#also briefly: charles but mainly just to go *listen I love him*

[variousqueerthings]

so the whole thing about BJ for me, is that actually he’s not my favourite character (I was just going through the characters and I’m no good at playing favourites -- purely based on amount of words written it may be Hawkeye, but every one of them, including BJ, has something that makes me go !!!!!!!!!!)

but right now BJ specifically is someone I circle back to a lot, because of the mask of it all. no character on MASH wears masks as well as BJ does

when I first started watching I knew that there was a guy (I at some point had the name “honeycut” and was like... “honeycut? is he a bond girl??” (yes, he is)) who would be there after Trapper and stay until the end of the show

and then as I was watching I got sent some fanfictions and generally got an impression of BJ through the lens of devotion to Hawkeye and overall good guyness, maybe a little bland even

and around s6 I was really wondering... where are they going with this guy? Did learn later that there was something going on on the writing-side of things, so the inconsistencies I was noting were... noticeable, but often that can give unexpected things to work with. at the time I figured “I will wait until I’ve got the whole puzzle” (I say, like I wasn’t writing a dozen BJ-related posts while watching, but I was just... prodding at him: what’s up with you my guy?)

so now I’ve got the whole puzzle and it’s quite devastating. I’ve joked along with others that BJ is the villain of the piece, and it is kind of true that a lot of later seasons inner-MASH conflict comes from him, but the whole thing about the end is of course that none of the people at the 4077th are villains (except for Frank, of course, Frank is a bastard as he was meant to be), they’re just reacting to all the awfulness in different ways 

I feel like Hawkeye, Charles, and BJ react the worst to it (although everyone has their Stuff) and out of the three of them BJ reacts in the most unpalatable ways to a viewer

Hawkeye is Hawkeye -- could go on about him (and have done) forever, but I think I’ll leave it at that here. We have had Episodes Dedicated To Hawkeye Is Being Hawkeye, we Know.

Charles is introduced as intensely closed-off, strongly disliking everything and everyone around him, even casually bigoted -- every example of him growing and changing and allowing his door to wedge open just a bit is bound to be catnip to a certain kind of engager of these sorts of stories (me). and this is also at risk of becoming paragraphs of text, so I shan’t continue for long, but Charles in the last episode was perfectly everything that is Charles, in all his fascinating contradictions -- and in a lot of ways, Charles is quite open with who he is, and who he is is someone who hisses angrily at the idea of sharing his deepest emotions with others and then occasionally he does and I 😭

BJ though!

BJ is introduced as a good guy. he’s the new Trapper. he’s going to be there for Hawkeye. he’s in many ways everything Hawkeye is not (clean-cut, a little traditional in a charmingly white knight kind of way, married to a beautiful woman with whom he has a beautiful kid -- there’s even that line from Hawkeye where he basically says words to this effect, and ends it on “and despite that I still like the guy”) 

so when BJ starts knocking on the walls of being this Type of character --- what if he fully knows the connotations of being Trapper’s replacement and hates it? what if there’s no way to maintain an All-American ideal in a place like this and he’s floundering because he’s never had to consider himself outside of that perspective? what if the ugliness makes him ugly? (in how he treats others, not physically, fully once he got that moustache, the little gay boy from the 1970s inside of me went 😳 oh hello. sidenote, does Mike Farrell know this? surely he must know what he was evoking with all of that??? I hope Mike *I need to talk about gay rights* Farrell got fanmail from gay guys that he cherished). 

and what if he still acts, in many ways... not even so dissimilarly from how he did in the beginning, with the exception of the sudden outbursts and jealous rantings? what if the cheeky smile feels a bit... off now? more like a smirk. what if you go from “aww he’s got a letter from peg,” to “oh no, he’s got a letter from peg”? what if he obfuscates and tells half-truths and outright lies in the exact same tone of voice as when he’s being sincere? what if that means you just never know when he’s being real? what if he’s all-mask and no answers? and when did he start being this? was this somewhat disconcerting man always who he was?

and, like with Charles, there are little glimpses into the answers (I think war co-respondent is a not universally beloved episode, but the stuff about being a prisoner of war and needing to look towards home was wonderful stuff to me, dunno if I can imagine him ever admitting any of that to Hawkeye -- not to mention period of adjustment, in which some bit of truth only comes out after literal violence and binge drinking)

when I was watching s10 I noticed that this got especially intense, not so much in the period of adjustment way, but just the casualness of cruelty. there were barely any examples of BJ really being there for Hawkeye (and I have another post I want to do about times he aggressively projected onto him and how Hawkeye reacted to that within episodes) and I wasn’t happy about it, because I wanted to see mutual support dammit! I wasn’t prepared to consider the tragedy that maybe the ability to do that is just eroding (take away why things were written the way they were and just looking at the narratives themselves) -- maybe all that’s left is the projection and the familiarity and the trudging onwards with bits of mad impulsive abandon the only way of dealing

and after Goodbye Farewell and Amen, I reconsidered (we’ll see if I feel the same way on my second watch though). I do on some level wish that BJ had gotten to be more in the final seasons than mostly petty and mean, but I’m also warming up to the reading of him and the ways that reactions to trauma can be incredibly unkind -- and also that BJ maybe doesn’t naturally come to kindness, but it’s hard to say. I quite like that read, personally, and there are hints of it (the fact that he played tricks on people before he ever came to Korea is one. the fact that he’s an easy-going privileged white guy who was popular in a frat house is another.)

the other thing about BJ is the gradual slide of his character. in the beginning he’s confidently able to play the Role Of The American Hero Man Who Is (kind of bland) A Good Guy Here To Pick Up The Pieces Of That Other Guy Who’s A Mess and we have a clear enemy in Frank. It’s a simpler story, even though it actually gets complicated almost immediately in the first episode by the way BJ starts out in his nice pressed dress uniform and ends it having thrown up, having fallen into the mud, having had bombs dropped on him, having taken a girl who stepped on a landmine to an ill-equipped local hospital, etcetcetc. and at the end getting mind-numbingly drunk. in hindsight it feels easy to see all of this and go: ah yeah, he’s not going to be okay

and yet he spends seasons in which he just seems to continue and then seasons in which he does increasingly unhinged shit, while still acting as if he’s just continuing. masks under masks under masks. 

the first crack might be when he cheats on Peg. it’s totally antithetical to what he believes in. it makes no sense for it to happen. I wrote a whole post about how I didn’t understand the reasons from his side at the time when I was watching it (I believe it was the first episode to really give him a POV), and I’m not convinced that it was intended at all this deep in any way, but through the lens of this read, it’s the first of BJ’s sudden, destructive behaviours -- but he’s still Good Guy BJ, he’s going to explain it to Peg, he’s going to fix it... until Hawkeye tells him not to (and once again obligatory mention of how Hawkeye inserts himself in the Hunnicutt family over and over). Who knows if that was the right decision, the point is that there are no right decisions, but maybe for a man like BJ... idk, maybe it would have been good to let him face the facts and take responsibility. he’s increasingly not very good at that, after all

I also think “BJ Papa San” is one of the most affecting pre-s8 episodes. more scales falling from his eyes, there are no heroes, including him, nothing here matters, why should he try to make things matter? and it’s in s8 when period of adjustment hits and I do think (and again I may find myself reconsidering once I rewatch) that there’s a pre-s8 BJ and a s8-onwards BJ and the changes can be pinpointed down to specific episodes -- those episodes turned a slow slide into a waterfall, until you end up with something like “Bombshells” in which BJ’s hurt leads him to blame Hawkeye (and really himself) for essentially judging the average soldiers who come through, when Hawkeye has never been cruelly simplistic like that in how he fights against the war

*

in GFA BJ finally hits the wall with his way of dealing, and he deals with that really badly too. every bit of how he goes about trying to get home to Erin’s birthday makes me want to shake him. he triggers Hawkeye, he doesn’t consider the needs of the 4077th in terms of surgeons, he feels weirdly manipulative in the way he shows her picture around like, “see, this is why it’s important I leave right now, rather than in idk, two weeks, you wouldn’t break the heart of this little girl, it’s all about her actually and not about me, when you think about it!” -- then he leaves without saying goodbye to Hawkeye or even just leaving him a note (and yeah, sudden short timing, but like... dude... you had time before that and also that’s the thing he’s sensitive about! that’s... that’s literally the thing that happened that meant he met you how he met you, you were there my guy!)

and he gets sent back and once again doesn’t acknowledge that he really may have hurt him. Over and over again in that final story, BJ runs from direct confrontation of how he feels, down to the feelings that must arise from allowing the word “goodbye.”

when Hawkeye confronts him on that (and I love love love that it wasn’t about how BJ might have hurt Hawkeye or about the mutual projection they may have done on each other, or anything about the past time of BJ being kind of a shit, it was Hawkeye asking for the thing underneath all of those things) it’s in a way that’s very raw and puncturing, and feels like slightly to the left of an argument (you know when someone brings something out during a fight that seemingly has nothing to do with what it’s about?) + Hawkeye’s highly sensitive way of dealing with things invoking his actual death to try and get BJ to just do the fucking thing! It was pretty shocking, I will one day rewatch, but I am remembering that feeling of it like a kind of slap to BJ’s face, because he’s trying to not think about things like that!

it reminds me of the example of “times men are allowed to show emotion and be close and be intimate include when a buddy is holding his dying buddy on the battle field,” except in this case it’s fascinatingly meta, because it’s Hawkeye calling BJ out on it through that example, because Hawkeye, as we know, has no problem being emotional (filtering those emotions though... somethingsomething fascinating that we have two examples of Hawkeye being so emotionally wounded that he literally deals with it by repressing the whole memory! ANYWAY!) -- would it be enough then, BJ? would you say goodbye if he was literally dying, or would you be a coward then too? I’m doing some hyperbole and stretching of how Hawkeye says it, but it’s the slightly left to an argument feeling of it all... you’re asking, how much does this question contain?

and hey, what do you know: having to look directly at the violence without a haze of genial “I’m just a blank space where a guy should be”ism, is the thing that BJ is sensitive about! but they’re about to leave and Hawkeye can’t let him not look directly at him anymore, he needs them to say goodbye!

*

BJ is also a guy who’s been really hurt and is continually hurt by all the ways war is a near-constant violence. they’re all just hurt people doing their best, and I like the idea that maybe Hawkeye is quite aware of what BJ is doing and absorbs the blows knowingly, because they’re all just trying their best to get through it okay and Hawkeye’s way is self-sacrifice

at the end BJ does say goodbye

he makes the tremendous effort to do so, and it’s done in a very BJ type way, big and grand. it feels like an acknowledgement that what happened here did affect him, Hawkeye mattered to him, and despite everything and the likelihood that they may never see each other again (or maybe they will, but only once or twice), there was something in it all worth saying goodbye to. in a sea of nothing mattering, that mattered

another thing is that I think if this had been a different show, with more traditional types of masculinity, BJ would have fit right in. Hell, he might even have been “the sensitive one” because ultimately he’s a very passionate healer of people and he’s against war on principle and he’s a wife guy, but this narrative doesn’t let him stop at that point. things that might go under the radar in that type if story become red alarms in this one. maybe the original MASH, full of snark and cynicism would have let him get away with it

but in this one he says goodbye, dammit, he hugs Margaret (twice), he says fond goodbyes to his friends and salutes Potter, and he hugs Hawkeye as hard as he can like he’ll never let go, and he makes the grand gesture! 

and I don’t know, I might reconsider so many things as I go along... like I said, he’s... *pokes and prods* what’s going on here, huh buddy? how can we make this writing make sense now we have all the puzzle pieces we’re going to get?

how hard can I fixate on the act of saying “goodbye”

[teeveeblog]

STUDIO AU HEADCANONS

Part 2: Fresh(and also some other characters I decided to throw in on the mix)

So everyone seems to have liked my first set of Headcanons so im here to add on with a part two.

So I would say if the grand scheme of the "story" these characters would be sidecharacters.

I was thinking about the AU and was thinking "whats it like in other industries" which inspired this! So spoilers: this focuses on the modeling industry.

Now i had came up with the logic of "in this world, they would need specific clothes for monsters because monster bodies are drastically different from humans, so that would mean they would need lots of monster models as well as human ones"

As always, Studio AU belongs to @zu-is-here and @help-im-a-gay-fish

And at her request and also again, her being one of the reasons I hopped on this train, @kotikaleo

Okay now to the actual Headcanons! (Below the cut)

1. Fresh

So yeah. When thinking what fresh would do career wise my brain went "hey what if he was a model" and thats been living rent free in my mind since. (I will draw some art later on, when I have time) But yeah! I sorta imagine it as Fresh was a dork, he always was, but in high school he had a MAJOR glowup(espically in comparison to his brothers) and as a result he caught the attention of talent agents and quickly started to build a career for himself. I imagine him being more a model for like specific clothing stores and brands.

Now Fresh is very good at hiding in public, as he dresses as his usual self(goofy glasses and like a knock off fresh prince of bailair) in public and then at work looses the shades and hat and goes into model mode.

Now in relation to my last headcanon with the failing out with Error(aka error being a jerk)

So when his older brother basically shut him and Geno out, Fresh was pretty angry, not externally but very much so internally. While Geno held out hope Fresh immediately responded with "fine, he was to act like that then ill give him what he wants" and cut Error out in return.

Once Geno and Reaper had their first kid, Fresh began dedicating himself to the Uncle role as well as the support role for Geno that used to be filled by Error, basically telling himself "im going to be better to my family than he was" trying to make up for Errors petty abandonment of them.

2. Outer

So this one may be random, but again, living rent free in my head(also this character deserves a little love, kay, also i have a potentional for d r a m a, do bear with me)

So Outer is a big hot shot, who is basically that one model/actor/artist you see in a million different advertising for things like the bueaty industry, fashion industry, jusy random products.

He is VERY recognizable and has a very distinct space theme, as well as just generally recognizable sparkly clothing/makeup(just eyeshadow for the makeup) and the best description I can come up with till I draw the art is James Charles.

So now we get to the d r a m a(apologies if it sucks, yall can just ignore it cuz its just a headcanon-)

So I wanna make sure all these characters are sorta connected to the "main cast" so here is my pitch:

So Outer used to be friends with(and maybe briefly dated) killer. This was something back in college and after they both went to focus on their careers they fell out of touch.

I like to imagine once they both began to suitably rise in popularity they got back into touch and rekindled their friendship.

This mainly is because they likely both needed a friend that could relate to the struggles of their work(since both of their jobs can be extremely objectfiying and painful to deal with)

And obviously, Killer suddenly getting closer to his old ex/friend from college who happens to be pretty attractive by most standards is going to get a certain pair of skeletons a little bit j e a l o u s.

Now killer and outer see themselves as purely platonic, and Killer keeps telling his boyfriends that, but that doesn't change the fact they can't help but be a little suspicious.

And so drama can insue (:

3. Lust

So this one probably would be obvious as hell, but Lust models in the uh....more risqué side of things(you can probably figure out what that would be).

Now lust is perfectly confident in his profession and takes some pride in it as he is pretty successful, but he also has tried again and again to get a big break into the mainstream. (Though he has long accepted he probably will never get that chance.)

Now i imagine Lust befriending Ink in some way or another, and mostly serving to help with the romantic drama that is Inks love life.

So every failed relationship has, Lust is always there to get some wine and listen to Ink bemoan and vent about the fact he can't ever seem to find the right person that he can stick with.

I will have art for these headcanons as soon as possible, since i currently am on vacation and will be busy.

Part 3 will come soon!

It will focus on Reaper and Geno again, but more their relationship and family they start so get ready for some sappy and cheesy as fuck romance.

[thisartofeveryday]

For those of you who thought I should make my life story into a book…here is the outline. For the sake of clarity as you are reading, let me explain who the characters are. The kids from my Dads first marriage: Jim1, Patty, Seana. The kids from my Mom’s (Mary Ellen) first marriage: Mary Jane and Jim2. My brother that I am a full sibling to is Charles (chuck).

I think you might know that 95% of our lives are lived from the unconscious mind. From birth to age 7 a childs mind is in Theta wave (hypnosis) and everything that they learn in those years (mainly through observation and repetition) is the program that their minds run for their entire lives. Knowing this – I look back on the first 7 years of my life.

I think we moved 7 times in those 7 years. I am certain it was because of Dads extreme anger management problems and the fact that he is a sociopath, a pedophile and a rapist. Zero stability or chance to make lasting friendships. My dad was sexually abusing me and unpredictably violent. I was terrified of him. I was being terrorized/bullied by my brother, Chuck, who was every bit the sociopath that my dad is. My mom was overwhelmed by the number of children she was responsible for - none of which she actually wanted- and add to that, her husband was sexualizing all of the kids, so really being the last of her kids I was the last of her problems. Being the youngest (and as traumatized as I was), I was quiet and easy to forget about or push to the side. The older kids were the ones in the spotlight and where all the attention went. They were enrolled in activities and they were more the same age, so they were a unit. I was just an observer of them. I felt so left out and forgotten. Always.

I was a mistake and a burden (dads exact words to me on my 11th birthday). Mom made sure I knew that she thought I was mentally retarded- she would joke about it all the time. (I guess she never made peace with her sister being autistic) She also loved humiliating me even when I made it clear she was hurting me. Remember her sausage fingers joke or how many years I got called Boomer? I absolutely hated both of those things, made it clear, and yet she refused to give up the name calling and humiliation. There was very little respect for my personal boundaries. Dad would assault me in the middle of the night and I would wet the bed out of fear- then he would make me sleep in it to teach me a lesson. Mom would do nothing to help me, though she was awake in the middle of the night when I would work up the courage to go into their room to ask for help. She let him treat me like that. Goddamn…I remember the night terrors and being scared to be in my room at night because the scary man was sitting in the rocking chair, in the dark, next to my bed.

