#and basically remind myself that all of that is miserable and HARD and isolating

[solarisposting]

will be ruminating on very decidedly unhealthy ideas about body image, weight loss, disordered eating, etc. below the read more.

whenever I start choking on shame for whatever reason, or whenever I get overwhelmed with everything around me, I return to the now-defunct thinspo and fitspo blogs I used to frequent almost obsessively from ~2010-2015 or so, and fitspo was just thinspo with extra disclaimers about why it wasn’t bad like thinspo.

in that period, I would comb through endless infographics about caloric contents, and fitness challenges, and before-and-after shots to show that you can do it too, you sad lonely fat girl, and gif sets of strong beautiful adult athletes and personal trainers doing so-called beginners’ workouts that I was never able to accomplish. I voraciously consumed the gospel of simple rules like fats bad, white rice bad brown rice good, bread pasta carbs bad, roasted broccoli baked chicken breast with a little salt and pepper on a bed of brown rice as the ultimate healthy meal, chew gum or work out to curb cravings (which was coincidentally a popular piece of advice on “pro-ana” blogs and websites I would sometimes come across, though I want to emphasize that I never had a full-blown, serious eating disorder - just disordered eating problems, which aren’t to be minimized by any means), couch to 5k couch to 5k couch to 5k, drink chocolate milk after runs to help your muscles recover but also lay off the dairy fatass, if you want chips eat carrots with hummus but only a small amount of hummus because it’s 70 to 90 calories per two tablespoon serving and if you want candy or chocolate or desserts then eat fruit dried fruit fresh fruit fruit and PLAIN GREEK yogurt with a little honey if you REALLY need additional sweetness, bananas as the core of every healthy diet and recipe, replace sour cream and heavy whipping cream with plain greek yogurt replace ranch and other dipping sauces with lightly seasoned plain greek yogurt thinned out with water or low fat milk, three ingredient protein pancake three ingredient protein pancake three ingredient protein pancake!!! (it’s just scrambled banana eggs with cinnamon and it’s disgusting), banana nice cream if you want a treat :-), 70 ish calories in an egg 100 ish calories in that one brand and size of tortillas you like but why are you eating tortillas when you could be be doing lettuce wraps instead coffee as basically calorie-free and then if you’re light with the NONDAIRY LOWFAT or else CREAMER then it’s almost guilt free!!

and on and on and on forever and ever.

that shit, which I intentionally and willingly sought out and consumed, damaged me so badly for years before a therapist I saw briefly in college pointed out that actually, I did have eating problems and actually, I should see a campus nutritionist because it was not normal to not eat for a day and a half and then eat as much as possible in one sitting so that it caused immense amounts of pain and emotional distress and the pain of eating too much and the pain of not eating at all being used as forms of self harm is supremely concerning actually and actually being ashamed to order food and too anxious to order food and too uncomfortable to purchase food on a daily basis when you’re a college student using a meal plan that necessitates those things is a huge worry and really, you deserve better and your body and mind need better to keep running and no you don’t have a full blown eating disorder and no you’re not in need of hospitalization and yes it’s good that no matter how many times you’ve tried you can’t make your body purge after you binge it’s concerning that you try but you aren’t a failure for being unable to purge.

I can barely understand what I was trying to write at first lmao but basically I still look at my old sources of obsession, blogs that haven’t updated since 2013 or so, blogs with ultra damaging and unhealthy rhetoric and because these other teens were victims of the neverending machine of diet diet lose weight diet that I was and still am. I saved probably over a hundred graphics from one of these blogs when I got my first laptop in 2013 and they’re still on my computer now, four laptops and eight years later, all saved in a word document titled “this is why” that I still refuse to delete and that I look at a couple times a year because I get so sick of myself, my weight gain, even when I was 145 pounds and objectively thin for my body type for the first time in my life and gained back five pounds going into college, and end up trying to trigger a period of this awful unhealthiness where I fixate obsess ruminate on and on over numbers exercise to the point of hurting myself (whether I get to that point or not) unsatisfying so-called healthy meal substitutions and truly try and brute-force myself into the same awful mindsets and behaviors that used to rule over me years ago. it’s like unhealthy and damaging and self injurious behavior is the only way I know.

[traumatized-motherfuckers]

Friendship Dissolutions; A Lesson in Asshole Trauma Reactions

So this is normally my school day, but I’m feeling the need to dig into something else this morning. The past events of this weekend, annnnd the past nearly two years. Because, if you  hadn’t heard, relationships are hard and I like to embarrass myself by telling you about all my fuck ups.

You know, romantic relationships are a disaster for yours truly, but I always thought I was pretty good at the friendship thing. Since high school I’ve almost always had robust friendly relationships - both in depth and breadth. With the exception of a few difficult points in my life since 16, my phone has never been quiet, my weekends have only been isolating when I’ve been isolating myself, and I’ve always felt like I had humans on my side who were closer to kin than my actual family.

The thing is, there have been periods when this hasn’t been the case. I want to say that it’s generally when I’m in my worst mental health downfalls, but I don’t think that’s universally true. There have been variable reasons for separating myself from other people, or vice versa. Sometimes getting too busy, sometimes naturally growing apart, sometimes getting too obsessed with a romantic partner.

But, taking a more analytical view, underlying my lost friendship events, trauma has often been one of the influences that corrupted my friendships and left me lonely, even if it doesn’t seem like it at face value. The thing is, the trail of breadcrumbs might go back 20 years or so. I might not have been in a full-blown trauma state at the time, but those early life non-learnings about relationships have left their mark. So, yes, I do believe that CPTSD is the prerequisite for interpersonal disruptions and we’re not alone in that.

Anyways, in this Fucker’s life, for the past almost 2 years I’ve been in one of those friendship lulls. I’ve had casual friends, roommates, work-associates, distant relationships, some of those hey-how’s-it-going-every-two-months relations. But I haven’t had those deep, rich, all-encompassing friendships that used to define my existence. The ones that used to make me feel safe enough to have an existence, at all.

It’s all because I lost my core group of friends, I didn’t understand and couldn’t fix the problem, and I had no idea how to move forward.

And this last time when I lost everyone I loved, it was definitely due to trauma. Acute, historical, and recovering trauma, to be specific. It was a horrible period of my life, I was a human wrecking ball, and I had no emotional control… because, partially thanks to said friends, I never had to develop those skills.

Basically, I’ve been on my own since a whole series of mental health related isolation events and relationships dissolutions that have persisted since - I want to say 2019 - but to be more holistic, the ship started sailing earlier than that. Like, when I was born.

This has all come to mind more than usual because, this weekend? I had a strange rush of humans back into my life. For the first time in a long time, I saw my best, closest, most important old friends, who were closer to siblings…. In our natural habitat, with our normal friendship routines, with hundreds of memories from the past decade flying around the room.

And today… or, realistically, since I tried to go to sleep after seeing them each day this weekend… I have the relationship reckoning to deal with. The emotional and cognitive processing of everything that’s happened. The lost years. The sense of abandonment. The feeling of being cast out of a family. The inkling that everyone was talking about me. The realization that I was acting a fool, and maybe they should be talking about me. The sense that all parties were partially responsible, but I was the one to blame. The voice in my head that has called me a crazy, miserable, unlovable mess the entire time I debated this at 6am and 6pm and 3am for the past several years.

And now, in the aftermath, I have to work through the dynamic cocktail of feelings, the sense of waiting for the other shoe, and the big decision - are these relationships that I feel secure pursuing again?

And I don’t think I’m alone in this one.

So, today I thought it would be good to talk about this. The history of losing my favorite people on the planet, how I perceived it at the time, how I see my own trauma-actions fucking shit up in hindsight, how I’ve forgiven myself for being such a wild one, and… well… my hesitancy to have close friendships with humans who hurt me in the past. The ways I realized that being separate was beneficial to my mental health and life progress. The self-sabotaging enablement patterns that I now recognize, ran deep, in our old group of friends. The fear that being around them again will let my trauma brain run away with me.

Woo - it’s a whole personal relationship reckoning over here. Let’s just do this, so I can get to my school work at some point soon.

History

So let me set up this situation. You need the background details, of which, there are many dramatic twists and turns.

Be me, Spring of 2019. My romantic relationship with my ex in Atlanta - the musical narcissist that I followed to the city - is going terribly. Since we moved things have been rocky, but now our relationship has been pumped full of disappointment, unfair expectations, emotional codependency, resentment, horrific fighting, and abuse of all colors. Every day is a battle. We’re rarely ever “happy” together. We’re closer to enemies than friends. And we live under the same roof - the one his parents bought for him, outright in cash - to make matters even more fun.

Other than him, I’m alone in this city. I work at the brewery, where no one really likes me. I have one friend from work, but little time to interact thanks to the demanding schedule of my ex with his gigs and out-of-state child visitation.

Financially, my savings have been depleted by floating my significant other’s horrible decisions for the past 2 years. We can never get ahead. He never pays me back for anything. I’m basically in his pocket, as far as needing resources to survive.

As you can imagine, and as I’ve described previously, my mental health is in THE SHITTER. Maybe worse than it’s ever been, although this is hard to judge against some of my earlier years in my 20’s. I’m definitely ramped up in an aggressive and defensive trauma state more than ever before, thanks to living with my aggressor every day. I feel like I’m surviving against the will of my partner, who seems to legitimately be doing his best to drive me into an early grave every single time the sun rises. He’s moved into the territory of intentionally triggering me for hours on end, upsetting me to the point of mental breakdowns, and then gaslighting me for “acting so crazy.” Things have become dangerous, I have no one to turn to, and no cash to get myself into a better situation… not that I know what a better situation even looks like.

But one day, I left. Packed my two bags, went to work, wound up at that single sort-of-friend’s house, never went back home.

And that’s when the real nightmare started. I mean, my ex was a terror over time as we lived together, but a narcissist scorned is a narcissist determined to ruin your fucking life. He harassed me daily via text, phone call, FB messenger, email, stalkings… whatever you can think of. When I blocked him on everything, he started trying to leverage our therapists against me until they refused to interact anymore. He wouldn’t let me into his house to get my stuff. He tried to have me arrested for attempting to do so, after he made arrangements with me to move that weekend. He suddenly refused to even acknowledge that he owed me a dime, and found a way to tally up venmo transactions to show that I actually owed him. He took my only support - our dog, who was really my dog - away and wouldn’t let me see him. Later, he reported my car stolen, so I had to purchase a new one without warning.

The list goes on and on. Just, assume every pathetic, cruel, desperate attempt at getting under someone’s skin and reminding them that they had the audacity to leave you. That’s what was going on in my world.

Meanwhile, with those financial and social pressures I mentioned earlier. No close friends in the area, no spare cash, an unstable job where I was on the chopping block for the reason of “the CEO didn’t like my personality,” nowhere to live, no idea where to go next or how to start a whole new life.

Annnnnd this is right about when my closely knit friend group back in Illinois sort of, well, dipped.

My bestest, best, most treasured friend in my lifetime had always been there for me. But now, she wasn’t. We had exchanged a handful of phone calls over the past month in the aftermath of this relationship ending, but she had been pretty detached from it. I wasn’t offended, because she had certainly heard enough of the drama in real time… of course she was tired of hearing about it...  but I was feeling especially alone and incapable of handling everything on my own, so the distance was difficult, nevertheless. Then, one day she told me that I was being too much for her. I had too high of expectations. It had been bothering her for a while. She needed me to understand and give her some space.

And this was the completely avoidable beginning of the end of my friendships. Let’s talk about why.

How I perceived it

So, I’m pretty sure you can guess how I took this challenging message from my best friend. Uh, poorly. I was so shocked that in my darkest hour, my comrade would feel like my problems were out of her paygrade. It felt like a stab to the heart and straight down through the gut. Here I was, completely alone and isolated, reaching back to my most trusted companions for a lifeline to keep my head above water, and… nothing. She didn’t want to reel me back into the boat.

I responded with some shitty messages about how I really wasn’t asking that much from her and I didn’t appreciate being blindsided by her sudden decision to get rid of me. I had only taken up a few phone calls to talk things through based on her schedule. I had visited her one weekend as I went to a job interview nearby. I had asked her to come visit me soon, so I could feel less alone for a few days. I didn’t think it was fair that she was responding this way. I couldn’t believe she would turn her back on me at this particular moment.

And so, the rift developed. We stopped speaking. I started sobbing. I was absolutely beside myself, as if I hadn’t already been. This wasn’t what I wanted, at all, but I also felt like I had no control in it.

.......

Like it? Well I’m too lazy to post the whole thing here. Check t-mfrs.com for the full blog AND the podcast recorded version. Yawelcome. 

www.t-mfrs.com 

(Traumatized Motherfuckers)

[afreakingdork]

Review: March Comes In like a Lion (Seasons 1 and 2)

What a wild ride this has been. It’s funny seeing the posters side by side because they really illustrate how I feel about seasons 1 and 2 of this series. To me, season 1 felt disjointed and season 2 just made me feel so good and light even while it was dunking me straight into emotional turmoil. The thing is, one cannot exist without the other and I’ll tell you why: 

I struggled at first to even finish season 1. I started once many years ago (I’m not even sure when) and gave up after about 2 episodes because I just couldn’t get my self synched with what was happening. When I started again a few months ago, I felt like every episode was a slog. I wasn’t sure why I even kept watching, honestly. The aesthetics were beautiful and haunting. The imagery reminded me of both Hyouka and Flowers of Evil. I could tell Rei was going through some really dark emotions, but I also wasn’t sure what was going on. There would be flashes and abrupt shifts away from the topic. It seemed to capture the sensations of depression really well, but also not in a way that translated to also telling a story to which, I think, it also had a duty to do. It seemed like Kyouka had sexually abused Rei at some point based on the flashes of her character straddling him and even after finishing both seasons, I’m not sure if that was the case. The dark and brooding artistically-charged emotional overtures of Rei are then just super-cut with intensely fluffy slice of life-esque sequences that gave me emotional whiplash. The show goes from Rei self-isolating to Nikaidou teaching the two younger Kawamoto sisters how to play shoji with animated cats. I remember trying to recall this information to my partner and not being able to explain it adequately because I just hadn’t even had enough heart in the series to learn the characters’ names. I felt bad, but I didn’t know what else to do. The show was fine, entertaining enough, but I just felt lackluster about what was happening. I applaud that they actually used the word depression when discussing Rei’s dark periods. I don’t know much, but I do know that mental health is extremely stigmatized in Japan and it was refreshing to hear it just laid out. However, I can honestly say that Shimada is what turned the show around for me. His introduction and the charisma of a beaten down exhausted pro just really resonated with me. By the time they were doing the train sequence in that final episode of season 1, I felt like everything was just too open ended and I had to go on because I had finally remembered Rei’s name. 

