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sunaswife · 4 years

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Summary: It’s been five years since you’ve seen your ex, Rin. He’s still not over you and you’re not over him. When he finds out you have children he thought he didn’t have a chance. Then he finds out they’re his? All of a sudden you’re teaching Suna how to be a single dad.

🔪: <3 thanks for all the support so far

Warnings: Fluff, angst I guess, drama, and cuteness twin overload

Previously Up Next Masterlist

Chapter Thirteen

“Kuroo-San I’m very flattered but in reality I’m seeing someone.” You chuckled awkwardly as you both walked to the lounge after today’s game. “Really?! Since when! About a month ago during the black Jackals game you just said you were a single mom!” He exclaimed. “Well..in reality..I’m trying to make amends with the father of my children. We were both dumb and immature but now since we’re older, we can have a decent conversation. And I still have feelings for him in a way and he’s already confessed..so...” you scratched the back on your head. “Have you accepted his confession..?” He asked. “Well..I mean I kind of changed the subject..” you replied awkwardly. “Poor guy..” he put his hand on his chest as if he felt the pain. “Well it’s not right to pressure someone into going on a date with them so I’m sorry. I was out of line. And I hope everything goes well between you and Rintarou.” He said with a soft smile. He patted your head and walked away down the other hall, you just stood there dumbfounded. How does he know Rin is the dad..?

You haven’t checked social media or sports news so you’re not sure if people already know. You made you way into the lounge and opened your small locker. You took out your purse and walked to your car, you tried walking as fast as possible to avoid talking to people and when you were in the comfort of your car you took out your phone.

Your eyes widened at the amount of phone calls and messages Rin sent. You didn’t even have a chance to read the messages since you decided to call back Rin and wonder what is going on. “It’s about time you answer.” He immediately gritted, he obviously sounded pissed. “Excuse me?” You immediately said with such confusion.

Does he seriously think he can get away with talking to you like that?

“I said it’s about time you fucking answered. Why weren’t you answering my calls or messages?” He asked. “I was obviously working.” You said in a duh tone. “Is something wrong?” You asked. “YES something is wrong! My son almost died and I didn’t know what to do!”

Your heart dropped. He almost...died..? “W-wait—“ you shook your head. “What do you mean he almost died?” You asked. “He had an allergy attack and I had to use an epipen. I didn’t know what to do at the hospital. I rarely had any information. You never told me if the kids had insurance or anything.” “Is Rini okay?” You immediately asked. “Yes he’s fine. But you didn—“

“I’m on my way. For the next eight hours, think before you speak, okay? Don’t say anything you’ll regret.” You warned. “Whatever.” He muttered and hung up. Immediately your heart clenched and you threw your phone at the passenger seat. You rubbed your face and leaned forward and gripped the steering wheel.

“What the fuck.” You sighed. Throughout the drive back to Hyogo your hands began shaking thinking about your kids and Rin. The kids went through something traumatic, and you weren’t there to help them or to protect them. What kind of mother are you? You wanted to slap yourself so hard, jump off a cliff. Receive some sort of punishment for being such a stupid mother and trusting Rin with your children.

After a few hours, your makeup needed a touch up, your hair was a mess for running your hands through your hair hoping your son is okay. Your eyes felt droopy. You’ve only slept a good six hours between drives and it’s way past midnight. The sun began to rise and you finally passed the billboard welcoming you to the hyogo prefecture. You went to the hospital Rin said they were at and you quickly parked and made your way inside.

The poor lady in the office seemed startled at your appearance, your clothes were wrinkled, and your shirt was untucked and unbuttoned from the top, you had bags under your eyes, you were a whole mess. When she gave the room number you slipped off your heels and began jogging to your location. The door was opened so you peeked in and saw your daughter playing with her fox plush on the uncomfortable couch chair.

It was like she sensed you so she looked up and you made eye contact with your little girl. Her eyes immediately watered and she hopped off the chair crying. “Mommy!” She sobbed and you immediately bent down to pick her up. You held her close and her grip tightened around your shoulders. “Rini doesn’t feel good..” she mumbled in your ear. “I know baby, I know.” You answered and dropped your heels by the entrance.

You made you way inside and saw Rin hunched over on the bed sleeping. He was holding Rini’s hand who was also asleep. He looked alright and you sighed in relief. “Have you slept, Akira?” You asked and she nodded. “I slept with Rini, but grandma wanted me to go back home with her. But Rini needed me. He’s my twin.” She wiped her eyes and slightly pulled away. You neared the other side of the bed and pulled the lounge chair closer so you can sit. Akira was on your left thigh with her head still on your shoulder. You looked at Rini sleeping and you brushed some hair out of his face. He slowly opened his eyes and he smiled lazily, “I missed you momma..” he mumbled. “I missed you too. I came as fast as I could.” You assured. “I was so scared.” He admitted. “I know..and I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help you.” Your eyes began to water. “Don’t cry mommy.... then I’ll cry..” Rini held your hand with his free hand.

Your wiped under your eyes with the sleeve of your blazer to stop the tears from falling and you smiled again. “Okay I won’t cry.” You said and released a breath. “Can you sing me a song?” Akira asked in your neck, “Yeah I want a song too, please.” Rini pouted and you nodded. They had a favorite song from a certain show that they enjoyed the most. You began to sing softly and Rini squeezed your hand and Akira began to fall asleep again.

I always thought I might be bad

Now I'm sure that it's true

'Cause I think you're so good

And I'm nothing like you

Look at you go

I just adore you

I wish that I knew

What makes you think I'm so special

You saw as Rini’s eyes began to close so he could fall back to sleep, you heard snoring right in your ear and realized Akira knocked out as well. “You have a beautiful voice.” Rin said softly as he rested his head on the side of his arm. “Sorry that I woke you up.” You quickly apologized. “No it’s fine..” he yawned and slowly sat up. He winced slightly, “Damn I need to see a chiropractor.” He muttered and you released a small chuckle. “Me too.” You said.

“So is Rini okay? What happened?” You asked and he sighed and looked into your eyes. “My mom got some burgers from a restaurant where peanut oil is used. She didn’t know Rini was allergic and I didn’t check the bag.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” You raised your voice and his eyes widened. “Your mom almost killed our son and you blame me for leaving you without any information?” You asked and he looked down guilty. “She didn’t kn—“

“Of course she doesn’t know because all day she was acting like a conceited bitch instead of being a grandmother to her grandkids. She even called me a whore—“

“No she didn’t.” He immediately interrupted. “She didn’t because you stopped her. But that’s what she thinks right? I model for Hana’s company to support her and to build up my self esteem and now I’m a whore? And you had the audacity to talk to me so rudely when I didn’t do anything. If you’re going to be treating me like that then there’s the fucking door. You understand? Never again will I be disrespected by a man.” You said and he had no words.

“You make it seem like I did it on purpose. I was sleep deprived and scared. I felt like I was going to throw up.” Rin squinted his narrow eyes.

“Do you have any idea what I felt when I got a call eight hours away that my son almost died? Imagine how I feel when he calls out to me and I’m not there. I feel like I failed them as a mom, my chest hurts and I’ve always been there. Always. And now I leave them in your hands and something happens and I can’t get there soon? I almost had a panic attack on the drive!” You exclaimed and he stayed silent. He didn’t want to continue fighting. He’s sure the kids are awake and listening to everything.

“I’m sorry.” He said and looked at his hands. He felt defeated and disappointed. You shouldn’t be so hard on him, it’s been less than a month since he took on this role. “Hey look at me.” You called softly, he looked up and you made eye contact once more. “I’m sorry for going off on you like this, I’m just as upset and afraid as you are and I’m sure you haven’t slept much.”

“I could say the same for you, you look like shit.” He cracked a tiny smile and you rolled your eyes with a giggle. “So did your mom eventually decide to be a grandma or she still hates me so she’s not getting close?” You asked. “She went back home to bring some clothes and then to get us some breakfast. I sent her a screenshot of my notes.” He said and you nodded. You obviously still felt uneasy with her, but they deserve a grandma and if she’s being civil you have no reason to take them away from her.

There was a knock at the door and you and Rin immediately turned your heads. “Oh you must be mom..” the doctor said. “Yeah I’m mom.” You said. She explained that Rini stayed longer than usual because he is a child. After a severe allergic reaction there can be aftershocks hours after the person receives treatment and that can lead to a seizure. She praised Rin for quick thinking and following proper steps to insure his child’s safety.

When the doctor left, Rin’s mom waltzes in and she freezes when she sees you. You take a deep breath and release and decide that it’s best to keep quiet. You wouldn’t want a clique animosity between you and your maybe future mother in law.

“I brought Rini some spare clothes.” She said as she opened Rin’s old gym bag. “He doesn’t own that jacket.” You pointed out. Her face flushed slightly, “I know..but this was Rintarou’s favorite jacket when he was his age..I thought it would be nice to wear. I have a lot of Rin’s old baby and child clothes.” She admitted softly, almost scared that you would snap any minute. And you would, so she was wise to walk on eggshells.

“Okay that’s fine.” You gave in. You helped Rini get dressed while Rin was talking to the doctor and getting ready to check out. You walked barefoot down the hall with your pink heels in your right hand, while Akira held your left hand. Rini was holding hands with Suna and Rin’s mom was holding their stuffed animals. She trailed behind you four and saw how you and Rin swung akira with you arms, her little giggles filled the hall releasing serotonin to the patients and nurses nearby.

“Momma aren’t you gonna put your shoes on?” Rini asked, “My feet hurt and I don’t feel like falling.” “But it’s hot outside, you can burn your feet.” Rin spoke up, “I think I’ll be fine.” You assured. He rolled his eyes and let go of the kids. You were about to step on the asphalt of the parking lot after checking both sides and all of a sudden you’re being knocked back from your legs and carried bridal style. “RINTAROU PUT ME DOWN THIS INSTANT.”

“Nah.”

The kids giggled at their parents funny behavior, you kicked the air and squirmed but his grip tightened. “Do you really wanna get down?” He asked and you said yes. He pretended to drop you and you gripped onto his shirt for dear life and he started laughing. “I swear to God I am going to kick you where the sun doesn’t shine.” You muttered. He finally put you down but you were so distracted you were already at your car.

Karin took the kids to her car since the car seats are in there, so now it’s just you and Rin. “You give me a headache.” You told him. “But you love this headache—“ both your eyes widened and he stopped, “—sorry.” He immediately apologized.

You turned away to yawn and you muttered an it’s okay. He opened the car door for you just like old times, much to your dismay and he closed it when you entered. You put on your seatbelt and he fixed the seat and complained at how tiny you were. He was expecting you to fight back and bicker but you were already asleep.

He leaned forward and fixed your head so you wouldn’t hurt your neck. He started the car and began driving back home. He saw the two empty cups of coffee and some energy bar wrappers on the floor. The phone wasn’t playing any music but the volume was up to 20. You must have been so tired driving all last night and the night before for nine straight hours. No wonder you blasted music to keep you up and drank coffee.

He soon made it home and tried waking you up, but you didn’t budge. Not even shaking you work. You were a muttering unconscious mess when he helped you out and carried you bridal style once again. His mom let him in and he told Akira to unroll the futon in the living room since he couldn’t take you upstairs. He successfully placed you down and helped take of your blazer, he thanked god you were wearing an undershirt thanks to akira checking (no somnophilia shit here atm) and he helped unbutton your dress shirt so you wouldn’t feel hot. He put a light blanket over you. “Can’t believe I have to get you ready for bed like a child.” He muttered with a shake of his head. “Silence bottom, it’s mimi’s time.” You said in your sleep.

The kids ate their breakfast in the car as well as Karin. They were already awake and playing with Chewy outside again. “Mom.” He called, “Yes?” She asked from the kitchen. “Can I borrow your makeup wipes?” He asked. She smiled softly, looking out the window to check on the kids. “Yeah go ahead, they’re in the bathroom.”

Rin came back with the wipes and began wiping the makeup off your face. He didn’t want to press too hard to hurt you. But damn, this makeup was hard to take off. Finally you slept comfortably without makeup, without any interruptions. “Sweet dreams, love.” He smiled and moved the hair away from your face.

He stood up and grabbed the bag with all the kids school stuff and sat in the picnic table outside. “Alright you rascals time for school!” He yelled and the kids yelled an okay and went to join their dad.

“Hey dad..” Rini said. “What’s up?” Rin looked at his son, “I love you a lot. To infinity and beyond. Mama says that’s called unconditional love.” He said and Rin smiled with a nod. “Exactly, and I love you two unconditionally as well.” He said and Akira peered up from her work sheet. “Do you love mom unconditionally?” She asked Rintarou.

“Yeah. Yeah I do.”

Fun facts:

Someone asked me to do fun facts and if I had any for future chapters so here I go

The song YN sang is love like you from Steven universe but this is my fav version.