I have a memory of being in the garage in our house in South Windsor. I was playing with our basset hound, General…I was crawling around on the floor and the dog mounted me and was dry humping me. Dad got this sick laugh and let it happen. Mom walked in and got mad at him, but did nothing to help me. My personal boundaries were nonexistent. Nobody was protecting me from him. I remember him eating the food off my plate at dinner…or kissing me on the ear or touching me when I would tell him I hated it and to stop. I remember the baths dad would have me take with him and how he taught me to touch and work his dick. I remember the photos he would take of me after the bath. I remember being 7 years old and trying to lay on his bed and be sexy enough for him. I remember kissing mom passionately the way that dad taught me to and mom getting upset and asking me where I learned that. I remember having a baby doll that I drew all over, angrily, with lipstick. I remember being scared because my ass was bleeding and I told mom while her brother and sisters were visiting and she shushed me and scurried me away. I remember him also beating the shit out of me…sometimes for no reason. I remember being deeply attracted to and absolutely terrified of him. I was 7.  These are the only memories I have of my dad. I don’t remember him being there for me, or interested in me as a person, or engaged in anyway. I just remember him being what I now know is a predator.

7 to 13: I remember some stability in Connecticut because we stayed there for three years… but I also remember having moments of being deeply depressed and hiding in the basement of the house writing notes that I hoped someone would find, asking for help to get me out of there. When I look back, those were my first experiences with disassociation from stress and waves of major depression. While I was being assaulted during those years, those years were all about Mary Jane, Seana, and Jim2. These three had each other. These three were a team. I was just an observer to your lives. I had no voice, no opinion, no importance, never truly included and absolutely my feelings went unheard and did not matter. We can say it was the age difference, sure, that’s part of it…but that’s also just an excuse. Things could have been done to validate my importance too.  I had Charles bullying me….I had my Dad assaulting me. I was so alone.

My internal voice wants to shout: Why did nobody see this? Why did nobody help me? Where were my siblings? I guess everyone was doing the best they could…

Literally anyone looking in knowing the truth could have easily assessed that this was a horribly destructive environment for any child to grow up in. I know dad was doing this to all the kids. I wasn’t the only one. It is absolutely stunning to me that through the years of my life I have consistently been blamed by my Mary Ellen (narcissist/borderline personality disorder) and the people who chose to listen to her twisted opinions that there was something wrong WITH ME.  I mean, logically the mental health issues I have faced my entire life are perfectly normal and healthy reactions to a situation that was deeply flawed. But somehow the blame has always fallen on me.

The very first thing I think when I think of my mom is her asking me “Whats wrong with you Melissa”. Ive lost count of how many times she has asked me that very question.

I now know that its just deflection. Queen Narcissist cant take responsibility for her actions so she puts it on the person who she always denied a voice. That’s nice. Very loving and motherly. Doesn’t fix the 40 some odd years of my life that I believed her and wanted to die.

Right around age 9 or 10, we move again. I remember it being a big scandal – I think the truth came about that my dad is a sociopath, a pedophile and a rapist. (By the way, that’s in my DNA. I get to live my life connected to that. I look just like my dad. I think like a Painter. It’s fucking unsettling.)  I remember all the pressure to say nothing about the move and to constantly behave as though we were the perfect family and nothing was wrong. So incredibly demented.

I remember a HUGE fight about Seana and Jim2 staying behind in Connecticut. (by the way: I also remember Jim1 leaving for the Marines and wondering where my brother went and why he never talked to me. At one point he came back to visit and gave me a beautiful geisha doll in a glass box that mom destroyed in a fit of anger at me…she intentionally violently knocked it off the top of my dresser in one of her vindictive off the handle rages…Im sure at 8 years old I totally did something to deserve it, right.)

And, of course I remember the night Seana was killed. (why did the man that killed her not serve jail time? Why are bad people never held accountable?) Dad wasn’t there. Again, Dad wasn’t there. As I recall he was having an affair with some woman in Arizona? Mom was already distraught to be back in Michigan. That night, I remember being awake before the call came in…watching the clock radio in my bed… it had a short in the wire that would spark. I was listening to the Beatles: My guitar gently weeps…. To this day, I hate the Beatles.The phone rang. Mom screamed to you “Mary Jane, OMG, Seana is Dead”. I didn’t understand what happened. I just knew we were packing up like we did so many times before to take yet another long drive across country. It felt to me like another move. I didn’t understand death or that my sister was gone forever. I didn’t get it.  

(an aside: I struggled in school. When I was in Beginning Algebra One for some reason that class would make me check out and I would always soul travel to the night Seana was killed and it felt like it was happening to me. I took that class 4 times including summer school before I passed.)

(later, when I was maybe 13, my dog got hit by a car in the street and now I knew what death was so I freaked out like Mom did when Seana died and I remember Mom shaming me: You cried more over than damn dog than you did at your sisters funeral. Very nice. Very motherly. Very supportive and kind of her.)

At Seanas funeral, I remember not knowing what was expected of me. I was just so focused on getting it right and who I was supposed to kiss (because that sexualized stuff was already so ingrained).

There were so many goddamn rules for behavior, (rich white republican ex-military country club going family that we were) and I remember getting it wrong and being scowled at all the time. Mom was always angry and stressed out. We had to BE someone and over and over again: “Don’t forget the family name” and how important our clan was (hilarious that she kept the Sterling last name because her current husband is too ethnic and this sounds classier to her than her own actual last name)….

Meanwhile, My developing sense of self was being assaulted and neglected/ignored out of me and I felt wrong all the time for every single action I took.

I think we moved back to North Carolina briefly and then to Florida? Whatever the case….

Then we move again. Again. Again. Now we are in Florida. Im 10. My parents are getting divorced. Mom is deeply goddamn depressed. My family is falling apart. I don’t know where my brothers and sister are. Everything is exploding. Im powerless and hostage to all this. I cannot underline the importance of that sense of being hostage to a situation that I was powerless to escape and having my feelings and my personhood completely ignored and erased. It consumed me. I wanted to die. I am, as always, the least of moms concerns.

In Florida I was so incredibly dissociative. I was experiencing C-PTSD. I remember feeling numb all over. Having no ability to react to this little girl that fell off her bike in front of me….I just stared at her…the adults nearby yelled at me for doing nothing. I went further into my head. I was so checked out. People just thought I was quiet or shy or retarded. I was deeply traumatized and needed help.

I remember Mary Jane and I sitting on the bed watching this music video by The Cars. In the video there is a woman who is laughing and crying. I remember asking MJ what she was doing because I do that too and I think she told me she was having a mental break down.  

I remember getting a Walkman and listening to the Police nonstop. That was my only retreat from how much I hurt. WHY DID NOBODY SEE THIS AND HELP ME?

I remember during that time that I was given another baby doll. I remember MJ and mom watching me play with it to see what I would do. I felt scared of them both and the creepy way they were lurking to watch me. I felt ganged up on. I couldn’t trust anyone. I was so alone. I wanted to die.

In Florida, I remember my birthday and dad cocking his fist back like he was going to punch me in the face…he did that sick laugh and told me he wished I was never born and that I was a mistake. (later when I told this to Patty she explained he punched her in the face on her 11th birthday. Im related to all that. That’s in my dna.)

My body was changing. I was getting my period. I felt crazy. I was in that HUGE school in Jacksonville and I had no friends and I was so scared. Everything was terrifying….and Dad was getting more unhinged thus Mom has Jim and Lynn move in to protect her and had you come back… and then I remember walking in to the living room in the middle of a sunny afternoon and mom on the pull out sofa, trying to make dad jealous, was fucking the guy who was there to buy the house  that we had just moved in to because we were MOVING AGAIN….

Not to mention, I remember MJ and I quickly taking Dads gun to the beach to bury it so he because he wanted to kill us all.

Im not even 13 yet….. Are you exhausted?

Any one of these things would make a fully functioning stable adult fold like a house of cards. “Whats wrong with you Melissa?”…. It took something like 20 years of therapy but now I have some clues to answer that question. Here are some more clues:

We finally make it to Boone. Mom followed her best friend, Mary Jane. After all that… that incredible pressure cooker of my pre teen childhood we arrive in bumfuck nowhere, North Carolina….and everyone is gone except the sociopath brother. The house is basically empty. Everyone abandoned ship. Where did my brothers and sisters go? I remember coming home after school and there would be nobody home. For my entire life I had come home to my family but now there was no one. I would sit on the couch and watch the clock with growing anxiety and cry until mom came home from work. It was beyond torturous. And then she would be pissed off that I needed her because she just got home from work. At this point Mom is just angry and exhausted all the time. She had to get a job outside the home for the first time in her life which she hated, she was sick of being a mom…she wanted it all to be over so she could have HER life. Charles was getting more and more abusive- physically and mentally and had to be sent away for our protection.

And then she starts dating Don Bailey. I think the sex must have been amazing because the guy was an utter low life. He was living off of her/my child support money… and beating the shit out of her. Their fights were never goddamn ending. I would hide in my room after school and not come out. I was so alone. I had no friends and no escape. Mom was friends with Mary Jane, not with me. Mom wanted nothing to do with me. One day we were driving home and I was so attached to her. I needed my mom so goddamn bad… I was struggling to make friends at yet another new school and the PTSD made me feel so distant from everyone but I had no words for what was wrong with me I just thought I was terrible at making friends (I remember this: pathetically I checked out a book at the library: How to be your own best friend)… She pulled the car over and told me “we cant be friends.” Mom has some glorified memory of us driving around looking for our favorite tree in Autumn… the only thing I remember is that conversation…her rejecting me when I needed her the most… after we moved to the town my sister lived in so she could be close to her.

Again, still no help with the major depression, the CPTSD… just a lot of blame “why cant you be happy Melissa…whats wrong with you?” and I cant be clear enough about this: all her spare time at home was spent on Don, not me. I didn’t have clubs and groups and activities that she as sure to enroll me in. I didn’t have my brothers and sisters there with me. It was just me, after all that, trying to figure it out.

I was a burden to her. She couldn’t wait to get rid of me and be done. I felt it always.

An aside: When she was unsure if she wanted to stay in Boone, I remember her asking Charles if we should stay or go back to Florida…after he chimed in with his answer, I gave my opinion which she angrily scoffed at me and told me it didn’t matter what I thought, Id go where they tell me to go.   My voice didn’t matter, I was a burden to her. I had no value as a person. I was powerless. So there I was in my bedroom that was the walkway between the living room and her room… at the mercy of whatever happened with no privacy or power over my life….. whats new.

Another aside: During that time we had gotten a dog that was a total pain in the ass for her to take care of. She gave it away while I was at school. I came home and the dog was gone and I was tearful thinking it ran away. She gave my dog away without telling me.

Then we moved out to Valley Crusis (9 miles outside of town…so isolated. I was so alone. The isolation was killing me. Where were my siblings. I needed help. I needed someone who was just there for me.) and Dons abusive behavior got even more extreme. I remember him picking me up from a concert that I was at….because he had sent Mom to the hospital with a sprained wrist and a busted lip. He was laughing about it when he told me to get in the car. Another time I remember Don looming in my bedroom door when Mom was at work and it was just us in the house… telling me: “Go ahead and call the police, nobody will believe you anyway.” I remember the woman who lived up the hill from us, with the curly hair…I think her name was Susan… coming down to the house while Mom and Don were gone and telling me If it ever gets too bad, you can always run up here. The neighbors knew I needed help. Where were my brothers and sisters? Where was my Mom? FUCK.

I remember Mom having many off the handle rages at me because I looked like a boy and my hair was crazy and I was so fucked up. I remember one morning after she had raged at me so hard that I was in stunned silence… we were sitting at breakfast at St Sinners and MJ kept looking at me, she knew something was wrong, I was clearly checked out and fucked up. I needed my sister. I had no voice or ability to speak up. I was scared of her husband, Glenn. Nobody helped me. Mom was the star of the brunch party!

I remember getting my first job at 15 and working at St Sinners…. Then, when mom bought the restaurant I stopped getting paid. She cut me off from my paycheck and told me it was my “duty to the family”… but she had Jim2 and his first wife Lynn there working and they were getting paid…and also stealing her money to fuel their coke habits. She didn’t value me, or my efforts but her golden son Jim can do no wrong even when he is fucking her out of her business.

I remember Jim2 offering me coke at a house party and John Golden and another friend getting me out of there away from my own brother. I remember Lynn being LIVID that I would stop by their house when I was lonely and wanted my family but instead I got shamed for thinking I could stop by and see them…and mom would tell me that “they had BUSY LIVES and I should leave them alone.”

I remember being so fucked up and alone in Boone….I mean, I now know I was just in shock and experiencing major depression. Mom kept asking me Whats wrong with you Melissa…when I was your age I had to choose between boyfriends… etc. Its incredible to me how Mom normalized my childhood abuse and completely erased my feelings or my personhood then blamed me for somehow being a problem child or wrong in whatever way….more incredible: people believed her.  

During those years in Boone I remember her doing things like openly making fun of me when I thought I might be gay, fixing regular hamburgers and telling me they were tofu when I became vegetarian…starting a burn pile in the back yard full of toxic things after I told her how important recycling was to me and laughing at me as I cried…..every chance she had to make me feel awful about being me and disrespected she took.

Once I visited her at her office and she told me I was “too ugly to look at and she didn’t want anyone to know I was her daughter and to never come to her office again.”

Shes right, we were not friends. She was a jealous mean girl, obsessed with appearances and her shitty boyfriend.

Lets not forget when she, with Mary Janes help, stacked my portfolio with MJs lithographies and coached me how to lie to get me in to Governors school for the summer. She wanted me gone and she got her wish. I remember feeling like a fraud that summer. I wasn’t good enough to be there. I had to lie to be included. I remember she didn’t even drive me there. She had Don do it. He harassed me in the car all the way there, 3 hours…. then dropped me…16… off on the curb in front of the college and drove away. All the other kids had parents excitedly helping them get set up in their rooms…excited about their major accomplishment of getting in to Governors school… I was there with my milk crate of shit, a fraud. alone. Acting like a tough girl who didn’t need anyone. I was a pro at that. Mission accomplished, she was rid of me.

I remember how deep my depression was becoming by the time I was 18. That last year of high school I would bang my head against my bedroom wall in an attempt to knock myself out, in hopes that I would get sent away to a treatment center or something. I couldn’t take all the fighting between her and Don. I fucking hated him and he was in my house and there was nothing I could do about it. I tried to throw myself down the back stairwell at school. I barely graduated high school my depression was eating me alive.

Amazing that nobody IN MY FAMILY SAW THAT I NEEDED HELP. I was invisible. Mary Ellen cast her proclamation that all was well, she was amazing and I was a problem child and that was that.

I have a million stories about Mom demoralizing me during those years…. Whats weird is that I have no memory of my Mary Jane there. I think she was so involved with Glenn and way up the mountain, I had no way to reach her. And I was scared of her husband Glenn. And, we were never close. And, she was Team Mary Ellen…. So I was just alone and wanted to die. Sincerely. Goddamn. Let it end.

I remember Don telling me that Mom was using my child support payment to make her car payment. So I asked her about where my child support was going and she told me she used it for my Blue Cross Blue Shield Insurance…. So I called the insurance company to see if I had coverage…. They had no record of me. She was, again, a liar….

When I graduated high school she couldn’t get me out of the house fast enough. She pawned me off on my boyfriend Gebeaux and expected him to simply take care of me. We broke up. He didn’t sign up for that. I was basically kicked out of the house in valley crusis. I wasn’t prepared for life on my own. I wasn’t ready. She just wanted to be done being a mom so Hey..I came back to the house one day and all my stuff was packed and that was that. I had to figure it out. Fuck me.  

At one point during that time I was living in a trailer with my friend Stacy. Mom was horrified about this. I was getting food stamps and she was so ashamed of me for being so low class. She came to the trailer and was completely off the handle. She said there was “no air” in there and grabbed a 2x4 and smashed out all the windows. Mind you from her perspective it was just another example of what a loser I am, living in a trailer on food stamps how did I end up such a piece of shit when she is such a wonderful mother… it must be because there is something inherently wrong about me.

She has seen me as trash who is incapable of being anything great my entire life.

Somewhere in there she stopped dating Don and started dating lawyer Rand Sterling…who broke her ribs multiple times and literally pushed her out of a moving car and then she walked 5 miles back to his house to be with him.  That relationship took her to Texas. She followed the money. The insanity of that relationship is all I heard about from her. She needed Jim2 to come protect her from her husband multiple times. I absorbed all of this through her very rare but insane emails to me. She has always used me as her emotional manipulation dumping ground.

I had my first total mental break right around 19 years old. I was fetal position on the floor at my girlfriends house… Jenn… I couldn’t stop crying for multiple days and I felt my mind split in two. I literally went into a black hole and was begging for death. Jenn and the next door neighbor scooped me up off the floor and drove me to the Watauga County Mental Health and got me some help… but at this point I was having a total mental collapse… the part of me that was traumatized was a child denied her voice or any recognition of her Self, so I had no way to articulate what was wrong and Mom had denied and normalized the abuse and denied me voice and my personhood for so long that I had ZERO chance of articulating what was wrong… it was buried so deep inside of me and I was so scared to trust anyone…. I was experiencing schizophrenia and Major depression.

Jenn helped me with my depression. Jenn made sure I was housed and fed. Jenn took care of me. I owe her my life.

I mean, that is an extreme mental health episode. Where was my family? How could none of the people who were supposed to love me the most see any of this? Why did none of them help me? Why did all of them think I was to blame? (my guess: Team Mary Ellen)  

Somewhere in that year my friends were moving to Chapel Hill so I packed up the car that my child support paid for and I went down the mountain. She threatened to call the police on me for stealing the car.  She told me I needed discipline and needed to go into the Army. She just didn’t know what to do with me…such a problem child. If I remember correctly, you echoed her sentiments. Everyone was always so angry at me for being so wrong and so bad. None of my family (meaning MJ and mom because my brothers had long bailed on me and my extended family has never made a single attempt to reach out to me or know me at all.)  were my friend, or loving, kind or compassionate.