Everything turned around as I started to watch season 2. They pretty much immediately dove into a bullying arc with Hina and the whole series turned around for me. I was absolutely invested in everything that was happening and it was so heart wrenching and realistically portrayed. I found myself unable to pull away as Hina led the episodes and explained how her classroom dove into a dark black swirling pool of hateful energy. Suddenly, the artistic sequences now seemed succinct. Each portrayal of an emotion made my heart tighten and I could perfectly see how each character saw what was happening around them. It felt too good to be true. Even when a brand new character took over, I’m talking about Yamazaki in "Silver Wings," I had a moment where I was like, ‘What do I care about this guy? Why are we interrupting the narrative for him?’ By the end of his chapter, I was ashamed I ever felt that way. For once the narrative was larger than Rei and, while we knew Yamazaki through the lens of Rei, we didn’t know Yamazaki’s feelings during his match with Nikaidou. This is where I say that the doldrums of season 1 are absolutely necessary to get to the greatness of season 2. Rei was closed in season 1, he had met the Kawamoto family, but he was still deeply in the thralls of his depression. This is represented by what we see. Everything is disjointed because that’s how Rei feels. The Kawamoto family is disrupting his otherwise miserable mindset with their warm feelings. He actually says something along those lines and how he is afraid that if he stays in that warm house for too long, that he doesn’t feel like he will ever be able to leave. The episodes that focus on anything outside of Rei’s perspective are basically non-existent in that first season because Rei can’t see anything outside of himself. By the end of season 1, everyone has wedged a crowbar in the closed door of Rei’s heart and is craning it open by season 2. We get to see all these other people and perspectives because narratively, Rei has taken the blinders off and is not oblivious to the world around him. In a grand storytelling sense, this must have been the author’s intention. It’s almost a travesty to break this show up into seasons because the narrative is on such a grand scale, you can’t even begin to fathom the scope until you are at least 30 episodes deep. It’s downright genius storytelling and I will forever be grateful that I never stopped watching so that I could get to the point where I am now. I’m absolutely going to read the manga so I can see this story through to it’s true end. 

Verdict: 

P.S. I didn’t want to interrupt my grand explanation, but I think it’s so incredible how the timeline is also realistically portrayed. Take Chiho, for example, she was bullied so violently that she had to be committed. Several months down the line, she hasn’t recovered from this trauma. Even seeing her close friend who never bullied her, Hina, can only be done in a short spurt because emotionally she is still healing and will be for an unforeseen amount of time. I just can’t applaud this realistic representation of mental health enough. It’s treated with such delicacy. 

P.S.S. Why is everyone so mean to Shimada!? He’s so sweet and he’s working so hard. All the outreach he does for the elderly community back in his home town and even just for the shoji community is mind boggling on top of the severe and debilitating gastritis that he has. I remember thinking when he was going up against Yanagihara, that even though I liked Yanagihara, I’d just invested too much of my heart into Shimada to be able to root for anyone else. This show loves proving me wrong because I was completely swayed to Yanagihara and literally pushed back a deadline so that I could watch the finale of their match. I’m so glad he’s the eternal Kishou, I’m sorry Shimada!!! 

P.S.S.S. The revelation that Souya is partially deaf was so stunning to me that I actually had to stop watching and take a walk. It is incredibly genius. I never saw it coming a million miles away. The comparison to when you’re a prodigy at something that people are able to look the other way when it comes to idiosyncrasies is mind boggling. I was right there with Rei as I watched Souya come down from being a shoji deity to being a regular person and it was such a delight to watch my perspective change along with the characters. It’s an incredible hand that crafts a story that can sway a reader so accurately. 

P.S.S.S.S. 

IT WAS CALLED MARCH TOWN THE WHOLE TIME!? I shit you not, I had just told my partner around episode 20 of season 2 that while the show had skyrocketed in quality, I couldn’t figure out why the hell ‘March’ comes in like a lion! I’m so mad at the reveal.

[kogo-dogo]

Long-winded grief post. You don’t have to read if you don’t want to. 

The year’s end in the wake of everything is just messing me up, I guess. I’ve spent the past few days wavering between “disconnected from reality” and “sobbing incoherently.” My half-brother is visiting with his half-brother, which is enough to make me panic at the thought of all the things I’m going to have to do last minute in order to give the impression that I’ve not let my life fall apart. My surviving family on mom’s side have been pushing about me going back to clean out her house, which I understand to an extent, but I am not emotionally ready to face.

I’ve lost a lot in 2020. I lost my job and I’ve been struggling to find another. I’ve lost my idealistic view of a lot of people. I lost a huge chunk of my social circle because I was very reliant on work for human interaction. I’ve lost faith in a lot of my family. I’ve lost a lot of faith in myself. And finally, as the final kick to the gut, I lost mom.

I really can’t overstate how much that last one has fucked with me. Courtesy of years of training and trauma, I have a hard time showing weakness, even to people I care about. I either convince myself that I’m being abusive by being emotional, or I’m being a burden, or I’m being childish, or I’m being irrational. So, barring some sad posts, I really just try to swallow it and stay strong.

I am failing miserably due to the gravity of the loss, though. It’s easier when I can distract myself, but as the days ticked closer to Christmas and now creep closer to New Year’s, it’s... it’s impossible to really choke back. Facebook keeps slapping me in the face with posts from years before, pictures of her last Christmas in the hospital, dumb anecdotes I’d write in college during my winter breaks at home with her before she got sick. I have had to isolate every picture of her on my laptop because I kept running across them and sobbing. A telemarketer left me a voicemail, which made me go check my voicemails and. Well.

Spoiler: I’m stupid and listened to some of them.

She’s one of the only people who ever left me voicemails; hell, she’s one of the only people who ever got a hold of me by phone. The 22nd is the last day I had a coherent conversation with her prior to her going home on hospice. I made her cry. I hate myself for that.

I’m trying to swallow a lot of this and go into the new year with more a positive mindset: I will get her house cleaned out, I will find a job, and even if I’ve basically lost the last of my family who cares about me, I’ve got a small but solid group of people who’ve proven to be more familial than my actual blood. I have an incredible boyfriend who went above and beyond for me, even if he doesn’t fully realize it. I’ve gotten closer to my cousin, who has honestly been a godsend in keeping the less savory members of mom’s family off my ass.

I’m trying to temper the urge to wail and ignore all these constant reminders of Bad Things with just a promise to myself that I’ll, like, manage. I’ll get through this. I can make this work, and I will be okay.

I really wish I could just let myself cry, though. Actually cry. Not some half-assed sniffling that I try to choke down so I don’t make anyone feel bad. I feel like I need it. I feel like I need it a lot.

[sunsetsover]

hello i know i’ve been gone for a couple of weeks and i disappeared without a trace and originally that was because ben’s deafness storyline was bringing back a lot of my own personal experiences that i dealt with when coming to terms with my disability and it was (and still is) really really hard to see what he’s going through and how shitty it is and how badly he’s handling it both because it genuinely is a tough thing to see but also because it reopens all these wounds and gives me anxiety and stresses me out bc reminds me of what i went through and what was easily the toughest and darkest part of my life and obviously that’s no fun to relive lmao

however at this point i’m just staying away bc every time i poke my head in to check what’s going on i’m seeing the most fucked up opinions and takes on the whole thing that it’s actually genuinely making me really angry and upset because the way some of you talk about ben’s disability and situation and specifically the way he’s handling this massive petrifying change in his life speaks volumes about how you view disabled people in real life. because yeah, this is a tv show and ben isn’t real, but things like this happen to people. it happened to ME. and guess what!! i did the exact same fucking thing ben’s doing!!! i isolated myself and felt miserable and got angry and acted out and did stupid shit and hurt the people that cared about!!! and i did that because i was terrified and suffering and hurting and angry!!!! and i’m fucking real!!! i’m a real person and i know for a fact i’m not the only person out there who’s dealt with this kind of thing and reacted in this kind of way. so yeah, you might be sitting behind your fucking keyboards saying all these things about ben being selfish or dramatic or unreasonable or whatever else and think it’s ok because ben’s not a real person but you forget that there are real disabled people reading this shit and potentially internalising those things and feeling like THEY have to deal with their situation in a certain way or that they can’t feel certain things because some able bodied dickhead on tumblr dot com feels like they’re entitled to give their shitty fucking input on how disabled people should react to or deal with their disability - and this apparently means we’re not allowed to break down or be upset or act out because that’s too dramatic!!! ben should just shut up and have his operation right!!!! he should just stop misbehaving and causing so much trouble because it’s inconvenient!!! it’s not fair on callum right!!!!!!

like for some reason some of you cannot see beyond the end of your fucking noses to see that this has absolutely NOTHING to do with callum!!!!!! what the fuck does callum have to do with the fact that ben is having a fucking break down!!!!! what does callum have to do with the fact that ben is scared and acting out in the only way he knows how because he’s desperate to prove he isn’t different and that nothing’s changed and that he can still do the things he’s always done!!!!! callum has so fucking little to do with what ben’s going through at the moment and yet some people cannot look at this horrible situation that ben’s dealing with through anything other than a ballum lens and it fucking REEKS

ben lost his fucking hearing, he’s isolated, he’s feels like he’s lost so much of his self, he’s angry, he’s scared, he’s upset, he’s petrified he’ll never hear his daughter’s voice again - his daughter who got hit by a fucking car because he couldn’t hear it and now he feels like he’ll never be able to look after her or keep her safe the way he should - and yes he’s acting out because of all of that!! that’s what happens when you can’t accept your disability!!! you’re determined to prove you can do what you could before no matter what it costs you!!! and yet i’ve seen MULTIPLE people reduce that to ‘well he shouldn’t do that because it’s unfair and inconvenient for callum’!!!!!!!!!! or ‘ben isn’t putting enough effort into his relationship with callum/thinking about callum’!!!! or ‘this is just angst porn that serves no purpose’!!!!!!!! do you not have a brain in your fucking head!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! his brother’s just died!!!!! he’s just become deaf!!!!!!! he can’t fucking hear!!!!!!!!!!! he might never hear again!!!!!!! and is facing major surgery that might not even work!!!!!!!!!!!!! like hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! of course he’s struggling and acting out!!!! the fact that so few of you seem to be able to comprehend what’s going on is genuinely worrying

the fact of the matter is that some of you are upset that you don’t have your able bodied ship being all cute and domestic anymore. YOU are the ones who feel inconvenienced or slighted, and you’re projecting that onto callum bc that’s how you can get away w saying this bullshit. bc - and i know this might come as a shock to some of you - when you care about and love someone, you support them when they’re going through such a difficult time. you try to be as understanding as you can. also just look at who callum is as a character. you think he wouldn’t understand ben’s behaviour rn??? like come on!! so maybe it’s YOU that has the problem. maybe it’s YOU that doesn’t like it bc ben’s struggling through this in an ugly (but COMPLETELY valid) way and that’s inconvenient for you bc, whether you’re even aware of it or not, being disabled is an inconvenience. disabled people are hard work. this is just how most able bodied people see disabled people. if you’re reading this and you’re able bodied, you’re not immune from this. you’re not special. like any other prejudice, it’s something you just subconsciously learn and you might not even be aware of. but i’m telling you as a disabled person, the way some of you are speaking abt ben/this storyline tells me everything i need to know about how you view disabled people. so maybe take a step back and ask yourself why you’re saying what you’re saying and why you may feel the way you feel regarding this particular sl. bc for a lot of you, whether you wanna admit it or not, the answer is ableism. 

i didn’t want to make this post bc i don’t LIKE being confrontational!! i wanna be polite and kind and fair!!! but some of you have to understand that when you’re saying some of this shit you’re basically disregarding/making light of/taking the piss out of disabled people and their experiences. maybe you’re not even aware you’re doing it, but that’s exactly what it is. that’s exactly what it comes across as, and that’s exactly what it feels like to read some of the things you post as a disabled person (and it’s not just me - i know for a fact this stuff is affecting other disabled people in this fandom too). it’s upsetting, it’s invalidating, it’s HUMILIATING. and i’m fortunate enough to be a point in my life where i’m at relative peace w my disability, but if this were 5 years ago?? you have no idea how reading some of this shit would have fucked with my head. so the fact that i know there are other disabled people out there reading this stuff and it’s affecting them is more important to me than not starting drama on tumblr dot com. their feelings mean too much to me for me to just sit here and not say anything bc i don’t wanna upset people. some of u need to be upset. it’s the only way you’re gonna learn.

literally all i’m asking is for you to think about the things you say before you post them. ask yourself why you feel a certain way about things. ask yourself if what you wanna say is potentially gonna hurt or upset or insult a disabled person who might be reading it. ask yourself if you just wanna say some bullshit abt ben bc you’re just mad callum isn’t getting more screentime. bc if the answer is yes i promise you your opinion is unhelpful, unneeded and unwanted. so maybe just u know. keep your mouth shut.

[flintbian]

Ugh I feel like I've screwed up a lot, or just am screwed up

So naturally I decided the best course of action to everything going on recently was to isolate myself completely. I completely cut myself off from everyone, even on here, some for not just the past weeks but months (and now I have the "it's too late" conundrum). After pushing myself into my work and overdoing it way past my breaking point and ending up in the hospital several times to pay for it, and then basically sleeping through a week, some friends reached out to me and we hung out. It helped. It made me realize that there are people who care about me and would care. The longer I go isolated the more I think it's for the best and I should just finish it, but they pulled me out of that. I'm grateful for that as I've been extremely self destructive and harming lately.

