t quite lock the thick metal net, has deterred the neighborhood kids, but if it’s there (and I’m not sure it still is) when the new kids get here, all they have to do is have mommy or daddy untangle it. If I had a lock big enough to lock it, it’d take metal cutters to get it off and hopefully no one would want to bother. So, I told Andy I didn’t know where my locks were and that if I asked Tom for them, he’d know what I was up to, and get all paranoid. You know my husband’s far from a prankster or anyone who’d destroy property that wasn’t his own. So, I asked Andy if he could please buy me a lock and forget about buying me anything for my birthday. We’ll see what he has to say about it, but he knows to keep it between us. Yes, Tom would still love me and he could live with knowing if I locked up the hoop, but why tell him and disappoint him and worry him? What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

Anyway, if they are moving, I certainly have mixed emotions about it. I mean, hopefully, and I repeat, hopefully, I would no longer have to worry about the potential of someone basing in since more people have kids and dogs, but there’s no way - no way - I’m gonna luck out again on that one. If new bass blasters don’t move in, I’ll get a pack of Mormons with lots of screaming kids and a dog or two barking like hell. Although, after the M’s dog settled in, it wasn’t too bad. No dog is as bad as the two on the other side of them and I wish to hell they’d move, but fat chance. If they’ve been here since we’ve been here, then they aren’t going anywhere. Not for a long long time. I’d think that if they moved, it’d be around or after we moved and each year we’re here, it seems further away till when we move. I used to think we’d be here till just after the turn of the century, but I doubt that. I think we’ve got another 8-15 years or so here, so it’s too bad dogs usually live 15-17 years. However, if these dogs croaked right now, they’d just replace them with the same kinds of dogs that almost never shut up. All people out here want to do is store their dogs out in their yards all year round like old furniture, but these two dogs are obviously guard dogs, trained to bark at the slightest noise. If they could hear a pin drop in this house, that’d set them off. These aren’t just backyard pets and if someone scaled their fence, I guarantee you those dogs would rip their throats out.

Anyway, it fits. If they’re moving, the timing fits. I swear, no one has lived next door for more than two years and I’m sure we’ll have several different people there while we’re still here. It’ll probably turn over 5-7 more times while we’re here.

Oddly enough, after the M’s split the gate that divides the backyard and carport was taken down. You’d hope that that’d deter people coming in with dogs since most people do have dogs, but I don’t know about that. All they’d have to do is leash it down or put up a gate, cuz if you think the dog would ever step foot inside that house, think again. Dogs live outside here. The new people, if there really are gonna be new people, will take the dog(s) straight to the backyard, tie it to that tree back there, and then probably put up a gate. Meanwhile, the kids will live outdoors too, and will only be gone from the yards during school hours and at night while they’re asleep. And that’s only if they’re even old enough for school and aren’t being taught at home.

Yeah well, I can promise you this - if the new people come blasting in here, or if they bring in a couple of guard dogs and 5 screaming kids that live outdoors - I will not tolerate it. I’ll set them straight just as fast as I’d set Mike straight if he were to return to his days of blasting in and out of here regularly. The more I think about why he’s shut up since late last year or so, the more I agree with Andy. I didn’t do shit to that woman over there, yet from the moment I first saw her, she’s always seemed to hate my guts, so yes, it’s probably cuz of how I look and she probably told him to shut up, for fear of him getting the wrong idea about me when he sees me as I go out to tell him to shut up. All guys are sluts and so many ugly women get paranoid about their guys seeing or being exposed in any way to better-looking women that are either neighbors, coworkers, etc.

I remember a few months after they came here, I was out by the pool and she was talking to someone in her driveway in front (that’s how loud this bitch talks), and she was saying something like, “Not my baby!” in a tone and way that suggested she was worried about her man eyeing something that he might consider a great source of eye candy and even more. Like I’d even be interested, single or not - right! I meant it when I said I’d kill myself if anything happened to Tom. And if I were dumb enough not to, well, I wouldn’t return to my days of trying to seek one-niters with women, cuz I learned long ago that that was never meant to be, but there’d never be another guy, either. I’d live and die alone if I didn’t die first.

If she’s moving, the reason why there may be no sign up is that she may have called her landlord (I still think they rented) and said she wanted to move and knew people to take the place over. God, I hope not! This black bitch obviously hates whites, so if that’s the case, then I’d have new freeloaders over there to deal with and I’m sure she’d let them know just how much I hate bass and other people’s noise, too.

Once again, I do not hate blacks. I don’t hate any specific kind of person and I know there’s good and bad in all kinds, it’s just that these particular ones happen to be rude assholes. I’ve known some good black people, but it still does seem that so many of them are either lazy, into crime, or religious fanatics. I often wonder if blacks don’t hide behind religion to cover for their crimes, but who knows? I try not to judge others too much, but we all have our human nature that we tend to follow and in my journal, I can say anything I want. People normally say things in their journals that they don’t usually say in their everyday lives.

If you ask me, though, I’d say that since they’ve been quiet over there 99% of the time since last October, I wish they’d stay. Like I said, though, God will only let me have things peaceful, no matter where I lived, only for so long. He’s obviously decided I’ve had enough peace and quiet and that it’s time to move on and back into dealing with and stressing over noisy neighbors.

I’d still like to not only ring the asshole’s necks that created such a fierce bass to newer stereos, but I’d like to kick ass on those that decided to build these houses just 3 measly fucking feet apart, too. When they get to opening and closing their car doors, it sounds like it’s connected to this house. Like someone slammed something up against the house. If I had never been here before, then was taken here blindfolded and put into the bedroom, then freed of the blindfold, then they opened and closed their car doors, know what I’d think? I’d think that I was in an apt. and that behind the bedroom wall was the neighbor’s kitchen and that they were going in and out of their cabinets.

OK, now my pork chops are ready, so I’ll be back soon.

Later…

OK, I ate my pork chops and saved some for Tom too, for when he gets in.

Other than the fact that I could go on and on about next door and neighbors forever, I don’t have much else to say. Just that we went to feed the hamsters yesterday and oh my God! What a pigsty that place is. Totally trashed, all in the Shower’s way and tradition. The only good thing that Tom’s great parents didn’t teach their kids was neatness and organization. They definitely get this from their folks, since Tom’s place at Crystal Creek and before I fixed up things here, Mary’s place and Ma’s place, all look the same.