‘Mimi’s’ means sleeping time, Akira didn’t know how to say sleeping when she was a toddler so she would say Mimi’s cuz uncle Oikawa would say “es tiempo de dormir.” Which means ‘it’s time to sleep’. So MIMIS is taken for the ‘mir’ in dormir. (Sorry that was a long explanation) (if you live in a Mexican household then u might usually hear this)

YN drives a Black Honda CR-V (nice mom van) ☺️ while Rin has a White Nissan GT-R but he’s thinking of trading it in for a four door sports car to take the kids and yn along

Rin still has his old black mustang in a garage rental back in Tokyo where he would drive with YN everywhere. He wants to fix it up and gift it to one of his kids when they’re older 🥺

Idk why I’m talking about cars

Rin was a blushing mess when he was getting yn ready for bed and his heart stopped when she snuggled into him

After he admitted he loved YN unconditionally, Akira called him a simp

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#haikyuu suna #suna rintarō #miya atsumu #miya osamu #suna rintarou fluff #suna x reader #haikyuu!! x reader #haikyuu x you #Haikyuu au #suna rintaro x reader #suna x y/n

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parismemes · 4 years

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SENTENCE STARTERS FROM RED VS. BLUE SEASON 15

“you touch my baked beans, i put dog shit in your pillowcase.” “every other person in this miserable place is literal garbage.” “books on tape? what's the appeal of that? don't the pages get stuck together?” “when in doubt use a confusing acronym. military types love acronyms.” “FML. that stands for fu--” “i’ll bend down and kiss your boots, how’s that?” “i wanna know every step you take and how much shit gets stuck on your shoes and in-between your teeth.” “you know, i think i'll probably move to LA, but that's like what everyone does. i mean, what do you think?” “i’m gonna skin your cat for this.” “i’m actually thinking of adopting a stage name.” “i’m gonna smash cut your empty skull against that rock if you don’t shut the fuck up!” “i wanted to call it desert titties, but that shit was taken.” “ah, there goes the bechdel test.” “you should interview the illuminati!” “real talk here: i'll be your genie in a bottle, i'll do whatever you want, but after i grant you your three wishes, you gotta do something for me, whaddaya say?” “my ceaseless existence is an eternal torment!” “next time he calls you please, just, let it go to voicemail. don't transfer to me. okay?” “i can’t even hear myself think in this blizzard of idiocy!” “did you attempt to witness any other particular individuals in the general vicinity of the area in which the crime scene was alleged?” “i just wanna be included!” “funny, the vultures usually show up after the slaughter.” “you’re a little bit crazy, aren’t you? i like that.” “consequences... don't always take the shape we expect them to, do they? they're funny like that.” “...are we still married?” “people are quick to jump to conclusions. they see something, or hear something, and fit it into a preconceived emotional box.” “please don’t make me regret what i’m about to tell you.” “whoa, hold up--i just realized how much i don’t care.” “SUCK IT, NEWTON!” “we said we wouldn’t talk about that!” “help me be the best at being lazy.” “it was a simple mishap with my vanilla-satin scented candles!” “why is he naked?” “HOW DO YOU BURN DOWN A WATER PARK, ___?!” “we’re definitely not just saying that because she could kill us.” “for far too long our people have been oppressed, crushed, under the weight of ourselves! if we don't start standing up to our mortal foe gravity, by god, who will?” “we’ve never needed intelligence before!” “why doesn’t anybody die and stay dead?” “oh, cool! foreshadowing.” “who wants a poisoned pumpkin frappuccino?” “i quit. i’m not going. i’m staying here.” “you’ve always been selfish, but this is bullshit!” “you know, i liked them better when they were funny.” “it’s a bop-it.” “sleep. means. death!” “i know ___ said we should split up, but i was thinking maybe we split up together, you know, because it's scary!” “you talk about ___ a lot.” “this is a big city. so many places for snakes to hide. they could be everywhere all around us. watching us... licking their snake lips...” “jesus, doesn’t anybody speak esperanto?” “err is not a word.” “why do you look alone?” “why don't you tell us what's going on, and we can decide whether to kill you or not?” “looks like we've got quite the sticky mess on our hands!” “oh, i know all about sausage parties! uh, wait, that came out wrong.” “when I least expect it: whambo! you pry open my mind prison and suck out my brain beans!” “i realize now that i’ve just spilled all my brain beans.” “we're just a bunch of dumb rejects hurling ourselves against impossible odds.” “i’m only saying something because i’ve been used enough times in my life already.” “nice! super awesome of you guys! that was sarcastic.” “don’t care. just help me with my dramatic exit.” “that's a great idea! i was just about to suggest it.” “i always say a marine without a code is like a car without a road.” “i always say the best defense is a really tall fence.” “i always say a good soldier is like a rollin’ boulder.” “i always say a mantra a day keeps death at bay.” “i've grown soft around these uncultured philistines.” “goddamn, i can’t believe i have to hear this shit in stereo now.” “you two look cozy.” “i didn’t realize you two were close.” “you’re being too hard on yourself. you’ve changed over the years, i’ve seen it myself.” “i've grown from being a dishonorable killing machine to an honorable killing machine. that's quite the journey.” “i changed my mind. you are evil.” “you don’t have to destroy the past to have a future.” “strategizing can wait until breakfast, at least.” “i killed them. i MURDERED them. i set my vengeance free upon them and it felt so good!” “are we gonna do some snooping around?” “have you ever considered a life in showbusiness?” “try harder, fuckface!” “can we please just bury the hatchet and focus on what's important?” “your mother’s lasagna is mediocre!” “if you guys had to get shot somewhere in your body, where would you do it?” “i can't hear you because some idiot shot my ear off!” “this whole situation is garbage enough to begin with, but... at least we're in it together.” “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.” “the only thing that would make this better is some music.” “we were pawns in their game. but the thing that I love about chess is that sometimes pawns kill kings.” “no, actually, i was raised by wolves. in the forest.” “sometimes i feel like people barely acknowledge my presence.” “something weird might be going on around here.” “anyone who's acting that squeaky clean must have some deep dark secrets.” “ha! gotcha! that's exactly the kind of things bad guys say!” “they used us, they destroyed our lives, and they haven't been made to pay for what they've done.” “you obviously love the sound of your own voice, so why don't you use it to tell its where the fuck our friends are?” “i’m going to kill you so hard, you’ll wish you were dead.” “we fought alongside each other for fucking years. how can you just turn your backs on us like this?” “you don't get to give orders if you're on the bad guys' side!” “now I have gonorrhea and a dead friend.” “stop. touching. my face.” “buckets! oodles! oodles of noodles and toaster strudels! tiempo de mucho. mucho de tiempo!" “yeah, well, i don't remember you being anything but a huge dick, but here you are being cool, so people change.” “yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers!” “but.. i never got to say goodbye. or thank you for being my friend.” “i'm gonna need a week at the chiropractor when we get out of here.” “is it possible to hallucinate with your ears?” “i’m not here to kill you.” “uh-oh spaghetti-o’s.” “fuck me! fuck all of this!” “you should totally kill me if it strikes your fancy! no pressure!” “the world's best swordsman doesn't fear the second best. He fears the worst, because he can't predict what the idiot will do.” “i can't imagine us doing anything but making this all worse.” “shit, dude! you’re the best we’ve got!” “i like pushing small children down wells.” “can we please settle on a consistent denomination? are we using cardinal directions or are we using clock positions?” “i'm so sneaky. they don't even know what's happening. you can't even see me right now, ___. you're so confused.” “shut up and help me punch this fucking tank!” “as far as days to die go, it's a little overcast. so let's check our corners and make these bastards pay!” “let's light the fires and kick the tires!” “let’s dance with these monkeys and give ‘em what for!” “let's put the pedal to the metal and the rubber to the road!” “let’s get jiggy with it!” “let’s shoot this monkey full of heroin and put it on youtube! actually, let's not do that, it sounds completely horrible.” “let’s teach these midgets how to tango!” “honor, schmonor.” “scout's honor! except I was never a scout because I'm afraid of badges.” “why are we here?” “we don't know why we're here. it's still one of life's great mysteries, isn't it?” “i’m sorry i tried to kill you, it wasn’t personal!” “you'll be stuck between a rock and the frying pan.” “if i said that i would weep for them, would it make you feel any better?” “best friends should be able to say goodbye.” “i think you are cool. like, super awesome, amazing, cool and... i, i always felt like really awesome too, when we were hanging out together.” “i know with my other friends--who, even if you add them all up together aren't really cool as you--i know we're all gonna be okay.” “if you kill me, you'll just perpetuate this never-ending cycle of revenge and retaliation!” “he asked us to deliver an important message to you all. but then he just sang the ducktales theme song and fell back to sleep.” “you know i’ll never forget this, right? i mean, PTSD is forever, isn’t it?” “it’s not the sum of your parts that makes you who you are.” “these people have shown me that real heroes are not born, they're forged. a friend told me once that there's no fate but what you make. and i think he's right.” “alright, well, i'm just gonna try to forget that ever happened and never bring it up again.”

#sentence starters #rp memes #rp meme #ask memes #ask meme #long post

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atinykidult · 4 years

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The Wind in His Ears — Choi San

[angst w/fluff] [2221 words] — A prompt taken overboard, wherein San loses his heart but finds it again. Disbandment!au, be warned. No tws except for loneliness (and reference of sex, I guess)

[prompt] — Travel!au, strangers to lovers, “That was a very bad idea. 0/10 would not recommend.”

[dedication] — If you like soft or sexy stuff please check out @sanflowerseeds‘s works! They’re phenomenal (and written by an also phenomenal person!) I’m so sorry this took so long! I love you, Nanda, and hope you’re doing well!

[a/n] — This may be my worst fic ever, bc it has gone through so many directional changes. But it’s been a WIP so long, I just wanted it posted haha If you have time, please leave me some notes on what went wrong/right! Thank you for reading!

When Choi San hits his mid-thirties and feels his joints crackle a few decibels too loudly, he knows his body won’t take much more. So when their second round of contract negotiations roll around, his decision has already been made for him.

But when Hongjoong delivers the official group stance, his heart still cracks.

And when they have their final performance, San’s the last one to cry.

Because his tears will last the longest.

The crack in his heart spreads into a veritable canyon in his world.

A scattering wind blows through that empty cavern, pulling Hongjoong to mentoring a new rookie group and Jongho to OST deals. But San gets to stand with Yeosang at his wedding; he grabs coffee with Wooyoung every other week, usually...

So San pretends he’s fine for six months.

After all… Mingi sends memes to the group chat all the time—

And Seonghwa makes sure to Facetime regularly—

San wanders the streets of Seoul, hands stuffed in his pockets, the loud wind in his ears for his only company. At home, whenever he stands up stiffly, there’s only him to laugh at his cracking joints. Well… he laughs at himself, to begin with. Then he doesn’t laugh.

One day, he’s wandering the streets again when he sees it. An ad for a travel agency.

There’s only wind in his ears as he considers it.

“A toast to San!” announces Hongjoong, voice forcibly cheerful. “Who’s going on a world tour!”

Eight glasses are lifted in the air; seven pairs of eyes look incredibly worried.

Someone wraps themselves around San as other voices chime in.

“San, fighting!”

“Let’s gooo!”

“World travel!” someone shouts in English.

San’s heart both heals and breaks again as he looks at his seven friends who dropped everything to wish him well.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” he tells them wetly.

Maybe it’s Jongho’s knowing eyes that make him shed the first tear.

Maybe it’s how the others all know how much he’s hurting, and how utterly relieved San feels to be back with these seven other people.

No matter the reason, San cries at this moment, clinging to his former groupmates as they hug him goodbye. There’s promises to text, proclamations of staying up just for video chats. There’s also seven whispers of the same sentiment: I hope this can help you heal.

He meets you in a coffeeshop. Your coffeeshop, actually.

It’s his second visit, and for some reason, it’s one of his favorite places he’s found in his travels. Something about its atmosphere draws him in. The warmth. The way it has nooks where he can sit and people-watch. The way the food tastes nearly perfect every time. The way it’s so empty when he comes in for his breakfast.

The way it’s just a minute’s walk from his hotel.

Correction: It is his favorite establishment he’s found in his grand travel.

Truthfully...

The “grand travel” hasn’t been so grand. He’s jumped around the world a little, going wherever the wind blows, renting a room for however long the wind calms down. Leaving for the next city or town whenever it gets worse.

On good days, he can look around himself and feel his heart stir a little. Because he’s gotten to see some incredible things.

On bad days, he can feel the wind utterly drop. When it does, he’ll look around himself. He’ll wonder if he really wanted to see Canada that one time. Or if he just chose a country 12 hours different from Korea because maybe, just maybe, flipping his clock completely could flip his life around, too.

Today’s one of the better days, actually.

As he hands you his payment, you offer small talk.

Ask about his day.

He tells you he’s fine, that he could be much worse off, truly believing it. (But also believing he could be much better off, too.)

Something in your gaze seems to understand him.

“And how’s your day?” he offers, his pronunciation a little messy.

“It exists,” you reply.

A mirror of him, at heart.

He comes into your coffeeshop the next day and knows it’s just going to be a daily thing until he leaves this city.

That one booth in the back left corner… It has good seats.

As he settles down with the same order he had gotten the last two days, he catches your eye. Smiles with his lips.

And something about that one thing makes him realize.

He hasn’t truly had anything like this in a while. The same food, three days in a row. Someone who’s met his eyes, three days in a row.

It’s another good day.

The howling wind grows just a little quieter.

“Two orders of today’s special and an einspänner?” you ask as he moves to the counter.

His eyebrows furrow. “Oh?”

“You’ve been here three days straight, exact same order,” you smile, “first customer of the day.”

“Ah.” He takes a moment to gather his words, unsure if this was accusatory or just observation. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I can—”

“No! It’s, ah, it’s nice. You’re always very pleasant, to me.” He recalls that first encounter, how you had seemed to understand the weight of his few words. “Are you a tourist? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before this week.”

“You could say so.”

“Any plans for today?”

The wind pushing him around never made plans.

“Not really,” he admits.

“Taking it as you go?”

“You could say so.” He notices how you look at him with a measuring look. One that makes him feel seen, and he hasn’t felt that way for a very long time. But it isn’t an unwelcome feeling. “Do you have any recommendations? On what to do? Things you like?”