At the same time it made me think of how screwed up I am. I mean I /apologized/ for laughing, and thank god they had the sense to say "you don't have to apologise for having a good time or feeling nice." Made me remember how foreign that feeling is and that it doesn't need to be. Sure yes I can never escape my pain unfortunately, I can't ever feel nice physically, but I also don't have to isolate myself and cut off the good people in my life who bring me joy, even if I am a flaming trainwreck atm. I thought I couldn't reveal myself until I got better, but that's not true, and thank goodness for the lesson as I've been getting worse and have finally conceded I need serious help and without support there and friends and people who love you it's so hard to make it through. Honestly the interaction gave me both joy but also some mental clarity. They said it's okay if you're not perfect, people can still care about you.

So yeah basically I'm going to try really hard not to isolate myself and not tell myself I need to stay miserable and lonely. Or that somehow I'm unredeemably broken and can't let others around me when I'm splintering. I doubt they'll see this, and yes I did vow not to post personal stuff like this anymore, but I need to try being open. And I also want to apologise, I definitely pushed friends on here away and I'm sincerely sorry for that. Anyway I'm not about to start posting personal stuff a lot or like I used to, but idk it's a reminder to myself not to isolate and to apologise to all those I've pushed away. Thanks to those who've stuck around ❤️

[stephhannes]

new year, who dis

what would be the use in becoming a symbol of walking desolation? awash in multiple griefs, elaborating on anguish. even if i never get to see you again, i’ll know that when we collided we both broke each other open. 

                                                   -mount eerie, love without possession 

i guess it’s been four months since i’ve sat down to write an actual blog. i figured i should at least try to get something out before the new year. 

i’ve tried to write an update a few times over the last couple of months, but every time i tried to write something, it’s just aggressively sad. like that one st. vincent lyric— i try to write you a love song, but it comes out a lament. and while an aggressively sad tone is appropriate to how i’ve been feeling, i’ve been trying to bring less sad energy to the table. (a surprise to everyone, because sad energy is my entire brand). 

I planned to get this blog up by january 1st. and then i kept putting it off. hence why this starts off saying things like, “i guess it’s been four months,” and “i figured i should at least try to get something out before the new year.” today is february 4th, which means it’s officially been a year and a half since nathan died. 

in the last few weeks, i’ve been under a lot of stress. i’m juggling three jobs right now, and somehow still don’t make enough money to survive. i’m sure that at this point, i’ve described to you my bona-fide money saving technique. it’s called “i only eat three days a week because it’s too expensive to feed myself every day,” sometimes, i get lucky, and get the scraps from events at work, and that’s literally like the one (1) thing i look forward to. 

i’m still out here searching for a salary (and health insurance) and hopefully, by my birthday, i’ll have that. but we’ll see, the job search has been uhhh…..abysmal to say the least. 

anyways, in the midst of being stressed, i’ve realized that i really don’t think about nathan all the time like i used to. sometimes i’ll go like two days before i’m reminded of him. the other day, i was like “am i a bad person because of this?” and like, logically, i know that it’s totally normal, but on the other hand, i can’t help but feel guilty because of it sometimes. i feel a sense of responsibility to exist as a reminder of “hey, this person existed, and they mattered,” and while i realize that’s a huge weight to put onto myself, i feel like if i don’t, then who will? 

last night, i was reading house of leaves (which, despite owning a copy since high school, i’ve actually never read it before) and i found nathan’s bookmark (a ticket from a baseball game he went to right after he moved to new york) in it, from when i let him take a few of my books when he moved to nyc. i got weirdly emotional and was like “wow what a fun coincidence to find this item of nathan’s that i’ve never seen before in my life on the 1.5 year anniversary of him dying.” i’m not saying i’m superstitious, but maybe i am a little stitious. 

+++

since the last time i wrote a blog, i’ve kept notes on my phone every time something happens that i feel holds some sort of importance- so here’s what’s been in my notes since august 4th. 

august 24, 2019. 4:17am

when i went into work on august 5th, a coworker of mine asked how i was doing. i was doing alright. the anniversary of nathan’s death really didn’t hit me too hard. i assumed i would have a huge nervous breakdown, and i didn’t. 

then my coworker, who’d also lost a partner, told me, “i hate to sound negative and be the one to tell you this but the second year is a lot harder than the first.”

that’s what i’d been reading online for months, but to hear someone say it to my face i was just like… oh shit. 

and so far, the second year has been harder. 

i’ve officially been out on my own for a month now. 

the best part about having depression is that no matter where you are, you still have depression. i don’t know why i was expecting moving to just alleviate all of my sadness when i know that i’ll always find a way to be miserable wherever i am. 

it’s nice to be out of abilene and at least have the option of opportunity, but i basically just spend all of my free time asleep or crying. 

as the ancient oracle, britney spears, once said- “my loneliness is killing me.”

now that i’ve started getting into a routine, i’m starting to feel that hole in my life again. 

i’m on the same schedule that i was when i lived in new york, almost. 

when we lived in new york, i would leave for work around 4, i’d get home around 11:30, and then nathan and i would hang out until around 4am, and then go to bed. the next day, he’d usually wake me up at a normal time, (or at least 2 hours before i had to be at work). 

and now i have to leave for work around 4:30, i get home around 11, and when i come home i’m just alone. and i lay in bed until i’m finally exhausted enough to fall asleep, usually around 5am. and then i wake up ten minutes before i have to go to work. 

i have been feeling this deep, existential sadness for awhile now. every night, i lay in bed and think about all of the conversations i wish i could revisit with nathan. all of the things i wish i’d said. i relive all of my favorite moments of ours. i am still so desperate to feel close to him again. 

i cannot remember a time in my life when i was excited to wake up. i cannot remember a time when i looked forward to my future. in fact, when i think about my mental health as a child, the only thing i remember is one time when i was 12, my dad bought me tickets to see my favorite band. i was obviously so incredibly excited, and expressed the human emotion of joy, and my mother accused me of being on drugs because she’d “never seen me act like that before.” it was so surprising to her to see me happy that she literally thought i was on drugs.

i’ve been like this for as long as i can remember, except for the two years that nathan and i were together. i was still so depressed when we lived together, but for the first time, i was looking forward to the future. for the first time, dealing with my depression seemed worth it. for the first time, putting effort into getting better made sense.  

for the first time in my life, i didn’t feel alone. 

and it took a lot of effort on nathan’s part to make sure that i didn’t feel alone. the loneliness i’ve always felt is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. i actively choose to retreat from friendships and relationships. i stop responding to texts. i hide away and cancel plans. it’s my fault that i feel isolated- because i isolate myself. and nathan refused to let me do that. when i get stressed, i internalize everything and take it all on my own- and nathan would recognize when i was doing that and beg me to let him help. and i wouldn’t let him help. but he would still do it, because he knew what i needed without me asking and would just quietly provide it for me so that i wouldn’t lose my mind. and a lot of the time the help was just him actively sitting me down and reminding me that i’m in fact, not alone. i’ll never forget when i was so stressed after moving to new york because i was so poor, and nathan telling me that “it’ll be okay. we’ll figure it out.” i never asked him for money, or for help, because i have too much pride for that. but even when i was working, i was struggling to make ends meet for myself, and he would sneakily do things like go to the grocery store and be like “oh hey, i was at the store today and just picked up some chicken for you so you don’t have to go yourself.” there were a few times when i asked him to pick up something from the halal cart for me because i didn’t want to get out of bed and i’d be like “there’s cash in my wallet just grab it” but instead of taking the money from my wallet, he’d just get the food for me, and put the change he had leftover in my wallet for me to have.

but even past that, just emotionally, he’d always reassure me that i wasn’t alone. as soon as he started to sense me doing the thing where i try to isolate myself, he’d just cling to me even harder. 

here’s the thing: i’m too tired to fight for myself, and i don’t have anyone that’ll fight for me the way that nathan did. 

august 29th, 2019. 5:32pm

so here’s the tea: i went on a date for the first time since nathan died. i went out last night, got drunk, got on bumble and agreed to go on a date this morning. so yeah, i was aggressively hungover, which is maybe not the best version of me for someone to meet- but it’s the version i brought to the table nonetheless. and like, it was fine. well, up until the point he was trying to relate to me and my career in theatre and told me that his favorite musical is CATS. his favorite cat is the rum tum tugger, and he can’t wait to see the movie in december. 

it’s not going to work out. CATS is an abomination and i refuse to spend time with anyone who disagrees with that statement. 

on a more serious note: i realized that i definitely don’t have the emotional capacity to date. i just can’t bring myself to care about anything anyone has to tell me about themselves. you have two sisters, your parents divorced when you were 8 and and you love CATS? zzzzz….sorry, that was me blacking out for 7 minutes. 

y’know, i’m unsure about a lot of things in my life. like, don’t try to ask me what i want for dinner because i refuse to make a decision about anything. don’t ask me what my favorite movie is, or my favorite book. i have no idea, dude, sorry. BUT the one thing i have incredible clarity about is what i deserve in a relationship. i had impossibly high standards before nathan and i were together and now they’re even higher- but that’s fine when you don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with scrubs to begin with. 

the other day, i found my journal that i kept in college. it starts in august of 2015, with the eulogy i wrote for my dad’s funeral. an excerpt: “despite me acting like an awful teen at times, he always was on my side. i think that’s what i’ll miss the most. i’ll miss having someone who had my back 100%. i’ll miss having someone who was always making sure i was happy…” and after reading that, i realized why my relationship with nathan was so successful. i’ve always heard that “girls always end up marrying someone like their dad” thing, and for the most part always chalked it up to weird patriarchal bullshit, but maybe there’s a little truth in it. because i definitely see some of my favorite things about my dad reflected in my favorite things about nathan. 

september 30, 2019. 1:09am

sometimes the saddest things must be sung. 

every time i try to write, it’s impossible to say anything that’s not just “i’m sad.” i haven’t been feeling great lately. i just feel trapped in this infinite loop of sadness and it’s so exhausting. i don’t like being like this. nathan would always get so frustrated with me when my depression was really bad, and i’d always be like do you think this is fun for me??? do you think i like being like this??? do you think i wake up and want to be a goblin??? newsflash my dude, i don’t. 

here’s the thing: when nathan first died, i was sad all the time. but it made sense. i had a reason to be sad all of the time. 

but i’m still sad all of the time. i wake up, i’m sad for 10 hours and then i go to bed. and then i wake up, maybe go to work, come home and be sad until bedtime. it’s a constant loop of sadness and i am so tired. 

nothing i do fulfills me. nothing satisfies me. i have neither purpose nor direction. i’m tired. and i’m sad. 

october 2nd, 2019. 7:34pm

i went to urgent care today- turns out i don’t have depression, i just have a torn ligament in my ankle. 

for context: i fell down the stairs at work the other day, crunched my ankle like it was an empty ozarka water bottle, and just wrecked my shit. i think this injury has me sadness spiraling a lot more than i normally do. now i get why nathan used to get so depressed whenever he’d injure himself.

the first time i got really sick after nathan died, i was so sad. this is my first ever really bad physical injury- i’ve never broken a bone or torn anything before, and i’m really feeling the loss of nathan right now. like how am i supposed to feed myself when i can barely walk to the kitchen? who’s supposed to remind me to take my ibuprofen every few hours? 

senior year of college, i kept getting strep, and the only reason i didn’t die is because every 12 hours nathan would call me to make sure i took my antibiotics, even when i had to take them at 2am. i only have two voicemails from him saved on my phone and literally one of them is from 3am and he’s like “hello wake up, your penicillin is calling, i’m gonna keep calling you until you wake up.” 

even though spraining my ankle was a nightmare, it could’ve been worse. just think, if i was a framing device in an emily bronte novel, i would have just had to live at work for five weeks until it healed.

october 11th, 2019. 5:37pm

i haven’t been sleeping lately, and last night i fell asleep around 6am. the cold front had just blown in and it was raining and i finally fell asleep. before i went to bed, i cracked my windows open for the first time this year and when i woke up this morning it was chilly in my room. i woke up in a little cocoon of all of my blankets and pillows and for a moment, before i completely opened my eyes, it felt like i was back in new york, waking up with nathan on a fall wednesday morning. it’s the little things.

october 25th, 2019. 2:19am

i keep thinking about all the things that have returned to me. all of the things that i gave to nathan that are back in my possession, tucked away in my room. like the grey ut shirt that was 3 sizes too big for me- so i gave it to him as a christmas present our first year together. he had been in new york for a semester, and he surprised me by coming to austin for new year’s- we hadn’t talked about christmas gifts or anything, but we ended up giving each other almost the exact same gift. he had gotten me a columbia sweater, and he slept in it for a few days before giving it to me, so it smelled like him. i did the exact same thing with that grey shirt. we couldn’t stop laughing when we exchanged the gifts because we were so amused that we’d gotten the same thing for each other. 

after he died, that shirt was one of the few that i kept of his, he slept in it all the time when we lived together. it still smells like him. 

i don’t wear my rings anymore, but when i see them in the bottom of my jewelry box, i think about the day that i gave him the engagement ring. he was so afraid of me saying no if he were to propose to me, so i told him that when i knew i’d say yes- i’d give him the ring i wanted him to use. on our first anniversary, i was visiting him in new york, right before i flew back to texas, i left a letter on his desk, with the ring attached. it returned to me a year after that, on our second anniversary when he proposed.

the day after nathan died, i went through all of his stuff. mostly because i knew i was about to fly back to texas and i didn’t know when i’d return to our apartment, so i wanted to collect all of his important documents that i didn’t want to lose. social security card, IDs, cards, passport, etc. but when i was digging through his backpack, i found a folder, where he’d kept all of the letters and cards i’d given to him throughout the years.