It’s too bad Teddy Bear is only up 6 hours a day. It’s really weird but true. He gets up around 6 PM, then not too long after midnight, he’s out cold. He gets up periodically to get drinks and have a bite to eat, but that’s about it.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 1997 Kim sent me a quick note yesterday to tell me she got her car fixed and about $1,900 for damages due to the cement dumping. She also sent some jokes and some of them are pretty funny. I guess some friend of hers at work gave her a copy, then she made copies and sent them off. I don’t know if she’d send Bob copies, so since I’ve got them typed up, I’ll send the originals to Bob. I sent copies to Tammy, Larry and my folks and printed out a copy that’d fit into journal 98 where I have jokes written. I’ll have a copy of them in this journal’s typed version, too.

I forgot to mention that when Andy was here, he noticed the weight loss too, right away. Even though it’s only a few pounds, that’s the advantage of being short. It shows when you lose just a few pounds, but I’d still like to drop below 104.

Sometime this morning, we’ll be going to feed the hamsters, but not to get markers, since Tom picked me up some nice ones yesterday. I drew up one of my desert labels in my sketchbook already.

Yesterday was a sucky day, but finally, it was in a better kind of way, rather than either us fighting, us having some pretty fucked up sex or me being upset over God’s hatred for me and for denying me a child. Well, it was deathly hot at about 112º. This idiot here went and made a baked potato at around 11 AM and that didn’t help the situation. It was near 80º in here for hours as it was too late to cool it down further in here for the worst of the afternoon. I couldn’t even go in the pool, either, to cool off cuz it was as green as the grass. I had to wash myself down with a cool, damp washcloth. Yesterday, though, Tom put algaecide in it and shocked it, and threw in some chlorine, so after I get back from taking care of the hamsters, it’ll be a great time to swim. It’ll be just about at the hottest part of the day and the bees should be keeping cool in their hives and not out to bother me.

I spoke to my parents yesterday and was glad to hear that Larry and everyone went to the Cape. They need a break.

Also, Max, their dog, tore a tendon in his leg and had surgery but is recovering well.

TUESDAY, JULY 15, 1997 I'm currently in a semi-bummed-out mood right now. As usual, it's all about the baby I'll never have. Am I ever going to be free of this? All I know is that I'm really gonna feel like life is one big sentence if I don't get over these feelings. The thought of spending decades feeling this child missing from my life is both saddening and scary.

I got a letter from Bob yesterday. He says that if God really loves me like the bible says, he will let me get pregnant, but there is no God that loves me. Absolutely no loving God up there for me and you know what I think of most of the bible - hogwash! Filled with tall tales that no one can prove.

MONDAY, JULY 14, 1997 When Tom got up yesterday, he said he was ready for a new beginning, and of course I’m thinking to myself - Yeah, for a whole two weeks. Maybe even a month if we’re lucky.

Anyway, I figured we could have sex yesterday morning, but I just couldn’t get into the idea. I’m still too nervous about it and I told him that I wasn’t quite ready and needed another day or so. He said that that was no problem and of course, he seemed the least bit bummed out about it and if he wasn’t, then he’s really a truly damn good actor.

In my mind, it still comes down to the same thing - what’s a fantasy of mine, and what’s the reality here. We cannot have the normal, full-time, happy, mutual sex that results in a child. We can only have full-time sex on a part-time basis, with him only cumming every two weeks, and with him playing games once or twice a month that he denies playing, and certainly with no child resulting.

I’m just sick of this roller coaster. I want this cycle broken. I cannot buy his so-called desire for a “new beginning.” I cannot believe that things will change in bed, whether I scream and shout about it, or keep quiet. I cannot believe that he and God are not responsible for this. I cannot believe that he desires the same kind of sex as much as I do. I cannot believe that he desires a child as much as I do.

I feel trapped and full of mixed emotions. He said that as long as I don’t call him names, he’ll always love me. But if I deny him sex, I know he’ll initiate other problems or they’ll just happen on their own or by God. Things would be OK for a while, but in time, I would think that he’d make me feel guilty about it, or I would on my own. I really believe that his way of sex means as much to him as the kind of sex I wish we could have means to me. If I take away his source of games, it’ll make him unhappy. So all I can do is try to tell myself that in 2-4 weeks when we have one of our so-called “normal” setbacks, that it’s what he wants, and what God wants, it obviously makes them happy, it’s obviously fated to be, I can’t have a child anyway, so just deal with it, keep quiet about it and just give God and Tom what they want. What they really want.

I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to have sex with him, but I just don’t see any way out of it without swapping one set of problems for another.

Anyway, sometime after I was up and showered, I cleaned the house and typed up some letters.

We will be going to the library today when it opens.

Did I mention that on Wednesday, we’ll be feeding the hamsters? I’ll also be stocking up on new markers that day, too.

Andy and Michelle left a message earlier. They say Michelle just “discovered” two months ago that she’s gay. Well, I don’t think this is something one just suddenly discovers about themselves. It’s either always there, or it’s not.

They wanted to know if I considered Michelle to be feminine, butchy, or in the middle. I’d say she’s in the middle, yet closer to feminine.

I’ve got to get out and de-duty the patio as soon as it gets a little lighter. I know the bird population has dwindled a bit, but it still gets a bit messy.

Later…

Jesus Christ! Now women are having babies in deodorant commercials. Everything on TV is having babies and you know, it really hurts. It really hurts to have what I can’t have thrown in my face. Everything on TV is babies, pregnancy (by children and adults), sex and violence.

I’m glad Little House was done in the 70s. They based stuff on life in the 1800s, cuz that’s when these people portrayed lived, but a lot of it was also based on life in the 70s. If it were being filmed today, there’d be some gay characters, which would be fine, but there’d also be pregnant teens galore, drugs galore, and someone would be giving birth on every show. Even Charlie’s Angels would be different. A lot like today’s crime shows. Instead of the cops chasing bank robbers and kidnappers, they’d be chasing baby killers and pregnant runaway teens, who were all doped up. This baby fetish that’s hit today’s commercials, shows, and movies shows absolutely no sensitivity or consideration for the sterile. Why should they, though? We only make up 5% - 10% of the population. It really wears on my nerves, though. I am sterile. And as a sterile woman, I don’t need to see these commercials while I eat popcorn and try to watch an old rerun of Little House.

Later…

Well, we just had a good screw and in half an hour we’ll be leaving for the library, then I shall return to read myself to sleep.

I wasn’t all nervous and feeling like the self-conscious freak I thought I’d feel like and it was great, cuz he slowly, but surely managed to start on top. I didn’t expect him to cum, but he enjoyed it too, and says it’ll take him a little while to get used to this arrangement. He says it’s cuz I keep lifting my feet, so he burns all his energy trying to get in there. Well, I’ll remember to lower my feet.