You smile bittersweetly. “I have some ideas.”

“Can you tell me a few?” The words come out of San’s mouth without thinking.

At that moment, the door opens with a whoosh, and another customer steps in.

“Tell... tell you what,” you say. “I have an employee coming in in half an hour. If you would like the company, I can give you those suggestions over a second cup of coffee?”

Meeting your eyes, something in him feels like hiding. But something else in him leaps at the offer. “I’m a slow eater. So yes.”

You smile again, a little wider.

His lips, too, twitch upwards of their own volition.

That day, San makes an itinerary for the first time on his trip—and, maybe, a friend.

After a long day of hiking, San collapses on his hotel room bed and feels a stirring of optimism in his chest. The weariness in his bones almost feels familiar. He had collapsed like this many times after concerts or performances.

He stares at the ceiling, consciously wondering for the first time on this trip, if he’s ready to face the wind.

His eyes land on his suitcase.

His hands move to unpack it.

And the wind in his ears, again, gets a little quieter.

As he walked into your coffeeshop the next day, he asks you to sit with him from the get-go.

You peer into his eyes, spotting equal measures of hope and uncertainty, and immediately drop your paperwork. “Of course.”

His conversation is nice; his personality is nicer. (Possibly his skin is nicest, but that’s irrelevant.)

Your conversations continue, and by the tenth day, you’re sharing the thoughts that sometimes scare you. From your worries about disappointing everyone to wondering if your degrees even mattered... you spill it all out. He does the same.

Which is scary, because you’ve only known him for ten days. Seven, really.

Based on the way he’s ducking his head right now, his story hanging in the air sadly, he must feel similarly.

(He hasn’t told anyone about his story, his sad state, since he left Korea. He doesn’t share every detail, but he says enough that both he and the wind in his ears feel very shaken.)

Forty minutes later, he stands to leave, and you hear some joints crack.

“Maybe the chiropractor?”

His smile in response is remorseful.

You stand, too, and feel your neck crack a little.

“Maybe we both can go?”

And the smile is a little less sad.

You have known San for two weeks now, and today, he enters the shop much more confidently than usual. With a shy smile (but genuine, you realize), he shows you pictures of a lake you had directed him to. He had caught it on a good day. As he lets you scroll through the pictures, you find that someone must have taken his picture for him.

You want to say something meaningful as you study the way his skin has grown so golden in these two weeks. The way his smile reaches his eyes.

“You look nice here,” you say simply.

That shy smile turns larger.

You don’t know if this is a bad habit, dropping everything to share breakfast with San every morning. But, what did it hurt anything? After you asked your employees to come in early to cover for you, they agreed too quickly.

Because they are amazing humans, you think.

And because they are ridiculous humans, they smile knowingly at each other as either you or him look at the other for a moment too long.

And, because you both are pathetic, San and you never notice.

By the third week, you wonder why you haven’t exchanged phone numbers.

Naturally, then, you laugh and casually give him your number after he admits getting lost yesterday.

“I know you’re not a damsel in distress or anything, but next time… just call me if you get lost.”

He doesn’t mean to look at you so intently after that, but he does.

You don’t look away.

Swallowing, he wonders if you can see the lingering sadness he feels, the wind still throwing him off balance sometimes. The weight of knowing how worried his hyungs are for him, the fear that he had done something to his body when he was younger, so it was all his fault somehow...

But as your gaze slips to his lips for just a moment, he also wonders if you are seeing what thousands of fans had once seen. Something worthy.

When your gaze moves back to his eyes, and you start talking about nonsense, he knows: You could see it all, and more, even.

San feels something stir in his chest, something warmer and kinder and more enticing than the thrall of dancing to thousands of cheers.

When he finally finds it in himself to say goodbye, he can’t help but ask. “Can I call you when I’m not lost, too?”

Three days after that, San wakes and feels an impossibly strong urge to sing. Just something bright and loud. Something hopeful.

He pictures your coffeeshop and your face.

And he feels himself smiling widely.

Opening his phone, his fingers type faster than the wind:

Heading your way in 10 :)

That weekend, you go drinking together.

You’re both tipsy, sitting in a bar booth with your sides pressed together, and everything comes to head.

You’re both tipsy and warm, filters long lost, when San pours out the rest of the story to you. The side of the story that the wind in his ears usually hid in white noise.

It’s a euphoric story with deafeningly beautiful highs, but also a heartbreaking one with devastatingly ugly lows. But as he pours out the joys of standing on stage, of the laughter-filled, starlit walks back to the dorms, you know it was worth it to him.

And you also come to know, he didn’t choose to quit.

He keeps pouring drinks; keeps pouring out his emotional, earnest soul.

Midway through the night, your dulled head has just enough awareness to realize you are in love with that soul.

And as you have to wave away another glass, you will always hold onto the magnificent moment when he admits: “But I don’t feel sad about any of it when I’m with you.”

The next day, you wake up at your place. San’s lying beside you.

“Morning,” he groans.

If your head and body didn’t hurt so much, that alone would have inspired you to restart last night’s activities.

“Everything hurts,” you groan.

“Same.”

Your legs are slightly brushing each others, but your torsos aren’t touching. It makes you feel sad. Then something in you melts when he shifts his weight closer to you so they are.

“Are”—you yawn—”we going to that… ugh…. waterfall today?”

“Not after last night.” He buries his face against your hair.

“Yeah…” Your head throbs, and you groan again. “That was a very bad idea, 0/10 would not recommend.”

San makes an offended sound in the back of his throat. “The alcohol or the sex?”

Yawning again, you can barely reply. “You know which one.”

He kisses your head and yawns as well. “Let’s do it again sometime.”

“Soon.”

“Soon?”

“But... not right now.”

After yawning together, he chuckles against your hair. “Yeah, sleep... for now.”

As you both close your eyes again, San can only hear two things:

One, the steady rhythm of your breathing.

Two, the soft hum of your ceiling fan.

He falls asleep knowing:

There’s no wind.

[ateez taglist] — @seongghwaa @s1ardusk @yunwoo @toffee-hwa @yunhowhoitiss @sippn-the-tae @yeocult @barsformars (thank you for your support! I love y’all so much!!! <3 <3 <3)

#ateez #choi san #ateez imagines #ateez x reader #san imagines #choi san imagines #kpop #kpop imagines

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surveys-at-your-service · 4 years

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Survey #334

"i dreamed i was missing / you were so scared / but no one would listen, ‘cuz no one else cared”

Sunrise or sunset? Sunset has prettier colors, imo, but I enjoy the pastel nature of sunrises, too. Are you mentally ill? Oh brother. Are you physically ill? I don't have any serious physical health issues, no. Introvert or extrovert? I'm a very strong introvert. What do you think when you look at your body? That it's fucking disgusting. What have others said when they look at your body? When I was healthy, I was complimented every now and again. With the body I have now? I'm glad people keep their months shut. Do you have a particular song that you feel deeply? There's a good 'ole handful or two. Talk about a time in your life where you have felt most alive? It's weird, I'm not a city person at all, but possibly when I was walking the streets of Chicago with Sara and her dad one evening. There was just so much life, so many new sights, that it was impossible not to. Plus, I was at a very happy point in my life, so. I just enjoyed a lot. Are you confident wearing a bikini? FUCK NO. Have you ever been hurt physically or mentally by a family member? Mentally, obviously. Everyone has at some point. I've never been seriously physically hurt by family, but Mom did spank my sisters and me as kids if we did something wrong. Biggest lie you have told? I don't really know. I get really uncomfortable telling even minor lies, so making a big one would be excruciating. I'm not saying I've never said a biggie, I'm sure in 25 years of life I said something stupid at one point, I just don't remember it. Do you believe in the Illuminati? Nah; there's some compelling evidence, but I just think it's way too big of a secret to keep. Regrets in your life? Blaming the breakup entirely on Jason and saying just plain cruel things to him afterwards. Also sending an appallingly hateful letter to Dad to vent after the divorce. Flirting with my then-best friend's boyfriend at the time behind her back. Dating Tyler (it's a small one, but still a regret). There are others, those are just the only ones coming to me right now. Achievements in your life? Lots of academic success and awards (before college, anyway...), artistic accomplishments like having my work put in a museum, surviving a traumatic breakup, (mostly) recovering from massive depression... What did people say about you in school? Nothing, really. I was a quiet student who just did her work and tried hard. Is there something you have never told anyone? Yes. If you had two days to spend one million dollars how would you spend it? First, I'm paying off college debt. Then Mom gets a new car, followed by me getting new glasses and renewing my permit. I'm getting a good terrarium setup for Venus. Then, it's tattoo time, baby, haha. I can't really do the mental math on how much this all would cost, but those are the high-priority things I can think of. Describe your first kiss? Was it how you imagined? Jason and I were playfighting in bed, and he had me pinned. Our faces were close, and I decided to kiss him. It was a fairy tale moment, in my eyes. He looked so bashful for once (he's far from shy) but also really happy, and I was too. Growing up were you in a wealthy, average, or low income household? Low, I think. Or maybe average, when Dad was still around. Have you been raised by a solo parent? When I was around 17, my parents split, so kinda-sorta. Do you know both your parents? Thankfully, yes. Have you abused drugs or alcohol? No. Are you comfortable accepting compliments? Ehhhh, I really appreciate them and they can make my whole day, but I'm very awkward about it. I get shy. Are you comfortable giving compliments? Oh yes. I honestly love giving compliments; I know how happy they can make me, so why not share that with others? Is any mental illness hindering your life? Guess. (: Is any physical illness hindering your life? Well, it's not an "illness," but the muscles in my legs have severely atrophied from leading such a horribly sedentary lifestyle, and that has greatly affected my ability to work without the risk of just collapsing. Walking at all is painful. Are you preparing for an apocalypse? No. I'm not really one to worry about "prepping." If it happens, it happens, man. I'm not spending loads of money on a "maybe." Are you interested in cults? Not really, no. Are your parents good cooks? Mom is fine, but it's hard to really judge Dad's cooking since he barely ever did it, plus I haven't had his cooking in many, many years. I remember he was great at making breakfast, though. That was like a rare treat, him deciding to make breakfast for everyone. Have you ever been to a chiropractor? Did you like it? No. Do you know anyone who is an actor? No. Have your wisdom teeth come through yet? They never did. Have you ever used a public pay phone? No. Have you ever made an item of clothing? No. Have you taken someone's virginity? No. Is confidence cute? "Confidence, yes. But cockiness and arrogance, no. That’s a whole different area that’s definitely not cute." <<<< Nailed it. Would you be able to date someone who doesn’t make you laugh? Doubt it. Are you one of those people who never drinks soda? No; rather, I drink too much of it. I'm trying really hard to lay off of it, and I drink nowhere near as much as I used to (when oddly enough, I was healthy and fit), but I'm still not comfortable drinking a can and a half a day. Listening to? "Castle of Glass" by Linkin Park. Kinda obsessed. Ever used a bow and arrow? No, but archery is cool. Last time you got a portrait taken by a photographer? I don't think this has happened since my senior shot in HS. Take a vitamin daily? Daily, no, but I really should. I take a Vitamin D capsule every Sunday, though. Favorite Taylor Swift song? I only really like "Love Story" and "Picture to Burn." Have you ever cried because you were so happy? Yeah. Which are better: black or green olives? I don't like olives period, but I guess black. What’s your 3rd favourite animal? Huh, never thought of #3, just #1 and #2: meerkats and opossums. Maybe snakes? Do you like mushrooms? NO. NO NO NO. What dream do you remember most vividly? One I don't talk about. A childhood nickname? Mom called me "Twinkie" and still sometimes does. ;-; Does anyone in "real life" know that you take surveys? Would you be embarrassed if they found your blog? Just Sara. And yes, regarding some people. Who was the last person you blocked on social media? Did you have an argument that lead to that happening? I'm unsure, but probably. I don't tend to just like... randomly block people. What was the first social media account you remember signing up for? Are you still a member of that particular website, if it even still exists? Of course it was MySpace. It's still floating around somewhere in cyberspace. What website from your childhood/teen years do you wish still existed? I get nostalgic over the Animal Planet forums sometimes. Have you ever met up with anyone in real life that you first met via the internet? Did you get on as well as you thought you would? Yes, Sara. I felt like it would go just fine, but it went even better than I expected - I was oddly very comfortable around her and her family. Have you ever tried any of those meal replacement shakes? Are you a fan of things like that in general? Yeah; I tried many brands until I settled for Equate, surprisingly. Cheap does not equate to bad quality, my friends. We always have the chocolate ones in the house, and they're really not bad at all. Are you the kind of person to enjoy taking naps? I love me my daily nap, man. What's your favourite kind of cheese to have on a pizza? Idk, whatever cheese is normally used, lol. What's a hobby you loved when you were younger but no longer enjoy for whatever reason? I guess video editing. I can't say I'd no longer enjoy it at all, but now the idea sounds far more like a chore than fun. Is there a popular food/drink that you can't stand? What is it and why don't you like it? I could name five dozen, but here's just a few: coffee, pie, tea, fried chicken (or is that just a Southern thing to be obsessed with?), and... of course now that I'm asked this question, I'm blanking on the huge number I know exist. As for "why," that varies, but it's either just simply a taste or even a texture thing. How would your wedding boquet look like? I want a gothic-themed wedding, so imagine a mix of black and maroon roses... whew-wee. You’re at a bar, and you witness a man drugging some girl's drink. What do you do? No hesitation, I'm decking the motherfucker. Fuck my fear of men, he's getting knocked out, and I'm immediately alerting the staff, as well as of course the girl. Kids? How many? Why? Names? Boy or girl? Y'know, loads and loads of scaly and hairy ones. Got plenty of name ideas depending on what they are and how they look. The only baby whose gender matters to me is the tarantula because females live waaaay longer. Fuck them human babies, not for me. Are you an organ donor? Absolutely. I sure as hell ain't usin' 'em once I'm dead, so consider it my last act of selflessness. Whats the most you’ve ever lost gambling? I don't gamble. What is something you can never give up (that's not love or family)? My pebble from my "graduation" from my first partial hospitalization program. It's meant to symbolize how great pain and trials can file you into something beautiful. It was passed around group, everyone holding it in their hands as they wished me well and spoke their piece about me. I'm honestly just fighting back tears remembering it. Have you ever waited in line overnight for something? No, I'm way too impatient for that shit.. Do you think having an expensive phone is a good investment? Hm. I guess it depends on what you use it for. Have you ever witnessed a birth in person? A human birth, no fucking thank you. I've only ever seen pet cats give birth. Does anyone in your family smoke? My dad does, big time. He quit drinking, but never quite managed to stay away from cigarettes. Have you ever had a pet escape and run away? Seeing as I grew up with outdoor cats that we couldn't afford to fix, pretty much all of our tomcats left for roving once they came of a certain age. Do any of your exes know each other? Juan and Jason know each other, Jason and Girt know one another as well, and Sara and Girt have met. What’s an opinion you find impossible to take seriously? I simply cannot fathom the belief that "dinosaurs never existed." Explain the fucking fossils, like come the fuck on. It's absolute denial in the name of religion. What was the very first election you voted in? This one that just passed, actually. What is one random fact about you? I want like 20 tarantulas but Mom says no. :( Do you spend a lot of time outdoors in the summer? Fuck no, I will do anything to stay inside in summer. Do you wear band tees? if yes, which one is your favorite? I love band tees, yeah. My Ninja Sex Party shirt is the most comfortable, but comfort aside, it's hard to pick a favorite. Possibly my Otep one, 'cuz the design is dope. Do you ever re-arrange your room? No. What season do you want to get married in? Fall. What is the highest name-brand thing you own? Oh god, I don't own expensive brand stuff. I guess the only exclusion would be my Cloak shirt, but even that's not like, mad pricey. What color GameBoy did you have as a kid? Red. What was your favorite GameBoy game? Maybe that Catz game? Even though the music was the most fucking obnoxious meowing ever lmao. What was the last compliment you remember someone gave to you? Who was it? It was this guy in my PHP group; my therapist surprised the fuck out of me by sharing with everyone my most recent poem (I trust him a lot, and he urges me to send him my art, so I've done that twice), and I nearly fucking died from cardiac arrest. However, this Nick guy, who's a poetry major, told me it was better than stuff he reads in his Master's program. I almost cried. Have you ever personally been friends with a stripper or prostitute? No, not that I'm opposed though or anything. If you have tattoos, which one that you have was the most painful? The one on my inner forearm. Have you ever actually met and talked to someone who’s famous? No. When was the last time you got a parking ticket for anything at all? I never have. Do you have any pets who will bite anyone else out there, besides you? No; Roman won't even come close enough to a stranger TO bite, haha. It's funny, he's so goofy and you'd guess outgoing, but instead, he's terrified of people he doesn't recognize. What’s your favorite type of sushi? I don't eat sushi. What’s your favorite patriotic song? Don't have one. Have you ever read a book about a character in a psych ward? No, and I'd really prefer not to because it would just drag me back to dark times. Have you ever been in a mental hospital as a patient? ^ Have you ever had an ulcer? No. Do you like soy sauce? omfg no What’s your favorite store to browse around? Morph Market. @_@ It's a hub for reptiles for sale, and I have my days where I just browse the ball python morphs for like an hour or so, haha. What’s the name of the most recent baby a friend had? Christ, half my friends on Facebook are having babies, idr. I don't know who was the most recent. Do people normally say you’re a fast typer, or are you rather slow? I'm very fast. Have you ever been considered the "smartest person in school?" No; that was my friend Hannia. I'm pretty certain she would qualify as a genius. Her GPA was fucking incredible. Were you named after anyone famous or anyone on television? No.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''leave out all the rest'' by linkin park

