#I’m getting an abortion tomorrow so :) trying to treat my body really well.

[fernspirals]

Trying to take care of myself this week.

[anamericangirl]

Just to clarify I use the term abortion as it means medically, all miscarriages are abortions. I myself was diagnosed with a ‘missed abortion’ because I spontaneously miscarried without any symptoms. I was scheduled for evacuation treatment but the OR was busy and all but one clinic nearby was closed due to anti-assisted abortion policies (despite legality). I ended up eventually passing the 9 week old embryo I was mourning into my toilet at 12 weeks and ended up in the ER.

The issue I am asking about is, the vast majority of abortions have no determined cause and possibly more than half of all pregnancies end in abortion. I just don’t see how, if someone secretly got an assisted abortion, it could be proved beyond reasonable doubt, when it happens spontaneously so often.

When the day comes that the cause of most abortions can be reliably determined, does that simply increase the parent’s and doctor’s culpability? If it’s determined an embryo would have lived if medicine was taken would that be neglect? How about addiction? Or if someone has an eating disorder and the fetus starved? All of those would qualify for a crime with born children, would they as well when the unborn count as children? Would they be more strict since eating a soft cheese can cause problems? If someone must carry a pregnancy, why would they be allowed to do as they wish during it? All I see from these laws is more fear, suffering, and uncertainty.

I am pro-abortion and pro-choice (formerly anti-abortion pro-choice). I personally think it is irresponsible to enact these laws without first addressing lack of maternal healthcare, I think that persons not born don’t qualify for government protection per the constitution, and I think that people must consent to use of their body, even to preserve another human life, as we do with organ donation. I welcome response to that, but I’m not seeking to change your mind, the question is really just about what just laws could look like after intentional abortion is banned. I just see a lot of ‘how pregnancy should be treated’ and not a lot about how the government should justly enforce it.

First, I want to say that I am so sorry for your loss. I imagine that is one of the hardest things in life to have to go through and I'm so sorry you had to experience it and that you lost your baby.

I know that miscarriages are sometimes medically referred to as spontaneous abortions, but they are not actually abortions according to the way we define abortion or according to the language of legislation like Roe v Wade. So even though a miscarriage is sometimes referred to as a spontaneous abortion within the medical community, miscarriage and abortions are not even in the same group. The majority of miscarriages have no determined cause, but that is not the case with the majority of abortions.

Overturning Roe v. Wade is, of course, only the first step that needs to be taken regarding this issue as it will not ban abortion, merely give the decision back to the states. Of course if we ever find ourselves in a world where abortion is able to be prosecuted than all of these questions will have to be answered and they are big questions and though I have some thoughts on the matter I certainly don't have all the answers to exactly how enforcement would work.

Let me try to put this is way: if we pretend the Roe v Wade got overturned tomorrow and all 50 states immediately banned abortion I would not want women who got abortions anyway to be prosecuted. Our culture has been tricked for a long time into believing that the unborn are not people, not a life, and that they are not harming anyone when they get abortions and it's hard for me to justify prosecuting someone who doesn't know what they are doing. The people who would be prosecuted would preferably be those performing the abortions. Kind of the same idea with how we handle illegal drugs. We go after the distributors instead of the users.

Now, way in the future, if we were in a time where everyone understood the reality of abortion and what it does to the unborn I think there would sometimes be cases where the woman could be found complicit. There are already some places that can find a mother guilty of causing the death of unborn child if she ingests things known to be harmful to the baby like drugs or alcohol. So maybe in some of those instances but certainly not all of them. Like for instance, having an eating disorder. If a person has an eating disorder the results of that can be so severe that they can't reverse the condition without the help of medical professionals and if the baby dies in that case it would be sad but not criminal.

These are all hypothetical of course and I don't have the answers to all of them, but if we ever get to a point where we are prosecuting people for abortion then we will have to figure this all out. And we will have to do it in a fair, balanced way. Innocent until proven guilty will still apply.

Since I believe the unborn are human beings with the right to life from the moment of conception, I don't think we need to address other healthcare issues before we stop killing them. I think the most important thing is we stop killing them and then we work on the other issues. There is nothing in the Constitution that says you have to be born to have human rights. The only qualifying factor for human rights is you have to be an existing human being and adding any extra qualifiers to that leads into dangerous territory.

If you consent to sex you consent to pregnancy and to let the baby use your body. It's not comparable to organ donation because refusing to donate an organ does not demand you intentionally kill the person needing the organ. The only way to not allow the baby to use your body is to kill it and bodily autonomy, nor any other right, save for the right of self defense, gives you the power to end the life of another human being.

Sorry if this doesn't really answer your question. My thoughts were a little all over the place as I was writing this. If I didn't answer something satisfactorily please let me know and I will try and clarify.

[kuuderekweenfics]

Canción de Cuna

Two in one week? I’m on a roll! (Actually, I was just late to post my last fic, so I thought I’d hit ya with a double whammy.)

Well, if you wanted an emotional roller coaster, you’re in for a real treat.

Because the turmoil is strong in this one. This is a follow up to my previous Dabi fic, although you don’t necessarily have to read that one to enjoy this piece of work. 

Now that I’m three fics in, I want to start opening up the polls to you lovely readers. I don’t necessarily have to stay on the MHA/BNHA train. I’m free to venture into other territories.

I’ve been thinking about maybe a Levi from AoT/SnK fic. But we’ll see. :)

Anywaayyyssssss, back to the point of the matter:

Dabi x Female Reader

Explicit Warning: non-con, and angst sex, as well as psychological abuse and trauma. A lot of adult themes here, people. You’ve been warned. (18+)

Manga Spoilers! Not anything that hasn’t already been put out there, but if you are only watching the show, beware!

El que no sabe de amores, llorona,

no sabe lo que es martirio.

(He who does not know love, weeping woman,

does not know martyrdom.)

Tápame con tu reboso, llorona,

por que me muero de frío.

(Cover me with your shawl, weeping woman,

Because I’ll die of cold.)

He has red hair.

Your child has red hair and you’re not entirely sure you’re seeing this right because, boy, is it red. 

Like brick red. 

Like fire-truck red. 

You blink, rub your eyes, then blink again.

Not a trick of the light. It’s still very red.

Well, at least he’s no longer bald.

You lay him down in his crib, a melodic, yet cracked, lullaby stringing its way from your lips as sleep attempts to overtake you. You run a finger against his puffy cheek, and watch him breath silently. 

Up, down. Up down. 

Sometimes, you stare at his chest for several minutes at a time to make sure he’s still breathing. To make sure he’s still there. He’s a miracle; a glowing ember in the dark void from which he was borne. 

For weeks after your discovered pregnancy, you contemplated aborting. He was a product made not from love but fear. No one would blame you. But the day you heard the whirred sound of a quick and steady heartbeat, your love became boundless. And thus, you gave birth to your baby boy. 

His red hair must come from his paternal genes.

You learned a lot about his father recently. Although, you didn’t have much of a choice in the matter since he hijacked the entire broadcasting network to air out his family’s dirty laundry. If he hadn’t broken you over a year ago, you’d probably feel bad about what he went through. It sure explains a lot of those inner demons he has. 

A small part of you almost wishes that his child inherits some of that apparent intelligence he has before deciding against it altogether. You want him to be nothing like that monster. He will be a good boy. The thought of the great man he will surely become etches a smile on your face. 

You scan any signs of distress before heading back to bed. If you can manage to get in an hour of undisturbed sleep, you think you’ll be able to keep the patisserie running for a whole day tomorrow. While money isn’t necessarily tight, being a single, new mother in a bustling metropolis can be expensive. Not long after your eyes close are you alerted by a high pitched coo. He’s not crying. But he’s awake. And being awake equates to needing attention. 

You don’t register the shadow standing in the corner of his room as you make your way in, your eyes closed and only your deeply ingrained memory of the layout of the nursery to guide you to his crib. It is when your fingers meet an empty bed, growing cold from the lack of a body, do your eyes finally fly open. 

Another coo raises the hair on the back of your neck. This one is deeper, much calmer. You crank your head. Nausea creeps up, pinching every nerve in your stomach with a ferocity that leaves you quaking.

You shouldn’t be surprised to find Dabi there. Part of you had always known that he may come back. Out of sheer curiosity or some bitter resentment, perhaps. But you desperately locked the thought into the depths of your mind, hoping that he might possibly be arrested, or eradicated before then. 

He holds your child, his child, gently, a whisper of a smile almost odd against his otherwise rough demeanor. He is slightly illuminated by the blue hues coming from a small night light. Cerulean eyes flicker at you before settling back down at the small human who sleeps soundly in his arms. 

Your breathing is forced and shallow. Have you blinked? The stinging pulse at the corner of your eyes is a good indicator that maybe you should. But you don’t dare to. Not when he’s around.

“I’m surprised you kept him,” he starts, his low voice rumbling through your core. “It didn’t take long for my hounds to find you. I thought you’d at least put in a bit more effort to hide.”

The silence rings in your ears. You’re not sure if he wants a response or if this is just another villainous monologue to add to his collection. But as the seconds crawl, slow but steady, your confidence grows. You clear your throat. Did your tongue always feel this dry and heavy? You grip the crib with white knuckles. An anchor for the fury you’re about to unleash.

“You changed your hair.” 

It comes out small and tired. Of all the things you could have said, all the icy venom you could have spat at him, you decided to comment on his white hair. His. Hair. You mentally plead for a do-over, as if the earth would spin backward to take the last minute and give you another opportunity to rain hellfire. 

He smirks at you, reading your inner turmoil, but decides to drop the matter. “What have you named the twerp?”

You tell him. He nods a bit, and you wonder if it’s a mark of approval as he walks toward the crib. He leans forward to gingerly place the baby back in and you feel the tension in your body cave, your rigid muscles releasing almost sorely.

Another pregnant silence.

“Sometimes, his eyes scare me,” you admit finally, chipping away at the stifling quiet. “Not because I believe he’s capable of ever doing what you did; what you do...but because they look just like yours. And then I see you.”

He doesn’t turn to you. Doesn’t react. He keeps his attention on his child, and, for a moment, you’re not sure if he’s heard you at all. 

“Do you regret it?”

Do you regret being there that day? Do you regret not calling for backup? Do you regret keeping your child? His question can apply to so many things, but the answer to all of them remains the same. 

You look down at the sleeping boy and finally answer, “Never.”

You hadn’t noticed he closed the distance until his hand was pressed against your lower back and your lips met. 

Oh no. No, no, no. Not again. Your heart thunders in your throat as you push him away. But his other hand wrenches your arm down and he pulls you in, deepening the kiss.

A sob escapes your trembling lips. You use your free hand to grab hold of his jaw, the skin thick and scarred, and shove him from you. You reach for the baby, your alarm blaring for you to get out, to create any distance you can from the danger before you, but his arms wrap around your waist before you can attempt your escape. 

“Don’t do this,” you plead, hoping the fragment of kindness he had shown toward his son would extend to you. 

He rests his forehead in the crook of you neck and holds you tighter. You can feel him shake behind you. Is he crying? Is he remorseful?

The blood drains from you as you hear it: laughing. Softly at first, a quiet, tired chuckle cutting into the dark, turning into loud cackle which startles your son into a tearful wail. 

You reach out in a feeble endeavor to comfort him. Your hand is pushed back down by your captor. 

“He’ll be fine. I think we should focus our efforts on giving the little tyke a playmate, what do you think?” He growls into your ear. “Maybe we can try for a girl this time. She’d be pretty, like her mom.”

You swallow the hot bile back down. It’s so unfair; him speaking to you as if he’s ever the doting father, as if he was around during the most crucial moments of your pregnancy, or in the months thereafter. He threw away his opportunity of being a family man long before he met you. Not that you wanted him there at all. Another child wouldn’t change him, wouldn’t change the fact that you didn’t, had never wanted, a family with him.

You don’t know what made him decide on you. What made him believe you were the perfect candidate to bear his children? You failed at having a useful quirk for power-breeding.  You were a shell among the rest of them. How long had he wandered along the shore, surpassing all others before reaching down into the sand and picking you? 

He breathes you in, the mere scent of you encouraging his cock to harden and rub into your ass. How did you get to this point? What could you have said differently? It goes without saying that you have no means to fight. He trails wet, open-mouthed kisses along your neck and bites down on your shoulder. You hate that he elicits a shiver in response. 

You lean forward on your own, letting him rut against you as you take a pacifier and place it into your son’s mouth. 

You hum a lullaby as your shorts and panties are pulled down and fall in a heap on the floor. 

You stroke his cheek as Dabi stroke his length against you, the precum coating your folds and the tip just barely grazing your clit.

You choke down the sob as he claims you, for the second time, just as the boy slowly submerges into another warm embrace of sleep.

He grips your shoulder and drills into you, and despite not having any form of stimulation, your arousal awakens hot and electric with each pulse. You close your eyes in a vain attempt to shield your son from seeing you this way: broken and needy. 

But he’s fallen back asleep. No, what you’re really shielding yourself from is the shame enveloping you as your legs squeeze together and your back arches. Because you want Dabi to hit that spot; you want him to pound into that button that shoots a wave of pleasure up your spine and into your skull. And as his thick cock finally strikes home one, two, three times, and your pussy becomes a soppy mess, you’ve realized he’s found it. 

You let out a raspy moan. This only invites him to reach over and rub your clit.

How embarrassing. How unbelievably mental you are. You bite down on your bottom lip, hard enough to taste a metallic tanginess. You just hope he decides against his previous notions and pulls out at the last moment. 

But It’s different from before. He holds you close, bending down and grabbing the crib’s railing with one hand and tucking the strands of your hair behind your ear with the other before bringing it back down again to play with your bundle of nerves as he whispers obvious fantasies against your cheek. 

Teaching his son how to control his quirk.

Learning how to braid his daughter’s hair.

The tears fall freely from you now. Because each dream sounds so perfect. So delightful. But that’s all it will ever be. A dream, wrapped nicely with a polka-dot bow. Because Dabi cannot be the man of your dreams. Not when he’s stolen so much from you already. Not when he is devoid of any basic human decency. He licks your tears and fears away and plants a sloppy kiss against your clammy forehead as he pounds almost endearingly into your tight, obedient cunt. 

And maybe that alternate reality is how you let yourself fall deeper into the abyss of want. You mask moans with whimpers to deny the immense pleasure you feel. Each squelch, squelch, penetrating the night’s stillness in sequence with your bodies. Cruelly tethered to one another until death. 

He growls, signaling his close release. His hand latches onto your hip as his thrusts become erratic. His balls, heavy and begging for release, slap up against you. You let out an open-mouthed gasp, closing your eyes as you hone in on that feeling that sends you deep, so very deep, into oblivion. 

Unlike the first time, you both cum together, your groans a harmony in the night.

You don’t remember what came next. Either from lack of sleep, mental exhaustion, or both, you fall into a deep slumber. You could have also fainted. But trying to figure it out now was simply futile.

Only, you’re not sure how you made it into bed, or how you opened the blinds to let the sun shine brightly through the window. And you’re not quite sure how long you’ve slept either. But you snap back to reality and run to the baby’s room, only to see not one, but two sleeping figures swaying back and forth on the rocking chair.

You can almost hear the crack, crack, cracking as you surrender, the fracture in your mind severe and unmendable.

You walk quietly, reaching for Dabi’s shoulder. His eyes flutter open, and immediately close as your lips meet, tender and sweet.

And you allow yourself hope, just for a bit longer, that maybe, just maybe, it may not be so bad after all. 

[doc-pickles]

maybe I don't quite know what to say

Hey so uhhhhhh ✨I just did a bad thing✨ no but really I woke up out of a dead sleep to type up a brief summary of this in my phone notes because I dreamed this up. And I already hurt Lay so I’m sorry about that. But uhhhhh enjoy this little S13 AU. Or don’t.

I didn't know if you'd care if I came back

I have a lot of regrets about that

Pulled the car off the road to the lookout

Could've followed my fears all the way down

TW// Discussion of Abortion

He doesn’t mean to look at it, he’s looking for labs for his own patient when he sees the file. The folder is taunting him as his fingers hover over it, the bolded name being the final straw.