I got away….I went to Chapel Hill and lived with my best friends Kerry, Lesley, Julie, and two other guys in Kerry’s Moms rental house. I was working at the Columbia Street Bakery and dating this boy, Richard…. Who happened to be a really abusive drug dealer… who held me down one night and violently orally raped me and when I called mom for help she told me with the exasperation of a mother who had supposedly tried so hard to do the right thing and raise her child with love and support but that child was just tragic and terminally fucked :

“I don’t know whats wrong with you Melissa, I guess you just like the bad boys.”  

Again, no self reflection on her behalf…she did nothing to help me.

I didn’t know how to get away from Richard who was playing mind fuck with me and I was getting high with him (LSD) …which was basically, me being drugged and him using me for sex but not being loving or kind in any way (felt like home)  Eventually, Richard got busted for selling a page of lsd to an undercover cop and threatened to kill me because he thought it was my fault… so I had to get out of there and I went to New York to chill out and work for the summer at the Omega Institute of Holistic Learning… to just be around hippies and eat good food. I hung out with Baba Ram Dass and Ben & Jerry…and took a class on the whirling dervish… These moments when I wasn’t in the pressure cooker of my life were both brilliant because I needed healing but also the worst because all this trauma would start to surface and I didn’t know what it was or how to speak about it. I would start to shatter again.

I believed it was my fault and there was something inherently wrong with me.

I was so lost. I needed help. I needed a parent or loving compassionate family or someone trusted to guide me through that time in my life. I had no one but my friends from North Carolina who were just as fucked up as me. I needed help. I needed help. Oh my god, I needed help.

Omega ended…I had no money to get out of there, nobody to turn to for help, no clue what to do next, I certainly couldn’t go back to Mom who hated me and was living with Rand so fuck that… I had no idea where my brothers and sisters were and no relationship with them so that wasn’t on my mind as an option…..so I caught whatever ride I could get and ended up in Boulder. One of my friends from Omega hooked me up with her cousin for a month and I tried to make it work… it was basically winter in Colorado at this point and I was out there door canvassing for Green Peace making no money and freezing to death. Just walking door to door for Greenpeace… looking in on other families and their loving lives together. I was so fucking sad. I was hungry and scared and completely out of options. I had to get out of there.

I called Mom for help. She said: “You got yourself into this, get yourself out”…. And hung up on me. The bitch hung up on me. I was stranded and so scared and I needed my mom. She hung up on me. She blamed me. She wanted to punish me for being such a problem. She was done being a mom. She hung up.

I remember having gone to the Planned Parenthood to get some medical help because I was sick. I explained my situation and the nurse looked at me incredulously and said “where are you parents?” I explained to her that Mom hung up on me.  I was devastated, living in a constant state of shock. Scared out of my sense of self or ability to connect to the present moment.

I was a fractured soul in every possible meaning.

My month at my friends place was over and I had to find an apartment or live on the streets. It took me another month of begging whatever guy I could find to give me a place to stay and then I contacted the boy I was dating at Omega, Scott, and asked him for money to get a bus back to North Carolina. He helped me. Bless him. He got me out of there.

I got on the Greyhound and ended up going to Idaho to visit with my friend Stacy (who I lived in the trailer with) and stay with her for a couple weeks to get grounded and feel safe with a friend for a minute. My mental break was coming back full force. I was inconsolable.  I remember laying on her bed fully having an out of body experience from the stress and being so disoriented. She is so patient and kind. She took care of me. When my time with Stacy was up, the next layer of insanity: I got on the Greyhound and took a 5 day no sleep, no food journey across country. I got chased down, carrying all my bags of things and looking like a little hippie… on a layover, by a group of drunk men in Wyoming…they almost got me but I found a laundromat that was open and full of people so I ran inside and hid until my bus was leaving again. I was terrified. By the time I made it back to Lesley and Kerrys house in Chapel Hill it was New Year night…I got some hours back at the Columbia Street bakery I was working at and got some money rolling in.

I want to mention that Poverty, which I have lived most my life in, is no joke and more damaging than anyone outside of the experience can understand. It is cyclical, like bi polar…. Living paycheck to paycheck or however you get just enough to maybe hold on for a moment longer but never knowing if more will be coming is a terror. Always feeling like the bottom is going to drop out…and never knowing when youre going to eat…and what that does to your hormones and your mental health…. Poverty is proven to damage people on a cellular level and have lasting effects that lead to chronic illness.

After making it back to NC, few weeks later the boy from Omega came to Chapel Hill and told me he wanted to marry me and wanted me to move to Boston with him. So we took a little road trip and eventually ended up in Boston. As a surprise to no one sane, that was not a lasting relationship. So after a year of misery in Boston, (more poverty, more loneliness, more no family) Scott drove me back to Chapel Hill and that’s when the girls and I all moved up to Asheville. All the while, checking in with Mom who was yelling and shaming me for being such a fuck up.

I can’t underline enough: I was disassociating the entire time. I was having episodes of schizophrenia. I was experiencing major depression and bi polar disorder. The stress of my entire life was more than I could handle and I had no support and no compassion and nobody validating my experience or me as a person. People just thought that was who I was. I was just fucked in every way possible and believed she was right and all that was normal and I was a terrible piece of shit. She had everyone believing that.  

Mary Jane believed her. She echoed her sentiments to me. Go Team Mary Ellen.

I moved up to Asheville and got somewhat stabilized. I was again living with my friends and I got a decent job at the Laughing Seed Cafe. I met Mark and I had decided to go to college because I thought that would make Mom happy and I needed to DO something with myself.  

Mark and I were together maybe 8 weeks before we moved across country and started a life together. Eight weeks.

I was so adept at being a high functioning  dissociative major depressive and I had no way to articulate what was wrong with me (all that stuff that had been normalized and ignored…all the ways my feelings and personhood was erased)… I just knew something evil bad was in me and it took me out from time to time. I thought it was my fault and I was ashamed of myself.  I was living in a constant state of shock. CPTSD.

So, I get myself into college and thanks to Mark and his truck we move across country.

When I hear my friends now talking about saving money for their kids college and really setting them up for success by helping them choose a school and get settled in or making sure they don’t have to work so they can focus on their studies and have a healthy social life with friends and do activities Im so confused. I didn’t know parents and families helped their kids with such things. I didn’t understand that in other families they help, protect and support. I made it through without any of these blessings.

Mark and I get a shitty apartment (the ceiling caved in out of rot and the place was full of roaches. The property managers stole my drum set and we would catch them on the roof at night peeping through the skylight to watch us), I get a full time job managing a restaurant…in addition to schooling full time...Im overwhelmed by the workload, scared to be across country, freaked out by college and the expectations… it was too much. I was away from the source of my abuse and things started to surface… I NEEDED HELP.

I needed my family except, honestly, I have none. Additional mindfuck: when I tried to talk to people about this I get the old trope about how everyone has tough relationships in their families and I need to love my mom and work it out with her.SO I KEPT GOING BACK FOR MORE WITH MOM BECAUSE I NEEDED HER LOVE SO BAD AND I THOUGHT THE PROBLEM WAS ME. Further, because I was so regressed I just sounded like a petulant child when I tried to talk about the abuse I had no accurate words for so nobody outside the experience really got it or could conceive how bad things really were for me… why would they? My family is extraordinarily fucked up, like nobody I have ever known.

In college, nobody comes to check on me and make sure Im ok. Nobody was calling. Id get rare emails or letters. When I would tell mom how hard it was, mom would mock me and tell me to suck it up when I would reach out to her and “complain” about how things were going for me… See, because its always my fault and Im never measuring up.

An aside: To this day, 40 years later, Jim2 has yet to even send me a single email to check and make sure Im ok or get to know me at all. He has never responded to the multiple emails I have sent him, so I stopped reaching out. I used to cry to mom about it and she would tell me that he “has a busy life” and I had to understand that’s why I wasn’t a priority to him. Personally, I cant imagine anything being more important than making a connection with your little sister, but I guess Im biased and not like him: busy getting high and drunk and being a cool party guy.  

During my college is when he married Lori. I worked over time and got a plane ticket to be at his wedding. I was sick to my stomach at the idea of having to be around my family but I love my brother and I wanted to be there. He ignored me the entire time I was there. I was a HUGE FUCKING DEAL that I could afford the ticket and made the effort to be there for him. I showed up for him….He ignored me. I was devastated and felt invisible and so worthless.

Another aside: I was 24 and that very first Christmas on the west coast Mom calls me, driving herself to the ER to get her stomach pumped from a suicide attempt. She was dramatically telling me her goodbye in case she didn’t make it. I was stressed and powerless beyond the telling of it. I cried all the way through that Christmas. Again: Mom always uses me as her emotional manipulation dumping ground. Out of all her children, Im the one with heart and she gets the sympathy she is working me over for.

During my college years, I would ask Mom for help she would mock me “Im sending baby Sava (MJs daughter) a care package…are you a baby? Do you need one too?”

Mean girl jealousy that I went to college and her life was taken from her by her children….

In college I had no friends, just Mark. No time for activities and my mental health was so fragile I had no ability to form friendships. I was barely hanging on. I would be catatonic in my time at home. We had this geometry screensaver on the computer and I would be frozen staring at it for hours while my brain felt like it was going to shatter. I was an absolute wreck and a shell of a person…but I was determined to prove I could graduate college and I wasn’t a fuck up. I wanted Mom to be proud of me.

I guess it should come as no surprise that after 4 years of no time off, working and schooling 80 hours a week, getting zero support emotionally or financially from my family …. that absolutely NOBODY FROM MY FAMILY CAME TO CELEBRATE ME AT MY GRADUATION.

Nobody came. Nobody celebrated me. Nobody saw the value in me or my hard work.

I remember being on the phone with Jim2 the day of my graduation. I had called him to ask why he wasn’t there for me. I was in tears. He told me that if that was the worst thing that ever happened to me, congratulations on your nice life. He thought it was bullshit that I was so upset. He thought I was being a baby. This loser dropped out of college which he had a scholarship for and did nothing with his life but drugs and alcohol and saw no value in me or what I did on my own. He didn’t show up for me.

Me going to college and graduating on time with full credits was a major fucking accomplishment on so many levels.

Not one of my family was there for me and I will never forgive or forget that.

We moved to the same fucking town Mary Jane was in when she was in college and never ONCE did anyone come to check on me and be interested in what I was doing or validate how amazing it was that I was in school and making it happen on my own.  

When I talk about how alone I feel in life, its in my bones.

I had worked over time to get Mom a plane ticket so she would be there for my graduation and she called me a couple days before to tell me pathetically “She couldn’t get the day off work.”  (Lie: I think she has some legal issue and couldn’t leave the state or something like that.)

After she called to bail on my graduation… at 27 years old… I had a heart attack on my walk home. I collapsed in my living room. Mark found me on the floor when he got home from work. She literally broke my heart. I was devastated. I was in shock. I was dissociating. I was so fucked up. I needed help. Poor Mark. He didn’t know what was wrong and neither did I.

Shortly after my graduation, MJ graduated and she drove to see her and was sure to tell me about it. I mean, they are BFFs so, no surprises there. GO TEAM MARY ELLEN, right?  

Whats wrong with you Melissa? My family. My family is whats wrong with me.

During college I was stressed to the point of being catatonic when I wasn’t at work or school. My mental health was tanking in every possible way… but the pressure cooker of school and work kept me hemmed in and my desire to prove that I was someone worth loving (because god knows I wasn’t going to be loved just for being me…No one was simply going to show up for me or simply be there. I had to earn it.)

…. then we moved to Seattle and I had three years at Amazon in that pressure cooker of a job… (10 to 14 hours a day, 6 days a week) working as a Lead running a team of 200 people to keep me too busy to feel my feelings or connect to emerging myself.  

At some point after I graduated and it no longer mattered, I remember MJ came to visit me one time. That was nice of her. Thank you for trying, MJ.

But heres the fun part: Mark. Mark loved me.

Mark is the very first and to this day ONLY person who has been intimately involved in my life who loves and respected me just as I am.

It was Mark loving me that allowed me to start developing a voice and for that very young very traumatized person inside of me to start coming to the surface. Mark was the very best thing that has ever happened to me….and, ironically, it was because he loved me that all that evil finally came to the surface…and was our demise.

All the things dad did to me, all the never ending abuse from mom that sought to vilify and demoralize me… all of the hurt from the abandonment from my brothers and sisters… all that evil came up because he Loved me enough to make me feel safe and supported…I just didn’t know that then and couldn’t see or feel that he was the most tremendous gift this life has ever given me ….

and I started sexually assaulting myself in my sleep (woke up one time with an entire box of tampons inside of me and had to go to the doctor to get them all out). I would throw punches in my sleep. I was having an utter mental breakdown/ breakthrough… and then I started acting out sexually with other men that I met online. I felt like I was being puppet mastered from some evil unknown source. I was manic and acting out sexually. That default programing from my childhood was calling the shots. I didn’t have a sense of self so I was acting from what I knew and what Dad taught me about myself and the self-worth that mom made sure I didn’t have.

I say acting out sexually. What I should say is reenacting the trauma…which there was so very much of. I was on auto pilot and at that time if you asked me if that’s what I wanted to be doing I would have said yes out of programming but the core truth of who I am knew it was not at all right or who I am or what I wanted…that core didn’t have a voice yet.

2001, Amazon had laid us all off. I got hired working at a treatment center for abused youth.  I was major depressive and would be fetal position on the floor and cry for a month at a time but I didn’t know why or what was wrong… I was just deeply goddamn depressed and wanted to die. All the time. Goddamn. Let it end.

Poor Mark. He didn’t know what was happening. He was the perfect boyfriend. He tried so hard to help me. I honestly could not have asked for a more perfect man to come in to my life…and he was stuck with me. Mentally fucked Melissa with no clue what was wrong… and worst of all, I thought I had to get out of my relationship with Mark.

Crazy,right?….I asked Mom for help. She had no relationship with me and no clue what was going on in my life…She is a complete train wreck of a human and so deep in her own denial and so wrapped up in her latest abusive relationship with a rich man that she could honestly give a fuck about me and thought the worst of me anyway… so yeah, break up with him and oh my god Melissa I don’t know what to do with you.

I kept cheating on him over and over again. I was off the rails with my manic depression. Spending, fucking, driving my car too fast…. Through a chat room, I got mixed up with a man that felt like Dad to me and I was entranced and captive to him. Mark asked me to marry him and I broke up with him, moved out.. I was off the rails with the sexual acting out/re traumatizing myself.

(Mark immediately met the woman he has since married and has been with for the past 18 years. I would give anything to have that man back in my life…Throughout these years, my memory of how he treated me has been the standard by which I have held all other men and nobody measures up….Beyond his character and integrity, the art, music and intelligence that lives within this handsome and kind man is incomparable. I blew it. Fuck. I pushed away the most incredible man I ever knew and he loved me. I still love him to this day.)

At that same time I heard a rumor at work that one of the counselors (reggie, 24) had slept with a client(raya,16). I knew reggie was capable of it (I had slept with him) so I reported it to the Unit manager, Big Mike. ……What I didn’t know is that Reggie, Mike and the guy I was so into, Cash were all friends who grew up together and in the same gang……

and so it was that month that I moved out from Mark that the man that I was so “in love with”, Cash, drugged me at a house party and raped me with 4 of his friends to teach me a lesson for reporting Reggie.

I remember sharing a beer with Cash and then feeling tired and dizzy and asking to lay down and then multiple hours of being barely coherent and having no control over my body and being passed around for everyone to fuck over and over again.

Cash was a sex trafficker and grooming me all along. No wonder he felt like home. My need for family and my daddy issues in full effect, I couldn’t break the spell. I was terrified of him and wanted him to think I was so sexy…..He was masterful with the mindfuck and kept me under his thumb at all times which felt like attention and love to me and was intense enough that I could feel it.

At that time, in Washington, you had a statue of limitations of 8 years to report a rape.

Mind you, I was so dissociative and still had no idea I was a person or had any rights to my thoughts or my body… I was really goddamn checked out at that point in my life….I was in shock. The childhood assault trauma was just surfacing and I had no words for it because it had been normalized and my feelings negated by my parents So, I didn’t know if I had been raped or not….it took me years to figure out that its wrong to drug someone and have all your friends fuck them…

I didn’t know I should or could ask for help. I didn’t believe I could be helped. I didn’t think anyone would help me. I didn’t know I was a person. I didn’t know I had rights. I didn’t know I could escape or how.

ANYONE CONFUSED ABOUT WHY I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO GET HELP OR THAT I DESERVED IT???????

Whats wrong with you, Melissa?

In the meanwhile, Cash was making sure I wouldn’t report it.

He knew I was away from Mark, had a history of sexual assault and no family, and that I lived in absolute poverty so there was zero chance I could escape him.

I was in so much trouble. I needed help. I called Mom. I explained that it all to her. I explained that they were a gang. That it was sex trafficking… that I needed help…. To which she said “Let them play godfather. Whats the worst they can do?”….. (nice way to minimize the extreme danger I was in and negate me as a person, don’t you think?)

that bitch loves to see me suffer and struggle, doesn’t she. Doesn’t it make her look amazing when I look like shit? So she didn’t help me. She shit talked me to the rest of the family like I wanted to be in that situation because I was trash. Nobody helped me.

I remember talking to Mary Jane around that time explaining that I was getting counseling and she, like mom, shamed me and told me I didn’t have bipolar or something like that… She was Team Mary Ellen all the way and me getting counseling was just attention seeking or something like that.

See, this is why MJ and I have never been friends or close. I cant trust her. Shes not someone I think of as an ally. Sorry about that, MJ. Im not trying to be mean but… look at why I think that.

I really do look up to her though. She is so smart and capable. But I cant trust her and this is why.

By the way, here’s just a few of examples of the worst they can do while “playing Godfather”: They were so invested in making sure I never spoke about the rape they made sure I was living in such constant fear for my life (mental domination) that I was too scared to talk to anyone about it:

*They had voyeur cameras in my house…that they were making money off of.