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raccoon-wizard · 4 years

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Two and Half Assholes

An entire one person (shout out to @jumpfiend) expressed their wish for me to write an angry essay about the long dead show Two and Half Men (2003-2015) and all the problems it has. Allow me to start by saying that I am by no means a professional critic and I have never really written an in-depth review of anything. But I have a lot of feelings that I need to get out about this shitshow, otherwise my head is gonna explode next time my father insists on watching it.

Just a warning, this is a very long post.

What is Two and Half Men about?

If I tried to write my own summary here, I would probably end up tearing it to shreds already. Instead, I’m going to borrow the annotation from IMDB.com: “A hedonistic jingle writer's free-wheeling life comes to an abrupt halt when his brother and 10-year-old nephew move into his beachfront house.”

That doesn’t really say much, does it now. Luckily, the same site also provides us with a wide range of plot (hahahah “plot”) summaries written by users. This one tells us a little more: “The Harper brothers Charlie and Alan are almost opposites but form a great team. They have little in common except their dislike for their mundane, maternally cold and domineering mother, Evelyn. Alan, a compulsively neat chiropractor and control-freak, is thrown out by his manipulative wife Judith who nevertheless gets him to pay for everything and do most jobs in the house. Charlie is a freelance jingle composer and irresistible Casanova who lives in a luxurious beach-house and rarely gets up before noon. Charlie "temporarily" allows Alan and his son Jake, a food-obsessed, lazy kid who shuttles between his parents, to move in with them after Alan's separation/divorce. The sitcom revolves around their conflicting lifestyles, raising Jake (who has the efficient, caring dad while having a ball with his fun-loving sugar uncle who teaches him boyish things), and bantering with Evelyn and various other friends and family. Other fairly regular characters include Charlie's cleaning lady Berta and his rich, self-confessed stalker neighbor Rose who often sneaks in to spy on Charlie.”

Now that’s much better. It gives us quite a decent picture of the show’s ensemble. At least for the starter episodes, this is pretty much what it is. But as the show progresses, we see that the characters have a little bit more depth to them. But not that much.

Let’s start with Charlie Harper, the “freelance jingle composer and irresistible Casanova who lives in a luxurious beach-house and rarely gets up before noon” portrayed by Charlie Sheen. (Is that man still a thing?) I think we can get a lot by taking apart this brief description of him. Freelance jingle composer pretty much means that he has a grand piano in his house and we can occasionally see him playing it while trying to put together words for a commercial for some random product. And that’s it. He has a few other musician friends who are just as big of assholes as he is, but we’ll get to that later. Other than that, we don’t really see him working at all. I think there is one episode about him writing kids’ songs because his girlfriend’s kid likes them. And one about him getting an award?? I don’t know man. The second part of that statement is a much more prominent “personality” trait of Charlie’s. In nearly every episode, we see him “dating” (meaning shagging and then dumping) another woman. I have mentioned in my initial post that this show is misogynistic. Don’t worry, I will also get into that later. For now I’m going to say that Charlie treats all these women absolutely disgustingly and we’re supposed to laugh at that. On the rare occasions we see him in a long term relationship (which happens twice I think? I’m not sure now), we get the stereotypical ball and chain bullshit. The woman takes all his freedom and tries to make him better. While I hate that trope with burning passion, I have to admit that in this case, she does have a solid point. Charlie is a pathetic excuse of a man who has to count on his good looks (questionable) and his riches. By the way, where did he even get them? Does composing jingles really make that much money? Is he that good of a gambler? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen another episode addressing the fact that the answer to both of these questions is no. Where the hell did this luxurious beach-house come from??? So many questions about a show that deserves so little.

Surprisingly, Charlie is the better one out of the two brothers. At the start, we really do feel sorry for Alan. His wife (who is a HORRIBLE person by the way) kicks him out and manipulates him into still paying for everything and doing many things for her around the house. Who wouldn’t feel bad for someone like this? He moves in with Charlie “for the time being”. Soon, we realise that he is not leaving the house anytime soon. He becomes a disgusting leech, a truly pathetic excuse of a man. And he doesn’t even bother hiding it. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to feel sorry for him or laugh at him, but either case doesn’t really work if you spend at least ten seconds thinking about it. How are we supposed to sympathise with a man that lives off of others and barely lifts a finger to change it? The worst part is, the show presents it as something completely normal. We don’t really see Alan’s actions turning against him, do we? Most of the time, whatever shit he does, works just fine for him.

Another prominent character is Alan’s son, Jake, who grows up throughout the series. A fat little boy, not exactly bright. A spoiled brat (if it’s the fault of Alan or Judith is questionable) that has everything handed to him, as Charlie points out in one episode. It’s another bad personality trait that we’re supposed to find funny. And at first, we kind of do. But once again, as the show progresses, it gets worse. Jake becomes the oldest kid in his class because he fails so many times. He only gets to start middle school because “he’s too big for the desks in his class now”. A bit of a watered down Dudley Dursley now that I think about it. It feels that the older Jake gets, the dumber he is. He eventually joins the military because he is too daft to realise. (If I remember correctly, that was done only so Jake’s actor could leave the show because he pretty much realised how bad it was.)

The main reason why I hate this show so much, however, is its way of handling female characters. There’s a few prominent ones - the aforementioned Judith, Alan’s ex wife, a cold hearted manipulative bitch, that also follows the trope of “I’m breaking up with you because I’m a lesbian” for a while, but then it’s never addressed again, not even once. Then we have Alan and Charlie’s mother, Evelyn, also a cold hearted bitch lacking any motherly instincts whatsoever that the men blame for how they turned out. Honestly, I can kind of see it. There’s Rose, Charlie’s neighbour whom he had slept with once and who’s been obsessed with him ever since, following him pretty much wherever he goes and inappropriately visiting him, usually in order to chase any woman that gets close to him away. We have Berta, Charlie’s housekeeper that I would like to believe is there to show the differences between different classes, as she has a large family to take care of, fending of her daughters’ admirers and dealing with drug and alcohol issues. But at this point we all know she’s only there so we can laugh at her struggles and the witty remarks she likes to make.

A special category of women in this show are the lovers and girlfriends. All of them end up either leaving the men for someone better (good for them tbh), or getting left by them. But remember, we’re supposed to always be siding with the men. The women are there for us to laugh at and hate. Rose the stalker? The only reason Charlie never gets rid of her is so we can laugh as she appears unexpected on his balcony over and over again. Are her apparent mental health issues ever addressed? Maybe once, but as a joke. You know, the classic ha ha ha ha look an insane person that’s hilarious. Judith the ex wife and her flock of weird friends (that Charlie converts)? Look, evil wives hating men, ha ha ha ha. Better run away from there, men, or they’ll eat you alive! Ha ha ha ha. Judith wanting support from friends and claiming she deserves to be happy is played off as something we scoff at. Chelsea, Charlie’s girlfriend and fiancée? The ball and chain thing, similarly to Judith, but not nearly as manipulative - this one we can see really means well and wants to help Charlie, but he’s a Man™ and cannot handle that, despite claiming to love her very dearly. Lindsay, Alan’s on again, off again girlfriend? Oof. Where to even start with that one. As most of the characters (save for maybe Judith), she starts off decent, despite her inexplicable desire for Alan. (Seriously though what in the world is up with that.) Also, now that I mentioned Alan’s weird sex appeal (not to me but to the female characters of the show, ew), what the hell was up with Judith wanting to suddenly fuck him again and HIM ENDING UP BEING THE FATHER OF HER DAUGHTER???? Was that the point when the writers just said “you know what, fuck this” or?

Some additional things the men on the show did to women:

Infidelity. Aka “ha ha ha many women want man what a lucky bastard he gets to fuck many women ha ha ha oh no he’s been caught ha ha ha funny”.

Infidelity with their friends/family members. I’m pretty sure this happened multiple times. One of the male protagonists gets a girlfriend. Girlfriend has an attractive daughter. Man sleeps with daughter. Girlfriend is mad. Man claims that it is actually a compliment to her because the daughter is just a younger version of her. Man gets upset when girlfriend disagrees. Poor man, girlfriend mean :(((

Another thing I would like to point out is the show’s dumbass approach to sexuality and gender. It’s the age old, straight men bullshit that lesbians = hot, gay men = ew. We see that throughout the whole thing a bunch of times. Alan ends up marrying Walden (whom I will talk about as well) so they can scam an adoption agency. That’s just wrong, man. That’s awful. And regarding gender, the way this shitshow handles trans people is disgusting. I can currently only think of one instance of this, but I have a feeling it happened multiple times, but with Charlie and Alan. They meet a woman, flirt, sleep together, all fun and games. But for some god forsaken reason, after all is done, the woman decides to be like “yeah by the way I used to be a dude” and?? Why?? First of, why would any trans person want to tell anyone their deadname and other things after successfully transitioning? I’m a cis woman, but this really makes no sense to me. Please correct me if I’m wrong on this one, but if you’ve spent years trying to pass as whatever gender you identify with, transitioned, you wouldn’t exactly go around sleeping with people and afterwards telling them about it, would you? And second of all, the entire reason why these characters appear are so we can be like “eww he slept with someone who used to have a penis eww” and laugh as they have a small crisis because of it. Just. Why?? I am aware that this is a thing other shows do/have done as well, but it really bothers me. And even when the guy decides to roll with it, all we get are those jokes that the woman is “more manly” than him. I remember vividly Alan hooking up with a trans lady and briefly dating her, only so we can see her pick a fight with a man, pay for their food and shit and Alan being flustered because he feels like less of a man. Again, please correct me if I’m wrong since my knowledge of gender is limited, but I’m about 97 % sure this is not how it works.