Trying to rationalize his actions, he tells himself that his sentencing this morning is what makes him open her test results. He was curious and worried, why the hell was she getting labs done on herself? It could’ve been a system error, but as soon as he opens the file and sees her birthday printed under her full name he knows it’s not. He scans the papers, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He almost misses it, the spike in her hCG levels so high that there’s no doubt in his mind what they mean.

He makes quick work of gathering his own test results before he barricades himself in the nearest supply closet. Chest constricting tightly he knows he’s in the middle of a panic attack as soon as he struggles to pull in a complete breath. The feeling is foreign, something that hasn’t plagued him since he was a young boy huddling underneath the dining table praying his dad wouldn’t hear him shushing his siblings' cries.

The thought of his dad made his heart clench, fear ripping through him like a hurricane as he entertained the idea that he might end up being just as crappy as his own father. If his head was screwed on right he’d know that he could never treat any child of his the way he had been treated, but he’s not thinking logically as he hyperventilates in a closet thinking about his impending fatherhood.

He was going to be a father. A dad. There was going to be another human that depended on him. He’d created another life with a woman he loved more than he could say and who currently wasn’t speaking to him and he might be going to jail. Before he can process it he’s leaning over an empty bin and puking, the fear and anxiety coursing through his body winning out.

Eventually he goes back to work, though he can hardly remember it. His body is on autopilot as he finishes his shift and drives back to Meredith’s house. When his brain finally decides to let him process everything that’s been spinning through it for the past few hours he finds himself standing in the shower under a cold spray of water with tears streaming down his face.

How had he fucked up this badly? How had he ruined things so utterly and completely between them? He should be at home with her, celebrating this unexpected surprise with their favorite takeout as they laid across the couch talking about their future. Instead there were miles of Seattle between them and even more distance between their hearts as they both struggled with their new realities. He with the prospect of facing jail time for his rash actions, her with the potential that she could end up a single mother because of what he’d done.

At the end of the day he knew it all fell on his shoulders, he knew he was to blame for fucking them up so royally. Despite knowing that he was to blame for the disaster their relationship had become, all Alex wanted was to hold Jo close and not let go.

-

It’s later that same day when he approaches Amelia and Owen’s new home that he sees her again. He doesn’t want to upset her, but the knowledge of their impending parenthood spurs him forward. Her eyes dart up to meet his as she tries to avoid answering his questions. She’s mad, he knows she has every right to be but he can’t help but want to talk about it.

“Jo... I don't want to go in there. I want to be home with you,” her expression is telling, they’re not on the same page. She doesn’t want him home. “And I messed that up, and I know that, and I'm sorry.”

“You can't just say that, Alex,” there’s tears shining in her eyes as she looks at him. “It doesn't fix anything. Sorry doesn't fix all of this.”

He knows he needs to bring it up, that he needs to ask her about it because it’s burning through him like a hot coal, “I’m trying to fix this, to fix us Jo. I want to... I want to because I know.”

“Know what?”

“That you’re pregnant,” he takes a step forward and she takes one back, tears welling up and threatening to spill over onto her cheeks. “Please, I want to fix this so we can move on and work together. We’re having a-“

“That doesn’t matter,” her voice is hoarse, she clears it quickly before she speaks again. “It’s not going to matter by this time tomorrow.”

It takes him a moment to process what she’s saying but when he does his knees almost give out. She’s not keeping their baby. They’re staring at each other, both of them crumbling inside as they try to hold back their true feelings.

“Jo, please-“

“Please don’t make this harder than it has to be. I’m trying so hard not to involve my emotions because I just... I can’t do this right now Alex,” she looks away from him, eyes falling to her feet as the emotion she claimed to be pushing aside spewed out of her like a rupturing volcano. “We can’t do this right now and I need you not to try and talk me out of it.”

“Jo, baby, come on. We can work this out,” his voice is verging on desperate as he reaches for her, their fingers brushing for only a moment before she takes another step back and presses her hand against her mouth. “You know I’ll let you do whatever you need to but we can work this out. Please. I don’t want to-“

“No! We’re barely speaking and I screwed everything up, I can’t bring a baby into that! I can’t be selfish and screw up another life no matter how much I... I can’t do that, I’ve been here before and I’ve made this choice before. I can do it again I just need you to leave,” sobs interject her words as one hand presses against her still flat stomach. Her words aren’t making sense, he doesn’t understand what she’s trying to say but his heart is breaking as he realizes just how terrible things between them have gotten. “I need you to walk away because if you look at me one more time I won’t be able to do it and I need to, I have to do this.”

He realizes then that she doesn’t want to do this, she doesn’t want to go through with an abortion but she think it’s the only way out. His heart breaks as he lets her walk away, letting her leave with the knowledge that tomorrow there wouldn't be any hope of a future between them.

Alex sits with his guilt and tears and the overwhelming pain building in his heart until his pager beeps and sends him back to the hospital. He wants more than anything to drive to the loft and hold Jo and tell her things will be okay but he knows he has to let her go. He has to let her do this because he’s the one that got her there.

-

The night is hell. Bailey has shunned him and basically fired him, his career is slowly dwindling away to nothing, and any hope he held for his relationship is now gone. Alex stays within the walls of the hospital as long as he can, but when the morning light seeps in and his exhaustion comes with it he knows he needs to drag himself into his own bed before he collapses.

When he walks up the steps to the frat house, he’s shocked to see Jo sitting on the porch swing. Her body is almost curled in on itself, Alex’s heart sinking as he realizes she had probably already done it. He drops his bag by the door, her eyes moving up immediately at the sound.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” Jo’s voice is incredibly quiet as she picks at a thread on her sweatshirt. A quiet sob breaks through as she wraps her arms around herself. “I’m sorry for showing up here, I didn’t know where to go.”

Alex sighs, leaning against the door as he stares at her with an aching in his chest, “It’s okay, you’re probably in pain. I get it.”

She shakes her head, a few curls falling out of her loose bun as tears build up again and she begins to cry in earnest now. Alex takes a step forward, wanting to wrap her up in his arms and comfort her, but not knowing if he should.

“I’m not mad at you, you don’t have to cry,” his voice is quiet as he kneels in front of her, one hand settling on her knee. “It’s okay, I get why you did it.”

“I didn’t... I couldn’t do it,” Jo’s cries get louder as she tries to force out the words, Alex’s heart stopping as he listens intently. “I just sat in the parking lot and couldn’t move because I kept thinking... about us and how this, this baby didn’t do anything wrong. And how loved they would be, how many people they would have to hold them and worry about them and make sure they were okay. So I left and I came here and I... I couldn’t do it. I know we’re both so fucked up right now but I want this. And I’m so sorry.”

Her body slips off the swing and into his embrace, Alex’s arms moving to cradle Jo against him as she desperately sobs against his chest. His heart is beating wildly now, relief coursing through him as he realizes that Jo had chosen them and their baby. The little life that they’d made out of love and that was still growing steadily inside of her.

His eyes close as his own tears begin to fall, his lips brushing against her forehead as he realizes how much they have to work through. He wants to though, for her, for them, he’d do anything. He knows that much.

[marveloussupernerd]

This is really embarrassing but: I'm quite a heavy girl and my breast are big, sometimes it happens to me I roll over so fast in bed that I crush my poor tit between my body and the mattress... This happened to me last night and I couldn't help but think in what if this happened during Jumin's route when the MC stays with him. Juju most likely would notice the MC in pain... How do I tell him I hurt my nipple and how he would react? (With wine maybe? I'm sorry Juju!) 😱 Please do write this?

I just want to start by saying my boobs are TINY LMAO so I am trying my hardest but I have not personally had this happen to me (then again neither has Jumin haha)

Night Pains - Jumin

“J-Jumin,” you whispered. Your eyes were heavy. His reading had almost put you to sleep. “Can I ask you something?”

He shut the book gently, placing it down on the nightstand. “Of course. What is it?”

“Would you stay here tonight?” You felt silly asking. But it was an unfamiliar place. It was natural to want to cling to something even semi-familiar.

“Of course I will. I don’t think I’ll be getting much sleep anyways. Go to sleep, alright? I promise I’ll be right here,” he said softly, a warm smile on his face.

Having him stay with you was a huge comfort. You were secretly worried you’d snore or talk in your sleep or do something silly, but Jumin wouldn’t judge you... right? You had done him a favor by coming over. At least, that’s what he thought. In actuality you came over out of your own selfishness; you had wanted to see him and comfort him. And look who was comforting who now.

Even though none of your fears came true, something much worse did. This happened per occasion, but you had never even considered it. You were probably deep in a dream and happened to roll over, pinching your breast between your body and the mattress. It woke you up immediately. You whimpered, rolling back over to try and ease the pain.

You had almost forgot Jumin was in here too. You hadn’t noticed him until you heard movement. He was shifting his chair closer to you. “Are you alright?” He asked.

You felt like you were being way over dramatic. But it really hurt! But how would you even begin to tell Jumin what happened? You put on a brave face and nodded. “Yeah, no problem. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

Not true! You were in so much pain you wanted to die. Maybe that was an exaggeration but ow! You couldn’t even go to rub it because that would look horribly inappropriate. Your thoughts just kept swarming in your mind.

“You’re... not okay,” he observed. He kneeled down next to the bed to get closer to you. “It’s okay. You can tell me what’s wrong.” His hand went to move to your face then halted, then continued its path, pushing some hair out of your face.

“You genuinely do not want to hear it.”

“Of course I do. If something is causing discomfort I want to help you with that.”

No! Don’t think of it in that sort of way... you were begging yourself not to get flustered.

“Uh... if you really must know...” you really didn’t want to say it.

“Go on.” He nodded encouragingly.

“Ugh! I rolled over in bed too fast... and I, uh, I don’t know how to put this nicely so I’m just gonna say it BUT you asked! I pinched my breast between my body and the mattress and it hurts so bad. Like so bad.”

He stared at you dumbfounded. “I... wasn’t aware that was something that could happen.”

“Yes! And it hurts really really bad,” you whined. You wanted to cry. Whether it was from pain or embarrassment, you had no idea.

He still was shocked. “What... do you want me to do? Do you want ice? Or, uh,” his cheeks were bright red, “I’m not really sure...” he coughed awkwardly. “Wine?”

“Wine would be nice.”

He grinned. “Definitely. I was thinking the same thing.”

He left the room, and you were finally able to touch your breast and try and massage out some pain without him thinking you were just horny. It was a huge relief. But he came back, two glasses in hand, and you just as quickly aborted the mission.

He handed you one. You were suddenly hyper-aware of just how pristine his white sheets were. “I’m nervous I’m gonna spill it,” you admitted awkwardly, holding the glass in both your hands.

He waved his hand dismissively. “It wouldn’t matter if you did. I promise.” He took a long drink of his wine and you followed suit, hoping it may dull the pain.

“This is literally so embarrassing I am so so sorry,” you muttered out, staring into your wine glass. You wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

He chuckled. Then swirled his glass of wine. “It’s alright. I’m sorry you were uncomfortable. Maybe having a softer, more pliable mattress would help. I’ll have one in tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“That is, if you’d like to stay tomorrow night as well. I hope you would. I’d love to treat you to a better bottle of wine,” he offered, glancing at you with a small smile on his face.

“You want me to stay another night? I thought after I embarrassed myself like this you wouldn’t be able to get me out quick enough,” you admitted. It felt nice that he wanted you to stay. You savored your wine a little more.

“Don’t be silly. My whole job is dealing with people who put on an act. It’s nice to finally get to interact with someone with real emotions, someone who isn’t afraid of showing them.”

“I don’t know if my boob pain is the best example for this...” you trailed off awkwardly.

“Well, nonetheless. You are a refreshing presence in the household. If I could convince you to stay full-time I would.” His words made your heart flutter. He really felt this way?

“Night pains and all?” You raised an eyebrow.

He carefully took your hand, kissing your knuckles. “Night pains and all.”

[sailorportia]

Femslash February 2020, Day 2

Fandom: Little Witch Academia Pairing: Diana Cavendish/Akko Kagari Prompt: Pining

approx. 1,700 words, rated T

also available on AO3

Summary:   Diana Cavendish is not *pining*, nor is she *yearning* or *mooning.* She simply wants to spend more time with her *friend* Akko. Is that too much to ask?

Tags: Pining, Fluff

It had been a day and a half since Diana had last spoken to Akko. Precisely speaking, it had been thirty-six hours and thirty-four minutes—Diana had been diligent in noting the time at which she had apprehended Akko attempting to steal from the school's pantry yet again. They had exchanged greetings since then, but that hardly counted as a proper conversation. She did the same with teachers. She wanted to talk to Akko.

Diana fiddled with the food on her plate as she gazed across the length of the cafeteria to Akko's table. The energetic girl was shovelling food into her mouth, occasionally stopping to speak animatedly with Lotte and Sucy with her mouth still full. It was shockingly impolite, utterly unbefitting of a student of Luna Nova Academy. So why then did Diana wish so desperately that she were the one Akko was speaking to?

Would it be peculiar if she walked over to Akko's table and struck up a conversation with her? She had no pretext for doing so. It would be rude to interrupt Akko when she was eating and already speaking with her other friends (though it would be nice if she were to do those activities separately). Diana didn't want to make a nuisance of herself, but she didn't want to wait until after classes or, Nine Olde Witches forbid, until tomorrow to talk to Akko...

"She's definitely pining," Hannah said.

"Like an evergreen," Barbara agreed.

Diana's fork scraped against her plate in an ear-grating screech. "Pardon?"

"We were talking about Avery," Hannah said. "She's totally yearning for Amanda."

"It's totally obvious," Barbara said. "The way she's mooning over that delinquent is almost as bad as Hannah."

"Hey! I do no such thing!"

Diana tuned out the sound of her roommate's squabbles to reflect on her own thoughts. She was not pining, nor was she yearning or mooning. That was ridiculous. Admittedly, she was fond of Akko, and her feelings bordered onto that of an infatuation, but whatever she felt for Akko was easily reined in and in no way affected her behaviour. She wasn't some lovesick fool, and she certainly wasn't pouting over not getting to talk to Akko as often as she'd like.

But if that were the case, then why had she been afraid that Hannah and Barbara were talking about her?

Diana pinched the bridge of her nose. She was being foolish. If she wanted Akko's attention, she would simply strike up a conversation with her. There was no point in lingering on those feelings and doing nothing about them.

She quickly finished her lunch and stood up from the table. "If you'll excuse me, girls, I have something I need to attend to." After making a quick detour to put her dirty dishes in their proper place, she made a beeline for the Red Team's table. As she approached, she could hear them talking.

"What do you mean we had homework for Magical Linguistics?" Akko shouted.

"Finnelan said it three times," Sucy said. "Looks like you're going to get detention again."

"Um, you can copy off mine," Lotte offered. "But this is the last time, okay?"

"Lotte! You're a life-saver!" Akko threw her arms around her bespectacled friend.

Diana, only two tables away from them, stopped dead in her tracks. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest, almost jumping out of her throat. Tendrils of envy snaked around her body and squeezed tightly—just the way that Akko's arms never did.

She turned around and went back to her own table, hoping that Akko hadn't seen her aborted walk to her table. Hannah and Barbara seemed surprised that she had returned so soon, but one look at her troubled expression was enough to deter questioning.

In all her life Diana had never met anyone as openly affectionate as Akko. Hannah and Barbara were at times just as brazen, but only with each other. Akko was clingy with everyone. Everyone except Diana, it seemed.

As pitiful as she felt for admitting so, it bothered her. It wasn't as if the two of them weren't friends—Akko had insisted upon it. However, Akko still considered her a rival of sorts. Perhaps that explained the gulf between how she acted toward Diana and how she treated her other friends. Ordinarily Diana disliked those who had no regard for the personal space of others, but now she found herself wanting Akko to invade hers.

Akko could very well hug whomever she liked, but that didn't mean Diana didn't feel left out. She had to mentally berate herself after she caught herself keeping a mental tally of how many times she saw Akko hugging someone who wasn't her. Honestly, she ought to be ashamed of herself. She couldn't ask Akko that she be treated as special among her friends, but she found it agonizing that she was being set apart from the others.

