#and me...a 22 year old with nothing in my bank account other...wanted to save part of my salary just to build up the amount inside

[soonhoonsol]

i hate money i hate that it’s necessary for everything i hate that it breaks apart families i hate it i hate it i hate it

[srjlvr]

[ LET’S GET MARRIED ! ] — lhs <3

PAIRING. lee heeseung!student X femreader!student !

SYN. the uni is giving away free dorms! under one condition, in order to save your desperate broke ass student’s life, you’d have to get married. and who’d be the lucky person to marry you if not your childhood friend? no feelings involved of course!…..right?

GENRE. he fell first but she fell harder, basically being in denial for feelings at first, childhood friends to a married couple, fluff fluff fluff !

WARNINGS. mentions of getting married(obv), rest of enha and lesserafim’s yunjin & chaewon are in it too, mentions on having kids(no, there will be no kids here its nothing serious!!), mentions of food, being broke because of uni student life. (pls do lmk if i missed something!) || NOT PROOFREAD AND VERY POORLY WRITTEN!!

WORD-COUNT. 5.1k+ (damn!)

NOTE. this is me being extremely sorry for not continuing my heeseung smau by releasing a heeseung oneshot yay!! i actually got the inspiration from HAPPINESS (one of my fav kdramas!) please leave some feedbacks!! i really wanna know what you thought about it<3

when you were younger, you’ve made a wishing list to you in the future, as soon as you turn an adult.

three important wishes were ;

first, never go broke while being a uni student.

second, never get married before the age of 25.

third, never ever fall in love with your best friend since childhood, aka lee heeseung.

first one is already being a huge failure. younger you would be definitely disappointed in uni student you, not that you care that much, but being a broke student sucks.

“my parents are literally about to kick me out, i get that, i’m a 22 years old uni student who’s still living up their asses, they probably want some peaceful and quiet life” you smacked your head over the lunch table, both of your friends looking at you concerned.

“maybe it’s time for you to pay for the dor-“

“never! yunjin, tell her how broke i am”

“she has like 1 dollar in her bank account, she’s still taking loans from her parents” yunjin nodded and you rolled your eyes.

“you didn’t have to go that far”

“oh i did”

“oh i know! what if you just start working?” chaewon raised her voice a bit.

“i have no time!”

“excuses excuses blah blah blah” she mocked you.

“look at heeseung for example, he works in a part time job at the convenience store right next to uni” yunjin pointed out.

you searched through the lunch hall and found the one person you’ve been looking for, lee heeseung.

you’ve been stuck to him ever since childhood, with your mothers being the biggest best friends you’ve ever seen, it was pretty hard to not see him every day in your young days.

both of your mothers even got pregnant at the same time, and gave birth around the same time, you’re two days younger than him.

your photo album is full with pictures of you and him, and so are the hanged photos on your house wall.

your mother and his mother were your biggest shippers, forcing you both to hug each other and even wear matching clothes.

your elementary school memories are filled with heeseung next to you and the whole class shipping you two.

highschool days weren’t better either, guys who wanted to try a move on you were always so scared of heeseung, they were so sure you and him are dating, with the amount of glares they got from him it was really hard to think otherwise.

your highschool crushes rejected you, always giving the excuse of not wanting to be in a relationship, hiding the fact that heeseung warned them that if they’ll say yes he’ll make sure they never see a daylight again.

he was joking, really. he’s not the violent type, and he couldn’t really explain why was he feeling so jealous whenever he saw you confessing to a guy who isn’t him.

heeseung got used to watching you from afar and protecting you, and you got used to search him everywhere you go even in crowded places and having his company ever since childhood.

“hee!” you called and waved at him, he waved at you back with a smile on his face.

“i swear if i didn’t know both of you were childhood friends i would’ve think you’re a married couple or something” chaewon rolled her eyes and you scoffed.

heeseung continued his way to his usual table with his friends.

“thinking about ways to confess your love to her?” jake smirked and heeseung shook away his thoughts.

“hm? who?” he asked.

“it’s obvious who! don’t play dumb come on!” sunghoon playfully pushed the older one.

“we’re talking about Y/N! everyone in uni are talking about you, even those who know nothing about the two of you” jay remarked.

“there’s nothing between us, we’re just friends” heeseung shrugged.

“and i’m queen elizabeth” sunoo tsked.

heeseung rolled his eyes and began to eat, “you know, even if i did have a crush on her, why would she even accept my confession?”

“ohhhh~” his friends teased.

“it’s kind of obvious she likes you, we’ve watched her ever since we became friends with you, and the way she looks at you is just different” jungwon shrugged and ni-ki nodded.

“she’s always searching you in a crowded room, as if you’re her guardian angel and she only needs you in her life in order for it to be perfect” ni-ki then stole a few bites of heeseung’s meal.

“hey! not cool” heeseung scoffed and ni-ki giggled.

“it’s not bad to have a crush on your childhood friend, you know?” jake smiled, “sometimes all you need is a miracle” jay added.

“hey, let’s go on a work search for yo-“

“no no no yunjin not you too!!” you sobbed, “i have no time to work and i need to search for the cheapest dorm, a one i can actually afford as soon as possible”

“why don’t you just go and ask heeseung for help” chaewon shrugged.

“it’s not that easy, i don’t want him to worry about it too much, he works hard for his money too” you pout and they nodded.

“by the way! how’s the money for the uni dorms is going?” jake asked heeseung who was busy fighting with ni-ki over his food.

“i’m just a few shifts away from getting enough money, i’ll ask y/n to become my roommate as soon as— what?” he noticed his friends looking at him.

“y/n and you? being roommates?” sunoo teased.

“hey, me and y/n spent all our childhood together, my house is her house and her house is mine, it has been like that for a while” heeseung sighed and they all nodded hesitatly.

“still, you said y/n’s parents told you about her not being able to pay for the uni dorms, are you really willing to pay it all?” jungwon asked.

heeseung shrugged and took a bite from his food again, “it’s either that or she’ll get kicked out by her parents”

“you really are her guardian angel” ni-ki whispered.

“good morning! you have afternoon classes today right?” your mother woke you up with a smile smeared all over her face.

“mhhm” you hummed, still trying to adjust the bright sunlight that hit your face.

“i need you to bring some medicine for ms lee! she’s been sick and i bought her some things” your mother helped you to get up and shoved you a bag, “here”

“can you please just let me get—“

“you can get ready at theirs! quickly quickly go!” she pushed you outside of your house. damn, she really does hope you’d get out as soon as possible.

she was right though, heeseung’s house is your house, and your house is his. you have a few clothes and even a toothbrush at his house and he has the same at yours, getting ready there was never a problem to you.

a walk to their house is even less than 5 minutes so you weren’t worried about someone from your neighborhood getting a jumpscare and thinking you’re some kind of a zombie.

you took out the keys and opened the door, heeseung was sitting in the kitchen and eating his breakfast.

“don’t ask, been a rough morning, where’s mom by the way?” you asked him and he pointed at her room. you got used to call his mom your mom too.

you saw her sleeping so you left the bag and the medicine next to her, leaving a note saying good morning and instructions of how to take the medicine, as if she doesn’t know all of that.

“you have afternoon classes too?” you asked heeseung while getting ready. he was in his room, lying on his bed while playing some games on his phone.

“not really, i don’t have any class today” he chuckled.

“since when don’t you have any classes today?”

“ever since i decided that im too tired to go to uni”

you rolled your eyes and threw one of the pillows at him, “don’t be stupid! get up and get ready to go!”

he giggled and shook his head, “i’m joking, i took evening classes for today”

you pressed your lips together and nodded, you don’t know why but hearing him giggling always made your heart skip a beat, but you don’t have any feelings for him, like, at all. right?

afternoon classes started and before you knew it, it was already lunch time.

“y/n! you won’t believe it!!” chaewon shout.

“what is it?” you shout at her back even though you were sitting right in front of her.

“i found you a solution! you can get a free dorm!” she shout back.

“what!” you shout.

“can you stop shouting! for god’s sake you’re literally a 1 cm away from each other” yunjin, who was covering her ears yelled.

you and chaewon shared an eye contact and froze. yunjin is so scary when she’s angry.

“continue please” she coughed and let chaewon continue what she had to say.

“it might seem crazy what i’m about to say,” chaewon sighed, “the uni is giving away free dorms—“

“no way omg omg omg please tell me i’m dreaming this is not happening right now right this is not real righ—“

“under one condition!” she cut you off and took her phone out of her pocket to read the terms.

“in order to get a free dorm, you have to have at least one option applied ;

one, you’re younger than 18. two, you’ve been scoring A+ on ALL of your exams and three, you’re between the ages 18-25 and got married, or engaged” she finished reading and turned off her phone.

“but chaewon, i’m not younger than eighteen” you complained and rest your head on your arm who was lying on the table.

“nor scoring A+ on ALL of your exams” yunjin added.

“thanks yunjin, i needed that”

“always here to help”

“then you know what’s left” chaewon smirked and you sat up, looking at her with innocent eyes.

“no” you let out.

“oh yes”

“i have no one to marry to” you argued.

“yes you do!” yunjin replied.

“i do not!”

chaewon and yunjin raised a brow and crossed their arms, “you don’t?”

as heeseung entered the uni entrance, you ran towards his direction and stopped in front of him.

“y/n why are you still here—“

“let’s get married” you said it out loud in front of everyone who was around.

your surroundings suddenly became quiet and everyone was staring at you two, starting to whisper and waiting for heeseung’s answer.

instead of answering he grabbed your wrist and dragged you out of the entrance into a place in the garden next to the uni.

the walk there was making you so nervous and anxious, what if you were a bit too much? asking your childhood friend to marry you just to get a free dorm? are you that desperate?

when he finally stopped, he let go of your wrist and cupped your cheeks, looking straight into your eyes.

“what did you say?” he asked, his eyes looking for any sign or answer from you.

“i said, let’s get married”

heeseung could’ve swore his heart skipped a beat because he for real felt like he died at that spot.

“let me explain!” you said before he could respond.

“the uni are giving out free dorms to anyone who’s between the ages of 18-25 and is married or engaged” you sighed.

heeseung let go of his hold and sighed, looking down and closing his eyes.

you really didn’t mean that genuinely, did you? something in him really hoped you did.

“hee?” you asked, biting your lower lips, suddenly feeling more anxious than before

“sure, let’s get married” he chuckled.

you broke your second main wish on your list.

heeseung was just a few shifts away from getting enough money to get the both of you a place to live in, he could have told you that too, but he chose not to.

only crazy people would agree to this idea, you were so desperate that you actually just asked him to marry you, and he guessed he was one of those crazy people, because he had no idea why he said yes.

he had other way, without marrying you, but something about the idea of marrying you made him feel excited.

“i knew it i knew it! only crazy people would agr— wait what” you blinked a few times after you realized his answer.

“i said sure, let’s get married” he smiled softly and you were about to faint.

“no feelings are involved….right?” you hesitantly asked him, hoping he wouldn’t agree with you.

instead, he nodded slowly and hesitantly, “no feelings involved”

you regretted that sentence so bad because the day after, when he kneeled on one knee and held a ring out for you in front of everyone and proposed to you, your couldn’t lie to yourself anymore, you actually broke your third wish on your list a few years ago, you were in love with lee heeseung for years.

“y/l/n y/n, i have loved you ever since i can remember, i watched you grow up and grew up with you as well, i got used to being with you 24/7, i can’t see the rest of my life without you in it, will you make me the happiest man alive and agree to marry me?”

even though it was an act(according to you), it felt so real to the point where you cried and sobbed so badly, while putting on the ring he bought for you less than 24 hours ago.

it wasnt planned. the proposal wasn’t planned at all.

the plan was that you and heeseung will go to the uni secretariat and request an application for the free dorm since both of you are engaged now.

heeseung had no reason to put on this whole show and show everyone that you’re now engaged. you have no idea why he did it, and instead of getting angry at him, you fell in love with him even more.

it felt wrong, it felt not right.

but you didn’t care, you always knew your feelings for heeseung were somewhere deep inside your heart. you tried to push them away all the time, because there was no way your childhood friend, the popular boy in your highschool, the kid who grew up with you, had feelings for you.

you tried to deny your feelings but now you realized thrre was no use anymore, so you let yourself love him as much as you can.

it wasn’t the desperation that lead you to ask him to marry you, because then you’d ask literally any other guy, it was your pure love to him, to the guy who was always there for you when you needed him.

“heeseung! explain what was that!” his six other friends gathered in a circle, surrounding him and not letting him go.

“what was wha—“

“you and y/n? married?” jungwon shout.

“have you gone crazy?” jake added.

“and she said yes! something is not right” jay joined.

“yesterday you told us you have no feelings for her!” sunoo remarked.

“you didn’t even believe us when we told you she’s obviously in love with you” sunghoon tsked.

“something isn’t sitting right to me” ni-ki gasped.

“explain now!” they all said at the same time.

“calm down!” heeseung coughed, “i’ll explain to you everything later”

by later he meant after classes, at his house, together with you and your friends yunjin and chaewon.

“yunjin, chaewon” heeseung nodded at your friends.

“lee heeseung” they glared at him.

“come on! both of you knew about it even before” you pleaded.

“doesn’t change the fact that he’ll be stealing you from us now” they rolled their eyes.

“i’m still so confused” ni-ki tried to quicken everyone and get to the point.

“me and y/n are getting married—“

“yeah no shit sherlock” sunghoon cute him off and heeseung glared at him.

“anyway, y/n would you like the explain why?” he turned to you and smiled.

“the uni is giving away free dorms to married couples between 18-25 so—“

“you decided to get married to get a free dorm” jay finished your sentence.

“have you gone mad? heeseung worked his ass to get enough money to get the dorms for the bo— mhhhhmmm!!!” sunoo roamed but jake covered his mouth before he could continue.

“sunoo!!” jake coughed and turned to you with a smile, “don’t mind him he’s been stressed from work and uni lately”

the rest of you giggled awkwardly and tried to ease the atmosphere.

after you yunjin and chaewon left, the boys stayed with heeseung, looking at him with concern.

“what?” heeseung looked at them back with his bambi eyes.

“i don’t know hee, it feels like….she’s kind of using you” sunghoon spoke, jay slapped his arm and he whined.

“he’s right though, marrying you only to get a dorm is quite crazy” jungwon nodded.

“he’s even crazier for actually agreeing to all of this” ni-ki said and jake shushed him.

“ni-ki is right, i am crazy, i have no idea why i said yes but she wasn’t forcing anything on me” heeseung shrugged, “besides, i’ve liked her for so many years so—“

“ah ha!! we knew it!” they all said at the same time and heeseung sighed. what have he got himself into?

after everyone left, heeseung texted you, asking you to meet him in your usual spot.

you got ready and for the first time, you took a while to do so.

you stared at yourself in the mirror a few times and even checked different outfits. this has never happened to you ever before, especially not when you knew that you’re going to see heeseung.

heeseung saw you at your worst, why are you dressing up for him now then?

“i must be crazy, crazy crazy!” you shook away your thoughts and got out to meet your soon-to-be-husband.

“hee!” you saw his back facing you and as soon as he turned around you froze.

did he dress up for you too? why does he look so breathtaking suddenly? his bambi eyes match the rest of his beautiful features on his face so much, you’ve seen this man grow up, you know every detail about his face and you couldn’t explain why it was so sudden that you got caught by surprise because of his beauties.

shaking away your thoughts, you walked closer to him and smiled.

“hey hubby” you grinned.

“hubby?” he asked.

“a new nickname for my soon-to-be-husband” you chuckled and he nodded.

“i actually thought about something,” he turned to you, “our parents will figure it out sooner or later, should we tell them the truth or—“

“no, let them believe we’re getting married without any reason other than being in love”

you have no idea why you just said that. but you hid your face as soon as you realized what just came out of your mouth.

heeseung felt too flattered and suddenly didn’t know what to say. you keep on making him speechless.