my personal favorite was an envelope that had two things in it: a sample size of the perfume that i’ve always worn, and a letter that just said “for when you miss me.” i gave that to him before we were even together. it was during that weird ambiguous era of our relationship where we were too afraid to commit, but were definitely in too deep to not commit. every time i would leave his apartment, he’d comment on how his pillows smelled like me, and how he missed me- right after he made his decision to go to columbia, we assumed we would never see each other again, so i gave him that letter. 

i was surprised to see all of those letters because that meant that he moved them from his apartment in abilene, to new york, to our apartment in new york, back to texas, and then to philly. 

so in turn, i moved them from philly, back to abilene, and now they’re with me in a box in austin. 

and i hope that one day all of the love that i gave to nathan will return to me. 

november 4th, 2019. 12:31am

in the deepest, blackest night of despair if you can get just one pinhole of light, all of grace rushes in.

november 19th, 2019. 2:20am

i’ve started taking up space again.

december 20th, 2019. 1:41pm

y’know, i’ve been doing pretty well for myself lately, and by that i mean that i haven’t had any major meltdowns. well, except for a couple of days ago. it was a christmas party, and as we all know- i’m not great at being social. but i also never turn down an invitation, which is a strange combination of things that happen to exist at the core of my being. but luckily, i got a plus one. see, with a plus one, i have a buffer there. i can bring one of my more interesting friends to carry conversations for me and then by proxy i become more able to socialize because i have to expend less energy by having that buffer there. anyways the person i was bringing as my plus one cancelled two hours before the event which meant that i had no time to try to get someone else to come with me. and this threw me into a major breakdown. i didn’t even want to go to the party at this point, but i had spent so much money on an outfit that if i didn’t go i would have wasted like 60 dollars. and i sat there trying to put makeup on to go but i kept crying and ruining it and then i chugged three white claws before even showing up at the party and i didn’t eat beforehand because there was supposed to be food there but by the time i was done crying and arrived, there was nothing left and then i drank 5 glasses of wine because it was free and i have social anxiety, and somehow i made it through the night without making a fool of myself, which is a miracle. 

the thing is, i really don’t get upset about a lot of things. but if someone cancels or changes plans on me, especially plans that we’d had set for at least a month in advance, i lose my god damn mind. there is historically nothing that upsets me more. 

but this time around, i realized that it really hurt me because it was the first time that i was confronted with the fact that i no longer have anyone in my life that prioritizes me. like, if nathan was begrudgingly my plus one to an event, he can’t get out of it- it’s non-negotiable. but like, i don’t hold that level of importance in anyone else’s life- there’s always something more important to them and uhhhhh that feeling sucks. 

+++

and that was the last note i wrote in 2019. which brings us to january 2020. when i think about my relationship with nathan, i feel like january always ended up being a special month for us. in 2016, january was the first time i ever spent the night with nathan. in 2017, nathan came back to texas to see me for the new year, after we’d been long-distance for five months. at the end of 2017, he went out of town for like three weeks, and i was miserable and all alone for the holidays, but in january 2018, his last day of vacation back home in abilene coincided with my first day of vacation back in abilene so we got to see each other for a little bit instead of having to go an entire month apart during the holidays. 

so i always end up getting weird and do a lot of reminiscing in january- but i feel like that’s kind of universal. 

like the #1 thing that everyone does is get all existential and contemplative when the new year hits. 

+++

in 2018, i never stopped moving. like a shark, i would have died if i stayed in one place for too long. and there i was in 2019, finally staying in one place.

it was a lot easier to ask for help when i had a reason to be sad. but now enough time has passed since nathan died that i feel like a burden when i’m not doing well. 

in my blog post wrapping up 2018, i said that my goal was to be kinder to myself. i also said that 2019 was going to be for starting a new life.

and while i’ve been no kinder to myself, at least i’ve made strides in living in this new phase of my life. in 2019 i moved out of my mother’s house, and back into my best friend’s apartment in austin. i got 3 jobs. i cut off all of my hair and pierced my nose. i started taking up space again. 

a few weeks ago, a coworker of mine told me that she had also lost a partner before. but what stuck with me was when she said, “you will never be the same. you’ll be happy again, and you’ll fall in love again- but you’ll never be the same person again”

and i’m realizing how true that is. 

i think one of the scariest scenarios is waking up one day and not remembering who you are. and that’s exactly what happened to me in 2018. i woke up one day without nathan and couldn’t remember who i was. 

one thing everyone’s been talking about lately is how this is the end of the decade, and i realized that nathan was in my life for the entire decade. he was in my life before the decade even started. and then when he died, i lost such a huge part of my identity. there’s a bear’s den lyric that’s like “i don’t want to know who i am without you,” and that’s what 2019 was for me.

kintsugi is the japanese art of fixing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with a lacquer mixed with powdered gold. i’ve always been a vase held by shaky hands, constantly on the precipice of shattering- and in 2018 i was dropped. in 2019, i’ve been finding tiny pieces of myself and trying to piece them back together to form a whole person again. 

recently, i’ve been realizing all of the little pieces of me that are missing. like the part of me that used to be good at holding conversations with people. and the part of me that had the ability to be a person for more than like 3 hours a day. and the part of me that showed excitement about things. i don’t even know what things excite me anymore? do i have interests or hobbies? not really. one time, i described myself as a robot that powers off if i am not at work, and wow, what an apt description.

the other day, one of my friends called me out about how she can never tell if i’m actually excited about something or not. my language is always very vague and even when i’m really stoked about something, i rarely show excitement about it. 

+++

so now it’s february 2020. it’s been a year and a half since nathan died. i’m feeling better. the other day, i came to the realization that i think my emotions have finally leveled off. i’m back to my normal amount of unstable, rather than that really virulent level that i was at for awhile at the end of last year. it feels good to finally have a little bit of control back over my life. i’ve finally really settled in at work, and i’m starting to feel more confident in my capabilities. 

so what are my goals for 2020? i think the biggest thing is to find something that i care about. honestly, probably a big part of the reason why i’ve been having such a hard time finding a Big Girl Job to settle into is because there’s just nothing that i’m 100% passionate about. it’s hard for me to find an answer other than “i’m just trying to not die,” whenever i get asked “so why do you want this job?” i really want to find lasting stability this year. i’m tired of not being able to enjoy anything because i don’t have money. whoever said money can’t buy happiness obviously was never poor because let me tell you, i’d be a lot happier if i could afford to go out with my friends more often. or if i could like…….eat 3 meals a day without feeling guilty for wasting food because i know i can live on just one meal a day. 

i also started doing a skincare routine that involves like 4 different serums and i’ve been doing really well keeping up with doing it twice a day and if i could carry that energy through the rest of the year that’d be dope. i would make a comment about how i’ve been going to the gym every day and how i’m trying to have a 2020 glo-up but i was going to the gym every day for awhile but i haven’t been in like two weeks. 

also my chemical romance just reunited so i guess my other 2020 goal is to see them on this reunion tour.

[pisati]

the neuropsych assessment this morning was long and kind of awkward. I think my examiner was training, since we had someone observing. there were a lot of tests, most of which I think I did well on. 

the examiners at one point tried to keep me from being frustrated at my own memory by assuring me that “many people that are educated like yourself want to do well at tests like these and they get upset when they don’t. you’re not supposed to do perfect, and there’s no way to! that’s the whole point.” here’s the thing, though: I knew I wasn’t supposed to. I wasn’t trying to ace it like a test. I was just trying to do my best. but my “best” right now, especially with storing new verbal information, is piss fucking poor. I can tell it’s seriously diminished from where it used to be. I could see why they thought I was upset that I did really badly, but it wasn’t because of some need to do well on tests. it was because I know I’ve done better. I guess that’s what I was there for.

I’m glad I did horribly at some of those memory tasks, though. that should be a huge red flag. someone my age shouldn’t be so bad at remembering details from a story with like 5 sentences, or words in a list. or a sequence of 6 or so numbers, backwards. I met with the doctor before the tests and described my whole situation to him, and tried to describe some of the problems I was having. the key issues right now are short-term memory (things my mom tells me to do, appointments, even my day-to-day. I won’t remember any of it if it’s not written down) and words in general. I trip over my own tongue, I get that tip-of-the-tongue feeling a lot more than I used to, I mix up words (lately I noticed I’ve been having a lot of trouble with sentences that have 3+ people involved: “I told him I showed you what he sent”)... and overall I’ve noticed that thinking in general feels like it takes up too much energy. I told the doctor that it’s actually been kind of a happy side effect that I haven’t been having depressive episodes for as long because I don’t have the energy to be sad for too long and I also can’t remember what I was so upset about. I don’t have the energy to focus on it. that’s nice and all when it comes to depression, but not so nice when it applies to everything else too. anything thought-intensive is exhausting for me now. I told him it feels like pulling on the ripcord on a lawnmower that wants to start but just can’t. 

hopefully I’ll have my results in a few weeks and I’ll have tangible, research-backed proof that I’m not making this up. people keep trying to assure me I’m fine when I know I’m not. it may not seem like a big deal because all of these things are only somewhat inconvenient; I’m not losing chunks of time or blacking out or anything. but it’s getting harder and harder to function, and I’m at a time in my life where I’m supposed to be doing more and more. I can tell it’s been getting worse and the fact that no one is taking me seriously (besides maybe a small handful of my doctors) just means that it’ll have to get to the point where I’m suffering actual memory loss to get anyone to do something about it. and by then where would I be health-wise? how much fucking worse do I have to get? how sick is sick enough? at least with this I’ll hopefully be able to get someone to look further into it. 

I worry about my energy levels too. by the end of next month I may be starting a new job, which means I’ll have to be a functioning person most days of the week again. I still don’t feel ready, even though I’ve had a whole year basically lying in bed. I’ve had things to do pretty much every day for the better part of the last week (at least I think so. I can’t remember), and I just want to sleep for a week. I feel like I need 1-2 recovery days for every day I have to do things. my next off-day is monday, as far as I know, and then wednesday I’m leaving for farm jam. I already feel like I’m crashing. I’m scared that if I start this new job, that’s all I’ll have the energy for. I don’t want to be miserable again. but I don’t know what I’ll ever be able to do if I barely have the energy for a sedentary full-time job, and nothing else. I’m still too tired to cook meals for myself 80+% of the time and I’ve been doing fucking nothing for the last year. I can’t say I’m not worried.  

charlotte still hasn’t gotten back to me about working on her bridal shower decorations. her bridal shower is saturday. part of me wants to say fuck it; it’s her bridal shower, it’s not my problem if she doesn’t want to work on it. the other part of me is a little bitter that she could post on snapchat sitting in bed with the dog but she couldn’t respond to my text from almost 3 days ago now. and I know she has her phone on her all the damn time. she’s always checking her snapchat notifications; hell, she was the first one to look at my story earlier. she’s always looking at texts from her fiancé while she’s driving. but for some reason my texts go unread for days. when we’re together she seems fine but it almost seems like behind my back she doesn’t want much to do with me. she’s still just being nice for the brownie points, because that’s how she is. I have no idea. it’s too tiring to think about it.

speaking of being ignored. I’ve messaged A a handful of times over the last few weeks, but almost every time, besides when I lost louie and asked something about farm jam planning once, he’s left me on read. he’s shown me a couple of times now how one of our friends messages him a lot and he leaves her on read all the time because she annoys him, and yet here I am. he even messaged me something the other day out of nowhere; I don’t think that message was meant for me. he followed up to my “?” but then when I asked about it specifically he stopped replying again. when he was down here last I saw he was on snapchat a lot talking to some girl he must be working with in music; he’s never fucking on snapchat. I don’t care either way, he can do whatever. if I’m upset about anything it’s the fact that he may have just done it again. drove me away, almost for good, came back with his tail between his legs telling me he missed talking to me and whatever else, and I ceded, and now that he’s at least got me back on speaking terms he’s pushing me away again. he can talk to this other girl all fuckin day, just like he could talk to every other one of those trainwrecks he decided to get himself involved with, but me? one of his best friends? the fuck do I matter lmao

I’m going to be staying at his house the night before farm jam; I’m sure we’ll be doing some kind of prep together (maybe food shopping, last-minute details and all that) and we may end up actually going out to the farm together, but I don’t know. if nothing else I’m sure he’ll probably need to use some space in my car; his new one is tiny. I don’t know anything about anything because he hasn’t hardly fucking talked to me in weeks. I’m starting to feel like I don’t even want to deal with him again. I don’t really want his tent near mine in our friend group’s camping area. I don’t care what he’s got going on with who, I just want it to be away from me. I do miss having a best friend, someone I could talk to any time who I knew would get back to me eventually even if he couldn’t right then, and feeling like I had someone there who understood me and cared about me. but looking back it really does seem like it was just a feeling. I feel like I don’t even know him anymore. I mean, I do, I just don’t care for it anymore. I remember being way in over my head with the crush thing, but looking back now... I want to roll my eyes at everything I used to like about him. everything I used to find endearing, now it just... now it just reminds me of him. everything that started getting on my nerves, everything he did that hurt me. anything that reminds me of him feels like a punch to the gut.

it was weird seeing him change the cover photo in the group on facebook to the one I should have been in. it was the winter he graduated, and I was supposed to go up and visit to celebrate with everyone, but the morning I was supposed to leave my birth control had me waking up so nauseous I really thought I was gonna puke. I felt awful all day and ended up staying home. they were all outside the brown, probably. almost everyone in the friend group, including people that were rarely around. and everyone was reminiscing on this picture, including T’s now-wife. I guess I can’t be upset about it; it’s just weird feeling like I was supposed to be in that group. not just for that picture, I mean I was there first. she entered the picture right after I left. literally T met her right after I left, lmao. but she’s been there. she’s been around. I love the group we have and I wish I could be around more, but the fact is that I’m not. it’s not even really mine anymore. I feel like I did in high school; friends with one or two people that were in different friend groups but never in a friend group myself. just floating in the in-between somewhere by myself. it can be really, really isolating, especially once you know what it’s like to feel included. 

