#and her delusions had serious impacts in their lifes and in their survival there

[chaosgremlim]

I’ll be completely honestly. I will judge you based on how you view Lottie Mathews. If you watch Yellowjackets and go calling her “psycho” “crazy” and judge her abhorent and manipulative for literally just having symptoms of her psychosis while UNMEDICATED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING WILDERNESS, I won’t trust you for shit.

[hawkinsschoolcounselor]

Sometimes I wonder about how relationships would realistically be affected by the kinds of experiences people pretty much only have in SF/F genre stories. Using Byler as an example, Will and Mike have very very few other people who can relate to what they've gone through, and none of them are likely (or even possible) romantic partners. Any thoughts about how (were they real people) that would affect how their relationship works, its prospects, etc.? Thanks!

This is the sort of thing that TV shows, movies, and books would usually hand wave or flat out ignore. Trauma is a lifelong ailment. It can be worked through via therapy and support, but it sticks with a person to one extent or another for the rest of his or her life. Getting into a relationship with someone who has experienced trauma requires being willing to accept a degree of secondary trauma, as it will surely manifest in some way during the relationship. In a world where supernatural elements are real, but the average person is unaware of them, there is a complication in the form of nobody believing that supernatural events really happened. Imagine being Will and trying to explain to someone new that you were kidnapped by a monster when you were 12, survived a week hiding in another dimension with a toxic atmosphere, then were possessed by a monster a year later. What are the odds that person sticks around?

We get a glimpse of what it may be like in Season 2 with Bob. Now, Bob is as good a guy as can be in the world of Stranger Things. He seemed to easily be settling into not only dating Joyce, but in joining her existing family unit that included two sons. He knew something was up with Will, but it’s clear that nobody ever told him anything close to what really happened. He assumed that Will’s issues were related to nightmares, and he did his best to help with that. He only briefly let confusion stop him before obeying Joyce’s order of “no questions” and solving the riddle of Will’s drawings. Then, he stuck with the crew to the tragic end after it started to become apparent how real it all was. The question we don’t get an answer to, though, is what would have happened if he was told of all this from the start?

Bob was able to accept the reality of what happened to Will because he ended up in the middle of it all when it happened for a second time. By then, he was already committed to Joyce and her sons, so he stayed with them. He may have had some serious questions after the fact, unfortunately he never got a chance to ask them. Even someone as good as Bob may have felt lied to through the omission of such information. I can’t remember if Joyce ever had a specific reason to not tell him. Maybe she never expected it to occur again, or she didn’t want to risk him getting entangled in the arrangements with the Lab since NDAs were signed. Still, secrets in a relationship are rarely a good thing. 

Every member of the cast is now holding onto a huge secret that they can never really tell without putting that person at risk. Max knew there was a secret, and she badgered Lucas about it. He only broke down and told her because she felt she was being rejected. By letting her in on the trauma, he unwittingly made her become a part of it. She now carries that secret, too, which would compound that summer with the fact that she has to keep the circumstances of Billy’s death a secret from her stepfather. 

All of this creates a cycle of secrets and stress leading to more secrets and stress. Relationships are about sharing burdens, but the people in the relationships need to be aware of the burdens and willing to accept sharing them. Who do you get to share the burden of a supernatural encounter? Who would listen and accept your story instead of judging you to have some sort of delusion? 

This is a corner that writers of such stories can paint themselves into. Some might show the characters being unable to hold down relationships. Some may ignore the problem altogether until a new supernatural danger crops up, having their heroes in “normal” relationships with muggles who are unaware of what happened. It’s the part of the story that happens after the credits roll and before a sequel is conceived. 

To use your example of Mike and Will, they really don’t have many people outside of their friends, who really know what happened. This limits who they can open up to and share the burden with. This also means that the people who they share the burden with already have their own burdens as well. Sometimes it is easier to share someone else’s burden than to cope with your own, but it still is compounding stress. They won’t even really have any therapists to talk to unless they are lab-associated. An unaware therapist would see these stories as some sort of delusionary state or, worse, signs of a more serious psychotic or dissociative disorder. 

This all raises interesting questions about what the Duffers plan to do going forward. I like to believe they are talented writers who try to delve into the supernatural without ignoring the “real life” implications. Hiding trauma, supernatural or “mundane,” is very much a real world issue, so it shouldn’t be hard to incorporate it. The same goes for the impact it has on relationships. 

[transamorousnetwork]

Letters@The Transamorous Network

Editor’s note: In this series, we’ll highlight conversations with our readers/viewers. We think folks will benefit from these conversations. All names are made up to protect everyone’s privacy. This particular exchange we are sharing because we strongly believe the narrative expressed by the writer has value for trans-attracted men, as well as transgender women who are capable of being compassionate towards women impacted by men struggling with their trans attraction. Trans attraction is serious business and is NOT A FETISH. It has long-term impacts for everyone involved. We at The Transamorous Network understand this and have compassion not only for the men, but for the women (both trans and cis) impacted by their short- and long-term decisions.

SECOND WARNING: This exchange contains material that may be highly offensive and triggering for transgender people. We strongly suggest that if you are triggered by content that may be perceived by you as invalidating or erasure, you should NOT read the following.

"My wife never measured up because she couldn’t. She wasn’t trans."

How fucking sad this statement is. Do you have any idea how much this destroys the woman who tries to measure up? To the man dressed as a woman and her husband who cannot admit his sexuality.

Forgive me, but I resent these men who want to call themselves women. Maybe my resentment is displaced for my husband whose attraction to these men dressed as women has utterly destroyed my self-esteem.

I’m not sure where to place my anger – for these men who are GAY and dress/transform into women so they can be with men OR for these men who are GAY who enjoy being with men who dress/transform as women but are confused by their sexuality and attempt to live a “straight” life.

My husband and his denial have utterly ruined my self-esteem as a woman and wasted a good amount of my life to be in a genuine relationship. I am angry, hurt and frankly bitter towards the porn industry that introduced him to these men. My life is destroyed and my heart is broken.

Meena

Hi Meena

I understand your resentment, your anger and frustration. I also understand your unacceptance of the people for whom your husband is attracted to.

How did you come to this website? What were you searching for? If you’ve looked around our content, you’ll notice something (although this may be extremely hard to hear from where you currently are): your self-esteem isn’t ruined, although I know to you it feels that way. At the same time, since you believe that it is, it is true for you: your self-esteem is ruined.

But it’s also not.

Just because you believe it is ruined doesn’t mean that truth is objectively real, like separate from your thoughts. You can have a quite-intact self esteem AND, believe it or not, still love your husband, even though you two may no longer be together.

I get though how that feels so out of reach right now.

There’s another reality in which you both have gone on your individual way, and along those paths both of you are happy. No resentment, no bitterness. Everyone happy.

Someday that will be your truth. But I get that right now, it’s not.

TTN

Dear TTN

Thank you for your thoughtful response. Forgive me but I think it is easy for you to respond in this way because you are living on the other side of the coin. While you talk about your wife in this article, do you really know how deeply this affected her?

Is it easier to brush it away as incompatibility or just both parties are happy now. I really think this is a delusion to help men (like you and my husband) to feel ok about the choice you have made. After nearly 20 years of marriage, I am devastated. I truly believe that my entire marriage has been a sham and that i must not be pretty enough, feminine enough or good enough. Your response makes you feel better for the choices you have made. I believe my husband is a COWARD who destroyed my life and self-esteem in order to live a facade of a life he thought he should.

So, I’m supposed to be ok because now he has found himself and can be in an authentic relationship. I think this is what you guys tell yourselves to make yourselves feel better for the TRUE women that you destroy. We are left in your aftermath to pick up the pieces and try to put our lives back together and find some sense of worth again.

I found your site after searching up the issue in a desperate attempt to find understanding and comfort at the sham of my last 20 years.

My only response to both you and my husband is I hope it was worth it. I hope denying your attraction at the expense of another human being and destroying that person so you could be with your transsexual [SIC] was worth it. I hope it was worth it that i became suicidal. I hope it was worth it that are children now live in a broken home. I hope it was worth it that I now require anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications in order to function. God, I hope my peace of mind and life were worth it.

Meena

Hi again Meena,

Rather than replying at length here, I would like to offer this: let’s talk on the phone or via Skype or Zoom where we can see one another or at least hear one another. I know that were we to talk in real time, you might find enormous relief from these feelings you’re experiencing and the actual physically real experiences you’re having.

It’s not an attempt to silence you here in the comments section. As you see, I’ve posted your comments verbatim, immediately and unedited. It’s more that, despite what you’re claiming here, I really do understand what’s happening with you and with my ex-wife and with your former husband. And, it could be helpful for you if we shared that knowledge together in real time.

This is a fee offer Meena. And I’m willing to talk with you as long as or as many times as needed.

Perry

Hi Perry,

Thank you for responding to my comment and the offer to talk with me via phone/skype/etc. I apologize for posting my comments on your site and appreciate your thoughtful and compassionate responses.

I don't wish to talk with you at this time as I am under the care of an AASECT (American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists) and am currently working on keeping myself safe. I am fearful that talking with you may push me further towards my self-destructive behaviors. At this time, I am working under a contract with her so I don't need to be hospitalized for my suicidal ideation. Please forgive me, but I believe talking to you would only further my desire to find quiet and peace in my mind.

My husband's lies and betrayal have frankly devestated me and sense of safety and security. I may find forgiveness for him eventually but right now I am simply working on surviving for myself and my children each day. I fear talking to you about this issue will only validate my feelings of worthlessness - as you are like my husband and have given up your marriage for someone you found better and more attractive.

I don't see where you could bring me any comfort. I wish you and your dating network all the best and hope you find success - hopefully not at the expense of other human beings.

Meena

Hi Meena,

I think you’re presuming what my intentions are, and that’s ok. I only know that I could help you find peace and calm, mental and emotional clarity and then empowerment pretty much immediately. That’s why I was offering. Conversing with me wouldn’t “push you towards more destructive behaviors”, instead, it could quite quickly reconnect you with your feelings of empowerment, security and knowing; the exact opposite of what you have expressed as a fear.

But I understand where you are, not because I’m trans-attracted and divorced, but because I understand other things you and I (and everyone else) shares.

Just so you know, I didn’t leave my wife because I found a trans woman. My wife divorced me because she found other men she preferred. It was a great move on her part and I don’t blame her or vilify her for her choices. And no, I currently am not with a trans woman. I prefer to focus on my growing enterprises.

Hopefully this provides the clarity it was meant to offer. The offer I made earlier still stands should you ever choose to act on it.

As for your comments on The Transamorous Network, you don’t have to apologize at all because your comments, as painful as they may have been to share, will help more people than you know as they seek their own understanding and freedom in the new reality we all find ourselves in.

Be well Meena.

Perry

Dear Perry,

Thank you for your kind and compassionate response. I feel that you are a very caring and empathetic person who is trying to help me.

I'm not sure I am in a place to find empowerment.  I have an 18 year marriage that is a sham.  I have been married to a man who was sexually attracted to something other than what I can offer.  We have struggled with sex for 18 years  - he always claimed a lower libido that me - and I am so stupid that I tried for so long to try to be what he said he wanted and liked.  I discovered his transattraction early in our marriage and I allowed him to convince me that it was just a fetish and that his primary attraction was to cis-gender women.  After all this time and recently discovering some sexting activity on his part (while recovering from breast cancer none the less - but who needs real breasts when your husband prefers the implants attached to a body with a penis), I realize I have been in denial because I love him and he is the father of my children. He wants to be with a tranny - though he says he never has had sex with one - but at different times in his life he has met ones he found attractive.  

Never the less, as a cisgender woman, I can tell you that transsexual women maintain a certain masculinity that is extremely obvious to real women (because they are NOT real women) - no matter how much surgery or hormones they have had.  As a result of being married to a man who is transattracted, I have begun to worry as a CISGENDER FEMALE - are my features masculine?  Do I look like a tranny? Is that why he was attracted to me?  Do other people think I look like a man dressed as a woman? I have lost all sense of self-confidence and esteem as a woman as well as my sense of safety and security.

I think it is easy for you to chalk this up to well, both parties can now be happy.  He can be with a transsexual and I can be - I don't know - because I can't imagine that another human being would want to be with me - (i must look like a tranny and my husband of 18 years is attracted to MEN  - albeit dressed like women with breast implants and a shit ton of make-up).  Right now, I see no happy solution to this.  I am so glad you can find the sunshine and rainbows in this.  I'm sorry but after 18 years of marriage, this is destruction of another human being because he is too macho to admit to himself, his friends or family that he likes men who dress as women!  I found your site in a desparate attempt to understand and frankly, reassure me that he actually does just have a fetish and truly is into REAL women.  Your site only confirmed my worst nightmare. I am lost and devastated.  

You can keep your site going and kid yourself that all will be well for men who are into trannies and destroy their marriages in order to indulge in this sexual fetish.  And frankly, it will - despite all the women it destroys and leaves in the aftermath.    How could you really make a difference?  Save two lives? You should focus your efforts on younger men who are struggling to understand themselves - before they enter into a heterosexual relationship - and help them enter into relationships for their TRUE nature.  This would save so much destruction and possibly some lives.  You see, the only people who come out on top in this scenario are the men you help to find their TRUE authentic nature and marry, date or have sex with trannies all the while destroying those women who have committed to them and thought they had a husband who loved them.  