“ahem,” he cleared his throat, “you do know that they’ll probably rush out things and even take the wedding plan to their own hands“

i don’t care, i’d like to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you as soon as i can. is what you wanted to say, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do so.

“y/n?” he asked. he noticed you were too deep in thoughts and waited for you to come back to sense.

“i’m aware” you nodded, “i’ve also got a text from the uni, we’ll be getting our dorm in the next week, so we should start preparing”

heeseung nodded and looked at you. you were suddenly feeling so nervous and shy to share an eye contact with him, so you broke it as he just kept staring at you and taking in your beauty.

“hey y/n” he said, “hm?”

“i don’t mind marrying you and spending the rest of my life being married to you”

you looked over him and he had the genuinest smile you’ve ever seen.

it felt like the world had froze, and the snow that was falling suddenly stopped, it felt like it was just the two of you in this whole world.

“YOU’RE GETTING WHAT?” your mother yelled.

you and heeseung planned a dinner with both of your parents, to announce the big news.

things became quite awkward between the two of you, ever since your last encounter with him you could barely face him.

his sudden confession freaked you out and the only thing that came out of your mouth was “oh, okay” in the most dry way ever.

you wanted to tell him you feel the same, you wanted to tell him that you’ve been in love with him ever since forever. but one moment that caught you off guard ruined your chance.

you were stupid, stupid and idiot. heeseung probably thinks you hate his guts now.

heeseung in the meantime felt like he was breaking apart slowly. oh, okay?? that’s all you had to answer?

he felt dumb, he felt hopeless. the confession was completely out of the blue and unplanned, your beauty hypnotized him and he was so mesmerized by you that the words just came out of his mouth naturally.

what if you hate his guts now? what if he made you uncomfortable? what if you’ll regret it the last minute because you weren’t feeling the same about him?

all of those questions were eating him alive, and you didn’t help either. each time he came up to you, you were suddenly in rush and told him you have to go, it was breaking him inside slowly.

the dinner was one chance to finally talk with you again.

“married, mom. we’re getting married” you repeat what you already said a few seconds ago.

“when? where? how?” heeseung’s mother asked.

heeseung looked at you and smiled warmly, “it just happened, we’ve been together ever since childhood, it already felt like being in a relationship for so long, so we decided to marry each other” he chuckled and held your hand tightly, “to belong to each other until the day we die”

your parents looked at the both of you. you were sharing eye contact for so long, with heeseung smiling at you, looking deep into your eyes, and with you looking at him with nothing but pure love in your eyes that was making everyone in the room feel so jealous of you two.

“now kiss!” your mother said.

you and heeseung broke the eye contact and blinked a few times.

“what?” you asked.

“kiss then! i want to picture it and keep it in my photo gallery forever!” his mother added.

you were about to speak up until heeseung held your cheek to turn you to face him and it was only a matter of seconds until you felt his lips on yours.

it was your first kiss ever, your first time kissing someone, and it was his as well, but he lead you on so good that it made it look less awkward.

you were his first kiss. you, his childhood friend, stole his first kiss.

“we knew that it’ll happen one day!!” your mothers cheered, “we even have a whole wedding plan ready!!”

you and heeseung broke the kiss and shared an eye contact again.

you didn’t need to hear him say to know how much love he holds for you, and how he cherishes you so much.

and your eyes told him everything, they held the answers to all of the questions that bothered him. you love him as much as he loves you.

“i can’t believe you’re getting married, my little angels” your parents cried altogether which made heeseung let go of his hold on you and grab some tissues to wipe their tears.

“i love that ring by the way! heeseung you did a great job” your mother gave him thumbs up and he chuckled.

if only she knew that it was a ring he bought you in less than 24 hours and even rushed your friends to come with him and help him pick it only because he wanted his whole life to properly propose you.

it was a moving day already and your parents helped you pack every last thing, they even cried through the way, how could their princess leave them so fast?

“you can visit our house anytime!” you tried to comfort them.

“we’ll update you before that, we don’t want to catch you while doing the thing you know” your mother winked and you rolled your eyes, “mom!”

“i see you’re all packed and ready” heeseung came in to check on you.

“she is! take her away already!” your mother complained.

“not before you take this with you!” she went away for a few seconds and came back with a huge wrapped photo frame.

“don’t open it yet!! only when you get into your new house and get everything in place!!” she excitedly hugged the both of you and you nodded.

moving in was quite rough, you had a lot of boxes to unpack and organized, and you and heeseung never felt more awkward after the first kiss you shared.

you’ve barely spoke with each other and your friends were starting to get concerned.

“he told me he doesn’t mind marrying me and spending the rest of his life with me” you pout.

yunjin and chaewon shout and giggled, “girl! he’s more than in love with you!! he’s lovesick!!” they both said.

“what did you answer then?” yunjin asked.

“i told him okay” you smacked your head on the table.

“no way” chaewon gasped.

“yes way” you whined.

“you’re stupid!!” they both smacked you.

“then!!” you shout, “we had our first kiss on dinner in front of our parents” you whispered that part.

“what did you say? couldn’t hear you” chaewon said.

“oh she said that they shared their first kiss on dinner with their— YOU HAD YOUR FIRST KISS WITH HEESEUNG??” yunjin’s eyes widened.

“what happened after that?” chaewon asked curiously.

“we just finished dinner, and now we barely even talk” you sighed, “each time i see him i’m just blushing and running away, i can’t face him!”

“you have to!! you’re moving in soon!!” yunjin argued and chaewon nodded.

“it’ll be the death of me” you sobbed and they chuckled.

you were right at first, but slowly and surely heeseung made a joke and both of you got back to normal in no time, as if nothing happened between you two.

you even helped him organizing his closet and his room, and he did the same.

after a long day you and heeseung finally laid down on your now shared sofa.

“it’s been a rough day” you sighed.

“should we order something?” he suggested and you nodded immediately. you ended up ordering your favorite food.

“let’s open up the picture!!” you said and grabbed the picture your mom gave you earlier today.

you and heeseung both unwrapped it together and revealed an old picture of you and heeseung hugging each other with a huge smile on your faces.

“look at us then and look at us now” he giggled.

both of you hanged the picture right above your sofa and kept staring at it for a while.

“hey hee,” you spoke, “yeah?”

“i wouldn’t mind marrying you and spending the rest of my days with you too” you turned to him, “until the day i die”

“is that your way of telling me you love me too?” heeseung froze for a second. you caught him off guard for the countless time already.

although he understood very clearly your feelings after you shared your first kiss, hearing your words made his heart beat fast.

it was a confirmation for him that all of his feelings for you were actually mutual all this time.

instead of answering his questions you grabbed his shirt and kissed him.

he put his hands around your waist and pushed you closer to him, holding you tightly as if he’s too scared to let you go.

breaking off the kiss was hard, but the lack of oxygen was kicking in, you pressed your foreheads together, still with your eyes closed.

“does that answer your question?” you giggled and you felt him smiling.

“i don’t think so, i need a bit more of it to feel certain” he teased and you tsked.

“i don’t need to be in a relationship with you to feel certain about my feelings and my willingness to marry you, i want to spend my life with you, i love you” you said and pecked his lips.

“i love you too, y/n” he pecked your lips again and it suddenly got into a fight between you two about who pecks the other more, until it ended up in a long, deep kiss.

“so let me get this straight. you and heeseung had been in denial for many many years and manipulated yourself into thinking that you don’t like each other at all at all, then when y/n’s desperate and broke ass heard of a chance to get a free dorm by getting married, she went up to you, heeseung, and asked her to marry you, you agreed to the proposal because at one point you stopped lying to yourself and realized you’re actually lovesick, and the rest is history” ni-ki finally breathed out after almost rapping this whole story.

“by history i mean y/n waking up from her denial and realizing her feelings to you” he added.

“yes, exactly” heeseung nodded and you chuckled.

you were sitting together with your friends on one table, yunjin and chaewon who were already aware of the story added a few notes here and there as ni-ki summarized your whole story.

“this is a story to tell your children” jay smiled and the rest nodded.

“we’re not planning to get pregnant anytime soon, we didn’t even have a wedding yet” you sighed.

“you never know y/n, you never know!” sunoo slowly nodded.

“why did you say that as if you went through something familiar” jungwon teased.

“you never know y/n, you never know!” sunghoon mocked sunoo.

“that was a good one!” jake laughed with him.

“children, literal children who found themselves in uni somehow” you sighed.

“at this point we won’t even need to have any children when we have them” heeseung agreed with you.

“it doesn’t matter, as long as i’m with you” you smiled and pecked his lips.

“get a room you two will you!”

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••• copyright © srjlvr all rights are reserved.

[jimlingss]

Until Yesterday

➜ Words: 10.4k

➜ Genres: 75% Fluff, 22% Angst, 3% Smut

➜ Summary: You and Taehyung are hopeless as you are hopeless romantics. But five months after tying the knot and saying "I do", you're hospitalized after a car accident with him. But upon waking up, the doctors tell you that you don't have a husband.

➜ Notes: Inspired by the movie The Vow (2012) and a bit of The Notebook (2004). This is purely an indulgent fic for all my hopeless romantics out there, so it’s a bit different from my usual!

cr.

Marriage was nothing like they told you.   It’s true that not much has changed from when you were dating or engaged, that merely the title of your relationship has slightly altered, but you have no regrets doing it at all. They always told you to wait until the honeymoon phase was over — that you'll find yourself tired and driven crazy by him. They told you to wait a few years down the line when you’re not having sex anymore and you’ll be so sick of each other, it’ll be like living with an awful roommate-child than being a couple in love. You’ll be bored when something becomes a normal routine, they said.   But it isn’t like that at all.   If anything, you’re more in love with Taehyung than ever.    “We should put the couch right here.”   “Well, we need to buy a couch first, Tae.”   “Didn’t you like the leather one we saw today?”   “I mean...I didn’t love it and it’s a bit pricey, don’t you think?”   “It’s fine. Leave it to me and the bank account!” The blonde grins and pats his own chest and it only garners your scoff. “I’ll take care of you. It’s the least I can do.”   “I make the same as you, idiot.”   It took years of hard work and dedication for the two of you to get to where you are, to have landed your dream jobs and built your dream house together. But of all the sweat and tears, you wouldn’t trade the outcome for anything else.    The house was newly built in a developing neighbourhood, the scent of cut wood and paint still lingering in each room. The white picket fence surrounds the seashell home with the dark brown roof, glass windows large and bringing light into the open concept structure along with the skylights. It has the cherry wood door reminiscent to that of your old dollhouse and a swing out back tied to the tree that Taehyung wanted. It was all the two of you could’ve ever dreamed of and you’re eager to move in, to bring in your furniture and allow this home to grow with you.   “Why is the master bedroom larger than I remembered?”   Taehyung’s laugh echoes down the hall and you hear footsteps becoming louder against the wooden floorboards. “Maybe the construction team came in during the middle of the night and expanded the room for us for free.”   “Yeah maybe,” you playfully quip back at him. “Maybe they’ll consider expanding our backyard too, so we can put that marble fountain in. It might cost more than this house, but you said I could trust in you and the bank account, right?”   Taehyung peels you off of him when you glue yourself to his side and giggle. Batting your lashes at him has little effect. “Fountain is still a no-go, sweetheart.”   You grin at him and waltz to the adjacent room, peeking your head into the modest space. “We still need to decide what to do with this spare room, Taehyung. If we want to turn it into another bedroom for when your mom visits or maybe an office.”   Suddenly, arms wrap around your waist and you ease as your husband props his chin on your shoulder. It’s one of his many habits of his that you love. “How about we save it for a nursery?”   The corner of your mouth quirks and you turn your head. “Are you sure?”   “As sure if you are.”    You spin around in his arms to plant a kiss against his mouth — one where Taehyung steals the opportunity and deepens it, catching you off guard. He pulls you in by your waist when you threaten to pull apart and he smiles at the whimper that comes out of you.   When the pair of you finally part, you’re unable to resist the smile that spreads into your cheeks and your arms loop around his neck. “Kim Taehyung, aren’t you blessed? There’s no one I’d rather have a baby with than you.”   His mouth forms into a rectangular grin. “You shouldn’t tempt me when we’re going to be late for our reservations already.”   “Late?” Your lips fall and you check your watch before your eyes grow wide.    Taehyung laughs and strolls behind you as you rush out, grabbing your coat and screaming at him to get the car started.   It’s another one of those date nights. One where intimate conversations are shared over a candlelight dinner. Until Taehyung accidentally catches the tablecloth on fire and the candlelight is removed by an exasperated waiter and the intimacy in your discussion ends up with him doing something dumb and water nearly spewing out of your nose from laughing, and the other patrons are glaring at the ruined atmosphere.   Still, with a generous tip paid, you leave full and happy.   “Anything you want to watch tonight?” you ask as he’s driving. It’s peaceful with the roads emptier at this time of night and the radio playing some generic pop song in the back. You count the lamp posts that pass by.   “Hmm...how about we do something else tonight.”   Your head turns. “Like what?”   Taehyung steals a glance at you and smirks. “I was thinking that we would drive back to the new house and break in that mattress we just got. Maybe get that kid you were talking about.”   You scoff, looking straight out the windshield as you feel your face heat. Even after so many years with him, he still knew what to say to affect you. “It’s not that easy, you know, and that mattress is still wrapped in the living room.”   “It’s fine. Better start now than later. And it’s our house, we can taint it however we want to.”   It doesn’t take much for you to agree — and you do so in the midst of laughter.   You shamelessly stare at Taehyung’s profile, the strands of his blonde hair that desperately needs a trim, his long lashes that you’ve always been envious of, the slope of his nose and his thin lips that always knows how to kiss you right. Taehyung’s thick brow cocks when he notices your blatant staring, but you don’t care. You’re just filled with joy and at a loss for words at how he’s with you.   He’s yours.   The two of you are too wrapped up in one another to pay mind to the car behind you. To the piercing beam lights. The wheels that screech against the asphalt. The sheer speed of the vehicle and recklessness of the intoxicated driver.   So when the rear of the car is slammed into and you both lurch forward into the intersection of the road, it’s a shock.    //   The white fluorescent burns your eyes.    It’s hard to see and you can’t feel your body. Not even your fingers that begin to twitch. You’re disoriented and delirious, not sure what day it is, how long you’ve been out, where exactly you are. It’s all muddled in your mind. All you can discern is a constant rhythm of beeping beside you and the odour of disinfect filling your senses. You’re scared — but you’re overwhelmed with the thought of Taehyung.    Taehyung.   You jolt in your spot and the rhythm of the machine quickens until it’s like an alarm, sounding aloud and making you panic even more. But then there’s a rush of people entering the room, white coats and scrubs checking the machines and lines hooked up from you.   “Ms. Y/N, I am doctor Jeon.” There’s a man looking down at you and you blink blearily at him. “You’ve been in a coma for three days now. Is there anyone we can call for you?”   “M-My husband,” you cry out with a parched throat.   The doctor looks to the nurse but she frowns and shakes her head. “The patient doesn’t have a husband.”   You don’t have a husband?   At once, sobs wrack through your entire body and you thrash despite the aches in your bones and your ankle wrapped in bandages. The doctor and nurse are alarmed and you choke out the words— “I-Is he okay? Is he dead?”   “Ma’am,” the doctor calmly says, “you were the only one injured on the scene.”   Before you can utter a word, a man comes from the doorway. His hair is dark, matching the hue lined underneath his exhausted eyes. His features are soft and evidently tired like he hasn’t slept in the past few days. You don’t know who he is but he stares right at you — and then a relieved smile draws upon his features, one that is too comfortable and familiar.   “Y/N?” His voice is deeper than expected and he closes the distance. The nurse is visibly confused, but he quickly introduces, “I’m her partner, Min Yoongi.”   You recoil back before he can touch you, even when the hurt comes across his expression.    “I-I’m sorry.” You don’t know who he is. “I think you have the wrong person.”