*They had software on my laptop to collect all my personal data (social security, passwords, answers to security questions) so I am owned by them to this day.

*They had GPS on my car to track me everywhere I went and would leave notes on my car to let me know I was constantly being watched.

*They flipped my therapists office and stole all her files to make sure there was no record

*They poisoned my dog every day for a month while I was at work…I would come home to Milo cowering in the corner like he had been abused all day long and diarrhea all over the floor until one day I yelled out in my home with nobody there that I would find Cashs son and do the same to him…and I went online and found his childs home address…yelled that out to my empty apartment…and after that day Milo was never sick again….

*Then there are the 2 times they broke into my apartment in the middle of the night, drugged me in my sleep and did whatever and dumped me at the park. One of those time I woke up with half my face slack and paralyzed as though I had a stroke. By the grace of god I got the feeling back but to this day its still a little droopy.

*They sent their equally psycho boy Alex into my life to keep watch on me. He was horribly mentally abusive. I was so broken and demoralized. I needed to get away. Instead, I got pregnant. Alex also gave me syphilis ..and so I had an abortion. I had to get two Orders of Protection to get Alex away from me. When I called mom for help with the pregnancy, she was off the rails hysterical and I was yet even more scared and alone. Mom blamed me for all of it. Further evidence Im trash. I got pregnant by a mistake by a black man.

There is more, I mean it was 8 years of daily torture… but I think you get the idea. Complete mental domination was the name of their game.

I had no friends. None. I was so fucked up. I was terrified to speak to anyone because everything felt like danger. Just these men showing up when they felt like to to fuck me and terrorize me. Eight years. My 30s. I was miserable beyond the telling of it.

Whats wrong with you Melissa. I needed help. I was so scared. I needed my family. I got yelled at and shamed. I was so alone. I wanted to die. I was so depressed and fucked up. Goddamn. Let it end. And the worst of it all is that I really didn’t even have myself. I never had a chance to be safe enough to develop a self. I was a shell of a human. I was out of my head. I was so checked out with the PTSD and the trauma of it all. I was scared to be alive. Soul fracturing is real.

This was how I spent my 30s. Somehow pulling myself together to go to work during the day because I didn’t want to be homeless, coming home and having a total mental collapse at night and all the while being mentally tortured by a gang of sex traffickers and when I reached to my family for help I got blamed for being a fucked up piece of shit.

I had no one. When I talk about my isolation and how alone I am, its cumulative.  Its all this and more.

I don’t need to volunteer at a shelter on Christmas to be with someone for the holidays. I don’t need to get a dog. I need family. I need to be validated on a daily basis that I matter and am loveable just as I am. I need someone safe who is simply there. I need people in my life who celebrate me without me asking. I need people who are there for those simple mundane acts of living that define us…I need to come home to love.

The miracle: I kept myself employed and was successful in my corporate career path, I kept myself housed, and drug and alcohol free the entire time. I had the where with all to get counselling and try to work through my shit. I never gave up on myself even though I didn’t yet know who I am and my family had absolutely written me off from day one.

Then the Recession happened. I, of course, had never learned money management skills so there really wasn’t any savings to rely on. I was comfort eating like a motherfucker, I had student loans, a car payment and insurance and a foolishly large and expensive apartment, I had these lecherous men that were taking advantage of me financially too… I was manic depressive… I was paying for counselling (which if I am not mistaken over the years has totaled $100k) But to be honest, I don’t know where my money went… so when the Recession hit it took about 2 months before I was selling off everything I own and living in my car….where I stayed for the next year with my dog.

Nobody help me stay safe or in my integrity. I had no friends in Seattle to turn to. Mom told me to put my things in garbage bags and throw it all away…take the dog to the pound… and work with my counselor (she was angry about me getting help because she perceived it as being me trying to vilify her and this was her chance to punish me for getting help) and find a shelter to check in to because I wasn’t welcomed at her home.

Let me say that again: My mom knew I was losing everything, told me to throw my life away, dump my kid at the pound and told me to check into a shelter, I wasn’t welcomed at her home.

MY MOM.

Shes sees me as trash. She threw me away. Doesn’t she look amazing when Im failing?

Work in Seattle was impossible to find. I literally had 700 resumes out. Understand, I have held a job consistently since I was 15 years old and somehow mom thought this moment was me being a lazy piece of shit and just trying to manipulate her for money when I asked for help.

Sure. Ok.

I spent the next year in my car with no money coming in other than whatever odd jobs I could grab on craigslist to make my car payment. I drove back to North Carolina to seek help from my friends and my brother. My friends back home were not in a position to help me in any long lasting way but bless them all for what they did…

but Jim 2, who lives in Raliegh, was. He just declined. He made me a sandwich…told me there was nothing he could do for me (he has three houses)…and I spent the night in my car outside my brother’s house.

I had an ex acquaintance from Seattle who lived in Raleigh. He was part of the abuser sex trafficking gang. He let me sleep on the floor but would beat the shit out of me if I tried to sleep on the couch. I was so demoralized and out of my head, I needed literally anyone to be there for me….so, I stayed there, on the floor, for a month.

My brother was 15 minutes away, could have kept me safe but my brother chose to do nothing to help me.  

Whats wrong with you Melissa. My family. Definitely gonna say my family.  

When it was clear that North Carolina wasn’t going to be any better for work than Seattle I decided to drive back to the west coast. I had to drive through Texas and I didn’t stop at Moms house. I didn’t even try. Why would I?  I was so hopeless and out of my head with depression and PTSD. I was screaming into the great black nothing. I was cutting myself all over to get the evil out. I would punch my own face black and blue from self loathing… again, thinking it was all my fault and that I was defective. I mean… my own family didn’t want me. Nobody did. It was me. I was a horrible piece of shit and deserved to die. Nobody loved or wanted me. Nobody kept me safe. I was deeply lost in the void. I wanted to die. Goddamn. Let it end.

That year in the car was by far worse than the 8 years of being tortured by sex traffickers or the 13 years of living with my sex predator father or the 7 years of being stuck in bumfuck North Carolina with my moms abuser boyfriend stealing the show.

Without question having nobody and knowing that nobody cares if you are safe, in your integrity, have a door to lock, privacy of any kind, if you are fed or showered… knowing for a demonstrated fact that there is not a single person on earth who cares enough to validate your humanity is the absolute worst feeling I have ever known.  Being completely dehumanized, demoralized, erased. I begged for death.

Whats wrong with you Melissa?

Fun fact: during that time, instead of helping me or offering me a job at her business doing the exact job I did so well at Amazon (I asked for one and told her I would sleep in the attic at the office and she told me No), to mock me and show me what a failure I am and that I was just trying to manipulate her for money because Im a lazy loser

Mom went to her local Costco and applied for a job to show me how easy it was for her to get hired.

I mean, if youre going to be void of a soul, you should really go for it. Kudos, Mom.  

I drove through California on the way back home to Seattle and met my sister Patty for the first time. We look like two peas in a pod. We think exactly the same. She is undeniably my sister. It was the most incredible feeling.

For the first time in my entire life I actually felt and thought the same as someone else.

She casually declined to introduce me to her family. They kept looking at me incredulously because we look just the same… but she would shoo them away when they would come over to talk. I met her at her restaurant and then she took me to her palatial home. She has a huge family. She had tons of photo albums… and then she started talking about Dad…like she was in a trance and talking about a favorite lover… it was clear that Dad had sexualized her and maintained that relationship with her well into her adult life and that was the reason she had no contact with us and didn’t want a deeper relationship with me. One conversation was all I got with her. I slept in my car outside her home. My sister didn’t help me. Whats wrong with you Melissa???

In one shot from LA I drove back to Seattle. I figured out that the Queen Anne neighborhood had the lowest crime rate so I parked there. I was so sick to death of all the nights that year that I would wake up with someone trying to break in to the car. Thank god I had Milo with me. He saved me multiple times from intruders that year. My body was a wreck from car living and shit food. My mental health beyond destroyed. I was really just done. Run through. All the way run through.

I did a brief stint staying in Silverdale with my friend from NC that I managed to re connect with on my drive back… but the hour drive into Seattle from Silverdale was too much so I lumped it and just slept in my car in Queen Anne once I secured my job…..

I went in to Top Pot Doughnuts every day for a month and demanded a job until they gave me one. I was 8 weeks into that job, still sleeping in the car but I had forward momentum when I totaled the car. I had the very last car payment in the seat next to me I had worked so fucking hard to maintain my payments in good faith despite it all and come out of that situation with my car but nope…fuck me. I was on my way to the gym and I was giving myself a pep talk telling myself everything was going to be ok….and I ate it…40 miles an hour into a stopped truck on the West Seattle Bridge. Entirely my fault. Milo went to the pound. All my earthly belongings went to the impound yard. I went to the ER…. And I called every single person I knew and who I thought could help me.

Just when you think you have nothing left, turns out you can go lower. Nobody returned my call.  

Me, the unwanted, loveable piece of shit. I could die and nobody cared. Whats wrong with you Melissa?

I got out of the hospital, I had made contact with my online friend Rishad and he let me stay for a couple days… BLESS HIM… In those two days I got on the bus. I took the bus that goes through Capitol Hill and up to Queen Anne where my job was. I wrote down every apartment for rent phone number I could see and I started making calls. In the first true lucky break I had in years, this apartment manager woman at a really sweet little apartment on the hill heard me out…heard my story… it was the 15th of the month. I had my car payment check and I cashed it and gave her the money… She gave me the keys and a wink and told me I could move in “on the first”, that’s what the money I gave her would pay for…. and that she definitely didn’t know anything about a dog so no pet fee was needed.

I went right upstairs, LOCKED MY OWN DOOR and laid on the floor with literally nothing left to my name and cried so fucking hard.  

I had whiplash from the accident. I fractured 4 molars on my steering wheel and over the years as my dentist promised they have slowly one by one fallen out of my face. I had broken both my feet and wracked my knees…. But I had a place that was my own and a job and that’s all that mattered.

I went right to the pound the next day and got Milo. I went to the impound lot and got what was left of my life. I missed a sum total of two days of work…. I was so thankful to have a job again I blocked out the pain from my broken body and I just kept going.

(Mind you the only thing Mom has ever been proud of me for in my lifetime is losing weight. That’s what got her attention…that’s what she was impressed by. I went on a diet.)

That next year, I lost 70 pounds at the gym. I perceived my training team as the family I never had and I was good at lifting weights. They weren’t honestly my friends or family but it was something consistent and I needed that stability and I needed them so fucking bad. It took 5 years to start to return to a somewhat functioning human... Lifting helped me get back into my body and stop checking out so much. My nutrition plan made me focus on myself every moment of every day…and nothing beats depression like clean food and working out. Structure and consistency.

My PTSD was off the rails though. I was worse than a soldier coming back from war…I never signed up for that shit and it started when I was a child. I was suffering. I wanted to die. Every moment of every day. I was miserable to be around. Nobody wanted to be my friend. So, trust me…just work and the gym with my illusion that people were there for me and me inappropriately and overly attached to them.

The irony is that I looked amazing and strong and I was, yes. The reality is that I wanted to die. I begged for death. I had two suicide attempts in those years….I surprised myself and cut my wrist with my house keys on the way to work one day and another time I walked into traffic but the car swerved.

Coming out of all that happened and processing all that trauma took more will power and resolve than anything I have ever done. It was so dark. I felt demon possessed. I was out of my head. I would find myself walking out of my place into public with no skirt on just my tights or other crazy shit like that. I was talking to myself, having heated arguments with nobody there all the fucking time. I was punching myself in the face. I was cutting and other such self harm.

It was really bad. I was hurting so fucking much.

And, I had another sociopath boyfriend taking full advantage of my disadvantage…keeping me fucked up because it kept me there for him. Thomas was in my life for 7 years. Absolute Scum. But he was the only person who would show up in person for me. I needed to be held. I was so out of my head and I still had no friends in my life…just people on the internet.… So again, this familiar situation: I just let him use me so I could have literally anyone there. The social and emotional isolation was killing me and I was convinced I was in love. He felt like home. He kept telling me we would be together if I waited. That he loved me. That I was the Key! I was the only time he was happy. The reality was he wouldn’t speak to me during the week. He would just show up on a Friday or Saturday night when he felt like it, from 1am to 3am…literally show up with his dick out to fuck me…very often wouldn’t speak to me when he was there…then he would leave and that was what I considered my relationship and love. It was about 2 years into our “relationship” that the truth slowly started to surface that he was in a long term relationship and he lived with her….

The details of how twisted he is and how he manipulated my daddy issues is disgusting. How he used neglect to keep me working so hard for him to be there and begging for his attention….really sick.

He felt like home which is the worst part. He was exactly like home.

It took me three years at the doughnut shop to get emotionally stabilized enough to make a plan for next steps. I was too emotionally fragile to go back to corporate work or be in an office environment. I knew I wanted to go to massage school and I really thought it could be an answer for me even though Mary Jane and mom had previously shamed and mocked me when I said I wanted to go. Mom didn’t think I could be anything better than a waitress. She told me to stop complaining that I hated my work and just go do it.

It was around this time that I had to move out of the apartment because they raised the rent by double on my sweet apartment and I found my way into squatting in my Art studio, where I have been for the past 7 years.

This studio has been so needed and healed me in so many ways. It is private enough to have a complete mental collapse and since it was a former isolation tank/jail… Nobody can get in here….bars over the windows and a steel door…so, I could sleep at night for the first time in years. The rent is crazy affordable which allowed me to go to school and later afford activities to try to learn social skills and be a real person in the world…. This place is my everything.

When I had my first art show… consisting of the photos that I took when I was living in my car. One of the ways I survived and changed my paradigm to get out of the car alive was that I would walk around and task myself with Looking through the eyes of Love. I would try to find one thing each day that I could see beauty in so I could continue to see good in the world…thus my collection of flower photos that I maintain to this day as my gratitude practice.

Mom picked up the phone and called me the night of my show.

(Mind you, she has never been there for me. Over the years since she kicked me out I think we have talked on the phone maybe 10 times. There have been years where she refused to give me her phone number…she made a game of it for years…I would email and ask for it she would say she was going to give it to me in her reply but never would. Then she finally did and a week later she changed it again. Psycho. Another time I can remember a time we talked on the phone and I ended by saying I love you and she was silent and struggled to say it back. Whats incredible is that she has always pretended to be someone who knows me and knows whats going on in my life and talks about it with such authority. This is a narcissistic abuser in action. What she was doing was scanning my social media and whatever scraps of information she could get and twisting it into whatever story she needed to support her storyline about me being a problem child and a fuck up and what a wonderful mother she is so she could continue to live in denial. She cant face the past and she has never done any work to own her part or apologize. So, now Ive cut her off. She does things now like call the place where I get my mail and had the people who run the PO box office tell me my mother called and she is worried about me and she asked them for whatever information they had on me -so I had to get a new PO Box place where the owners have English as a distant 2nd language-  or she will go through my friends list on social media and contact people to see if they will keep tabs on me for her and share her story about what a problem I am and how she is just a loving mother who I have scorned and of course people believe her. She said the magic word: Mother. Nobody would suspect what kind of Mother she actually is and they see me all angry, regressed emotionally like a child and so fucked up and struggling in the world so she must me right about me, yeah? Text book actions when you try to break away from a Narcissist)

So…I get into the studio and Im all set up for my show and she called me to say this: “So, youre having an art show huh? You think youre so great. Youre still alone though aren’t you? (the mean girl was jealous that I somehow retained a sense of self and did something neat to be proud and again, she wanted to punish me…the woman is demented.) You know, the longest relationship you’ve ever had is with that damn dog.” And then she laughed at me. Made some shit comment about my basement studio “not having air” and some other bullshit and we ended the call. My party guests were arriving. My self-confidence was missing in action for the rest of my night.   Nice, right? That’s my mom.

Shortly after I get in to the Studio Milo got sick. Really really sick. As I promised him from day one, I would never let him suffer for my own selfish reasons…. So, I rented a car, took him to the vet and had him put down. The love of my life and my great protector. This sweet soul that was my constant source of love and hope for 14 years. When I posted on my facebook thread about his passing, mom commented that she was devastated at her loss. Because, you know… Milos death, this dog that she wanted me to throw away, was about how it impacted HER.  …yeah….ok.

I want to mention out of the context of a clear timeline that somewhere in here I trained for and ran two Tough Mudders. They are 12 mile courses with 20 really fucking hard obstacles. They are designed to be run with a team. I ran them both solo because nobody wanted to join me. On the days that I went to the events, neither my Trainer or the man I was so in love with, Thomas, sent me as much as a good luck text to wish me well or acknowledge my accomplishment. My previously 215 pound ass had shrunk to 140 pounds and, at 40 years old ran a team event solo and made it through in TWO AND A HALF HOURS completing every single obstacle, no excuses…. And nobody who should have been excited and invested in my success said a word.

I was still invisible. I still did not matter. I was still not celebrated by the people who should have been there for me.

I want to point this out: Even I did not think I mattered or what I was doing was noteworthy. I was still so checked out and erased to myself that it didn’t click in my head that my life and all that I was doing and surviving was me doing the impossible.

My friend Luke (who I met online dating but I knew we were meant to be solid friends for life) made a point to come with me to the first Tough Mudder. He spent the entire day out there and he took photos of me… He is the reason that I can now reflect on what I did and actually SEE MYSELF. That gift is immeasurable. Luke evidenced me. Im here today as a whole person in part because of him.  Also of note, the transition time between the apartment and the studio: Luke let me stay with him. He kept me safe and he was my sounding board and my true friend. I have nothing but the deepest most heartfelt love and respect for him. His story is equally harrowing and he is a miracle in action. Thank you Luke. I love you. Youre in my inner circle for life.

Now that Milo was gone and I was feeling somewhat more stabilized as a human, I knew it was time to make my career plan and try to get into massage school. Here is the next great stroke of luck in my lifetime: I went to Discovery Point and I talked to the women that run the school I explained my situation and that I was completely broke. They let me go to school for free in those 9 months with the understanding that I would clean the school on the weekends, make what payments I could as I went along and work out a payment plan immediately after graduation and that they would hold my diploma until that was complete.  OH SWEET MERCY.