SUNDAY, JULY 13, 1997 Well, Andy may be coming over in an hour or two. He’s gonna bring a tape with a song of Cheryl Crow’s that I want to tape and a journal for me. It was the journal that he wrote 6 pages in and I wrote about 8 pages in December and January of ’95-‘96. It’s not a great-looking journal, but since he’s decided he’s really never gonna use it (I figured as much), he says it ought to go to someone who will use it.

While Andy’s here, he’ll be browsing the Internet.

Tom went to bed about an hour ago. He says that tomorrow we can finish the bathroom and then Monday, we’ll stop by his ma’s house to take in her mail and paper, then we’ll go to the library. On Wednesday, we’ll feed the hamsters.

Later…

I just took a break to listen to music.

I discussed this with Tom who says that his wants haven’t changed, that neither has mine, but that I just don’t know what to do. Yes, I miss our fun and all that, but I’m still tired of the biweekly botches. He says that setbacks are a part of life and all we have to do is just keep moving on when they happen. Well, I agreed to not call him names, but this is hard to do when you feel your own husband (along with God) is controlling the bedroom scene and it’s hard not to get mad. He says voicing my opinion is fine and telling him that I think he’s lying is fine. He said it’s when I call him a fucking asshole and tell him he is a liar that he’s got a problem with.

So, since a baby can’t happen no matter what, I think I may as well just let him play his biweekly games and just deal with it. Just cuz I can’t be happy with our sex life and have a child doesn’t mean he can’t be happy and I want the one I love to have all the happiness I can possibly give him. Besides, I know the truth, he’s heard it a million times from me, so I may as well keep my mouth shut about it and take these constant setbacks that I don’t think are as normal as he says they are. I can’t imagine your average person having problems with sex this often.

Also, maybe somewhere down the line, God will have a change of heart and stop adding insult to injury and just leave us the fuck alone in bed. Maybe he’ll realize that sterility is enough of a punishment for me and that there’s no need to keep on picking at me by further controlling my body in other ways, as well as the sterility.

Maybe Tom will have a change of heart too, and either put his actions where his mouth is or admit to what he’s been doing and all the reasons why, too.

Whether or not he cums more, I doubt I’ll ever have the nerve to see a doctor. I mean, really. What’s he gonna do for us? Fight God and win? Fat chance!

Tammy and Dad mentioned Tammy and her family going to Florida this summer, but I guess not. I recently talked to Tammy and asked her when she’d be going and she said she wasn’t. I asked if she had a falling out with Mom and Dad, but she said she didn’t, so I guess their health matters, among other problems, are gonna prevent them from going this year.

I noticed by the caller ID box that my folks tried calling at 8:30 on Friday night, but I was asleep and Tom was bringing Mary and Dave to the airport. So yesterday morning I called and got their machine. I told them I saw they called, let them know what was going on, and told them to leave a message if they had anything important to tell, but I’m sure they were just calling to say hi.

Tom got a couple of awards from work. One for processing 19 million checks with no errors and another one, too.

Andy will be here in about half an hour. He just called. He’ll also be coming over sober. Amazing! That’s cool, though, cuz when he’s stoned, he can’t remember shit I say and he’s such a flake.

Later…

Soon I will be crashing, but I thought I’d write first and say that Tom finished carpeting the bathroom. It looks nice.

Andy was over for a few hours and he brought the journal and tape.

Why has the vitamin E failed to keep my tits from soreness this time around? For the last two months, I had virtually no soreness, but now, at a whole 10 days away from my period, they’re getting quite sore.

Perhaps I drank too much coffee? Perhaps it’s God cursing me? Or maybe my emotional state, which was pretty shitty for a few days, has taken a toll on me physically?

Anyway, I chickened out of sex today, but I’ll write about it later.

SATURDAY, JULY 12, 1997 Tom brought home a fountain pen that Ma wanted me to have. I’m using it to finish out my paper journal.

A few hours ago, Tom brought Mary and Dave to the airport. They’ll be gone to New York for a week. We’ll only be feeding 3 hamsters and not 4, cuz one of theirs died.

Then tomorrow, Tom will be bringing his mom to the airport. She’s going to Steven and Carol’s for about two weeks.

Tomorrow, he’ll also be putting up a mural for Jackie and Jim, and then he mentioned doing some painting at his ma’s on Monday.

Hopefully, though, he’ll want to do something here on Sunday. Like maybe finish carpeting the bathroom.

Later…

Well, I’m still sure that quitting sex would be the best thing for us, but that would be only if Tom wouldn’t have a problem with it and I know he’d at least act like he would, so if we end up screwing again, I guess I should just deal with his games, lies and teasing and just keep my mouth shut. Opening my mouth and bitching about whatever he does to jerk sex off-kilter, won’t stop it from happening and all it does is cause fights. All he does is deny it, anyway.

Yes, I’d love to have a child, but I know that that’s not going to happen and that that’d be even worse for both of us, so why bitch about something that’d be bad for us when he pulls his stunts in bed? We wouldn’t be able to have a child even if he didn’t play games and even if he did cum regularly, so why not just let him have his fun his way, the way it’s always been? It’s like knowing how bad cigarettes are for me, as well as how a baby would ruin our lives. The only difference is, is that I know I’m gonna continue smoking those cigarettes. However, I’m not gonna get pregnant, so I guess there’s no point in my reacting to his shit. Deep down, that’s probably what he wants and likes, anyway, if I really am truly right with my beliefs of what’s gone on here for ages now.

His story changed a little bit, too. The last time he said that my urgency for a child has been what’s been holding him back from cumming more (which makes no sense, cuz it’d seem to me that if someone you loved really was anxious to have or to do something they really wanted, you’d push harder to see them get it) and that what happened that night was that I wasn’t in the mood, so subconsciously I botched the angle up. Today, though, he told me it’s not my urgency that’s held him back, it’s my actions. Meaning, how I reacted after his little stunt a few nights ago. Also, not only was I supposed to not be in the mood and subconsciously botch the angle, but now he tells me that I have such anger deep within my subconscious that I just had to look for a reason to be mad at him.

I told him yet again if I were really the type to want to go off on someone, just to go off on them and be mad at them, I wouldn’t bother with feeling the need for an excuse, I’d just let them have it. Also, I’m almost always in the mood, but if I’m not, I told him that’s no reason to deny him fun. I can just lay there and let him do the work.

I told him I wish we could ditch the side position altogether, but that wouldn’t do any good, cuz then he’d just go do something else. He’d find some other thing to use as an excuse to cover for his fears and to cover for the truth, all the while pinning it on me. And he tries pinning it on me in such a kind way, so to speak by saying I’m not responsible for just being the way I am and for it being a subconscious thing on my part and not something that I knowingly and intentionally set out to do. Please! I mean, his beliefs about me and what happened are so fucking off the wall, it’s pitiful! He may be a great con and one hell of a smooth bold liar, but he’s also a bad liar as well.