I don’t really feel excluded by them, though. they’re all still incredibly kind to me. but I missed out on so much. I was only there for a fraction of their timeline. it’s hard to talk beyond niceties. I don’t have much to say anymore. 

it’ll be nice to be on the farm again, though. the weather will hopefully be nice; I’m seeing a chance of thunderstorms though so I should probably try to waterproof-spray my tent before I leave. or maybe I’ll be okay if we’re in the woods. my friends tout the weekend as pretty much an anything-goes few days. “farm jam” is often used as a reason for doing literally anything. for a lot of them it’s the one weekend a year to get together with everyone, relax... some of them get way fucked up, but I feel like this year might be at least a little more tame, what with people having jobs and T’s wife being.. what, like 7 months along? her due date is the day after my birthday, because of course it is. A tells me they’ve really gotten their shit together since they knew they were expecting. did a whole bunch of work on the trailer, got their back room all cleaned out, got new furniture... good for them. it’s weird seeing this guy I knew as a weed dealer with blacklight posters on his bedroom walls and piles of laundry all over his room getting his shit together and being an adult. I always knew he’d make a good dad though. just weird finally seeing it happen, ya know? what a difference 5 years makes.

at least I have the farm to look forward to. things are stressful right now. I’m worried about fitzie but I’m starting to have some hope he’ll make it a little longer. I want to hope he’ll make it til I’m back from scotland, but he’s been laying around a lot. losing weight, still, despite eating. I think his new heart meds have been helping with his seizures, so that’s really nice. I’m just afraid anything could happen any time now. I barely noticed a plug just a few hours ago, and it ended up being a big one. I’ve been checking his privates every time I take him out of the cage now, because buildup can happen quickly since he can’t clean himself very well anymore. if it gets completely blocked, he won’t be able to pee, and that’s bad, obviously. sometimes the plug is pretty obvious because it’ll show, but today I only realized there was something there because there’s a very particular smell to it, and he just smelled like it. I flipped him on his back in my lap and pushed a little on his abdomen and he didn’t like that, so that’s another sign. it’s a little weird having to massage it out, and I don’t like feeling like I’m hurting him by pulling on it (because it CAN be uncomfortable when it’s so big), but thankfully when he’s in my lap like that he can curl over and take care of it himself, once I’ve done the work to get most of it out. it’s weird and kind of gross to talk about, but this is just life. this is my pet, and everyone’s got body parts. if I were too grossed out by having to pull a rubbery plug of excretions out of an aging rat’s penis I probably shouldn’t be caring for any of them, lmao. as his owner his health is my responsibility, and that means the gross stuff too. that does make me worry though. he seems to get them every few days or so, but I don’t think charlotte or mom or mom’s boyfriend will want to clean it out for him. hmm. I’m going to have to ask again at the vet’s tomorrow. that tech who offered to watch fitzie for me never called me. 

anywho. blah blah. don’t know where I was going with this. just good to write sometimes I guess.

[elenajohansenreads]

Books I Read in 2019

#102 - All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders

Mount TBR (66/100)

The Reading Frenzy’s “Bookish Treasure Hunt” Challenge -- A bird in the title or on the cover

Rating: 1/5 stars

All book reviews come with personal bias attached--as much as many reviewers (myself often included) like to think we are working from some hypothetically universal standard of "good" writing, we can't always agree on what those standards are and how to apply them fairly across all books. I say this now, because I'm about to write a negative review for this book, but for once, I recognize that my intense dislike is coming from a deeply personal place, and that my experience with it isn't necessarily a good sign post for whether or not this book is worth reading. I often write bad reviews for books because of things that I don't think other people want to be reading--unchallenged racism, sexism, homophobia, or pedophilia being the big ones, and I stand by those. I will continue to do my part warning people away from books that promote harmful ideologies, whenever I can. That isn't the case here. I can't stand this book because it reminds me too much of how I wrote when I was a teenager, and of all of the people who read my work then and told me how terrible it was. Yeah, it's personal. So, I didn't finish. I read the first hundred pages, and I gave up. I couldn't stand the constant misery, and I mean that quite seriously. Laurence and Patricia don't have much more personality than "I'm so weird and nonconformist that everyone bullies me." Laurence is science-flavored on top of that, Patricia witch-flavored. But they're such thin characters, and they simply can't support a story solely about the two of them without more development. To pile on extra misery, all of the members of both families are also horrible people who also mistreat them in some way. In that sort of environment I'd expect the two of them to become close friends, to be the only spot of good in each other's awful lives--but despite the overall narrative the blurb is trying to sell me, I'm not at all convinced these two are friends at all--they tolerate each other at best, and at worst they spend weeks not speaking to each other--and this setup does not have me confident that they're going to eventually fall in love. I'd be laughing at the reviews that call this book "romantic" if I weren't so disappointed, because I adore real romance, and I don't feel like I'm going to get that here. Let's go back to that science vs. witchcraft characterization. Because at a hundred pages in, I had only just gotten what looked like a plot, rather than chapter upon chapter of "look at how miserable and bullied these two kids are, don't you feel for them?" Theodolphus Rose, master assassin posing as a school counselor, tells Patricia that Laurence is an enemy of nature and must be killed. That's the conflict, and in other circumstances I might be interested--pitting kids against each other isn't new at all, but done well, it can certainly be compelling. Pitting potential romantic partners against each other can be awesome, whatever age group. So I'm not opposed to this basic plot. I am opposed to it taking almost one hundred pages to show up, and I'm opposed to the flimsy world-building that has done nothing to define the relative power of science and witchcraft. At first (in the very first chapter when I still thought I might like this book, it looked like my kind of weird,) I was enchanted by Patricia's magic and her talking to birds and going to the forest to see the Parliament. But there's no rules to anything related to magic, and without any sort of standards or explanations, there's really no upper limit on what magic can do in a story, whereas the real world has definite limits on science. Without the author setting up a system deliberately to make science and magic balanced, I find myself assuming magic can be more powerful (if Patricia ever gets access to it again, if not, this will be a dull story I didn't finish) so magic will obviously win. And that's just not interesting, if there's an obvious winner before the battle is even fought. Now, there are ways to subvert that expectation, and there are ways to move forward from the point where I stopped reading that might result in a better book than I expect it to be. But that low bar I have set in my mind is a result of that slapdash, flimsy world-building that amounts to "this is basically contemporary fiction but I want to put whatever I want into it and call it sci-fi and magical realism at the same time." I don't have a problem with genre-mixing. I'd be a giant hypocrite if I did. But a work doesn't get a free pass on mixing genres sloppily because it's quirky. It's the "quirky" thing that really gets me. I love absurdist humor, and there are elements of it here. Theodolphus' introduction at the mall almost had me laughing, it was so over the top and ridiculous, in just the way I like. I can't take it seriously in context, because it's so off-tone from everything else I read surrounding it, but in isolation it was hilarious and I loved it. For a brief moment, I felt like the author was channeling Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams, and I was on board. But if the whole book is meant to be absurdist, it doesn't go far enough, and absurdity for its own sake is exactly what my teenage writing (yeah, we're back to the personal part) was mocked by my peers for. And occasionally my teachers as well. I was a weird kid. I have no problem admitting that, though I was never bullied anything like Laurence and Patricia are shown to be. I had friends--it's not impossible to be weird and also have friends. I was also often an unhappy kid--teenagerhood was not particularly a good time for me--and writing was a thing I did to cope. I wrote escapist fantasy. I wrote about magic. I wrote about absurdity. I wrote about depression and misery. I wrote things in high school that were very like this story, both in tone and overall quality. The nearly universal response to these stories, when I was brave enough to let my friends read them or turn them in for writing assignments, was basically derision and ridicule. "It's too weird." "I don't get it." "What's the point?" "I don't like how strange it is." "It doesn't make sense." No matter how many times I tried to defend some of the most "weird" pieces by explaining that the absurdity of it was the whole point, the overall reaction was "stop being so childish and write things that make sense." I do, now. I've found ways to channel my love of the absurd in more palatable directions. I've studied my craft and "grown up," so to speak. I take great pains to make my worlds, no matter how "strange" they are, internally consistent and understandable. So here's the incredibly, undeniably personal part that you absolutely shouldn't apply to yourself and whether or not you want to read this book: I am (mildly) professionally envious and angry that this book is so praised when it reads exactly like the stuff I churning out by the notebook-full at fifteen that everyone hated. It stings. I cringed constantly with second-hand embarrassment while I was reading this, as if all of my flaws had come back to haunt me. Thin world-building because I wanted it the way I wanted it and I didn't do the work making it cohesive. Awkward and stilted dialogue. An "me against them" mentality in my main characters. No plot to speak of for ages because I was more interested in making my world weird than having a story take place in it. Objectively speaking--as objectively as possible for me, at this point--I don't think this is a good book, but obviously its weirdness resonates with a lot of people, and you might enjoy it. If you think it sounds good, then maybe for you, it will be. Speaking with extreme and noted bias, this book is bad, and I can't stand it, and I will never finish it and wish I hadn't spent the few hours I already did attempting to read it. I want that time back. **After I spent a solid hour writing, rewriting, and editing this review, I wondered if I should even post it in full. After all, it is highly biased and not particularly applicable to other people in many places. I thought about it a lot. I considered where I could cut the stuff that shouldn't matter to anyone else, the stuff that revealed too much of me, the things that might do more harm than good. But I've always written honest reactions to books, because I think reviews are only useful and helpful when they're honest. So I'm posting the whole thing, because I worked hard putting my thoughts and feelings in order and being up front about my biases. Whether or not this is a helpful, useful review is only part of the point. It was cathartic to write, and if another writer sees this and feels understood, then it's worth it.        

[unproduciblesmackdown]

shake, i hope you'll still remember that you're p cool 2/2

oh man Thanks as fuck....... yeah like it’s funny b/c it’s both a difficulty that like, it’s kind of hard to get me to realize maybe ppl want to be pals in the first place because every time someone first is choosing to interact with me i have that casual assumption like “uh oh this person’s mistakenly thinking they’d enjoy talking to me! better just ease them through this experience without making them deal with that mistake” and stuff instead of trying to Have Fun And Be Myself....and then it takes me a hot minute to be like “hey they might actually want to talk to you, chill out” and also “i know social mirroring is your default mode but try to figure out how not to do that”

and then yet also yeah i’ll be like, oh is this person my friend now or?? too early and like. i always do it still despite being well aware now that i do it and knowing to watch for it, and it’s still disappointing sitting there telling yourself you’re not really ppl’s friend, but it’s a lot more manageable than it used to be at least thanks to being more attuned to the whole matter and stuff, like it’s still the “oh it’s exciting to have a friend :)” and then “oh it feels bad to remember that’s not really the case :(” but it’s like the feelings are happening on a smaller scale / lower volume and such. and like using sort of ~objective~ considerations like “okay, you know that most likely this person has Actual friends and stuff” and reminders about how your relationship with them is really just like, kind of light fare. and it’s like, it always kind of sucks but its easy to remember cuz it’s not like it’s not true? its just an unusual thing to have to consider, and if you DO have ~real friends~ and aren’t like disgustingly lonely maybe you don’t have to consider it that much lol. 

like it isn’t fun basically having to be all like, okay so a sorta-friendship might feel significant to you but you have to keep in mind that its not as significant to them. but it’s generally true and like.........better to remind yourself of that sooner than have to realize it later when you’re more invested or care about the other person more or whatever and it’s like oh shit yeah i’m not really that important to them, dang it........like it’s just a weird thing because there’s really no way to be isolated and lonely and not have close friends and be in a truly ~okay~ place with it because it’s just....a continuously detrimental place to be in? and that applies to a lot of things lol. like there’s all these mental approaches i’ll take to things that’s not really about thinking that i can Be Okay with some bad fucked up situation, but rather just trying to lessen the unavoidable and everpresent Not-Okayness of it. the Okay is relative but sometimes you can really only be so okay!

honestly one thing that’s wild is i pretty much did go through the route of “my self worth was so bad it circled around into becoming more positive and now i have fairly decent self-esteem even just on my own”.....cuz like at least when you have to figure things out and get through shit and look out for yourself mostly on your own, you do have that Practice in doing it without external support lol even though you shouldn’t have to. and like i’m not Peak Self Confidence And Self Esteem by any means but it’s decent, self-loathing really isn’t a huge issue or anything. one classic thing that just helped put shit in perspective is the “if you were someone else would you be as unsympathetic / think these things about them” and i’m not like evil so of course i wouldn’t and its like oh lol yeah true! and then speaking of evil another thing that helps is remembering that capitalism is inhumane and an empire of lies and it’s like, okay is this thing about me really At All Bad or is this based on the standards of capitalism and, again, would you be unsympathetic and if it was someone else and blame / criticize them in this way? and i totally wouldn’t. and yeah i get to this point where i appreciate myself by myself!! it’s pretty chill! like, well, i’ll be my own best friend forever if i gotta. is this sad and loserly? sure! but somebody’s gotta do it and that’s just the situation! gotta be a loser? own it!! (to make the references yknow)

like really even knowing that hmm maybe i just don’t have much deep appeal for most ppl is ultimately like well, if so, Shrrruggggg b/c what are you gonna do!! i know there’s ways i’m not “good” at interactions and stuff, but in terms of personality i figure there’s stuff that definitely might not be of universal appeal but it’s definitely not always bad, like i’ll be like “oh i’m too enthusiastic about what i like” or “oh i’m too hot tempered” but really then i’ll remember that no, this isn’t something that everyone hates lol and really what’s the point if i’d have to change fundamental things about myself so i might have more Appeal anyways like....yeah it sucks having ppl just generally not be interested but also? it helps that other ppl talk about having the struggle of like....its not necessarily like you’re a jerk or have nothing to offer or anything, but just seeming “off” to most ppl in terms of that social frequency can always have this effect of largely leading to being like, ignored but also sometimes ignored with A Hint Of Rejection, and it’s like oh hell yeah!! just inherent social Other People Repellent, bring it in!! it sucks but its not Just You!!

like really i feel like maybe for like a decade and a half i’ve always been overcompensating when i think somebody seems neat and trying to seem cool-tempered around them? which, why would i even want to, i’m not cool tempered at all and really am not even interested myself if other ppl are truly like that! but maybe i am tuning in to the fact that ppl generally arent quite so excitable as me and thus trying to play it cool. but like, at this point, even though i do try to “turn it down” for ppl like, all the time, it’s like, why bother. what is the difference between doing that and having ppl not like me and just getting to do my own thing and not having ppl like me, yknow? 

plus just to throw another element of chaos into it, i’m cagey with my ~True Emotions~ or something both in part because i know maybe they’ll seem Annoying to other ppl or something but also because (chaotic trumpet riff) abuseee ://// so like even on the rare occasions i realize that somebody’s okay with interacting with me, i’m still acting kinda elusive or trying to filter myself too damn much like there’s a point to trying to be friends anyways if everybody’s putting on too much of an act!! gotta self sabotage!! trying not to though

like really Would Love To Have Friends i’d just also love to not have to lower my standards despite that fact that being like, yeah the big L Loneliness is really pretty miserable and says you should want to grab on to any chance of friendship with both hands....that’s often not the case cuz it can be like oh wait hang on, do i actually like this person and are they being cool to me too? or like, the person is totally alright but the relationship isn’t going to mean that much to them cuz it’s more of an outer-orbits sort of casual...Friendly Acquaintanceship or whatever and you’re just like Ah Yes :’)

for example i could’ve trimmed this down to not be an overly long series of weird tangents about myself in depressing ways but this is what you get!! why put up fronts. it’s not that bad anyways.