It’s hard to cope — your entire universe has been flipped upside down and you don’t know what to think. Suddenly by opening your eyes, your entire life has been swept from underneath your feet. Everything that you loved and cared about is gone. And you’re left alone to deal with it.   “I-I remember being with my husband. We were driving back from dinner and planning to take a detour to the new house, but then a car rear-ended us and we were brought out into the intersection,” you recall.   But the doctor’s brows furrow. “I see. Well, I can tell you that you weren’t in a car accident, Ms. Y/N. You were injured after falling down the flight of stairs at the subway station. You’ve been in a coma for three days.”   It doesn’t make any sense and you squeeze your temples. But it hurts. Everything feels like a dream, like you’re floating and not truly grounded in reality. Your surroundings are hazy and you wonder if this is just a hallucination — a very frightening one, a world where Taehyung doesn’t exist.   “What year was the car accident?” the doctor asks suddenly and you exhale, trying to remember the date.    “It was late January of 2016.”   “Ms. Y/N, it’s 2020 right now.”   It’s a shock through your system. At first, you sputter, choking on your own spit. The doctor is kind enough to give you a moment but when you press your hand to your chest, you wince at the bruises around your wrist. Then you open your mouth and close it, finding yourself rendered absolutely speechless. Your brain is melting into itself and you have an urge to get up and scream.   “What?”   “It looks like you have a four year memory gap,” Doctor Jeon says as if he’s prescribing you with cold medication and if you weren’t bedridden, you might just throttle him to the floor. “It’s okay, these things happen with your sort of injury. It should be fine and only temporary. You can get your memory jogging again after looking at mementos, pictures, or talking to the right people.”   “Anyways, we’ll keep you here for a few more days just to monitor that head injury, but it looks like your ankle is healing nicely. There’s no cause for concern, really.”   The doctor ends up leaving and you repress the urge to cry again.   You don’t know where Taehyung is and you miss him.   //   Your so-called partner appears days later to help with your hospital discharge and pack up your belongings. You learn his name is Min Yoongi and that he’s two years older than you are. He works as a car mechanic in a shop and you’ve apparently been with him for a whole year.    Yet, you can’t help but stay guarded, watching him from the corner with your arms crossed while you try to decipher his impassive expression. The man is quiet, but not in an angry or frightening way. He never asks you questions, makes demands out of you or once appears exasperated with your distant behaviour. He seems gentle somehow.    You wonder what your relationship with him was like.   “T-Thank you,” you murmur as he packs the slippers he had brought for you into the duffle bag.   Min Yoongi turns his head and the corner of his mouth pulls into an oddly warm smile. His voice is husky when he says, “You don’t need to thank me. I’m just happy to see you walking around again.”   You’re taken aback.   You aren’t used to receiving this kind of love and affection from someone other than Taehyung and from a stranger no less. It makes you unsettled. Conflicted.   The car ride is smooth. Yoongi helps you into your seat and buckles you in without making you speak much of a word. You’re not sure where you’re going, but you spend your time looking out at the window and taking in what you’ve missed for four years, or rather what your mind no longer recalls.    Luckily, it seems like the world hasn’t changed too much.   The streets are familiar, lined with lamp posts and bike racks. There are different billboards and some buildings you don’t recognize, but it looks like many things have stayed the same. The street names, avenues and boulevards, the people jogging and walking their dogs — it hasn’t changed.   “Hey, Tae—”    Except for the person driving beside you.    You turn your head and blood drained from your face, realizing that it’s not your husband you’re sitting beside. “N-Never mind.”   There’s a moment of quiet.   Then Yoongi’s lips part. “It’s okay.” He glances at you and your eyes meet. “It’s okay,” he repeats with a small smile that makes you even more burdened.   The apartment is modest yet cozy. A living room with cushions out of place and souvenirs on the shelves next to the television. The kitchen is to the left, cups in the sink and refrigerator haphazardly filled with take out boxes. It’s lived in, full of memories that you don’t have. But above all, you notice there’s only one bedroom and there are male belongings assorted with yours.    Shaving cream. Gel. Cologne.    “You live here?” you ask Yoongi, coming to the living room where he was giving you a chance to look around for yourself, perhaps hoping that you would remember something.   “We live together,” he corrects with a tiny smile. “But it’s okay. I’m planning on staying at a friend’s place, so you don’t have to worry about me being here if that makes you uncomfortable.”   “You…” Your mouth opens before closing, startled at how considerate he is. “You don’t have to. I mean, this place is yours too. It seems unfair if I kick you out. You should...stay.” Yoongi smiles and you shy away from his attention. “I...might not be comfortable sharing a bed with you though…”   “Okay.” He nods. “I can take the couch.”   That night, you lay awake in the foreign bed, unable to sleep and staring at the ceiling. It feels like you’ve been asleep for four years anyways, although it’s technically only been three days.    Your brain is swimming in confusion. You’re not sure what to think. One moment you were with Taehyung and the next, you don’t have him beside you anymore and you’re with someone else.   Taehyung….   You reach over to the nightstand and switch on the lamp. A dim yellow light softly fills the room and you begin to truly investigate your surroundings. On a pinboard near the door are pictures of you and Yoongi, selfies taken where you’re both smiling with one another, one of you at a carnival and another at an aquarium. The vanity drawer holds jewelry that you don’t recognize, perhaps ones that Yoongi had bought for you. Your phone contains grocery lists and miscellaneous notes that make no sense. There’s nothing on your social media, no connection, nothing once you search his name up. All you discover is work-related things in your calendar, more pictures of you and Yoongi and affectionate texts between the two of you.    There’s no trace of Taehyung whatsoever.   But when you dig into the closet and find a box at the top shelf hidden away, your answer is found. It’s inside a box of paperwork — school awards, certificates of achievements, evidence of your first paycheck, your birth certificate, social security papers, and divorce papers.   You and Taehyung got divorced in April 2018.    Two years and eight months after getting married. And it’s been a year and ten months since.   The paper crumples underneath your hands and you gather your knees together on the floor as quiet sobs break through you once again. You don’t know what happened. Where it all went wrong.   //   When morning comes, you hope the swelling and redness of your eyes from crying so much isn’t noticeable. If it is, Yoongi doesn’t say anything and only regards you with a gentle smile.    “I was going to stay home today, but I thought it might be overwhelming for you,” he says before you can protest otherwise, “so I’ll be at work. Take it easy, okay? You can call me anytime you want for anything. My number is in your phone.”   You nod. “Thank you, Yoongi.”   His smile is sweet. “I already told you, it’s not a problem.”   But half an hour after Yoongi leaves, you prepare for your own departure. Hobbling with your weight on one foot and off the one with your injured ankle, you grab a coat and the car keys laying on the counter. It takes a moment to figure out which one is your vehicle in the lot but you find it after pressing the panic button. It looks brand new — apparently recently repaired and the reason why you had to take the subway and how you got your head injury in the first place.   It might be wrong to leave without giving a warning to Yoongi, especially when he’s so worried about you, but you can’t stay idle at the apartment. You can’t sit still. You need answers.   You drive to the house — turning down the familiar streets and roads before coming into the neighbourhood that feels like you had been in just a week ago when it’s probably been years.   But you don’t recognize it anymore. It's more developed than you last remembered. What once were empty lots have other homes built. All the sidewalks are paved, there’s an elementary school down the avenue, a new playground that shines, neighbours that have moved in.   What hasn’t changed is the house itself.    There’s still the white picket fence that surrounds the seashell white home, a shade you had personally picked yourself when building it. The roof is a dark brown and the front door cherry wood. The glass windows are large with baby blue curtains and you wonder if there’s still the swing in the backyard….   You get out of the car, feeling your emotions swell up to your throat and your eyes becoming watery as you gave upon the house. This was the place you had built with Taehyung. The place you both had planned to live in for years. The place you wanted to raise your kids, grow old and retire in.    It was perfect. The combination of your dreams.   Where did it all go wrong?   You close the distance, limping up the path to the door and knocking on it. After a moment, you ring the doorbell properly. But even then, there are no answers and you notice that the Kim nameplate under the mailbox is gone.   Of course. It’s been over four years after all.   You cross the street back to your car again, but not before catching sight of a woman bringing groceries up her driveway and towards her own house.    “Um, excuse me.”   She turns at your voice, brows lifted.   “Do you happen to know who lives there?” You point to what was once your home.   But unfortunately, she shakes her head. “Sorry, I don’t. I know that house has been sold a few times and the owners have recently changed again.”   “Oh. Thank you.”   It’s hard to leave the house behind you, but you keep your foot on the gas pedal and drive, never glancing out the rear-view mirror in fear of bursting into tears again.   You still have more questions than answers, so your next destination becomes downtown where Taehyung’s engineering firm is. The two of you had met in school, back when you were awkward and chasing after your ambitions of being a chemical engineer like your aunt while for him, he wanted to take his childhood lego dreams to the max and become a civil engineer.   Your neck hurts to look at the top of the skyscraper, the many windows reflecting the bright sunlight into your eyes and blinding your vision. If there was any place where you could find Taehyung, it would be here.    It’s his dream job. What he had wanted for so long and legitimately cried when he found out he got a position at. You remember that day, how proud you felt of him for achieving such a goal.   But when you approach the receptionist at the lobby’s desk, her response only fires the confusion further.   “Sorry. We don’t have a Kim Taehyung working here. Are you sure you’re not mistaken?”   You miss him. And you wonder at what point, he wasn’t a part of your life anymore.   //   In an attempt to find Taehyung, you contact your friends and work your way down your list of contacts on your phone. They’re happy to hear from you, some even knowing about your accident and asking if you’re alright.    But when you ask about Taehyung, they tell you that they haven’t spoken to him since the divorce. That they’ve lost contact. That the months leading up to it, the two of you were distant from them and they’re unsure of the reasons for what had happened. It was frankly unexpected.   “You always told me it wasn’t any of my business, dear,” your mother says over the phone. “You actually got quite upset when I asked, so after a while I didn’t anymore. Do you want to talk to your dad? He’s watching the news right now.”   “No.” You press your temples, holding in your sigh. “It’s fine.”   Frustration overwhelms you.    No matter where you turn, you can’t seem to get the reasons for yourself.   You can’t find him.   “Is the take out okay?”   At once, you’re snapped out of your thoughts and you lift your head to meet kind, cat-like eyes staring at you.    “It’s good,” you try to smile and nod.   He seems to sense how disconnected you are. “I’ll learn how to cook. I know you like carbonara, so maybe I can find a recipe this weekend and try to make it, so we don’t have to eat out all the time.”   You stare at the man across from you.   How tired he seems, his dark hair shagging in front of his forehead, his downcast head facing his food as his fork scrapes against the bottom container, never quite taking a full bite. Yet whenever your eyes meet, his plump lips always tugs into a small smile and his eyes crinkle.   “I’m sorry.”   Yoongi’s brows lift at the sudden apology. “What for?”   “For not remembering you.” Even if Min Yoongi is a stranger, you can feel how intimate the pair of you used to be by the photographs you’ve seen, by the way he still regards you. You feel guilty for not being able to return his affections.   “It’s fine. It’ll come back with time, right? Don’t stress out about it too much. It won’t do you any good.”   “Yoongi.” You have his attention by the way you say his name like he hasn’t heard it uttered from your lips in quite a while. “I went searching for my...ex-husband today.”   It’s foreign to call Taehyung that. It’s unsettling and makes you uncomfortable.   But your eyes never divert from Yoongi’s. “I need answers.”   “I know,” he murmurs in a low voice, still playing with his food. As intimidating as he might appear on the surface, you’re quickly learning how considerate and soft-spoken he really is. “And I want you too. I don’t want you to have any regrets. I want you to know you’ve made the right choice by being with me.”   Your heart squeezes at his thoughtful nature and you sigh lightly before stuffing your mouth with some of the noodles, trying to alleviate the tension. “You’re a good man, Yoongi.”   He chuckles, gummy smile emerging for the first time that you can recall. “Maybe that’s why you chose me in the first place.”   //   The avenue is nostalgic, a street that you and Taehyung spent many dates at with its cheap street food and cute stores. And when you were both working, it was the halfway point between your workplaces and where you’d meet to have lunch on those special occasions. A few things have altered from when you remembered them, the stationery shop closed and that ice-cream parlor changed into a pancake café instead. But for the most part, it remains the same.   You aren’t sure what you’re doing here.    Of all your ways and methods in searching for Taehyung, even you know that it’s unlikely you’ll find him on a Tuesday morning at such an obscure location. But it’s where you’re drawn too, where your body told you to go and your mind followed.   Otherwise, you’re not sure what to do anymore or how you should contact him. You wonder if it’s too drastic to drive hours away to visit his mom on the off chance that she’s still living in the same place after four years. If she moved, the journey would be for nothing. But even then, if you somehow found him and reached out, would he even be willing to talk to you?   A sigh escapes your parted lips. You tilt your head up to the sky, wondering where on earth he is. And in your reverie, you fail to notice the strapping brunette humming to the music he’s listening to. Not until your shoulder collides with his as he’s walking the opposite way.    But instead of an apology spilling from your mouth, you’re interrupted by a call of your name—   “Y/N?”   It's shock that has taken hold of his expression. His hand rips out his earphones and the loud music becomes silenced from his world. With the way he looks at you, it would be like he’s seen a ghost. A stranger from his past.    In your mind, it’s only been a week since you’ve seen him. And you’ve been missing him so much.   On sheer instinct, you wrap your hand around his wrist, afraid to let go. “Taehyung.”   //   It’s awkward, the stiff air almost suffocating your lungs. You’re sure that the first date wasn’t even as bad as this. But you don’t mind whatsoever, even if he’s shifting uncomfortably at the intent way you stare and how it makes him break out into a sweat. Even if Taehyung hates you now, as long as you can see him like this, it’s enough to bear.   Taehyung clears his throat, diverting his vision elsewhere. “So….you look like you’ve been well.”   “Not really,” you murmur.   Taehyung is still a man of intense habit. His drink order hasn’t changed, a cappuccino with extra whipped cream and chocolate shavings. At the same exact coffee shop since you were dating. And he’s taken the same table in the corner of the shop too, the spot of your many study dates.    It’s these habits that have led you back to him.   “I heard you weren’t working at the engineering firm anymore,” you say after another tense pause.   Taehyung’s brows curiously raise. “I haven’t been working there in years. You knew about it.”   “Did I?”   He’s wary that you can’t recall. “Yeah….”   “What are you doing now?”   “I’m in animation.”   Your eyes widen, surprised. “I never knew you could animate— well, I knew you could draw, but you never even watched much animation.”   Taehyung shrugs. “It’s a good fit. I didn’t know I’d like it either until I tried.”   Your expression softens, a tender smile pulling into your cheeks. Taehyung’s gotten older but in a refined way. His hair is back to its natural colour, a few wrinkles set into his skin but his features are sharper and less rounded and boyish. He seems less mischievous and irresponsible too, a little more mature and quiet. Or maybe he’s reserved because you’re his ex-wife.    The thought makes you nauseous.   He sips his drink. “So...what have you been doing?”    “Not great. I recently got into an accident, Taehyung.” That seems to grab his attention and his eyes become rounded while you brace yourself. “Apparently I fell down a flight of stairs at the subway station and I was in a coma for three days.”   “Oh shit. That...must’ve sucked. I...I’m sorry to hear that.”    “I’m fine now.” You pause, clear your throat. “But the last thing I remember is us, Taehyung. We were planning to spend the night at the new house and we got hit by that car…”   “I remember.” He nods slowly and murmurs, “But the accident wasn’t that bad, Y/N. We were only bumped.”   “I don’t remember that,” you tell, earnest eyes connected with his that makes him believe you. Even after all this time apart, Taehyung can still tell when you’re lying and telling the truth.    Your voice raises in pitch, in frustration and exasperation. “And...and I’m trying to understand how this happened. I’m trying to understand how we…..how we ended up divorced.”   Taehyung’s brows furrow and he fiddles with the paper cup. “What’s there to tell? We fell out of love.”   “That doesn’t make any sense!” Your shrill voice garners the attention of other patrons, but you don’t pay mind to them. “We got married and were planning to have kids and we just built a house in a new neighbourhood—”   “We lost that house.”   Taehyung doesn’t look at you. His downcast head allows his eyes to stay on the floor. He looks small — shoulders slugging and frame slumped.   “I lost my job and then we lost the house. It went downhill from there and one day, you couldn’t do it anymore and packed your bags. You were the one who divorced me, Y/N.”   You’re stunned, unable to get a single word out at the revelation he’s given you. An answer to your questions that you had never expected. That you didn’t want to hear.   Taehyung’s eyes are saddened and he never once meets your gaze. “You’ll remember sooner or later. I’m sorry this happened to you, Y/N. I really am. But it was still nice to see you.”   He gets up before you can protest, leaving as fast as he came into your life again.   //   Yoongi arrives home visibly tired, his hair in a disarray and his navy workwear stained with oil and grease. Still, he greets you with a warm, sleepy smile that you still aren’t used to.   “I saw my ex today,” you tell him during dinner, breaking the silence by deciding to be open and honest. It at least alleviates some of the guilt weighing on your chest. “I found him coincidentally.”   Yoongi’s eyes flicker up, peeking at you. “How did it go?”   “It didn’t help. I’m still confused.” You can’t understand why you would ever leave him, even if you lost the house and he lost his job. It didn’t make any sense. “Do you know anything about the divorce, Yoongi? Did I….ever tell you anything?”   “You told me that he was pathetic,” he informs but without any malice like he’s simply stating facts. “He was unemployed for two years and didn’t get off his ass to find a job. Hey, your words, not mine.”   The corner of your mouth curls even when you’re still stupefied.   “Are you alright, Y/N?”   An exhale leaves your lips. “I’m not sure.”   That night, you find another box in the closet while alone in the bedroom. There are pictures of you and Taehyung from when you were younger and just friends, small mementos like movie tickets and keychains won at arcades while you were dating, and photographs of the wedding day, the two of you with enormous smiles and swollen cheeks.   But they’re buried underneath your belongings with Yoongi.   //   His expression is one of repulsion, like he bit into a lemon or something bitter. But you don’t pay any attention to it.   “What are you doing here?” Taehyung is incredulous to see you in the morning, standing in the same café as if you own the place.   “I’ve been waiting since eight,” you complain and he repeats his question with increasing skepticism. You suppose it’s not everyday your ex-wife is waiting to run into you, so you don’t blame him for his apprehension. “I’m trying to understand how the two of us got divorced. I know this is probably really weird since for you, I’ve shown out of nowhere after two years.”   “You think?”   You ignore his playful quip. “But for me, my last memory is still going on that date night and getting into that car accident.”   Before Taehyung can utter a word, the barista is calling him as the next person in line. “Can I get—”   A cappuccino with extra whipped cream and chocolate shavings.   “A cappuccino with extra whipped cream and chocolate shavings,” he says without missing a beat and your mouth tugs into a smile. Lots of things may have changed in the time that you no longer remember, but the fact of how constant he is comforts you greatly.    You wait with Taehyung at the counter, feeling his eyes glancing at you every so often. When your eyes meet, he realizes he’s been caught staring.    “Once I remember again and make sense of the situation, I’ll leave you alone,” you say even if it hurts, but the last thing you want is to be burdensome to Taehyung. “I just want to understand and get over it and move on like you have.”   Taehyung sighs, never saying a word.   He picks up his drink and you follow along with him, quietly as to not disrupt the comfortable silence between the both of you.   He walks down the street and enters the modest grocery store, beelining to the deli to pick up a ham sub. But he notices your quirked brow. “What?”   “No.” You shake your head. “Just reminds me of uni. You used to eat those too. Same brand and everything.”   The man scoffs lightly, but he knows. You’ve pointed it out to him many times in the past that he has a tendency to stick to specific habits — the odd quirks that you once said you loved about him.    “Like what?” he had once asked when you mentioned it.   “Like you always put your beverages on your left side and you chug half a glass of water before going to bed and you always close the entire toilet when you’re done going to the bathroom and you have the same brand of cereal every morning and after you sneeze, you always scratch your nose every time,” you had said in the midst of giggles and then lifted yourself up to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Don’t worry. They’re cute and it’s part of why I love you.”   The two of you walk together down the street. The early morning air is crisp and chilly, slightly nipping at his nose. He grips his drink still steaming to warm his hand and Taehyung can’t help stealing a glance at you, wondering if you’re cold too.   “How’d you get started into animation?”   “Huh? Oh. Well, if you really want to know then after you packed your bags and dumped me, it was a pretty good wake up call.” Taehyung laughs as if he’s recalling a funny memory, but then his expression softens, touched with sorrow. “I decided to get myself picked back up and get a job. They liked my personality enough at the interview to give me a chance. At first I didn’t know what I was doing, but I learned and I like it a lot.”   He turns his head when your silence is prolonged.    But his eyes widen when he finds your tender smile. “I’m happy for you, Taehyung.”   And you really are — even in spite of him not technically being a part of your life anymore.   //   The next day, Taehyung is not any more impressed to see you there at the café.    You enthusiastically smile and wave at him. And when the barista calls the two of you in the line, you have no hesitation. “Can I get a cappuccino with extra whipped cream and chocolate shavings? And just an iced americano for me.”   Taehyung eyes you when you pay and stroll to the other counter to wait. “Don’t you have a job to go to?”   “I’m still technically in recovery and it’s not like I can work if my head’s a mess.”   Taehyung scoffs lightly. “What do you want to know this time?”   He can tell by the look in your eye that there are questions on the tip of your tongue. And when you take out a whole laundry list like it’s things you need to buy at a grocery store, a rectangular grin plasters on his face. Taehyung wouldn’t expect any less of you.    “Hey, I was thinking about it all night, alright? I was afraid I was going to forget so I wrote it down.”   He leans over to look at the list but you move away. “Don’t peek.”   “Okay, okay.” He laughs and gestures for you to start.   “First question. What did I say before I left?” You look at him, eyes meeting his. “What were my exact reasons for the divorce?”   He hums a low note, staring off into the distance. “I don’t remember well. You called me a motherfucker though,” Taehyung chuckles and becomes solemn. “Probably something along the lines that I’ve stopped trying and that you were leaving. There was a lot of crying and screaming. I…..don’t really like to think about it.”   There’s a pause and you clear your throat, paper in your hand crinkling and forgotten.   “Why didn’t you ever do anything to stop it?”   A sigh leaves his lips and he runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Maybe because I’m an idiot. But it’s not like I could’ve forced you to stay with me.”   “I’m sure if you had said something, I would’ve stayed.”   Taehyung’s smile is meek and sad, not at all like how it usually is. You wonder just how much you hurt him, how much you hurt each other. “A lot can happen in two years, Y/N.”   A lot can happen in the two years they were apart too.   “Have you been seeing anyone?”   “No. I haven’t,” he says.    It’s a question that tumbled out of you, one not on the list.   //   The evening comes and you hear the front door open and shut. Immediately, you call out from the kitchen, “Hey!”   Yoongi emerges from the hall with another tired smile. “Hey.”   “I got takeout for us,” you say while heating said food up. “How was work? Busy again?”   “A little.” The man comes closer to see what you’ve bought but before he’s able to assess, he mindlessly leans in and plants a soft kiss against your cheek. You instantaneously freeze, the muscles in your body becoming rigid and tense, and Yoongi realizes. “I’m sorry. It’s a bad habit.”   He pulls away, disheartened and guilt wells up in your throat. “It’s okay.”   Yoongi nods and he shrugs off his coat, walking back towards the hall to hang it up, but you stop him before your conscience can berate you, before you hurt him further—   “I saw him again. This morning.”   He halts. He stands still as you watch his backside.   The both of you know who you’re referring to.   “How was it?” Yoongi inquires hesitantly as if he’s not sure if he even should.    “It was good,” you murmur. “I got a few more answers.”   His head turns, the black strands of his hair sweeping against his forehead. Yoongi’s gentle eyes are glossed over, his tone low and husky as he quietly asks, “Can’t you get answers without seeing him?”   “I…..I’m sorry, Yoongi.”   You divert your vision, but from the corner, you can see the way his mouth curls gingerly.   “It’s okay.”   But you know that it isn’t. It’s unfair to him to wait for your memories to return, for you to continuously see someone of your past as he waits for you to come to love him as you once did.   The man retreats into the darkness and you feel guilt overwhelm you.   //   When Taehyung wakes up, does his daily routine and heads to the café, he opens the door and expects to see you. Standing there, waiting for him as if you were the owner or a barista working full time.   “Are you sure you’re not healthy enough to go back to work?” He grins, brows lifted and almost impressed at how adamant you are.   “No.” You loll your head to the side. “I’m still feeling tired.”   Taehyung scoffs lightly, noting that you always show up earlier than he does. “Tired, huh?”   “You must be tired too. Your shirt is inside out.”   “What?” His line of sight follows to where you’re pointing and Taehyung looks down to see that his shirt is indeed inside out. He groans in embarrassment as you laugh.   “Did you not notice?”   He doesn’t answer, grabbing his drink from the counter once the barista calls his name and he books it out of the shop. But not without you following behind him and still giggling.   “Are you sulking?” You quickly catch up to him and quirk your head almost to his shoulder. “I’m just teasing, Tae. It’s not that noticeable.”   “You noticed it.”   “Well I’ve always noticed everything about you.”   He clicks his tongue in feigned annoyance and stops, making you halt on your heels. “Don’t flirt with me, woman. Didn’t you say you were seeing someone?”   You scoff, continuing to walk and this time, he’s the one who follows after you. “Who says I’m flirting with you? I think you’re terribly mistaken and quite frankly, full of yourself.”   Taehyung grins. “It’s not my fault I was born this handsome and have so many people regularly flirting with me.”   “Uh-huh. You’re beginning to sound like Seokjin.”   “He’s not half as handsome as I am.”   You burst out laughing, knowing that your old friend would probably throw a fit if Taehyung openly fought him for the position of most handsome in your group of friends. “I beg to differ.”   “Then why didn’t you marry him back then?”   “Should’ve,” you sing-song much to Taehyung’s chagrin.   The pair of you stop in front of his building, the destination of every morning journey. You know this is where you’ll have to leave him off and see him again tomorrow, wait for just these ten minutes of conversations and banter. But unusually, Taehyung doesn’t bid you farewell right away. He doesn’t run away with his tail in between his legs, shooting you a playful glare over his shoulder.   Instead, he stops with you and smiles. Taehyung lingers on the sidewalk with you.   “Y/N…” He gazes at you.   Your eyes connect with his warm irises and something lodges in your throat, an emotion that only seems to come with him. “Hmm?”   There’s held silence—   “There’s a bug in your hair.”   “What?!”   His palm slaps your forehead before you can flail, not enough for it to hurt, but enough that you’re stunned. You lift your hand to rub the spot and at the same time, a rectangular grin spreads into his face. Taehyung laughs childishly. “Kidding.”   “Are you five years old?!” you shout but it only eggs him on more.   “Sorry, sorry.” He bats your hand away and his fingers come to rub the spot for you instead. “I’m pretty sure it was your face cream and not a bug.”   The proximity is closed. You can feel his breath against your face, count his thick lashes, draw constellations through the tiny freckles around his nose.   You swallow hard, feeling the heat rise into your cheeks and Taehyung catches it. For a moment, his eyes linger against your lips and yours follows down to the dip of his cupid’s bow to the corner of his mouth. There’s a thick tension between the two of you, a kind of intimacy not found between a pair of old friends on a normal morning. It’s a kind of longing that you recognize in Taehyung’s gaze as it’s similar to your own…   You lean in to close the distance completely. But then Taehyung abruptly pulls away.   His vision is diverted to the ground.   All traces of mischief are gone. His mouth has fallen into a straight line, brows knitted together as if he’s in physical pain. “What are we doing, Y/N?”   He doesn’t wait for a response. Taehyung turns and walks away while the knots in your chest constrict you. But you run after him. You take three strides before he can vanish from your life — like what you found when you woke up in that hospital bed. The thought of that returning is terrifying.   “Taehyung!”   “No!” He turns around to face you, shutting you down before the way you call his name can affect him. You’re taken aback by the hurt etched on his expression. “It took me two years to get over you and even now I’m still not over you,” he declares angrily and your eyes widen. “And then you come out of nowhere to make a mess out of my head, playing these games.”   Your brows furrow, upset at his accusations and you shout back at him, “What games?!”   “I know that the moment you remember again, the moment you get over your stupid fucking amnesia, you’re going to dump me!” Taehyung swallows hard. “You’re going to make me go through all of that again. It’s downright cruel, you dense woman!”   “Don’t call me dense!” Without conscious decision, tears begin to shed down your face and you shake your head. “You know that that isn’t my intention.”   “I know.” Taehyung sighs. “But it’s going to happen anyway.”   The pair of you look at one another and then the doors to the building open. A tall man with dimples comes out and is absolutely bewildered at the ruckus. He’s seemingly familiar with Taehyung, perhaps a colleague of his. “Is something wrong, dude?”   “It’s fine.”   “Who’s this?” the stranger asks curiously, smiling at you.   “She’s my ex-wife.”   The man is caught off guard, eyes becoming rounded. “I didn’t know you were married.”   “Yeah, well, I used to be.” Taehyung peeks at you in a silent farewell and you watch his backside leave.