She watched despondently as Akko left the cafeteria with her friends. The object of her affections turned around just inside the door and the two of them made eye contact. Akko flashed one of her adorable, goofy grins and waved. Diana looked away in embarrassment, as if she'd been caught doing something disreputable. By the time she recovered enough to look up again, Akko was gone, and she felt all the worse for it.

That settled it. Diana Cavendish was, indeed, pining.

*

Just because Diana acknowledged her own feelings and that she was, in fact, yearning for attention from Akko didn't mean she had any idea what to do about it. Would it seem needy of her if she asked Akko to spend more time with her? Would she be bothering her by asking for a hug? After all, surely Akko had a reason for never hugging her. Was it possible that the two of them weren't as close as Diana thought? The idea was unbearable.

Unsure of what to do, Diana limited herself to unproductive pining. She wanted to be closer to Akko, but the prospect of even physically closing the distance between them was daunting. She kept Akko at arm's length, even as she felt the pain of not being at her side as others were. On one occasion when her crush invited her to join them, Diana stiffly made an excuse to be elsewhere and cursed herself the second she was out of the room. Her feelings were making a complete fool out of her, and she didn't know what to do about it.

Diana hid in her room as much as possible, justifying her cowardice by catching up on some extra-curricular reading. After three days she had accumulated a stack of library books which she only dared to return under the cover of night, lest she unexpectedly run into Akko. She slipped over to the library just before curfew and placed the books on the desk where they belonged. When she turned around, she saw the library's only visitor sitting at one of the tables.

"Akko?" Her voice ratcheted up an octave. "What are you doing here so late?"

Akko grinned. "I'm doodling goatees and devil horns on the witches in the textbooks."

Diana blinked. "I'm going to get Professor Finnelan."

"I'm kidding!" Akko yelped. "I was reading this doorstop about magical theory." She slapped the heavy tome. "I didn't understand something in today's assignment. Um, I still don't, but I'm trying!"

"How diligent of you." Diana felt a powerful urge to sit down with Akko and explain the topic in intimate detail, perhaps feigning exhaustion so she would have an excuse to rest her head on Akko's shoulder... Diana came to her senses. "Make sure you return to your dorm room before curfew." She turned to leave the library before her feelings got the better of her.

"Diana!" The shout was followed by the scraping of a chair against the floor.

"Akko, please. We're in a library. Could you keep your voice—" A pair of arms circled Diana's waist and she shrieked from sheer surprise.

"Keep your voice down," Akko murmured against her shoulder. "We're in a library."

Diana should've been offended that Akko of all people was telling her to be quiet, but her brain had stopped working. "Wh-why are you hugging me?"

"You looked sad! You've been moping for days!"

"I have not been 'moping', nor have I ever 'moped.'"

"Nuh-uh! You look miserable like someone stole your Magical History notes." Akko hugged her tighter. "Tell me what's wrong!"

How could Diana possibly verbalize her thoughts under these circumstances? Admitting her feelings, the source of her dismay, could have unpredictable consequences—she didn't know how Akko would receive them, given the distance Diana perceived between them. She settled on the simpler, incomplete truth. "Why haven't you hugged me before now?"

"Eh? Well, I noticed that you aren't really touchy-feely with anyone, not even Hannah and Barbara, and sometimes you get all wigged out when I get really close to you, so I figured you didn't like hugs." Akko paused. "Uh, should I let go?"

"Most certainly not."

"So that's how it is," Akko giggled. "You were jelly because I wasn't giving you any hugs!"

"I—that's not—" Diana was thankful that Akko couldn't see her face from this angle. "We need to return to our respective dorm rooms imminently."

"Awww, somebody's shy!" Akko gave her another squeeze. "Wait, I have to put my book away. Don't leave without me!" She let go of Diana to take care of her business.

Diana smoothed out her unruffled uniform and willed her face to cool down. By the time Akko made it over to her at the library's entrance, she had recovered her composure. "Shall we?"

"Let's shall!"

Akko walked unusually close to Diana as they made their way through the hallways. "Y'know, if you needed a hug, you could've just asked for one."

"I didn't need a hug." True enough; she wanted a hug, which was much more difficult for her to admit.

"Don't be silly. Everybody needs a hug sometimes. If you don't get enough skinship, your body gets depressed. That's science!" Akko reached over and grabbed Diana's hand. "If you need some love, don't hesitate to ask!"

Diana turned away so that her hair would shield her from view. She gave Akko's hand a gentle squeeze. "I'll keep that in mind."

[loserholland]

𝐋𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐂𝐮𝐩𝐢𝐝

𝟎𝟎𝟐 ➺ 𝐅𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐟𝐮𝐧 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐫

Pairing ➺ Teacher!Tom Holland x Single mom!Reader

Warning ➺ fluff, talks about reader’s ex

Word Count ➺  1,549

Summary ➺  What happens when your five year old tries to set you up with her kindergarten teacher?

A/N ➺ So, I watched far from home today and i want to write some ANGSTY peter x reader imagine where the reader and peter are dating but slowly peter begins to have feelings for Mj. I want to do it based off of Out of love by Alessia Cara but idk would you guys like that?? Send me an ask or reply if I should do this angsty piece, i really want to lol.

✿ 𝓟𝓮𝓻𝓶𝓪𝓷𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓣𝓪𝓰𝓵𝓲𝓼𝓽 ✿ - @loveyathreethousand​, @taronxfiction, @killerqueen-gunpowdergelatine, @spideyyypeter @lou-la-lou​ @babebenhardy​ @rivervixenbaby​ @acklesholland​ @zabdisamor​ @keepingupwiththehollands@sweet666pea @sspider-parker @jackiehollanderr

❤ 𝐋𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐂𝐮𝐩𝐢𝐝 𝐓𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 ❤ @luvborhap @asianravenpuff @agusdoti @meg-holland @silverreading

☞  Masterlist  ☜

Family fun fairs. They’re always fun to attend to, mini carnival rides to enjoy along with the food and drinks. Everyone had a good time, making fun memories with their kids.

The moment Tom had told his class full of five year olds that he’d like some of their parents to bake some yummy goodies for the fair, Audrey was quick to sign her mother up.

Audrey happily walked into her mother’s office with a smile on her face. This wasn’t any typical smile, this was the ‘Mommy I’m about to ask you something you can’t say no to’ smile.

“Hi mommy! Could you make your special cupcakes for the family fun fair this Saturday?” and there it was, something she couldn’t say no to. It’s been a while since she used that smile. The last time she did, she convinced (Y/N) that she wanted to spend her last day of summer at disneyland even though it was hot and busy. 

“Hm, bubs did you sign me up to sell your favorite cupcakes at the family fair?”  Audrey nodded hopping around her mother’s desk to stand in front of her with a huge toothy grin spread across her face.

“I also signed you up to help Mr.Holland sell the yummy goodies!” Audrey wanted her mom to have a special someone, because everyone should have a special someone. 

She figured since Mr.Holland didn’t have a special someone and her mother didn’t have a special someone, why not have them be each other’s special someone? 

Yeah, this five year old is pretty damn smart.

(Y/N) chuckled lightly picking Audrey up and setting her on her lap, “Did you now? Did you think mommy would say yes?” She always said yes to Audrey, she was her little princess never could she say no to her, except when she’s being very bratty. 

Audrey nodded with a big smile on her face, of course she knew her mother would say yes. 

“Alright bubs we’ll go to the store right after I get this paperwork done.” 

(Y/N) pushed the cart around the store gathering all the necessary ingredients for her cupcakes, Audrey was held her attention to her ipad playing on some learning app that taught colors and shapes. 

As (Y/N) looked down at her notes to check off the ingredients she had in her cart she was unaware of the cart she had just bumped into. Immediately she placed her phone back in her purse and looked up ready to apologize to the stranger. 

“I’m so sor-Tom?” 

“You di-(Y/N)!” 

Audrey turned around and smiled from ear to ear before saying, “Hi Mr.Holland!” she clicked the lock button on the side of her ipad handing it to her mom to place back in her purse. 

“My mommy is going to make cupcakes for the family fun fair!” Tom smiled at the five year old looking between her and her mother, Audrey had her mother’s hair and eyes. Audrey was basically her mini her, (Y/N) had been told many times that Audrey looked like her. 

“That’s great! I’m really glad you could help, also sorry I really wasn’t paying attention early.” Tom apologized which caused (Y/N) to shake her head lightly, “I wasn’t paying attention I should be the one to apologize.” Audrey looked between the two adults giggling to herself as they just stood there staring at one another. 

Truth was, Audrey was doing this for a reason. There are nights when she can hear her mother crying. She never questioned what it was but she also thought it was because she didn’t have a special someone. All she wants is for her mom to be happy. 

“Well, it was nice seeing you! I’ll see you on Saturday, Audrey bubs tell Mr.Holland you’ll see him tomorrow.”

"Bye Mr.Holland! See you tomorrow!” 

Tom smiled waving at the five year old before proceeding out of the aisle, he did have thoughts about maybe asking (Y/N) out to dinner but was unsure if that would be highly inappropriate. Maybe he could get to know her more this Saturday.

-

Kids ran freely though the open school play yard, dragging their parents to buy tickets to then drag them to the rides and smaller game stands that was out on the field. 

(Y/N) rearranged the desserts onto the table as Tom fixed the e-z up. Earlier that morning she had dropped Audrey off to her parent’s house so they could bring her once the fair started at nine. She didn’t want Audrey to be grouchy at seven when setup was happening.

“Mommy!” an all too familiar voice called which pulled (Y/N) attention to look up watching as Audrey ran at full speed towards the tent. (Y/N) walked around the table crouching down as she took Audrey into her arms, “Hey bubs.” she pulled away lightly brushing the wild baby hairs they fell atop her forehead. 

“Go on with papa and gma okay?” Audrey nodded giving her mom a kiss on the cheek before running back. 

Tom had brought two chairs for them to sit on not wanting to stand for the next five hours. The two sat next to each other in silence watching as a few guest come and go, some stopping for a sweet treat. 

“So, your from London?” (Y/N) questioned, the awkward silence between them was not cutting it for her. 

“Southwest London, Kingston upon Thames to be exact.” Tom watched as she fiddled with her fingers picking at fabric of her jeans.

“When did you have Audrey?” This was a common question for (Y/N), usually when she’d see family from either her mom or dad’s side they’d ask ‘When did you have Audrey?’.

“I was nineteen. Two years into college.”

 During those two years of college she barely made it through with the grades she had, and the crowd she was hanging around with. Wanting nothing but to party. I guess you could say she hung out with the rich kids. Yes, (Y/N) was also one of those kids but, her parents taught her to be humble and to work for what she wants.

Tom wanted to ask the question that has been in the back of his mind for a while, from the moment he saw Audrey’s drawing that question has been on his mind for a while. 

“I-if you don’t mind me asking, um what happened to Audrey’s dad?”

(Y/N) tensed lightly remembering the night he had placed twenty-thousand dollars into her hands and said “Get an abortion, and we can go our separate ways.”  When she had disagreed and said she was keeping the baby, he walked right out the door and didn’t turn back.

“Well, he didn’t want me to keep Audrey. He had placed twenty-thousand dollars in my hand and said ‘Get an abortion, and we can go our separate ways.-”

(Y/N) paused for a moment as she scanned the field to see Audrey was playing at one of the mini game booths, she never regrets keeping Audrey. It was one of the best blessings in the world.

“-so I kept Audrey. I’m glad I did, she’s one of the most amazing kid with a huge heart.”

Tom couldn’t help but agree more, he would notice how she would share her crayons with whoever didn’t have crayons. Or when she’d comfort one of her classmates who accidentally skinned their knee during recess. 

Just then Audrey came running back to the booth with a huge grin, “Mommy! There’s a dunk tank!” (Y/N) placed Audrey onto her lap “Did you try it?” her daughter shook her head no.

“Why not?” 

“I have to choose one of my favorite teachers to dunk, I dunno if Mr.Holland want’s to do it.” 

(Y/N) glanced at Tom who was obviously listening in on their conversation, “Why don’t you go ask him?” Audrey hopped off her mother’s lap and to stand right in front of Tom. 

“Mr.Holland, can I dunk you?”

Tom smiled “Sure sweetheart.” Audrey squealed loudly jumping around the booth before saying “If I dunk you can you and my mommy go on date?” (Y/N) mouth fell open at the question as Tom’s eyes widened. 

“Bubs, that’s only if you hit the target.” (Y/N) reminded, causing her daughter to glance between her mother and Tom.

“I won’t miss mommy, now come on!” 

-

(Y/N) watched as Tom climbed the mini ladder and sat on the ledge watching as he lightly tapped the surface of the water that was a bit cold. Audrey held three bean bags in her hand standing behind the line.

Audrey threw the first bean bag a little too far to the right, as a bit of relief washed over (Y/N) body. The second bean bag was a few inches off but still nonetheless, she missed again. Now for the moment of truth, she did say ‘I won’t miss mommy’ 

It all happened so quickly the sound of Audrey screaming with glee as she watched Tom fall into the water before quickly standing back up, as for (Y/N) who stood there in complete shock. She’s going to go on a date with her daughter’s kindergarten teacher.

Audrey walked over to her mother with a huge smile on her face along with victory written across her forehead. 

“See mommy? I told you I never miss.”

[musemesmer]

Migraine & Tension Headache Management | Chronically Ill Studyblr

@lupinstvdies​ asked me for tips about how I manage migraines. It’s extensive. Migraine management is a lot of work but it’s so routine now that I don’t even notice it. By doing all of this things (almost) daily, I’m able to transition to a med free life (though I’ll still take migraine abortives if necessary), and focus on my health.

My knowledge for managing migraines is a result of extensive research, talking to people, reading forums, and personal experience. Some things might work for you, some not. 

Start small - with one or two habits - and see what works for you. Then build over time. Health isn’t built in a day. A lot of things take time and consistency - perfection does not happen right away.

ALL of these things will be useful for studyblrs / desk workers as well, because these are self care tips that aren’t exclusive to people with migraines. 

Finally, if you have any questions (Is this type of electrolyte supplement okay? Do these glasses work with my face? How do I meditate?) - PLEASE ask me. Knowledge is so important, but even more important when shared! Most of this information will not be summarized for you by a doctor. 

In this post you’ll find information on:

My history with migraines

Theraspecs & blue light glasses

Moisturizing eye drops

WeatherX pressure-adapting ear plugs

Electrolytes & Magnesium

Water & Sleep

Essential Oils

Physical Therapy, Treating Trigger Points at Home, and Yoga

My History with Migraines 

I’ve had mild headaches all my life, but didn’t start having migraines until a few years ago, and then I only had them once or twice a year. Then in April 2019, I started developing severe, frequent migraines. For the past year and a half I’ve had chronic migraines and tension headaches. Mine were weird because they came out of nowhere and hit powerfully and hard. Within months I had to stop working. In February 2020 I could hardly get out of bed because I just had pain all the time. I tried different types of drugs (Topamax/Topirimate, beta blockers) and they didn’t work. Finally in March of this year I got on Amitriptyline, which calmed my migraines down. Now I’m weaning off it because I have a lot of tools that can help me. I’m sick of medicine side effects. This isn’t for everyone, but I do believe that the tools below can help many people.

Theraspecs 

⎔ My #1 tool is Theraspecs. These are heavily tinted glasses that block different types of light to help with migraines. I went from being able to look at a screen 30 min a DAY to HOURS. It helps with TV, flourescent lighting, everything. You can get them prescription, send in your own frames, get night driving ones, and even sunglasses. These CHANGED MY LIFE.  

Theraspecs and Axonoptics are made especially for people with light sensitivity. These are stronger than normal blue light glasses, which you can get on Amazon, though some people say they work as well.

They are very red but after 5 minutes wearing them, you don’t notice it. People around you get used to it very quickly so it doesn’t look “dorky” (something I was personally very worried of).

Some insurances cover these.

These are especially important when looking at screens.

Moisturizing Eye Drops

⎔ I’ve found my eyes get so dry looking at screens / being inside with AC/Fans/Heating / and also from migraines. I found some moisturizing eye drops on amazon and use them daily. They help a lot so my eyes are less strained. 