My days during those 9 months were 17 hours long. I would manage the café in the morning 5am to 1pm, go to the gym to lift and run from 2 to 4, then to school from 5 to 10pm…all the while walking to get to each place. I was getting something like 12 miles a day. I did it. I made my 9 months of cleaning the school and keeping my life on track ( no cheering section, nobody doing laundry, cooking, keeping bills paid or there to comfort me but me: Whats new?) , I passed my exam and I was on track to move my life forward.

I feel like there should have been a celebration when I graduated because that’s fucking astounding…. but, hey… nothing happened, nobody in my life said a word of congratulations about it. Surprise.

I live alone. I have no friends beyond those that exist on the computer, acquaintances from community, and a few co workers that I have hung out with from time to time and I always make a big deal about that on social media which gives the illusion that I have people, but I really dont. My only contact with others is at work. I go home to an empty room and there is no support or comfort. Its really impossible to describe to people who have people what it is like to live with this constant isolation and utter lack of emotional intimacy and how it eats you alive…but this has been my life.

People who don’t understand tell me to get a dog or volunteer or pay for therapy for companionship. That’s a cruel tone deaf response. People need people and it is reasonable to want to be loved, intimately, from the outside in. What I want is to simply matter, and be loved and valued, and have someone who is there without having to do something to receive that…..

Because I have yet to be understood when I talk about it, I have for the most part stopped talking about my isolation that is to this day very real for me.

Im so lonely I just want to die. Whats new.

In the next year, I was waiting tables still and somehow managed to pay off $10k for my license… on a year where I only made $24k. again, no celebration when I told my co workers about it…. I thought it was a big deal.

During that year I went to the doctor and discovered that I was literally malnourished. I was pushing it too hard with working out and keeping everything on track and my personal trainer wasn’t actually reading the food journal I sent him each night… so I got pneumonia as well….but just kept going.

I also got my Personal Training Cert and my Nutrition Counseling cert that year and started working as a Personal Trainer while I looked for a Massage job. Things were lightening up for me. The tremendous crushing weight of my entire life was lightening up.

But the reality of who my Trainer was and what a fraud he was came to the light. He was sleeping with some of his clients and I have a laundry list of unethical things he, and his business partner, were doing. When I held him accountable that was the last straw for him. He was sick to death of weathering my PTSD and how fucked up and sick I was and how fucked up I was over Thomas all the goddamn time… and additionally I was calling out all the ways he was unethical: I was bad for business. I was bad for him in the fitness community.

He kept gaslighting me to try to get me to leave but that was my community for 5 years and I didn’t know what to do…….So, Matt did whats guys do: Shes crazy… and shit talked me throughout the fitness community.  He kicked me out of his gym and I now have no gym to work out at and no trainers willing to work with me. Thanks Matt! Super appreciate you!

I maintained my own lifting program for another year but honestly, I was in it for the community and sense of belonging that I never had before in my life. Without that and with Matt shit talking me in the background so I had no support elsewhere my program started to slip…. Add to that, I had begun  working full time in massage and my shoulder got burnt out. I have a repetitive stress injury from my Amazon days that was made worse at Tough Mudder when I got my arm yanked nearly out of its socket in an obstacle… so, Lifting started to fade… and honestly, I was burnt out on the regiment of it all. I needed a break. I deserved a huge break.

I think it was right around 2014 when Mom had me come to Houston for Thanksgiving as though we are friends or she was a Mom. The highlights of that visit include her telling me the reason I wasn’t welcome in Houston during the Recession was because her husband Rumi forbade it.

(I forgot to mention that all through the years of her being with Rumi she has painted this picture of him being physically and emotionally abusive. That she was hiding money to escape him and what a horror he is. She had some secret email account that she sent me emails from at one point and told me that she was trying to hack his email to see who he was having affairs with or some other drama….. but you know if you ask Jim2 who his best friend is, its Rumi…apparently they text all the time…so, you know…she loves to lie and paint these horrific pictures of who people are to support whatever her manipulation is to get sympathy or whatever pay off)

Anyway, While I was in Houston visiting her she was acting like everything was normal and fine and that I had just made up whatever it was that I went through during the Recession. She reminded me that since I “left home” at 18 she has had to give me something like $20k in support and implied what a burden I am and how I always have my hand out. She has kept track of the financial support she gave me as a parent and wanted me to feel like shit for needing her. Cool….

Another example of how mentally deranged she is: While I was there we went out to lunch. Mind you, I have maybe $100 to my name at that time. I offered to pay for lunch at this fast food place and after we ordered she commanded me to go pick a table. So I got a booth with a chair. I sat on the booth side so I was facing the café and could see her when she came out of the restroom… I waved her over and she sat in the chair. Unbeknownst to me, the booth side made me taller than the chair side…. She got this twisted angry look and became livid that I thought I was better than her. Paying for lunch and sitting above her like that….. The next day Mom and Rumi started playing a really fun game where they forgot my name and kept calling me “Savannah” (my niece) for the remainder of the time I was there …. You know… because at 44, they saw me as a child. Nothing like a little game of erasing your daughter’s person hood and replacing it with infantilism to let your daughter know you really see her and respect her.

I really hope this is making clear why I have a strict no contact in place with her that I will never change.

Now its 2017 and I get hired at my dream job. The Spa that I am at is beautiful. My co workers are the best. I make really fine money. My mental health is slowly coming together. I got Thomas out of my life and have enough mental clarity now to really see him for who he is.  I had spent yet another holiday season alone and the isolation was killing me, as per usual…so I decided that the best thing for me to do to help pull me out of my PTSD and stop being so scared to be seen or heard would be to go to music school…. Learn how to make friends for the first time in my adult life and be with people who were not my co workers. Try to trust people again. Try to trust that I could be liked for who I am….though rejection has been a very prevalent theme in my life… Try to learn some social skills that I missed out on basically my entire life.

How to simply hang out and play….was brand fucking new to me. Music school was really really really hard… not to mention I have no musical ability and I get triggered by stress pretty quickly and freeze… but I knew it was the right thing to do to reparent the kid inside me who never learned to make friends or be in activities with others and who wanted to play drums…. So hell yeah. I did it.

Thank you to Katy,Tracy,Melissa,and Kiyan for coming out to see a couple of those shows and being there to support me. You have no idea how much that meant to me.

I thought if I could make friends there I would have people to go out with and maybe could have a chance to meet a man and have a relationship… but all the women there were married with children and had little interest in going out at night, and I still wasn’t fully integrated as a Self yet… so that was a bust.

Music school was really me making up for my 20s and 30s when I should have been out at shows and hanging with friends and making art and and dating but instead I was being mentally tortured by my entire life. I gave it a good shot, but Im a mixed media artist not a musician and that’s really that. I have to take it in stride: Bless my heart for trying. Thank you to all my bandmates for being so kind and supportive of me and for being stellar humans

I was in my first year of Music school when I met the most amazing man, Joe. He was magical. He honestly loved me for me and I loved him right back. It was fast and deep and I felt so completely seen and wanted by him and OH MY GOD I NEEDED THAT FOR SO LONG. He made incredible things happen and took me on dates that made me feel like a Queen…. But Joe was terminally ill and two months later took his own life. I was in shock again….but kept going as I do.

Also out of context of timeline: When I got into that sweet little apartment I would go down to Edge of the Circle which was just a couple blocks away and get Tarot readings from Raven and Kiyan. I didn’t know how to simply ask for friendship so I would buy Tarot readings to have someone to talk to. These two helped me so much in so many ways…through their compassion and through helping me develop my Self and my skills. Over and over again these two have shown up as real people who have treated me with integrity. People who genuinely care about me and support me in my developing personhood. Ive made it through because of them and so many others along the way.

The shitty thing about being knocked out of your self is that even though you have people around you who care, you often cant see it or feel it and like a dick minimize what people are doing for you because the all-consuming feeling that nobody is there is so much larger than the gentle loving efforts of those around you…. And what happens: you push away the people who are there for you because they have self-respect and youre unwittingly being a dick. I want to say Im really sorry about this because I know for sure Ive done this.

Also out of context of timeline: Somewhere in here I started working in Tarot and caught a lucky break and got hired at Percys to be their Reader. Huge shout out to Krista who made that so possible for me. That Tarot night did more for my sense of Self and well being than I can explain and I was a success there largely because Krista made it so beautiful and kept that night going for me.

I also want to say Thank you to Tracy, Katy, and of course Brian who were my friends and co workers at the RowHouse Café… through those early massage school years. Endless support and encouragement from these guys, even when I was too fucked up to really receive it or reflect it back. Im really lucky to have met you and have had you in my life.

It was right around the solar eclipse and the night before that hurricane hit and flooded Houston and moms house got flooded that I emailed her a long list of things she had done that hurt me and explained that I would be taking time away from her and Id let her know when we could speak again. The next morning after I sent that email I again felt puppet mastered…. But this time by the little kid inside me… I literally woke up, jumped out of bed and started to dance. I was filled with glee. I was amazed by myself. I don’t know where that came from except to say that the kid inside me was OVERJOYED to be free of her.

In the coming years I kept proving to myself that I wont let her back in and that Im safe now… and as I have been staying true to this practice of not letting her, or anyone like her, back in my life… I have become happier and more whole as a human being…. More capable of making good choices in friends and finances….

She made an attempt to contact me around the holidays this year. I saw her call but let it go to voice mail. The message she left was something to the tune of her wanting to know if I had forgiven her yet and gotten over it. …See, because its about me and what I need to do because its my damage that is the problem here…. Nothing had changed with her. It was still my fault. No apology. No self reflection. Had I forgiven her yet. For fucks sake: I will never forgive her.  

I have learned to celebrate myself, take my self on vacations and to my great delight I had friends who spent time with me and took care of me!!!!!! Incredible!!!!!, give myself the compassion and nurturing that I always wished I had and reasonably should have had from my family. I have been working on being able to see the love that is there for me from the people that I have in my life, though I still struggle with that.  I have been working so hard on Self Love, Self Respect, Healthy boundaries, creating safety and stability in my life in all way and I know that Im doing great work because my inner me, those little kids inside of me that needed a parent are really responding to the parenting Im giving them…. Check this out:

A month or so after I declined her call I was out at the café in my neighborhood, having a treat and a coffee and doing some writing. I was sitting at the table and this incredible feeling came over me as though a golden light was shining on me and I could see it glittering down on me. I started laughing and crying like when you cum really hard and youre filled with ecstasy and bliss. And then I had a vision of being in a hospital room that was in the forest… it was just two walls of the room and then the woods…I could see deer and birds. In the hospital bed there was a person in a full body cast. The cast had moss growing on it and tiny sprouts of pine trees. The Doctor walked in to the room to check on the patient. I was both the Doctor and the Patient. I told myself: Hey, its time to get you out of there. And I grabbed my circle saw and started to cut my cast from end to end and crack to open like a sarcophagus. I told myself Welcome Back! We are so glad you are here!!! Go slow, take your time getting up. No rush.

I was so elated. I walked home immediately. Upon arriving at my studio I had another vision of all the ages of myself, down to the youngest and up to the oldest and wisest all linking hands. I recognized these women as my Sisters/MySelf… all of us agreed that the next would watch out for the next and that nobody would ever hurt us again. SOUL RECLAMATION.

For the first time in my life I am here, in this body, in this present moment. The first time in my life I am ME. Im currently 6 months in to my actual LIFE. THIS IS ME. I AM HERE. OH MY GOD. I MADE IT.

Yes now, of course, the world is ending and my career in massage is tenuous at best and I might be fucked again…. But so not worried because honestly, Ive survived worse with less. So I will figure this out and keep myself alive, housed and fed.

Over the years my attempts to talk it out with Mom were pointless… she would erase my feelings and angrily tell me that it was hard on all of us. She would hold no space for me and just be my mom and have some compassion for her baby girl. Nope: It was hard on all of us so stop complaining… but see, I was a child and they were my parents and that was my family and I had no choice…. So really, at this point, Im done. Im better off on my own.

I don’t know what else to say other than those yearly years were tremendously bad for everyone in my family, yes. I can now at this time in my life see and understand why everyone did what they did…. That my parents were also victims of abuse from their parents and all that and yeah, I have compassion and Im really sorry they had to go through that….But it doesn’t make it ok or make mom someone I will let back in my life. I mean, I went through it and Ive dedicated my lifes work to helping others heal and I try to be so good to everyone around me so…. No excuses. And, I still have questions like: Fuck, why did dad never go to jail? Im guessing it was about the money…..and really, how did nobody in my family see that I needed help?

Anyway… Ive done epic amount of self work to be here today as a whole person and really change my reality to one where I have value and can share love. Im still working on it… My social anxiety is still the worst. I can barely form words into sentences when Im out in public and I dont have a job to do as my role to play....but you know, I keep trying and its easier and keeps getting easier… and I have amazing friends like Brad to have mini adventures with… and I have my Studio to do my art in and now that Im feeling so much more whole as a person I think I might actually see some work through to completion that I can be proud of… and I have a job that I love and Im getting training for some other skills to expand my skillset and I feel that things can only get better from here so

I feel so lucky to be alive and so fucking grateful to be me and I really like myself. It’s a miracle. All things are possible if you just remember: LOVE IS THE KEY and keep moving in that direction.

That’s my experience and now you know.

[seanfknmacguire]

Under the cut is the beginning to a project I’m doing, where I’m writing my OCs into the story of RDR2. The OCs I’m using are Hosea’s twins, Dutch’s daughter, my first OC and an OC of mine which is a rival of Sean’s. I might also add in my OC inspired from Ellie from The Last Of Us later. I have no confidence in this so any replies or tips are welcome :)  I’ll probably do a whole post of OC introductions soon. Please let me know what you think <3 

In the dead of night and the worst snowstorm 1899 had seen, Dutch Van Der Linde led the Van Der Linde gang through the snowy mountains, having only just gotten out of the small town of Blackwater after a robbery gone wrong. Sitting next to a Hosea Matthews, they looked on for some shelter, trying to keep their family warm. 

Amelia Silverton was following on horseback, her oversized coat, a gift from Arthur, wrapped firmly around her shoulders as she shivered. The young 20 year old watched Abigail and Luna work on Davey, a member of their gang who had been fatally injured, and sighed. She wondered just how on earth they had gotten themselves in that situation. Moving her brown hair out of her face, she looked behind her to check on the twins.

The twins, Lily and Nick Matthews, were the spitting image of their mother Bessie who had unfortunately already passed. Their father Hosea was fiercely protective, always keeping a close eye as they always got themselves into mischief as 17 year olds should. The pair were inseparable, following the caravan closely in fear of getting lost.

Luna Van Der Linde was helping Abigail work on Davey in the medical wagon. The short 16 year old being a huge help in the medical field - almost as if it were a gift. She kept an eye on Davey’s wounds, keeping pressure on them as instructed by Abigail and Reverend Swanson.

Connor Kingston had kept his mouth shut for once and instead followed the caravan, keeping guard at the back alongside Javier. The mouthy 22 year old always had an opinion for everything, and didn’t exactly get along with a lot of the gang. He made up for it with fighting - he was a damn good fighter, and a valuable asset to the group, as much as Amelia or Luna didn’t want to admit it.

“Abigail says he’s dyin’, Dutch. We have to stop some place.” Reverend Swanson warned up at Dutch and Hosea, his hoarse voice no match for the loud wind.

“Okay, Arthur’s out looking - I sent him up ahead.” Dutch responded, not sure how on earth he could help apart from wait until Arthur got back. He had a hell of a lot on his plate - Sean and Mac missing, Davey on death’s door, and trying to find a place for the people relying on him to stay.

“If we don’t stop soon we’ll all be dying. This weather, it’s May… I’m just hoping the law got as lost as we did.” Hosea’s voice came from beside Dutch, the bitter cold biting at his face as he shivered. The cold wasn’t good for his bones. The two noticed a silhouette in front of them, and were on alert until they recognised it to be Arthur.

“Arthur! Any luck?” Dutch called forward, his voice hopeful. He was desperately praying that Arthur had found something useful.

Arthur dipped his hat, wiping the fresh snow from its hilts. "I found a place where we can get some shelter!" he shouted in response, the aggression of the blizzard rendering him difficult to hear. "Let Davey rest while he... You know." he added on, the gruffness of his voice growing stronger.

"Come on!" Dutch called to the rest of the group, speeding up the wagon he was steering. He was relieved, suddenly getting almost excited to get everyone inside near a warm fire. It only took them a little while to get to the little mining town, Dutch checking on each individual member as Hosea checked the building they were about to bring Davey into. Making sure there was no danger, he called back outside. “Bring him in here!” Amelia dismounted her horse, taking it into the building they were going to use as shelter for them and tried to keep herself as wrapped as possible. She helped Nick bring all of the horses in, having no time to talk as she focused. Patting him on the shoulder once they had finished, they made their way to the main building with everyone else. Lily and Luna followed the gang into the house, quickly taking a seat. It wasn’t warm yet, but hell, it was out of the wind. Luna looked around at everyone’s faces, and she couldn’t tell if they were full of hope or full of fear. Connor wandered in with Javier and Bill, putting his gun back into his holster now they were finally in and safe. He smiled at young Jack, walking over to the fire and placing some logs inside of the fireplace ready.

Abigail took a stand next to Davey, ready to patch him up properly now they were in shelter when she noticed he wasn't breathing. She looked at his chest - no movement. She put her head near his nostrils - no air coming out. "Davey's dead." She said sadly. Amelia sighed, looking down sadly. They'd lost a lot of people. They didn't even know if Mac and Sean were alive, and worry sat in the pit of her stomach as well as everyone else's. It was evident to Dutch spirits were low.

"There was... Nothing more you could've done," Reverend Swanson peered over to the brunette, dipping his head.