When Taehyung wakes up, does his daily routine and heads to the café, he opens the door and then his breath catches in his throat. He doesn’t know why disappointment seems to overwhelm him when you’re not there and he wonders since when he expected you to be in the first place — standing there, waiting for him.   He stands in line by himself. Makes his order by himself. Picks up his lunch by himself.    Taehyung walks to work alone.   And every so often, he unconsciously glances to his side and then sighs when he catches himself. He’s not sure why he keeps anticipating you to be with him. Why he allows himself to feel frustrated when he remembers you’re not here.   You’ve become Taehyung’s habit.   And now you’re gone.

There’s a timid knock at the door.   A moment later, it cracks open. “Hey, dinner is ready….” Yoongi’s puzzled to find you standing on a stool, reaching to the top of your closet but he smiles, glad to see you lively again. “What are you doing? Do you need help?”   “It’s okay.” You grab the album you were reaching for and wipe off the layer of dust that covers it. “I just remembered I kept old albums up here. Jeez, it’s so dusty.”   Yoongi’s brow lifts. “You remember?”   You nod, smiling at him. “I do.”   The album is flipped open and you step off the stool to sit on the edge of your bed. Yoongi watches you for a moment and exhales softly. “Well, I’ll leave your food on the table.”   You thank him and he takes his leave, shutting the door.   You guess no matter how bad your relationship with Taehyung got, you never had the heart to throw away or burn the photographs. And you’re glad. The photographs of your wedding day are still in tip-top shape, images showing the pair of you glowing in the sunset with his arms wrapped around you. You remember that wedding dress and that suit of his that had to be tailored twice. You remember being late to the ceremony and having to run with Taehyung who snuck out to see you beforehand even though he wasn’t supposed to...…   There are also photographs of your honeymoon, a vacation to the Caribbean, and another trip of Europe that you went on during your university days. But above all, there are photos of the pair of you in front of the newly built house. Proud and ecstatic. The seashell white home with the dark brown roof and large windows and skylights standing tall behind you two. Ready to house your future.   Some things change but these memories won’t.   //   The sprinklers spritzes across the freshly mowed lawn, a sputtering hiss that leaves a mist in the air. You step up the stone path to the cherry wood door, noticing the golden nameplate under the mailbox, but you don’t dwell. In your haze, your closed fist comes to steadily knock at the door.   It swings open.   Inside, you find someone with warm eyes, brunette hair and a boxy smile. He encapsulates the sunlight itself, so bright that it’s hard to discern who exactly it is. But you feel like you know. Like you had known before you even knocked and the door opened.   The man calls your name.   And you’re shaken awake from the beautiful dream. And you wake to an empty bedside, tears welling up in your eyes. It’s the middle of the night, darkness surrounding you and weighing heavily against your body. But you fight against it and rip the covers off of your body, grabbing a cardigan off your chair and rushing down the hall.   Yoongi is stirred from the noise and gets up from the couch.    “Where are you going?” he asks in a husky voice, running a hand through his hair that’s sticking in all directions. But the sleepiness leaves the man as he watches you shake your head, struggling to put on your shoes with tears in your eyes.   “I-I need to go, Yoongi.”   But for the first time, he reaches out.    Yoongi’s hand clasps around your wrist to stop you, having an inkling that you might never return. “I won’t let you.” His foot is finally placed down, but the decision has long been made.   “I’m sorry, Yoongi.”   “Don’t say that,” he desperately pleads.   “But I am. It’s unfair to you. That I’ve treated you this badly while all you’ve ever been is patient and considerate and understanding. But I don’t want you to wait for me anymore.”   “You’re not going back to your asshole of an ex-husband. He was horrible to you.”   “Yoongi, what do you expect me to do?” It’s a genuine question that you ask. You’re at a loss and the words choke out of you, but you had these feelings the moment you had awoken in that hospital bed. “I love him.”   The pause draws on and you lower your gaze.   “It’s not fair for you to wait for me to love you instead. I’m in love with Taehyung.”   Yet in spite of your words, Yoongi still pulls you into him. He wraps his arms around you and squeezes you tight as if you might vanish between his fingertips. You come to realize that you never gave Yoongi a chance to express his love to you — you never kissed him or held him despite how long he waited.   You feel him tremble against you. The man who you had woken to presses his face to your shoulder, his quiet tears staining your thin clothing. You return his hug, arms lifted around his torso and grasping him close. You remember who he is. You know well.   He’s Min Yoongi, the man who you loved.   After a moment, he releases you. “Go.”   You nod. “I’ll always be thankful to you, Yoongi. More than you’ll realize.”   //   The car door slams shut.   You cross the street, approaching the house that still stands tall on the quiet suburban street illuminated by lamp posts. You’re not sure what you’re doing here at this time of night and you know you’ll just be disheartened when you see another family inside, living in the space that was meant for you and Taehyung. But you needed to see it.   It’s your home. What you made with Taehyung. Physical proof of your planned devotion to one another.   The house is dark and you assume that the people inside are long asleep. So you take a moment to gaze at it, heart aching inside your chest, and after ten minutes, you turn to walk away and leave your home behind. But then a car drives down the road. It’s a modest vehicle and as you wait for it to pass to cross the street, it instead pulls into the driveway of the house.   The headlights turn off. The engine dies. The car door opens.   And you freeze, watching the person emerge.   “Taehyung?!”   The strapping brunette man is unmistakable. He’s dressed in his work clothes, casual sweater and black trousers, his leather crossbody bag slung across his torso. He looks tired from what you can see with the glow of the many street lights, his hair messy and eyes weary. But he still has the energy to be shocked at your sudden presence.    Shocked as if he’s been caught in the act. “What are you doing here?”   You speak on an exhale. “Y-You bought the house back again?”   He bought it after the two of you lost it. Even when there’s no reason to.   Not unless it still holds sentimental value. Not unless the memories held in there were ones he still cherishes. Not unless he still loves you.   Taehyung murmurs your name, “Y/N…”   You run to him, closing the distance, throwing your arms around his neck. And you kiss the silly man breathlessly, pressing your mouth against his and swallowing the groan that leaves his lungs. His arms wrap around your back, holding you close and quickly reciprocating. His head tilts and his tongue slips into your mouth, drawing noises out of you like when you were young and still exploring one another.   But it’s a kiss of sadness and longing — yet still sweet even after so much time has passed.   After a handful of seconds, Taehyung pulls away.   “W-What are we doing?” He shakes his head, letting go of you.   But you grab hold of his hand. “I still love you, Taehyung. I love you.”   His earnest eyes search yours. “How….how do I know you won’t just remember why you wanted to leave me. How do I know it won’t happen all over again? We’re still the same people, Y/N. It didn’t work once.”    “I don’t care,” you spit at him desperately. “To me, it feels like it was until yesterday that we were still married and in love. And right now, right now I still love you, Taehyung. I miss you. I don’t care what happened, that you lost your job, lost the house and started to feel bad about yourself and gave up on us.”    Taehyung’s eyes are rounded and his lips part. “You….remember?”   You nod. “I have gradually for a while now.”   Bits and pieces had fallen together the longer you spent with him, the more you looked at pictures and mementos, and searched your memories. They were loose puzzle pieces, moments of time, until you fit them together to create a whole picture. To finally understand why things happened the way they did.   And you can finally recall the downward spiral of Taehyung all those years ago. How he abruptly got laid off, losing his dream job that he had worked so hard to obtain, how the two of you lost the house when your sole income was no longer enough and how depressed he became about losing that home. How he sat at his desk for two years in the dark, playing games and wasting time, giving up on searching for a job and refusing to get himself help in his poor mental state.   You remember how he ignored you until you felt like his mother and couldn’t take it anymore. How he pushed your sanity enough that you had to walk away before you were damaged.    But in spite of all that has happened…   “I still love you.”   He’s an absolute shit, but you love him.   Without being able to blink, Taehyung tugs you in by your waist and he presses his lips against yours, holding you close to him. You smile against his mouth before your hands lift to cup his cheeks, cradling his face as he deepens the kiss. It’s desperate, hungering to make up for lost time, fulfilling the yearning that has dwelled between the pair of you each time you spoke.   Taehyung kisses you like he’s missed you more and the pair of you barely manage to break apart to stumble into the house.   “I can’t believe you bought this place back.” It’s a whirlwind, nostalgia slamming into you as you step into the foyer. You’re overwhelmed with emotion, feeling a staggering urge to start crying.   “Had to do a lot of negotiating, but I did it,” he murmurs proudly, happy to show you how he’s picked himself up, how he found another passion and followed the path, that he’s no longer so pathetic. “All on my own too.”   “Taehyung…”   He kisses you again, less gentle than before. He’s merciless, hands placed on your hips and your back arches into him until the force of his body causes the two of you to fall backwards onto the floor. Taehyung catches your head so that it never hurts and he hovers over you, leg between your knees while he peels off his coat.    “I’m sorry,” he says softly, gazing into your eyes. “I never got to tell you that. I’m sorry for hurting you.”   You nod, grasping at his forearms that’s next to your head and he takes the opportunity to lean down. Taehyung lay pecks against your cheek until he moves his way down to suck bruising kisses into your neck. You cry his name, writhing against him as he palms your breast and leaves his marks all over you.   Taehyung eats you out on the cool tiled floors of the foyer entrance, filling the house with obscene sounds that make you embarrassed. But you can’t complain, not when you’re sobbing his name and your fingers are sinking into his hair.   You end up cumming all over his swollen lips and chin, and you bat at him when he grins and says it’s delicious. Before Taehyung can completely ruin the mood, you grab him and with little warning, his cock sinks into your cunt, head poking right at the entrance of your cervix. You feel full and he begins to pound into you, satisfying that itch you’ve had for so long.   Taehyung makes you look at him the entire time and as you hold him, it hits you just how much you missed him. Tears leak from your eyes and it only eggs him on to be rougher. His fingers sink into the meat of your thigh and his mouth leaves hickeys down the valley of your breasts to admire later. You cum again and then he presses his pelvis into yours and cums in you as well, painting your walls in white.   Despite being sweaty and sticky, Taehyung kisses you again and the two of you hold one another. He’s sweet and affectionate until he starts to push his cum back into you with his fingers when you begin to leak.   “Now you’re not even trying to hide the fact you want me to get pregnant.”   The man mischievously grins. “Last I checked, it was yesterday that we wanted kids.”   You burst out laughing, unable to argue with that but…. “We’re not even married anymore. What would your mom think?”   “She would probably cry tears of happiness if she knew we were together again. And marriage…” He interlaces his hands with yours. “We could make it happen again. If you want.”   You nod. “I do.”

It’s another chance. Another do over.   You wonder if you had never lost your memories and tried to chase them down, if you would’ve ever reached out to Taehyung again and reignite the spark between the two of you. Had you not found him again, you wonder if you would’ve known that he’s picked himself again and returned to the man you fell in love with. It’s hard to say but those things are yesterday’s problems.   Today, you look towards the future.   “Wake up, sleepy head.”   On any other day, you might kick him in the knee for waking you up on a weekend, but it’s been so long that you don’t mind whatsoever. Taehyung’s mischief is world’s better than waking up to an empty bedside or to someone you can’t genuinely love as much.   “Ugh.” You open your eyes and immediately slap a palm against his mouth. “Don’t kiss me. Morning breath.”   Taehyung peels your hand off, grins and smooches you anyway. You laugh and quickly reciprocate.   When it’s all done and over, he snuggles into you. “You know…” You’re wrapped in each other’s arms and you slowly blink awake, glad that you’ve finally woken up with him beside you. “...those brown walls in this room are going to have to change.”   Taehyung laughs. “Happily.”   There’s nothing been more certain of. You want to spend tomorrow with Taehyung and the day after that and the day after that.   Until eternity.

[okay-victoria]

Random Personal Rant

For anyone somehow here not from the original thread, this started off me getting asked what finishing school is and me getting shit off my chest that is only mildly relevant about how I could both be of the social class that gets sent to finishing school and grows up on welfare.

With an understanding that in many parts of the world it wouldn't qualify as so, as far as the US goes, my dad is from what counts as a very old money family from Baltimore & Philadelphia. Both his siblings went to college and one now owns a major hedge fund, and his sister is married to a C-level executive at a huge conglomerate. His parents went to college. His grandparents went to college. All eight of his great grandparents went to college. My dad...did not go to college. He was not about that life, and while I don't mean it as an insult, when I say his primary occupation until I was ~5 was a drummer in a mediocre band I mean that he opened for a lot of great acts, and if you lived in the Boston to Atlanta area in the 80s you may have heard him play, but he was never a huge national name. But he wasn't an amateur band playing for free at some random local gig either.

My mom grew up on a chicken farm in a Mennonite family in Pennsylvania but also completely rejected her heritage and became a model, sort of like my father, of mediocre status. Not Giselle Bundchen, but had national contracts and if you have a Graco ad/box from 1990-1993 you might see both me and her on it. They met because my mom's friends placed bets, one each, on who could sleep with a member of their favorite local band first and my mom picked my dad and...my mom was actually supposed to go be a model in Tokyo and found out she was pregnant with me and couldn't go 😂

So, after my parents had two kids back to back with a third on the way and determined they needed lifestyles more in line with having three children, they became much poorer than they originally were because my mom stopped working and my dad, with a barely-passed-high-school education but needing a true "day job" worked day labor in construction. My dad's father was too proud to give us money/help if my dad didn't beg for it; despite having eventually four young children my dad never did so we ended up on all the state assistance programs one could imagine. My grandma jokes that dinners at my parents house were BYOC - bring your own chair, because we didn't own any.

My mother and paternal grandmother had no such pride issues and I live in eternal gratitude that my welfare childhood was not as crappy as it should have been because my grandmother would have my mom accompany her on grocery runs and buy us food without my father or grandfather knowing, and every Christmas and birthday my grandparents/godparents could give us the one big ticket gift all the kids wanted that year. But, on the other side, I once got stung by a bee inside my mouth because my brother threw a hairbrush through a cracked window at me and broke it and we couldn't afford to fix it for about two years and a hornet got in one day and rested himself in my coke can (my parents were the very American type that fed me coca-cola in baby bottles at age 8 when I was jealous of my younger siblings lol).

It is hard not to believe in "toxic masculinity" when two men warring over dumbass pride issues would rather their children/grandchildren go without food than suck it up and decide 'help' isn't the worst word in the English language, and you know you've only been saved by two women who came from totally different backgrounds and entirely disapproved of each other but reached out the hand to shake when it came down to toddlers getting the short end of the don't-bend-the-knee stick. It wasn't that either of the men were bad people, I loved them both and got along great with both, but on a societal level I feel they were socialized in a very fucked up way if that was the end result, as both claimed "male pride" in these instances [my dad took multiple thousands of dollars I'd saved from working during college from me during the 2008-2010 financial crisis and didn't tell me and that was the reason I was given for why I hadn't been informed/asked, because it would be too emotionally difficult for an adult man to ask a young woman. My graduation present was them repaying me 1/3 of the money they'd taken from me without asking because I'd like, trusted them when it had been in a joint account that was a holdover from when I was <18 and couldn't have my own bank account].

While in some ways my parents on the surface achieved the American dream of going from nothing to a bunch of money, the real factor in play was that my dad's father was the bank. My parents had no credit and couldn't get real loans. My dad worked construction and during the two major periods that flipping houses was very lucrative, he never had to get an actual loan or pay actual interest, he just had to ask his father to pay out cash and then repay him at a flat 2% interest rate that didn't even accrue over time, just...whenever you are ready, repay the value of the loan + 2%. Because my father was doing something productive, in these instances, my grandfather was happy to pay, because it wasn't giving away money, it was loaning it. I had a very weird situation of mostly being poor but like also getting taken to the "big donors" events at the Kennedy Center and my grandparents regularly buying me a dress as a child worth more than my mom's wedding dress and also needing to pretend I fit in with these people.

And look. When I say "these people"...honestly, by and large, most wealthy people, whether inherited or not, are not the assholes you want to imagine. Most of them are extremely nice. Most of them are generous when it comes to the less fortunate who are in their personal sphere of being. Most of them are just really out of touch. The 100% kindest of all of them that I know once relayed to me that she thought people would be happier if once a year they did what she did...go to the airport with a purse packed full of absolute necessities, buy a one way ticket to the most appealing destination on the flight board, buy your clothes and book your accommodations after you'd arrived, and come back after you felt you'd 'centered' yourself. She didn't understand why there were so many unhappy people who weren't taking this very obvious route to being happier. I didn't quite know how to explain that saying "most" people couldn't afford to do that either financially or from a job/career angle didn't even cover it, as "most" sounds like 70% instead of 99.7%.

I was both my parents eldest son and eldest daughter in the worst combination possible. I was the eldest son because I was the most stereotypically male of all my siblings, in everything from desire to physically fight the battles I was given to dislike of shopping/fashion to lack of emotional connection to my relationships, so I can now fix your average household plumbing/drywall/electrical issue better than most "city" guys I interact with and remain less clingy to them in the process. I was also very much the oldest daughter from a responsibility perspective, I managed our household and from age 10 - 24 managed the finances of our family business, my mom almost died giving birth to my youngest brother after a ruptured uterus that should never have happened in the first place if we had adequate insurance to get her a non-emergency C-section (I was just past 9 years old at the time) and I was informally withdrawn from school for two years to take care of the family when she couldn't because there is no paid parental leave in the US and we got double-fucked by the medical industry because she got a bad "mesh" put in and then had to have a further surgery to repair that which we also had to pay for and didn't have the money to win a lawsuit over.