I apologize for my hostility and anger - I am still searching for peace and answers - and your site has provided me with a horrible ugly truth that is very hard for me to accept.  I kept searching for answers that lead down a different path - one that confirmed my marriage, confirmed that I hadn't married a man who preferred to be with MEN, confirmed that I am an attractive, desirable and worth while woman deserving of a relationship and not some pathetic hideous woman who can serve as as a facade/sham for a man who truly is into MEN.

I thank you again for your compassionate response to me - as I know my thoughts and ideas are very attacking of your entire endeavor.  

My only hope is that my pain might help save someone from this horrible experience and ultimately save their life.

Meena

We offered Meena a free live engagement to help her. To date, she has not responded.

This exchange shows how serious this is for everyone involved. If you're trans attracted and feel shame and embarrassment about this natural part of you, we encourage you to consider this: the sooner you come into owning who you are, the better off everyone will be.

That being said, stories people tell create their reality. Often "stories people tell" blind them to their own intuition, which is always accurate. As you can see in Meena's experience, several times her intuition led her to evidence in response to her questions, which came in the form of suspicion. Instead of listening to her knowing, she told stories which caused her to ignore her knowing.

Everyone is a match to the partner they are with. In other words, it always takes two.

Whenever a person ignores answers they receive, and everyone always receives answers they seek, such answers will get bigger – more intense, harder to ignore – until the person "gets it". By then, a lot of cleaning up may be required.

It's possible to avoid all this. If you're in a long-term relationship or marriage, or you're contemplating marrying a cis-woman, but you are trans attracted, we urge you to consider the significance of your choices.

And, at the same time, it takes two. Meena's struggle reflects her husband's struggle as both create one another through stories they tell.

Find out more. We are available to everyone.

[mobius-prime]

58. Special - Sonic and Knuckles Mecha Madness

Previous / Table of Contents / Next

Mecha Madness

Writer: Michael Gallagher Pencils: Pat Spaziante Colors: Kyle Hunter

Oh boy, time to see what "Operation Last Resort" is! Turns out, it involves a portable roboticizer - the same one, in fact, that partially roboticized Bunnie all the way back in StH#3. Apparently they actually took it with them when they rescued Bunnie, and Sally's been having Rotor fix it up this whole time in case of such an emergency. It even has a built-in neuro-overrider to let the person inside keep… their… okay, hang on. I'm calling BS. You're telling me that this entire time they've had a portable roboticizer which functions normally, lets the person keep their mind, and as revealed later in the issue even comes with a reverse function that can deroboticize any 'bot that it's created? Can you say plot holes? First of all, since this is Bunnie's roboticizer, it should be the simplest matter ever to stick her in it and give her her organic body back. I guess you could fudge around and say, well, there's too many risks since her process was interrupted and whatnot, but the other problem comes with the fact that two different issues now have had this same drama about someone being roboticized and not having kept their normal mind. How different would literally the last issue have gone if Sally, in response to Sonic's request, had said "Well sure Sonic, we have a nearly-risk-free option right here in Knothole Village. With your consent we'll throw you in it and have Robotnik defeated and in prison by lunchtime"? There would be absolutely no risk of him losing his mind and becoming a slave of Robotnik's! Sure it would come with physical risks, but since when has Sonic ever balked at a risk of death or injury before?

Man, the only way we'll be able to get through this issue is if we just pretend there's no plot holes, so I'll stop my yapping and move on. Knuckles comes to, and after deliriously trying to punch several of the Freedom Fighters present Sally kicks him in the back, which makes him recognize her, because I guess she's the only one who's ever kicked him in the back like that. Healthy relationship, guys! They get a bit gaga over each other for a little while, reminiscing on their past together - apparently Sally's father used to vacation on the Floating Island when Knuckles' father was still guardian and before Robotnik's takeover. Really, this issue makes it seem like they have a residual crush on each other, with Sally in particular still being affected by it. Man, Sally, how many crushes can you have at once? I still insist she's polyamorous. Things would be so much easier for her if she could just date multiple people at once. After a bit more discussion, Sally tells him the plan, and apparently Knuckles just cannot wait to scoot his booty into the 'botmaker and get roboticized.

Everyone actually acts quite terrified by using this option, with Rotor even questioning Sally if this makes them "no better than Robotnik." While it's played for laughs with Sally's response of "Et tu, Rotor?" honestly all this makes me think is that these literal kids (none of them is over 18 at this point) are definitely traumatized by all the crap they've gone through in this war. For basically their entire lives, getting roboticized has been synonymous with psychological warfare and death, with only a handful of examples otherwise (such as Uncle Chuck and the people he rescued a few issues ago, but even then that's an incredibly recent occurrence). It's clear they're having a hard time getting over this association in their minds, apart from Sally, who's the pragmatist of the group, and Knuckles, who… well, has spent most of his time away from the war anyway, and thus doesn't have the same fear.

As all this is going on, Tails is the last to evacuate Knothole himself while Mecha Sonic lays waste to all its buildings, and as such is spotted and targeted. He tries to fly away to safety, but it's hopeless. He's still within reach of Mecha Sonic's blasters, and Mecha Sonic locks on… and…

…hesitates! Sonic, you still in there buddy? He seems to be fighting back somehow, even though Robotnik's apparently upgraded his roboticizers since Sally's old attempts to thwart them. Not a problem for Robotnik though, since he has nuclear bombs, apparently! Jeez, man, he's really serious about taking these guys out for good. After a little while, Mecha Knuckles emerges from the roboticizer, and engages Mecha Sonic in battle, conveniently right before Mecha Sonic can tell Robotnik the coordinates of Knothole. They duke it out midair for a little while, until Mecha Sonic eventually hits Mecha Knuckles hard enough to knock him back straight toward Robotropolis, on a direct course for wherever Robotnik stores his nuclear warheads. Mecha Knuckles, determined to take out Mecha Sonic no matter what, grabs him with a magnetic pull, and together, they hit the stockpile.

Oh, boy.

Everyone back home is in tears. Certainly, as confirmed by Nicole, there's no way they could have survived a nuclear blast like that, not even with upgraded robotic bodies. Sally has to take a few moments away from the group to hide her tears. It's pretty damn bleak.

So, turns out that the blast just straight up ripped a hole in the middle of Robotnik's city, vaporizing basically every building in its path and irradiating the crater. This is some serious damage. No mention of the fact that this probably just killed untold numbers of roboticized Mobians who were stuck inside that section of the city, however, because Robotnik then emerges from an underground shelter, straight into the radiation - how messed up is this guy, dude? He drinks motor oil like it's a nice glass of wine, never exercises, and already lives in a city made out of pollution, and now he can just walk right out into the site of a nuclear bomb explosion with no issue? Anyway, he then happens to find Mecha Sonic's mangled body, somehow still barely alive, though heavily malfunctioning. Oh, and Mecha Knuckles is alive, too, so Robotnik gets punched in the head.

Mecha Knuckles isn't doing so hot, but incredibly, he recounts how just before the impact Mecha Sonic switched their places so he would take most of the brunt of the blast instead. Mecha Knuckles heads back to the Freedom Fighters with Mecha Sonic in tow, to Sally's immense relief, and they get ready to deroboticize Knuckles.

Aww, poor Sonic. Literally, he thinks he doesn't deserve to be saved after what he did, despite it not even being his fault. That's some seriously heavy stuff for a fifteen year old, man. Of course, Sally isn't about to take that. Nicole is able to run some tests and confirm that somehow, back when Sonic collected his one billionth ring and went on that crazy drug trip with the Ancient Walkers, it gave him a magical protection around his "life force," which allowed him to keep some of his personality even while roboticized. I don't know how the hell all that is supposed to work, but essentially, she's certain she'll be able to use that life force protection to deroboticize him even without the help of any machinery, since all of Rotor's equipment was destroyed in the attack on Knothole.

Miraculously, it works, and after a few moments, Sonic is back to normal, although suffering from one hell of a migraine and unable to remember anything from his time as Mecha Sonic. At first everyone is quite happy to have him back, but then he sasses Knuckles right out of the roboticizer, who glides away in a huff, and from there things start to turn sour.

Yeah, you didn't think everyone forgot about his supposed disobedience of a direct order, did you? He's handcuffed and marched away in preparation for a court-martial, as he's now suspected of treason! Remember, from Sonic's point of view, this is all he remembers: got denied his proposition, walked away and passed out, woke up in very brief agony before everything going blank, and then woke up again on the floor with a migraine. He has no idea what has even happened these past two issues, and now he's suddenly being dragged away in cuffs. Can you imagine? This poor guy.

Don't Let the Island Hit You on the Way Down!

Writer: Kent Taylor Pencils: Harvey Mercadoocasio Colors: Kyle Hunter

Well, we couldn't have an epic issue like this without a couple of silly "nothing" stories following it, so time to see what the Chaotix were doing while Knuckles was away being a robot and everything. Turns out they're under attack from the "Fearsome Foursome," a random group of Mobians who are apparently just interested in kicking some ass. The Chaotix get slapped around for a little while before regrouping and fighting back.

It goes on for a weirdly long amount of time considering nothing even happens in this story until like, six pages in. All they do is punch each other around. Suddenly, a mysterious figure emerges onto the scene: Mammoth Mogul, a gigantic mammoth with delusions of grandeur. Apparently, he was actually born in prehistoric times, but a chance encounter with a Chaos Emerald granted him mysterious powers and immortality, and as such he declared himself ruler of Mobius while sitting on a throne wearing a loincloth that leaves almost nothing to the imagination. People eventually couldn't take his manspreading on the throne any longer and ousted him as their leader, and so he just bided his time for millennia until the modern day, where he assembled this really weird ragtag team and is now intending to take the Floating Island's Chaos Emerald for his own, since apparently there are absolutely no other Chaos Emeralds for him to choose from on the planet right now.

The Chaotix respond by punching him in the face in unison, and he immediately retreats, insisting he'll be back at a better time. He literally just jumps into a hovercar straight out of the punch and zooms away at top speed while essentially doing the stereotypical villain thing of shaking his fist and yelling "I'll be back, mark my words!" C'mon, man, you're apparently this immortal god-being from prehistoric times and four random dudes slapping you is enough to drive you back? What a wuss.

Eel of Fortune

Writer: Michael Gallagher Pencils: Dave Manak Colors: Kyle Hunter

This story pretty much only exists because Michael has overestimated how much people might care about the Forty Fathoms Freedom Fighters. P.B. Jellyfish encounters Octobot swimming at top speed and tries to stop and fight him, but turns out Octobot, no longer a big bad boss of the ocean, is himself running away from someone even more terrifying - Eel Capone! Yeah, this guy is basically just a big mob boss joke, even getting his own "hired mussel" (geddit? geddit?) to beat the crap out of P.B. His other friends in the F.F.F.F. find him unconscious, and Bottlenose decides to take things into his own hands by beating up Eel Capone in ninja getup, while simultaneously murdering all his lackeys! Wait, what?!

That is cold-blooded, man! No one even makes mention of the fact that Bottlenose just brutally killed like, a hundred sentient beings. They just drag Eel Capone off to "Aquatraz," and then sing a silly, pun-filled song about the battle. Guys, I can't stress this enough, but your friend is now a literal murderer. Just because he was dressed in a ninja disguise while he was doing the murdering doesn't make him any less of a killer. These weren't even roboticized mussels or anything, they were literally just some living individuals who made bad life decisions. What kind of a Freedom Fighter keeps the head honcho alive but murders all the lackeys who were just following orders? Jesus christ.

[thebestplltheories]

Hello! I loved the finale, and I loved the season! I'm really hoping there's a second season (with some serious re-branding). Before episode nine, I sent in a theory through the submit box, and I was just wondering if you'd seen that or if it had gotten lost in the shuffle. Just trying to do my part in making the fandom a healthier, more positive place with some theorizing! :)

Omg yes I saw that! It’s just at the bottom of my message box that I keep forgetting to scroll down enough to post it. Thanks for the reminder! Let me post it here for everyone to enjoy. I’ll read it later today, I’m excited!

Let’s look through Taylor’s timeline (with included analysis) up until the day of Nolan’s death:

According to Claire, despite Taylor’s and Nolan’s close relationship as children, Taylor never trusted anyone, including Nolan. If Taylor felt that Nolan was turning against her by wanting to reveal that she was alive to an outsider, would their unity fall apart? As Claire says, both Alison and Taylor are survivors at any cost. While we can’t always trust Claire’s perspective on her children, we can use our understanding of Alison’s character to better understand Taylor. We know that Alison is a survivor, and we’ve seen her ensure her own survival over others in the past. It’s not a leap to say that Taylor would do the same.

At some point in the past, Taylor “snapped.” Taylor says to Claire: “I snap and you come out smelling like roses. Just like last time.” We don’t know for sure what Taylor is referencing here, but this does show that Taylor has struggled with mental health in the past.

At some point during Taylor’s time at BHU, she befriended Ray Hogadorn. This friendship inspired Ray to write “They’re 👀” on her wall as a warning once he realized that something was wrong with Beacon Guard. Was this a personal warning or an overall warning to inspire Taylor to look into the situation?

Taylor became paranoid and occasionally delusional once she began teaching according to Claire. Because this is coming from Claire’s perspective, it could be doubted that Taylor really was paranoid rather than responding with caution to a real situation. However, we have had signs that Taylor snapped before (as Taylor referenced herself). Interestingly, Mason notes that Nolan also changed upon attending BHU. Something about BHU really impacted both Taylor and Nolan. This information raises questions: Was Taylor’s paranoia and delusion before or after Ray Hogadorn’s warning? Is this a hint that Taylor is dangerous? Did BHU have this effect only on Taylor and Nolan, and if so, why them?