"What are we gonna do, we need supplies?" Hosea asked, closing Davey's eyes with two fingers and looking up at Dutch. He watched him move, nodding at the man.

"Well first of all you are gonna stay here, and you are gonna get yourself warm." Dutch looked at Hosea, a hand on his shoulder briefly. "Now I sent John and Micah scouting out ahead. Arthur and I, we're gonna ride out and see if we can find one of them."

"In this!?" Arthur waved to the outdoors, frowning a bit. He didn’t exactly want to go outside, it was a death trap.

"Just for a short bit. I don't see what other choice we have.” Dutch reassured, looking at the faces of his gang. They needed some motivation, fast. "Listen... Listen to me all of you, for a moment. Now we've had a bad couple of days. I loved Davey, and Jenny... Sean, Mac, they may be okay, we don't know."

Amelia looked down at the mention of Sean, but soon perked back up. She was worried. They weren’t exactly together, but there was definitely something there - the whole damn gang could see it. Luna listened to her father intently as well as the others.

“But we lost some folk. Now if I could throw myself into the ground in their stead, I'd do it. Gladly. But we are gonna ride out, and we are gonna find some food. Everyone, we're safe now. There ain’t nobody following us in a storm like this. And by the time they get here we'll be long gone. We've been through worse than this before. Mr Pearson, Miss Grimshaw, I need you to turn this place into a camp. We may be here for a few days. Now all of you, all of you, stay strong. Stay with me. We ain't done yet." He said with a strong tone, nodding towards the door. “Come on Arthur.” He finished strongly, reaching and squeezing Luna’s hand quickly before walking out of the door with Arthur. The gang sat in silence for a few moments, before Connor decided to lift some spirits.

“So… Lovely weather we’re having.”

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

“So what’s the plan Dutch?”

Night had fallen on the gang’s makeshift camp, members eating the stew that Pearson made from the deer Arthur and Charles had caught the day before. John was also back- Luna cleaning the wound on his cheek before she ate. A lot had happened since they arrived, including rescuing a widow, Sadie, taking out a whole O’Driscoll camp and capturing a young O’Driscoll, Kieran. The gang had gathered in the main room, wondering just what on earth they could do and where they could go. They couldn’t stay in the mountains - they’d die within two weeks. Dutch racked his brain as he stared at a map, looking for possible places they could go. His eyes skimmed over the words Valentine, and nudged Arthur, pointing to the words.

“That’s a lotta civilisation, Dutch…” Arthur shook his head, glancing at the words on the map. They couldn’t go further north, or back west into Blackwater, and lord only knows what lurked direct south.

“I know, but I don’t see what other choice we have.” Dutch sighed. He turned to his tired family - all looking to him for some kind of idea. “We head West, into Valentine. I know a little spot we could use, for now, until we find a proper place.”

“What about Sean and Mac?” Amelia asked, leaning her arms on her knees as she sat on the floor next to Lily and Nick. She was worried mainly for Sean - not that she’d ever admit it.

“What about them? We can’t do nothin’, at least not right now.” Connor replied, a harsh tone in his voice. He and Amelia never really got along well - Amelia’s fiery personality and Connor’s always made them at loggerheads.

“We can’t just leave them.” She furrowed her eyebrows looking up at him.

“Look princess, I know you’re worried about the ginger, but let’s face it - he’s probably dead.” Connor shrugged, his Irish accent thick as he spoke. He and Sean never got along either.

“You take that back.” Amelia spat while standing up, her quick temper almost too quick in this situation.

“Both of you, stop it.” Hosea warned from beside Dutch. It wasn’t new to him to have to separate the two.

“This is the plan - We gather a few people to rob that damn train in the morning, while whoever stays behind packs up. We’ll get back and leave straight away, heading for that spot near Valentine.” Dutch spoke, his voice full of hope and confidence. Luna looked at her father with a smile - she wanted to be like him some day. She wanted nothing more than to go on the train robbery with them - but she knew Dutch would never allow it. Then again, what was the harm in asking?

“Now everyone - try and get some sleep. We have a big day tomorrow.” Dutch nodded to everyone. As everyone dispersed, Luna stuck around, getting up from her seat next to John and standing beside her father, Hosea and Arthur.

“You know, Pa… I was thinking.” She trailed off, looking up at Dutch with an innocent grin. She had him wrapped around her finger and she knew it. Dutch looked at her suspiciously before Arthur spoke.

“Don’t hurt yourself.” He joked, earning a small slap on the arm from Luna before turning back to Dutch.

“Ain’t it time I start coming on robberies with you fellers? You know I can shoot, and ain’t no-one gonna pick on a young girl.” She said hopefully. Dutch shook his head.

“Absolutely not. I can’t risk that darlin’, I’m sorry.”

“Hey hold on now Dutch, it might be a good idea.” Connor overheard the conversation and interjected, a hand on Luna’s shoulder. “She’s a bloody good shot and you kno’ it. What if she comes tomorrow? There’ll be plenty of us and you can see if she can handle it.”

“But-” He started, but stopped himself and sighed. It was a good idea.

“A simple train robbery, what can go wrong? After Blackwater I think we’ve used up all our bad luck. Besides, I’ll be fine, I got you guys if things go to chaos.” She looked up at Dutch hopefully, who sighed.

“Okay, fine. You stay back at all times, you’re never on your own and I don’t want you killin’ nobody, you hear?” Dutch pointed at her as she nodded. Luna was the spitting image of Dutch - the same curly, black hair, the same eyes and smile. “Now go get some sleep.” He smiled, kissing her on the forehead after nodding to the door. She smiled up at him, walking towards the door like everyone else, nerves bubbling in her stomach.

[thorne93]

Paranoia

Prompt: As a mutant and ex student/friend of Charles Xavier, you get a visit from an intimidating man, which sends Clint (your husband) into a peril of paranoia.

Word Count: 5158

Warnings: language, threats, intimidation, wounds, mentions of parental death, worry. 

Note: First Clint/Hawkey fic! Made this for  @until-theend-oftheline‘s Summer of Love Challenge! Let me know what y’all think? Should I write more Clint/Hawkeye?? (Sorry for going over word limit, hun!!!) beta’d by the lovely @like-a-bag-of-potatoes & @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Being an Avenger was hard, of course it was. Why wouldn’t it be? You put yourself on the line for people all the time, for huge missions, for city-saving, state-saving, country-saving missions. But being an Avenger with a gift… that was another thing. Being an Avenger with mutations was a whole class all its own.

You never recalled feeling unsafe due to your powers. In fact, your powers were mainly good. They helped heal people at nearly an instant rate, so why would that be bad? Well, it was only bad if and when someone saw them that shouldn’t have, because not only could you heal people unparalleled, you could also rob them of all their senses.

One touch from you and you paralyzed someone, blinded them, deafened them, made them lose sense of smell and taste. It wasn’t just whenever you touched them, you had to exert your energy over them. Push your power onto them.

This wasn’t all that bad though, Wanda could hold people in place or rip them apart. Thor could literally obliterate someone if he wanted to. Steve and Bucky could shred someone with their bare hands so why should your special gift be any more frightening? In a sense, it wasn’t. However, seeing you on the news just holding someone’s arm as the team struck them down was a whole other thing. That’s why you didn’t use it unless you or someone else’s life was on the line. Mainly, you used your ability to self-clone and heal the team rapidly.

On a bright, warm summer afternoon, you got a call from a man you hadn’t heard from in a long time.

“Hello?” you answered.

“Hello… Y/N?” the voice wondered on the other end of the line.

“Professor?” you breathed, shocked. “How are you?” you asked excitedly, delighted to hear from your old mentor. He had rescued you from  experimentation when you were younger. Thankfully, they never got you all the way to the compound to do their experiments because the X-Men intervened and saved you and three other kids. He offered to have you stay at the mansion until you were an adult, to which you jumped at, having no family to turn to.

“I’m well, I’m well. And you?”

“I’m great! Clint’s doing well,” you informed.

Professor Xavier had practically raised you and helped you slightly on your powers, but one good thing about your powers is they had never been out of control. You’d always known how to use them and just how strong they were so he really didn’t have to work with you much, which was nice. You stayed at the mansion until you were eighteen, then went off to college, and you heard through Professor that the Avengers were recruiting.

Right after graduating college, and going through rigorous tests, practice, and training, the Avengers finally accepted your application to join. That was five years ago now, and you’d met your husband through it.

When you first met, Clint seemed to be your biggest supporter. The others were a little worried that your powers were a little too dangerous, but he was the one that reminded them that Wanda was ten times more dangerous than you. Not to mention, no one on the team could heal and that would come in handy more often than not. He was practically your cheerleader and it made you feel warm and welcome.

At first, he started out training you nearly all the time, and it was only until Natasha made a point to tease him about spending a little too much time with the new recruit, did you realize he had a crush on you. The feeling was more than mutual. His easy going, humorous nature made you feel relaxed on missions. Steve could be uptight, with a good reason. Bucky was always on edge. Tony was sometimes too intense. But Clint… well he just made you feel relaxed and in the zone while you worked.

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear that,” Charles responded. “And the rest of the team?”

“Crazy as ever,” you informed with a laugh.

He returned the chuckle. “Well that’s so good to hear, my dear. Listen, I was wondering if you would be up for teaching.”

“Teaching?” you asked. “Teaching a class? At the school?”

“Yes. I’ve got a few students here for summer school, some that need a little more help and… well the most of the other teachers are wanting some vacation.”

“Naturally,” you said. Being an Avenger was a full time job, you couldn’t imagine the workload that came with being an X-Man and a teacher.

“Well I’d like to give some of them a few weeks off, but I thought you’d be a great fit. You have such control over your powers, and you’re a great example of what can happen when you learn to control them. I thought it’d be good for the kids.”

For a moment you were stunned. Professor thought you were good enough to teach for his students? Wow.

“This is such an honor. Um, let me just talk to Clint about it and I’ll call you back. Give me just a few hours.”

“Take your time. I won’t need you until next week,should you decide to accept. I can’t wait to hear from you.”

“Thank you, Professor.”

“Any time. Bye for now.”

“Bye.”

With that, you stood in the living room of your country abode, the phone resting against your chin as you thought. Clint had just come in from outside, doing some yard work.

“Hey, everything okay?” he asked as he walked up to you, clad in dirty jeans and white t-shirt. Even a dirty mess he was still the most handsome man you’d ever met. It was a good thing you finally asked him out all those years ago.

“Yeah. Uh… Professor X just called.”

“Oh? That’s cool. What’d he want?”

“He wants me to teach a summer course.”

“Teach? Like… work with the kids?”

“Yeah. Crazy, right? Me teaching someone.”

“I’ve heard crazier,” he teased before walking into the kitchen to grab some juice. “So? You gonna do it?”

“I’m not sure. What do you think?”

“It’s up to you,” he answered as he walked back in with a glass full of cold liquid. “Do you want to teach?”

“I mean, I’m not sure I’d be any good. I’ve never had problems controlling my powers.”

“Doesn’t mean you can’t tell them how you do it,” he offered.

“That’s true.”

“Would you have to stay there?” he inquired.

“At the mansion?” You shook your head and shrugged. “I wouldn’t think so. They’re only an hour away. I could commute.”

“Well if you feel like you’re up to it,” he insinuated as he leaned against the beam of the built in bookcase.

“I think I’d like to at least try. He wants to give some of the teachers a vacation.”

“That’d be nice.”

“What about the team?” you wondered. “Are they going to be okay with me taking off for a few weeks?”

He put down the glass and walked over to you, putting his arms around your waist. “They’ll be fine. You know them. If it’s too big, we’ll call you.”

You screwed your mouth to the side in contemplation. “Alright. I think I’ll take it.”

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

Two weeks into your summer course and things were looking great. It was amazing to catch up with Charles, Hank, Jean, Scott, and Logan. All the people you remembered that helped keep you safe. Storm helped you come up with a loose curriculum for the kids and so far they seemed to really like your class - if you could call it that.

One sweltering summer day, you decided to have the kids go outside and work on their powers. You gave them each an objective and had them work on it while you observed and only assisted if they needed it.

Inside the mansion, however, some students that weren’t in your class were gossiping about you.

Jenny, a young mutant, was talking to Bradley in the hall. “I hear she can paralyze people,” she whispered as she stared at you on the lawn.

“Not only that but she can make them blind too!” he responded.

“Children,” Charles’s calm, authoritative voice sounded behind them, making them jump and spin. Their eyes landed on the professor and his old friend, Erik Lehnsherr, nowadays better known as Magneto. He was by visiting Charles and the school briefly when they encountered the snooping children.

“Professor!” they cried in unison, guilt and shame coloring their faces.

“Just what do you think you’re up to?” he inquired.

“We’re just watching Mrs. Barton teach her class,” Jenny sheepily informed.

“I see, and gossiping as well?” he wondered, with a gleam in his eye.

Both of their gazes dropped to the floor.

“If you want to know the truth about Y/N, I can tell you. So the two of you aren’t spreading silly rumors over the school.”

Their eyes lit up as their faces shot up to look at them. They nodded vigorously, as if he just offered them a lifetime supply of candy.

“You see, Mrs. Barton has some very unique abilities. She can clone herself, which comes in handy on the missions she faces as an Avenger. This is because she can heal people, so when she clones herself, she can heal all of her teammates at once. Meaning they can still fight the good fight. I found her when she was just a young girl,” he remarked, the tone of memory washing over his voice.

“And what of the blindness, Charles? Is that true as well?” Magneto inquired.

Charles sighed and nodded. “Yes, Erik. She does have the ability to block one’s senses. One touch from her and a person can no longer hear, see, smell, touch, taste, or move. But it’s only while she has a hold of them, and it’s not permanent.”

“I see,” he mused, staring at you through the window as you walked up and down the line of children, instructing them. “How marvelous.”

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

Only a week later, you were at home on a Saturday, about to get started on dinner for you and Clint when a knock came at the door.

“I got it!” Clint called as he jogged through the house to the front door. Being back in the kitchen, you could hear him talking to someone but couldn’t make anything out.

After a few minutes, Clint came into the kitchen where you were cutting vegetables from your own garden.

“Hey, a guy’s here. Say’s he’s a friend of Xavier’s. He wants to talk to you?” he informed, sounding confused.

With a curious look, you put down the knife and wiped your hands on a towel then the two of you met the man in your living room. He was older, probably around Professor X’s age, with light gray hair and a long coat and dress pants.

“Please, have a seat,” you offered, still very unaware of what was going on. You and Clint sat on the sofa across from him.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” the man asked suddenly.

You shook your head and frowned. “Uh, no. I’m sorry I don’t. Should I?”

“Possibly not. My name is Erik Lehnsherr. Today I typically go by Magneto.”

At those words, your eyes went wide. You’d heard of him. And what you’d heard wasn’t particularly positive, other than being Professor X’s old friend.  

“I’ve heard you have some very special gifts, is that true?” he wondered and all you could do was slowly nod. “Tell me, have you ever felt… scared?” he inquired curiously.

You remained silent as images of those awful scientists flickered in your head. Your slight flinch at his question gave him all the answer he needed.

“Or have you ever felt in fear for your life, due to your mutation?”

Again, you remained quiet, not giving him any sort of answer, for fear he might use it against you.

“I think you have,” he concluded, eyeing you. “How do you feel about humans?”

“Humans?” you questioned, unable to resist, because his question made no sense to you.

“Non-mutants,” he clarified with a head nod.

“They’re wonderful people. I work with humans all the time, and I enjoy it.” You gently shrugged.

He scoffed softly as he stared at you as if you were merely a child, trying to understand a mature idea far beyond your comprehension.

“Wonderful people? You do realize you’re talking about the same people who persecute our kind, correct?”

“And you’re talking about the same people I work with every day, people who have my back no matter what, including my husband.”

“My god, you married one?” he asked as he eyed Clint to your left, disgust painted on his features.

“Yes, and it’s a happy one,” you evenly shot back, staring him down.

“Happy? You think him holding you back, making you complacent is happiness?”

“I think working with brave, kind, heartfelt people is happiness. I think being with a non-mutant who accepts me as I am is happiness. I’m sorry to say it seems you haven’t found that.”

“How can you possibly stomach being around humans?”

“Why do you say that as if I have some special reason to not like them?” you asked curiously, slightly agitated.

“Your parents were killed by humans!” he erupted, his form practically shaking from rage as he leaned forward.

“That’s not true!” you nearly shouted back at him, your own emotions stirring inside you as the memory of your parents rushed to surface. The mangled car, the blood, the newspapers, the double funeral. It was amazing you could even remember all of it, seeing as you were only five. A terrible age to lose your parents. Old enough to remember them to miss them like there was no tomorrow, but young enough to only have a handful of memories to keep close to your heart.

“They died in a car wreck. That wasn’t the work of humans.”

His face suddenly morphed from pure anger to understanding and thoughtful as he leaned slightly back. “Is that what they told you?” he asked calmly, eyeing you.

Your jaw set as you tried to keep tears at bay, not making any form of an answer.

“My dear, your parents were lab rats. Dying at the hands of those beasts that called themselves scientists. They killed them and didn’t shed a tear, or blink an eye.”

Rage boiled inside you. Lies. This was all lies.

“And how the hell would you know?” you questioned, teeth clenched, fists tightening, your nails digging into your palms.

“Because…” he simply said, “I was there.”

You shook your head vigorously, the tears no longer held captive. “No, no, that’s a lie. You couldn’t have been there. It was a car wreck,” you insisted.

“No. They were victims of experiments and experimentation at the secret lab ran by the United States military. They were captured, held in an underground lab in upstate New Jersey, and used for nothing but research over, and over, and over again, until they couldn’t take it any longer.”

“And how do you know all this? Were you a prisoner there too, hmm?” you pressed, the venom in your voice not concealed.

He seemed to take a second to answer. “Ah, no. I was there with other mutants to free your parents and other imprisoned mutants. Unfortunately for your parents, I was too late. I got there just after their death.”