I don't know quite how to put this, but in the deepest fuck you of the universe, my rich-immigrant-ggggg grandfather's money led to him owning banks, insurance companies, etc, and the family cashed out in a big way when their ownership was bought by and merged with what is now Cigna, one of the biggest US healthcare insurers, and my nuclear family specifically got screwed by the American health insurance industry, but anyway, we were the people selected for that karmic comeuppance so if you want to feel schadenfreude at my expense, I'll allow it without begrudging the sentiment, my family might have fucked up your family’s life too, not just their own.

I got up twice a night to feed my brother because my dad had to sleep unmolested in my room to get to work and my mom was too weak to carry my brother or even hold him against her while she nursed so I had to hold him up to her. Adjusting to living in a city and hearing lots of random noises all the time was not easy when I'd had mom sound instincts from age 9.

I learned to drive the fall my youngest bro was born because my mom couldn't and I had to get my middle brother to preschool and go the grocery store on my own. While I hold absolutely no ill will towards my father or grandfather for this and given that about 1/3 of my paternal family either has an autism diagnosis or should, I fully feel the struggles they both went through to be communicated with, my father wouldn't ask for help, and my grandmother that lived 20 minutes away couldn't give enough help because my grandfather refused to do a single dish on his own as that was outside their "marriage contract" type agreement and she couldn't ever stay with us overnight when there wasn't a clearly-communicated need, so they let the burden fall on a 9 - 11 year old child and that really shaped a lot of my life in both good and bad ways. My youngest brother is 22, and we have only just climbed out of the medical debt his birth left us with between my dad's life insurance and my oldest brother and I paying for the extra cost of out-of-state college tuition.

The irony of all of this is that because my father died before his father, when my grandmother dies, my siblings and I will all inherit enough money (as a non-blood relative my mom, despite keeping her vows to part at death and not having remarried in eight years, is cut out entirely) to make this a non-issue, but my grandfather couldn't conscience spotting his unluckiest child some money in the end of days to pay for my youngest two brothers' education and take that worry off my father as he was dying. The day before he died I had to hold him down in bed to keep him from trying to climb in his truck to go to work because he was so anxious about trying to provide for us in spite of his father having fuck you money, because his father didn't think it was fair to the other siblings (who, at the time, still owned a major hedge fund and were married to a C-level executive of a huge conglomerate). A day and a half later I went back to my job because at the time I was then the sole provider for the family and didn't want to risk asking for the standard week's bereavement leave when I knew I was capable of showing up at work the next day and was fresh out of college so hadn't built up a reputation yet.

My father worked the day each of us was born, so I suppose it is only fair and he smiled at the choice. In spite of what it may seem, I gave a baller and very heartfelt speech at his funeral to all his rich friends that over and above everything, he'd taught us how to be happy with our own lives no matter what, and multiple of them emailed my mom in the aftermath to say they'd reassessed their relationship with their children in light of it, although...tbh I kind of doubt that lasted and they probably changed nothing 😅. The last good talk I had with him, two weeks before he died [his liver was going and it sent toxins to his brain that de-personed him after that and he no longer recognized me as his daughter, but as his sister], I reassured him that though we would all be sad he'd gone, we'd live on just fine without him because that's how he'd raised us, and according to my mom that was what gave him the final bit of peace he needed. Although honestly, I don't think I will ever see the strength in another human again that it took my grandmother to sit next to him and stroke his hand and tell him to close his eyes and imagine he was happy on a beach and die, for God's sake, because he was unaware and in pain and just prolonging it for our sake by then.

That type of obsession my grandfather had with assessing his children and grandchildren on the basis of economic productivity and a very black and white idea of "fair" is one you don't easily forget, I promise you. My hedge fund uncle is currently positioning himself to screw us out of our inheritance because of janky writing in the will and I'm doing my fuck all best to gain the wherewithal to go toe-to-toe with this cold motherfucker in court as the oldest and representative member of my happily much nicer and softer younger brothers who I want to remain that way not because I even care that much about the money, I know what bills affect your credit first and what you can put off paying and all of us have good enough career prospects to do our own thing, but just because I want to give the middle finger to a man that was a multi-millionaire and drew lines on his milk and orange juice bottles when I came over so he knew if I drank what my parents couldn't afford when I was approximately six. Anyway, ask me why I support major reforms in wealth taxation. I don't care who it goes to, just not that guy, you feel?

Having expendable income was very exciting for a bit after I started working but once I got to the hateable point of assessing my annual bonus and internally complaining that I'd spent the money I should have spent on a Sauternes cellar to drop five digits on bedset materials (to be fair they are drop dead gorgeous, very comfy and the factory pays a living wage for people to handmake the sheets/duvets/pillows to people in San Francisco, which is not cheap, so maybe I did more good than harm with that), I two seconds later nodded to myself and went "the government needs to confiscate more money from me". The narrative is always that the "undeserving" will use it for dumb things they don't need like iPhones or refrigerators...?...but like...I could also have gone to Bed Bath and Beyond and bought a very nice sheet/comforter set for at most a tenth of what I paid so am I really spending it responsibly either....?....who is going to get more joy out of this misspent money....?....not me, that is for sure, I probably would have had more fun going to BBB and laying on all the demo beds and buying something there.

My lifelong dream, which may become possible if/when I do have something of an inheritance, is to provide food security for one of the many towns in the US were most residents don't have it. It's the thing I remember the most distinctly over the years. I never could quite believe it when I got to the point that I could just...pay to eat at a restaurant. One of the most disappointed my mother has ever been in me is when I was twenty five and confessed I actually had no idea how much a gallon of milk cost in a city grocery store besides that it was probably between $1 and $5, because I didn't have to know. For now I make a weekly drop off of my excess produce to a mom group I met under somewhat weird circumstances but I was walking through the cut-through that went through the low-income housing back to my apartment at like 2 AM on a Saturday and these moms were out there partying and smoking weed with their kids all strapped in strollers around or the older ones watched by a rotating member of the group and I felt very safe and like these moms had a very good vibe of both living their own lives [seriously for mental health parents but in most cases specifically mothers need to be able to keep up relationships with people their age] but keeping their children safe and accounted for while doing so and trying their fuckin' best against all the odds to figure out how to make that happen when life had dealt them a shit hand.

...anyway, looping way back to the original question of what finishing school is, when I was almost done with middle school my dad had built a legit construction business that then very quickly took off because we lived in a commutable zip code to the now-rich-in-their-own-right people he went to high school with who trusted him to redo their homes. We eventually moved to that zip code but I stayed and commuted back to my old high school. But, i was a pretty wild kid which my father appreciated for a long while because I would follow him around on jobs and enjoy doing physical labor, but once I was mid-puberty and also he had to maybe show me to his high school friends that did not fly.

I snapped - not broke, snapped - my left thumb and my parents had to trap me like a wild animal to get me to go the hospital. Then I got a deep cut that partially injured a tendon in my leg and at eleven I tried to beat the shit out of my dad to prevent him from picking me up to strap me in the car and go to the hopsital. Next I got a deep splinter due to my eternal-barefoot tendencies and it wouldn't come out so got infected and I refused to go to the doctor [another weird back story but I was minorly sexually assaulted [[to be clear, not raped or anything big traumatic]] when I was eight and had to stay in hospital for a week and my parents couldn't be with me all the time so I have a permanent heebie-jeebie about going to the hospital, not true anxiety, I will go if I know I need to and I don't breathe heavy or anything, and I'm actually not permanently weirded out by sex or anything, just doctors in hospitals specifically I kind of unconsciously try to justify not needing to the extent I can rationalize it] and my dad was tired of my antics so he was like "fine if you don't go I will slice your foot in half with a Swiss Army knife to get it out" and I called his bluff and laid down on the floor, stuck my foot on his lap, and he didn't really know what to do when a barely fourteen year old girl called his bluff so my brothers watched in fascinated but horrified awe as I got my foot sliced open spectacularly so that the infection/splinter could come out and I didn't even make a sound out of spite despite it being quite painful to my recollection almost twenty years later.

They saw me cry from pain exactly one time when while trying to break up a fight between all three of them (it was over ice cream) I got pushed and my ankle got dislocated and what actually made me cry was snapping it back in place and they realized it was not a joke. These dumb assholes that I love have ragged on me for "skipping" chores the day after I was in the hospital because the day before that I had to spend 18 hours running Thanksgiving as a good sub-hostess like I didn't have a serious infection that needed treating and couldn't rest because none of them were up to any task beyond peeling potatoes.

After the Swiss Army knife incident, my dad's discussion of sending me to finishing school became real, which I knew when my mom made me take a walk with her and talked about it. Finishing school is like...etiquette school....? In ye olden day when finishing high school was not the norm for anyone, wealthy men finished high school and wealthy women often went to "finishing" school to have a combined education on being a proper lady but also being able to hold a decent conversation with your presumably-educated husband, so it wasn't entirely etiquette non-academic. It was more just like "what a rich man wants in a wife" school, which was sort of household management and knowing enough about cleaning/cooking to correct the staff if they fucked up, how to be a polite hostess, and how to not entirely bore him when you were alone together and had done your five minutes of sex or whatever so actually had to have a conversation. In modern times it has obviously expanded to be less bleak.

I said miss me with that, I can be a girl on my own, so I went full throttle into the girliest sport they offer in high school and ever since have gained the inestimable advantage of knowing how to also use femininity to my advantage, which I am very grateful to my parents for making me learn. It would be great if we lived in a world where that didn't count, but it did/still does, and they really set me up to operate in all the worlds.

It is weird for me to tell the story to Internet strangers because it's one of those things that makes your parents sound terrible and abusive in the general tone of the Internet nowadays, and while I support gender nonconforming children I don't remember my childhood or parents that way. But, I feel like the bits and pieces of my life I've given don't always make a ton of sense together without the context, so here it is, and in the end, I think a number of parts of it are areas where you can probably understand where it makes me have the opinions I do when I write.

Anyhoo, this makes my life sound far worse than it is, I actually have a great life and I am not unhappy with it at all and feel I was on the whole blessed with many more turns of luck than unluck, so, please, do not take this as a depressed artist rant, it is more like a rant of a very energetic person who rants about a lot of things all the time and didn’t need to come out but just did because the question was asked and the time was right with my life being in a bit of flux to think about how I got where I am and where I want to go and why.

Always remember no matter what problems it seems like I have, if I didn’t solve them on my 2 year round the world traveling hiatus I took from working, it’s my own fault, I definitely had the time and money to solve them and just chose not to.

[dream-a-little-bigger-x]

Chapter 22 -- Perfect Harmony | Charlie Gillespie

Summary: Emily Fox is a talented 17-year-old with a passion for all things music. Her dream is to become a successful singer-songwriter one day. But to achieve that dream, she needs to get into one of the most prestigious music schools in her district – it’s all been part of her plan since she was six. Sadly enough, those schools cost a ton of money that her parents don’t want to invest. They don’t even want her to pursue her dream. So, now Emily’s hustling, working at the music store to save up to get into college. That’s until she meets Charlie, an annoying seventeen-year-old boy with the same dream as her. The only difference is, he’s just doing it. He doesn’t need a fancy college to pursue his dream to become famous with his band. He just writes his songs and books small gigs here, there and everywhere. Will meeting Charlie defer her from her dream college, or will he actually help her achieve the dream?

Pairing: Charlie Gillespie x OC (Emily Fox)

Warnings: mentions of death, sexual assault

Important note: the characters of Charlie, Owen, Jeremy and Madison are based on the characters they play on the show and i do not own their names, only OC are mine. The songs aren’t mine either, they’re all from the show except for one.

~|Emily Fox|~

I think I might have hit rock bottom again. It’s been a year since I’ve found myself falling and falling deeper down this dark and empty hole of sadness and remorse. It’s been a pity party of one up in this house since Saturday and it’s now Thursday. Madison came around almost every day. She brought lasagna on Saturday, spent the night and then watched movies with Mitch and me on Sunday. On Monday, she came back after school to give me my homework, but knowing I probably wouldn’t do it, and the same happened on Tuesday and Wednesday. Today, the bell rings at 9 am while I’m still in bed, wrapped up in a blanket burrito. I can hear Madi’s voice, however, and all it does is make me wonder why she’s not in school. “I’m just worried about her, you know?” I hear Madi’s voice as her and Mitch make their way upstairs. “I don’t want her to fall further down to rock bottom the same way she was last year.” My uncle simply hums. “Yeah, I think it’s time for an intervention,” he says seconds before he knocks on my door and enters without my response. “Morning, Muffin.” I glare at him for his chirpiness. “It’s time, honey,” Madison tells me, her nose in my wardrobe. “Time for what? To cry? I think I’m behind schedule today,” I mean it as a joke, but neither of them takes it as one. “I don’t feel like doing anything, guys.” “You’ll feel so much better after a shower and putting on pretty clothes,” Madi replies, throwing me a couple of clothes. “Now, chop, chop! Into the shower!” I stay put, glaring at my best friend. Even though I know she’s trying to help me, it’s not really working. Getting up and being productive isn’t going to get me my audition back. “Come on, Muffin! We’re going to the mall for like an hour. Please, can you do that for me? Just an hour?” Mitch’s begging somehow makes me rise up from my bed and head into the shower. The hot water doesn’t help with the empty space in my heart, but it does help with the stank of four days lying in bed. With still wet hair, I get into the outfit Madison has given me and walk back out into my bedroom. Mitch and Madi both smile at me proudly like I’m a child walking for the first time. “I don’t feel like doing my hair or makeup,” I tell them, putting on some shoes. “You want us to do it for you?” Mitch asks carefully, but I shake my head. “It’s fine. I’ll probably cry and ruin it anyway.” Both of them pout before grabbing my hand and leading me downstairs and into the car. Uncle Mitch drives us to the nearest mall where we get to shopping straight away. Nothing seems to please me though. No item of clothing or accessory brings me any joy. My bank account is happy. At least that’s one of us. “What do you think of this?” Madi asks, showing off some really rad trousers. Black cargo trousers with white blocks running through it. “Those look cool. You should get them!” I encourage her, managing a tiny smile. “They’re for you,” she tells me, but I shake my head, looking through the rail of clothing. “I’m going to buy them for you anyway. I’m sure you’ll thank me later,” she says and walks off towards the register to pay for them. I watch Madi and Mitch interact for a moment. Their voices are hushed, and they’re too far away to eavesdrop. But the wide eyes and open mouths don’t predict anything good. “Everything okay?” I ask them once Madi has paid for the trousers and joined me again. Both of them push me out of the shop and into the next one, pulling and pushing me all around the place. “We’re fine!” Mitch replies, but I can tell he’s lying. “Just really excited to look here!” “Oh, look, Ems! These look cool! You always wanted those!” She pushes a jumpsuit into my hands and pushes me towards the changing rooms. Careful as she is, she pushes me into one and yanks the red curtain shut. What the hell is going on? “Madi, I really don’t feel like trying things on,” I say, reopening the curtains. “Just do it, babes,” she says, forcing me back inside. “Mads, this is a small. I can’t get my fat ass in there!” I tell her and shove the curtain open again. Madison looks behind her swiftly before exhaling and taking the jumpsuit away from me. “What’s going on, Mads?” “Nothing, babe! Just really excited about shopping!” I raise an eyebrow at her. I’m certain she’s lying to me, but I don’t know about what. Suddenly, Uncle Mitch joins us again. I hadn’t even noticed him gone. “Right, Mitch? Aren’t you excited about shopping?” “Yes! Very!” He claps his hands. “I hear there’s a sale in that shoe shop you love so much, Muffin. You want to go?” At least Uncle Mitch somewhat acts normal. Besides the vanishing. The two lead me to the shoe shop at the other side of the mall, which is busier than the side we were on previously. Must be the crazy sales.