A year ago, Taylor faked committing suicide as a way to escape the attention of her family and Beacon Guard. She told Alison that the “real reason” she ran away was because someone tried to kill her. This is of course potentially true, but I find it to be an interesting cover story. If Taylor ran away because someone tried to kill her, she is painted in the light of a victim. This immediately makes her seem more trustworthy. However, in the one conversation we 👀 between her and Nolan, it doesn’t seem like Taylor ran away for this reason. It seems more like the system at large is a threat.

During the year Taylor is gone, she and Nolan tried to find evidence to bring down Beacon Guard, but we don’t know why they’re trying to do this or what kind of evidence they’re trying to find. It’s worth noting that Alison comments to Mona that she feels something is wrong with the campus–something worse than a murder and fake suicide. This seems to align with there being more to Beacon Guard than meets the eye, as Taylor and Nolan know since they were actively trying to find evidence of this corruption. Does Taylor know exactly what is wrong, or was she simply trying to find any evidence that spoke of corruption? It’s notable that Taylor has not told Alison that she and Nolan were working on this project together. Her whole focus has been on “someone tried to kill me!” and “I need to find who killed Nolan!” There is a lot she has not been upfront with Alison about.

The day Nolan dies, he and Taylor meet up. After Nolan asks to 👀 Taylor (why?), Taylor seems to disagree because Nolan had been put under surveillance and it wouldn’t be safe if they met up. However, Nolan assumes that this means Ava has also been put under surveillance and pushes that he and Taylor need to meet. During this meeting, Nolan becomes dissatisfied with his and Taylor’s process in bringing down Beacon Guard (he’s 😟 for Ava’s safety) and argues with Taylor that they should bring in an outside source (Alison), which Taylor is adamantly against because she doesn’t feel safe. However, Nolan makes it clear that he’s going to do it anyway. Taylor responds by sheepishly agreeing and gives Nolan a very interesting hug. Even in the first episode, this hug felt significant–like Taylor is saying goodbye to her brother.

Now let’s break down what happened during Nolan’s death scene:

Nolan has decided, with Taylor’s unwilling acceptance, that he’s going to bring Alison into their group in order to bring down Beacon Guard. Presumably, Nolan and Taylor come up with the exact plan together of how to talk with Alison safely without revealing their entire ✋. Nolan texts Alison to meet him on the roof, and Taylor turns off Beacon Guard in that area so the conversation will be private. This means that Taylor knows that the roof is a safe place for her to be without being seen.

When the killer arrives, Nolan can only 👀 their silhouette and maybe some vague features because they stand directly in front of the bright light. This tells us that Nolan would have been immediately suspicious of the killer if he had been able to 👀 them.

Despite Nolan revealing very protected, sensitive information (that Taylor is in fact alive), he is sure enough that he’s talking to Alison that he reveals this information before getting a full look at the killer. It doesn’t make sense that Nolan would start talking without thinking he absolutely knew who he was talking to (based on his character’s attributes). However, it makes sense that Nolan would have thought he was talking to Alison if he was actually talking to her look-alike, Taylor. In silhouette form, Nolan would have seen long, blonde hair and very similar facial features.

The killer reveals themselves (stepping away from the light) immediately after Nolan says that Taylor is alive. If this is anyone other than Taylor, it makes more sense that they would have kept listening. This would have been huge  news that they could have gotten more information about! However, if the killer is Taylor, it makes sense that this would have been when she would have attacked. She had her evidence that Nolan was going to “out her.” As we discussed above, Taylor is a survivor at all costs and she is shown to be extremely fearful of being the “⚰️ girl who’s not ⚰️ anymore.” Taylor also knows who Alison is and why Claire brought Alison to Beacon Heights. Most likely, as someone trying to stay unseen, this would have made her feel hunted and more paranoid than ever. At what point would she turn against Nolan to protect herself?

Of course, we know Alison doesn’t reveal the text until the next day because of a partial Beacon Guard shutdown around Alison’s 🏠, the roof where Nolan is killed, and a few other cameras. We know that Taylor is behind the roof shutdown, meaning we know that Taylor is capable of causing a larger shutdown as well. It’s quite a coincidence that other cameras are shutdown, allowing a safe route for Taylor to travel the campus. It’s quite a coincidence that Alison doesn’t receive the text because of her home’s shutdown. If Taylor knew that she might kill Nolan, she absolutely wouldn’t want Alison to randomly show up. Plus, stopping Nolan from revealing her secret in the first place is the whole reason she would have gone to potentially kill Nolan. As Alison says later to Mona, “there is no such thing as coincidences.”

A few additional observations:

Mona is locked out of Beacon Guard for suspicious activity that she later discovers came from a single source. We never learn what this suspicious activity is exactly, just that Mona initially assumed Beacon Guard didn’t appreciate her trying to solve Nolan’s murder. I would bet that source is Taylor’s RV. What was the suspicious activity?

Two things from Mona’s perspective: first, Mona tells Alison that Nolan is dangerous because he has the ability to push a student to the snapping point. We 👀 Nolan push Taylor past her preferred safety system. Second, Mona tries to use her Beacon Guard algorithm to discover which student snapped enough to kill Nolan but was unable to find anyone. Of course, Taylor wouldn’t have come up because she would no longer be active in the system.

Taylor has shown lots of suspicious behavior. The biggest incident that immediately springs to mind is the fact that she’s trying to manipulate Alison into giving her the evidence against Booker. If Taylor is the killer, it makes sense that she wouldn’t want Booker to be stopped. Booker is doing a great job of keeping everyone focused away from who murdered Nolan, frantic, and potentially pinning Nolan’s murder on someone else. Taylor would want to do everything she could (like destroy the evidence) to keep Booker doing what she’s doing.

Dylan, Caitlyn, and Ava are talking about their belief that Booker is behind everything when Dylan briefly mentions Taylor’s suspicious behavior and her access to Beacon Guard. The script immediately cuts him off and then Booker shows up to take the audience’s attention off his statement. This is interesting.

This show has gone out of its way to show two aspects of Alison’s character: first, that she used to be a mean girl capable of deception and manipulation and second, that she has now changed and wants a drama-free, trustworthy life. The show has also gone out of its way to connect Alison and Taylor’s personalities. I think the show is doing something very interesting with this. Basically, they have created a gemini character. Alison is the good side while Taylor is the bad side. Taylor’s mean girl persona has been brought up by Claire, and we’ve seen it in how Taylor immediately treated Mona (calling her short, saying she should wear a 🛎️, etc.). This is a study of how the “same” person can choose two different paths.

I’m unsure if Taylor is the ultimate big bad, but I do think she is the one who killed Nolan. Personally, if she is the killer, I hope that she’s not also the big bad. I would 💛 to 👀 the dichotomy between someone who did a horrible thing but who is still fighting against a corrupt or dangerous system. Like Booker noted about Alison, she’s a complex character. I’m sure the same can be said then for Taylor.

[x-dudes]

Hi I recently got in a car wreck (I'm physically okay) and I have a really bad scar on my forehead. Could you do a Poe x reader where she's insecure about a similar scar and he kinda helps her out? 💛💛

Notes: Sure can, babydoll! Hope I did you justice.

Published: December 29th, 2017

How are you feeling?

The question didn’t seem to come as a question at all, but rather as just a buzz of words that only somewhat formed within your brain. You weren’t even entirely sure if you were truly being spoken to or if the voice in your head was the byproduct of a dulling fever dream you managed to catch the tail end of as you came to.

(Y/N)? The voice rang again. It had been clearer this time, though still not sharp enough to discern from a delusion. For a brief moment, as you vaguely recalled a handful of the events that occured before you were knocked unconscious, you were certain that you were dead, and the voice was an angel. Are you waking up? (Y/N). A cool hand running across the skin of your forehead assured you this was not an angel, yet also brought a smile to your face as your eyes fluttered back into consciousness.

You were safe.

“You’re awake!” The voice beamed. It seemed familiarly feminine; an accent encrypted within it from a planet you couldn’t recall in your state of delirium. Your eyes had finally opened, only for you to audibly wince as you shut them once again due to the blinding white of the overhead lights. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll get them off” You could hear a set of sharp footsteps, a soft click, and then the remnants of the blinding white light still seen from behind your lids died down, leaving you in blackness. The voice spoke up once more, and you found solace in the soothing silk of their words. “Hey, can you open your eyes now?” Your eyes finally flicked open, meeting the smiling face of Rey in the dim light of a medical room.

“Rey,” You spoke softly. Your voice was weak, but she could tell you were thrilled to see her.

“Are you feeling better?”

“I feel much better than I did being beat around by members of the First Order,” You joked. “Thanks for asking.”

“No,” She chuckled. “I mean after surgery. It was a shame you missed it, the medics had this little droid by their side who ended up stitching up the cut after they cleaned it in about two minutes flat. Though I suppose you had to miss it otherwise something could have gone wrong, right?”

“Surgery?” You repeated, digging through your cloudy memories for the answer to your own question. “Oh shit, my-” Though weak, your hands flew to your forehead, feeling a protruding scar along the plane of your forehead. You only vaguely recalled the wound being at the hand of General Hux before your memory returns to black. “Oh, Rey,”You whimpered, speech still slurred from what must have been remnants of the anaesthesia. “Be honest with me, okay? How bad is it really? Now that everything is all said and done, and it’s all sewn up…”

“Bad?” She echoed, confusion etched across her sharp features.

“Yeah, as in- nevermind. I don’t really expect you to understand, I guess.” You bit your tongue to refrain from commenting on Rey’s upbringing in your still softheaded state. It wouldn’t do anyone any good. “Wait. Where’s Poe?”

To be able to say that your injuries were likely the least worrisome of the group’s was something truly extraordinary. You had been sent out on a reconnaissance mission right within the heart of Starkiller Base. Something that should have been easy, in theory, until a weak link within your team had resulted in all of you getting captured, with one of the four not making it out alive. Poe had been a member of the team sent out to recover the remaining three of you before anything could escalate further. After being beaten, bruised, strapped to a metal dolley, tortured, manipulated, and lied to with the goal of obtaining Resistance information, it was a miracle you were still alive, let alone in one piece. Poe had been drifting in and out of consciousness for the past four days or so, never managing to stay awake and aware of his surroundings for very long. You were too afraid to wait by his side for him to recover.

Gentle fingers grazed the mark along your forehead.

He would worry. That was what you had decided. The scar wasn’t the simplest thing to hide, more so than ever as it was in the weird grace period between being freshly sewn and having healed entirely. Rey had insisted you not worry about ‘some mark that hadn’t been there before,’ yet always held you in her arms in silence as you bit back all of the emotions that overflowed from that scar, as well as its origins. She didn’t quite understand. You insisted that she couldn’t.

You should be grateful you’re okay physically, you tried to tell yourself. Not even a concussion to show for it and this is what you’re upset about?

“Lieutenant (Y/L/N),” The General had called from the piece in your ear, still kept as you trained newcomer resistance fighters in the fields.

“Yes, general?” You spoke back, hoping your response could be heard above the natural roar of the D’Qar jungle. The dozen or so new recruits ran past you into a large clearing in the trees.

“You’ve been requested in the Medbay. Sector three. I’d go, if I were you.”

“Yes ma’am. Let me finish up here.”

“Just go, (Y/L/N). Lieutenant Connix will wrap things up for you. I’ve already sent her your way.”

“Thank you, General.”

Remembering Poe’s fickle state, you began to dash through the thick foliage, stripping your heavy training equipment as you went along until you had come to the front desk with nothing more than an old black tank top and your jumpsuit, now half opened with the arms tied tightly around your hips. Without a single word from you, the medic working the desk that day directed you to where Poe rested, filling you in on his recovery status along the way.

“-as well as a serious fracture on one of his left ribs from the impact. He’s been asking for you for a few days now, though you’re a naturally busy person, so I figured I would hold off on contacting you until we could get him awake for more than an hour.” She chuckled. “I mean, you must be busy. You look like you just came out of battle. Training newbies, I presume?” You gave her a small ‘mhm’ in response and she huffed. “Yeah, I get that. I’m on new kid training duty tomorrow all through the rest of the month. Crazy, you know. I could have sworn that I was a new kid myself just last month and now I get to teach them. How are ya’ healing?” You cleared your throat nervously. Both thankful for and dreadful of the fact that she was a talker.

“I, uh, I’m feeling alright.”

“Yeah? No burning? No irritation? No psychic connections with force spirits?” She giggled at her own joke, though you weren’t entirely sure of what to say. “Oh! Here he is. Dameron.” You thanked her softly, bracing yourself silently as her footsteps grew distant. Knocking twice on the door for good measure, relief and dread simultaneously flooded you upon hearing his voice, asking you to come in.

“Poe,” You began.

“(Y/N)!” He bolted up in his bed, beaming with joy upon seeing you. Hesitantly, you stepped forward until you were sat at the edge of his bed. Without a second thought, he lunged his already weak body at you, enveloping you into a hug you could tell hurt him deeply. He didn’t mind, though. He loved you more than you could ever know. “(Y/N), I’m so glad you’re okay! I’ve been in here for who knows how long and all I kept asking of them was to see you, or to at least hear something about how you’re doing, and I wasn’t even given a ‘she’s doing alright’ before they shut me down Rey came in here a while back and when I asked her about you she got all weird about it. I almost thought you were dying. It was driving me crazy not knowing how you were doing for so long. Yeesh, if I could stay awake for more than an hour at a time before now, I probably would have busted out of here to find you…” He chuckled at the end of his sentence, but something told you he was biting back happy tears. “How are you doing?” He pulled out of the hug, yet still kept a vice grip on your shoulders as he got a good look at you for the first time weeks. You could tell he had caught a glance at the scar in the way his eyebrows knit, lips pouting in silent thought.