Your eyes cast down to the floor. How could this be? How could your parents have been held captive? How could they stage the accident? How could they have been killed and have  it be covered up?

In a quiet voice, you asked, “What did you do to the scientists?”

“I gave them the same fate they gave your parents. My assumption is after the military came to clean up the mess, they had to do something with the deceased. I suppose they thought a car accident for the mutants was appropriate, and said the scientists died in a common lab experiment gone wrong.”

What were you supposed to think now? You being captured was one thing, but you got away. You escaped. You were freed thanks to Xavier. But your parents… they weren’t so lucky. They… they died because of their mutation.

White hot rage flamed through your veins as you tried to hold back the tears of hate.

“So now you see, my dear, that’s what your precious humans are capable of. War, destruction, hate, malice, murder. All as they see fit, not a care in the world. Mutants aren’t equals in a humans eyes. They are something to study, something to inquire about, something to turn into a science project. To them, we are no better than a dead frog on a slab to poke around in for mere entertainment.”

“Stop. Stop it!” you begged, the fight against the tears losing. Clint reached over and grabbed your hand as he rubbed your back soothingly, not saying anything.

“Why? Because it’s the cold truth. It isn’t one we want to face, but we must, for the survival of our kind.”

“No… I refuse to believe that. My parents fate was unfortunate but it doesn’t represent every mutants life or experience.”

“Really? Is that so? Is that why you live far out in the country? Far out where no one can find you? Isn’t that why you hate the media seeing you use your powers?”

“Hey, man, lay off,” Clint suddenly interrupted. “I don’t appreciate you coming into our house and opening up old wounds and making her scared and paranoid about something she’s never had to fear in her life before.”

You turned to him and slightly shook your head. “No, it’s okay. Let him talk. I want to hear what he possibly has to say.” You turned back to face Magneto. “In any manner, that’s not fair, our job is extremely dangerous.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Mr. Stark seems to live in the central of the most populated city in the United States. Your friend Captain Rogers doesn’t seem to be hidden out on a farm. It seems the only people on your team that have to hide are you and Dr. Banner, who, last I checked, has an off brand of a mutation.”

You turned your head, trying to hide the pain he was inflicting. The truth in his words stinging.

“My child, we could put a stop to all of this heartache, the trauma that humans cause. Join me, join my cause. Mutants that join me, we can put an end to it all.”

“You mean an end to humans.”

“I mean an end to our persecution. Believe me when I say it’s either us or them.”

After a moment, you finally stopped crying and you looked at him and squared your shoulders. “No. I won't join you.”

“And why not?” he demanded.

“Because I’m not like you. I hate what happened to my parents, but killing other humans won’t bring them back. Killing innocent people or stopping them, or whatever you plan on doing will only ignite this war between the humans and mutants.”

With disdain, he spat, “You sound just like him. You sound just like Charles. You’re both naive and prideful.”

“It isn’t naivety, and it isn’t pride. It’s truth. If we never trust them, how can we expect their trust in return? We have to have hope.”

A look of cold darkness entered his eyes before he stood up. “Hope doesn’t save lives, Mrs. Barton. Action does. You and Charles, and all you other mutants are going to die because you’re too weak to see the truth.”

“Magneto, I don’t share your vision. I don’t think humans are bad. I’ve met bad mutants, and I’ve met good humans. A mutation doesn’t make someone special, or good, or kind, or worthy of life. A good heart does. Compassion does. I love humans. I married a human. I work with them all the time, and I will never, ever change that.”

“Well then,” he stated, “if you’re not with me, you’re against me. Please remember that for the future. I’ll show myself out.”

He swiftly turned and left out of the living room, making you release the breath you’d been holding before Clint raced to the door and dead bolted it behind the man.

You laughed humorlessly. “A deadbolt won’t keep a man out who can control metal, babe.”

“Hey, it’s something,” he tried before walking back over to you and sitting in front of you on the coffee table. “Are you okay?”

You shook your head before a new wave of fresh tears hit, making Clint take you in his arms.

“I’m so sorry you had to find out about them that way,” he offered as he held you.

When you were all cried out, you pulled away from him and looked at him.

“So… you aren’t going to reconsider his offer, right?”

You frowned at your husband. “Are you nuts? Of course not.”

“I’m just asking,” he said gently, grabbing your hand, lacing your fingers with his before he scooted over to the couch. “Because no one would blame you if you felt some bitterness towards someone. I mean what happened to your parents was awful.”

You nodded gently. “Yeah, it was. And those people paid for it, and that’s where it stops.”

“I was sort of worried you’d…”

“Join him?”

He shrugged meekly.

You shook your head. “Never. No. I’m not like that.”

“I know, but I--”

“But nothing,” you assured with a soft kiss. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Then we need to tell the others about his little visit,” he said.

“Why? He’s harmless,” you said as you got up to finish dinner.

“Well I’m not taking the chance. The team needs to know and we gotta keep you safe.”

“Clint…” you started, sighing before he wrapped his arms around you from behind and kissed your hair.

“Just let me do this, please? For peace of mind?”

“Alright.”

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

Two more weeks had gone by without a peep from Magneto or his team. You went on working your summer course and it had now ended, just a few days before July 4th weekend. With no threat in sight, and the course ending, you decided to throw a huge bash. You and Clint had put in a nice pool the summer before, but never held a party. Now was your chance.

The veggie and fruit plate were all made, the cracker plate had been sat out, the burgers and hot dogs were ready to go on the grill. Drinks were chilling in ice in the oversized cooler Clint had made. Decorations and banners had been pinned up the day before. Everything was all set and guests had been arriving.

You invited pretty much all of the Xavier mansion, and of course the team met up. All of them were aware of the whole “Magneto Trying to Recruit You” business, making them alert and keen while they were here.

Everyone was getting along, mingling, but after twenty minutes, Tony had started to pressure you for food.

“Y/N, I thought you were going to feed us,” he teased as he walked up to you at the pool.

“Yeah,” Sam chimed in. “I was promised some gnarly food, now where’s it at?” he asked with a smile.

“Ugh, let me find Clint and see what’s taking so long to get him to start the grill,” you noted before excusing yourself. You searched all over for him inside, calling for him.

“Everything okay?” Nat asked, standing in a bright red bikini as she stood munching on the red, white, and blue trail mix you’d made up.

“I can’t find Clint,” you informed.

“That’s not a surprise. He’s like a cat, as soon as there’s a huge party, he hides under the bed,” she joked with a coy smile.

You returned one half-heartedly.

“Hey, what’s up?” she wondered.

You let out a huge breath as you leaned against the counter. “It’s all of this Magneto business. It’s had Clint up late at night. He checks every lock and bolt three times at least, he hardly sleeps. He wakes up constantly to check the house. It breaks my heart because I know he’s suffering through this because of me.”

“That’s just who he is. He’ll practically die to save the ones he loves,” she commented without thought and sorrow filled your chest and painted your expression. When you didn’t say anything, Nat looked up at you, apologizing immediately. “Oh, Y/N, I didn’t mean it like that!”

You waved her off. “No, it’s okay. It’s one of the reasons I love him, I just wish there was a way to get him to not worry so much about me.”

“Yeah I doubt that’ll happen any time soon.”

You nodded in agreement. “Well I’m gonna check upstairs,” you informed. “Thanks for the talk.” You squeezed her shoulder and walked upstairs, checking every room, until you reached your bedroom. You stood with your hands on your hips, wondering just where your husband could be. Next step would be to check the barn to see if for some odd reason he went out there. But before you could make the full decision to go there, you heard footsteps above you -- on the roof.

A frown etched on your face as you walked out of the room, down the stairs, and out the front door. Putting a hand over your eyes to shield you from the sun high in the sky, you looked up at the two story country home. At first you didn’t see anything, but a few seconds later you saw your husband come over the other side of the roof.

He was crouched, walking stealthily, his bow in hand as his eyes scanned his surroundings.

“Clint? Why are you on the roof? We have guests over!” you called up to him. “What the hell are you doing?”

He looked down at you and gave a wave. “Hey, hun! I heard a noise.”

“A noise?” you asked. “What the hell kind of noise would bring you to the roof?”

“I don’t know, but I intend on finding out,” he called back down.

“This is insane! Get down right now! I think Sam and Tony are going to start eating the side of the house if you don’t make the burgers!” you shouted up at him.

“In a minute. I gotta make sure no one’s up here.”

“What the hell, why would anyone be up there?”

He finally stood all the way up and looked down at you with a disappointed face. “Come on, Y/N, we both know why I’m up here.”

You looked down and sighed, heaving your shoulders. “Do you really think they’d be on the roof?” you asked, worry settling into your stomach.

“Don’t know,” he answered before crouching again. He was just about to step over one of the gabled dormers when a huge black bird flew at him, making him duck quickly.

A playful laugh bubbled out of you, quickly realizing that was the noise he’d been hearing on the roof. “I think I found the spy,” you teased, calling up. “Didn’t know you were worried about birds that much, Hawkeye.” You winked at him and he narrowed his gaze at you and nodded mockingly.

“Ha-ha. I would think you’d be thanking me for making sure people aren’t here to kill you,” he remarked.

You  flock of large black birds suddenly fluttered up around him. With an outcry, he lost his footing, his arms flailing before he fell backwards off the roof.

“Clint!” you screamed, running to meet where he might land, hoping you could break the fall, but you were just a little too slow.

He landed with a hard thud, screaming when he hit.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” You ran and kneeled beside him. “Are you okay?” you asked, looking him over.

“I think I broke my arm,” he informed as he held it up, showcasing that it was bent at an odd angle. Without hesitating you put your hand on his arm and began healing him, concentrating extra hard, and within just a few moments he was good as new.

“Man am I lucky I have you,” he noted with adoration soaking his tone, making you blush.

“You’re just now realizing this?” you teased.

“Hey, I nearly just died trying to save you,” he shot back playfully with a grin.

Nodding slowly, you agreed. “Yes…. yes you saved me from a murderous flock of birds,” you joked with a laugh you tried to hold back. “So brave,” you teased.

Within the blink of an eye, he grabbed you by the arms and whirled maneuvered you over his lap, then underneath him, lying in the grass as he hovered above you. He gazed into your eyes with a loving spark swimming in his eyes.

“When are you going to stop being so paranoid?” you asked lightly.

“When I stop worrying about you,” he answered as he slowly lowered his face closer to yours

“And just when will that be?” you wondered with a tiny smile.

“When birds stop scaring the shit out of me,” he informed with a thoughtful nod of the head. After a moment, he got serious though. “Never,” he eventually breathed, his lips just grazing yours for a moment before giving you an earnest kiss.

Neither of you noticed that someone had come around the corner of the house though. To your dismay and embarrassment, it was Tony.

“Found ‘em! They’re neglecting us to swap spit on the yard. Okay you two, do I have to run the hose on you?” he asked sternly before you and Clint slowly broke apart.

“Keep your shirt on, Stark, I’m getting the grill going right now,” Clint informed as he stood up, dusted himself off, and helped you up.

Tony gave you too a coy look and said, “I don’t think I’m the one that needs to be told to keep my clothes on. Chop chop, we’re getting ravenous.”

At that, the two of you went through the farmhouse, grabbed the food, and went out to the grill where Clint got the fire going and began grilling up a storm. While he stood there with a cold beer in hand as Thor, Sam, and Steve surrounded him, and you stood with Wanda, Nat, and Vis, you couldn’t help but stare in amazement.

That brave, loving, selfless, kind, sweet, goofy man was your husband, always looking out for you, always supporting you. So long as you two had each other, there wasn’t anything you two couldn’t conquer -- whether it was birds or a hell bent mutant leader -- you’d be okay.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[blu-b]

Family Ghosts

A little Warleggan family scene that I scribbled because it wanted out. 

Is it cheesy? Yes, unbelievably so. Was it necessary? Absolutely.

Because the entire Warleggan family needs more love and appreciation. Well, save for uncle Cary, perhaps. 

Characters: George Warleggan, Geoffrey Charles Poldark, Elizabeth Warleggan. But mainly George and GG. 

THIS IS NOT SHIPPY! (I mean in terms of George/Geoffrey Charles if anyone got that idea! It is shippy in terms of George/Elizabeth).

Let’s pretend to ignore what happens in the series, shall we? At least the bad things. Let’s just pretend everyone’s nice to one another. 

If you dislike any of these characters or their actors, please don’t read this. If you read it anyway, please show some respect for my work and refrain from hateful comments. Thank you.

If all the legends of hauntings and ghosts were true, then George was predestined to be the one person most likely to ever meeting one. As usual, he was wandering the corridors of Trenwith late at night, so quiet that he could have passed for a ghost as well. A single, small candle carried in a simple brazen holder lit his way. En route from his study at the other end of the building he crossed the gallery, heading for his private bedroom. Generations of Poldarks looked down upon him from the lofty heights of old portraits. From his position below, it always seemed like they were sneering at him, the intruder. And who knew what those dignified family veterans might whisper to one another once they were left in the peace of their own company again.

Hurriedly, George crossed the landing and left them behind. He had once again worked well past any reasonable time, as he did so often these days. Lately, the day had not enough hours for all the matters that had to be taken care of.

There was not a soul up and about at this time of night save for the master of the house himself and whatever wandering ghost his footsteps on the tufted carpet might disturb. Elizabeth had already retired hours ago. Part of him regretted not being able to join her, but there had been urgent papers on his desk that needed his attention more than his wife did.

In truth, he still wasn't quite sure whether Elizabeth needed or wanted anything from him at all. She enjoyed his attentiveness, sure, and she was generally glad for his company, but encounters in the bedroom had been few and far between since their wedding night, and George always had the impression that Elizabeth seemed relieved more than anything else when he finally retreated to his own quartes. Needles to say, their private meetings were marked by a certain touch of awkwardness. Elizabeth was too much of a lady to make demands of any kind, and George....well, he had never learned how to voice intimate desires, and even though he craved her gentle embrace and tender touches more than any other physical contact, he didn't quite know how to explain that to his wife.

Oh well, there was one thing he could do at least that would make her happy, and that was providing for her and for Geoffrey Charles. It brought him joy to make sure Elizabeth was taken care of, that she received daily presents from his hand and could indulge in all the luxuries a lady of her standing required, from new dresses to expensive tableware. It didn't matter much that she was spending his money, he had enough and was earning more by the minute, and he had little fancies for himself save for what was needed for business.

That the boy received a proper education was particularly important to George. He had grown fond of Geoffrey Charles, had always been, even when the boy was still his god-son. He reminded George of himself in his youth, a shy, quiet boy who played by himself for lack of a sibling or companion, but also by preference.

And now he was the boy's stepfather, a word that still sounded strange in his mind but left him with a warm feeling and a smile on his lips. His way led him past Geoffrey Charles' chambers, a child's realm hidden behind heavy oaken doors. George stopped for a moment, listening. Everything lay in quiet solitude behind the lavishly carved portals.

Maybe George should arrange for a set of rooms a bit closer to Elizabeth's, so mother and son were not parted by almost an entire wing. Geoffrey Charles was very attached to his mama; it seemed unfair not to let him bask in her comfort while he still could. The burdens of growing up would be upon him soon enough as he transcended into adolescence. No one knew better than George that the carefree years of childhood would waste away too soon, making way to a future that left little room for personal freedom. He had not yet spoken to Elizabeth about it, for he was entirely unsure how to break the news to her (any way he tried, it would be the wrong way), but the moment for such aggravating news would come sooner or later.

Lost in his musings, George was startled from his thoughts when the sound of wailing cries and sobbing broke the silence, albeit subdued as if coming from....

Geoffrey Charles' room.

It wasn't loud enough to alert the nurse, or Elizabeth, or anyone else for that matter, but George was near and he wanted to know what was going on. The boy was having a nightmare most likely, so George lightly pushed open the door, knocking with his free hand as he entered.

"Geoffrey Charles?"

He met his step-son halfway to the door where he stood, shivering, in a too wide shirt and with tears streaking his cheeks.

"What's wrong with you? What happened?" George asked softly, putting the candle on a nearby table as he stepped further into the room. Immediately the boy came running towards him, sliding little arms around George's middle and burying his face in the folds of his coat.

"U-u-uncle Geeeeeoorge!!"

"What is it? Did you have a bad dream?" George went down on one knee to be able to look into his eyes.

"Y-y-yes. There w-w-were bad m-men ch-chasing after m-me, men with n-no faces....and then I w-woke up and the candle had gone out and it was d-d-dark..." He started to sob again, and George awkwardly hugged him close and let him cry for a while.

"I'm afr-afraid of the d-dark," the boy hiccuped.

George rubbed his little back. His hands felt too large and he wasn't sure he was doing this right as he'd never been turned to for comfort, but he needed to try as best he could. "It's alright to be afraid, you know," he said. "There's nothing wrong with that. Everybody's afraid of something."

Geoffrey Charles lifted his face out of George's waistcoat for a moment. "Really? Everybody?"

"Of course," George nodded. Slowly, he stood, holding out a hand to the little boy. Geoffrey Charles slid his smaller hand into it and they walked to the bed.

"Your mama for example is scared of spiders," he told his step-son while helping him up into the large four-poster. "Especially those ugly black ones with the long legs that come in from the garden. You must make sure to protect her from them, will you?"

The blond boy nodded eagerly while George pulled up the blanket and tucked him in.

"And aunt Agatha...." He couldn't think of a single thing that would scare the old lady, so he quickly made something up. "She's afraid of bugs, you know, those brown, flying, stinky ones that tangle in your hair." He ruffled the boys's feathery hair, making a buzzing sound. That actually made Geoffrey Charles giggle for a few moments.

"And you, uncle George, what are you scared of?"

"Me? Oh, hm..." A dozen things, he wanted to say. And none of them befit a man of my age. In the end, he picked the most obvious one. "Narrow spaces. Anywhere I can't move properly, you know, where it feels like you're being trapped and can't breathe. Those places scare me."

"Is that why you never go down into the mine?" Geoffrey Charles asked with all the innocence only a seven-year-old could have.