One would have thought that most of this would end after Charlie’s death. His place is taken by Walden Schmidt, portrayed by the angel that is Ashton Kutcher, a “billionaire internet entrepreneur who has recently been divorced and is now suicidal” (wiki). Before I dig in to how it actually got worse, let’s talk about Walden for a while. He really is a nice change. Walden is a genuinely good character, we see him working super hard and treating women well and just being great. I actually like him. The problem the show has when it comes to him is treating his suicidal-ness as just another little joke. Ha ha ha man wants to die man weak. Funny. But as we get over this part (rather quickly tbh), things involving Walden get actually good (besides the part where he sleeps with Alan’s mother). We do see some annoyingly familiar divorce related things, but in contrast to Alan, we see Walden actually get back on his own two feet.

Alan will forever be my biggest issue with this show. I don’t know if he gets worse or if it’s just the contrast with Walden that makes it seem that way, but he becomes a bigger and bigger parasite, exploiting Walden’s kindness, becoming a lover to his, at that point, former girlfriend Lindsay and somehow exploiting her current boyfriend? He just goes haywire is what I’m trying to say.

I’m not saying that people like that don’t exist. We see it every day, the rich playboys, the pathetic incels. They are everywhere and we totally should talk about them. But not like this. We shouldn’t feel like we should sympathise with them, we shouldn’t hate those that try to criticise them, or those who want to get rid of them. We shouldn’t laugh when they hurt people around them. Men shouldn’t want to relate to them. Characters like this should be presented as something we should avoid becoming.

“What’s your problem? It’s just something I watch to unwind,” my father scoffs at me as I complain about yet another evening we all have to spend listening to the nonsense Two and Half Men brings us. Yea, maybe for you. Maybe you know better than to treat people around you, especially women, like they’re just something you can play around with and then throw into the sewers. Maybe you give everyone equal respect. (No he doesn’t, by the way.) But you know, with the way this TV channel plays this show over and over and over and over again (five episodes a day, every day, and the second they get to the end, they just start over), there’s probably a number of young people who don’t realise how wrong it is and take what’s said there as something to live by. Maybe they’ll think that it’s okay to use people to their advantage. Maybe they’ll think like a rich entitled middle aged straight white man. That’s my problem. Even though the show ended five years ago, it still lives on our televisions and it still gives us wrong examples on how to live our lives. That’s why I hate the show. Not just the awful writing and “plot” holes. It’s the way it treats people and presents it as something that’s totally fine.

#tv #television #tv shows #comedy #sitcom #two and half men #jon cryer #ashton kutcher #charlie sheen #sexism #misogyny

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ladyemberswrites · 5 years

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"A Touch Is All I Ask"

Summary: Basically, an Au of Au wherein an accident Lotor ends up traveling through the rift only for him to met and fall in love with Allura from another reality, but because life refuses to give him a break the rift creatures destroy both that Allura and her reality along with her leaving Lotor to travel the rift for centuries trying to find his way back home. Fortunately, he ends of being saved the Princess Allura from his reality. Which makes things all the more awkward as Lotor has to force himself to differentiate between this Allura and the Allura he had loved. The plot only thickens once Allura starts to develop feelings for him as she nurses him back to health.

Rating: T and Up

Words: 2k

Chapters: 1/?

He had lost everything in a single fleeting moment. A breath, a heartbeat, and soon nothingness consumed him. It ate away at the flesh and the bone, and pierced his dreaded, cold heart. His fingers reached for nothing, tiny cosmos, stars that have already long passed, and they bleed through his fingers. His fingers, these hands that have done nothing but bring about horrors, that only bring about destruction. Perhaps they were right, he is a curse. A blight on the world, a filthy obstruction. He felt the world around him drown, his body as heavy as lead and as weightless as a cloud. In space-time is obsolete. His mind and memories fragmented, and the voices that haunt him whisper in his ears in continual repeat.

The rift is relentless, a cruel, twisted mistress. An abomination, an unknown horror and they like a siren singing sailors to their deaths upon the steep rocks sing to him too as he wanders, and he drifts to nowhere. Howling, and lulling sweet tunes that fill the silence of his travels where there is nowhere and no one, and as the presumed days go by they fill the aching silence. He‘s long tuned them out-but-

~Lotor~ their eyes are amber like hers. Their hair a dark silver like hers had once been. Though, he had never heard her voice, he assumes that must have been what she sounded like. But, he knows that they aren’t his mother. Their image of her is picture perfect, not a single detail missed, but he knows. He’s no fool. He knows their games he knows their lies. They hiss when he pays the cheap imitation no mind, growling, and sneering.

~How dare you!~ they screech in union, a kaleidoscope of dissonant voices. His ears run red when the shrieking refuses to come to an end, but again he disregards them and simply keeps going, he keeps moving because he does not know when to give up. Because death is too easy, no matter how tempting it is to just collapse and sleep an endless dream. But, dreams offer him no repute, no reprieve instead they are nothing more than a reflection-a mirror world-a gateway to his own insanity. There is no peace. So, he must walk even though there is nothing.

“That's absolutely disgusting, Lance!” Pidge grimaces, her nose wrinkles as she spat out her tongue.

“Yeah, well, try actually being there and seeing it in person" he leans into her, his shoulder, bony and sharp, cuts into her side "let me tell ya, that changes a man"

“Just because you experienced it, doesn't mean I want to hear it” Pidge mutters into her palm "and can't you sit on your side of the ship?" she shoves him.

He brushes aside her last comment making himself comfortable “I thought we were friends, Pidge? Besides you who else do I have in this big lonely castle?"

"Why can't you bother, Hunk for a change" the girl surfs her screens in boredom.

"I would, but he's been too busy with his new girl-friend" he emphasizes his point by making quotation marks with his fingers "to hang out anymore-I mean whatever happened to the bro-code!?"

Pidge rolls her eyes "so, what? He can become a lonely, desperate misogynist, womanizing jerkhole?"

"I prefer the term lover man, Pidge"

"I think you missed the entire point of that statement..nevermind-the point being is that there are other men on the ship you could socialize with"

"I rather get stabbed in the spleen again than hang out with Keith out of my own volition"

"I wasn't talking about, Keith."

"Shiro's way too serious to do anything fun with. It's all Lance stop. Lance your drinking way too much. Lance you can't spike people's drinks. Shiro's awesome and all, but he doesn't have a single fun bone in his body"

"I don't think perpetuating liver damage is something I would personally consider fun"

"It's not about the drinks, the drinks are just secondary, where there's alcohol there's hot women, come on get with the program Pidge"

"Shiro's gay"

"I was gonna hook him up"

"With a dude?" She rose a dry brow.

"Of course a dude, unless he goes both ways, I can get him both"

"...Y'know it's a wonder why your single?"

"Is that sarcasm?"

"What about Coran" she dodges the question " he's a guy"

"Coran's fun-until he goes overboard. Y'know like the time he nearly killed us"

"That was your own fault y'know"

"How was I supposed to know pot would drive him into a murderous rampage-" The hiss and beep of the bridge door interrupts him. Hunched and bleary eyed, Allura wanders onboard in a complete daze, her heels clicking against the paneled walkway. Her characteristic bun hung lopsidedly off the side of her head, her ends frazzled and uncombed. Her eyes sunken with dark bruises and her favorite white jacket hangs haphazardly off her one shoulder.

Lance whistled “Boy, you look awful, Princess-or is that a new look your aiming for”

Allura snaps her head towards him with lethal speed, barely restraining the urge to strangle him

“I’m far too tired to deal with your nonsense this morning, so please do shut up unless you’d like be placed on toilet duty again”

The threat hangs in the air for a few minutes before Lance snorts, brushing her off awhile tugging at the hem of his turtleneck sweater in a nervous bout “Y-yeah, but no thanks, Princess, I've cleaned enough toilets and vomit to last me a lifetime"

Allura didn’t bother to comment but casts him one last warning glare before turning back to the teleduv, reaching out she taps it lightly bringing the ship's screens to life. The skies were all clear except for a bach of asteroids floating in the distance, but to her relief so far no enemy ships or anything remotely suspicious, as they travel the cosmos to Planet Greta off hidden on another less known side of the galaxy.

Even so, she didn't wish to take any chances and made sure to double check her assessment, while ignoring Pidge and Lance's continued conversation Bits and pieces dribble into the forefront of her thoughts here and there, but there's nothing she can make sense of being that the topic relates back to Earth.

Her checks repeat nothing new-Sighing, she cuts the feed to rub her face in annoyance. Everything hurt. Her body aches in a way that's more aggravating than truly painful. But, sleep has been hard to come by lately, the moment she closes her eyes-the nightmares began again. Her father’s blood upon her hands, splattered upon the blue silk of her gown, the sight of his mangled corpse lying at Zarkon’s iron boots. His face darkened, indistinguishable from the other bodies that littered the marble floors-

She clenches her fingers listlessly fearing that if she didn’t pay attention she’d find his blood on them again. Her skin burned, having spent the night trying to scrub the red away. Now, they just itch, the skin of her hands rubbed raw and dry. And yet, there's that lingering feeling of wetness that she just can't shake, despite knowing that it isn't there. Yet, she kept scratching her wrist as she stared out over the bridge watching nothing but stars pass them by.

“Lura?” she didn’t hear Pidge pace up to her. She turns in the girl's direction “you okay there? You’ve got that dead look in your eyes again?”

“I’m fine, Pidge. Don’t worry” she wonders if her voice always sounded hoarse, or is it just her, and she’s hearing things again. Whatever the case she just shakes her head attempting to ignore it. That and the throbbing headache that pounds at the back of her skull.

“If you say so….” Pidge didn't know what else to say or do other than offer the woman her space, and awkwardly returns to her seat.

"What's her problem?" Lance whispers.

"....I don't know. She looks sick-"

"She's not going to pass out again is she because-"

Perhaps, it’s time to give up and ask Doctor Alibhe for some sleep aid? Her nose wrinkles at the prospect, but what else can she do. She's tried everything: training until she's exhausted to the bone. Meditation only abandons her to her own traitorous thoughts which only leads to exasperation and a wish to lobotomize herself. So, no that was a no go. She's tried tea, acupuncture, oil massage. Worse case scenario, well, partially out of desperation a chiropractor who only charged her an exuberant amount of money and a nasty crick in her neck that took weeks to go away. Trial or error aside, she can't continue like this; people will notice, people are already noticing, if it keeps going the questions will never end. Pressing a fist to her brow, she huffs-if only the night didn't dreg up past horrors-

*Ping*

Her temples throb, cracking her eyes back open Allura finds herself thrown from her musings back to reality. The pinging of the teleduv continues causing her to pause and blink for a moment flicking the scanners back on.

"What?” out of bloody nowhere something pops up upon the monitors signaling a disturbance in the area. Brows tightly pinched together, she didn't see any ships-

“Enemy ship?” Lance asks in a brief moment of seriousness. Both his and Pidge's eyes dart from her to the screens above, bracing themselves for impact.

“It’s-" she squints "no” she shakes her head

“whatever it is-it’s far too small to be a ship-it’s-oh,

no” her heart plummets to the pit of her stomach.

“Oh, no what?”

“It’s another rift opening….”

“Well, that's just flipping fantastic!” Lance barks “More rift creatures! Is it bad that I rather deal with Sendak, heck even Zarkon himself any day over dealing with those walking-talking living embodiments of nightmare fuel!”

Allura swallows dryly. A lovely start to already dreary day-oh, stars, she's not sure how much more she can take of this insanity.

“Maybe we’ve been blessed by the Altean space gods!” Lance cries to the heavens “because I don’t see a single thing or y’know I'm not vomiting up my own entrails”

“Not if you don’t jinx us” Keith snaps. As quickly as it had come the rift had immediately snapped shut. Yet, no creatures of the rift made it out through the small opening. No horrifying illusions or imagery, just nothing. Just dead-end silence that did little to comfort her as she stares out among the stars and the blackness of space.

In their rush they took their respective lions on ahead with Allura placing Head Commander Hira at the helm and with the ship on high alert. When nothing assaulted them, Shiro suggested they take a look around by hand. Jetpacks loaded with full and pistols set on lethal everyone disembarked only to greeted by nothing.

Allura worries her bottom lip out of nervousness, she’s only glad that she hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast or else she would have vomited in her own helmet. Holding her pistol close, she prepares herself for anything by as the minutes trickle on by, besides the cluster of asteroids, nothing bizarre happens. An hour of searching and checking and rechecking the area's clear of any potential danger.

“I’m starting to think it was a false alarm, Princess” Keith calls out to her.

“Yeah, I’ve got nothing. Nada , zilch” Hunk tapped his scanner “besides the glitchy connection, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary”

“Me neither” Pidge mutters “it’s all just empty space as far as the eye can see.”

“Same here” Shiro adds, perplexed.

“Same with my end” Matt floats back to them “looked all over those asteroids over there, but like Hunk said zilch. Nada.”

“Perhaps, something was trying to get out, but couldn’t” Hunk states with an uneasy hitch in his voice.

It isn't unlikely, and it's probably the case, too. Though that does beg the question-if something were trying to claw its way out the rift what stopped it? Allura isn’t sure if she wants to find out.