“Listen, I-”

“They stitch you up pretty good?”

“Hmm?”

“Well, (Y/N), I don’t remember a lot from Starkiller Base, but I do remember having to watch Hux do that to you, and let me tell you it was a lot less pretty when-”

“It’s still not pretty…”

“-I had found you- wait, what?”

“Hmm?”

“What was that?”

“I said that it’s not pretty, Poe.” You confessed. Subconsciously, your hands rose to rub at your temples in a sense of worry. “I don’t… I don’t like it. Call me dumb, call me whatever you want, but some part of me just knows that I’m always going to be changed by what went on on that ship, and this just serves as a constant reminder of that.” His eyebrows raised. Whether in shock or in revelation you really weren’t sure, but you had decided you were too deep into your confession to care all that much. “Poe, people look at me differently, they think of me differently,and I absolutely hate the fact that it- it ruins the image of me that I-”

“Now hold on just a second.” He interrupted you, placing a hand on your chin to force your gaze his way. “(Y/N), good god, I can’t believe you would think so lowly of yourself after what you just did. Are you even aware of the amazing acts that came out of that scar?” You didn’t respond, only gave him a quizzical look, but it was enough for him. “The girl who snuck on to Starkiller Base with the intent to destroy? This same girl who when captured led Hux on a wild goose chase, only to tell him to go fuck himself in Twi’leki and spit on his nose? This girl who was brought to hell and back, and still wouldn’t cave in, even if it costed her her life, all in the name of the Resistance doesn’t like the scar that shows that she survived?”

“I don’t think you understand-”

“No, (Y/N), I don’t think you understand. Yeah, people absolutely think of you differently. They take one look at you, knowing you got back from a mission that would turn any normal man into a pile of ash, and they think that you’re incredible. I know I do.” Poe stretched down further to place a peck to your forehead. “You should too. You should look at that scar and think to yourself ‘I’ve been through hell and back, but I’m still here, and I’m still kicking ass, because I’m (Y/N) (Y/L/N) and that’s who I am. Not even this could stop me, and nothing else sure as hell will.’” You smiled softly, carefully burying your face into his chest as you hugged him, as to not hurt his bad rib any further.

“I don’t think all that would fit into my morning routine, but thanks, Speedy.” You giggled, grinning wider as you felt him smile against your shoulder. “That means the world to me.”

[sayofchains88]

Chapter seven: Finding Alice by OrangeLetters88~

She flips down from a tree branch. "Were you tailing them or something? Vampire has telepathy now?" Alex asks more confused.

"Of course not, I am not a vampire; give me your hand." She says pulling him up by jumping with her strong hind legs. She holds her finger her mouth to be quiet.

Joseph walks through surveying shortly before leaving. Alex could feel the pain in his leg still despite for the most part hundred percent then before. "Why are you helping me?" Alex interrogates.

"Because he is looking to game anyone he can find. It seems like he is planning to end your small group. I know he already took your old base and now have your old clan captive." She explains.

"Why do you know so much? Who are you?" Alex asks leaning against the tree feeling sick.

Ida peeks over to see Alex losing grip of the tree tipping to the side. His eyes trying to keep open when Ida drops down below to catch Alex who slips forward, Ida grips his legs trying to give him the best support she can. Dizzily he leans his face against her shoulder. "My whole life is gone because of him. Everyone I cared for is gone. I had been trying to track him down. He will rue the day he destroyed my life also I am from the mountains."

"Join us and we will take revenge for you I swear. I just need a little more time to heal is all." Alex chimes in weakly.

"Let me take you back to the house then, we can talk inside." Ida said as they slowly trudged back to the house where Clarence was smoking flicking it to the ground seeing Ida carrying Alex.  

"Clarence, I am sorry, but seem a lot seemed to happen in the time I was out." Alex replies pushing himself off Ida to tip to the side.

"We knew you went missing eventually, but I also saw Joseph coming from the wood so I had a feeling. I saw someone with him...looked like a child, but I don't think he is. Is he Alex?" Clarence asks. Wrapping his arm around Alex like a crutch walking him inside with Ida following from behind them making it to Alex's room where Clarence would retrieve a chair for him and Ida.

Clarence begins examining Alex's leg with the healing hole while they talk. "I am Ida, I come from the mountains. I had been following those two rogue vampire for a long time. They had killed my clan. I will die trying to take what he destroyed, but now he has increased his fold. If you are targeted then he will not stop till you are vanished. This time I will make sure you are safe. I tried to warn Cooper, but he celebrated this so called help." Ida preached her story. Clarence stops Ida holding his wrapped hand around a slightly feverish Alex.  

Laying him down him injects Alex with a mild sedative. Telling him to rest and taking Ida's hand and locking the door behind him. Steel peeks in asking where Alice is.

Something felt very off to Clarence that very second. Christian and Steel were looking high and low for Alice.

                                          "Alice, my poor sweet Alice. You had been through much. If follow me I will protect you." Alice looks upon a cliff at the end of the forest. She could feel as though a million hands were dragging her down an endless hole. She was about to step down the side with her eyes closed till Clarence grabs her from where the land shifts between both of their feet crumbling.

He wraps his arms bracing the worst as they fall. "The hell is wrong with you?" he addresses screaming as they tumble far below.  Alice snaps out of it.

"Where am I?" Alice asks confused.

"Are you serious? What are you seeing?" Clarence evaluating Alice's psyche in the small period he never thought he would have to toddler another vampire clans people.

"I was being pulled down by hands after following a rabbit or so I thought. It felt familiar. Someone was calling me." Alice responds blankly. Red eyes pursued them deep in the twilight of the day.

"Of course you would catch on to me Clarence. I thought I would have captured sweet Alice." A child like figure in the distance snaps his fingers. Alice stood up right with her hands to her side. "She is doomed to repeat her life it seems."

Steel looks on as she heard a clap then an explosion could be heard and seen from a far. Running to the edge smoke covers everything making it hard to view what is happening.

"Stay away Steel!" Clarence screams from the bottom. He could feel her lingering not far from him above.

"Yes protect your princess. Amazed you didn't see it under your nose." He cackles. Alice was able to summon the many hands a long with the vorpal blade from the ground. "Now Alice give me the blade..." He demands.

Walking forward she tries to give the sword till Clarence pulls it from her hands. She collapses like a rag doll hitting the ground. "She is the reincarnation of Alice eh?"

"Hand it to me fool. It is not hers, but she has the right to carry the blade yes. I felt her awakening since she had become a vampire. That blade is priceless." He explains.

"Is this so you can gain full stature pint size?" Clarence said swinging it around before he knows it he feels a pang of pain from holding it. He drops it. It disappears back into Alice.

"For now you win." He says walking back in seemingly vanishing. Swiping Alice in arms fast as he can in case he looks around to get footing to push himself back up the destroyed cliff side, reaching up Steel grabs his arms helping him with bringing Alice; Steel makes sure the both are safe.

Steel checks Alice's breathing. "She is fine, but we have a new problem..." Clarence states. Steel kisses him at the same embracing him in hug.

"We will work this out together. It seems we need to protect Alex and his crew a little more before we go back to normalcy here." She says scared.

Clarence picks Alice up when he is impacted by a heavy presence. Alice begins to glow. Steel backs away. An illusion of a young child chasing a rabbit is seen before she realizes she is being watched.

The image twitches trying to convey its message. "It seems I lived a happy presence for a short time. Once again my life is sent a rift in time. I am fated for the chaos that is a vampire. He will find me if I am not separated from her current being although it seems even that is too late to me. If Alice dies the vorpal blade will turn to Edwin who discovered the magic contained in its pages of my book. If she is tranced then she will become his sheath, she will bring forth literally the hands of destruction, your books of fairy cannot stop them."  Alice explains breaking up. "There is one way though..."

Alice stopped glowing. The image stops and disappears. "His name is Edwin? That midget is named Edwin." Clarence growled to himself. Steel felt something tug her long gown. A golden rabbit giving her a large watch with a key attached to a chain swinging to the side.

"Protect your reality with this. You will know when it's time. Do not use it till then." The rabbit asks. "It is with great importance that you seek distance unless you are in danger."

"Joseph will separate Alex from Alice, but from what I gauge Alex was revived with her blood when she was still human...Let's go back Steel." Clarence suggests.

Almost every night a party has happened at Steels large compound since Alex's crew had been invited. Clarence settles Alice back into bed with Christian guarding. Opening Alex's door he is limped over the leg of Joseph.

Blood running down Alex's neck, his grip holding his arm up as though it was some forbidden love scene. Clarence swipes at Joseph almost hesitating.

Joseph dodges Clarence's attack attempt. "You dirty bastard. You snake! You never know when to call it quits. We may be able to drink from other vampires, but doesn't mean we should!" Clarence shouts.

"This is why you are only second to me. Survival is hardly on your mind. We are animals first. We wear our preys flesh on our faces. Why not utilize it, but no I am here for my toy. Isn't he a pretty little thing?" Joseph says ogling Alex's face with his long fingernails touching into his hair. "Master Edwin made him feverish with delusion so I could come in to retrieve him."

"Edwin has that ability? Who is Edwin, Joseph?" Clarence asks in shock.

"Of course, he could make you his doll if you were target. Master is amazing. Oh you look astonished." Joseph replies licking his fangs.  Walking over to Joseph he grabbed his arm pulling Alex from his arms.

"How the hell do you reverse the fever curse?" Clarence demands fed up.

"Like I would ever tell you how to reserve the fever curse, all you do is bust in on my fun." Joseph responds while climbing out the window. "For another time I suppose."

Clarence sighs deeply placing Alex back on the bed. He makes sure to secure the lock on the window and close the curtains. He sits there with his hands on knees looking down. He notices Alex's book tipped off the shelf partially opened.

He tosses the book on the ground. "Vepar, I need your help. It's Alex. The witch of the mountain is dead so I cannot ask her what is wrong with him. His eyes are open and his fever is persistent. I offer you my blood as right now there is nothing more I have." Clarence said shaking, but the book stays un-summoned on the ground. "It's probably due to the fact I am tired right now..." Clarence says to him falling asleep next to Alex on the floor.

In the morning he feels a hand on his shoulder. He clutches the hand slowly waking and groggy.

"Thank you Clarence. I will take it from here so you can rest." He says smiling.

"The spell broke? How are you awake?" Clarence asks weakly.

"Vepar came to me in a dream, he told me I need to wake up. I need to protect Alice and Christian. I can't do it sleeping. He gave me back my energy, but he also told me you called him. So I thank you." Alex praises.

"I didn't have the strength to properly send you to him." Clarence responds depressed.

"But you did and he came. I am fine and that is enough. Where is Ida?" He asks.

"I am not sure...a lot has happened. You cannot let Alice out of your sight. She is the reincarnation of Alice of the book fame, with all things there is a grain of truth. Alex this is the time for you to finally become who you need to be your kin. Steel and I will be with you all the way through this. Please trust us." Clarence asks.

Alex goes to change into his normal clothes then meet Clarence out to check on Alice. Christian and Mars are talking side by side. They find they made fast friends. Steel came to drag away Alex to hand him the pocket watch.

"You need to stay here till this whole thing blows over. They want to try to get you all apart. We can help protect you. Alice will probably be lured with illusions more and more plus I am pretty sure Clarence wants to level the playing field with Edwin and Joseph." Steel confines.

"That guy's name is Edwin? I felt he was an old soul. He wanted to kill me, but he said if I don't kill him, he will kill me, but Joseph wants me as a play thing. I thought I was going to die earlier if Clarence didn't come when he did." Alex explains trying to relax.

"Joseph is not your usual fighter Alex." Clarence states. "We grew up in the same space at one time. We mutated due to both being experimented on by human captors so it's not exactly coincidence that we share the same ability. He killed our captor trying to save a female companion, but she bled out a painful death. We all bonded those days."

"I wondered how you two have similar abilities. It feels like your fangs are more jagged." Alex points out.

"We were given implants to apparently latch better. Joseph broke through his chains to rescue her, but instead when he realized it was fruitless and toe his throat out in an adrenaline fit of rage. We parted ways only to find each other again..." Clarence reveals.

Steel stood silent reminiscing when she met Clarence one rainy day. He lay defeated on the ground broken and bleeding after Steel dispersed the group who was beating him up. Cleaning him up she realized how gorgeous he was. They shared their first laugh when he temporally had to wear an eye patch.

"Stop Clarence, it's okay, You have a home now. No need to explain yourself when you owe none." Steel responds blushing grabbing his shirt.

"He deserves to know what Joseph is. He is specially aiming his sights on Alex while Edwin is going for Alice. This is their own war, but the main problem is Edwin..." Clarence expresses biting the nail on his thumb. "Is he a vampire?"

The small room they were in seemly became large like they stood in the middle of a vast amount of stars that starts to move around center of them. Shooting stars fly past them. Clarence clutches Steel firmly by the shoulders. Alex goes on defense like a cat on all fours.

"I can find you from anywhere in the world if I wanted." Edwin cautions walking into the room in front of them.

"Bastard..." Alex growls under his breath. Edwin snaps Alex goes limp once again with fever curse Steel kneels down clinging to Alex.  