[theindigomillennialchronicles]

Blog Entry 4

02/22/2019

So, the government is shit, and taxation is theft. Way to start off on a good note right? Nah but for real, I hate this system we live in. My entire tax return was given by the IRS to some bs life insurance policy that I supposedly had while in the Army NG that I do not ever remember getting. From all the stories I’ve been told there’s no way I’ll be getting that back. Everyone who has had similar issues all say the same thing. They just take the money and you don’t get it back if you try to fight it.

On another great note, all my bills are about 3 weeks ahead of my income because worker’s compensation claim literally kicked in 4 weeks late the first payment, so I’m basically just playing catch with due dates at this point. Society is shit. The rat race is shit. The government is shit and I can not wait to get the fuck out of this toxic system.

I don’t recall if I spoken about this yet, but I bought 7 acres somewhere isolated and am currently just paying off all the debts I can, while I have solar, and rain recycling installed to move the fuck away. My wife and I hate the city, and people make me feel gross so we’re going to move off grid and live out our days away from the rat race.

Did you know they’re literally trying to make that legal? Like they want to make it illegal for us to harness the sun’s energy or to use rain water. The government is legit trying to claim dibs on Natural resources that come from the sky. lmmfao Fucckkk and they call Millennials entitled. hahahahaha

Anyways, my anxiety is being hit with constant bullshit lately, I have mini sessions of heavy breathing and whirlpools of dark thoughts and then my higher consciousness reminds me to stop being a lil bitch and I get my self together. It’s hard though, living like this. It all just kinda spirals out of control most days. Any small thing will have me fearing consequences that I know logically are unlikely to happen. i.e Currently I’m behind on some bills and I keep imagining my wife and I homeless and fucked. Although I know for a fact, I got people who will help if it comes to it, and I could never be homeless when I literally own land to go live on. I’m a survivalist and know how to grow my own food, and have tents and a jeep to live in. Yeah, Anxiety is a bitch. I honestly wish it was a physical being so I could fight that hoe.

 Now that I’ve vented let’s talk manifestation. I believe in manifestation, strongly. I’ve been able to make things happen just as I imagine them a couple of times, but I wonder sometimes if my anxiety interferes with my attempts to mold my reality around me. I mean anyone with anxiety knows that the mind is constantly whispering to you. I can say a thousand times I am wealthy, I am successful, I am abundant, but my mind is like; “You sound stupid. You know you’ll mess up. You’re always messing up.” It’s a constant battle between what I know to be true and what this chemical unbalance in my brain wants me to believe.

Do I have to believe despite the voices? SIlence them first and then start my manifestation? DOes the universe know my brain is broken and shouldn’t listen to those thoughts but the ones I’m shouting at myself instead? Should I switch to writing my manifestations on sticky notes instead? Honestly, I have no fucking clue. What I do know is that it’s hard living as a highly spiritual person with a mental disorder. I sometimes want to be able to clone myself so I can whoop my own ass because I get on my nerves. I’m not even exgerating, everytime I have a break down, I want to catch these hands.

The other day I was thinking about how if our thoughts become things, maybe that’s why I’ve been having such dark moments and then right after good ones. I know life is a constant wave pattern of different vibrational frequencies translated to positive and negative energy, BUT hear me out. What if I’m confusing the shit out of the manifestation transmitter and it’s spazzing out, throwing out different comands? What if I gave my higher being a virus through my mental codes of ones and zeros? What if it’s just up there like; “Alright dude, what the fuck do you want? To stay broke and miserable, or to live off grid and free?”

I honestly feel like my higher self is just face palming the shit out itself constantly. Giving me precise moments to reach for what I want and my anxiety fucks with me and I’m just like; “Maybe I should wait. Maybe it’s not a good idea right now.”

Maybe I just need to reach out and connect to more spiritual people. I guess that’s one of the reasons for this blog. I’ve had a couple people reach out to me already about the things I write. Honestly if you relate and have some ideas that might help me or want me to blog about a subject, inbox me. Honestly it makes my day every time I see a message from any of you.

At this point I’m just shouting out into the abyss and hoping I get an echo in response.

 - Namaste

[maren-as-an-adult]

So here’s the thing...

Adulting is hard. No one is disputing that. But sometimes life decides it’s going to be exceptionally hard for a while. And sometimes when that happens, you allow it to happen. 

Basically what I’m saying is that my life went into a bit of a downward spiral recently. 

It started back at the end of October. I had set plans to move out to New York. I had put in a transfer to a Target out there, I had a shared room situation lined up, and I had a little bit of money in my savings. I bought my plane ticket, said my goodbyes to my coworkers, and told my close friends in the area I was leaving soon. 

And then the first panic attack hit. 

Now, I cannot speak for everyone who experiences a panic attack, but I know they suck. Mine kind of feel like three foot worms coming out of my stomach as my limbs shake and my face goes simultaneously numb and hypersensitive. I get really cold, and then the demons come out. 

Not actual demons, just thoughts really. 

But they’re all the thoughts that usually stay locked away during the day and what some people may call “intrusive”. I’d say that’s being too generous a term. These thoughts are the whispers of “You’re a burden,” “You’re going to starve,” “You’re definitely going to die and here’s how,” et cetera. 

All this is super fun at two thirty in the morning two days before your flight out. 

So after this panic attack and talking with some friends and family, I decided to not move out yet. I emailed the Target in New York telling them I would be delayed coming out, and then proceeded to finish decorating my house for Halloween. 

Fast forward to November 1st, and the first round of seasonal affective disorder hits. 

Now, as a disclaimer, I’ve never been professionally diagnosed with depression, anxiety, or SAD, but then again I’ve been in denial of my mental state before and let it get to be too much. That wasn’t a fun time either. So I choose to assume I have those three mental disorders in some way so that in case I’m wrong, it’s a pleasant surprise. 

So the November SAD hits, and I become nocturnal. Textbook depression signs of days without personal hygiene, loss of interest in activities I like, and absolutely no appetite. I think I had to verbally remind myself to eat something at least once a day. I would notice at night my stomach growling, but I didn’t feel anything. I knew this was a bad sign, so I reached out to my old therapist in the area. I didn’t hear back from her because: 

I sent her an e-mail asking for an appointment because I couldn’t bring myself to actually speak to anyone over the phone

My e-mail was out of storage space

which either means her response never came through

or my e-mail never actually sent

So instead of looking for another therapist, I withdrew even further. 

To be honest, I can’t remember much of what happened in November. I was constantly asleep during the day and awake at night for no other reason than I had no self-control maintaining any healthy habits and put off trying to fix it every time there was an opportunity for a tomorrow. But I always knew I needed to start fixing myself. Even if it was just in the smallest ways, I’d have to work for it, and work hard. 

I started with my sleep schedule. I went to the library one evening and found a book titled The Mindful Way to a Good Night’s Sleep. I started reading it one morning following a completely sleepless night. Armed with two shots of espresso and a knowledge that a cleaning lady was coming to our house that day, I forced myself to stay awake and read up on helpful tips to regulate my circadian cycle. 

I slept for fifteen hours that night and was in bed by 9pm the following night. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t keep for long, but I knew I could get at least one aspect of my life back on track. That’s all I needed to start getting myself out of this depressive quagmire. 

During this time, I did some soul searching. I never reached out to Target, be it the one in New York or the one I worked at, because I couldn’t (and still can’t) bring myself to go back to retail. The thought of it had me facing a particularly dark path that terrified me. Was I just scared of the hectic stress and long hours that would inevitably come with the holiday season? Maybe. But I did not want to risk a particularly destructive mental state at a job I felt that I had failed at. Not failed on a professional level, but a personal level of not following through with one of my goals. 

But in the time where I kept myself awake debating whether or not I made the right choice to stay at home despite promising several people I would be in New York by November, I couldn’t justify moving myself to New York City to work at Target. Even though my plan had been to move out and hit the ground running looking for more artistic jobs that would keep me happy while Target kept me in the black, I couldn’t stomach the idea of moving out there to work a part time retail job. And I couldn’t (and still can’t) swallow my pride enough to contact my old Target and ask for my job back even though I’m certain they’d take me back. 

I know that sounds shallow. And one of my best friends told me it sounded very “first-world problem-y” when I was still planning on moving out. But I could feel deep in my heart that I would be miserable, paranoid, and isolated if I followed through with this plan. 

So to make a long story short (too late) I’m jobless and battling depression. I know I have more to say, but I’ll get to that later. Finally getting the strength to write this and post it is enough for today, I think. 

[haramheathen]

I just really need to vent and get some feelings and things off my chest and mind.

Life has been really tough lately.

My family are still terrible, still don’t speak to me nicely, barely acknowledge my existence and when they do it’s only to bitch at me or about me.

I now suspect my aunt told my cousins I no longer follow Islam because they don’t even say hello to me when they see me anymore. Not that they did much but i’ve noticed since around the time I told my aunt I don’t believe in Allah or follow Islam anymore that they’ve had less to do with me .. not that they ever had much to do with me.

My aunts behavior towards me has become a lot worse. I think most of it is because of how she feels about herself. She seems so miserable but hides behind it and is in denial. She refuses to help herself so she’s forever stuck being miserable. ‘Praying to allah’ is only gonna get her so far and when she does nothing to help better herself or situation or refuse to make changes. She’ll forever be stuck in the same miserable place. Now that she’s been stuck in that place for years she lets her anger and misery out on me because it’s like she can’t keep it to herself anymore.

I feel like we got on a lot better back when I was overweight. We would eat a lot of junk food together and watch hours of tv. Now i care more about being and eating healthy and don’t really go over to her house to watch tv with her because all she does is bitch at me and push her negativity onto me. I’m 50kgs lighter and she’s always said she doesn't want to lose weight but I can tell she’s not happy and I guess seeing me change so much while she hasn’t changed would be hard. I feel like she’s kind of bitter towards me. I don’t know if that’s the exact or part of the reason why but there’s definitely bitterness there.

I feel like my entire family is bitter towards me. I feel like a lot of it is to do with the fact that i’ve always made my decisions for myself and gone against what’s always been expected of me culturally and religion wise. 

When my grandparents got sick I did my share to help out here and there. I’ve always struggled a lot with my mental health going through stages of deep depression and suicidal thoughts. I’ve only ever had the mental energy to just push through and help better myself get from one day to another and that’s how I live, I take things one day at a time because that’s what I can only cope with. I haven’t had the mental energy to invest anything in my family specially since they’ve never really been there for me and mainly just mistreated me or ignored the abuse when my parents/mum would treat me bad.

When my grandma had a stroke I took turns at sleeping on a mattress next to her bedside to help her at night if she needed help walking to the bathroom. When it came time for me to say hey i’ve done it for a few days can someone else take over now they’d all get shitty at me. No one really wanted to take over. It’s like they felt i was obligated to do it because i was the youngest. Like i owed my life to my to them because i’m family. It’s like they were taking advantage and I didn’t like being guilt tripped when we were all meant to be taking turns. It’s like they felt their jobs and well being was more important than mine because they were all older than me. And it was like because i was the youngest in the house and a female I should just shut up and do it.

Being raised in New Zealand I never shared that mentality. Specially being raised with an abusive family. Why on earth would I want to continue to give so much of myself when they’be barely given me the time of day and failed to protect me from my abusive mother for years? I felt it was more important to protect myself so i backed off and withdraw away from my family and let my aunties and uncle and dad take responsibility of my grandparents.

I didn’t feel it was fair to put so much pressure on me, specially since I was constantly struggling with my mental health. Also being around my family more meant being around religion more and I just couldn’t cope. It was just too much. I had withdraw, keep distance and protect myself.

Early last year my aunt broke her arm. She was off work for nearly a year and during that time it was offered to her FOR FREE to have free home help and cleaning. This was offered to her at the hospital too and at the doctor. Despite this she said ‘no my niece with do it all for me’. She basically could have had someone come to her house for free to clean for her, do help her with things but she insisted that I do it all for her. I was struggling with depression and being bullied at work, let alone working a stressful job.

I was too kind hearted and agreed to help her out but i made clear in the start its better for her to have home help because I can only do so much.

I’d have to get up extra early in the mornings and cook her breakfast, did her laundry, cooked her dinner, cleaned her toilet and shower. All this while struggling with depression, work stress, dealing with my own problems, barely being able to look after myself.