WeatherX

⎔ WeatherX offers earplugs that help you adjust to different pressure changes which can cause migraines. This is especially useful if you have problems with storms or sudden hot and cold weather. I don’t use mine too often but when I do, it is a life saver. 

Electrolytes (especially Magnesium Citrate).

⎔ Electrolytes are three essential nutrients your body needs - sodium, potassium, and magnesium. You can get these in commercial sports drinks (like Powerade and Gatorade, which I don’t recommend because of sugar and additives), different foods, or as supplements. 

I started taking some electrolyte tablets in my water every day and noticed a huge difference in my migraines. You can also get a potassium / sodium blend, known as Lo Salt or Lite Salt. 

⎔ Magnesium Citrate. After taking the tablets and also reading up about another health issue I had, I learned about the importance of Magnesium Citrate. Magnesium used to be brought to food from soil, but because of modern farming practices, there’s a deficiency in our soil of up to 80-90%. A lack of magnesium in our body causes us to be stressed more easily, and react more strongly (e.g., through anxiety, irritation) to little life things, such as loud noises. Then stress causes us to lose magnesium through urine - creating a viscous cycle.  

A lack of magnesium can CAUSE or CONTRIBUTE to a lot of issues: sleepiness, anxiety, migraines, headaches, feeling weak, feeling distracted. 

Hormonal Birth Control VERY FREQUENTLY depletes the body of magnesium. You can fix this easily by taking a minimum of 500mg of magnesium a day. 

Make sure to take Magnesium Citrate - other types aren’t absorbed as well by the body.

Magnesium Citrate can cause diarrhea. Try to avoid taking with other diuretics (coffee, milk) or try an hour or two before/after eating.  

This may seem hard but it’ll prompt you to drink more water, which is really good for you too.

Be patient. It may take a week or so to start seeing real differences.

Water. Drink it. It’s good for you. 

⎔ I find under 3L a day and I feel really off - but I had to work up to that amount. 

⎔ Drink it first thing in the morning and sip throughout the day. Also if you’re managing your electrolytes you’ll have to go to the bathroom less.   

Sleep. You need it. 

⎔ Whether your condition is caused by tension in the body or a neurological condition, your body needs sleep. Meditating can help you get to sleep. Try to keep a regular sleep schedule every night. It makes a big difference. 

Essential Oils

⎔  Peppermint and Lavender can help calm you down. I dab peppermint directly on my temples (some people say don’t do this though, but it works wonders to help relax me). It instantly relaxes me and gets rid of a lot of the tension in my temples/forehead/jaw/neck/shoulders. 

⎔ Yesterday I made a lavender lotion by putting some essential oil directly in the lotion in a small bottle and mixing it. 

⎔ I also have a lavender spray (spray bottle + water + lavender) that I use on my face throughout the day. Cheap and effective.

⎔ Essential oils can be pricey but a little goes SUCH a long way that it’s so worth it for me. You can often get them on Amazon or in a pharmacy.

Physical Therapy / Trigger Points / Yoga

** All of this is also super important for if you’re sitting at a desk every day.

⎔ This made a HUGE difference in my ability to handle migraines. I didn’t really believe it - I was like, “I’m having auras, I’m having issues seeing, there’s pain in my brain and pressure behind my right eye, this is NEUROLOGICAL. NO WAY is it muscular!”

⎔ Boy was I wrong. Physical therapy helped me a bunch - but if you don’t have the ability to do physical therapy, here are some things you can do at home and cheaply.

⎔ This fantastic (and dorky) video explains what trigger points are and how to help them. I suggest doing this every day. I use a very simple fascia massage ball similar to this. A tennis ball also works. Also look at this video for exercises for the upper shoulder / front of the shoulder.

Tips for this: When you’re working with the ball with your back to the wall, you can hold the ball with the opposite hand. This means, if you’re working on the right side of your neck but the ball keeps slipping, hold it with your left hand. Keep the side that you’re working on relaxed! Same for the ball on the door frame - keep your arm limp and relaxed. 

⎔ Yoga really helps. I do this quick 10 minute video by Yoga with Adriene almost every day and it makes a colossal difference. 

⎔ Strengthening your core and focusing on proper sitting posture helps a lot. A good / easy core strengthener can be found in the Plank Workout at Home App by Leap Fitness Group. Android and iPhone. 

I really like that it works ALL ab muscles, not just some of them. found that at day 9 of the beginner it became too hard for me, so I am doing day 1 today, day 10 tomorrow, day 2, then day 11. Hopefully that will work. Feel free to modify the program to make it work for you!

[fandom-meanderer]

Hi, I may or may not be the one who requested the Felix likes reader but she likes Sylvain fic. That was litro the best thing to wake up to and I may have quietly squealed when I saw it. Thank you so much for writing it; it was perfect!(And for Felix’s P.O.V. you mentioned, I certainly wouldn’t complain seeing it😉) Your work is incredible, and now I have a huge smile on my face(and you may’ve given me the final push to marry Felix instead of Sylvain in my BL run🤫)Thank you so much ~💝♊️

I see I’ve converted another person 😈 Welp, let’s see what Felix thinks about all this, shall we?

[Part 1/Reader POV]

~

The clash of metal filled the air, blades crossing at every possible second. But for some reason, it seemed like you were moving slower than usual. Then, right as Felix dodged your incoming attack, he noticed it, the opening he had been waiting for. But you saw it coming too, didn’t you? Too bad, you didn’t react fast enough. Felix flicked his wrist slightly and watched the steel sword fly from your grasp.

“You’re distracted,” he scolds.

“Am I?” Gods, that damn smirk. Felix suddenly feels his legs give out from below him and finds himself on the ground. Of course she would be able to do that. “If this was an actual battle, you’d be out of commission, Felix,” she laughs.

“You’ve got a point, I can’t be careless,” he concedes. He notices her looking towards the door.

‘Oh, right,’ he feels himself grimace. ‘Sylvain.’

“Thinking about that idiot again?” He asks her, but in truth, he really didn’t want to know.

(Full Name) started out as his rival, the only person who bested him on their first try. Then he strove to train harder, and even after all these years, they’re still even matched. For years, that’s what he told himself. He was only getting frustrated because he couldn’t beat her. But goddess was he so very wrong. It wasn’t until they did a mock battle with the Knights of Seiros when he noticed. It was the way you and Sylvain just clicked when you fought together. He didn’t want to admit it but it was true. He was jealous. Jealous of his best friend.

The thought sickened him.

“No!” You shout. A false hope. “Yes...” That’s what he thought.

“I honestly don’t know what you see in him,” Felix grumbles. ‘He’s frivolous, eccentric, and in some cases can be cruel.’ When did he start thinking that way? He shakes his head. “We’re in war. You should be focusing on your training.”

“What do you mean? I just bested you, did I not?”

“That’s hardly relevant!” Felix turned away to hide his blush.

“Yeah, yeah...” You trail off. “I think I’m going to tell him tomorrow.”

Felix suddenly became hyperaware of his own heartbeat, it was beating against his chest and he was afraid that it might just jump out all together.

“Nothing good will come out of that, I promise you,” he musters out.

“Like you’d know!” Felix feels her disapproving glare, he doesn’t need to look back.

Ah, fuck, where’d his heart go? Oh, there it is, on the floor. Yup, let’s just put that back. He really just grabbed his sword. But can he blame her? While his friends were out having fun, he decided to stay in and study the blade. He is a bit... uneducated when it comes to pursuing any form of relationship, really.

“I’m gonna call it a night. I take it that you’ll stay here for another hour or so?”

“Yes. Unlike you, I care about surviving.” That came off a bit colder than he intended it to.

“Of course,” you sigh. Felix picks up his sword again and begins to practice his combat arts, ending the conversation. He hears you huff, then your footsteps leaving the training ground. Once he heard the click of the doors shut, he started attacking with a new found vigor.

“Sylvain this, Sylvain that,” he buries his sword into the training dummy. “Gods above. Why must you be so dense?!” He completely decapitates the dummy and throws his sword on the ground.

He could treat you so much better than Sylvain. He knows his best friend, if he was interested in you he wouldn’t be that cool with you. He knows how this is going to end, and he knows that Sylvain will most likely just drop you once another pretty woman walked past him. Yet here he was, in the training grounds, taking his frustrations out on a dummy. Then, a realization hit him.

He’s about to lose you forever. And he’s never even had the chance.

“Why do I feel this way?” He asked himself. His eyes lingered on the door. 

His thought of you a while longer. The two of you would be a much better team in battle. You’d work better together than you and Sylvain, surely. He’d have to talk about that with Professor Byleth later but... right now all he could think about was the slight possibility of waking up tomorrow and watching you and Sylvain enter the Cardinal’s Room hand in hand. The mere idea of that was enough to make his blood boil.

“Okay, fuck this. I’m going to tell her right now,” then he stormed out of the training grounds. Right as he was about to knock on your dorm floor, he noticed you run back into the training grounds, leaving the door open behind you.

Well, that makes this easier.

He follows you in, taking care not to alarm you. He figured that he wouldn’t listen to what you said until,

“Stupid Sylvain!”

Oh, now he’s definitely listening.

“You and your dirty tricks! Making me fall for you! And then tossing me away! Why did I allow myself to be led on by you, you idiot!” You shout. Felix watches you completely slice off the dummy’s arm in a clean slice. What was this he was feeling? Pride? Surprise? Love? Whatever it was, he was intrigued.

“So, you finally agree with me?” He asks. He sees you tense.

“How long have you been there?”

“Since I saw you walk in, I figured you left something so I came to see what it was.”

“Gods above...” you curse. He watches you pick up your sword and make a beeline toward the exit.

‘Oh no, I’ve already gotten this far,’ Felix thinks to himself. He puts his arm out, stopping you in your tracks.

“What, Felix, going to tell me ‘I told you so’?”

“Not exactly.” Felix takes a deep breath and, in one swift movement, pins you to the pillar. His eyes moved down to stare into yours. Had you been crying?

“What?” You move your gaze to the ground. Great, now you were hiding it from him. He places his hand gently on your cheek and pushes it to meet your gaze again. Only one person could make you cry like that,

‘Sylvain,’ the thought made him grit his teeth. “I guess that idiot was good for one thing,” he accidentally says out loud.

‘Fuck it, I’m going all in.’ Felix leaned in slowly.

“Which is?”

‘Okay. Abort mission. ABORT. MISSION.’ Felix sighs, his head dropping. “Ugh, you’re too dense.” He moves away from you. You grab his shirt and move in front of him, standing slightly on his toes so he wouldn’t try to move away.

“Wait just a second,” you growl. You grab onto his collar and bring him down slightly, pressing a quick kiss to his lips.

Felix.exe has stopped working. Felix felt his world stop for the brief second that the two of you kissed. He couldn’t describe it in words, all he knew was that it just felt right. Once he finally came to, he noticed you a foot away from the door. Without thinking, he moved in front of you. You looked up at him, a mix of ‘What now?’ and ‘Please let me leave I’m tired.’ but none of that mattered right now.

“If you’re going to start something, own up to it and finish it,” he says before bending down and capturing your lips once more. He rests his hands on your hips, and there it was again. That feeling of this being just right.

As much as he hates to think this, he’d have to thank Sylvain later. Whatever he did to you led up to this moment. And once Felix felt your arms wrap around his neck he realized that you must have felt the same.

~

“Thanks,” Felix says gruffly. Sylvain looks at him, just about to climb up on his horse.

“For what?”

“It’s not important! Just know that I’m thanking you,” Felix scoffs.

“Right, okay, Felix,” Sylvain jumps on right as Byleth walks up to them. “What’s the game plan, Professor? Should I go pick up (Name)?”

It took every fiber in Felix’s body to not kick his horse and send Sylvain running.

“Actually, (Name) requested that she work with Felix for this mock battle,” Byleth says, eyeing Felix.

“What why would she- Oh.” Sylvain suddenly remembers the events of that morning. “OH.”

“Quit gaping and get ready for battle,” Felix storms off.

“Oh gods,” Sylvain places a hand to his head. “THAT’S WHAT HE MEANT BY ‘SOMETHING LIKE THAT’!”

[this-is-freeridge]

The Air Between Us

Chapter Nineteen: Mari finally faces her family.

Warning: this fic deals with dark themes, including but not limited to teen pregnancy, rape, drug abuse, murder, abortion, underage drinking and underage sex. Read at your own risk.

Find all the other chapters here.

Read the better-edited and revised version here.

.

The chicken tasted like cardboard, the pudding tasted like sawdust. Mari stopped trying to eat after the first couple of days. The upside to this was that the lack of food made it a lot easier to spend most of her days in blissful unconsciousness.

The downside was that it also meant she wasn’t healing as she should be.

Mari ended up being kept in that hospital room going on two weeks. Doctor O’Connor said it was to allow her to heal, but the way Latisha looked at Mari said otherwise. The way Latisha looked at Mari said she was worried what the girl might do if she weren’t there.

So every day for almost two weeks, Mari spent hours with Latisha relearning how to walk, how to eat, how to go to the bathroom.

And every day for almost two weeks, she tried to call Oscar.

And every day for almost two weeks, he didn’t answer.

The radio silence was killing her, and it was getting harder and harder to even pick up the phone and try every day. But she couldn’t do this without someone, and she wanted that someone to be him. She didn’t know if he was even listening to the messages she was leaving, and part of her hoped he wasn’t because she was well aware how desperate she sounded in the vast majority of them.

Although she hadn’t truly expected him to stick around, not for the long-term anyway, this wasn’t how she had anticipated it ending between them. At least, she thought, it would be a clean break. This way, she thought, it’ll be so much easier to get over him. (Or that’s what she told herself, every night for almost two weeks, as she lay in bed and tried not to cry.)

And every day for almost two weeks, Ruben and Geny came to visit, but Mari turned them away each time. She couldn’t let them see her like this; weak and bruised and beaten down, barely able to stand on her own.

After everything she had survived with Mallory, she was strong enough to get out; to run away and save herself. But she wasn’t strong enough to deal with this. How could she face the people she had run to?

Mari hated the thought of disappointing Ruben. She hated the thought of proving Geny right about her and of being a bad role model for Olivia and Monse (and even Ruby, Cesar and Jamal, to some extent).

She hated that she had probably lost whatever good thing she had going on with Oscar.

She hated that she couldn’t even bring herself to see the baby; the baby, who was still in critical condition, and who Mari still hadn’t given a name. The deadline coming up on that, too. Just another thing on the list of things that were suffocating her, she supposed.

Doctor O’Connor had come to see her, birth certificate in hand, sometime around the first few days. She hadn’t pushed anything, remained neutral and unbiased as she had given Mari all the information she needed.

“By California law,” she had said, “you have two weeks from the date of birth to complete the birth certificate. Given that this baby was so premature and we weren’t sure if he would even survive out of the womb, I didn’t want to bother you with this but he is stable now. It’s looking good for him, so I do think you need to decide what you’re going to do,”

Mari could only shake her head and shrug in response.

“I don’t know. I haven’t even seen him, I don’t want to. The other women in the ward,” (Mari refused to label herself a mother,) “they keep telling me: he’s beautiful and strong, just like you, dear. They say I can’t choose until I meet him,”

She hadn’t been expecting Doctor O’Connor to turn around and say: “No. You have to do it for you, forget what everyone else is saying and ask yourself; what do you need?"

But that was part of the problem; almost two weeks later and Mari was still a jumbled mess of hurt and sad and confused. She didn’t know what she needed.

Well, she did know one thing: she needed to face her family.

. : ♱ : .

It was like clockwork at this point, really. Every morning, right before nine a.m. when visiting hours started, Latisha would come to her room and tell her that her family was waiting. And every morning, Mari turned them away.

But not today.

Today, she was sitting up in bed, had been up for hours trying to prepare herself. She had forced herself to finish her toast-with-jam breakfast, had changed into a new hospital gown and brushed her hair for a solid thirty minutes all in an attempt to look a little more alive.