"Do you think you really can mess with me?" He threatens snapping again bringing Alex out of it. He looks up perplexed. His mind foggy with hopelessness as Edwin walks over to him face to face. Edwin once again snaps displaying everyone lying on the ground appearing to be passed out.  

Alice displayed on her bed. Her arms to her side like she is sleeping beauty; her eyes flutter open. "You know how easy this is for me?" He counters taking her hand gently. She gets up and does a twirl as they start to dance. He sways back and forth with her as the two are slowly entangled in each other's emotions. She smiles gingerly stepping side to side.

The two simply enjoying a dance, Clarence starts to feel sick when Joseph wraps a metal shackle around his neck pulling him back from Steel who shouts all the while Edwin continues to promenade with Alice who seems to not be able to acknowledge anyone else there.

When Alex pulls out the large stop watch about to use it when Edwin stops, Alice's gaze on Alex when the reflection of the watch hit her eyes. She seemed to be able to melt the illusion without Alex needing to open it.

Everything stops Clarence, Steel and Alex alone in the room again. The house where all should be; Clarence runs into the room where Alice is, she is sitting up. The expression on her face terrified filled with sweat looking up at him in awe. Christian and Mars unaware of the occurrence ever happened or that something even materialized.

"Are you okay Clarence? Alex? Steel?" Mars asks confused. Who follows close behind.

"Can we talk to Alice? We will call you back later I promise. Take a break." Clarence said nervously showed them out. His legs felt like jelly registering what happened by touching his neck lightly.

Alice glimpses at everyone in the room. Bringing her legs up to her chest to hug them warily, Alex unsure of what to say looks away.

"Do you know Edwin? Did you not see us?" Steel picked at Alice's brain.

"I did not. That watch brings back memories I know aren't from this time in current reality. Edwin is a reincarnated member of Wonderland. He is the cat...ageless, timeless. He was brought back as a human child. I didn't know his life would come into despair his first incarnation. I could see his life before my eyes when that watch came into my vision. I realized I was under control as soon as the light hit my eyes." Alice illustrated. "I don't think he wanted me to know who he was. He was turned on accident instead was left for dead."

"Not everyone wants to turn..." Alex forlornly thinks a loud.

"I don't regret turning. Alex we came from the same fold. We know we would not have survived if we didn't take that offer. Those winters were brutal. Keeping dinner on the table was scarce." Steel proclaims.

"But Edwin was a child. Not even proper age to give his life." Alex argued to Steel. "We gave them permission and they gave the question of immortality to weigh on."

Steel huffs clasping her hands together behind her back, Alice gets up from the bed taking off the night gown off in front of the others popping on an oversized soft brown sweater and jeans; Alex and Clarence ashamed looked away.

"I am not that Alice anymore. Yet seems to him I will be till we finish him off. He didn't know even know his past till he opened the limitless book at akashic records is when he opened the great seal in his life. His hair stained white over the beautiful brunette hair he previously had." Alice once again spelling out Edwin's life at the moment pushing on brown ballet flats.

"Becoming a vampire opened his intelligence and ego. His inhumanity would set him apart from other vampires I am sure, but why this quest to take his role back as Cheshire cat?" Clarence asks.

"I did not view that. Only his suffering spoke to me. He saw deeply into me as well I know it. He is going to use it none the less. He is looking to get revenge for his humble life destroyed by bandit vampires who killed his parents and little sister. I want to visit their grave outside of town." Alice responds concerned.

Alex grabs her arm. "You can't go alone. Did you not just see what Edwin is capable of? We will come with you." He scolds her. She takes her hand back giving a slight attitude before softening up.

"Fine, I understand." Alice replies with a sigh.

Steel hands Alice and Alex a vial of blood. "We need to keep our strength up. Remember Edwin wants the vorpal blade."

"I was listening on you guys. Please take me with you to examine the grave." Ida interrupts.  

"We know you two are behind the door already. Christian, Mars. You both need to watch the house while were gone in case something happens." Steel chides.

"It's not like we're going to fight. We need to observe a grave. This isn't a gang thing." Clarence explains slightly unsure what else to say.

Christian shrugs at Mars. The two felt they were in heaven. Steel's compound has multiple rooms dedicated to games of all sorts. A large library, a very large kitchen and dining room, ball room and many bathrooms and plethora of small rooms to bring a human as a late lunch or dinner so you need it to be.

They weren't upset at Alex despite a lot of their time ended in medical bay. They went into the dining room following behind one of Steels roommate's to make small chat. Clarence pulls the car outside.

They pile in and make it to the location not far from their place, Alice winces in pain to notice her palm is bleeding touching the grave stone. She can see images of Edwin crying hard hugging the stones.

She felt like she was being watched deep into the distance from the tree. She walks over to it looking at it. Alex points out the parallels to the famous illustration practically instantly.

Alice scowls at Alex who backs away. Joseph walks from the tree swinging his cane. "Master is in the tree, but he knew you would be here."

Edwin jumps down. He signals for Joseph's cane sword who hands it to him. Who literally takes swipes at Alice who dodges each time. She starts to get acrobatic darting each attempt before struggling to summon the vorpal blade.

He swings with more furious conviction Alice every time tries to get it right. She slides on her knees dunking the latest stroke. He sticks to his stance. Both are un-moving.

"You were just a child. You need to move past this already." Alice shouts.

"You think it's just about that?" Edwin laughs. Getting off her he drops the sword. Motionless in the position after, Alice alert moves to the side. "Stay out of my mind if you plan to live any longer then I will allow."

Alice pulls the sword from her chest. "Mirage of memories!" She howled the energy seemed to blow her into the trunk of tree dropping sword. Every one blasted to the ground, Alice is able to retrieve it before Edwin could.

Joseph picks Edwin up. "Nothing happened?" Edwin bleeding from the head semi-conscious rubs his face trying to view at the scene.

Alex holding his head while helping Steel up, Clarence couldn't find Ida. "Something is wrong..." Clarence announces.

Looking around everyone could see no differences. Alice stood stationary. Her hair grew longer her appearance shifted to a different face and she was shorter. Visually Victorian holding the sword to the side walking over to Edwin about to give it to him when Clarence not thinking properly decided to take his knuckle and beat her in the face; she turned to him shocked.

"What did you do that for? It is the Cheshire Cat." She replies about in tears.

"I am so sorry Ms. I thought you were someone else and unreasonably hit you." He says offering her his handkerchief since he grazed her face with his ring.

Edwin leaped from Joseph's arm. "You are Alice? Do you remember me?" He inserts himself between Clarence and Alice.

"Of course I do. Why would I have forgotten?" Alice questions.

Alex checks the watch when he hears inside like a tapping to an image etched like Ida inside. He clicks the stopper. Alice faints in Steels arms releasing Ida back into this realm.

"Where the hell was I?" Ida wonders. "I am pretty sure it weren't in heaven. I was small in a large bottle. A lady smiled at me, but I think she knows whatever is going on."

Steel fanning Alice with her hand apprehensive of the situation, Edwin still not understanding so he paces in front of them all when Ida attacks him head first. "Long time no see. Of course you would go with Alex to get revenge."

He tosses her to the ground with almost no energy at all. "What are you?" She asks.

"An inter-dimensional vampire, this is no time to getting on my nerves." Edwin said wiping his shoulders insultingly. "Why did she use that spell? It seems to bring back literally a memory of her former self, but proves she is indeed the reincarnation. She saw me as the cat when that cat has been dead for millions of years now, but means..." Edwin stops freezing.

"Master Edwin?" Joseph asks.

"Why would she try to give me the sword? Can she not feel my aura?" Edwin says visibly trying to hold back tears. He wipes them quickly to instruct Joseph. "Think fast Alex"

Edwin snaps his fingers sticking Alex under the fever curse. Joseph punches Steel in the gut taking Alice from her arms swiftly also grabbing Alex. Clarence catches Steel who is bending forward despite the massive hit she took. Ida moves back uncertain how to go forward.

Alex had dropped the watch from earlier. Clarence makes his way to retrieve it. "I hope Vepar watches over Alex...at least till we find them."

"He is going to turn Alice into the sheath. We have to find her or were all in danger. He is seriously mentally imbalanced. He feels every vampire has done him wrong it seems." Steel states winded.

"Humankind is also his enemy at this point..." Clarence says feeling past hope. Ida also gets the impression that is not a simple task.

"He feels more like a God then a vampire. He is almost impossible to fight. He snaps and he turn us inside out..." Ida responds wistfully looking to Clarence and Steel. "I feel like giving up..."

"If we give up and were screwed when Edwin literally sends the hands of destruction our way, we need to regroup with Christian and Mars and figure it out from there." Clarence affirms. "If Edwin wants a battle then we will give him one."

"Darling, aren't we getting ahead of ourselves with this one?" Steel says disheartened.

The silence felt deafening when Clarence put his hands on Ida and Steel. "Look we are way in way over our head, but we have a unique team here.  We better head back please trust me. After all...I am a vampire's vampire." Clarence says with a smirk. "I am only the one fit to get rid of Joseph..."

https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/269037735/write/1067804352 Please support my works at wattpad if you like my works~

[dakotaissorandom]

Finding The Best Place to Order Kratom Online

Philippa's drug problems started after she injured her arm and was asked by her doctor to apply for leave from work. However, she was scared of losing her job if she took leave of absence. She was also suspicious about using painkiller Vicodin which is an opioid agonist, so she started taking Suboxone, a partial antagonist associated with lesser risks of abuse. After a few months passed, Philippa noticed that she did not feel alright on the days she did not take the drug.Do you want to learn more? Visit can i order kratom online if i live in alabama.

At her wit's end, Philippa decided to find means to end the drug habit. She was told that kratom, a plant-based supplement, was a good bet. Most of the online reviews that she had read about kratom were positive. They mentioned that the drug was harmless and non-addictive. So she ordered the drug online. In the beginning, it was smooth sailing, but soon Philippa realized that every time she missed a dose, she would have a serious panic attacks and profuse sweating.

Many like Philippa believe that kratom is harmless. But it is not. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a stern warning about the drug on its website. It has advised that kratom is not to be used for treating medical conditions. It has also warned against using it as an alternative to the available prescription opioids. The most recent FDA warning about the drug came in February saying it was illogical to consider the drug as benign just because it came from a plant.

On the basis of an investigative report on CBS 17, which cited several drug-related deaths with kratom in their system, the herbal supplement was treated on a par with opioids. In response, five American states have banned the drug.

Here are some reasons why kratom is emerging as a drug of concern:

Denial of the condition: Most people who have been abusing kratom for long refuse to accept their dependence on it. Even if they cannot function properly without the drug and feel anxious and stressed out, they keep lying to themselves about the condition. Their plight is similar to those addicted on other substances. They refuse to attend rehabilitation as they are under the impression that they are okay.

High risks of abuse and addiction: Kratom is associated with high risks of abuse, dependency and addiction. As it is a stimulant, it is common for the person consuming it to feel euphoric, energetic and revitalize. However, the euphoric phase does not last long. Once the effect of the drug wears off, the individual starts suffering from anxiety. He/she also experiences painful withdrawal. Soon the drug becomes vital for survival. As kratom is expensive, it depletes the individual's savings, forcing them to switch to the cheaper options.

Painful withdrawal: People who use the drug could suffer from serious side effects, such as muscle and bone pain, fatigue, tremors, mood swings and irritability. In some instances, more powerful withdrawal symptoms, such as hallucinations, delusions, and confusion could be experienced. Symptoms like depression, anxiety, insomnia are also common. Therefore, with drugs like kratom, quitting cold turkey is never recommended. Instead, one should visit an accredited rehabilitation center for detoxification and cure under medical supervision.

Possibility of negative impact with other drugs: Though the jury is still out, the probability of kratom reacting with other drugs and causing adverse reactions is quite high.

Detox - first step towards addiction treatment

Persistent use of any drug can result in dependence. If you or a loved one is doing drugs, help must be sought from a trusted and accredited medical rehabilitation facility. Addiction is a scourge and chronic addiction can be fatal. Nevertheless, it is not the end of the world for a person battling an addiction to opioids. With timely medical intervention, it is possible to recover fully and live a healthy and productive life as before.

[izzyovercoffee]

RepComm for the fandom meme

send me a fandom and I’ll — meme

softly, with a lot of feeling: I’ve been waiting for this moment.

lmaoo not really but yes, yes really. I am here and I am ready for this. 

Thank you for sending this B’)

Republic Commando

the character i least understand

Karen “What Is Abuse I Don’t Know Her″ Traviss

Ko Sai. I think, for the most part, she was written with very alien motivations, and it was fairly successful, at least in conveying that it was difficult if not impossible to relate with her on any level. 

I’m sure if I spent more time thinking and writing about her I could maybe attempt to understand her character … but for the most part I don’t really “get” her, and I think that’s the point.

interactions i enjoyed the most

Mereel and Ordo are endlessly entertaining. 

Any of the Nulls together, individually or clusters or all six in one room.

Mereel and Etain have had some very, very touching, emotionally deep moments — the kinds of scenes KT generally doesn’t allow any of her characters to have between two characters that aren’t romantically involved.

tbh this list is gonna be very long so to sum up: everyone with everyone else, when they’re allowed to be individual characters with separate personalities and motivations recognized, instead of twisted into very specific moral representations that KT pushes towards the end.

the character who scares me the most

Walon Vau is reasonably frightening, though really he should be. He is about as cold blooded of a killer as you’re going to get, and he doesn’t make threats, he makes promises. B’) 

Plus he’s also very difficult to get into the mental space to write, because he’s a legitimate Bad Person, and trying to write characters like him can be difficult.

it’s also a good idea to maintain a healthy fear of the nulls, if only out of respect of their potential for sudden and extreme violence. They’re not as “unpredictable” as the text says, though.

the character who is mostly like me

mmm … actually, I’m gonna go with Kal. this is probably gonna garner some “whaaat? but you HATE him?” 