I’m gonna go take a coffee break now, then maybe I’ll listen to music or something. At 4:40 I’ll be watching a movie on HBO, but I’m not sure if I’ll really like it or not. I have to wake him up at 9 AM, then he’ll be gone from about 10 AM - 5 PM and I’ll be hitting the sack right around that time. I can’t say I’m not glad he won’t be around, cuz I just don’t want any more shit, so he can be off doing for others all he wants. As long as he does enough stuff around here and doesn’t procrastinate too much around here.

Another thing is, I know he’s not as serious as he claims to be about a full-time sexual relationship. I know our schedules don’t always match up and that things come up, but I’m not stupid either and I am 100% sure that even if we were compatible with each other in bed we’d still have full-time sex on a part-time basis. This is just not your typical male who thinks below the belt 99% of the time like 99% of the male population does.

He also told me that the reason for not fixing the tape is cuz he needs a special tape to tape its ends back together and that there wasn’t extra money for it. We could’ve made money for it, but he didn’t think it was a higher priority. He didn’t tell me he needed a special tape for it, but of course, he swears he did tell me.

Later…

I just did up a list of the tilesets I don’t like for Tom to delete if he wants to.

I’m doing some laundry now too, but I think I’ll wait for it to get light out before I dry it, so as not to let the bugs in.

Like I said, I’m gonna get me some coffee and I think I’ll read for a while. I’m reading Single White Female and it’s great.

Later…

I watched that movie and it was OK.

I did some reading and now I’m drying the two loads of laundry I’m doing.

FRIDAY, JULY 11, 1997 I’m kind of bored right now, but I thought I’d drop in to say hello to my journal.

There are different things I could be doing now, but I can’t decide on which to do. I did some reading and now I could listen to music, sing, proofread, cruise the web, or try to see if I can wash old coffee stains off of my dog/cat mugs with vinegar. I think I’ll hit the web first and see what other games and tilesets I can find.

Later…

Wow! The vinegar Tom suggested I use to clean the mugs really worked! The stains disappeared like magic and now they look brand spanking new.

I also forgot to mention that when I got up yesterday, I got up at 103 lbs. That’s the lowest I’ve been in nearly a year. Still, my metabolism needs more speeding up. Especially since I went to bed at 106 lbs. that day. I shouldn’t be more than a pound heavier at the end of my day.

Later…

I don’t want to do it. I just don’t want to do it. I don’t want to have sex with him and I can’t imagine not being extremely self-conscious in bed from here on out. Not after he accused me of having my angle off, even when I knew it wasn’t. If I had really had my angle off, that’d be different, but now I’m gonna be like - am I lined up right? Or am I gonna hear afterward that I deliberately screwed up the angle and so he wilted away? And besides, if my angle had really been a problem, why didn’t he just say so? Why didn’t he just have me move, or move himself, then continue on?

I just don’t want to continue with these fights over sex that we seem to have at least every other week and deal with the anger and depression that goes with it. But I feel trapped and like I have no choice, but to let him keep on playing with me for fear that he’ll be unhappy and even think about us splitting.

He says he’s not lying and not deliberately trying to prevent himself from cumming more or from me getting pregnant. Then why oh why do I feel like he’s trying to ensure we keep up with the sex so he can fuck with my head and play games and tell lies? Anyone can be so much of a smooth and bold liar and accuse someone else of messing up sex, while it’s really them that’s messing it up, cuz they don’t want to admit their fears/reasons. I’ve tried to comply with his wishes and see things his way and give him the benefit of the doubt. I’ve looked for reasons to believe him, but I can’t find them. I’m grasping at straws in my mind and all I can see are the many reasons I’ve written about before, that are causing him to intentionally and knowingly do what he’s done. He knows I can’t literally prove him guilty like I could if he were guilty of an affair and I had pictures of him screwing someone, so he knows that all he has to do is pin the blame on me. Then butter me up by saying it’s not my fault cuz it’s just the way I am and I can’t help it, so he can get me back into the sack so he can do this yet again, for the millionth time.

I don’t want to fall into this trap again and this angering, depressing and frustrating cycle, but how do I get out of it? He’d just put a guilt trip on me, so what do I do? Now I not only feel like there’s no way to solve our sex problems, but I feel there’s no way out of it, either. We can’t quit, but we can’t do it right, either.

In the midst of my desire to have a child, I’m having more and more doubts about just how much I really want that and the troubles and responsibilities it brings. Even if I could handle it, which I still can’t imagine, is it really worth it? I’m still so afraid of what it’d do to us as a couple and how it’d make me feel. I mean, my life as I always knew it would be over and I don’t truly know if that’d be a good thing and in a good way. All our time and money would go to the baby. There’d be no life for us as individuals to indulge in hobbies, or to indulge in each other. I can only imagine just how many fights we’d have concerning the rearing of it, too.

Then there’s still the lack of sleep and what it would do to my body. I know just how I’d look and how my asthma would be as well as my sanity and come on! They cry for hours at a time. Can I really handle that? Wouldn’t I just turn around and bash it as my mother did to me? I just don’t have the patience and the tolerance it takes to be a mother and I wonder more and more if I should be looking at my sterility as I look at my singing - a gift.

Maybe the right and the only thing to do, that would be best for me and for us as a couple, would be to concentrate on being more consistent with something I’ve suggested to myself before - look at my sterility and being able to dodge pregnancy each month as a blessing, as a game I love to play, that I’m great at, and am lucky to always win at, and remind myself constantly of all the good there is to never having a child.

THURSDAY, JULY 10, 1997 Tom and I have done a lot of talking since I last wrote. So much talking, that I don’t know where to begin. I can start, though, by saying that I’m still not convinced he’s not lying and then pinning the problem on me to cover his ass for being too chicken himself to tell me what’s really going through his mind.

He keeps telling me he knows we disagree about what happened a few nights ago and that’s OK, cuz you can’t always agree on everything. He still insists it was me who shifted angels. I’m sorry, but I did nothing wrong. Not intentionally and not unintentionally. I’ve thought about it a million times and I still know for a fact that he was right on the money. I can tell when the angle’s off and it wasn’t. It was he who wilted away, wasn’t in the mood, and put up the resistance.

Andy told me he read that the main reason for someone not being able to cum very easily is cuz of fear of failure in bed. Well, that’s certainly not the case with Tom.