The roughly three minutes it took for Latisha to leave the room and bring back a handful of Martinezes felt like far longer to Mari. Time slowed down the moment the nurse left the room and Mari’s throat immediately closed up.

Her palms were clammy, her breath short as she gasped for air and tried not to think about the disappointment that will paint Ruben’s face when he sees her, or the way Geny will shake her head, or the way Ruben and Olivia will judge her.

She was trying not to think about it too much, but she expected it.

What she didn’t expect was for Ruben to look at her and break into a wide smile, tears shining in his eyes. She wasn’t expecting the small but relieved smile Abuelita shot her way, or for Ruby and Olivia to run to her bedside and wrap their arms around her, or for Geny to rush forward with a cry of “Mija! Your father and I were so worried about you!”

Four pairs of arms were around her and suddenly that seemed to be the only thing suffocating her (but she didn’t mind). Almost two weeks (though probably longer, if she thought too hard on it) worth of tension left her shoulders as she breathed out a sigh of relief. A painful lump made its way to her throat and no matter how hard she tried, she wasn’t able to swallow it down. Tears stung at her eyes and she blinked hard, trying to make the tears stop to no avail.

They didn’t let go of her until her body began to shake and she let out a loud sob.

The family immediately shot back, afraid they’d hurt her, and Mari, for the first time in almost two weeks, let out a laugh. Head thrown back, a mess of curls falling over shoulders as her body shook with every giggle that bubbled out of her chest, Mari didn’t realise until this moment just how much she had missed them, how lonely and isolated she had been.

All of that isolation, the loneliness went away as she was engulfed by lightness and a sense of freedom. Freedom from the pain and the darkness and the shadows she kept as company. And some part of her, a part she tried to keep hidden away in the depths of her mind, wanted it to stop. It was too unfamiliar, the brightness, the liberation, the weight that had lifted from her shoulders and her chest and throat.

The darkness, the pain, the weight on her shoulders and the invisible hands that tightened around her throat; they were familiar, they were safe. She knew what that felt like and how to deal with it but this...

It’d been so long since she felt truly happy, truly free, and she had no idea what to do with it.

“Did we hurt you?” Ruben asked, eyes wide with fear that they had somehow made her worse.

Mari only huffed another laugh at that. They had always been careful with her, hesitant like she was a deer caught in the headlights, a rabbit ready to run at the slightest movement.

But she wasn’t a rabbit. She wasn’t going to run and right now, more than ever, she was desperate not to be treated like fine china; she had been through far too much to break now.

(Somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice told her Oscar doesn’t treat me like that, but she pushed it away. She didn’t want to miss him and she didn’t need him here. And even if she did, well…)

Finally calm enough to speak, Mari took a deep breath and plastered on the most genuine smile she could muster. It’d been so long since she’d smiled that the action almost felt like a grimace. Lips spread wide and teeth bared, she hoped it at least reached her eyes.

When no one moved to say anything, Mari asked, “So, what have I missed?”

There was only a brief pause, and then Abuelita dove straight into a recap of everything Mari had missed in their favourite telenovela. Mari welcomed the ease in tension, it was as though the whole room let out a collective sigh of relief.

And Mari relaxed as she spoke. Laughing and gasping in shock as she was drawn into the story Abuelita was so passionately retelling. Abuelita’s face lit up each time Mari laughed, grabbed her hand each time she gasped and asked: “What happened next?”.

She was having fun. But, maybe she jinxed herself by admitting it because soon enough Abuelita’s retelling was over, and Olivia was announcing: “I’m dating Cesar,”

And maybe it was selfish, maybe Mari really was a bad person, but her first thought wasn’t wow, Olivia, I’m so happy for you! or damn, how must Ruby feel? Her first thought was have you seen Oscar?

But she didn’t ask. Instead, she swallowed the lump that was rising in her throat and she bit her lip and she smiled and nodded like a good friend, a good sister, as Olivia recounted their time together.

She smiled and she nodded and she pretended her heart wasn’t breaking because all she could think about was Oscar Oscar Oscar and the fact that he wasn’t here.

And he should be because he said he was in this. He said he would be there for her and he promised that she wouldn’t be alone. She trusted him. She had cracked open her chest and let him see every scar on her heart, every negative word she had breathed in and was etched into her lungs. She had handed him all of her fears and all of her demons and he had promised that he would take care of them, but he wasn’t there to fulfil that promise.

Ruby’s voice - strained, desperate to change the subject - cut through her distress.

“It’s Olivia’s quince tomorrow!”

“Oh my god, Olivia, that’s so exciting!” Mari responded, flashing the girl a wide smile, and this time, that was her first thought.

Olivia smiled, almost bashfully, and said, “I wanted you to be one of my damas, but…”

Mari glanced down, feeling like she had just let everyone down, again. Like she had messed up, again.

“We had to ask Jasmine to fill in,” Ruby said, “‘cause, you know, the dance,”

And no, in all honesty, Mari didn’t know. Growing up, Mari didn’t get to explore the Latino side of herself; she didn’t speak any Spanish beyond the few phrases Oscar had been teaching her, she never celebrated Grito de Dolores, and she never had a quinceañera. Until recently, until coming into the Martinez household, she didn’t mind, didn’t know any better. Now she was mourning all the tradition, the culture, the family she missed out on.

But she didn’t say that. She wasn’t about to play the pity card, not when they were already staring at her with enough sympathy to fill one hundred Hallmark cards.

“Of course,” she said instead, smiling and nodding like she knew anything about quince traditions. “No hard feelings,”

“Your doctor,” Olivia started, wringing her hands and biting her lower lip before continuing, “she said you were getting discharged tomorrow,”

She had been trying not to think about it, trying not to think about having to reenter society and accept reality and figure out what the fuck she was going to do with the kid, but she couldn’t deny it.

“Uh, yeah, I am,”

“I know you’ve been through a lot, but it would really mean a lot to me if you would come. I mean, the reception is going to be at home anyway, but like, the ceremony. I’d love for you to be there,"

Mari opened her mouth to say of course, I’ll be there but a sob escaped her lips instead. A sob that she didn’t even know was coming, though the way her chest had been slowly growing tighter and tighter and tighter should’ve been warning enough.

“Oh no, Mari I’m sorry! You don’t have to, I was being selfish!” Olivia cried, reaching out like she wanted to hug the older girl but her arm just hovered.

Mari shook her head.

“No, you weren’t,” she uttered between weak gasps, “I just…I love all of you and I’m so, so sorry!”

“Mari, sweetie,” Geny’s voice reached Mari’s ears, softer than Mari had ever heard her, “you have nothing to be sorry for,”

“No I do,” she said, nodding hysterically and bringing her knees up to her chest like armour, “I do. I just came into your life, into your home, then I don’t-

“I just work and then I go out and do whatever I can to not be home and it’s not…it’s not because I don’t want to be there, because I do! I love you and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me I just…I don’t feel like I belong.

“I wasn’t raised like you all were. I don’t speak Spanish, I don’t know anything about your culture or what it's been like to grow up in this neighbourhood, I’m not religious and now I’ve had a fucking baby and I-I have none of my shit together and I’m just…” her sentence trailed off as she wiped her eyes with the heels of her palms and sucked in a shaky breath. “You must be so disappointed in me,”

Sheer heartbreak painted Ruben’s face and he didn’t say a word as he lowered himself onto Mari’s bed, but the moment he wrapped his arms around her she knew. She never should’ve expected anything but acceptance from the man who had only ever tried to show her love.

“Mija, how could you even think that?”

Mari sniffled and buried her face further into his shoulder.

“You didn’t sign up for this!” Mari could feel her voice getting tighter, a little higher. She tried to slow her breathing but she was already too worked up, both mind and body on edge and cowering from something no one else could see.

Ruben held her steady, his arms tightening around her like a shield, ready to defend against any invisible enemies.

“Neither did you,” he replied, his voice calm and steady, anchoring her down.

No matter how good his intentions were, Mari realised that he wasn’t going to get it. He loved her and he accepted her, but she had seen what happened to someone who was stuck raising a baby they didn’t want, and Mari was terrified of turning out like her mother.

But she had brought them all down long enough. Taking in a deep breath, Mari forced a smile back onto her face and tried to ignore the way her cheeks were already hurting and her heart was racing at a million miles an hour. She tried to ignore the intense, knowing stare Geny had trained on her.

Mari shook her head. “You’re right. I’m being ridiculous,”

“You know,” Geny cut in, “I’m getting hungry. Ruben, why don’t you take Abuelita and the kids to get us some lunch, I’ll wait here with Mari,”

Ruben released Mari from his grip, looked at his watch and frowned a little. “It’s just gone ten a.m.,”

Geny’s hands flew to her hips and her eyes narrowed as she ordered: “Go get us some coffee, then,”

And then she cocked her head toward the door; subtlety had never really been her strongest trait. Ruben’s face contorted as understanding hit him, and he quickly ushered Ruby, Olivia and Abuelita out of the room, stopping only to press a soft kiss to the crown of Mari’s head and tell her they’ll be back soon.

The moment they were out of the room Geny moved in closer, taking the now-empty seat beside her bed that Abuelita had occupied. Her hand came to rest on Mari’s and for the first time, Mari felt like Geny truly cared.

Geny grabbed Mari’s hand and tugged lightly as she said: “come with me,”

Mari followed, standing from the bed on shaky legs, holding on tight to Geny’s hand for stability and let the older woman lead the way.

“Tell me, Mija; how are you really?” Geny asked as she led Mari down the almost-empty halls of the hospital. “Because you gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, who is so strong, just like you are, but childbirth is hard, even when you’re ready for it,”

The lump in her throat was back. So were the invisible hands which seemed to be squeezing her neck even tighter than before.

“You’ve seen him?” Was all she could bear to ask, the words quiet over the sound of her heart pounding in her ears.

“Of course!” Geny’s said, almost as if to say why wouldn’t we? “Ruben and I wanted to see our first grandchild! And Ruby is so excited to be an uncle!”

Her voice was innocent, light, unaware of just how much fear her words were drilling into Mari. If they’ve seen him, been visiting him as much as they had tried to visit her, then that made it real. The kid, her circumstances, the decisions she still had to make; it was all real and it wasn’t just her own life she would be affecting.

“But I want to talk about you right now,” Geny brought her back to reality.

Mari sighed, swallowed hard and looked away. It was easier to speak when she didn’t have to make eye contact, and she wanted to speak; to confess the fears that’d been haunting her for almost two weeks.

“You told me once that, after Mario, you were depressed. I don’t know if the way I’m feeling has anything to do with the baby, or if it’s always kinda been there, but I…I don’t remember what it feels like to be happy,”

Geny’s hand gave hers a small squeeze as they rounded a corner.

“I know I have been,” Mari continued, throat aching and eyes stinging as tears pooled. She was tired of crying, but she didn’t have the energy to fight it. “I know I was happy just ten minutes ago but it's like…I don’t remember how it feels. I can’t imagine it ever happening again. All I remember is all the bad stuff that’s happening; I shouldn’t have a baby, I shouldn’t be hiding from my own mother, and Oscar-”

She cut herself off, not wanting to bring him into this, not wanting Geny to get the wrong idea and blame him for the mess that Mari is in.

“How did you deal with it?” Mari asked.

Geny offered a small smile and they came to a halt outside a light wooden door. A door that was adorned only by a small, black cross.

“I prayed,” she answered and pushed the door open.

The room was small; one small, stained glass window to the left, four plain wooden chairs before an altar. The lights were dim, the room illuminated by only a standing lamp in the far corner of the room and the scattering of tea light candles surrounding the statue of Jesus on the cross that stood in the middle of the altar.

Mari was glad that no one else was here, because her skin was crawling like there were bugs under her skin itching to get out.

“I’m not really religious,” she confessed. If there was a God, he hadn’t done her any favours.

“Neither was I,” Geny said, leading Mari forward to one of the chairs, “but it’s not about believing, not really. It’s about having someone to talk to, accepting that whatever’s happened is out of your hands now, and it’s about having faith that things will work out in the end,”

And maybe she had a point. Maybe Mari did just need to put everything in someone else’s hands, let the universe take the wheel for a bit.

So she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply and...

God, or Jesus, or whoever, she thought, I...

Her mind was blank.

But she sat for a few more minutes, trying to no avail.

With a huff, she opened her eyes. “I don’t know how to do this,”

“There’s no right or wrong way, Mija,” Geny said, “just...talk,”

Warm breath ghosted over her lips as she let out a tentative breath. She licked her lips before speaking.

“I’m…so angry, all the time,” she confessed, the words leaving her lips and hanging in the air between them, “and I’ve never been an angry person. No matter how bad Mallory treated me, I was never angry, but I’m angry now. I wake up every damn day and I’m angry, and that scares me. I don’t wanna live like that.

“And now I have a whole other person’s life to think about. I need to decide what’s best for him when I can’t even give him a name. I haven’t even seen him, do you know that? I can’t bring myself to see him because I’m afraid that if I do I’ll fall in love and I’ll keep him. And there’s a part of me that wants to keep him, to raise him right and prove I’m nothing like my mother. But spite is no reason to have a kid.

“But what if I give him away and I regret it? I’m too young to be making these decisions! I’m too young to have to worry about this! Why the fuck did this happen to me? If there is a God, why did he let this happen? Because I just don’t understand!”

Maybe it was wrong to scream and curse and cry in a place of worship, but Mari didn’t care. She didn’t care that she was sobbing or that her voice was raw from shouting or that she had just let Geny into the deepest parts of her soul. She didn’t care when Geny wrapped her arms around her and pulled her into a hug.

Mari cried, sobbing into Geny’s shoulder as the woman ran her hands through her hair. Mari felt small, like a child herself, but she felt safe and she felt accepted and right now, that was all she could ask for.

Geny didn’t say anything as they walked back to the hospital room, but she didn’t let go of Mari’s hand the entire time.

“You’re not welcome here,” Ruben’s voice boomed as they approached the room, deeper than Mari had heard it before. “You need to leave,”

“She’s my daughter too,” Mallory’s voice chimed. Mari’s stomach churned.

“Oh, no she-” Geny hissed under her breath, then stormed towards the room and hissed, “get out, now,”

“Excuse you? I am Mari’s mother and I need to speak to my daughter, so I think you’re the one who needs to get out,”

The girl in question felt like she was about to vomit, but she swallowed it down as she stepped into the room.

The sight of Mallory made her stomach flip. The sight of Doyle beside her made her head scream. She fought the urge to run.

Ruben and Abuelita were standing before them, faces twisted into uncharacteristic frowns. Olivia and Ruby were hiding behind them.

“There you are, sweetheart!” Doyle smiled, his dark eyes gleaming and a wicked grin slowly spreading across his face. The pet name made her shiver, her mind replaying the night he had crept into her room, the way he had whispered sweetheart with so much sugar in his voice as he violated her. “Your mother and I need a word,”

Mari closed her hands into fists, desperate for them to stop shaking, desperate to stop being terrified.

“No,” she said, though she didn’t sound very sure, “you both need to go,”

“You heard her,” Geny said, holding Mari by the arm and all but guarding her as they crossed the room. Mari took a seat on the hospital bed and closed her eyes as though that would will them away.

Mallory scoffed. “You spent the better part of eighteen years with me, yet you’re siding with them?”

Mari shook her head, angry that Mallory would dare play the victim.

“Because I know they love me,”

“Yeah?” Mallory inched forward, her smile not quite meeting her eyes. “Do they know who the father of that baby is?”

Mari froze. Mallory knew?

“Do you think they’ll still love you when they find out who that baby belongs to, huh? When they find out who you let fuck you,”

She flinched as her mother spat the words, but she couldn’t respond. She was right; Mari was dirty and disgusting and she was tainted. She wasn’t the innocent daughter they thought she was.

“Mari, ignore her,” Ruben cut in, “you don’t have to tell us anything,”

But Mari could barely hear him; he was just another noise in the background behind Mallory’s taunts.

“Go on,” Mallory urged, “tell them who your baby daddy is,”

“I am,”

Mari’s eyes snapped up and for a minute she thought she was hallucinating because there, in the doorway was Oscar.