Yes, I do hate him. but let me list some similarities lmao:

perpetual limp due to a bad ankle and persistent injury that never healed right / properly (partially kept as a constant reminder for a mistake)

short and angry, like all the time

compartmentalize everything and everyone

obsessive about caring for and protecting family, literally does everything for family

extremely secretive, to the point of never telling anyone the full story or full truth, everyone just get bits and pieces that seem complete. no one ever seems to realize this.

self sacrificing to the point of martyrdom, especially for family

these are all pretty negative, but … unlike Kal, I am actually self aware lmao and am working on these things, and have for the most part listened when other people criticize me so that I can continue to work on being better. it’s a daily process, you know, so I don’t hurt the family I care so much about.

Kal starts off terrible, and the writing implies that he might learn from it … but then instead of him learning and growing like everyone needs him to, the narrative instead makes excuses for him, everyone suffers, and Etain dies.

it’s unfortunate bc people like him exist, and you can’t coddle them if you want them to survive life. and yet everyone coddles Kal. Fandom, in general, coddles and makes excuses for abusive men. Full stop.

but like, here’s the thing:

He is a grown man. He is not a child. Don’t treat him like one.

I hate him partially bc the entire fandom excuses his behavior when it is, ultimately, inexcusable. He is not a child. He is a man, who has undertaken a huge group of extremely vulnerable people under his care, and he ultimately hurts them all. Severely. And TBH Kal deserves better than to be coddled and all his boo-boos kissed away by a fandom who says they care about the rest of the clan, but cannot see the sheer world-shattering damage Kal committed on them, regardless of intention. 

You can like a character, and still hold them accountable. Fandom, somehow, seems incapable of this level of nuance, especially if they’re a father and shown as sympathetic in any way.

hottest looks character

Mereel, obviously. lmao

No but like, consider: he dyes his hair (and his skin, and his eyes) and has a full wardrobe for all situations. 

He’s the (Daniel Craig) James Bond of the Grand Army of the Republic.

But I also headcanon Jilka and Besany to be incredibly fashion forward. Besany usually embodying the Career Professional woman, with very sharp, very perfectly tailored outfits that allow no room for nonsense.

Jilka also perfectly tailored, though her wardrobe is potentially more fun, visually, and incredibly flattering in all the right ways — but still very sharp, and very much professional when necessary.

one thing i dislike about my fave character

Mereel, light of my life, sun of my sky, salve of my wounded and broken heart, peace at the eye of my storm …

why are you like this?

lmao. On a more serious note, I can’t outright say I dislike anything about Mereel, but his inability to share what really goes on in his head with … well, anyone. The only time we see a truthful admittance to weakness is that single moment with Etain, when he admits that he’s still human. That he’s not perfect.

Every other time, and I know I say this a lot, but every other time … he deflects any serious conversation with a joke — and usually a joke that the speaker wants to hear (even if they don’t know they want to hear it). He doesn’t let anyone in, not even his brothers, and that’s … got to be a lonely sort of suffering. 

The kind of internalized suffering I’m sure he’s learned from Kal, both in the how to do it, and the reason he does it. bc Kal does internalize a lot of his suffering and doesn’t share it, burying weakness while in the same breath saying that he’s experiencing it and letting it go. He doesn’t, it’s just a different sort of self-delusion and deflection, and Mereel echoes it to a painful degree.

And then, of course, there’s Mereel learning that he needs to do it, bc Kal only accepts a certain kind of visual presence of mental illness and suffering, otherwise the person is “damaged” in some way and will never be “okay” for whatever understanding Kal has given okay. (view, for example, how he sees Ordo vs how he sees Mereel. He sees Mereel as stable, bc Mereel is extroverted, outgoing, and “always positive.” It’s not something intentional, but it’s still damaging, to all parties.)

one thing i like about my hated character

I might hate Kal Skirata, but I also love him. He’s a fantastic character. He is so so so flawed. His flaws make him interesting, and he tries. He tries so hard. He cares so much. He cares too much, even. His dedication and his love for his family are all encompassing, to the point that he can even be blinded to their faults because he loves so strongly.

But that love is a sword. One might even say it’s a triple-edged blade.

Love, as bright and fierce and consuming as it is, does not make someone right. It does not make their actions excusable when it leads to hurt, or even someone dying needlessly. It does not make one’s choices correct.

Love does not excuse abuse. And I really wish fandom would, at the very least, make the attempt to understand that.

a quote or scene that haunts me

Yes, I know how the Kaminoans did it. They used our genes against us, the ones that make us bond with our brothers, make us loyal, make us respect and obey our fathers—that’s what they manipulated to make us more likely to obey orders. They had to remove what made Jango a selfish loner, because that makes a bad infantry soldier, and you can tell from the Alpha ARCs that the Kaminoans weren’t wrong. But there’s one thing I don’t know yet—and that’s how they controlled the aging process. That’s the key. They robbed us of a full life span. But we will not be defeated by time, ner vod.

—ARC Trooper Lieutenant N-7—Mereel—in an encrypted transmission to Captain N-11, Ordo

a death that left me indifferent

mmm, Sev, actually. Like, in the game? I went through the whole grieving process after I finished Republic Commando. 

The way it was written? idk. It did nothing for me.

This probably is an unpopular opinion lmao but honestly, that scene? did not hit me anywhere. it just kinda left a bad taste in my mouth … much like Etain’s scene, except that I was actually pissed off about Etain lmao to the point that I still rant about it bc of how little sense it made.

a character i wish died but didn’t

I mean I could go the obvious route and say Kal, but I actually don’t wish Kal died. I just wish he’d learn from his mistakes and people would point out how he’s hurting his family lmao?

who do I actually wish died? any of the nulls, even if they don’t die die. They’re presented as these entirely Untouchable cast, to the point that no one really expect any of the Nulls to so much as get a paper cut — because how can they? they’re presented as close to perfect (obviously not in the mental illness department, but they do inhabit this space of being invincible).

and for any of them, even temporarily, to die would have had incredible emotional impact — moreso than Etain’s. It would’ve really brought home the threat on all their lives in a way that Etain’s death could never convey. 

but I’m asking nuance of a writer who clearly overwhelmed herself with a cast much larger than she could handle in writing, and who started all these incredible thematic arcs only to abandon them, forgotten, over the course of the series.

my ship that never sailed

I have a lot of ships, tbh, but it’s kinda like … weird? to talk about? as if I expected them to sail and then they just simply didn’t. 

I don’t have any ships that I expected to happen or be recognized and simply didn’t. I mean … Fi read as if closeted, so I was kind of hoping he would maybe realize he was attracted to men, but then of course he was paired off with his caretaker, and my god there are so many consent problems with that. 

[itleaning]

How To Navigate The 5 Stages Of Intimacy

We all want real, lasting love, whether we are in our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or beyond. Yet too many marriages disintegrate and most of the people don’t know why. They mistakenly believe that they need to choose the incorrect partner. After browsing the grieving process, they begin looking again. But after quite forty years as a wedding and family counselor I even have found that the majority of people are trying to find love altogether the incorrect places. They don’t understand that Stage 3 isn't the top, but the important beginning for achieving real, lasting love:

Stage 1: Falling crazy Stage 2: Becoming a few Stage 3: Disillusionment Stage 4: Creating Real, Lasting Love Stage 5: Using the facility of Two to vary the planet

Stage 1: Falling crazy

Falling crazy is nature’s trick to urge humans to select a mate so that our species carries on. It feels so wonderful because we are awash in hormones like dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, testosterone, and estrogen. Falling crazy also feels great because we project all our hopes and dreams of our lover. We imagine that they're going to fulfill our desires, give us all the items we didn’t get as children, deliver on all the guarantees our earlier relationships did not fulfill. We are sure we'll remain crazy forever. and since we are besotted with “love hormones,” we’re not conscious of any of this.

When we’re crazy, we dismiss naysayers like curmudgeon George Bernard Shaw who cautioned:

“When two people are under the influence of the foremost violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they're required to swear that they're going to remain therein excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”

Stage 2: Becoming a few

At this stage our love deepens and that we join together as a few. this is often a time once we have children and lift them. If we’re past the child-rearing stage, it’s the time when our couple bond deepens and develops. It’s a time of togetherness and joy. We learn what the opposite person likes and that we expand our individual lives to start developing a lifetime of “the two folks .”

During this phase we experience less of the falling head-over-heels “in love” feelings. We feel more bonded with our partners. We feel warm and cuddly. The sex might not be as wild, but it’s deeply satisfying. We feel safe, cared for, cherished, and appreciated. We feel close and guarded. we frequently think this is often the last word level of affection and that we expect it to travel on forever. We are often blind-sided by the turn-around of stage 3.

Stage 3: Disillusionment

No one told us about Stage 3 in understanding love and marriage. Stage 3 is where my first two marriages collapsed and for too many relationships this is often the start of the top. this is often a period where things begin to feel bad. It can occur slowly or can desire a switch is flipped and everything goes wrong. Little things begin to bother us. We feel less loved and cared for. We feel trapped and need to flee.

We become more irritable and angry or hurt and withdrawn. We may stay busy at work or with the family, but the dissatisfactions mount. We wonder where the person we once loved has gone. We long for the love we once had, but we don’t know where it went or the way to catch on back. One of the opposite partners wants out or sometimes people continue “existing together,” but without really feeling intimate.

This is a time we frequently get sick in body, mind, and soul. In our marriage, Carlin and that I both began having problems with our hearts (heartache?) and were diagnosed with fibrillation. I started having serious problems with erections. To be truthful, there have been times when it had been miserable, and that we both considered leaving the connection.

But we didn’t hand over, we kept going. There’s an adage, “When you’re browsing hell, don’t stop.” This seems to be true of this stage of life. The positive side of Stage 3 is that the warmth burns away tons of our illusions about ourselves and our partner. we've got a chance to become more loving and appreciate the person we are with, not the projections we had placed on them as our “ideal mate.”

Carlin and that I have now been together over thirty-five years. We’ve moved into subsequent stages of affection and feel blessed to possess learned the talents for negotiating the stage of disillusionment and may truly enjoy the later stages of affection.

Stage 4: Creating Real, Lasting Love

One of the gifts of confronting the unhappiness in Stage 3 is we will get to the core of what causes the pain and conflict. Like most of the people, Carlin and that i grew up in dysfunctional families. Both my father and mother suffered from depression and my Dad tried to require his own life once I was five years old. Carlin’s father was an angry, violent man. Her mother left him to guard herself and her daughter. We all have wounds and therefore the wounds need healing if we’re to possess a relationship that's real and loving.

Ongoing research from The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study demonstrates conclusively that childhood trauma can impact our physical, emotional, and relational health. For the primary time, I made the connection between my father’s attempted suicide once I was five and my adult depression and male erecticle dysfunction.

Carlin and that i learned to be allies in helping one another understand and heal our wounds. As we began to heal, the love and laughter we thought we had lost began to flow again. We began to ascertain one another as wonderful beings who had suffered greatly within the past and had close to like one another and help heal our old wounds from childhood.

There’s nothing more satisfying than being with a partner who sees you and loves you for who you're. They understand that your hurtful behavior isn't because you're mean and unloving, but because you've got been wounded within the past and therefore the past still lives with you. As we better understand and accept our partner, we will learn to like ourselves ever more deeply.

Stage 5: Using the facility of Two to vary the planet

No one has got to remind us that the planet isn't doing too well. There are continuous wars and conflicts. Racial violence seems to be everywhere. We ponder whether humans can survive. I wondered, “If we can’t even find peace between two people that love one another, what chance can we need to create a world which will work for all its peoples?”

But now I check out the flip side of that question. If we will learn to beat our differences and find real, lasting love in our relationships, perhaps we will work together to seek out real, lasting love within the world.

I believe that each couple has a chance to use the “power of two” to deal with some aspect of the world’s problems that touch their lives. Carlin and that i are particularly tuned to issues that face men and ladies at midlife. We are writing a book, You Two: Renewing Your Mid-Life Marriage for Real Lasting Love. If you’d like more information about our work, please subscribe to my weekly newsletter below. you'll also view more articles on my blog.

We’re also curious about your journey. Please share your own experiences on the trail of real, lasting love. Together we will make a difference within the world.

If you’d wish to dig even deeper, I wrote a whole book about the 5 Stages of affection that you simply can download instantly. Learn more and obtain yours now.

[drlindamurraytenacity-blog]

Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories and false naming of real events . . .Adrian Richt . . sp

In the Beginning----I started life in a small place called 'Bridge of Allan' in Scotland June 20th  1956. My parents were Margaret Joy Latimer (suicide at 27) and Derek Andrew James M. Apparently, my birth was very difficult and my father told me, much later in life, that they did not think I was going to make it. My mother suffered from some form of toxaemia possibly due to Rh difficulties which were also going to also impact me. This information is sketchy since my father was the only source of this information and he wasn't talking. My father told me much later in life that it was touch-and-go for a while for both of us. I wasn't named until it was clear that I was going to survive. My mother was apparently warned about having other children. Yet, she gave birth to Desmond Thomas in September 15th 1957 (committed suicide when 20) and another boy Kevin on June 20th  1960 (attempted suicide at 23). When they came home with the baby, Kevin Derek my mother handed me the baby and told me that since he was born on my birthday, “he was my birthday present and my responsibility.” I remember this scene so clearly, I actually remember where I was standing in the home and where my father was standing to my mother’s left and to my right. I took my responsibility very seriously. I could, and did, warm bottles, changed nappies [diapers], and washed dishes by the time I was five years old. It was like at five years old I became my brother’s keeper and a mother all in one. Desmond at this time was three years old. My mother was sad a lot and cried all the time. It was the beginning of the 1960s. But, then there was very little they could do for serious depressive mood disorders.