Though every now and again, Madi and Mitch push me into dressing rooms quickly or change directions suddenly, the day actually feels decent. For the first time since Saturday, I actually feel as though my life has gone back to normal. Until I start thinking about my life and then it’s all over. I even started crying in the middle of a Claire’s, which wasn’t the prettiest sight. Madi and Mitch do spring into action immediately and bring me towards the ice cream parlor where we have several scoops of ice cream. “Thanks, guys,” I sniffle, “I know I haven’t been the easiest, but thank you for not giving up on me.” They both offer me a proud smile, and Madi even grabs my hand in hers. “We’re just glad you’re out of the house, Emsie,” she says. “Yeah, and we’re really proud of what you’ve accomplished today!” Mitch chimes in. “Aren’t you really happy with your new shoes?” I nod my head at Madi’s question. My new sneakers really are the coolest and most rad shoes I ever did see. “They’ll look great on your new pants!” Her smile widens when my lips curl up slightly. “I really like those new earrings you bought, Muffin! They’re very chic!” Mitch chimes in. “You know I’m all about the butterflies lately,” I tell him, already thinking about the cool outfit I’ll be able to put together with the shoes, the pants and the earrings. “Don’t forget that cool new jacket you found in that thrift store!” “I really wish they made those things in my size,” Mitch pouts, causing Madi and me to laugh. “There she is again!” She says excitedly. Her wide smile suddenly falters as she looks somewhere behind me. Before I can turn around to see what she’s seen, she grabs me by the hand and pulls me up. “I think we’ve done enough shopping for the day,” Mitch says, and grabs all of our bags before the three of us leave the mall. Once at home, Madi and Mitch seem to get back to their usual self; calmer and less anxious. “Show me your new outfit!” Madi shouts excitedly as we go upstairs to try everything we bought on again for a little fashion show. When we were younger, we always used to put up fashion shows with her or my mom’s heels. It was the funniest thing. “That looks so bomb!” She claps her hands excitedly, scanning up and down my body. I turn to look into the full-length mirror, and suddenly I’m taken back to our fashion shows back in the day. “Thanks for today, Mads,” I say instead of getting nostalgic about our past. “Anything for you, Emily.”

Taglist: 

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Lemme know if you wanna be on my taglist! :)

[purplesurveys]

1149

A

What is your age? 22, but there’s less than a month to go before I turn 23.

What annoys you? Literally every single person who still supports the government at this point. For context, we are back to square one and we’re under the exact same quarantine imposed in March 2020 because of the surge in cases. Nothing has changed and nothing has been done in the last 365 days while people are getting hungrier and poorer. I’m done feeling hopeful for this country and I cannot wait to abandon it forever.

Do you have any allergies? Apparently, grass. Can’t be exposed to it for too long otherwise the skin on my thighs turn red and occasionally even get rashes.

B

Do you know anyone named Billy? Kind of, but they’re girls with their name spelled as Billie.

When is your birthday? April 21st and spending it in quarantine once again this year...

Who is your best friend(s)? Angela and Andi.

C

What's your favorite candy? I like gummy bears and worms. As for sweets, I really like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Butterfinger, Twix, and the Hershey’s Cookies and Creme bar.

When was the last time you cried? Maybe a day or two ago while watching a snippet from Caught in Providence.

Have you been out of the country? Yes.

D

Do you daydream? Not so much these days. I’ve been better at keeping my focus at work.

What's your favorite kind of dog? I love alllllll dogs, but I’d usually be wary of smaller dogs because 87% of the times I’ve met some, they’re aggressive or a bit moody. I don’t like stereotyping dogs as much as possible but because I’ve had direct experiences to back it up anyway, *shrug*

What day of the week is it? It’s a Sunday.

E

How do you like your eggs? Scrambled, poached, or an omelette with lots of fillings. Balut is also great.

Have you ever been in the emergency room? Only when I was born, I’m guessing.

What's the easiest thing ever to do? Idk, what comes easy to me might not be the same for others. But my answer would be to smile, regardless if it were genuine or otherwise.

F

Have you ever flown in a plane? Yeah, many times. The child-like excitement I get whenever I get on one will probably never go away, either.

Do you use fly swatters? No, my mom usually uses old shoebox covers or rolled-up scratch papers we have lying around to swat them.

Have you ever used a foghorn?: Only in video games lol, never in real life.

G

Have you pet a goat? I don’t think I have. I’ve pet lots of animals before but I don’t think a goat has been one of them yet.

Are you a giver or a taker? Giver, but I’ve been allowing myself to take more these days.

Do you like gummy candies? Love them.

H

How are you? We’ve entered summer weather now, so I feel hot and miserable. It’s also Sunday and I am stuck at home, which doesn’t make me the happiest camper.

What's your height? 5′1″ or a tiny tiny tiny bit taller than that.

What color is your hair? It’s black but on extremely rare occasions I’ll catch a single light brown strand when I play with my hair.

I

What's your favorite ice cream? Cookies and cream and chocolate chip cookie dough. My friend Leigh actually started her own ice cream shop recently and I bought her coffee crumble ice cream, and it is sooooooooo fuckinggggggggg good??????? It’s so rare to find coffee ice cream where I live period, so I’m fucking stoked to have a close friend who makes literally the best one and in generous servings too.

Have you ever ice skated? Many times as a kid. I was never formally trained, but it was something I wanted to try from watching other kids play in mall ice skating rinks; and when I did give it a shot, I ended up enjoying it. Luckily my mom was encouraging and actually frequently dropped me off at a rink so I can practice gliding and all for a few hours while she ran errands.

Have you cheated the IRS? That’s like an American tax thingy, right? We don’t have that here and my employer handles my TIN.

J

What's your favorite jelly bean? Not a big fan but if I had to have Jelly Belly, I obviously would want to get the pleasant-tasting ones.

Do you tell jokes? Yes.

Do you wear nice jewelry? Only on special occasions.

K

Do you want to kill anybody? I don’t want to kill anybody but I certainly wish a good number of public officials would finally die.

Do you want to have kids? Yes. I really wish I could still have a future with them. Thanks for the trauma, my real asshole of an ex.

Where did you have kindergarten? Somewhere.

L

Are you laidback? I doubt my friends would use this to describe me. I for sure lean more towards the uptight side of the spectrum.

Do you lie? Eh, occasionally.

When is the last time you sent a hand-written letter? I have no idea. Christmas 2019 maybe?

M

Ever talked in a microphone? Sure. Many times.

Do you still watch Disney Movies? I very rarely get in the mood for them if I’m by myself, but yes, I’d gladly sit down and watch should an opportunity come.

Do you like mangoes? No.

N

Do you have a nickname? 99% of people call me Robyn while my family calls me Byn, but there are a select few friends who’ve stayed long enough with me to catch other names I’ve gotten over the years, which have since become inside jokes/nicknames. There’s Reben and Rolayn, and literally just yesterday ‘Roby’ happened when I ordered food for lunch so that will probably catch on as well.

What’s your favorite number? 4.

Do you prefer night over day? Absolutely.

O

Are you an only child? No, I’m two siblings away from that status.

Do you wish this was over? I haven’t felt that way, no.

What is the closet orange object near you? An orange tumbler my Kuya gave me as a Christmas gift in 2019. There is also orange tape wrapped around the charger adaptor of my company laptop.

P

What one fear are you most paranoid about? Waking up in the middle of surgery and being unable to speak nor move.

Do you play any instruments? Nope.

Do you think you are pretty? Some days.

Q

Are you quick to judge people? No, unless they are already blatantly showing their character like being rude towards service staff, tossing their trash to the ground, or cutting in queues. Whenever those things happen I give myself the space and freedom to guiltlessly judge.

What do you keep quiet about? How dysfunctional my family really is, and the things I really want to say about Gabie.

Do you have any quirks? Food-wise, I like peeling off the breading from fried chicken and placing them on the side of my plate so I can eat them last, because they’re my favorite part.

R

What’s a good reason to cry? Frustration. Crying can be really helpful in lessening stress.

Do you think you're always right? No.

Do you watch reality TV? Not religiously, but I love watching snippets of reality shows on Facebook because they’re all so embarrassing and it’s hilarious to watch hahahahah. Literally last night I was watching clips of Big Ed on 90 Day Fiance.

S

Are you a social person? More so now than I was years ago.

What states have you lived in? I lived in Manila briefly but it didn’t take long till we transferred to another city for a more peaceful life in the suburbs.

What is your favorite season? I wanna say winter because of what I’ve seen from it in movies and shows, but I’ve never actually experienced it before.

T

When did you last sleep in a tent? Sometime in March or April last year.

Do you like tomatoes? Mostly in diced form. Tomato sauce is fine but I don’t really like it in my pasta. Bloody Mary also tastes rather awful.

What time did you wake up? 8:30 AM.

U

Do you have an umbrella in your car? I think so, yeah. I finally placed one in there lmao.

Do listen to Usher? Eh, not really. 2000s R&B isn’t my thing, save for Beyoncé.

Describe the underwear your wearing? It’s light blue.

V

What’s the worst veggie? I never learned to like pechay. I’d still eat it, but only because I like cleaning up my entire plate.

Do you like movies with violence? Some. Like I hate action movies but I enjoyed A Clockwork Orange and Scream lol.

Where do you want to go on vacation? I recently bookmarked an Airbnb in Zambales and the accommodation is basically this super cute line of tipi-styled huts by the beach. I'd love to have a solo trip push through once this Covid mess subsides.

W

Ever been on a wave runner? No.

Where do you work? I work in a PR company.

Do you wish on stars? Just sometimes.

X

Have you ever had an x-ray? Only for mandatory medical exams.

Do you own a xylophone? I think I had a toy one as a kid, but it’s not with me anymore.

Have you watched the x-games? No, not interested.

Y

What did you do yesterday? I stayed at home; ordered food for Angela as a surprise; debated if I should buy a pair of Air Maxes – and ultimately decided I’ve already spent too much this month to deserve a new pair of shows lol; and just settled to buy a new night lamp for my bedroom. I also watched the newest episode of 2 Days 1 Night and ate more of Leigh’s ice cream while doing work.

Do you like the color yellow? Only in mustard yellow. I also like the song Yellow, heh.

What year were you born?: 1998.

Z

Do you believe in the zodiac? No.

Has your bank account been at zero? No. I remember when I was first opening my own account at the bank and the clerk told me to make sure I don’t go below P2,000, and my intensely by-the-book ass has been following the rule ever since, even though my dad has told me it’s absolutely fine to go below it so long as I have P2,000 back in the account after a month hahaha.

Ever been to the zoo? A few.

[thoughtsofanexcitedspacechild]

50 things I’ve learned this year during a global pandemic/general life advice from your local teenage train wreck :) (Pt. 1)

1. It’s okay to let go. Of things, people, old interests, even your past self. It doesn’t matter. If it isn’t benefiting you anymore, it’s okay to let things go.  

2. No relationship is worth pursuing that doesn’t match your energy. If someone’s not matching the love you give them, pull back to match their energy. That way, you save your energy for the people in your life that do. Most times, the people who do match your love and energy are the one’s that are in it for the long run and will be there for you. 

3. Stop caring what other people think about your interest. Often times we have so much shame for liking what we like. Why is that? If it isn’t hurting anyone, then why does it matter that you have an obscure taste in music, books, movies, etc.? Stop apologizing for what you like!

4. It’s okay to not want to grow up, even if that’s all you wanted to do as a kid. You don’t have to grow up. 

5. Going off of that, if you’re a “gifted” or “mature” kid, it’s okay to mourn your childhood you never had. Watch that show that you never did as a kid and fall in love with it. Finger paint with no exterior motive. Read way below your reading level. Reread Harry Potter or the Percy Jackson series. Play outside. You deserve it. 

6. “Kids” shows, including atla, lok, etc. often have more complex and interesting plots and characters than most “adult” shows these days. Don’t dismiss something just because it’s geared for a younger audience. Watch and learn from them. 

7. The changes you want to happen don’t suddenly happen. They’ll happen after many months of trial, error, and consistency. Take baby steps and celebrate small victories. 

8. You’re body will always be imperfect, and it’s okay. You’ll eventually learn to accept it once it doesn’t change so fast during adolescence, but don’t feel pressured to. It’s okay to not like how you look, just don’t let it keep you from enjoying life and your body from serving it’s purpose. 

9. Most high school guys don’t want a serious, long term relationship yet. They all have to mature a little bit for that, and it’s normal to feel frustrated about it, but don’t blame them too hard for it. You matured at a faster rate then them, and they still need a little more time. The best thing to do it wait for it. 

10. Questioning your sexuality is a normal part of life. You like guys? Good! You into girls? Great! It literally doesn’t matter, and God doesn’t really care either. There’s nothing in the Bible against it, and he made you that way right? Why not embrace it! Asami was your first gai crush? WONDERFUL! me too! Want to label yourself? I’ll respect and support whatever your decision is! Don’t know or don’t want to? Also perfect!

11. God (or whatever you believe in, or don’t!) made you imperfect for a reason: to embrace those imperfections and grow through them, to improve. Why would God put you on this earth if He didn't think that you had a reason to grow closer to Him through your imperfections? Make sure you use and acknowledge your imperfections, because they’re your lifeline to Him in prayer. It’s what you need to improve on, and ask help for, and that’s okay! (Spoiler alert, even when you do this stuff and work super hard, you’re human, and you’re still gonna mess up and make mistakes! Perfection wasn’t intended for humans, and I don’t believe it ever will be!)

12. When summer rolls around, get a summer job. Go down to the local ice cream place and ask if they’re hiring. Get an application and fill it out nicely with good handwriting. Then, take it back and wait. If they say yes, great! If not, that’s good too! Keep looking! Once you’ve found a place, settle in. Learn how things work. Learn how to do your job good and effectively. Immerse yourself in it. Then, have fun. Name the machines. (Big Bertha the waffle iron, or Fernanda the flurry machine, etc.) Name the ice cream flavors after your favorite fictional characters based on what they’d order (Aang is cookie dough, Obi Wan is mint chocolate chip, etc). Make new friends there and schedule your shifts with them. Get them in on your games too! It makes it more fun. Take time to show them your names for the ice cream flavors and machines, and maybe start using the names as abbreviations to make orders more efficient. Make sure you work only how much you can handle, even if that’s once a week or seven days for nine hours each. Whatever makes you happy! If you work in customer service, make them smile. Give the little kid extra sprinkles for wearing a fun mask or stickers if you have them. If there’s a tired mom, help her out by prioritizing her order to get out fast if possible. Whatever helps them. Thank the customers that tip! Then, get your paycheck in the mail and save all your tips. Put it in the bank and save it for college or when you need it. (Make sure to buy yourself something nice with the money sometimes too!)

13. When in school, don’t feel pressure to over achieve all the time. It’s okay to do the bare minimum sometimes. If you have an A, why are you worrying about if it’s a 95 and not a 98? It’s still an a, and that’s great! School is there to help you learn, so don’t force yourself to do extra busy work for a little extra credit (unless you absolutely need it!).

14. Take time to learn and do other things outside school that you may not be getting credit for. They’ll serve you in the long run! You like to write fan fiction? Keep writing! It’s helping! You love a sport? Good! It’s keeping you healthy while teaching you real life skills. Most of these things are gonna stick with you forever, so keep doing them and don’t let you passion fade away.

15. Write letters to your friends that live far away. Even if they don’t respond, they will appreciate having something that’s harder to lose or accidentally get deleted. Make the letter nice with pretty paper or colored pens or stickers, and spray your favorite scent on the envelope. Then seal it with a sticker and send it off. They really will appreciate it. 