Her heart stopped as she drank him in; white socks and dirty converse, dark cargo shorts and a white tee under a plaid shirt only buttoned at the top. He looked good, if a little sleep deprived, judging by the deep bags under his eyes. One hand clenched into a fist, the other was grasping a small bunch of limp flowers; deep red and pink carnations with small white flowers peppered throughout.

His brow was furrowed, nostrils flared and his eyes were hard on her as he crossed the threshold and made his way to Mari.

It took him less than a second to cross the room. He pushed past Mallory and Doyle and he pushed past Ruben and Geny and he dropped the flowers on the bed beside Mari. Then, in front of everyone Mari cared about, everyone Oscar knew would never approve of him, he held Mari’s face between harsh, brutal hands that’d learned to be soft only for her, and he kissed her.

He kissed her in a way that he hoped made up for all the times he wasn’t there to kiss her in almost two weeks.

.

Taglist: @robinsdolan @lostgirl219 @kseniainneverland @ravengreystone @weediskindabad @moistdollerbills@javoqetal @kenzie44469 @goddessate @blackdepressoexpresso @classyputa @babygirl-htx@wonderlandlovelove @cacapoodlepoo @agent-femmefatale​ @elliesshitofablog @daydreamer0307 @lucyfuh @harduy @elizabeth-santana-98@lonelyyblues

[shijiujun]

history3 ep 17 summary - we’ve been kind of robbed, but this was a good ep

okay first things first, this episode was fucking INTENSE like usually i’m laughing out loud and everything but today i was more or less silent even during the romantic scenes between jack and zhao zi - those were cute don’t get me wrong but there’s the underlying shady thing that jack is doing - in any case, you guys will both love and hate today’s episode, and if you wanna turn back now and wait for subs etc. to come out, this is the point to do it, otherwise: SUMMARY TIME BELOW!!

CWH + TY/SF confrontation aftermath

we start off first with the scene in the preview, where TY is facing SF while SF explains that LZ is his mother, and CWH, who’s standing a little bit further away with his back faced to them 

also: thank you line tv, for making hong ye totally disappear without you know, letting us know what happened to TY’S PRECIOUS SISTER WHO GOT KIDNAPPED YOU KNOW?! she literally just disappeared - what happened? where’s dao yi? did CWH get his lackeys to send her home by curfew? you know?!!!!

back to the scene - TY is catatonic and just staring angrily into the distance, and CWH is all: “you must be wrong, you must be lying to me, LZ wouldn’t have lied to me”

flashback to the prison visit by LZ and TGD - TGD turns up to visit CWH and CWH looks to be badly beaten up, and TGD obviously looks very guilty but trying to be smiley, he tells CWH that he cooked some of CWH’s fave dishes and brought it for him today and CWH is obviously pretty mad as he accuses TGD of getting the other prisoners inside the prison to beat him up - TGD tells him to calm down but doesn’t have a chance to explain himself, and one can probably understand CWH because i think he wasn’t expecting to be in prison for so long, and he asks TGD when he’s going to get him out, but TGD says that the other gang, Si He Hui, has a hit on him and it’s safer for him to be in prison, and CWH gets mad and yells: “you’re the damn boss of xing tian meng, don’t fucking tell me you have no way to get me out!” basically

that’s when TGD reveals that he brought LZ with him, and rmb that CWH when he decided to take the rap for TGD and go to jail in his stead, he told TGD to take care of LZ and not let him know where he is? WELL THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN OBVIOUSLY - CWH begs for forgiveness from LZ, saying that he didn’t mean to lie to her etc.... and LZ asks: “how could you lie to me?”

and then she says: “i’m pregnant”, and CWH is so happy, and then he looks to TGD who looks back at him with a smile and approving nod - and like 10 seconds later, LZ says: “i went for an abortion, you and i are from different worlds we can’t be together, it’s over”

then CWH goes ballistic and even TGD looks a bit confused and stunned, and LZ walks off and outside the prison she sobs and cries, while TGD is looking at CWH yelling and being dragged off

comment - srsly?!!! so many loopholes that are with this scene srsly

back to the present: TY thinks that SF is lying to him and that even if it was true this changes nothing - he still killed TGD, and he knows this because CWH was actually the one to shoot TY and he remembers it

TY back on that day, he heard two gunshots while he was waiting for TGD, and when he ran up the stairs, he saw TGD and LZ dead already on the ground and TGD holding a gun, and when he yelled for TGD, CWH shot him

CWH says he really wanted to kill them, but before he could do anything, he heard the gunshot, and the first thing he did was call out for LZ and run over to them both and they were alr dead

TY doesn’t believe him and now pulls a gun on CWH, and SF is so desperately holding onto him and trying to stop him - he reasons that if CWH really was the killer, then why would he be standing here like this? SF: “finding the real killer is more important than you venting your anger like this, right?”

so TY runs off, and SF calls TY a gazillion times but TY doesn’t stop and heads straight for the car - SF catches up to him outside of the car but TY pushes him back and shouts: “why are you doing this to me?!”

heart. break.

he gets into the car and drives off, locking SF out of the car (and this is really inappropriate but i wondered - this remote abandoned place does grab or uber or lyft even reach this area for SF to go home you know)

SF+TY - In the house scene where we hoped we’d get bed scene but...

and SF obviously managed to get a ride somehow because he turns up at TY’s house, yelling for him from downstairs and he finds him curled up in the bathtub

they struggle because TY is obviously mad at SF for doing this and he wants to be alone and the truth is hard to bear and he’s trying to get out of SF’s grasp but SF is holding really damn tight and refuses to let him go, he back hugs him and tells him: “shhh... it’s okay, i know how you feel, i really do” and he tries to calm him down, which TY does for a moment, but he struggles again, and SF kisses him to calm him down, and then TY gets on with the program and starts kissing back desperately, and SF is telling him not to do this to himself as TY kisses his way down SF’s body - and then he kisses SF on the lips again, and then he just... stops

and TY goes back to crying on the floor, falling to his knees against the bed as SF holds him

HEART. BREAK. FUCKING HEART BREAK.

Jack + Interpol Chief

jack passes interpol chief a thumb drive containing xing tian meng’s information and details and says that since this mission is done, they should move on to the next one, i.e. dismantling CWH’s drug network

interpol chief says that CWH’s network in cambodia is difficult to dismantle and at this point i think interpol chief is shady as hell and jack seems to be talking in rounds to him, i really don’t believe jack betrayed XTM and TY

and then jack says that now they can, because CWH just invited him into his group and he’ll take the job, and interpol chief and jack shake hands on it

so we get confirmation: jack is NOT a police officer, he’s a mercenary for hire and interpol paid him handsomely for this ‘job’ with XTM and TY in a sense

Zhao Zi + Jack

zhao zi goes home and sees jack’s motorcycle at his door but no jack in sign, and he looks so confused, and then jack was actually crouching behind the gate and pops up and says hi

ZHAO ZI’S face LIGHTS THE FUCK UP and he goes up to jack with his umbrella and im gonna gif this in detail don’t worry, so i won’t say too much here, but anyway he lets jack into the house and jack cooks for zhao zi

and yes, that preview scene happens here, and zhao zi doesn’t really give him an answer until when they’re inside

REMEMBER THE PHOTOS U GUYS WERE GOING CRAY CRAY OVER? we WILL GET THIS SCENE TMR I THINK!!!!

anw zhao zi more or less tells jack that ever since his grandma died, no one is waiting for him at home and when jack turned up earlier, he felt so touched that someone was waiting for him to come home

ALL YOU FIC WRITERS - YOU GUYS CALLED IT!!!!

so anyway tmr it’s likely zz will accept jack’s confession and then hopefully jack won’t just disappear you know!!!

TY+SF in bed, half naked or totally naked I GUESS WE’LL NEVER KNOW

yeah, so they’re in bed naked and okay i’m gonna do a separate post on this about what i think - in any case, yes, no bed scene, and SF and TY are awake, and SF leans over to hug TY

TY: “I’m sorry”

FUCKING BREAK MY HEART YEAH WHY NOT U DO THAT SCRIPT WRITERS

CHIEF+DAUGHTER+TURNING HIMSELF IN

so yes, this happens - i have to say i totally called this, because it really does fit his character, that he would be overridden with guilt and that’ll make him turn himself in 

the scene with his daughter and the daughter’s fiance was really sweet i think, and it really reflected the dilemma and conflict captain shi has with this entire thing, and @ctl-yuejie mentions this to me as well and i agree, and that is that i wish he would’ve thought about SF as well? because SF... i feel like he treats chief as his dad almost and chief dotes on him a lot

so yes, he also emo walks to the police station and oh god okay i really gotta say, i almost cried - chief you’re damn good

and the next day, jun wei runs into the office calling for zhao zi, and says: “shit’s happened, chief turned himself in!!!”

everyone: “WTF?!” except ah zhi, who literally packs up and leaves

Domestic TY and SF

SF comes downstairs in the morning and handsome TY has cooked breakfast for him, and SF looks cautious and apprehensive, but TY has obviously decided not to think about ytd’s whatever, and just insists on SF eating breakfast with him

totally NOT a healthy coping mechanism but what can they do? anw SF sits down to eat, and then he’s trying to convince TY to not go for revenge on his own and to pass the person to the police, and TY, cryptic, says: “you investigate on your side. i’ll investigate on my side”

and then jack comes in and says they’ve caught He Hang, the asshole dude from the episode before, and SF is all: “tang yi, no, you can’t-”

and tang yi compromises more or less on this at least: “once i’m done with him, i’ll pass him to you, promise.”

and then SF acquiesces for a moment, that is until his phone rings and he picks it up and goes: “what are you saying? chief has been arrested for dealing drugs?!”

tang yi looks up. THE END.

and you can feel the stress and tension and the foreboding sense from this interaction and i hope this does not mean anything bad for our beloved TY and SF!!!! in any case... we’ll probably get jack x zz tomorrow IF LINE TV DOESN’T CUT IT OUT YOU KNOW?!!!! and yeah SF gets shot tmr - we see shots of him in that baseball jacket in three scenes currently: a scene with zhao zi where he’s investigating something, another scene where SF’s in a restaurant/cafe and finally the shooting scene

very likely ah zhi is discovered as the culprit tomorrow - although my theory is that interpol chief is in on it as well!!! it’d make sense because now if u think about it, if CWH didn’t pay police chief off, then who did? it has to be someone higher than him in position and interpol chief has a standard bad guy vibe, and this would mean that jack is moving interpol chief into a trap as well!!!! LOVE IT

this was a frickin good episode i think. thank god it was 30 min. any shorter again i would have rioted. but all remains to be seen for tmr!!!!

[autismgavemychildvaccines]

Why I’m Ashamed to Be Christian

So, now that I am literally sick of the Measles nonsense (no, fucking literally, working 12+ hour shifts on an incident management team has got me sick and tired enough to call in tomorrow), I’ve decided to do a non PH rant, though it’ll for sure rear it’s fucking head somewhere in here. Instead, let’s tackle something real fun. Religion! Time to buckle up.  In my half fucking awake daze that I was just nudged out of, something really wild hit me. My faith, my belief in a very specific God with a specific book (though I admit that other religions, so long as their origin is not a company or a tool to oppress others on the outset, are valid/likely just as true) makes no God damned sense.  (For reference, here I will claim my most closely related sect as my own; American Evangelism [though if one were to ask in person I’d say “non-denominational”, but historically, the two are close] and will be speaking as a part of a community I used to closely belong to but now have drifted away from on some granola-crunching dumbassery that is “I am a church of one” bullshit. I’ve wanted to be other things, but ever since I left the Freemasons, fuck all else has had much appeal.) So, first things first, Garden of Eden, right? Pretty fucking cool place, some might have even called it a perfect garden, a perfect place for humans and God to interact? But here’s my hang up with it. The trees of Life and Knowledge, and the rule that Adam and Eve could eat of any fruit except those grown upon that pair. Why even fucking have them?

 When I asked that as a kid in a faith based area, they said because it was a test.

 Of what?

 “Well, of our loyalty to God and our Faith, of course”. 

Except again, what the fuck? Like, I get the idea of free-will, in fact I am a huge believer in individual free will (I’ll get to that in a sec), but here’s the stickler here. As any other creative type will tell you, we want our work to take on a life of its own. Like say I wanted to program a remarkably bright AI, and it worked, and all I wanted was for it to recognize me as its creator and to discover and enjoy what home I could make for it. You know what I wouldn’t do? I wouldn’t give an AI, even with some simulated free will, the ability to break certain rules. For example, I wouldn’t allow it unrestricted access to the internet or my personal accounts. I wouldn’t even give it the concept that such things existed, let alone put it right fucking there to be used. That would be a flaw, an imperfection in an otherwise perfect place. And yeah, there’s something to be said for giving free will with not-free consequences, sure. But two things: 1) Don’t be pissed when the thing happens that you allowed to exist in the first place and thus forced it to be a mathematical certainty now that you’re dealing with perhaps the most curious species to ever exist.  2) Don’t go blaming them for a lack of faith. If anything, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, an act that abusers often use to get what they really want and have a thin veneer of an excuse to make happen. Now doesn’t that sound a lot like a good number of the followers of this faith, as opposed to an almighty, omnipotent, powerful being? Hmm, something to consider there, maybe.  Speaking of followers, let’s actually also take a look at some of the prophets that we as American Christians often hold so dear. Now me? I’m a Luke guy, I like Luke. Peaceful, loving gospel for the most part, and I dig it. Peace and love, baby, that’s all I want coming from stories regarding a higher power that we had to hang up like a fucking tapestry to make sure we got all that love. But do you know who I fucking hate, and who I blame the most for how the American chruch is? Paul/Saul of Tarsus. Thiiiiiiiiiiis prick. This fucking Deus Vult Vulture. Actually in many ways, he really is the archetype to the Modern Evangelical fucking anything. Actively participated in the harassing, attempted extinguishing and successful terrorizing of a marginalized group. Then after being hit back for it, literally “seeing the light” and trying to be the fucking vanguard of said group only to lead it down a path where he’s suddenly the appointed expert of anything to do with the issue. And while he does this, he helps create the most violent and bigoted thoughts in the whole of the religion, and is praised for his visions as he says they are truly from God, and can thus act oh so righteously. This right here is a fucking problem, y’all. Like, I know the whole forgiveness idea allows for some mental gymnastics on how this could even happen, but even then to make a genocidal ass-face your de-facto leader aside from Christ himself for the next 2000 years is a fucking flip that even at the 1988 Olympics, if Christians were America, Russia would give them a straight 10/10.    And yet, for many of us, that’s exactly what we’ve done. Hell, we’ve even fallen into the forced victim narrative of the synopsis of this asshole:  “Oh well, you see, I was a heathen and thus I couldn’t help myself, but then like, the God of the people I was killing talked to me and like, now I have to do this (Take on the “burden” of leading the church) as penance for what I couldn’t help myself over.” We’ve fallen for it so much, that it may as well be hard wired into our nervous system to believe anything resembling it, just as we assume if something is flat, green and on a tree, it’s a leaf.  Maybe it’s why we as a religion (and let’s face it, other Abrahamic religions as well) are so damn good at beating down the marginalized while screaming that we are the saints, we’re the sacrificiers trying to make things better. Like, let’s have some modern day fun with this bullshit, man; let’s see how we treated and in many places continue to treat women.  Of the few churches I have been to, 100% of them had one dual-sided message that made me real fuckin’ uncomfortable, fam:  Part 1) That women cannot be trusted onto themselves and thus 2) Men must take control of them and society to not allow for some unspecified “Ridiculous bullshit”.  (as a fair heads up; I do fully recognize non-binary, trans individuals, etc, but for the sake of brevity I’ll be mostly referring to M/F in the traditional sort of way, because opening up Christianity’s treatment of anything regarding gender fluidity is a Ph.D. thesis for another day)  Now, I don’t know about y’all, but I know damn well that out of all the dudes I know, and all the lasses I know, they’re a pretty mixed fuckin’ bunch. It’s almost like their gender assigned at birth doesn’t really affect how reasonable they could be as people nor how much responsibility they should have. Obviously some cultural practices skew this quite a bit in so far that women are expected to take more responsibility, younger, and for less praise, but if anything that should help destroy, not reinforce that message.  And yet, the idea persists so much in Christian circles. And not just by the men themselves, but the women, also. For the longest time of my church going days, the pastor was a woman. She wholly believed it was just and right that her husband be in charge of everything, that women should be loyal to their men in all aspects. Then again, she also (despite recruiting members primarily from college) did not believe in evolution at all, so there’s that in terms of an intellectual hurdle. But regardless, this inherent submissive attitude within the faith (and even the half-hearted and self-congratulatory “Yeah but we REALLY are the ones making the decisions because we can withhold sex if we want” is essentially that too just a smidgen more empowering), when combined with the idea that men should be wholly in-control (which is a breeding ground for toxic masculinity if there ever was) is shameful. It’s what has allowed so much bullshit in the past, including these recent abortion laws. Now, I’m going to cover abortion in another post (I might get to it tomorrow; It’s been on the burner for weeks), but it’s super pertinent here.  We, as a religion, have allowed ourselves to tell women (just as we tell/told minorities before) that they cannot be trusted with their own bodies, that they cannot be trusted when they speak, and most certainly cannot be trusted to truly hold dominion over anything. And that has allowed the most insidious, hateful, bigoted, disgusting things to happen in the name of God. A God that while I am writing this post I still believe in, but my doubts about how genuine the message has ever been is hitting home. One whose words about peace have been ignored when they could be interpreted or pointed to to support war, where the rich can profit off the poor, or to support sexism, because we as men historically have wanted to control “everything of ours”, or to take the very free will we claim to hold so dear from those who need the ability to make their own decisions the most. Words that have been used to hold down good people from making lives better. Words that in the hands of those who wanted, could be profaned and desecrated and thus allow for profane and disturbing events, both on the grand stage of the world and behind the closed doors of any house in some small town. Words which are held up with a wink and a nod so that followers feel included when they are scammed by some fucking fried chicken joint who wants to make more money to fight against equality, or to pay for another $9 million jet for some asshole who croons about how the poor should be grateful they do not have the temptations of the rich.  To other followers, do you not lament that we are this way? That we have been this way for so long? Because I fucking do.  And to those who have been discriminated or marginalized or whatever else against because of your gender or skin colour or situation or victimization or  past deeds of any sort; I’m sorry. Genuinely, truly sorry you have suffered as you have. Sorry for what people have done thinking it was somehow morally or spiritually justified, sorry that they thought they were saving you. And I can assure you that I will never try to lead you as those before me have tried to. Though if it’s all the same, I’d like to get to hear you, and walk beside you. 