“When truth is buried, it grows, it chokes, it gathers such an explosive force, that on the day it bursts out, it blows out everything with it”....... Neil Zola....(sp)

“Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive, easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.” . . . Henry Peter Brougham

The Slap-----I am not sure exactly when this event occurred but it was before I turned five years old and while my mother was alive. We were sitting in her and dad's bedroom facing the mirrored chest of drawers opposite the bedroom door. My mother was crying, but I can’t remember why. My father came into the room and they were arguing. I don't know about what. He slapped her on the face and I charged at him. He picked me up and threw me down on the bed. He later denied ever hitting her or throwing me on the bed. But if his version is the truth, why are my memories, even now, are so clear and vivid? I remember after he left that we both sat on the edge of the bed crying, me on her left side. I was on her right when he hit her. We sat and cried together. My mother cried a lot. I was very upset and to help me feel better she pulled out a small ivory-covered jewellery music box and she opened it up, up popped a small ballerina who turned to the music. Both of us sat there and cried for a long time and she had her arm around my shoulder. I have chosen to believe my version of the events that day. Part of the reason for this was my father, when I was 15, offered me a choice of two jewellery boxes, a larger wooden one and a small ivory-covered  one. I picked the ivory music box and I told him at the time that I knew it had belonged to my mother, the other was his mothers. I asked what had happened to the ballerina in the white tutu. The box was still lined with the blue velvet I had remembered.

My Father’s Father----Apparently my father’s father was a lingerie sales man. I thought that he was some form of a carpenter for the longest time. I know nothing of my father’s family or his history. I believe he told me once that he was a child born late in his parents’ lives and when they died he was cared for by a much older spinster sister. To this day I know nothing of my father’s side or the mental health history that may have also been clear on his side. I do know he said he was raised by his much older sister and that his parents were not in this picture. The difficulty with trying to find out where mental illness originated in genes is often compounded by secrecy and missing relatives. In our family, it was clear that there was mental illness on my mother’s side from my mother and maternal grandfather. But this does not explain why ALL three of us siblings were mentally ill. To have this high a prevalence rate in three related siblings clearly indicated a dominant gene or recessive gene combination problem of some sort.  Given this, I’m almost certain, that there was at least one-person who was not well on my father’s side of the family and could have been the source of the genetic ‘double whammy’. But I’m only guessing, however by now, it is a very well educated guess at this point. Having a hundred percent prevalence rate and, as of the date of this writing, a fifty percent mortality rate, it is clear that there must have been something wrong on both sides of the family. The risk should been, according to published medical information in 1995, less than % 30. The only logical explanation I have arrived at is mental illness in both sides of the genetic pools.

“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely as you wish to forget it”-----Michele DeMontagn . . .sp

The Cat in The Hat------Another memory of my mother while she was alive, was her teaching me how to read a Dr. Seuss book called “The Cat in The Hat” and sing Frere Jacques. You start grade one in Scotland when you are five years old. By that time I could read this book almost from memory. I have never had the chance to thank her for my love of reading or anything else for that matter. I read a lot now and always have, mostly text books and journal articles and anything else I get my hands on. Unfortunately, I was not able to gain as much understanding of what I was reading by every one else. I needed to read something about 4 times to get out of it a good reader who only required one reading, My reading helped me escape from life when I was a child. I still use it to help me through the rough times. I don't know what happened to the original copy of the book. It was probably thrown out like everything else was when we moved to Canada when I was eight and a half. In my 59th year I  purchased a new copy to keep as a reminder keepsake. It is not the original but that is not the important part of the memory.

Sheets - - I have a very clear memory of playing in a fort made of bed sheets in the back yard. The sheets were yellow or white and they were hanging on the clothesline. But they made a magical place inside the fort. I do not know why this was important. I don’t know why this memory came into the fore front of my memory. I do know I still had my mother and thee safety of the sheets I can remember the feeling but I remember the feeling of safety and warm.

Wanting to Be Dead-----When my mother died I was devastated. I hurt so badly. I wanted the pain to stop. This is the kind of pain that is unbearable. This kind of trauma for anyone is hard. But when you are 5, I don't know if you ever recover. I think that the feeling of abandonment never leaves you. Apparently this is common. The trauma and loss never heals. It hasn't left me. I believe that it may be pushed below the surface but it never leaves. It seems to be just under the surface all the time. There is, I have discovered, a difference in wanting no longer to be in pain and truly wanting to be dead. Many professionals believe that mood disorders erupt in the late teens and early 20s mine clearly started with early symptoms, at least when my mother died. The kind of pain I felt was physical and emotional in the depth of my being. I know crying about it hurt my father so I only cried at night or when I was alone. All three of us kids were in the same room at night so I had to be quiet so I wouldn't wake my brothers. Desmond was in the lower bunk and Kevin was in the crib. My father heard me crying one night and came into the room. He told me that he was sad too but we couldn't be with her anymore. Even as a five-year-old I knew my crying was making things worse for my father. So I had to stop. I learned to hurt in quiet. He said I had to keep quiet or I would wake up my brothers. I was screaming in pain inside. My entire being was in pain and it almost never left me. I tried not to grieve publicly and to keep this pain inside along with the anger. Yes, I was angry too. I think. I wanted to die, but I couldn't. I had responsibilities too. I was responsible for my father’s hurting and my older brother’s sleeping, my younger brothers hurting. Kevin was going to depend on me now. He was my ‘birthday present’ and I would have to stay alive to take care of him. I had promised my mother. Now, when I think of the pain I was in I realize that I was depressed then. I was five, and I truly wanted to be dead.

“Children begin by loving their parents, as they grow older, they judge them. Sometimes they forgive them” . . . Oscar Wild

logic will get you from a to b but imagination takes you everywhere . . . Albert Einstein

Chips and Babies ----A clear memory of my mother was when she fed my baby brother Kevin ‘chips’. Chips are what we now call french fries in Canada. Back then, we made them at home and deep fried them in the ‘chip pot’ using slices of potatoes we cut into ribbons. When she gave them to the baby and us, she would bite the ends off all of them. I asked her once why she did that. She explained that she did it for two reasons. The first was to make sure that all of the sharp points were removed so we would not hurt our throats. The second reason was to make sure that none of them were too hot for us. She told me that it was important to remember not to feed little children like Kevin chips with sharp ends on them. Was this another attempt at preparing me for what was to come? It felt weird at the time and the memory is very vivid I can even remember where I was sitting at the table in the dining area. This memory is also rather interesting. As I write it, I realize that I like the sharp ends. Today whenever I eat chips I pick through the pile to find all of the crispy ones. I have never tied this together before now.

Swinging While We Walked----I have a clear picture of my mother and my Aunt Joan one day. We were going down the sidewalk to a larger department store. We were walking to the left of my gran’s store and I remember going into a large store with big red letters for its name. I think we were getting things ready for my Aunt’s marriage. My mother was on my right side and my aunt was on my left side and they had both of my hands. They would go 1-2-3 than pick me up by my hands or arms and swing me into the air. Every time I see parents do this with their children I see the picture and almost feel the experience. I’ve never forgotten this. It is weird what you remember of a very fragmented past. When I did some searching in Edinburgh on our 2001 visit to Scotland I could only find birth records that did not include my Aunt Joan being born to the Latimer’s. I have to do more research into the missing records

Snow-----I remember the fist time I saw snow. It is so clear. I was sitting in this great big armchair positioned at the picture window in the livingroom. My mother was on my right but I don't remember my brothers being there. She explained that we were so lucky to get snow at Christmas time. I sat there forever watching it all fall and felt warm and loved as she sat with me. Apparently, snow in the lower altitude places in Scotland was rare. I only remember this time and I shared it with my mother. I knew that she loved me but I don’t hear I love you all the time and I did not hear it from my father. It seemed like my grandfather was the only person who said I love YOU to me.

[femininesuperpowers-blog]

Other Mothers - When Mother’s Day isn’t all Roses and Thornton’s

Barely done with counting coffers from Valentine’s Day, florists and chocolatiers eagerly rub hands with commercial glee as they reliably entice us to consider Mother. For some that very word create shivers of fear and dread.  Too many people experience Mothering Sunday not as a delightful excuse to push aside life’s endless commitments and make Mum a priority on this special date.  Nor to engage in the pressure to pamper and spoil the woman whose tummy you ruined and life you changed immeasurably. 

 In return for her undying love, patience and maternal knowing the lucky ones take this sacred Sunday to honour this marvellous woman!  

 What happens to the 40% fencing with painful truths they manage to conceal for much of the year? Feeling confused and bemused at the treatment they endured at the hands of their Mother, the less fortunate awkwardly go through the motions whilst burying the resentment and feeling of worthlessness beneath other layer of obligation driven by the age-old need to be ’good and deserving’.  No-matter how many years we’ve clocked up, we’re always our mother’s child.  Burying devastating truths, deep scars and pain, along with a whole heap of unwanted emotions.  The injustice can be hard to fathom or process, which is why the majority settle for a life of turmoil and heartache.  

 What are we supposed to do with the deep burning rage within, nobody taught us how to take care of ourselves, much less self soothe and learn from our emotions.  The danger of turning into our Mothers is real, as we get older the similarities creep in, unresolved wounding dictates our lives.

  What does it say about a person who feels disgust, sadness, fear, loathing, shame - all when it comes to their mothers?  It’s time to face the reality and ditch the Disney delusion…..Mother’s Day isn’t all Thorntons and Roses for everybody.    Actually, you may be surprised to know the Mothering stats and stigma’s.

 As a coach, I specialise in turning childhood adversity into grown-up greatness.   Often people arrive at my door only when they’ve run the full gamut of colourful self-sabotage and destruction common to people who’ve been badly treated, unloved and un-nurtured by the women who brought them into this world.  It’s a harsh world, and harsh facts borne out by The Crime Survey of England and Wales published in August 2016 by the Office of National Statistics.  Credited with being the first UK survey delving into emotional abuse.   Sadly the 40% of respondents reporting psychological abuse at the hands of their mother, as opposed to 35% from their Father, are all too familiar within the world I work.  

My own familiarity of the pain and shame of a mother who just doesn’t love you provided the Semtex.  For over two decades I have been on a relentless mission to understand this Mother dichotomy from every angle.  Clients find their way to my work by referral and understand the impact all too well of a universal taboo.    Whether it’s because your Mother can’t or she won’t love and nurture you bears little influence onto the deep damage you bear.

 Maternal love is sacred, full of myth and fuzzy pink lenses, not everybody will concur.    Mother’s Day is an opportunity to send love to those for whom the day is a cruel reminder of the love they rarely or never knew through no fault of their own.    In place of maternal connection, deep in the gut and the pit of the soul, an endless gnawing of shame and emptiness.  Motherhood has a much deserved and magical mythology running like an umbilical cord from culture to reality.     In a world where perhaps maternal abuse is truly our last bastion of hushed whispers and wagging fingers.  It is for this reason the people who suffer remain keen to defend their Mothers at any cost, including the cost of their own wellbeing and quality of life.

 How often do we explore openly and honestly the legacy of hurt caused by mean mothers, unloving mothers, non-mothers and fuck-you mothers?

 A swathe of our fellow humans are suffering in silence.  Pushing down the reality that they weren’t nurtured or protected and paying the price throughout their adult lives with poor self-care, abusive relationships and in many cases an inability to engage in a healthy love and attach securely to another human being.

 Even Walt himself colludes with our deeply entrenched ideal fantasies.  The raft of Disney movies with vivid and vile wicked mothers are…..  Step Mothers!  Even in the world of deep and dark cartoon fantasy, real mothers aren’t deemed capable of inflicting pain and suffering on their own offspring.  Without fail, it’s the new, evil wife dishing out the dirt and the damage!

 Being born to a mother who won’t, or can’t, take care of your needs creates potential for lifelong wounds.  Wounds of shame and pain, carving our adult personality and shaping our lives.   Addictions, compulsions, love intensity, love avoidance, co-dependence, disorders of every hue and every subsequent relationship - whether business, love or casual acquaintance - are forged from our maternal blue print.  Without mother love we’re rudderless and destined for a choppy ride against the rapids of life. 

 From the moment we’re born, some say conception, the mother bond teaches us how to respond and view relationships.  The blueprint is set.  So what’s so different about Mother Wounding to Dad Demons?   Both are serious, both have the staying power to ruin a life, as we hurtle from drama to depths of intensity, designed to numb the pain and shame.  

 It seems our culture dictates we can discuss anal sex on a first date, or watch a murder on TV but Non-Mothers remain our final taboo!  Try talking about your abusive or neglectful mother experience in a painful or critical way.  Often even our closest friends will run to the mother defence, unwittingly denying your experience in the process. You may even be judged for being heartless - the ungrateful child, yet again!  