Speaking of reading, he said he wanted one of us to go through my journals, cuz he knew I wrote that I’d be happy and want nothing else if he’d just cum. How could I have said that? His cumming was never the number 1 thing as far as I was ever concerned. There were and are and will be things of greater importance to me than that. Such as having a kid was and of course, you can’t have that without the guy cumming.

So, I think either he misunderstood me or I used a poor choice of words if he thought I said that that was the one and only thing to make me happy. That was only one of the few things I felt would make me happy. Or at least happier.

Then he says that maybe I’m calling him a liar to cover up for my own lies. He said this after he embarrassed the fuck out of me by going through my journals. I just didn’t see any way to tell him I’d go through them myself. He said we could go through them with him there, but what would be the point of that? He’d still see my writing which I still don’t think is all that great and which I’m still very shy about sharing. He says I deceived him by telling Kim, Andy and Dr. Rugg about our sex problems. But he knew this. He knew this a long time ago and he always told me to use my best judgment as far as who I say what to and I agreed. We both did.

Anyway, he didn’t find it, cuz I just can’t see why I’d write that or say that, but I’m sure that I said it was very important to me. Not the most important thing and not my only dream or goal in life.

Why does he swear I’ve said things I don’t remember saying and that I wouldn’t say? And why does he swear he didn’t say things that I know he has said?

I told him I suspect more and more that the source of my sterility is cuz of not ovulating. We all know you can get periods and not ovulate, just like you can get pregnant, but not have periods. I told him that a woman’s body temp is supposed to be slightly elevated at mid-cycle and stay that way till she gets her period. Well, there have been times I’ve taken my temp at these times to find it lower. He said I can’t get an accurate record of my temperature cuz of how I take my temps at the wrong time. He said your temp is the most accurate when you first wake up and it’s also important to do it at the same time of day every day for accuracy, cuz air temperatures in houses fluctuate from say, 7 AM-2 PM. Well, maybe he has a point.

It’s still awfully hard to believe I could be fertile when no evidence has ever suggested that I am. Evidence has suggested, though, that I’m not. Seeing is believing for me, usually.

He still swears also, after reminding me that I swore he’d never cum in the first place, that he will cum more if he screws more, that everyone has setbacks, that we’ve progressed and gotten through these setbacks, that we can move on and progress even more and that he doesn’t think you can have a happy marriage without sex. Oh really? I thought he had said that he felt that sex was just a little tiny part of it and that what went on out of bed was where it counted and mattered most. See, I feel like he’s saying this just to get me to go back into this multi-year cycle with him again so he can jerk me around.

He keeps saying he hates being called a liar and that he’s not lying, but what else can I think or believe? It’s virtually impossible to give him the benefit of the doubt when I’ve never seen him put his actions where his mouth is. When he came like he said he would, then I believed him when he said he could cum. I believed it when I saw it and that’s what it’ll take for me to believe he’ll cum more and that he really wants this kid that much.

When I asked him why he didn’t blame me for the way we were in bed, then why he implied that it was my urgency that made him falter, he said that I am who I am, and since I can’t help that and am not deliberately at fault of anything, then I can’t be blamed. No, I certainly wouldn’t deliberately fuck up our sex, but then he goes on to say we can work around it. Then why haven’t we?

If our sexual problems are truly all my fault (and I’m not saying that some of them aren’t), then if I haven’t gotten the hang of how to fix my faults, I guess I never can or will.

My heart says she wants to have a normal, happy, full-time sex life with the man she loves and have a baby with him. My head says that that’s not reality, sex is the main source of our problems and fights, so break the cycle by eliminating the source of the problem - sex. That’s the problem. I always have to want something I can’t have.

Sex is like booze and I’m like the alcoholic. It’s addicting. It’s so easy to keep on the roller coaster and keep this hurtful, destructive cycle going. And I also feel like he, too, is pushing me into sex. Whether it’s intentional or not, and whether it’s for good reasons or not, I’m afraid that if I quit the sex with him (even though he said he’d never make me do anything I didn’t want to do), he’ll leave me or fall out of love with me. He even said that I was heading towards having him fall out of love with me. He said you can’t make someone love you, but you can make someone not love you, and that’s where I was heading. Now I don’t even know if I can believe he loves me when he tells me so. I know he did love me. But does he really and truly still love me? Or is he just saying so?

I just wish I could see inside him like we can look into our own selves and see what was really there.

TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1997 That stupid, stupid, lying little fuck!!! Aaaarrrrrgggggghhh! How dare he pull this shit on me yet again, then lie to my face as if I were some naïve sucker?!?! Yes, it’s Tom and God and their usual shit.

Tom slept for 11 hours. Something he hasn’t done in eons. I told him that since the house was cool and since he was so well-rested, he shouldn’t have any excuses for having sex. Of course, deep down I knew better and could sense the fear and apprehension he was under about that, cuz he thinks I’m fertile and he knew I was in the conception range.

Then I prayed to God and some God he is, alright! Yeah, look where that’s gotten me. And look just how helpful God is to those who help themselves. God did just what I knew he’d do and so did Tom.

I’m so sick of Tom and God’s shit and how they have to play with my head and control my life! I may be sterile, but God sure wants to act like I’m not. I mean, I’m sterile, yet he plays things out in a way that suggests I’m not sterile and therefore, he has to make sure we miss it. Why is God so into making us miss something we could never hit in the first place? I’m sterile, God. OK? You fucking sterilized me, you bastard, I know you’ll never help me help myself, I know you’ll never allow me a child, so why can’t you leave us to at least a peaceful, normal and full-time sex life without the bullshit?! And why can’t you get Tom to see I’m sterile, so he’ll stop his bullshit, or does Tom really just get such a kick out of teasing me, lying to me and just totally jerking me around sexually? Is it really so much fun for him? And does God see me having sex with anyone, male or female, such a sin that this is why he’s hexed my sex life with all the people I’ve had sex with? Is this God’s punishment for my being human and having normal and natural desires, goals and dreams?

When Tom was ready to screw I said, “I’m gonna have my other kind of fun tonight” which I’ll explain later.

Then, sure enough, we went to screw and he was quite soft and he kept resisting and pulling away and it was so damn obvious that he didn’t want to have sex at all. Not at all! He was so fucking terrified, I could smell it. And then when I asked him if he was OK and commented on how he didn’t seem in the mood, what did the chicken shit liar do? Same thing he always does - he turned it on me and said that I always say that when I’m not in the mood. That’s bull and if I wasn’t in the mood, I’d say so.

Then he said he thought we should get up, right as I was about to suggest that, but man oh man was I so fucking pissed and hurt!!! I’m sooooooooo fucking tired of this shit and of his and God’s fucking games.