[theemichelleb]

The Handmaid's Tale (Hulu Original) - Series Review

What on Earth did I witness in this 2 and half seasons of New Age Gilead/Old Age United States fortune telling horror reality on Netflix?

Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu is definitely a series that will make you open your eyes to the injustices against women happening in real life today and the battle we fight daily to have ownership over what happens to OUR bodies.

I appreciate the men in my life that are horrified by what happens in this show, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are so many more men out there that are fighting to have our real world turn into the fictional world of Gilead from this series. These are the same men that ripped my ancestors from their homes, built America on their backs, and had the nerve to credit themselves as our saviors because of their diluted perspectives of who we are as PEOPLE. Black people are not savages and women are not baby incubators or sex toys created for the pleasure of men!

If you don’t understand how this ties into the real world, look at the abortion laws being passed to control what we do with our bodies. I know I’m late on the topic and it’s because it’s a sore spot for me, but all of these laws passing taking our rights away that help us have a say in when and if we push out human beings no matter the circumstance is for the birds.

When I was a senior in high school, I remember a being in this meeting of sorts with people talking to us about college life and things to look out for or to expect when entering into any institution of high learning. In that meeting, we were informed 1 in 4 women on college campuses are raped and/or sexually assaulted within their college career. ONE IN FOUR! After successfully graduating, being a Resident Assistant for 3 years, and having a multitude of involvement on campus through different organizations and groups, I’ve had my share of experiences with this statistic; which I’m sure is a very different ration now. Unfortunately, I’m pretty positive I can say anybody reading this knows somebody (whether in your knowledge or not) that has been a victim of sexual assault and/or rape.

It took me a while to sit down and watch the Handmaid’s Tale series, not for lack of interest but because of time. I wanted to commit the time to watch it all, digest it all, and allow myself to be angered by it the way I knew I would be. These laws passing and seeing comments referencing them to the show was the catalyst to me getting my time together to truly understand why anybody would suggest that.

If you haven’t seen it and don’t want spoilers, this is where you may want to stop, but if you have seen it or it doesn’t bother you to know the plot in advance come on down this rabbit hole with me then.

WARNING: Spoiler’s below!

June (Elizabeth Moss) is an amazing character that was developed so perfectly for this story. I appreciate the adaptation from the book although I have not read it yet, and I know this story was one that definitely needed to be brought to the big screen. June lives under a totalitarian government which is now known as Gilead, in a time where the human population is in danger of extinction due to a dramatic decrease in births; the future of the US. Women aren’t allowed to own property, work regular jobs, and are themselves considered property of the state to men. The few remaining fertile women are placed in sexual servitude to the commanders of this government and their wives to reproduce and provide these barren women with the children they are unable to bare themselves; they are known as handmaid’s. The remaining women, that are acknowledged as such, play specific roles in the day to day lives of the men in this world; Wives - typically barren women that handle the inner workings of the house hold and take care of their men, Martha’s - barren women that cook and clean, and Aunt’s - barren women that prep monitor and assign handmaid’s into their servitude. But of course there are women that cannot be controlled and are punished for their uselessness and or treason to the society. They… are unwomen; stripped of their dignity and thrown to the colonies to shovel toxic man-made disease filled dirt and die on the outskirts of each city.

How disgusting!

June and her Best Friend, Moira (Samira Wiley - Orange is the New Black), show us two different perspectives in this world. Although, they are different, they are both rebels in their own ways, and help this story unfold to show us just how hard these women have to fight to be considered human; and even then they’re still treated like cattle only destined to serve man. Handmaid’s undeniably have it the worse, however. They are beaten when they step out of line, tagged with a metal clip presenting their serial number, have had their biological children ripped away from them upon being thrown into this slavery, are stripped of their identity to be given a name created from that of their commanders first name to show whom they below to (Of-Fred, Offred), must participate in ceremonial rape once a month to conceive a child for their host home at that moment (as though artificial insemination isn’t a thing we’ve already discovered), complete grocery shopping needs for the home, and stay locked away in a room prepared just for them away from the rest of the inhabitants in the home. Then, on top of all that, if they are so “blessed” to conceive, after carrying a child for 9 months they watch their child be ripped from their arms, placed into the hands of the wife they are handmaid to, and then they’re shipped off to their next posting to do it all again for another family and never see that child again (preferably) either.

I went through so many mixed emotions watching this show, and honestly it’s not a series that I could re-watch. It hits hard, and you have to make it personal because it’s a personal attack on everything we are trying to preserve. It also got me hot to see the blacks and how they react in the show. To be clear, Gilead is a fairly new concept and the American government is still active and trying to regain control over US land from their embassies around the world. June has been in servitude as a handmaid for 3 years, I believe. This isn’t something that’s 100 years down the line and people have only read about slavery and the time before… the time before was literally 2 seconds ago and some of the blacks participating in this tom foolery as though they’ve forgotten what our people already endured in this country.

I’d especially love to slap the little black girl know as Ofmatthew (Ashleigh Throp) in Season 3. I loved her as Delilah in the 100 (another must watch) but this little girl is running up my blood pressure, and I just want her to get her life together! It looked like she may be coming to her senses now that she’s pregnant AGAIN, at the end of Season 3 Episode 5, but who really knows.

Well, there’s not much more to say other than watch this show and start/continue your fight to protect the women you love in this world TODAY, before we make our way to Gilead tomorrow.

Praised be… may the Lord open.

Be D.O.P.E. America… and protect your valuables, stop being children and breaking everything God blessed you with!

Series Premiere Date: April 26, 2017 Where I watched: Hulu

[invincible-selfxmade-punk]

Long post, coming up on my niece’s birthday

It started out to be such an adventure. We initially couldn’t believe our good luck:  a long lost relative wanting to fly us to Washington DC  for an impromptu family reunion to settle some matters over some land my father’s family in Lebanon were selling.

We had always dreamed of visiting DC, but, being poor, a dream was all it was.  Suddenly we were there in this great hotel, hanging out with my Dad’s family who are all rich and cultured and have seen the world.  It was wonderful.

Then, one night before we were to leave, we came back to the hotel and I saw I had texts on my phone, several texts.  They were all from my mom’s side of the family or family friends telling me to call home right away.  The home they were talking about is West Texas, the most backward, hateful, racist spot you can imagine, a place where the Civil War never really took place except in people’s minds and in their limited version of history, the South won.

My mom was a wonderful woman, what I remember of her.  However the kids she had before me with another husband might as well have been space aliens for all we had in common.   Being told to call home meant someone had taken someone hostage, someone was in jail, someone was in a mental institution, someone had the SWAT team called on them, someone needed to be talked out of having an abortion, someone had just punched a cop, or someone was going to court over a dispute with their neighbors.

None of these things could be changed by me, especially not me in Washington DC a million miles from home.    So I did my best to ignore them until I couldn’t.

I try to avoid that side of the family as much as I can because any attempt to communicate or help gets me yelled at, cussed out, my inbox filled with hate mail and leads to me having to block relatives on every social network before the make their opinions of me public.   So I got the clever idea to just go stalk their facebook pages rather than talk to them directly in order to find out what was going on.

THIS IS HOW I FOUND OUT MY NIECE HAD KILLED HERSELF.

There are a million details and footnotes to this story but drugs had turned her into another person.  We had once been best friends, more like sisters than anything.  We had grown up together, taken care of each other.  She might as well have been an orphan as both of her parents gave up rights to her and left her with an alcoholic, abusive, shrew of a grandmother.  We were always there for each other until she married a second time and discovered money, plastic surgery and Oxycontin.

“They You took for granted your soul and it’s ours now to steal… NOW YOUR NIGHTMARE COMES TO LIFE…..”

As if this was not enough, being a million miles away, not being able to go home for the funeral and pretty damn sure no one wanted me there anyway, despite what they said, there was more to this anniversary.

At the same time I had three “best” friends turn their backs on me, even though I had just announced I was having a nervous breakdown and needed a break from everyone and for everyone t either treat me gently or give me space.   I had two best friends become best friends with each other and gang up on me and one that it turned out just didn’t give a damn.  These weren’t just random people.   One I had known for 4 years, one I had known for 8 years and one I had known for 25 years.

The two that chose each other over me had made a point of making friends w/ several other friends (online) and rather than have THOSE friends abandon me too, I jumped ship and left them before they could leave me.   Maybe not the most mature thing but how the hell was I to know who cared and who didn’t?  I mean if someone dumps me after 25 years, who’s to say that five year friendship I thought I had actually existed.  So in the end I lost a handful of friends, all of which I’d had for years, and my niece, and my ability to trust anyone ever again.

Sure, I’d been turned on before.  It happened all the time, but when “those girls” turned on me “these friends” were the ones to pick me up, back me up, and keep me sane.  Now “these friends’ were "those girls”.

And so here I am a year later.   I won’t say I’m friendless because I’m not.  However I make every effort to keep myself far apart from the world and only rely on myself no matter how bad things get. Because you never know.   The person who was there for you, the one you told all your secrets to, could be the very one using those very secrets against you tomorrow.

In the end it’s just better to be alone.  I should have learned that years ago with the AFI girls.  I should have learned that after Jimmy’s death when I was kicked out of every A7X community by saying someone should stepped up and forced his ass into rehab.

And maybe I’ll never learn it, but I have learned to be careful.

LeAnn,

I read the news today oh boy About a lucky man who made the GRADE And though the news was rather sad Well I just had to laugh I saw the photograph He blew his mind out in a car He didn’t notice that the lights had changed

I am still mad at you.  I am still so angry that you took this way out, after your step dad did the same, after your aunt did the same, after our best friend in the whole world had her life and the life of her unborn son ripped away from her.  And you just gave it up. And I’m so sorry.  I’m sorry you were abused.  I’m sorry your life did not turn out the way you wanted it.  I’m sorry for the voices in your head and I’m sorry for them men who were supposed to love and protect you and ended up abusing you, terrifying you and ultimately ending your life.  I’m sorry you didn’t call me.  I’m sorry we stopped talking.  I’m sorry I wasn’t there.

I think about the concerts we went to: Danzig Smashing Pumpkins Tesla Pantera

I think of the times we got drunk and should have died.  I think of how we buried your step dad (my brother-in-law) and Margo, our mutual best friend, within weeks of each other.  And having gone through this you still chose to take your life.

I’m so sorry I wasn’t there! I miss you so much it feels like my heart is being torn out from inside my body. I should have wished you a happy birthday.  I should have called you, I should have kept bugging you on facebook even if you kept blocking me.  I should have kept trying.  I thought you were happy, I had no idea.

“Please forgive me I can’t forgive you now”

Well, I’m mad, but I forgive you because I’ve been there.  There are times I’m not sure what kept me from it.  Our family is cursed, you know?  You have to have realized tha

But we all die, right?  Sooner or later. Margo and I used to laugh about how I thought the angels looked like Will Sexton.  Who knows maybe they do.  I think about it a lot and I try not to be scared. I think of you and mom and dad and Mimi and Margo and Jim all waiting for me.

We have 20 years to go.  My internal clock is ticking.  Remember how fast 20 years went?  How one day we were 15 together listening to Poison and trying to make sense of the world, then we blinked and we were 35 and Jim and Margo were dead and we were married?  I only have 20 more years of life left in me and then I will be joining you.

I hope you forgive me, I hope you take me back.  I hope you remember how we were children once and how we kept each other alive when everyone else gave up on us.  I hope you’ll forgive me for not keeping up my end of that promise once you started doing drugs.  I never stopped loving you, I was just hurt.  In 20 years I’ll find you and then we’ll both go find Mom and Margo and Jim.  And speaking of Jim, after you take me to meet Kurt Cobain, there’s a guy named Jimmy Sullivan I want you to meet.  You’ll love him, he’s a lot like Margo.  In fact, I think they may have been separated at birth. 20 years, meet me at the gates.  I’ll be the one w/ all the tattoos that the angels are looking at suspiciously.

t at some point.  It’s just the way of things.