I managed to do it for a few weeks/months and it got too much for me. She would make me feel guilty. I’d come home from work and asked if she’d eaten lunch and she’d say no. It would make me feel bad, like I should be there to make her something. She had a broken arm she could still use one arm to do things. I feel like she wanted to be babied and I can barely take care of my self so I can’t be there to baby her specially when she’s a grown ass women and can still do things with one arm. It wasn’t like she was a vegetable. 

It got to a point where she asked if i had a toothbrush.. and I said ‘why?’ she said too clean the shower. I was shocked because I cleaned her shower fine.. I didn’t need a toothbrush to scrub it?? Wt?? That was it for me I felt like she was starting to take advantage at this point, I’ve helped her through the first few months and now she needs to take responsibility and if she needs more help that is FREE she needs to talk to her GP and get it because I am struggling to look after myself and my depression is getting really bad and i’m struggling to cope. 

I told her i’m sorry but I can’t do this anymore you need to get that free help if you need it now I’ve done this for a while and i have to look after myself. And i feel like she’s been bitter towards me since. 

I feel like my whole family has been bitter towards me since my grandparents got sick and my grandad passed on because as the youngest in the house and as a female it’s culturally my ‘duty’ to put myself last, be completely selfless and do everything for them.

But like i said, I couldn’t. I love my grandparents to death but it was destroying my mental health. This family has destroyed my mental health from day one. I distance myself, isolate myself and focus on my mental health and look after myself. I was incredibly suicidal that during that time and getting sucked into my family would have no doubt tipped me over the edge. Specially since they were setting of my ptsd symptoms every time i was around them or every time i could hear them screaming at each other through the walls. 

My family and their religion are incredibly volatile and toxic. They are damaging to my mental health and well being. That’s why for the past few years I’ve really withdrawn and kept to myself. They’ll never know the damage and pain they’ve caused me yet continue to treat me like an inconvenience and burden. I feel like they have no respect towards me at all. I feel like no one has my back, no one really cares. I don’t know what it’s like to have a caring, loving family where people actually want to help you and care about you and you’re well being.

All i can do is try to be strong and keep going and continue to take things one day at a time. At least i’m trying my best. At least unlike my family, I slowly make changes to better myself and my life. I just can’t let this break me down or get to me. I have so much to look forward to in the future. There are so many things I haven’t experienced. So many places I haven’t been. I need to keep reminding myself that there are positive things in life and maybe one day things will be okay and the past will just be the past and I’ll one day have nothing to do with my family or islam and I’ll never look back. One day things will be okay. I just need to stay strong for myself.

[wolfofansbach]

The Bolshevik’s Last Rites

I wrote this in a quick sitting earlier 

She saw him come in the darkest part of the night. His coat near sloughed off in tatters from his reedy shoulders. His hair was stark with frozen sweat. He licked his lips but it did nothing. Beads of ice weighed on his lashes. The ice and snow splashed over his chest and stomach were red. But whenever more blood dripped out, it met the hard winter air and froze solid.

He raised a pale, draining fist and pounded on the monastery door. He pounded again and again, with the strength a dying man shouldn’t have.

She was in prayer when he came. The cross hung between her fingers and scraped her knees. Her lips were moving fast and silent. She could not hear God through the storm. She could not tell his thunder from the big guns anymore.

She did not know if the cannons were still roaring or if it was now only the sky. If the battle was won, then let heaven have decided it in their favor. Ice and snow slipped into the monastery, despite her best efforts to seal up door and window. Everything was white and cold and crackling.

The pounding came harder, and at least she was plucked out of her faltering commune with the father. The torchlight grew dimmer as if something black approached.

The building was ancient. Its foundations were dissolving. The alcoves that held torches and icons had been carved by hands that did obeisance to the khans. The heavy oak door rattled in its frame, like a great beast was beating away at it. But it was only the blizzard. And the man.

But she looked through the little hole in the oak and saw such a pitiable, sallow figure that he could not have moved a grain of salt. The snow at his feet was red.

Behind her, the monastery was empty. The creeping sickness came and went. Melancholy took the rest. The four graves in the field were full. She dug them herself, with the help of two sad workmen. And they were gone now too. There was little moving still in the town.

She threw the door open.

“God help me,” croaked the supplicant, and he fell inside.

At once the snow began to melt in the tender torchlight. Rivulets of water and blood and filth ran through the creases in his coat and boots and skin. He smelled like a soldier. He was on his knees, elbows propping him up. He muttered something. She knelt down, and he lifted his head.

The very first thing she saw was that he was very young. A boy, really. He had no hint of hair on his chin or lip. His cheeks were full and even red, despite his condition. His eyes were full and wet, and he looked like he desperately wished for his mother.

And then she saw his cap. It was an ordinary broad-cloth hat, drenched with snow and shredded in multiple places. But a red star was pinned off to the side. It was crudely sewn, and on the verge of falling away. But it was there. She shook her head and stepped back. He reached out after her with a grasping, bloodless claw.

“You are a bolshevik,” she said. Her lips trembled. She searched his belt and his coat for any sign he was still armed, and saw nothing. But he was a red. An enemy of the church. An enemy of God.

“I am a Bolshevik,” he affirmed. He kept his eyes to the stony floor, unwilling or unable to look at her. “Help me. I think I’m dying.”

She could have thrown the door open again. He was so weak that she could have taken him by the arm and thrown him back out into the snow. She could have let him stain the white hills with his gore and filth and kept the monastery clean, for what it was worth.

She reached down and lifted the cap off of his head, and she plucked away at the strings that still held the red star in place, and when the hateful insignia was gone, she threw it aside and placed the stripped cap back onto his head.

“Will you kill me?” She asked.

He shook his head, and that was enough. She lifted him to his feet and helped him along.

In the old refrectory, where her dead sisters once ate, she pulled away the hanging shreds of his old coat and the dirty shirt underneath. The would was still dripping gore. It was sharp and deep, perhaps a bayonet or a cavalry saber.

She was not sure she could do anything for it.

“Will I die?” He asked, his lips now glistening, and his big, youthful eyes trembling with fear.

“I don’t know,” she told him, truthfully.

“I am afraid to die,” he said forthrightly.

“It’s okay. So am I.”

“But you’re not dying,” he responded in a sort of plaintive way, as if it wasn’t fair. Which perhaps it wasn’t.

“No. Not yet.” She dabbed away at the blood. “What is your name?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Why not? If you die, I will dig a grave for you, and put a cross over it, with your name.”

“Because I don’t want God to know.”

“God sees everything,” she reminded her. The most basic of Christian precepts.

At that, the boy moaned in miserable horror and put his arm over his eyes.

“There is no God!” He pronounced with a shaking voice. His fist clenched. She cocked her head. He sounded much less sure than he likely hoped he did.

“And yet you do not want him to know your name?”

“No! God! I don’t know,” he whimpered. Tears rolled down his fair, ruddy cheeks. He sniffled. She felt a deep, unwitting pity for him, like for a wounded calf in the field. “The priests conjured God…to frighten the peasants and the workers…there is nothing…nothing,” he mouthed the word ‘nothing’ one more time.

“There is nothing?” She questioned.

She tried to bind up his wound, but it was difficult. She was no expert. He helped her, even with his shaking hands. The bandage was soon stained red all the way through.

“The revolution!” He cried, suddenly. “The revolution…”

“The bolsheviks lied to you, dear one,” she sighed, as if he were a little child, though she was likely little older than him, and perhaps younger. “There can be no paradise on earth. Only in the next world with Christ.”

He looked past her. She turned, and saw he was transfixed by the tapestry on the far wall. It was the day of judgment, and a crudely drawn Christ and his avenging angels lifted the church up to the sky and cast the wicked into the pit. The flames were painted so long ago. They flaked and faded on the old stone. But they still looked so bright.

“With Christ…when I was very little in our village my mother brought me to church. She always brought me to church. And there was a priest there. He was very old but he was so strong. His voice. And he told us always that if we ever abandoned the church…if we turned our backs on God…on Christ…we would burn forever. Forever and ever, there would be nothing. Only fire. Oh God, can you imagine forever?” He moaned.

“Eternity is very long,” she said, and she tenderly gave him a wet rag to wipe the grime from his face, which he gratefully did.

“is it true?” He begged of her, with a voice that was sure she knew the answer. And before she could answer: “Oh God, sister! I’m afraid of the fire!”

“Do you believe in God?” She asked.

“I don’t know,” he cried again. “I have never seen him but…never…never I have never seen Lenin, either. If God is really there…will he throw me into the fire?”

“I am not God,” she answered.

“But can’t you tell me?” He implored.

She wanted to answer as she would answer. Hadn’t she suffered these same terrors time and time again? But what did she believe? So she said only what she had learned to say.

“Do you detest your sins?”

“When the whites come, they will shoot me. Won’t you tell them not to shoot me?”

“No one is coming to shoot you here,” she assured.

“No. No, they will come,” he responded. “God, I am a coward.”

She motioned mildly to the wound in his side. And she decided to ignore any resemblance it bore to the lance-wound in Christ’s flank.

“You do not look like a coward.”

“I wasn’t a coward when I had my gun. I wasn’t afraid of anything then. But now…” he sobbed with the pain of it all, whether psychic or corporeal. “Now I am afraid. I don’t want to die.”

She clasped his hands.

“Pray with me, then.”

“Won’t you give me the final rites? To cleanse my soul? If—if there is such a thing?”

She frowned.

“I cannot. Only a priest can—“

“Please!”

“It isn’t my right. I am—“

“You’d give me over to the fire, then.”

“I would not.”

“Then you must—“

“I cannot.”

“I cannot die in this state!” His eyes turned feral with terror. She saw the tapestry of damnation reflected in them. She saw the damned spiraling towards the fire that smoldered forever. The wrath of judgment.

“I—there is no host to give you.”

“There must be.”

And she broke the law of the church, because it was she and him in the dark torchlit convent, and she could not bear the boy’s hideous terror another moment.

She brought him a lump of bread and cut away the parts that were bad, and brought some wine that was more water.

It was not permitted. Any of it. But perhaps she had grown slack from the isolation. And the others were dead. Rigor had not saved them. Only God was watching. If she was sinning so greatly, then God would repay in his time. So she knelt next to the bolshevik.

“Do you detest your sins?”

He opened his mouth to accept the lump of bread that was not the host. Then he sprang back, as if bitten. She nearly spilled the wine. Perhaps it was his state of body that so addled his mind.

“And if I do this…and I say I believe…only to save myself now. God will see that, won’t he? And then he’ll punish me, and the fire will burn even hotter, won’t it, sister?”

She closed her eyes. She knew not what to tell him, because his terrors unnerved her, too. She swallowed them because she was supposed to be calm, and a servant of the Lord. And he was frightened for his soul, and she should offer him hope and salvation. If she could.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I am not God. Only God knows these things.”

“But you can speak to him, can’t you?”

“I—“ she was suppose to, wasn’t she? Was she the only one who heard nothing back when she spoke? Or did no one? When the others spoke of their communion with God, did they mean only the vague warmth she could sometimes make herself feel, or did they experience something she simply could not. “I have never heard his voice,” she admitted.

The boy looked saddened. Offended even. His lips twisted up.

“So then the commissars are right?”

“What?”

“And you are all liars! And not a one of you has ever spoken to God?”

His face grew ever paler. His lips were near blue.

“I—that is not what we mean when we speak of talking with God. It is…different.”

“Then you couldn’t even save me from the fire, if you wanted to?”

His wound was bleeding again. He fell back, movement seeping out of him.

“I can do nothing. God can, perhaps.”

She tried to raise the wine to his lips again.

“But all my comrades…they would be in flames too, wouldn’t they? If they didn’t believe. No matter how bravely they died…” his lips moved and sound stopped to come out. His words became soft and then slipped away entirely. “And my father, who never believed?”

“I don’t know,” she said again. “I don’t know your comrades.”

He looked past her, and his eyes were full of terror again. The tapestry hung in the windless air, illuminated in torchlight. All the horrors of hell spun in glorious, vibrant threads. Beautifully grotesque. The roasting flesh and the eternal, hopeless anguish. One could nearly smell it, and both of them shuddered.

“But I…doesn’t the church teach…that we will be damned, if we don’t believe?”

“The church does,” she said, in such a way that gave the vague impression perhaps she did not entirely agree.

“Then if they are there…then I should…” but his thought was chased off by the terror. “No, sister. I could not bear the fire, not even for my comrades and my father. Not forever. Dear God, I am a coward.” And he leaned forward and buried his face in her sleeve. “Please save me!” He wailed, sobbing again. “I don’t want to burn! Please…”

“Do you believe only because are dying?”

“No! I don’t believe! God, that is what you must save me from! Please!”

“Please, drink the wine. Take the bread.”

“Will it help?”

“I—“

“Will it help me? My soul? If…if there is a soul…no! No! There is a soul! I believe! I swear, I believe!” And they both knew he was lying. “Will it help?”

“Yes,” she promised him.

“And you promise this?”

“Yes, she lied”, because she did not know.

So he sipped the rancid wine and choked down the moldering bread and they told themselves, though they scarcely believed it, that it did some good for his spirit, if there was such a thing.

But the bolshevik did not die. And the whites never came to shoot him. And in the monastery, by miracle, he regained his health. And he thanked her each day for her succor and her aid.

And then one morning he had gone off into the melting snow. All that was left was the red star that had come off from his cap.

The war wound on, and the land turned red. Bloodied. The white was scrubbed away. Churches burned.

And it was some years later that the nun saw the red horsemen cantering down the streets towards the monastery. Her charges, the novices that had come under her care—and she could hardly believe she was no longer a novice herself.

“The bolsheviks will slay us, God be with us,” moaned one young girl.

“They will not,” the nun said, even if she did not fully believe it, remembering the young bolshevik who was only a boy and who was afraid.

But the soldiers tramped up to the monastery and threw the doors open. They were chekists, and the holy women trembled.

“By order of the regional soviet this monastery is directed to turn over 100,000 roubles worth of wealth. Gold, jewels, silver, or what have you.”

The nun shook her head, and she could hardly believe it.