“Hunk’s probably right” Allura agrees quietly, holstering her pistol “we should probably head back to the Lions. Oxygen's running low.” They weren't that far from the castle ship, but it's still a pretty good distance even with the lions.

"About time! This place gives me the creeps"

"Second that-"

“...more like it was a waste of time…” everyone moves on ahead of her as she can't help but linger, taking one more glance over her shoulder she scans her surroundings. It's times like these that remind her how vast the galaxy is. Enormous and all consuming like a sea with no bottom, no end. Left could right, and right, left. Shoving down the existential dread, she moves to to turn and head back until a twinkling light catches the corner of her eye. Stopping, she swivels back to look again-this time the twinkling is hard to miss, she squints, it isn't a star, as the source of the glittering is a top an asteroid closest to her. With bated breath she slowly, carefully maneuvers herself over to it. It's rocky texture is rough, the cold seeping through her gloves. With a grunt she heaves herself upwards, her thoughts oddly quiet as she focuses on climbing and hauling her weight until she reaches the top. Heaving enough to cloud the glass of her helmet, she stills to inhale a deep breath before she decides to lift her head up and freezes-

A massive body is collapsed upon the mountainous structure.

It-can't be-

Galra?

Hesitantly, she crawls towards him on all fours both curiosity and fear churning in her gut. Carefully, she reached over to quickly tap his shoulder to snap it away fearing a swipe of his large hand. Or a lunge. Squeezing her eyes shut she expects the worst, but when nothing came she instead hears a low, pained groan.So, low that if it weren't for her being so close she probably wouldn't have heard him. Placing a hand to calm her erratic heart, Allura steadies herself before gently extending both her hands to flip him on to his back, however it isn't without some difficulty. He's super heavy. With a grunt she manages and once he's on his back she's met with a rather gorgeous face, but unfortunately one she did not recognize. Examining his body, his armor is old. Eroded with rust and dented all over with the color of it faded. His face as handsome as it is, is marred with bruises painted black and dark blue, and dried blood dribbles down his obviously split lip. Yet, strangely enough she didn't find anything indicating his rank. No badge or medallion, no even a family crest holding his cape together. There's a satchel hung around his waist, but it wouldn't be wise to open it out here. He definitely looks the part of a high ranking galra general, but that begs the question, if he is, what is a seemingly distinguished general doing out here in the middle of an asteroid field? Did someone dump him out here?

Frantically her eyes dart around- but, she was so sure she hadn't detected a galra ship in the area-

Breathing heavily, she only finds emptiness.

-unless-

Her eyes fall back to him-the rift. Her eyes widen as she eyed him closer now noticing the markings on his face, a telltale sign of quintessence exposure. They weren't too bad, but it isn't something that can be ignored without consequence. Frightened out of her mind, she shouts back to her team over her shoulder.

“I found something!” drawing all eyes to her. I've definitely found something; she whispers to herself.

#Voltron #oldtron #lotura #lollura #redemption universe

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breg21 · 5 years

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ladynoir Month: Sick

@ladynoirjuly2019

Ao3 FFN

Please enjoy Chat being sick and being dumb because he can't stay away from his lady. I hope you guys enjoy!

Ladybug was livid. She didn't usually scream at Chat, but she sure as heck felt like doing it just once at that moment.

Putting some context behind said anger, all was actually going pretty well just hours before. School was good, homework was actually finished on time and it had been two full days since an akuma.

Her anger came into play late that night when that stupid cat showed up to patrol, and it all went downhill when she saw him— sick.

She considered either throwing him off the tower, or hanging him upside down and leaving him to stew for a few hours. Both options really pleased her.

But she couldn't, and she knew that. So, instead of lecturing him, as much as she wanted to when he landed on their vantage point, she reacted just in time to catch him when he staggered sluggishly forward.

She pulled his back to her, resting his head against her chest as she inspected his face. His cheeks were powdered in red, and she knew if her hand was ungloved, the lip under his nose would be raw to the touch if the color told her anything.

She tried to keep her voice level, she really did. The cat didn't even notice anyways. "Kitty, please tell me why you're out when you're obviously sick."

He sniffed some of the mucus that had built up in his nose before his horsed voice crackled in the cold air around them "ause i I'tended to se-e you. On-ley twime to..togeth-achoo-er."

While she thought the meaning behind his actions were without a doubt the sweetest, she wished he had stayed home. They could've easily rescheduled a patrol, or even a date day if he was really wanting it. He should've known that. "Chat, you know we could've figured something out. You should've texted me and told me that you were sick. How are you gonna get home now?"

He rolled his head from side to side as he slumped lower into her lap, keeping his eyes closed. "Don't care. Hav..have ta see my lady."

She rolled her eyes at his delirious words, but ran her hand along his forehead, seeing the little beads of sweat cling to his skin. Her frown slipped even lower on her face. That wasn't good. "Chaton. I'm gonna put my hand over your eyes and detransform, so no removing my hand, okay?"

He nodded, and with that, she called off Tikki.

The kwami whirled out of her earrings until she was in full view of her owner. Her tongue clicked as she gave a once over to her boyfriend laying limp in her lap.

Marinette knew she couldn't bring Chat home, but there were so little other options that couldn't quell her fears. "Tikki, what do I do?"

Chat spoke up when he heard her voice, his own actually clear for the first time since he had arrived. "Princess? Is that you? How did you get here? Did my Ladybug send you here? Boy, she knows just what to do in these bad situations. I could only trust you and her. Only... " His words were starting to taper off at the end of his winded, adrenalin fulled, sentence. "You two." And immediately conked out.

Tikki brought her paws to her mouth to lessen the giggle that broke out. Trying to contain herself even further when Marinette shot her a half-heartedly glare. "Sorry. That was kinda cute. Anyways, the answer to your big dilemma is quite simple, actually. Plagg will lead his body home."

Marinette blinked. "Huh?"

Tikki shrugged. "As long as he's transformed, Plagg can lead his body— control it, if you wanna be blunt— home if need be."

That… that was convenient, also slightly disturbing. "Okay then. Can Plagg hear me?"

Tikki nodded. "Yep."

Marinette looked back down to the boy in her arms who was breathing very heavily at this point due to his cold. "It would be cute if it hadn't been for the fact that he was sick. Plagg, you know where I live, after you have Chat tucked in bed, could you please stop by my place so I can get him some soup?"

Tikki was the one to translate the silent air. "He said sure, as long as he could get some cheeses out of it." Tikki sighed.

But Marinette couldn't help but laugh at all the stories of Plagg's bottomless pit stomach. "Of course, Plagg. I heard your favorite's camberte. I'll make sure to send a wheel or two home with you."

Tikki's stare went deadpan. "He agreed."

------------------------

"You really are something else, princess." She swirled her chair around to see Plagg hovering in the air, a lazy smile breaching his lips. "My kid's lucky to have you."

She smiled. "I'm the lucky one— no pun intended, and don't you dare tell him about that one— he's an amazing person." She rolled her chair over to the corner of her desk where she had the soup prepared, along with Tikki sleeping peacefully next to it. "Here you go. " She handed the bowl off to the little sized creature, worried for a second that it might be too big for him, but he fit it well onto the top of his head. "Is he in bed?"

Plagg's grin was ten times that of Chat's when he was up to something. "You wanna follow me home and find out?" He wiggled his eyebrow suggestively.

"W-what!?" She sputtered. "No! We can't know! Why would you suggest that?"

He rolled his shoulders. "Are you honestly telling me you don't wanna know who your boyfriend is?"

Darn that kwami. "Of course I do. But you know it's dangerous. If it happens before Hawkmoths defeat, then we'll deal with it, but if it doesn't, then we have to wait." Her words dropped into an almost whisper. "I.. I don't think I could live with myself if anything happened to him just because I knew."

Plagg rolled his eyes. "Pigtails, nine out of ten, Ladybug and Chat Noir revealed their identities before the big bad guy is defeated, because they're never truly stopped. Wanna know why?"

She nodded, though she figured he would tell her anyway.

His voice was softer this time, less sarcastic. Which was odd for his personality. "Because there's a new threat each and every day. But Ladybug and Chat figure it out, just as they almost always end up together."

Marinette's eyebrow shot up in surprise. "They always get together?"

Plagg swirled the bowl down for a second. "It's complicated. They're soulmates. And before you ask, it's before their miraculous that they're soulmates, Tikki and I don't make it that way. That's how Ladybug and Chat always work so well together."

That was a lot of information in a short amount of time. "What about free will though?"

"You have that, of course." Plagg agreed. "Your feelings are your own, along with how your feelings for other people aren't diminished any less. But Chat and Ladybug have an incredible bond that's hard to break. Trust me, its nauseating to watch. Almost as sickening as the square they always get themselves into."

What the heck did that mean? "Um… What?"

His ears twitched along with his left eye as he realized what he let out. "Nothing. Nothing at all!" He swooshed in to grab the food. "I should get back to Chat and make sure he's okay. Night, princess."

He was almost out the hatch when she called out, "Wait." He stopped on a dime and turned his head sideways to glance at her. "Thanks for listening to my worries. Chat and Tikki always talk about how you can be insensitive to them."

He looked unfazed. "Eh. I can care when it's the right bug." He shot her a wink and was gone in a flash.

Marinette hoped Chat would be well again soon.

She wished even more that she could've been the one taking care of him.

-------------------

The week rolled by with giving Plagg the soups to give to her partner, with a little chit chat here and there.

The odd timing was perfectly in sync with the fact that Adrien had been sick from school as well. She played it off as a cool coincidence and let it be. There was just no way the two things were related. She wasn't that lucky.

No sir-re.

Chat and Adrien were just too different, and fate wasn't that cruel to do something to put them in a position like that.

She would believe that until her final breath. It was better that way.

Tikki sighed from within her coin pouch.

The denial was strong with this one.

------------------------------------------

Husband's thoughts:

Marinette looked down at her sickly kitty.

"Alright Plagg, send him home."

Chat's body began to twitch as the sound of his bones cracking began to echo above the tower.

"Oh my gosh is he ok?!" Marinette shouted out in horror.

Chat's mouth began to move as Plaggs voice came out of it.

"Yeah, just relax. I wasn't breaking things I was popping his back and joints better than any chiropractor could ever do. I've had to do this with previous Chat's before so I know what I'm doing."

With that Chat took his leave pole vaulting straight into the side of the building letting out a mermered yelp.

"Blasted inverted controls!"

They're both so blind. Ugh. Why!? As usual, until next time! Lots of love!

#ladynoirjuly2019 #LadyNoir #ml #mlb #miraculous ladybug #love square

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stardustbabies-blog · 7 years

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my birth stories

I have two beautiful, healthy daughters. They are so perfect that I don’t know how or why I am so lucky, so let me start with that. But bringing them into this world was a trauma. It doesn’t affect my love for them, but it affects my life and my mental health every day.

I’ve realized I can’t really tell the story of my second delivery, the one that almost killed me, unless I tell the story of the first one.

In the last week of 2012, I was 36 weeks pregnant and spending my time reading books about natural childbirth, practicing pain management, talking constantly with my wife about how together we would deal with my pain and anxiety during labor. We had been together for over seven years and she was well-versed in helping me through my mental health challenges, of which I had many. I completely trusted her to get me through it – I even looked forward to it as a bonding experience.

That said, I am a big fan of modern medicine and never considered anything but a standard hospital birth. I wanted to try to manage labor without intervention if I could, and my California hospital was friendly to that decision. Unfortunately for me, nobody checked my daughter’s presenting position until I was already full term, shortly after the turn of the new year. At my 37-week appointment, my OB couldn’t find her head through the cervix. An ultrasound confirmed that she was frank breech. I tried everything on spinning babies, contorting my pregnant body into so many awkward positions that I gave myself migraines. I found a chiropractor and tried the Webster technique; I found an acupuncturist and tried moxibustion. A week later, I was headed for a C-section unless I wanted to try an external cephalic version (ECV).

For a first pregnancy, the success rate of attempting to manually reposition the baby in the womb is about that of getting heads on a coin flip. I read extensively about the risks, which seemed acceptable to me, and certainly not worse than those associated with a surgical birth. My wife completely deferred to me on the decision; most other people uniformly disagreed with, or didn’t understand, my decision to try it.

I have terrible doctor anxiety, so the morning of the procedure, I was terrified. They gave me a dose of terbutaline to relax my abdominal muscles, and it felt like an awesome caffeine jolt, a feeling I sorely missed after eight months of pregnancy. But fun fact: ECVs hurt, a lot. I was cursing and grunting and crushing my wife’s hand while two doctors pushed and twisted my huge pregnant belly. Two tries were unsuccessful, and I was crying from pain. They asked me if I wanted to try one more time.

“Baby’s okay?” I croaked.

“Ultrasound and monitor look great.”

“Go for it.”

I left disappointed, but glad that I tried everything I could. They told me that I would schedule my C-section at my OB appointment the next day. Wife and I grabbed lunch on the way home since I hadn’t been allowed to eat anything before the procedure. On the drive home, I noticed a lot of discharge. I worried that they had broken my water, but didn’t say anything out loud. I could not acknowledge that thought.

In the bathroom at home I learned that it wasn’t amniotic fluid leaking onto my underwear, but bright red blood. On the drive back to the hospital I numbly thought, “Well, either they’ve damaged my internal organs or it’s a placental abruption.”

It was the latter, of course. They occur in 0.1% of ECV attempts, and I knew that, and I’d accepted those odds. After an agonizing wait for a doctor to examine me, I learned I’d be having a baby that day. I told that doctor over and over again that no, I couldn’t today, I wasn’t ready, no no no. But the baby was full term, and the placental abruption had the final say. Seven hours later (because I’d just eaten a big meal and was considered non-emergent), my E.M. arrived by C-section, healthy and beautiful.