[davidjjohnston3]

7.24.2021'Reflections of a Russian-Romantic-Orthodox-Post-Soviet Obstetrician / Aspiring Catholic-Post-Reformation-Unified-Church Pediatric Neurosurgeon (Divider of Freak-Conjoined Child-Brains) cum. Bethlehem College and Seminary M. Div. Global Studies + Savior of Worldwide North Korean Studies + Policy  + Final Flaming Sword Destroyer of Democrat Intellectual Arrogance, Child-Hate, God-Hate and Anti-Korean Racism' Flaming swords that divide people, change the world, change souls... Russia's determination to remember tragedy as well as mercy and a spirit of gentle adoption whereby they treat students and other young people much different from what I did; also Russian anti-Nazism - everlasting I imagine - in an age when respect-me-or-die attitudes, moral purity, intellectual hubris and Scientism, messianic corporatism and much else are either being accelerated or badly necromanced as everyone tries to settle every little score (an easy way to forget all the starvation, organ-harvesting, betrayal of human promise that is going on every second).  I'm only writing this because it's 7:08 in the morning and it's easier to write than not to write.  Lately I developed the habit of 'Holding the Dream' to paraphrase the title of a Nora Roberts novel about children that I tried to turn in to 'Project 521' in a gentler time.  I read a C.S. Lewis essay though I forget which one, perhaps 'Home,' about being known.  When I read this essay at night it reminds me of a more trusting whole time as does Knausgaard's 'A Time for Everything' whose title is a joke at several levels; a book I'll finish reading, if I even finish 'Autumn' which is my favorite work of his about an unborn daughter, a 'notebook-letter-bouquet' which is a genre I appreciate.For a while I felt I was close to greatness and that my mind and heart were in unison with those I most respect around this globe such as Chancellor John Piper with respect to abortion-culture - playing God - but no matter what I say this is a Maoist era in which power has to be backed by guns or other 'hard' resources.  I was also compelled or perhaps tempted to provide background for my spiritual development which in retrospect attracted 'assassins' who were only interested in cherry-picking my worst moment. I honestly came to feel that there is some 'unconditional evil, unconditional hatred' in some that makes them - no matter how nobly they speak or how hard they worked in the past - determined to destroy something at the end rather than build something or help someone or do what they said they would do.I wondered if I blasphemed someone or something so that God allowed the Prince of Darkness through these people, every professing Christians or family-members.  People are talking about spirit and intellect and insight but forget that Lucifer has all these in abundance.  I've had some delusions and kept responding to people outside of myself.  I learned a lot about people whom understanding was without purpose or profit as a) telling them to themselves, that their expectations were wrong or criminal or sadistic or nihilistic or of the party of 'the protest of ultimate futility' - the messaging whereby someone says ultimately nothing matters or you don't matter - was never going to alter their mindsb) this increased experience of human / spiritual evil didn't really constitute increase of knowledge, wisdom, understanding but only more 'CCP-esque pimp-love lie-fare gas-lighting brain-damage; brick to the head' or to put it more gently a wrong emphasis of factors which distorted mood or disposition as an orchestra with good rehearsal, preparation, and conductor could be eroded in the wrong hands over time, and people were just trying to wear me down in a 'Bleed France White' war of attrition against everything I've tried to be and do  I also realized of late the time had come to give up certain perquisites that I had had in mind to one day gain or 'help myself to.'  At the bottom of my soul I guess I always wanted to cash in; someone else on FB after the miraculous sparing of my life in 2012 started spreading around an experience that I had had with a student in 2012 which was nothing like the K-wave NC-17 version could have been the CCP deepfake character-assassination pretext for WW3 or Covid unrestricted biowarfare against white guys.  Words can't fly back in to the mouth that once let them out and at this point I have no idea what my legacy could be - or in a way hopefully no one even cares anymore although I suspect they keep some version of the story somewhere for a dinner-party IDK why I am saying this; you can reason with some people / try and teach them but if they have no compelling reason to change they might just savage youI wondered lately whether some people really believe.  They want life but their interpretation / understanding or imago of life - who knows?  'Tomorrow will be like today only more so' (Isaiah, mutatis mutandis).  They might love life or hate life but they want it and they also often don't care where it comes from, which is part of why right now the debate over social justice or the fact that so much in the United States comes from outside of the United States, or the fact that poor Millennials et al. are often still unable to get married and have children while Boomers ride emperor-on-palanquin- style on top of the Social Security system and reproach us for believing, like the title of a novel about Shanghai, 'What We Were Promised' at the breakfast-table or in (public, Democrato-Maoist-intellectual-town-bike-fruitbasket) schools about freedom, self-esteem, magic - world peace, nuclear disarmament, the 'salvation' of the natural environment, outer space, technology, non-traditional families, racial reconciliation, international adjudication of breaches of international law and esp. enforcement of human rights.  It struck me several times in recent months and years that the rulers, the sovereigns, the princes and great captains of the nations I admire such as Israel and Korea were often either a) special forces soldiers (such as Moon Jaein, Ehud Barak)b) human rights lawyers (Roh Moohyun, Moon Jaein again)c) spies (the individual who might actually have closest to total control of world-events right now; or at least the ultimate veto of everything and everyone, with variable selectivity and specificity / detail) I don't know if I was overreacting or what; I was comfortable with my 'modest income' from mental illness and felt adequately justified since I was engaged in respectable activities; I felt I hadn't really had a moment's rest in life since I was about 4, constantly shot at, judged, abused, thrown to wolves etc. and blamed for my own problems since I 'didn't "make" daddy____.'   I even believed I had a chance to re-emerge since everyone amid Covid appears to be essentially on the same side.  Before recent events I event felt an 'FDR-moment' / 'New Deal moment' was feasible under Biden though I now see clearly I believe that JRBJr. can't control his underlings, staff, et al. as FDR was able to do; and America and the world are simply too complicated.  Vladimir Putin was saying - and he doesn't always lie - basically that constitutional democracies are too weak.  Neoliberal+ shills, 'Wahh bureaucracy, Milton Friedman, grist for our mill, cliche, cliche, eat the poor, abandon the weak, post-partum-abortion, God is dead' but a lot of these people are part of a bureaucracy as well and Russia's got government bureaus, CCP does, Korea does.  Anyone who ever loved or admired Confucius or studied China knows - though many such as Ezra Vogel and Tu Weiming and some dumb-ass Australians and Indian-Singaporean pervert this knowledge for pleasure and profit - what can be achieved through sincere, spiritual, loving, reverent, educated, talented, qualified, also beauty-loving, statecraft.I guess the only question in a way is whether Microsoft themselves have nuclear weapons or Google built the guidance-systems or something and that's not an LRB title though if I had lived a purer life to this point I might be on staff there or at least they'd welcome me in the cake-shop.  Howbeit at this point my 'last wish' is kind of to die in Korea where they journalists are NOT affected or mercenary, and the rag-picking of ppl like me is not fake or ultimately egocentric / meretricious / simulacrum or sham-virtue (again I hate to talk about Nietzsche since I wanted to move on to just David Platt, Saint Augustine, John Piper, John MacArthur, global Christianity 2022).  Korea's also, I noticed, a country where the Covid body-account appears to be honest and I know for a fact, as Dr., Prof, much else Eric Feigl-Ding has been talking about on Twitter about 25 hours a day, a country in which the Democrat mentality of 'you got sick you're stupid' or the Milwaukee mentality of 'you got sick bypass watch you die joke at bar but we're still good Christians South Park Satan must be good to be evil sometimes' isn't in effect and people have resolved to do everything they can both to prevent and to mitigate as well to contain or pocket though no one wants to talk much about that.  Like I said the other day I wish I were in Korea; I also had a dream about one of those free-standing station-stops in rural Japan that reminded me of 'Cafe Lumiere' by Hou Hsiao Hsien and a conversation I had with Prof. Ban Wang fmr. Rutgers and last I checked Stanford about how Japan had built these intricate rail-systems in order to help preserve rural culture.  Another good film about rural Japan is 'Hanamizuki' although IDK if post-Covid anyone is going to want to talk again about micro-sized kindergartens, the Iraq War, fishing, the meanings of trees, following through on commitments or promises, or returning gratitude and love.  IDK whether the stuff I read over the last 5-10 years about housing-prices in places like rural Japan or, alternatively, Vladivostok are as low as I've read but if they have good internet I might go if only b/c  people there aren't interested in teaching you every lesson or extracting the max. from you then leaving you to die in the name of 'getting to know one.'  There's a short Somerset Maugham book called 'The Moon and Sixpence' though I don't admire Maugham that much and prefer his literary criticism / critical appreciations of other writers and cultures to his fiction but it feels like what some people are looking for today is more like 'huge amounts of money, charming personality, offer we can't refuse, satisfying sexual favor or we either vivisect you or pozz you up with 1st-gen anti-psychotics / kill you with ECT and still deny the exist of God, as well as demons.'My other privileged Millennial friends are all mad at me for not bearing fruit and my 'last love' said I dishonored my parents but Koreans  & maybe they don't get just how much Mark Johnston et al. are totally committed to reversing course at the most destructive possible moments and never paying what they said they'd pay; like how terrorists will sometimes detonate one bomb for the civilians and another for the first responders on the scene - though maybe I just ran out of chances.

[sweetnestor]

On Days Like This | Chapter 10

teamiplier + oc, romantic/angst/platonic

PREVIOUS FICS (if you’re new here then I suggest reading these first)

previous chapter

@bellasanti: I have found a song that has bested me…

Attached to the tweet was a clip of me singing “Love Me Or Leave Me” by Little Mix, particularly all the high notes towards the end of the song. My face was contorted as I tried to hit every one, and it was difficult. Not to toot my own horn, but I could usually sing risky songs like that with next to no problem, but with this song… my voice cracked several times.

Or maybe I couldn’t sing it because it made me feel really, unbearably guilty. But Dan knew the song on piano and when he started playing it, I couldn’t just tell him to stop! Then, Mark took my phone and started recording, so I was really in deep and couldn’t dig myself out.

I watched back the clip, shaking my head and cringing at myself as I walked around the stage. Mark and Dan were mindlessly playing tunes, waiting for me to join them again. I closed the Twitter app and went to my texts, opening up my conversation with Ethan. Nothing new, not even an indication that he was typing. Our silence gave me a lot of room to listen to music and clear my head. But all I could think of was how hard Ethan had cried yesterday, and all the things he said… how I treated him prior to all of that…

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I joined Mark and Dan once again. We continued rehearsing the acoustic set, or the one acapella song in our set.

Little Mix kept circling my head as we sang. I distinctly remembered watching a video of the group singing this particular song, The End, for the first time. When Perrie Edwards was in the middle of singing her solo (ironically, the same solo I took on), she burst into tears and couldn’t finish the song. Every time I listened to that song, that was what I thought of. I’m not saying that I had a meltdown while rehearsing or performing on stage, but god that moment resonated with me deeply.

I felt just like Perrie by the time my rehearsal was done. Although, I didn’t feel as crappy as I did yesterday, when I practically hid in the bathrooms in the hotel lobby, silently crying my eyes out until after midnight. By the time I had returned to my room, Ethan was gone, having spent the night in one of his friends’ rooms. I was glad there wasn’t a show yesterday, I wasn’t sure how either of us would have done it.

Today was different. The circumstances required me to remain civil and strong faced. Just, not right this second. I spent the last hour singing while remaining calm and collected. This hour was dedicated to letting my mascara run down my face. The next hour would be for holding myself together again.

The security guard walking me to the bus was decent enough to act like I wasn’t on the verge of tears. I silently thanked him as I climbed the steps onto the vehicle, and I nearly collided into someone coming off.

It was Tyler. My plan to wallow and feel sorry for myself alone was now ruined. I sidestepped past him to the couch, and he followed my trail.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, concerned.

I shook my head as I started to cry more. I hadn’t talked about my dumb issues with anyone on this tour, why start now? Tyler was patient and persistent, though.

“I know there’s a lot going on right now,” he told me. “Things are hectic, it’s overwhelming. You can talk about it, it’s okay.”

It was stuck in my throat. But I only had one hour, and I already used up ten minutes. How could I explain anything that I was feeling?

“W-We keep f-fighting!” I cried after a moment. “We’re just r-ripping our heads off!”

Tyler didn’t need to ask who I was talking about. “Fighting about what, if I may ask?”

I thought my boyfriend cheated and vice versa. He treats me like I’m broken, I treat him like he’s nothing. My body pushed out dead offspring and it’s fucking with our heads a lot more than we - or, I - would like to admit.

I sniffed and wiped my eyes. Here we go. “I-It started with the miscarriage…”

“Is that what happened when you went to the hospital?” Tyler asked after a moment of silence.

“You didn’t know?” That was a bit of a surprise, given all the attention I got when I returned from the hospital. I thought of all the people coddling me and shunting Ethan to the side, and then I felt guilty.

“No, well… when the paramedics took you away, Kathryn shielded everyone from your bunk,” he explained. “She and Amy cleaned up and made some calls to get you a new mattress. Mark suggested to just switch buses altogether, y’know, for your sake, but that couldn’t be done.”

My stomach turned, and my cheeks heated up. I wasn’t sure why Kathryn and Amy would go through that for me. I couldn’t imagine anyone here making a fuss like that, not even Ethan. Why would they?

“A couple of people asked what happened,” Tyler went on, “but Kathryn was a little shaken up after you left. And I don’t think she wanted to breach your privacy, because she didn’t tell. But most of us saw the bloodstains.”

“So everyone knows it was a miscarriage?” I asked nervously. I made a mental note to attempt to hug Kathryn later. “Because no one’s asked me.”

He hesitated, thinking about it. “There’s been some talk. Don’t take this the wrong way-”

“Oh no.”

“-but you’ve been kind of… ah, unapproachable since the hospital,” Tyler admitted. “I know, and so do Mark, Amy, Kathryn, and Ethan - we know you have to put on a front to deal with all of this. But, I think you’re trying so hard to be strong and unaffected by what happened that you just… look very intimidating in front of everyone else… and a little mean, too.”

Abort! Abort! Abort! Pack it up, boys, we’re going home! Let’s never show our face here again!

“Oh…” More tears welled up in my eyes.

“I understand that this is how you cope, but don’t shut out others when they want to help. You’re never going to be alone.”

He put his arm around me as I momentarily fell apart. I guess I didn’t really have to talk in order to open up. I just had to trust the person enough to be vulnerable around them. The only I people I trusted were Jack, who wasn’t here anymore, and Ethan, who didn’t want me here. But now I was crying on Tyler’s shoulder, because he conveniently caught me in a moment of need.

We pulled away from each other when the door to the bus opened. Someone must have been sent to drag us to the stage. I quickly wiped at my eyes and nose, only to look up and find Ethan entering the confined space.

His eyes were shiny with his own tears. However, he stopped in his tracks when he spotted me and Tyler on the couch. It looked like Ethan was trying to figure out what was happening just before he entered, and when he came to a conclusion, he turned on his heel and left.

“Wait!” Tyler called, then he nudged me. “Go after him!”

“I can’t,” I told him, despite how nervous it made me. “We agreed not to fight today.”

“So you’re just going to let him leave feeling like that? On top of everything else that’s going on?”

The guilt already sitting in my chest only struck harder. I looked at Tyler as if to say, “please don’t make me…” He stood his ground, though, so I took a quick look in the bathroom mirror and erased the mascara trail from under my eyes. Then, I sped off the bus.

I found him in the dressing room he shared with Dan, except Dan wasn’t there. The door was open, but I still knocked, seeing that Ethan was sitting at the vanity, typing on his phone.

“Hey,” he greeted, like he hadn’t been in tears a few minutes prior. He turned his head towards me, offering a smile.

Weirdly enough, it made me anxious. I fumbled on my words as I tried to explain what had happened on the bus, but Ethan stood up and stopped me.

“It’s okay,” he told me, offering his hand. “We’re not fighting today, remember?”

I stepped into the room as I took his hand. It was a little relieving that we hadn’t resorted to yelling and crying again. At the same time, the physical affection was just increasing my anxiety. What was the purpose for this? Was he just killing me with kindness?

Ethan’s gaze was a little much, too. Then again, I couldn’t really remember the last time I actually looked him in the eyes. I almost forgot how pretty they were…

Next thing I knew, he was pressing me up against the wall next to the door, which was still wide open. His hands tightly gripped my waist, and then he was kissing me full on the mouth. I was surprised, to say the least, but I couldn’t stop him. My hands found his shoulders, naturally pulling him in closer.

I wanted to blame lingering hormones on my sudden surge of lust, but it was Ethan keeping me trapped between him and the wall. He knew what I liked, and he was using it against me. He could get me to do whatever he wanted in this position. He had my bottom lip between his teeth, and he kept me in place with his body pressed up against mine.

The sound of a door closing down the hall pulled us apart. My breath was taken away as Ethan stepped away from me. Rationality was starting to return. Today was a non-fighting day, but we were still mad at each other, right?

“Why…?” I whispered, like I was still trying to come back to earth.

“I don’t remember the last time I kissed you,” he admitted, now a little timid. “And because I love you.”

“I lo-”

“No,” he said, much to my surprise. “You'd only be saying it because I kissed you. You can't say things when you're emotional. Isn't that what you told me?”

My cheeks grew even warmer. There were quite a few things Ethan failed to remember about us, like anniversaries, birthdays, and little things about me. I was not expecting him to remember that particular thing I told him many months ago. I could only stare at the ground, embarrassed and still blown away from the random kiss.

“I don't know what I did to make you stop loving me,” Ethan continued, “but we'll fight about that tomorrow, okay?”

Well, if I said it now, he would think it's because I'm obligated. My feelings of lust turned into heavy guilt. I watched Ethan leave without another word, feeling even worse.

The only person I texted that day was my sponsor.

______

next