I called him a fucking asshole, which I admit was wrong and not helpful, then I told him, “Hey, you knew I was close to being mid-cycle, you got cold feet and got scared off, so admit it. Don’t turn it all on me, cuz if I was the one who wasn’t in the mood or who was scared, I’d have said so.”

When the fuck is this guy ever gonna come out and admit that he just doesn’t want to be a father?! I told him yet again, I know he doesn’t want to be a father, I know he doesn’t think I’d be a good mother (and I’m inclined to agree), but instead of telling me what I want to hear - tell me the truth! I told him I wouldn’t force him into being a father, I wouldn’t leave him or beat him up or love him any less if he’d just admit to this.

Anyway, I know I’m sterile and that we on our own couldn’t produce a child and that no doctor could produce one for us, but he obviously does think I could conceive, or else he wouldn’t be so fearful of screwing around these times like he often is. It isn’t always the case, but it usually is. I know that together, he and God have other reasons for this shit with his games, lies and not cumming much, but I’m just talking about the part about his not wanting a child.

I told him I knew that it wasn’t like he’d be a bad dad or would leave us if we had had a kid, but that since I knew that he believed I was fertile, I’d do nothing from now on to put him in a position where he’s uncomfortable or fearful in any way. I told him - we will not see a doctor and we will not screw when I’m around that time. I don’t think I could if he said he wanted to, anyway. Cuz then all I’d do would be to feel bad for him, knowing he was doing something he really didn’t want to do.

Then the asshole pins it on me again with a response saying that as soon as I said that I was gonna have a different kind of fun, he should have foreseen problems and backed off, so that was his only true fault. Oh, bullshit! I’ve said that before (that means I was just gonna relax and let him do the work without taking care of myself in the midst of it) and we’ve had no problems. Yet he says that 99% of the time my saying that causes problems cuz when I say that that means I’m gonna resist and do something screwy like change angels, etc. That’s fucking bullshit! All that is is his pinning the blame on me to cover for his true feelings and intentions. He used that as an excuse to get out of screwing so he didn’t have to face me and say, “I don’t want to screw now, cuz I’m afraid it may make a baby that I don’t particularly want,” or “I just don’t feel like screwing tonight.”

I have done everything I can do to allow myself to get pregnant and to help myself get pregnant, even though I can’t, and if I were OK, the reason why we’ll never have a child is cuz of him and God. Not me.

So I’ve decided to not screw at mid-cycle and to never go to a doctor for sure and that’ll make God real damn proud of me and Tom breathe a whole hell of a lot easier. And then it’ll always be just Tom and I cuz I don’t want a kid if he doesn’t. And when I say that, I mean I won’t do anything more to try to fight fate, which is virtually impossible to do, anyway, and those that do fight fate and win, which is very seldom, have to pay dearly for it. So, this baby thing will just be the dream it’s always been and the dream it will always be, just like it was meant to be. There are dreams, and then there’s reality.

If Tom’s not gonna come out and admit that he doesn’t want a child and do more things than he already has to make sure he doesn’t have a child, then I will. All 3 of us will. Tom, God and I together. So, if he pulls this shit when it’s safe, he’s gonna have to pull it for some other reason, even if it’s just to tease me further and play the games he just loves to play.

And fuck talking to a God who doesn’t give a shit and who will never help us anyway!

I’m sick of Tom telling me he wants this kid he doesn’t want, but I know the truth, so I’ll act on this truth and protect us from this baby that could never happen anyway. I’m also sick of Tom not being able to say no to favors I ask of him. Instead, he says yes to please me, then bitches that I give him too many projects and tells me I nag him about stuff he’s said he’d do but doesn’t do. I asked him to fix a videotape a long time ago. He said he would fix it and that it’d only take a few minutes to do it. I’ve reminded him about it periodically, but he hasn’t fixed it. Well, he obviously never wanted to and I wish to hell that he’d not only admit that he doesn’t want a child, but that he’d say no to stuff he doesn’t want to fix or do around here.

Tom also had the nerve to say that I use any excuse I can to lay into him and that I’m the one who’s scared and making sure we don’t have sex at certain times. Of course, that’s bullshit, too, cuz if I really just wanted to let him have it, I wouldn’t need no excuses. Also, I am not afraid. He is the one afraid of a child. Yes, I have the usual fears and doubts that anyone would who’s never gotten pregnant or had a child before, but I haven’t been letting that stop us. He and God have, though.

Later…

I am pretty depressed right now. I was quite bitter and not in the mood to see Tom when I got up, but thankfully, he crashed shortly after. I won’t be waking him up till 10:30, so he’ll only be here an hour and I’ll be in the other room reading or listening to music. I am just so hurt and pissed off and both Tom and God for controlling my life and my mind and my body like they were some kind of toy. I am not a toy!

MONDAY, JULY 7, 1997 I can only imagine what my next letter from Bob will entail. On the phone, he had said that if he wrote something that pissed me off, he didn’t mean it, he doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time.

Oh, so what is this? An excuse to write whatever he wants?

Anyway, we may screw later on and of course Tom’s subconscious (and probably a bit of his conscious side), will prevent him from cumming and God will be right there to help him make sure of that. Well, like I said, there is a lot of good to his not cumming at the right time. No having such a rough PMS and period when reality’s slapped further into my face. If he were to cum every time it was the right time, I’d just be worse off emotionally every time that period came that a fertile woman isn’t supposed to get.

There are another one of God’s “ways” that I just don’t get (do any of us get his ways?). You’d think that his setting up Linda to not be able to conceive was a sign saying a child wasn’t meant to be for her, yet it was. It was through in-vitro. What doesn’t make sense is why God would want to make a woman who wants a child and who’d be a suitable mother have to work for and pay for a child. Why not sterilize those who don’t want them and who shouldn’t have them even if they did? So, that makes me wonder if God had a beef with her of some kind and he knew that yes, she could and would have a child, but cuz of his grudge against her, he was gonna make her wait several years, then work her ass off and pay for it. However, I know this isn’t the case with me. I know that a doctor can’t help me and that it’s not meant to be, period. I can’t “see” us ever going to a doctor cuz I don’t see how I could ever muster up the guts to go and I can’t see my husband ever admitting that there’s something wrong with me. He wouldn’t admit that in a million years, even if he came like hell all the time, cuz he just doesn’t want to deal with that, even though he says differently. Linda’s husband had to have wanted kids more than Tom does. So, since it’s very obvious I’m in a no-win situation and am hopelessly sterile, why does God have to add the sexual problems I’ve had with different people in different ways? Why not at least leave all alone and well and good in bed? Why does he and Tom both, feel such a need for him to cum only every other week? I know I can’t get pregnant, God knows that so why can’t Tom have a normal sex life? And when I say that - I mean, why can’t he cum the usual amount that your typical guy cums? God couldn’t have made sure (along with Tom’s other reasons for being the way he is) that Tom would only cum occasionally to keep us from missing it, cuz there’s nothing to miss. I don’t even know why I bothered to fear a miscarriage when I know for sure that no matter what time of month he came I’d still get my period. There’s nothing Tom, a doctor, or I can do to stop that. It’s inevitable fate that I get every single period due to me till they stop for good.