George smiled and nodded, signalling defeat as if this were a game and he had just lost. "You caught me. It's indeed the reason why I don't like the mine. But sshht, don't tell anybody. This will be our secret."

Again, the boy was eager to agree.

Before George could turn the conversation towards other matters - sleep, for example - Geoffrey Charles suddenly had an idea.

"Uncle Ross is never afraid of anything!" He proclaimed, clearly proud of his other, more stalwart uncle.

One could possibly argue that if one were Ross' wife, or his banker, George thought. Out loud he said, "You know, I think even uncle Ross is afraid. He's just better than most at hiding it."

"Oh?" The boy looked disappointed, yet vaguely intrigued. "Why is that?"

"Well," said George and took a deep breath, brushing over the boy's blond head again. "You remember that he was a soldier, right? And soldiers often have to act like they're not afraid at all when in truth they are very, very afraid. But they have to appear brave on the outside. Because if an enemy knows they are scared, it will end badly for the soldier. He has to be brave for himself, and for his comrades, to keep up their spirit so they can win the fight. Do you understand that?"

The boy nodded gravely. "So, what is uncle Ross scared of, then?"

Death. He's scared of losing his loved ones. His beautiful wife, his son. After his daughter died, he was a near wreck. Of course George couldn't say that to the boy.

"I don't rightly know. I think you'll have to ask uncle Ross yourself next time you see him."

Geoffrey Charles nodded with sleep-heavy eyes. "Will do."

"You should try and go back to sleep now, young man. Tomorrow will be another busy day, and young gentlemen need rest." George wondered briefly if he should kiss the boy on the forehead, then decided that as a stepfather, such a gesture was not within his rights and it would remain Elizabeth's privilege.

Geoffrey Charles yawned, mumbled some words of protest but closed his eyes obediently, bunching a corner of the blanket tight between his little fist. George waited a few more moments to make sure the boy was indeed asleep. Then he rose quietly, only the rustling of his clothes giving away his movement. And yet a small hand grabbed him by the wrist, and a tiny voice peeped from the pillows.

"What if the faceless men come back?"

"They won't, I promise."

"Can't you stay, uncle George? Just in case? Please? Just this one time?"

A hundred replies shot through his head.

Aren't you too old for that? Don't be childish. A young man your age doesn't need a nanny.

But all the memories of his own bitter childhood and its lonely nights were stronger. Alone in the dark, clinging to his pillow for comfort because no one was there to listen to his cries - that was not a fate he wished upon any child.

And so George took a deep breath, shrugged out of his coat and his boots and sat down again at the edge of the boy's bed, ready for a sleepless night and a stiff back in the morning. But to his utter surprise Geoffrey Charles pulled at his wrist, insisting that he lay down next to him on the bed. How awkward this felt for George who wasn't used to such physical contact, and how afraid he was that he would make some mistake or another, that he could accidentally hurt the boy or say something wrong because he was entirely not the right person to come to for comfort, what with his clumsy way of expressing emotions, and he was not fearless like aunt Agatha or uncle Ross, he was a coward and an intruder and....

The boy curled against him, his little blond head coming to rest at George's shoulder. Feathery blond hair tickled his cheek. Hesitatingly, George put an arm around his step-son. The boy let out a content sigh and inched even closer, burrowing deeper into the warm nest created by his stepfather's presence and entirely unaware of any conflicting emotions, ready to drop off into sleep's embrace.

"Good night, uncle George." "Good night, little man." George whispered, petting blond hair with tender hands.

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

When Elizabeth came to the nursery in the morning, she found both her husband and her son sound asleep with a smile on their faces, and in their slumber she thought to notice a certain likeness in their profiles as if they were indeed father and son. She smiled, drew the blanket over their shoulders and placed a whispering kiss on their foreheads, deciding to let them sleep for a bit longer.

[music-of-silence]

An awesome book. If you want to understand what really ... An awesome book. If you want to understand what really goes on in hollywood, in the music scene and in American politics, this book will open your eyes. Serious topics covered, fascinating insights into the lives of the "stars" and a new way of looking at our cultural icons, "history" and the "news". David McGowan also writes with great humour and irony. Just a great read, highly recommended. Applying what I learned about he lives of some of our cultural icons in this book, its actually opened my eyes as to some of of the things going on in Hollywood today, and just what some of our cultural icons of the current time are into. I'd also recommend another book of Dave McGowan's. "The politics of serial murder", which if read in conjunction with this book is just a staggering look at how entire cultural movements can be created by governments, and just how carefully manipulated our media and "cultural icons" really are. Just an awesome book. Serious topics, deep insights, but done with great humour as well. A must read. Go to Amazon

In the Wonderland Zoo A follower of the original "Inside the LC" webseries, I expected Weird Scenes to be that plus some additional material (and with greater narrative continuity). And if that were the case, I'd give the book 4 stars, no problem. But what we have is a quite beautiful book that deserves shelf-space between The Collected Works of Charles Fort and Thos. Pynchon's Inherent Vice. "Conspiracy literature" in a broad sense, but McGowan's sense of humor - and *story* - distinguishes him from many such writers/researchers. And, really, there is plenty for those of a non-conspiratorial bent to chew on: Weird Scenes functions as a Rock History - documenting a particular scene - with keen insights (such as the splitting up of the folk-rock movement). The Arthur Lee chapter alone is vital for anybody who ever, well, *loves* Love. And "Brianistas" will recognize the names Jack Rieley and Tandyn Almer -- Right-wing and/or intelligence connections? It would be far from the strangest thing to happen in the Beach Boys universe. And that's where McGowan gets his hooks in: there is so much thoroughly documented Weirdness associated with the L.A. music scene that it begs for at least the beginnings of a STRUCTURE. Those looking for a neat "the Illuminati/Space Lizards did it" type explanation will be disappointed: like Charles Fort, the author brings forth information and asks the questions that pretty much nobody has thought to ask. The book is filled with possible scenarios supported by hard fact: a speculative history because there's really no official history of all these people/events to measure it against (Graham Nash's recent memoir? he truly loved Joni, is still miffed at Neil, next slide *please* ..). Like the mysterious "factory" in P.K. Dick's A Maze of Death - or the monolith in 2001 - sits Laurel Canyon's Lookout Mountain Laboratory, a honest-to-god military facility in the heart of hippiedom. McGowan doesn't dwell too much on it, because it's one of those uncanny things that, once you hear, you never forget: it's the hum in the background when you discover that Frank Zappa learned much of his studio wizardry from a former missile engineer. There are some who will shake their heads at the last two chapters, one on Houdini's intelligence connections and the other on the Spook-ridden Copeland clan and the late 70's/80's music scene. I thought these worked remarkably well in terms of providing some outside-the-Canyon *context*. To wit, what if the 60's/70's Laurel Canyon scene was simply a concentrated form of Weirdness that can be shown to be at work in other places, at other times? Well, we as readers would want examples, naturally. The Houdini material is illustrative of the sometimes nexus of the Entertainment world and intelligence work. Coming at the end of the book, the author can stand back and let the reader make connections (a delight for any devout reader of Mysteries). For example, the story of a Dr. Crandon and leagues of "disappeared" children called to mind the CIA/"Finders" cult that was news, briefly, in 1987. Other readers, with a different store of experiences, will have other revelations. What makes Weird Scenes so rewarding is that it invites revisiting: the Mystery remains open .. Go to Amazon

A readily accessible primer First of all, I am sorry for the recent loss of Mr. McGowan. I only just came across his writings. Go to Amazon

Interesting and well-written. An in depth look at the underside of celebrity that very few challenge themselves to see. In a culture, in awe of fame and celebrity at any costs, mainly pushed by our current media, this book serves as a vital source of information that can dissolve the enchantment of the "pied piper." Go to Amazon

A real eye opener, and a great and interesting read! It will keep you spellbound! What a super interesting read. I could hardly put it down, and I'm not easily swept up, by many books. Even though it is quite long, I finished it in two days, which is a huge thing for me. I start a lot of books and quickly loose interest. NOT this one, it will keep you intrigued through the whole read. I was born in the early 50's so all of these people were around in my late teen years, and I listened to most of their music. WOW!!! If your a Conspiracy Realist as I am, your going to appreciate and love this book, even if your not, it will open your eyes to a lot of crap going on in this Evil Government. Anyone growing up in this era will also love this book. A REAL eye opener. I wish he would do a updated one, as I'm sure this crap has kept going on, throughout the history of rock and roll, and now carries over to Country music. :( If you know what to look for, most all of these musicians are flashing the devil/Lucifer/Illuminati hand signals all the time. Very sad. Go to Amazon

i was born in 1952 and followed the music scene ... maybe, maybe not. Failed to make his point. This book is the opposite of "Coincidence Theory" Government Psy-op takes control of the Hippy Movement "Dirt on the Controllers" Fantastic research into the darker side of the music industry Excellent read! McGowan opened my eyes to the behind ... I will be recommending it to my friends Both Sides Now, from a different point of view.

[papermoonloveslucy]

Chris Goes Steady

S2;E16 ~ January 20, 1964

Synopsis

When Chris starts dating Mr. Mooney's son, Lucy gets the mistaken idea that they plan to elope and hides out in the boys' tree house to prevent it.

Regular Cast

Lucille Ball (Lucy Carmichael), Vivian Vance (Vivian Bagley), Gale Gordon (Theodore J. Mooney), Candy Moore (Chris Carmichael)

Ralph Hart (Sherman Bagley) and Jimmy Garrett (Jerry Carmichael) do not appear in this episode.

Guest Cast

Michael J. Pollard (Ted Mooney Jr.) was born on May 30, 1939 in Passaic, New Jersey. He appeared on Broadway in five shows, including Bye Bye Birdie and Enter Laughing, just before this appearance on “The Lucy Show.”  At this time he was married to Beth Howland (Vera on “Alice”) who he divorced in 1969. In 1967 he was nominated for an Oscar for the film Bonnie and Clyde. This is his only appearance opposite Lucille Ball. He died on November 20, 2019. 

Ted Mooney is Mr. Mooney's son.  

Usual series writers Madelyn Martin and Bob Carroll Jr. are joined by Fred S. Fox and Irving ('Iz’) Elinson for this episode. Fox wrote 15 episodes of “The Lucy Show” and 26 episodes of “Here’s Lucy.” Elinson wrote a dozen episode of “The Lucy Show.”

This episode first aired on the 68th Birthday of comedian George Burns.1964 would see the death of his wife, Gracie Allan. Burns reinvented himself as a solo act and appeared on “The Lucy Show” as himself in 1966 and on “Here’s Lucy” in 1970. Burns will celebrate 31 more birthday before passing away in 1996 at age 100.

Opposite “Chris Goes Steady” on ABC, Kathleen Freeman was making the last of her five appearances on “Wagon Train”. Three weeks earlier she made the first of her five appearances on “The Lucy Show.”  

That same night, Mr. Mooney’s predecessor Charles Lane (Mr. Barnsdahl) appeared as Mr. Frisby on “The Andy Griffith Show”, airing after “The Lucy Show.” Like Burns, Lane ended his life as a centenarian, living to the age of 102.  

MY THREE SONS 

This is the third 'son' of Mr. Mooney introduced on the series. 

Barry Livingston played a young Arnold Mooney, Jerry's classmate, in “Lucy Gets Locked in the Vault” (S2;E4). The role will shortly be re-cast with Ted Eccles when Livingston is busy on “My Three Sons.” 

Eddie Applegate played Bob Mooney in “Lucy and the Bank Scandal” (S2;E7).  Applegate was reportedly too busy appearing on “The Patty Duke Show” to return to the role of Chris' boyfriend and it was re-cast (and re-named) for Pollard.  

In an earlier episode, we hear that Mr. Mooney also has a daughter, who lives in Trenton NJ. Like her mother, the character is never seen on screen. Lucille Ball lived briefly in Trenton as an infant. On Mr. Mooney’s home office desk there is a framed photo a woman who may be Irma Mooney. 

The title of this episode refers to the post-War practice of teenagers dating one partner exclusively - until they ‘break up’. Those not ‘going steady’ were ‘playing the field’.  The boy generally gave his ‘steady’ a small token to wear as a sign of their commitment. Here, Chris is given Ted’s class ring to ‘make it official.’ Two weeks after this episode aired, “The Patty Duke Show” produced an episode titled “Going Steady” and later in 1964, the song “I’m Going Steady With A Dream” hit the charts. The Studebaker automobile’s user manual was titled “Going Steady With Studie”. 

Chris formerly dated Chuck Gibbons, who Lucy fondly remembers bathed in the glow of the light from her refrigerator.  

Although Jerry and Sherman are not in the episode, their baseball glove and ball is visible on the side table and Lucy and Mr. Mooney occupy their backyard tree house as a look-out post.  

Vivian can walk to the grocery store from their house. The malt shop is mentioned several times in the episode. This may or may not be a reference to the same location Chris and Cynthia worked in “Lucy is a Soda Jerk” (S1;E23). For the umpteenth time, Chris mentions her friend Cynthia, a character that was played in two episodes by Lucie Arnaz, but merely mentioned in dozens more.  

Viv says that UNIVAC couldn't have come up with a better match. UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer) was an early computer made by Remington Rand that was originally used mainly for weather forecasting, but would correctly predict that outcome of the 1956 Presidential election. UNIVAC was first mentioned on “Lucy and Bob Hope” (ILL S6;E1).  

Ted: “I can't get married till I get more customers on my paper route.”

Viv sings a bit of “I Love You Truly.” The song was sung by Elizabeth Patterson when Lucy Ricardo renewed her vows to Ricky in “The Marriage License” (ILL S1;E26). "I Love You Truly” was written by Carrie Jacobs-Bond and first published in 1901. It was sung in the film It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) and was frequently heard on TV (often satirically). It was one of the earliest songs composed by a woman to sell over one million copies.  

A few moments later, Viv sings a few bars of another traditional wedding song, “Oh, Promise Me!” an 1887 art song by Reginald de Koven and Clement Scott. She first sang it when Lucy’s sister got married in “Lucy’s Sister Pays a Visit” (TLS S1;E15) a year earlier. It was later heard on “Here’s Lucy” (1972) and  “Happy Anniversary and Goodbye” (1974).

Mr. Mooney bristles when Lucy suggests that Ted and Chris may get married, dreading that they would be related. In “Here's Lucy”, Lucy's character is indeed related to Gale Gordon's – she is his brother-in-law. They are also related by marriage in “Life With Lucy.” 

Chris: “We both like the same ‘Hootenanny’ singers, we both wear Beethoven sweatshirts, and and we both do our homework listening to Dave Brubeck's Jazz Combo.”

“Hootenanny” was a music series that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1964 during the height of the folk music craze. It taped performances at college campuses around the USA. Dave Brubeck is a jazz musician best known for his recording "Take Five." In “Lucy the Music Lover” (S1;E8) Jerry wore a Beethoven sweatshirt.

After they use 'reverse reverse psychology' on Lucy and Mr. Mooney, Chris and Ted get a smattering of exit applause from the studio audience.  

To convince their parents that they are going to elope, Ted passes his father's study window carrying a long ladder. In fiction, a man usually accessed his prospective bride's bedroom window using a ladder.  

To further add verisimilitude to their narrative, Chris borrows Viv's suitcase and purposely leaves out a travel brochure for Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls is located on the border of New York State and Ontario, Canada, and is known for its majestic waterfalls. It has long been a favorite honeymoon destination, mentioned many times in films, TV shows and songs. For more than 200 years it has touted itself as “The Honeymoon Capital of the World.”  

This is one of a few episodes where Ralph, Viv’s ex-husband is mentioned. We never learn the first name of Lucy’s late husband. 

To spy on their kids, Lucy and Mr. Mooney take refuge in Sherman and Jerry's tree house, which Mr. Mooney describes as “early Huckleberry Finn.” Huckleberry Finn is a 12 or 13 old fictional character created by Mark Twain who first appeared in the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and is the narrator of its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Both Tom and Huck were known for roughing it living in the woods in and around the Mississippi River.

The boys have decorated their tree house with a yellow stop sign (above Mr. Mooney). The traditional red stop sign didn’t come along until 1954 because there were no red dyes that wouldn’t fade outdoors over time, so yellow was chosen when the signs were first standardized in 1922. 

The scene with Lucy and Mr. Mooney in the tree house will be reused in the 1986 “Life With Lucy” episode “Lucy and Curtis are Up a Tree” which went un-aired when the series was abruptly canceled. It was also written by Madelyn Martin and Bob Carroll Jr.  

In that episode, it rained instead of snowed because the characters of Lucy Barker and Curtis McGibbon lived in Pasadena, California.  

Since the episode revolves around reverse psychology, Mr. Mooney invokes the name of Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst, often called ‘talk therapy.’  

Trying to stay awake in the tree house, Lucille Ball uses her comic facial expressions much the same way she did fighting drowsiness in many other episodes of her shows.  

Technical Note: This is the first episode of “The Lucy Show” to use a 'flip wipe' between scene one and two instead of the traditional fade transition. It is used again later in the episode.

Callbacks!

Reverse psychology was a common plot device on “I Love Lucy.” Ricky and the Mertzes use it to lift Lucy’s spirits in “The Inferiority Complex” (ILL S2;E18). They later use it when “Little Ricky Gets Stage Fright” (ILL S6;E4) to get him to play his drums. That same season, the girls use it on the boys to make them think they would be better at “Building a Bar-B-Q” (ILL S6;E24).

The rope ladder falling to the ground and stranding Lucy and Mr. Mooney in the treehouse is similar to when the ladder Lucy Ricardo planned to use to escape being locked on the roof falls to the ground in “Vacation From Marriage” (ILL S2;E6). Weather also gets the better of the stranded duo, albeit man-made weather via a garden hose. 

In “Lucy Puts Up a TV Antenna” (TLS S1;E9) Lucy and Viv get stuck on the roof after their ladder breaks in half.  

“Chris Goes Steady” rates 4 Paper Hearts out of 5