He was older now, and though he was still fairly young there was scruff around his chin and his eyes were less cloying. His cheeks twitched as he chewed on nothing. If he was still afraid, he did an admirable job of concealing it.

The chekists fanned out to take stock of the convent and to strip it of valuables. And the chekist who had been the young bolshevik that was afraid stormed into the refrectory.

“You don’t remember me?” The nun asked, calmly.

He said nothing. He stood before the grand tapestry displaying the torments of the damned. His face was hard and angry.

“Lies,” he spit, to no one in particular.

“You were the one who was afraid of the fire,” she said.

“I’m not afraid of anything!” He shot back. And he looked back to the tapestry like it was an old foe. Which perhaps it was. His eyes that shone with fear that night shimmered with hatred. And he drew an old cavalryman’s saber and swept it across the width of the ancient tapestry. It rippled, and then the priceless old thing smoothly fell in two. The nun started. She imagined the old wound, long since healed and scarred over beneath his black coat. It had been red and angry and mortal that night. Now, she supposed, likely you would hardly see it. Like his terror.

He still gave no showing that he recognized her, but she knew he did.

“You’re not afraid anymore?”

“I’m…” he walked off.

But the chekists did not bother the sisters, and then the captain who had been the boy ordered them to take only half of what the soviet had demanded. And as the bolsheviks amassed to leave again he said to her, quietly and aside: “you saved me that night. My body, but not my soul, because there is no such thing.” And he was determined to convince, whether himself or her.

“Are you so sure only because you’re not now dying?”

“No, but because I was dying, and peered beyond the veil, and I saw nothing. No heaven and no hell.”

He did sound surer than he had been.

“We spoke of forever…”

“Eternity is very long. It’s lucky for us that it does not exist.”

“I’m glad you lived,” she said. “Even as you carry away our precious things.”

“Why?”

“Because all the gold in the world isn’t worth your soul,” she said. And he went to go again, his men fluttering at his back and his boots clicking on the stones he’d bled upon that winter, she spoke again, and he caught only the impression of her words on the wind: “if there is such a thing.”

[halfcape]

rewatching this scene reminds me that this is about the point when I started to have some problems with the writing for this show, especially when it comes to Keith (S2 spoilers). 

  I was getting a lot of very bad Mako vibes from Keith when his character was introduced in S1. The character design alone set off red flags, because he looks like typical fangirl bait: dark and serious but pretty, Angst Angles (tm), etc. But I kept watching, because it got good reviews and I wanted to see for myself how everything would play out.

  Keith’s main drama is that he’s part Galra. This was hinted at since the scene from S1 where Keith was able to operate the Galra tech. Then there’s the many other times Keith got visibly uncomfortable over Galra stuff (the writing for this series isn’t that subtle). The Galra are the bad guys, so Keith is part of the “race” of those bad guys, which I think is supposed to make him "dangerous".

  narratively, that means the writers are leaning heavily on the ‘character is related to race that has oppressed other groups when they're supposed to be a hero’ trope. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; most anything can be at least be interesting or compelling if it’s well-written. With Keith, though, it's falling pretty flat.

  in this really forced and confusing scene, Allura admits to treating Keith like crap for a bit before ~suddenly realizing that it’s actually her fault for being so judgmental about his heritage. Then she hugs him and promptly gets over it.

but why is Keith the one that changes her mind? They already had a Galra guy (Ulaz) who helped them. Allura didn’t trust him and still had reservations about any “good” Galra, even after he sacrificed himself for them. A complete stranger who physically looked like the enemy would’ve made for a much more effective scene to show Allura that even the “bad” people that she doesn’t know can be good. But when Keith, a person she knows and who looks fully human, is revealed to be Galra, he's the one who changes her mind about it? 

  I’ll even put aside the idea that Keith wasn’t sure if he was Galra. Keith may be Galra, but he looks fully human. If I had to use a real life parallel for this, I guess it’d be something like … Keith being white-passing. The writers seem to suggest that Keith’s situation is similar: He doesn’t look like it (to anyone before the reveal), but he’s actually part of group that's oppressed others, and now people and aliens are afraid of him. 

  but based on my experience (yes I know this is a complicated topic), the white-passing analogy doesn’t really work here, because “passing” is very conditional. Also, people who “pass” are rarely recognized as white and are therefore not part of an oppressive group, even if they may occasionally benefit from some privileges of being “closer” to the group. 

  if I were watching this as a kid, I’m pretty sure I’d keep forgetting about Keith being part Galra because he doesn’t look it at all. He has no physical markers of appearing different from any other human. He seems to have a kind of rapid healing ability, but that’s about it (it's also very awesome). If he wanted to, he could spend his whole life just being a human and no one would know any different. 

  mixed and/or people who “pass” generally don’t have this luxury. What would have been way more effective is if any of the main characters suspected it before it was revealed. Or, even better, if Keith did have a physical marker; for example, if he had darker patches of skin or something that he had actively to hide in order to look more human. But the writers seem intent on portraying him as a ~misunderstood youth, so he needs to be sad and beautiful 24/7. In short: Keith gets to have all the problems associated with being “different” because he’s technically related to a hated race of people without having to deal with any of the actual burdens of physically looking like them. This all comes off as extremely contrived drama that’s only there to give him a “reason” to be miserable and to feel isolated and “different”. With the exception of this scene, none of the other main characters give him a hard time over it, either. Hunk teases him a few times, but he's still treated more or less the same. 

this seems to be a common problem with relying on the ‘related to x’ trope. It’s too convenient because it assumes instant drama and removes the responsibility from the character to have to change for the better. Keith obviously can’t change being Galra, but he can work on changing his shitty attitude, addressing his impulsiveness, and becoming more empathetic. I would’ve thought that writers understood this by now, but fine. Things that ARE character flaws: excessive anger, jealousy, insecurity, impulsivensss, etc. Things that are NOT character flaws: simply being related to a bunch of purple, DeviantArt-inspired space aliens.

also, the implication that Keith’s anger or his “innate” abilities exist because he’s part of certain race is … not great. From a writing standpoint, it’s a lazy way to be able to quickly dump Powers on him without him needing to struggle or work for and earn his abilities. (slightly OT, but the idea that him basically looking human might make it easier for people to accept him as Galra is also pretty awful) 

finally, Allura was already established to be pretty level-headed and accepting. She puts the mission first, even when it’s risky, or when she doesn’t agree with everything. She even agreed to work with Ulaz despite hating the Galra (yeah Shiro vouched for him, but still). So for her to suddenly give Keith the cold shoulder for a few eps and then dramatically apologize to him over something he has absolutely no control over JUST to create forced drama and tension between them doesn't make sense for either of them. It suggests that her anger isn’t justified (which it absolutely is), and it tries to get the audience to feel bad for Keith. But he doesn't deserve our sympathy for this, because it's out of his control. Keith didn't need to be related to the Galra to have a decent character arc. He already had plenty of flaws that the writers could've focused on without adding any of that extra stuff.

this show has some issues with character writing, but I’m hoping it’ll get better. Faves so far are Pidge and Shiro, and Hunk's growing on me a lot. S3 in a few.

edit: in case this gets any notes, a few things/timesavers -

- I wrote this a few months ago before dropping the series for a bit, so I might have missed/forgotten about a few things.

- stans pls go; this isn't an attack on [character]

- I don't expect this show to be a character study. I know it's based on a cheesy 80s Saturday morning cartoon show. (Though if that's your immediate response to any type of criticism, that's probably your issue)

- I also don't expect this show to have ATLA-quality writing. I know most shows won't. But that still doesn't mean it can't be criticized.

[shallowbreaths]

My dad used to have a quote hanging in his office:

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll only get what you’ve already got.”

Up until recently, I wasn’t happy, and I hurt someone I love with the entirety of my heart because I felt a sense of desperation to cling to the joy she brought me. She has forgiven me (you can forgive a thief, but that doesn’t mean you invite them back into your home), but from love she was very clear with her thoughts and feelings over it all, and she also made some very specifics requests of me. I promised to do my best to honor and respect her in all of those things.

I recognize if I keep doing what I’ve always done, I’ll remain miserable, so I must change, but I also recognize that I have a tendency to self loathe and either blow up good things to protect others from me, or I throw away good things in order to punish myself. That is what I’ve always done when I was “bad”. At the same time, I do need to make sure I don’t allow my own sorrow to be passed to someone else like that again, so there IS a degree of isolation and control of my surroundings, circumstances, and those I interact with in order to prevent the risk of reoccurrence. My TOP responsibility is to make sure I never again hurt anyone the way I hurt her. In truth, I had planned an extreme preventative immediately after, but it seems she recognized it and denied me that option.

So yes, I think of her every day, and I miss her with everything, but I am not waiting, planning, or even wanting her in that way. She had left me a video message, and to see her eyes in that hurt me deeply. She is a being of light and love, and so I suppose IF there was a person that could help me forgive myself and let go of my tremendous shame, it probably WOULD be her, but at this time, I FEAR nothing worse than having to look her in the eyes. So, no, I am not sitting around pining for her, but I miss her influence and comfort daily.

I have made no secret about going back into therapy as I try to learn to deal with the mess I’VE created in my life. (Not her or anyone else, but me). I had my best and most helpful session ever the other day and eluded to it in a post. He and I have made some pretty big discoveries about evaluating risk, and how I read situations, and I honestly feel hopeful for the first time ever that I can change.

To do that, I’m working on me! I’m working on providing my own joy internally and not having to rely on another or others to make me feel joyful. (Ironically it’s something SHE herself had directly stated to me, but it was beyond my ability to truly comprehend. I guess sometimes you need to tear the old structure down completely before you can rebuild, and losing her was sort of “scorched earth” for me). Most anything I can say “I love to do that...”, I am finding time to do. Such as writing. Whether I get one book published or ten, I will get published because I enjoy writing, and I’ve always dreamt of being published, so it would make me proud of myself. I have always wanted to find a liquor I enjoy drinking straight (I don’t know why, but I have.) So I’ve been buying smaller sized bottles to try. Obviously that wouldn’t go over well, but I’m trying not to worry about other people’s perceptions. I’m focused on trying to find out who I enjoy being, because I realize I’ve never enjoyed being me. It’s always felt like a burden, and so when I crave love or attention, the last thing I wish to be is a burden, so I can’t be ME! Some of her last words to me, and what I discuss in therapy help me to believe that will change. I’m practicing things right now. (The other day I practiced drinking rum until I blacked out 😂. But I found I do like it straight if it’s aged enough. I may need to learn limits as well 😂). Overall however, I am enjoying this process. Some days suck donkey dick, some aren’t too bad, and some are actually pretty good. When the guilt and shame and self loathing hit, it gets hard, but I’m trying to recognize my triggers for those things and minimize them.

Unfortunately, I have allowed people to be very disrespectful of me because I held no respect for myself in some ways. I have tried very hard (and openly) to establish boundaries that would allow me to feel safe and comfortable and limit some of the triggers I recognize as dangerous to me. There are those in my life who claim to be well intentioned and even claim to “love” me, who either CAN not, or WILL not, respect those boundaries. They will occasionally (or frequently), say or do things with the sole intent of hurting or upsetting me, and they use their knowledge of me to trigger me in those dangerous ways. Whether it’s intentional or not, frequent or not, I can’t make room for those people in my life right now. I forgive them, but I’m working too hard for what I’ve got to invite the thieves back in.

Yes, I’m basically alone, and for the first time ever I am still maintaining a rather healthy and happy balance. I have a ton of work to do, and I DO interact with others, but I am selective of who and how. I’m still not my biggest fan, but much of what I hate about myself are things I’ve learned to do in order to survive, so I need to remove myself from scenarios where I feel the NEED to survive in order to be less of that, and start to feel comfortable with my right to “live”.

I used to say to her, “I’m trying.” And I was, and she’d say, “I know you are. You’re the strongest person I know.”, but I was TRYING to fight the tide with a bucket, so I was failing, and like a drowning man trying to climb a lifeguard to safety, I pulled her under in my desperation. I can’t change that. I need to live with that. I feel like I’ve started to figure it out though, and like maybe someday I can be a man I’m proud of since that time, and who lived a life where he was able to find joy in simpler things.

I regret and I hurt, but I try not to cry over it. I’m trying to move on. I know she’s gone, but there are times I feel her next to me as if she never left. I know she’d approve of my choices. I know I’ll need to make even more, and I find the life I was miserably comfortable with not so long ago is less and less comfortable each day, so I’m pretty sure there will be some major and permanent changes, but not until I can be certain of why I’m making them, and I believe they are truly going to be an improvement and it’s not just me blowing shit up.

If you text and I don’t respond, or call and I don’t call back, I think it’s pretty clear why, but if you’d like to think it’s me tying a noose around my ceiling fan as I cry my eyes and drink myself into a coma (aside from the other day, I still haven’t been able to touch a drop since 😂). Well, you’d be dead wrong, I’m doing pretty good overall. I’m taking the chance she gave me to try and improve and build a better me and a better life, because I owe her that, and because I feel like it’s the only way left for me to prove I love her.

I know not everyone likes it or agrees with it, but let’s be honest, those same people only agree with my choices if those choices align with their own desires or in no way effect them. That’s really not the type of person you can afford to try and appease. So I’m not going to allow myself to feel guilty for it. If someone truly loved me, then this would be positive, and they would not spend massive amounts of energy reminding me I’m alone or dissecting what I say or feel in such a way as to make myself or others feel like I am continuously longing for someone I know I can not have. I DO love her. I will ALWAYS love her, but I believe she will be happiest long term without me, and at very least, I have sworn to honor and respect her wishes. The whole concept of “if you loved her you would fight for her” or “you would go to her” is moot if she’s asked you not to. Sometimes when someone severs ties, the best way you can show your love for them is to let them go, and pray for their happiness, and work on your own. It’s not easy, and there are days you have to fight the urge to run to them, or beg them, and there are days you ache and have to fight not to tear your own heart out, but “love” is about giving, not about “getting”, so true love will allow you to give those things even when you’re desperate to get something quite different.