The piece of trash came in again last night but then left a short time later. Once again, he’s been a good boy. Not one note of music was heard.

Another good thing about never being able to get pregnant is that if I did get pregnant, my old wishes would just change to new ones. In other words, I’d simply go from wishing I could conceive to wishing I could have it naturally and have it be OK, too. Now, there’s no way God would ever give me one of those wishes, let alone all of them. So, I guess that in a sense, it’s better to have the same wish that can never come true, rather than wish for one thing after another that I could never have. What would be the point of changing wishes? I mean, if you’ve got 10 wishes that can’t come true, what’s the point in rotating between all these wishes? Might as well just keep the same one.

Tom’s still asleep and he had mentioned screwing at around 8:30 - 9:00 when the house cools down a bit, but if he’s still asleep by then, I’ll just let him sleep. After all, I’m not overly horny now and he’s not gonna be able to get off himself, so it may be best to let the guy sleep, rather than wake him up so we can screw and not get any real relief from it. Don’t get me wrong. Screwing is still fun, anyway, and I only cum about 95% of the time, but he probably needs sleep more than sex, if he hasn’t woken up on his own by then.

No more mild Arizona summer. It’s extremely hot like it should be. The pool water is like bathwater.

SUNDAY, JULY 6, 1997 Right after my last entry, it came in next door. The music was at a fine volume and there was very little bass too, so no big deal at all. Then, to my surprise, it just left. Without a note of music. That’s weird, though, cuz he usually stays all night when he comes in that late. Well, he certainly didn’t come over to see the kid, unless they got that kid on some weird schedule, so I’m sure he just came over for a good screw. His scheduling makes sense, though. It’s usually every 3 weeks that he’s here. Sometimes 2, but mostly 3, so that’s it for a while.

Tom finally got around to checking my tape deck out like I’ve been wanting him to for a while now. He just had to make me wait on that like he loves to do, though. I haven’t taped anything yet, but he says the adjustments he made, have made it a little better. So, hopefully the music recorded will be less muffled.

I’ve also given up waiting on him to make that special box with the light he was gonna use to scan copies of my drawings that can actually be seen. Another thing he’s all talk about and isn’t gonna do and if he does do this, how many more months, or even years will it take for him to do it? He’s just not that serious or eager about it and so, I’ve decided for once and for all that I’m gonna get my drawings photocopied. We’ll be tight for about a month, but then there’ll be money for that and other things.

SATURDAY, JULY 5, 1997 I just thought I’d do some updating before I read some more of the two library books I’m gonna be reading.

On the 3rd I got my cavity filled and it was no problem. The drill sure was quite an obnoxious vibration, but it didn’t last long at all.

I also spoke to Bob that day, since I usually tell him to call me about twice a year. Nothing new on his end, but the chat was pleasant enough.

A few days ago, I rearranged some stuff around here and got rid of old towels that were shredding up. I also frequently rearrange Teddy Bear’s tubes. Especially since he sleeps in them and pisses in them so much.

Speaking of Teddy Bear, he’s really warmed up to me and a few times I’ve had him running around on the living room couch.

Our toaster broke, so Tom picked us up a new one that’s quite nice.

He saw something promising on TV last night. It’s this thing where you use two twin mattresses and you put them side by side to make a double, queen or king-size bed and each one has an air compartment on the top of it so that each person can make them as firm or as soft as they want. And also, if one person moves, the other shouldn’t feel it. Hopefully, this will be cheaper than that other mattress we saw and will hit the stores soon enough and not be a scam. In November, he’ll be getting a $500 bonus from his job and so maybe we can use this to get some kind of bed that’ll suit us both. I’m really sick of having the two beds side by side and not being able to just walk right up to the side of my bed. Also, waterbeds really can be a pain in the ass.

Unfortunately, Tom’s mom found out she has skin cancer on her face, but luckily, it’s a highly treatable thing, so in a few days she’ll be seeing a doctor and they’ll discuss what would be the best way for her to deal with it.

Last night I saw some really pretty fireworks out back. They weren’t too far off in the distance and unfortunately, I missed the grand finale.

Today was a pleasant day. I got up around noon, then he came in a few hours later. We swam together and we screwed and he got off, too. That was nice, cuz I didn’t know what would be the scoop with that, but it appears he’s back to the cumming about every two weeks. That’s better than nothing.

Later…

I feel like I’ve forgotten to mention other stuff, but anyway, the asshole hasn’t been next door this weekend. Not so far, anyway, and if he isn’t there at the start of the weekend, say by a Thursday or Friday night, then he’s probably not gonna be around at all.

Well, if I were OK, I definitely stand no chance of getting pregnant this month. That’s cuz he just came a few days too soon and cuz he can’t cum just a few days apart from each other. He can’t really cum any sooner than about 12 days apart. Or won’t cum more than 12 days apart. Whichever. So, my point is that cuz he won’t cum on the 7th - 9th, I haven’t got a chance in hell. If only God could decide it was that meant to be. Cuz if God really wanted to, he could line things up and make sure that during one of the rare occurrences where he came, there was an egg waiting for it. I’ve prayed to God for help, due to the fact that we’ve got a 1 in about a hundred thousand chances of hitting it and cuz he’s supposed to help those that help themselves, but he still doesn’t seem to care or the least bit interested in helping us. He doesn’t hear a word I say. Well, he hears me, but he doesn’t listen to me. Like I said, if he hasn’t by now, he never will. God wouldn’t have had us childless for this long without a reason and obviously this is just how it’s meant to be, just like I always told Tom.

Did I mention that all the cactuses we planted died? Well, they did, so we’ll have to try again someday.

I finished proofreading the Norwich file, so now it’s onto the Vista. I love how I said that Andy took me to see Squaw Pee Mountain when it’s really Squaw Peak Mountain.

I wonder what’s up with Marla. I haven’t heard from her since AOL crashed on her when she was trying to mail me that enormous email.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 2, 1997 I just talked to both my dad and Larry. They both say they’re getting rain.