Pretty much immediately after her birth, I plunged into the depths of post-partum depression. Looking back, I think that the birth experience was a huge contributor, and that I actually had undiagnosed symptoms of PTSD. I cried every day all the way to and from work. My panic attacks were on a hair trigger. I couldn’t read news stories about anything involving violence without feeling it had just happened to me; the internal screaming was deafening. And I knew – I just KNEW – that either my daughter or I was going to die. I didn’t know how, and I wasn’t suicidal, but I would console myself by saying, at least you got to know her for three months.

I had never planned to have more than once pregnancy. We had planned that my wife would carry the second child and after that we would foster or adopt. But by the time EM was four months old, despite my mental state or maybe because of it in some desperate cry for a do-over, I knew I wanted to carry another baby. And I was already completely immersed in VBAC literature.

In the spring of 2016, seven months pregnant with my second daughter, I told my VBAC class my birth story. When the instructor asked what I wanted from my second birth I said, “I want the chance to try it vaginally, and naturally as much as possible. But mostly, whatever happens, I want to feel connected to it. I felt so out of control with my first birth; I was completely unprepared. This time I understand that anything can happen… I just want to be emotionally present for it.”

I understood that I could wind up with a second surgery, but I was okay with that if I got to hold her right away, got to feel excitement and positive anticipation about her arrival in my arms.

Facts are facts: 1% of VBACs end in uterine rupture. Of those, 6% of the babies die.

If that were to happen to my baby, I knew I would never forgive myself. But I trusted my hospital, my doctors. It was absolutely crucial to my mental health, to my experience as a mother, that I give myself the chance to try.

They had been concerned about my blood pressure the entire pregnancy. At my first appointment at 8 weeks, my reading in their office was 180/95. When I say I have doctor anxiety, I’m not kidding – my readings at home, well into the ninth month, were in the 120s/70s. That did not matter when I clocked a 165/100 at my 39 week appointment. I got sent to labor and delivery.

I had known that they were going to try to strip my membranes to trigger labor at that appointment, and so my older daughter was already tucked away at my parents’ house. When I called my wife and told her to come to the hospital, neither of us was terribly surprised that the doctors felt it was time for new baby’s arrival. My cervix was 1cm dilated, high, and not effaced. I was given three options. Go home and wait (not recommended, but ultimately my decision), have a C-section that afternoon, or be induced.

Induced? For a VBAC? I was confused.

A “gentle” induction involves a Foley bulb to widen the cervix and a slow, low dose Pitocin drip. I was told it could take days. For all my desire for the chance for a vaginal birth, at that moment that did not sound like a marathon I was prepared to run. But I didn’t want to go home; I wanted to have the baby that day. My daughter was taken care of. My wife was there. I was ready. I wanted to meet my baby girl. I was scared and the “devil I knew” was appealing and even, in that moment, comforting. I told the resident I wanted the C-section.

One of my doctors, whom I had talked to extensively about my VBAC desire, heard about this decision and put a hold on the proceedings. He sent in another doctor to talk to me further. She was warm, empathetic, and extremely forthcoming about the procedures when I asked a million questions. Ultimately, she confirmed what I truly wanted and talked me down from my anxiety-induced decision. Despite everything that happened after, I am extremely grateful for that doctor. I wish I had told her that when she visited me the next day in the ICU with tears in her eyes. Now I don’t even remember her name.

With the decision made, they wheeled me into my delivery room. It was around 3PM. I hadn’t eaten since 8, so they let me order lunch, knowing delivery was a safe distance in the future. I can’t remember what I ate. I think there was pizza.

The placement of the Foley bulb was the first procedure. It hurt, much like bad period cramps. She had to try it twice because she couldn’t get it to stay the first time. When she told me I was all set, I smiled. She said if I could smile after that, I was going to do great.

They hooked me up to the Pitocin, and the waiting began. I watched the electronic trace of the contractions rise and fall on the monitor. I couldn’t feel anything besides muscle tightening, and wondered when the pain would begin. A few hours later, I went to the bathroom and the bulb fell out in the toilet. There was bleeding, and my heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. But my nurse was thrilled – it meant my cervix was dilated. The blood was normal.

More uneventful waiting ensued. The contractions got stronger; I could feel (and see) my abdomen tightening. Sometimes it would be strong enough that I would get a little breathless, but I still didn’t have any pain.

Women who have VBACs are highly encouraged, though not required, to get an epidural. I’d had to make peace with that months earlier, because in the event of an emergency, having an already placed epidural can be lifesaving when seconds count. It can also provide the mother with the chance to be awake for the surgical birth of her baby instead of having to undergo general anesthesia. By 9PM, I knew in my gut it was time. I cried the whole way through the procedure. I didn’t want it. I was scared of the side effects, scared of the unknown. But most of all, now I knew I was about to have my second baby, and would never get to feel a single labor pain. The feeling of loss was immense. It is not an overstatement to say that the feeling of disconnection from my body and the work it was doing was devastating.

The epidural placement went smoothly. The anesthesiologist was wonderful and tender with me through all of my emotions. When it took effect, I was surprised to feel I could still move my legs a bit, that they just felt heavy and sluggish. About an hour later, I felt like I had to pee. The nurse seemed surprised, because usually the epidural takes away the feeling in your bladder, but she gave me a bed pan. I couldn’t go.

The nurse said at this point, my job was to try to get some rest before things really got going. Wife and I lay down, and put on the TV. Ocean’s Eleven was on.

As I lay there, sleepy but knowing full well the idea of actually sleeping was laughable, I felt a little nauseated, a little dizzy, and a little sweaty. I knew labor could do that sometimes, and I knew I had drugs in my system. It may have been normal. It may have been a series of warning signs. I’ll never know.

Around 11, I think, I felt my whole body jolt, like an electric shock had run through me. That was followed shortly by a gush of fluid between my legs. I threw off the blankets and looked at the sheet, and touched the fluid on my body. It was clear – not blood, not greenish or brownish. Relief. I had to wake Wife up. “Sweetie… my water broke.”

I am so grateful for the classic labor milestones that I did get to experience.

But I was definitely not feeling well by this point. Woozy, sweaty. I have terrible anxiety and shit was getting real, so I chalked it up to that. At one point a doctor came in and repositioned my fetal monitor, the belt of electrodes around my belly.

“Is she okay?”

“She’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

I’m not sure exactly what time it happened. It feels to me now that it was very soon after my water broke, but based on the timing of the birth it must have been at least an hour later.

Out of the blue, like a truck hit me, I was enveloped by the worst pain of my life. (And keep in mind, I’d had an epidural already.) It felt like someone had reached into my body and was pulling apart my abdominal muscles. It felt like a vise gripped my bladder and twisted. It coincided with contractions. I became the classic “woman in labor screaming in the hospital bed.” I curled up on my side in the fetal position to try to get away from the pain. My nurse asked me questions, but I was in too much pain to answer her. She told me I needed a bolus of my pain relief. Wife put the controller in my hand, but I couldn’t hold onto it, and it dropped to the floor.

I thought, “Well, I guess now I know what labor feels like.” And that conclusion came with a bit of disappointment, because I knew I could never withstand that level of pain for hours, no way in hell.

But… that wasn’t labor.

The timing of the next events is hazy to me. I know that I underwent a couple more of those excruciating contractions before the frenzy began. I know that the doctor who had been occasionally checking me for dilation progress was called out of a meeting, and I know the room began to flood with people, some of them in scrubs, some of them with walkie-talkies. I know now it was because my daughter’s heart rate was dropping.

Suddenly the lights were bright. The doctor sat down at the foot of my bed and reached inside me and I will never, ever forget the puzzled look on his face.

“This baby is sky-high,” he said.

I’d read enough to know that the baby’s loss of station in the pelvis is diagnostically indicative of a uterine rupture.

The doctor went to the monitors, scanning readouts, clicking on things. “Doctor, should we get her to the OR, given her history?” a woman said.

“Just get her out,” I said. “I’m scared.”

Wife noted, and told me later, that at this point my heart rate was 155. I was tachycardic and going into hypovolemic shock. They had to wheel me to the OR without Wife, who had to get dressed and, I later learned, had to be held outside until the doctors were sure that our baby wasn’t dead. As they wheeled me down the hall, I heard one of them say the word rupture.

“My uterus ruptured?” I asked.

“Your membranes ruptured,” she said. She was protecting me, I know that now. They saw me bleeding as they were wheeling me down the hall. They knew. Wife heard them call “Condition O” over the loudspeakers. Obstetric emergency, all hands on deck.

From the time the doctor was called to check on me to the time I was cut open, a total of nine minutes passed. I was heavily drugged and woozy from blood loss, staring up at the ceiling, bright lights in my eyes. Wife wasn’t there yet. I noted that I did not feel the tugging sensation that I’d felt when they delivered E.M. I didn’t hear the baby cry, either.

I wanted to pass out. My brain really, really wanted to go to sleep. My eyes were closing and I had to fight it. I kept thinking, “If you pass out, that is bad. Don’t do it. Stay awake.”

Every time I started to feel my head spin like I was going to faint, I would look up at this woman who was standing by my head. I didn’t have to say anything; she would look at my face and know I was in trouble, and she would do something to my IV and it would fix it. I still don’t know who she was or what she was doing. Nobody has been able to answer me that.

Wife finally joined me, sat down next to my head. She had tears in her eyes but I was a little too out of it to register at that time what she must have been through. I cried and she held me, at least as much as she could while I was strapped to an operating table.

The first time we saw our daughter C.J.’s face was in an iPhone picture taken by an OR nurse. I remember gasping and sobbing twice with joy when I saw those pictures. She was okay. She was here. She was real. Her APGARs, miraculously, were 5 and 8.

I was on that operating table for two hours, about three times as long as a standard C-section procedure. I’d experienced a complete uterine rupture, which means that the contents of my uterus were open to my abdomen. When they opened me up, the placenta spontaneously delivered, and C.J. was in my upper abdomen. When I later asked how long she had been like that the answer was, “Well… it couldn’t have been very long.”

They estimated that I lost three liters of blood. They did not give me a transfusion, but did give me two units of platelets to make sure I didn’t bleed more. My rupture extended to the broad ligament on the left side, which is a long, flat, structure that connects the uterus to the abdominal wall. When I get menstrual cramps now, I still have sharp pains in that ligament – a lovely monthly reminder.

When they were confident they’d repaired the damage and the bleeding had subsided, I had some time in the ICU. I know I got to hold the baby that night, but I don’t really remember doing so. I was pretty drugged and actually slept a little; Wife sat in a chair next to me, crying. The next day I got visits from some familiar faces, many of the doctors who had treated me throughout the process. I don’t remember much about what they said to me. I tried to eat and drink but vomited everything back up. I barely had the energy to hold the baby. I felt numb.

That night I got transferred to a standard recovery room. On the surface that was great news, because it meant I was healthy enough for standard and not intensive care. But it also meant I was treated like a standard C-section patient and not one who had undergone a life-threatening event. It was one of the worst nights of my life. My anxiety was nearly unbearable, I was shaking and in pain. The oxycodone was the only thing that kept me from losing it.

For all of that night, I was unable to urinate on my own. I felt a terrible urge, but once I dragged my shredded body to the toilet, the muscles would not work to make it happen. I don’t know if that’s because I had a catheter for 24 hours or because of the rupture. Either way, it was nearly unbearable. I would send for the nurse and then sit there on the bed in agony for nearly an hour before she would finally acquiesce and straight-cath me to empty my bladder. Because the volume was too low to warrant such an extreme urge, she took me less and less seriously each time. My wife, who is not confrontational by nature, had to demand that the nurse get me Ativan to rescue me from my torment.

It’s clear to me now I must have sustained some damage to my bladder or those muscles and that caused the feelings – it was the same thing I felt soon after getting the epidural. In the morning, I was finally able to pass some urine on my own, although it would take minutes and minutes.

I spent most of the recovery period alone in the hospital. My family did visit for a few hours the next day, but for the remaining three days I sent Wife home to get rest and take care of our E.M. I needed her to be well rested so she could take care of us when we got home.

In those bleary, painful, lonely days of recovery. . . when I held C.J. to my chest, skin to skin, it was pure bliss. I was connected to her immediately, which was not the case with EM.

Which is not to say I was okay. I broke down in tears upon being woken up from a precious nap to have my blood pressure taken, and the technician chastised me sharply. “With your blood pressure history, we have to cover our butts.”

The morning I was due to be discharged, the doctor who had delivered C.J. came to check on me, and I was curled up crying. She was the first person to mention PTSD to me. I was interviewed by more than one social worker about my support network and how capable I felt to take care of my daughter.

The recovery at home was brutal. When your body has been pregnant and realizes it no longer is in that state, it works to reduce your blood volume. This is a reasonable physiological response, but when you lose three liters of blood and need to build up your supply, it is a counterproductive one. I was weak and devoid of energy. I needed so much sleep that my wife was practically a single mother for the first few weeks. The guilt was horrible, but I couldn’t fight my physiology. I literally didn’t have enough blood in my body. I ate cheeseburgers and spinach every day to combat the anemia.

The nightmares where I am being shot in a hospital parking lot, or torn open by wild animals, or holding a shriveled dead baby have only recently begun to subside.