 If your father was abusive, neglectful and damaging people would speak up but your mother, it’s a rare incidence where she is held accountable. So why is the mother wound so taboo?   Can you imagine the shame of having a mother who didn’t love you enough to take care of you?  Or perhaps to keep you as her child, to let you know you were wanted and special?  Imagine the impact of feeling no love from your mother.  That you were a burden, a mistake or born in some way to serve her needs.   

 Science has proven the impact of non- loving mother causes our brains to wire differently to those  who are secure with a loving, empathetic mother bond.  The legacy of feeling insecure, unlovable and damaged by a hyper aroused Fight, Flight and Freeze mechanism in the brain takes careful understanding a navigation.

 “They’re doing the best they can” I hear the rally cry.  “I don’t know why you have to poke around in this stuff, no good can come from it” is often the family anthem.  

 When a mother fails her daughter they also fail to teach her how to be a mother.  Becoming a mother when denied a maternal blue-print is a minefield. 

 Today take a moment to send love to every soul who hasn’t known a mother bond, those who felt unlovable and unwanted, unheard and unseen.   Wherever you are in life, I salute you, only you know how much it takes to overcome being unwanted and unwelcome at core.

 Walling off, numbing out, drama, chaos and addiction are all ‘normal’ responses as we unconsciously kick and scream our way away from feeling the shame and rage of rejection.  A walled heart can form to make us hard and devoid of compassion and love.  You may be a high achiever, swearing you would never have to rely on anyone for your survival.  The scars are indelible but there’s hope on the horizon.  

 Perhaps it’s you, dear reader, who know this familiar pain.  Take heart in the knowledge that you may not know how to be a mother but you do know how not to be your mother.  Take it slowly, build a deep and meaningful relationship with your own inner child. When you learn to parent yourself, you will have learned how to parent.  The wounds that are passed from generation to generation can stop with you.  Own your power, hear your inner voice and show yourself the acceptance, love and compassion you craved for.  

 And most of all, know for sure, the quality of your mothers’ love was never about you - it was about how she was able to love, attach and connect from a place of deepest humanity.  Her fractured psyche was never your fault, nor your responsibility - it’s time to own your adult power by being the Mother to your vulnerability, the mother you feared for but never had.

 Today, for Mother’s Day, take the vow to learn the impact of the mother wound and how to heal not just for you but for every generation to come.

 Michelle Zelli adopted by the age of  two, unloved by her adoptive parents, left home at 16 to channel a need to rely on nobody.  Her need to provide security for herself led her to becoming a blue-chip director in the 80’s -   Using the pain to propel her forward she became Blue Chip Sales Director and MD of the largest TV Post Production Company in the UK by the age of 43.  A woman on a mission to help others channel their mother wounding and lack of self-esteem in healthy and extraordinary ways. Michelle is a coach at the top of her game, the secret weapon to successful people who embark on the path of self-mastery.  Michelle specialises in using adversity to drive us and teaching us the magic of mother love to heal ourselves and change our legacy.

[imspardagus]

My God, my God, why have I forsaken you?

Dear God,

 I hope you don’t mind me writing to you out of the blue like this. After all, as an omniscient being, it probably isn’t out of the blue as far as you are concerned. Nothing ever can be, can it? I can’t imagine how tedious that must make eternity for you.

 The thing is, we used to be close. I thought of you as a friend, someone who understood me and was always prepared to listen. And I accept that it was I who broke it off, though you must have known it was coming. So I can see that you would be well within your rights not to bother to open this and instead just to reach for the divine delete button.

 And to be honest, I’m not coming cap in hand seeking reconciliation and forgiveness. It’s purely selfish on my part. I need to understand what happened between us. It’s been on my mind for a while but it burst to the surface just a couple of months back when one of your servants, a nice, gentle boy called John, at The Holy Trinity and St. Mary Church in Berwick, asked me whether I was an atheist from choice.

 You know how it is – well maybe you don’t – at the time I was taken off guard by his question. I had been expecting, I don’t know, perhaps a look of condescending scorn or maybe “How can you be an atheist when the wonders of God are all around you?” I’ve had both before. But his question was a genuine enquiry made as one seeker after enlightenment to another. It was that sincerity that threw me. I managed to stammer “No”.

 Later on, of course, my brain supplied the glib answer that I would have liked to hear me give: “I cannot believe in a good God and I choose not to believe in a bad one.” But even as the words dressed themselves into a neat brigade in my head, I knew I wasn’t satisfied with that. And ever since then the question has been churning in my mind. Why did I break it off with you?

 I didn’t do it to be clever, or to appear so. To that extent, my first answer to John was correct. It was not a matter of choice. Not on an intellectual level, anyway. Here, I have to go back inside the question. I have to be clear in my mind what God I am talking about. Forgive me for talking about you as if you aren’t in the room, so to speak. But you must be aware of the problem. If someone asks you “does God exist?” and you want to give serious attention to the answer, you first have to establish what the attributes of this God would be if he/she/it did (the fundamental mistake we made during the Brexit referendum was in not asking what it meant to “leave the EU”. And look what a mess that has got us into). Are we talking about a God who is present in the physical world? Are we talking about a God who exists outside of it? Are we talking about a creator God? Are we talking about a God who engages with his/her/its creations?

 The Abrahamic version of you is very anthropomorphic. That is hardly surprising. They were still very primitive when they chose you from that beauty parade of pagan gods and goddesses who were auditioning for the job; and they chose you because they thought you would be good at smiting their enemies, a very practical consideration for a belligerent band of nomads so troublesome to their neighbours that they had to be taken into protective custody. If you recall, you signed a starring deal with them: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”. Top billing, above the title or nothing.

 You were very hands on, according to the book they later wrote about you. Not only did you create the whole world (and the heavens) and light the place, but you did it for us and you made us in your image. And ever since, it said, you’ve been watching over us, deciding who’s naughty or nice, chucking in the odd miracle to keep us in a state of awe, sending down your own son for us to kill to make us better people (or not, depending on which branch of the Abrahamic myth, we have opted for).

 The problem with that is that the brains you gave us, the power of thought you inflicted on us, kept coming up with other scenarios that made a lot more sense (and shone a rather harsh light on the child’s tale that is Genesis). Our science kept taking the fields that you had occupied across space and time until it seemed as if there was nowhere left for you to live. Like homeopathy, over time your actual presence in the Universe or its development became so diluted, so remote, that for many of us it became intellectually impossible to accept your existence or impact in any material sense. Science still had no answer to how the Universe came out of nothing (and its attempts to speculate came more and more to resemble the very creation myths it had undermined with evidence) but that did not help your cause. Fill the void before there was anything with an omnipotent, omniscient eternal being and all you have succeeded in doing is push the conundrum back a level. “Okay,” says logic, “I get there was nothing before there was something, but where did God come from?” “He’s always been there” is not an answer. It’s an evasion. Something Theresa May might come out with.

 But sadly it wasn’t just that. The more we learned about this world, the more history, geology and biology we had to work on, the more difficult it became to fit you into it as a positive creative or directive force. And the more we learned about ourselves the more crudely wrought and flawed we turned out to be. Not God’s masterwork at all. More like an Austin Allegro built on a Friday afternoon.

 Worse, if you were The Creator, there needed to be a bit of serious manipulative delusion to accommodate all the bad things in the world. Our forebears, brought up to serve and obey the Church that owned the intellectual property on you, accepted almost without question the introduction into the story of the Devil. They didn’t as a body, call out the glaring plot failure: that if the devil existed you must have created him and tasked and facilitated all the evil that he did: that you were prepared to inflict indiscriminate harm on us. But once science had given us the option of believing in the literal truth of you or seeing you as a mere construct, it was, as Stephen Fry said, impossible to believe that the literal you was anything less than a monster. You would have to have been responsible for appalling, callous cruelty, for suffering of a magnitude that could only be contemplated by a being of a uniquely evil proclivity.

 So, “I cannot believe in a good God and I choose not to believe in a bad one”. Science did not have all the answers but it had succeeded in showing that you had none.

 As Douglas Adams had Oolon Colluphid say in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “Well that about wraps it up for God.” Only it doesn’t. Or I should say, it didn’t. In my case.

 “Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."”

From Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

 I wasn’t brought up in a very religious household but I was nonetheless a member of a species that had had religion at its heart for thousands of years, and a member of a society built around the particular worship of you for well over a thousand. Reason and education may have brought us finally to the point where, intellectually, we had to dispense with you as a reality but there were circuits in our minds hard-wired for belief. Paradoxically, they had in their time been vital to our survival and they could not be so easily disposed of. Our need to believe in something bigger than ourselves and the whole hostile world which we inhabited, something on our side, had given rise to you (or one of your brother or sister deities). And creating you in turn inspired us to fight on.

 But our rationality required us to accept that if you were that powerful we had to be supplicants not the masters of you. We knew from our recently feudal lives what that meant. You would require to be worshipped and appeased. I think it is a relatively late development, possibly only in the Church of England and some US evangelical churches, that sees you as the purveyor of goods and services to order. To the evangelicals you are the great Amazon.com in the sky. To the CoE of the Shires, you seems to be perceived much as the secretary of their exclusive golf club.

 But, way back, we did something very damaging to ourselves. Having constructed you in our collective consciousness as an all-powerful guardian, we invested you with being the source of all those things about us that we couldn’t understand: our tendency to choose compassion over selfishness, devotion over fecklessness, “good” over “bad”, life over death. We stripped ourselves of the ability to believe in ourselves as inherently moral creatures.

 (This is the other thing that gets flung at me: “An atheist? Why do you get up in the morning?” “You don’t believe in God? How do you know not to do wrong?” It seems churlish to point out how many people have suffered and died for not believing in the “right” version of you; and how much that we here take for granted in our lives is provided by people who do not believe in our God and whom we treat with unChristian contempt.)

 Once I had accepted that there was not merely no scientific evidence to support you as the creative force behind our material world but also that there was no evidence to support that you were manipulating it in the interests of this one tiny species, I had, logically, to accept that we were the source of our own morality too. And it wasn’t hard at all. In evolutionary terms it made sense. Natural selection made us think the way we do.

 And yet, and yet… I still couldn’t let you go. My imaginary friend, believing in you, God the Impossible, brought me comfort. When I was lonely, when I was afraid, when I was close to despair, when I was confused, I could talk to you and it seemed to help.

 The people in my life couldn’t help. As my mother said, when I tried to talk to her, “Nobody wants to know.” My teachers wanted to teach me, not to listen. My friends wanted to play, not to talk. But you were there, a silent presence in my head, someone I could not lie to but whose unjudgmental patience made lying unnecessary.

 When, as a boy, I had learned that my grandfather had died when my Dad was only sixteen, the awful thought invaded my mind that I might lose my Dad at the same age. I could do nothing about it but it was unbearable. So I prayed to you and made a pact with you that you would take me rather than him. I had not understood that Granddad had died of TB and that science, and the new NHS, had already made it almost impossible that Dad would die of that.  Dad did not die when I reached sixteen and neither did I. But the intervening years were not given over to mounting anxiety. Praying brought me consolation.

 But when it became my mother’s turn to die the whole argument turned upside-down like solid ground torn up by an earthquake. 

By then, Richard Dawkins had opened the shutters and flooded my mind with the bright, warming sunshine of evolution. It had come at a price – everything does: Irrefutably, the creator God of my childhood was not a sustainable version of reality and that meant that the men who imposed their will on us by falsely claiming to be your emissaries on earth were at best expediently deluded but more likely exploitatively wicked. There are no half measures, no nuances and shades of grey when you are living in a polarised world.

 In this real world, my mother took five years to die, eaten up, organ by organ, by cancer until there was only a husk left. And I wanted her to be free of the suffering, and I wanted to be free of it myself, and so, against all my new-found reason, I turned to you again. You were all I had to pin my hope on. God, if you cannot cure her, give her peace, let her die.

 I know I was asking the impossible. I knew it then. But all I had left was the shadow of belief.

 You do not need my absolution, God. It was not your fault she did not get the release she so desperately needed. There was, of course, nothing you could do. But in my anger and grief, I needed someone to blame and I turned it all on you. I am sorry.

 I miss you. I want to be very clear about that. I wish I could believe. I wish I could feel the love and consolation that those who have kept faith with you tell me that they feel. I wanted to tell good, kind John of Berwick that, but I feared – feared what? Ridicule, I suppose, in my own head, not from him. He would have been gentle and offered pastoral care. He would have offered to pray for me. And, with that, the hopelessness of my position would flood back, sucking me down into a whirlpool of logic. He is praying to no-one, just to the voice in his head. He cannot help me. His offer is only confirmation that I am helpless, helpless, helpless.

 And yet here I am, writing to you. What do I want?

 Recently, and let me be clear I mean in recent years not days or weeks, I have been so low, so utterly defeated, that I have longed for my own end, as I longed for my mother’s. Just for it to stop. But it won’t stop, can’t stop. For it is life. To bring an end I need to die and, like my mother, I cannot die. The will to live is too strong, supported by the need to cherish my family and the knowledge that if I were to take my life it would hurt them unconscionably.

 But I have cried out in the night, as Jesus was said to have done, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Did you hear me, God? If you did, from that place in my head to which I banished you all those years ago, I can only apologise. I know full well that you did no such thing. I ditched you. Stripped of the burden of creation and redemption, all that is left for you is to be what we believe you to be and for me you were and are the embodiment of the goodness I have yearned to embrace. It must hurt you so much to see a creature in so much pain and not to be able to help. But you cannot and I know that and I need you to know that this time I do not - I will not - hold it against you.

  Go in peace.

Yours ever,

Iain