Dad said they’ve been going back and forth between the store and playing bingo. A new Arizona bingo lottery game just started, but we lost.

When I called Larry at work, I told the receptionist that I was his sister. Then a thought hit me - he’d want to know which one since he doesn’t want anything to do with Tammy. Sure enough, the lady came back on the line and asked which one. He still sounds kind of down, but not as down as he’s sounded in the past. He’s just working, as usual, and that’s it.

When I called Tom’s mom’s house yesterday, Evie answered and said that was really sweet of my parents to bring gifts for their kids and I gave her their address in case she wants to send a thank you note, as she mentioned.

No, I don’t think the fact that I haven’t heard that dog barking out front had anything to do with God, or else God would have taken care of those two dogs, too. I now believe it was a stray. A big, fierce-sounding dog wouldn’t suddenly shut up and mellow out and I thought it had sounded really, really close when I went outside to see if I could tell where it was coming from. That’s scary to think of now, cuz I realize that that huge thing really was no doubt on the street right by the house and it could’ve attacked me. I remember how loud and close it sounded and how it scared the shit out of me. Something told me I wasn’t safe there and to run back into the house. Well, I’m still glad I haven’t had to listen to it, anyway, so now the living room can remain peaceful. As I said, the summer isn’t bad for barking dogs around here. Since dogs are made to live in their owner’s yards only, all year round here, they cannot use their energy to bark when it’s really hot, or else they’ll get overheated. I’ve heard the old man’s dog a bit more at night, but that dog has never barked as much as the two dogs do in the winter.

Tomorrow I get that cavity filled and Tom said that tomorrow would be a little inconvenient for him, but we’ll work it out. Oh well. I tried.

I had a funny chat with Kim the other day. She was in two car accidents, not one. The first one, she got cement dumped on her in Springfield, cuz cement fell through an area that they were doing construction on. She was one of 10 cars to get dumped on and I guess she’ll get a settlement out of that. The other accident was her fault, but it was so funny, that I couldn’t help laughing. Even Tom was laughing about it, but I do feel bad for the poor girl. She must feel so embarrassed and guilty and she said she felt bad and guilty, too. Well, she rammed into her boyfriend! They were leaving from somewhere in their own cars when she got to daydreaming and plowing into him and she totaled her car. Now her insurance has to go up cuz of this. I told her that at least she hit someone who loves her and she was like, “No, no, no! I wish I hit a stranger.” Then, “No, I wish a stranger had hit me, cuz I hate being at fault.”

I was laughing at the part where she kept telling Walter when this happened, that she just couldn’t get close enough. Imagine ramming the one you love, though? Oh, I’d feel so guilty and embarrassed! Like a complete fool! It’s still so damn funny, though, even if I do feel terrible for her.

I also got a kick out of how the Northampton paper (where she rammed Walter), claimed she was treated for numerous injuries. All she really did, though, was bang a knee a bit, but she’s fine.

There are a couple of other things I wonder about Tom, although I may have mentioned this before. First of all, we screwed yesterday, he didn’t cum, then said he likes sex whether or not he cums. Yeah, I believe that and that’s rather unfortunate when you’re trying to make this baby you can never have.

Anyway, one of the things I wonder about is how blinded he’s become and if he can ever be “unblinded.” He still insists that he’s the one who knows the truth and that I don’t (about my getting pregnant and how that’ll happen without a doubt, as far as he’s concerned). I know that a person can be so set in their beliefs that they can’t see anything different if something’s changed. It’s like with Tammy, for example. She’s so set in her belief that I can’t sing, then when I really couldn’t sing well, then became a better singer, she could never see that cuz she just never wanted to. If Tom would cum every day for years, would he then still be set in his belief that I was OK? Or would he be able to see reality? I had asked him if he thought I’d ever have the guts to be able to walk into a fertility clinic and set aside my this-isn’t-fair attitude and my beliefs that God would just take away anything a doctor put in there. He said he couldn’t answer that, cuz in his mind, there’s no doubt about the fact that I’m fine and will conceive.

I also wonder if deep down he’s afraid to find out I’m right and is afraid to have to deal with that, so maybe that’s why he’s not cumming regularly? Is he stalling for time on finding out who’s really right out of fear?

TUESDAY, JULY 1, 1997 Is God getting to like me somewhat? Again he answered another little prayer of mine and again, I'm not sure if he had anything to do with it and nothing could increase my faith in him and make me believe he loved me like it would if he gave us a child, but anyway, I got the perfect time for my cavity appointment. I have a cavity on the back of the last molar on my right top side, right along the gum line that needs to be filled. While at the dentist, we made the appointment for the 8th at 1:30, but by then my schedule will be too far forward and it'd be very very hard to make this appointment. So, I prayed for an earlier one, knowing that that'd be perfect, but also knowing that that would be nearly impossible, but get this - I asked for the afternoon of the 3rd and someone was just on the other line when I called and they canceled for that day, so now I'm going in on the 3rd at 4:45. Perfect. I just hope it's perfect for Tom, too, but I don't see why it wouldn't be.

[bloodthieved]

"You shall be what I wish you to be, and what I wish you to be is worthy. There will be moments spread through out eternity my dear boy where you lament your station, where you mourn and lose yourself to self hatred. As insecurity grips you, as you boast openly of yourself while secretly fostering deep scars and doubt know such things are unfounded. You will be beautiful, cunning, deadly, and strong for it is I who will you. If I must spend century after century bloodying you I shall. I will skin you, I will beat you, I will raise you up only to tear you down again and again. I will provide you will family, I shall make you feel loved and accepted, I shall offer you pretty little creatures to break upon your will, and I shall bestow every luxury possible upon you. Through destruction and creation I shall see to it you are sharpened into something truly beautiful. Worry not, your fate shall never rest in your hands."

Fear. Fear like bile crawled up his throat, threatened to squash whatever might’ve amounted to words from tumbling forth. This spiel—something his Master was prone towards, in one of his many whimsies—caught him off guard, and a nail of fright thrust freely into his heart.

He swore he almost felt it beat.

What spurred this? Had Astarion let one too many thoughts stray? Surely not. He was good, complicit, perfect. At least, that was what he told himself. Lies rolled off the tongue as sweet and easy as flowered water; oh, but how rarely did they provide the fruit which let him feel full and happy.  He felt himself slouch, a subconscious gesture to make himself weaker, smaller. He and his Master, they were of similar height. This was the best option.

Astarion swallowed thickly.

“… Yes, Master. I trust my fate in your hands, now and forever more.”

There was a moment’s hesitation—and he hoped it wouldn’t plummet into days-long suffering.