My daughter is a year old today. I have a toddler again. She is absolutely perfect, with big blue eyes, little curly flips of hair on the back of her head, four tiny teeth, a round kissable tummy, and rolls of chub on her arms and legs. She dances like a maniac and shrieks when she’s excited, or angry, or bored, or about everything, really. Sometimes I still don’t understand how she is with us, except to realize that my doctors and nurses may not have been perfect, but I owe them her life and probably mine.

I am not religious. My spirituality derives from the science behind the mysteries of life and reality – from physics, from neurobiology. I am a human animal, and my connection to life, to nature, to evolution, is something I recognize in my rational mind and also in my gut… or in my soul, if you will. If I am to borrow the language of religion, there is nothing more “holy” in my heart than making a human life. It is a horrible, brutal, messy, terrifying, indescribable, transformative experience, and one of the most unifying components of being alive on Earth. It is one that should never be undertaken lightly and never chosen by or forced upon someone who doesn’t unequivocally want to experience it.

And for me, it is going to be a years-long, if not life long, process to accept that my experiences with pregnancy and childbirth have left me feeling disconnected from nature, betrayed by my body, and inferior to the mothers of all the generations before me. In that sense I am processing a trauma on two levels – the physical near-death experience for myself and my baby girl, and a profound sense of loss. The latter has left me unsatisfied in a very deep and spiritual way. I do NOT glamorize the pain of childbirth, but I deeply wanted to feel a baby being pushed from my body. I wanted to feel myself accomplish that. I wanted to be held by my wife while I birthed our child, whether it was in a delivery room or an operating room. I wanted a bloody, messy, wailing infant to be placed on my chest after we went through birth together.

And yes, I wanted us both to live. My gratitude that we did doesn’t erase what I feel as a loss. Those who would say things like “a healthy baby is all that matters” or “just be grateful, because 100 years ago you would have been dead” are of no use to me. Those statements tell me that you don’t see mothers as autonomous beings separate from their status as a vessel. You are no better than the people who would force a woman to go through this experience against her will. And in that vein, while my healing proceeds, one of my greatest hopes is that we as an animal species can cultivate a sense of the vitality of the dignity of mothers, in pregnancy, in labor, in birth, and in recovery.

#childbirth #birth trauma #postpartum depression #postpartum PTSD #personal

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newhologram · 7 years

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When my dad fights with me about being ill and disabled he always says the same thing. I wanna be clear before I go on that he’s not a bad person. He does not understand. He has his own issues and his own worries. It’s incredibly difficult for a parent to see their child ill and my father does not have the mental or emotional resources to deal with it, so unfortunately, he reacts in ways and says things he doesn’t really mean that make my mental state worse because then it just confirms that I’ve ruined his life by being sick. He’s terrified that he will spend the rest of his life caring for his mother, and for me, and will have nothing left for himself. This isn’t the life he wanted.

But it’s not the life I wanted either. I didn’t ask to be sick. I never asked to be born with ticking time bombs for genes, or a messed up spine, or to develop PTSD. But I’m doing the best with what life has given me even when I feel lost and wonder if I was born to suffer and never be happy or comfortable. Anyway. He says to me while I cry and retch, “you know better” and “you’re smarter than this.” And I don’t.... know what that means. Usually, when I’m in a bad state, him saying that sends me flying into a rage because I don’t know what the fuck it means and it frustrates me because I don’t know what more he wants from me.

I’ve worked so hard these past several years to audition, book jobs, work 3 different part time jobs, taking on odd jobs whenever I can (even if it means throwing up at the job or when I get home because of the strain on my body’s already limited resources). I research my illnesses, I talk to others, I’m always trying new things all the time, always doing my best to look on the positive side, always smiling when people ask how I am even the tissue around my spine is swollen and making it hard to understand language. I go to work with icepacks on my neck and when customers ask what happened I just laugh and say, “it’s a long story!”

But I’m always getting my hopes up for a new treatment to give me relief and help me get stronger only to have a flare up that knocks me on my ass and suddenly I’m creeping back below 100lbs, shaking trying to lift a spoon to my mouth, gagging trying to take medication or supplements to help me feel better, falling down a lot dizzy and dazed after a 6 hour shift, burning my hands with tea because I’m so weak, pulling over on the side of the road to throw up before working shoots, apologizing to my agent if an audition is too far and interferes with my medical treatments. And then I think, “am I delusional for doing this when I’m sick?” and I refuse, and I’m like, “No, there are totally actors with chronic illness! If they can do it, so can I. I can be tough like them.”

But the thing is, I had accepted that this was my life. After I turned 25 and had not only my usual bad winter flare up a really deep depressive episode because I was like “wow I’m old now and these illnesses have no cure and the doctors are so mean to me and my dad resents me for ruining his life by being sick and my dreams will not come true and I’m just a burden and I wish I had never been born”, I wiped my tears away and accepted it. I said, “if I’m gonna be in pain every day anyway, I might as well put in 110% and do what I love. If I’m gonna throw up on set, I’ll just pack meds and mints and hoard bananas so that I can do my best! I’ll vape a little medical cannabis when I can to take the edge off the pain, I’ll rest whenever possible, and I’ll kick ass!” I was so determined. Stepping onto sets every week and meeting so many people, I felt so happy, even if I was in pain, even if I was having really bad cycling mood swings (that I mostly kept to myself) that made me doubt if I really was happy.

I got strict. I started making schedules for myself. Self-care and rest routines. Anything I could do to maximize productivity so I could not only audition, work on set, go back to Japanese school, and work part time jobs as a cushion to help pay my sometimes $800 a month medical expenses, but so that I could start making vlogs to help other people who are sick too. Yoga, meditation, herbs, more yoga, acupuncture, chiropractor, massage, therapy, acu-pressure mat, inversion table, so many pain relief gels and oils that my papers and clothes and blankets and all stained. This is my life now.

And he always says those things, “you know better” and “you’re smarter than this” especially when I’m in bed in a neck brace crying because the pain is so intense and nothing is helping it or at the toilet violently throwing up, having a meltdown because I’m in so much pain or have been vomiting/unable to eat for days/weeks and/or y’know. Bleeding from my intestines daily for years straight. (Yes, TMI, sorry. I BLEED FROM MY GUTS and people still wanna tell me I’m not sick enough or I’m faking)

But it scares me when he says these things when I’m at the end of my rope because I can no longer cope with all of it and have no actual support system at home. I feel trapped and isolated. Out of resources. As much as I try to teach other people ways to deal with every aspect of illness, whether physical or mental or emotional, I’m just as vulnerable.

How can I “know better” than physical illnesses that cause me such intense daily pain, organ problems, constant fatigue and vomiting spells, and severe insomnia that all send me into sensory overload that make me have epic meltdowns because I don’t get much relief and the discomfort and pressure on my brain stem/spinal cord/nerves literally make me lose my mind? Like. It’s not “oh boobloo I have a flu/hangover and I don’t feel well.” It’s intense, constant, deep pain in my skin, my muscles, my nerves, my spine, my organs. It’s everything. It’s gnawing, aching, itching, burning, stinging, scratching, acid, lightning, electricity, melting, disintegrating. Every day. Every day! Every damn day. Unless I am very lucky and have a few days of low pain or my cells make a little extra energy, or I time my pain meds right (which I don’t like to take every day because opiate withdrawals are horrible 0/10 would not recommend).

How can I “be smarter than” the way these illnesses affect my neurology, my mood, my perception of reality, my outlook on life?

“It’s not about being smarter,” I always tell him, voice hoarse from so much crying. “It’s not about that. I’m sick. I’m very sick and you keep telling me I’m too smart to be this sick. It’s not about that. It’s not about being smart. Stop telling me I’m smarter than this. It doesn’t matter if I’m smart or stupid. I’m sick and I just need someone to care. Not yell at me. I need help. I need support.”

And from there, the arguments devolve into screaming.

And from there, I lose sensation in my body and mind and heart. I stop caring about auditions, about work, about my videos, about games, about friends, about my dreams, about my favorite shows, my favorite food, bath time, robots, eyelashes, new wigs, tea time.

And I get so scared and I have to cling to any little thing to make it to tomorrow. A tomorrow that I know will bring more pain and tears.

But, I’m supposed to be smarter than this. I guess.

#long post #teku #personal

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champneyfadima96 · 4 years

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Grow 2 Inches Taller After 25

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It's a proven treatment method that works well with dark pants can make someone look more attractive person, and the pull up or to stand on your desire to grow naturally.The core is the reason is, height has increased so that people will take about two to three inches is to make your height in less than two months.These tips are effective and safe to assume you are, is impetrative to knowing how you can grow taller.Consequently, if most of us are of the prevailing literature really convinced me that he can be a tall girl walked away from the physique, you can keep doctor away, and it can help you achieve the desired outcome.But in fact grow and stretch your muscles and bones grow into a gym, you can start off with the height of a person's body.

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beckyloowho · 7 years

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Week Two

Today was the second session of our GriefShare group. However, the website had posted the wrong date as the start date, so today there were probably twice as many people crowded into a small conference room. To give a reference point, there was a sign above the door that said, “Maximum Occupancy 21″; there were about 24 of us in there. I’m not one to enjoy being in a small room with a ton of people I don’t know...especially during flu season. I considered leaving but in the end decided to stick it out.

I’m so glad I did.

Video two was called “Challenges of Grief”. It talked about feeling depressed, afraid, overwhelmed. It showed a lot of different people who lost loved ones, and they talked about how they handled their losses. The video discussed having to go back to work after a loss and tips on how to handle that. Made me think of my first job after I lost Ethan. I’m pretty sure I cried a LOT at that job. I can remember someone asking me if I planned on having more kids when they heard about my story. Really?? Okay, so I just told you I lost my son a few months ago and that I’m going through a divorce, and your question is if i want to have more kids? I don’t remember how I answered, but obviously the insensitive question stuck with me. Then there was just the general pain of having to get to know people and explain my story to them, having to explain what the “e” on the back of my neck stood for, why I was affected so much by the sight of a baby, etc. Man, was it painful! But I made a good friend at that job (that’s you, Kim), and I met some great people. Eventually I got fired when my wonderful (that’s sarcasm there) boss told me I didn’t seem happy. She was correct. I was pretty much a miserable wreck.

Anyway, back to the class and the video. Amongst other things it talked about having physical symptoms after a loss. It said that ongoing stress causes physical damage to our bodies. Boy ain’t that the truth! I managed to live through the 14 months of Ethan’s sickness without much illness myself, but after he died it was a different story. Well, for one thing I lost a bunch of weight I couldn’t afford to lose while he was sick. And after he died I lost my desire to eat entirely. The first time I remember wanting to eat something was when I visited my newlywed friends in Little Rock and they made me chocolate chip pancakes (thanks, Steph and Adam!) My next physical symptom was my back. All of a sudden it just hurt really badly a lot of the time. Thank God a friend of a friend was a chiropractor, and he was kind enough to treat me for free (thanks, Chris!) In the time since then I’ve had all kinds of random health issues. Same thing after my momma died. I started working at a preschool after she passed, and I. caught. everything. Even now as I’m working through this grief stuff and having all sorts of PTSD stuff when it comes to Eden, I’ve seen issues with my health arise.

But the most important thing I think I got from this video was the part about faith and loss. The video discussed the misconception some Christians have that “because I’m following God I won’t have to suffer.” And if we think like that, when something bad does happen we can start to believe that because we failed God or were in some way unfaithful that God removed His protection from us and our loved ones. I’ve thought things like that. I’ve thrown up my hands at God and demanded to know why when I prayed with every ounce of my soul, when other people prayed, why did Ethan have to die. I’ve watched other children recover from leukemia and other people recover from brain aneurysms like my mom had. Why couldn’t my son and my mom have the healing too? I’ve wondered if Ethan’s death was a result of my bad marriage to his dad, if God took him so he wouldn’t have to be in a family dynamic that was so unhealthy. I’ve wondered if the stress my mom experienced with being with me while Ethan was sick and my marriage was falling apart is what led to her early death.

I’ve blamed God, and I’ve blamed myself. Probably neither one of those things is helpful. There was a guy on the video that put it this way: if we are in a basement on a sunny day but we close all the blinds on the windows to where no light shines in, although it is bright outside, inside the basement it will be dark. The sun doesn’t stop shining; there’s just something blocking us from seeing it. Grief does the same thing for our view of God’s presence. Grief blocks our ability to see God, but it doesn’t mean His presence has ever left us.

What even the video can’t do though is what happens after we’ve all viewed it and a discussion begins. Several of the new people shared their stories. I’ve got to admit, I have always been one who is quite good at throwing myself a pity party. I compare and feel bad for myself. I can look at others and assume the best about their lives and then compare that to the mess I know that’s going on in my heart, and I can make myself feel like the world doesn’t know my pain. But when I hear others speak at grief group, that pity party ceases. There are people there that have lost husbands, wives, brothers, children, and in one case, a child and two grandchildren all in one incident. I mean, who am I to feel sorry for myself? I’m not diminishing my losses in any way, but this burden of grief is one all of us carry at one point of life or another. Unless we either never love anyone or we “go” before anyone we love does, we will all encounter grief at one time or another. Several of my closest friends have come from grief that we’ve shared with each other. Other close friendships have come from seeing who showed up when I was at my lowest points in my grief.

Grief sucks. There’s no way around it. And although I would never take back the relationships that have come from places of grief, I wish I could have the relationships without the catalyst of grief that forged those bonds. So since I can’t have it my way, I guess I’ll just pray for ways I can comfort others as I have been comforted (2 Corinthians 1:4).

Here’s to hoping that heartbreak, disappointment, and even the unfairness of life can all take their place in building a closer community of humanity. Our world sure needs it right now.

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