16. Splurge on your own Spotify premium account and make a playlist for each mood. Make one for studying, working out, singing at the top of your lungs, one for when your happy, sad, etc. (You can also search my name, Hana Zainea, to listen to any of my playlists and see if we have the same music taste. If so follow me there and I’ll follow back to see your playlists!) Listen to your music and take time to enjoy it. Set aside ten to fifteen minutes just to do that. Let it flow through you and wake your soul up. 

17. Learn how to make handmade gifts. Wether that’s learning to make necklaces, earrings, bracelets, crochet, knit, or even make a nice card with hand lettering, learn how to make at least one solid handmade gift. It’ll give you a new skill as well as let the other people in your life that you love them. Handmade gifts are valuable and kept forever no matter how good they look. 

18. If your best friend lives far away like mine does, plan a monthly bsf subscription box. You can send each other a letter and a few little self care gifts once a month. It’s soooo fun and I can’t recommend this enough. 

19. Have photos that you like printed in physical form and hang them on your wall even if it’s just with tape. You’ll like being able to see and access happy thoughts and memories easily and have them hanging on your wall instead of sitting in your camera roll. 

20. You don’t have to keep up with social media. Delete it if you want, or limit your time on it if you want. Sometimes the “connection” we experience through social media isn’t always healthy, so monitor your use. 

21. Have a screen time widget on your phone and keep track of it. Try to cut your usage down by half an hour every week and eventually reduce it to the amount of time that you’d like to spend on your phone without being excessive, whatever that looks like for you. 

22. Meditate. This isn’t anything religious or spiritual, and it brings many benefits. It’s basically you setting a time aside to think for yourself. You can use one of the hundreds of guided meditations on youtube, or listen to theta waves/meditation music or just find a quiet place. Find a place where you know you won’t be disturbed, and then start to let your mind wander. What’s bothering you. When you turn off you mind, what’s the first thing that pops up? What keeps you from just being? What do you need to focus on in order to help yourself feel better? What are some things that you regret that are weighing on your heart? Now, what is your desired reality? Where do you want to live? Who do you want to meet/live with? What do you do? What do you act like? What do you have to do to make this happen? If you pray/are a christian, ask God for help with this desired life. (Remember, ask and you shall receive!)

23. Get yourself a hydro flask or any other durable water bottle, specifically a 16 or 32oz one. This way, it’s way easier to keep track of how much water you are drinking. A 16oz bottle is one pint and a 32oz one is a quart. Four of the 32 and eight of the 16oz are a gallon. Start by trying to drink a quarter of a gallon (2 16 oz or 1 32 oz) then a half, then three quarters, and eventually you’ll be drinking a gallon plus of water a day. (Put stickers on it to motivate yourself. Trust me it works wonders having fun stuff on there. Makes it enjoyable) 

24. If you’re able, make and give gifts often. It brings more joy than expected. 

25. Get rid of clothes. Toss all the old ones out. Reinvent yourself. Invest in pieces of clothing that are timeless (crewneck sweaters, cable knit sweaters, tan and brown colored dress pants, nice wool coats and sweaters, etc.) You’ll have these forever. 

26. Maintain your physical appearance. Make sure to change your clothes, follow proper hygiene, use lotion, etc. You’ll feel much better, trust me. You don’t have to use expensive products or put on a full face of makeup either, but putting some effort in will make you feel much better about yourself. 

27. Find a tea that tastes good to you. (Preferably without caffeine so you can drink it whenever.) Try everything! Then get yourself a nice mug and have some at a dedicated time each day. Relax and enjoy a constant in your life. 

28. If you’re into it, research and try reality shifting. I’m not going to go into depth in this post (that would take awhile) but if you’re really needing an escape but can’t go on vacation due to money, time crunches, etc, you can shift to any alternate reality that you’d like. Further in depth post about this to come. 

29. Read. Anything. A book, and article, the paper, the news, even the back of a cereal box. Think about it. What did you learn? Anything? 

30. Never accept criticism from someone you wouldn’t go to for advice. 

31. Call your parents if you live away from home. If not, spend more time with them. They love and miss you. 

32. Same with your siblings. 

33. And grandparents.

34. Find a way to remember your home town. Know it like the back of your hand. 

35. Read Shell Silverstien poems. They’re funny. 

36. Have a piece of jewelry that you never take off. Keep it to remind yourself of your sanity and to remember yourself. 

37. Cry of you need to. It’s bad to hold it in. 

38. Series you should read (even though some are nerdy): Harry Potter, Percy Jackson/Heros of Olympus, The Hunger Games, The Red Queen Series, The Giver Series, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit. 

39. Standalone books you should read: The Book Thief, The Fault in our Stars, They Both Die in the End, Where the Crawdads Sing, The Scarlet Letter, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, The DaVinci Code, The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, Out of my Mind, Love that Dog, The Unfinished Angel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet

40. Shows you should watch: Avatar (Even if you’re a casual fan of the fandoms) : The Last Airbender, Legend of Korra, The Mandalorian, The Office, The Clone Wars, Parks and Rec., Stranger Things

41. Standalone Movies/Series you should watch: The Notebook, any of the Disney classics (specifically Lion King, Hercules, and others during that era), the Harry Potter movies, the Hunger Games movies, The Star Wars Movies, All of the Pixar movies (specifically Soul and Coco), Ten things I hate about you, the perks of being a wallflower, Clouds, If anything happens I love you

42. Artists to listen to: Norah Jones, James Taylor, John Denver, Anson Sebra, Ed Sheeran, The Paper Kites, The Artic Monkeys, Conan Grey, L. Dre (for Lofi) Song recs are on my Spotify haha (Hana Zainea) 

43. Invest in good supplies for art. It’ll make a difference.

44. When something feels off, clean your bathroom. Not your depression cave of a bedroom. Your bathroom. Trust me. It helps so so so much to have on clean space. 

45. Have a cohesive scent. Like lavender? Buy lavender everything. Use it in lotions, deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, candles, etc. You’ll have a scent that people will now associate with you and you only. 

46. Learn how to cook while your at home. Ask your parents if you can go to a nutritionist and learn what foods nourish your body the best. Eat them and let yourself feel good about what you put in your body. 

47. Learn how to do basic home improvements while still at home. Fix toilets, clogged drains, clean ovens, showers, sinks, etc. You’ll be grateful. 

48. Don’t do drugs/drink. It’s not worth dulling your senses to miss out on your wonderful life. 

49. Annotate your books. It makes you engage more and you’ll like looking back on them. 

50. If no one is looking, you should totally cart surf down the isle at the grocery store. It’s the little things that count. 

[thebritishblabbermouth]

Jungkook Fanfiction- BTS Mafia AU

Heyya :))

@atricksterwithwings requested a beautiful BTS mafia au, and I loved writing this for her. I’ve split it into three parts. Scroll down for the first and for the link to the latter. 

A/N: I’ve mentioned Zhang Yixing in this fanfiction aside from the other BTS members. Its totally okay if you dont know who he is...although you probably do, he’s like such a popular sheep ;) Find information about him here . 

Tell me your thoughts on this fanfic, Id love to receive any sort of feedback on my work and I totally think that likes and reblogs are recognition too :) Have fun reading, I know I really enjoyed writing this :) Its like 12 pages long on a word doc...idek anymore xP Jungkook is gorgeous. :) 

Also...there is cursing in this, mention of the mafia from different nationalities and part two and three are rated M (its smutty xP) Reader discretion is advised if any of these things bother you. 

Lots of love :) <3 - Enjoy :)  

PART 2

PART 3 (final)

1.

Jeon Jungkook stood at the 77th floor of Euphoria, the headquarters to the largest crime syndicate east of the Pacific Ocean. The height was dizzying for most, but not for him.

Jungkook had no fears; or so was assumed.

The man himself, was built at an impressive 6 feet and constituted of raw muscle, protein and a rather cynical approach towards life. Outwardly, the leader of the most legal crime syndicate was cold, intimidating and the type to burn you to ashes with a glare from his heated eyes.

Inwardly, he was exactly the same.

He was well aware of the effect he had on his employees, men and women who knew exactly of his affiliation with the Japanese Yazuka and the Italian Camorra yet pined to work under Jeon, the sheer power of his company bringing everyone to their knees with respect.

Euphoria was a giant.

It had dealings with government run telemarketing firms, banks, real estate agencies, alongside finance and technology markets. An easy way to convert money earned through extortion, gambling and trafficking to its pure and pristine form. The corrupt politicians whose elections he had funded didn’t complain. No one cared where the money came from and no one dared to ask otherwise. The cause of the founder’s formidable aura wasn’t a secret. Everyone knew how he had been tortured by his father, abandoned on the streets by a mother who seemed to love Heroin more than her own son. The story had been plastered all over the internet, and Jungkook would never deny reading through its many exaggerated versions. They were entertaining and did well to remind himself about how important money and power were, without those weapons, he too would be sitting in a room, writing about a life that belonged to someone else.

Materialism was reality and wealth- it’s currency.

~~~~~~~~~~~

‘’Sir, your coffee…’’ you said, walking through the office doors, a skip in your stride. There was no knock. No hint of awkwardness, no aspect of fear in the way she spoke. If anything there was the undertone of coercion, almost coaxing the man to leave his billion dollar thoughts in the gutter and focus solely on the warm drink.

Your playful extortion had worked, he was focused. Just not on the coffee.

Three months ago, Euphoria had issued an internal opportunity- PA to Jeon Jungkook. The post received 3 applications from his 20,000 employees. Min Yoongi, his chief of finance and operations took to appointing the least qualified of the bunch, a woman- aged a mere 22 years. The pitch to his ever frightening boss had been simple. ‘’You’ve let down 30 men in the last 6 months. I am done handling my job as well your shit. Those Harvard lunatics are too busy tending to their stupid resumes and I don’t have time for the garbage they throw at me when you fire their sorry arses. You’re settling with the woman, she’s got sick parents to feed- she won’t give a damn for ego as long as you pay her on time.’’

Jungkook could only snarl at the curses, the audacity of the man to speak in the way he did. Anyone else and they’d be lying in a pool of their own blood within seconds of the first word spoken against him. But Min Yoongi couldn’t be touched and this was a fact.

Jeon Jungkook was putty in the hands of his elder brother.

Today, he sent thanks to his sibling, for his aggressive outburst and daunting approach. You were priceless and the best decision ever- professionally of course.

He gave no reply to your request, not even a glance spared in your direction as your placed the drink onto his desk. There were just a series of footsteps, the man walking over to his maple work table, ready to do as he was told.

You had no idea of the prerogatives you held, and at that point, neither did him. The slight tease in your voice had mellowed down completely- replaced with the air of innocence and obeisance. Jungkook groaned at the sight. 

‘’So I was thinking…it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow…and well…’’ you said... Shuffling your buckled black heels.

‘’You aren’t leaving early.’’

His abrupt command had no thought behind it. Other than the fact he couldn’t let you out of his sight for more than a few hours, often paging you unnecessarily just to make you think of him.

He doubted you ever would if he didn’t.

‘’I am not…my parents are flying in tomorrow…it’s a small get together at my place with a few colleagues. I figured since you didn’t have anything planned…you could join us?’’  

Your apprehensive feet clicked across the hardwood with anticipation, the weightlessness behind your request holding the air in a trance.

‘’You’re my personal assistant, not event manager. You do not handle my private affairs so don’t think for a second that I care about your stupid Christmas dinner or the family I saved from crumbling.’’

It wasn’t what he had intended to say. Rather, his mind had flourished a thought he needed to keep locked away. He wanted to tell you that he’d love to join your family, share potato salad and amusing anecdotes across the table... All the while pressing his hand into your thigh- a subtle promise of sinful satisfaction later that night. But he wouldn’t dare to voice his feelings. You didn’t need to get involved with his shit, the scars that graced his back or the life full of gluttony and gambles he had chosen to lead. It was compulsion, to remind you every second of every day that the apartment which he bestowed upon you just 3 floors below his office- was a gracious boon, a gift given to improve your petty life. You had to be reminded of your father and how had been released from Jail after almost overdosing on the crack he had envisioned to peddle. Jeon Jungkook had to remind you of how ugly your tear stained face looked as you begged on your knees- begged for him to save your family.

There was simply no other way.

If you weren’t reminded, you’d crawl your way into his heart and sit there- encasing it completely.

He was just a damned moth to your flame.

‘’I know…and I am trying…I am trying to repay you. Please. Come over. I won’t waste your time.’’ You said. The words articulated with a purpose, were laced with meaningful sorrow but you couldn’t help the small smile that graced your lips.

He hadn’t declined.

Jungkook noticed how your full lips turned upwards, noticed how you had bent your head downwards, trying to hide your amusement. He knew he hadn’t said no, he knew inside the pits of his soul that was going to attend. Your reaction publicised his private notions completely.

It wasn’t hard to hate you.

Rather, it was the easiest thing in the world. His life had been built upon layers of lies, fear, judgement and mistrust. You tore everything apart with one look. He despised the hold you had over him, envied your purity and tried his best to tarnish it with his own two hands. Even if it meant burning your entire persona to ashes. He was well aware of the impact his audacious remarks on your large heart, knew just how much you wished to throw your small fists at his chest in rebuttal- he could see it in your eyes. But he knew you’d never break.

‘’Get out. I don’t have time for you.’’

Fuck.

Why couldn’t he just say no?

Probably because the thought of abjuration had never once crossed his mind.

~~~~~~~~~~~

11 pm saw him standing at your door, a bouquet of Lilly’s in his hand. The flowers had almost wilted away. What the hell was he doing? Why was he even here? There was no noise from behind the oakwood and why would there be?

Your offer had been for dinner, not a midnight snack.

He wasn’t going to come, prove you wrong and act smug about the ordeal. However he had shown up, at 7 pm, flowers fresh and suit prim. Ready to tap onto the door and shimmy himself into you…your apartment. But his confidence dropped as he heard your laughter, it was beautiful, natural and something he had never experienced before.

Jeon Jungkook had never made you laugh, but had every thought of hearing you scream.

It wouldn’t have mattered to him if you were any other woman, but the lack of knowledge frightened him, made him think there would be another man who would have the pleasure of witnessing both sounds.

Every. Single. Day.

His heart beat erratically, edging him into a state of worry and insanity. What the fuck was wrong with him? It would be a complete lie if he said he hadn’t just stood in front of your door for 3 hours, praying he didn’t hear sounds of men. The silence at 11 pm provided comfort and he walked away, only after dropping the Lilly’s inside the vase at your desk.

You had been pleasantly surprised the next day, and you knew exactly who they were from. The flowers- drained from their pretty colour -were beautiful nonetheless and you couldn’t help but run your hands over their soft petals.

They were perfect- just like him.

 ~~~~~~~~~~

2.

‘’See that guy over there…he’s checking you out hon.’’ Lisa, the American-Chinese intern, stirred her tea at an exceedingly sluggish pace. Her eyes were glued onto the 27 year old accountant who stood in the corner of the room, photocopying his work and humming to himself. She’d been a temporary employee at Euphoria Inc. for a bare 3 weeks but had done well to pair 4 couples with her self-praised matchmaking skills.

3 of said relationships had broken up within 24 hours. And thus, It was only natural that her impeccable track record attracted many an employee to her small cubicle, ready for her to set them up with dates and one night stands.

It seemed that you were her next target.

You sighed and turned to look at Jamie. He was tall, considerably well-built and had this collegiate boyish charm to his appeal, his long-slightly raven locks sat faultlessly over his glasses.

The image was so immaculate it made you uncomfortable.

I

However in your opinion, the man on the 77th floor was nothing short of perfection. His ruffled hair didn’t need to be waxed and placed as it were; it fell naturally and it made you want to run your hands through it. His rugged and damaged personality sheltered his otherwise kind heart and you saw right through the vile facade. You didn’t hope for him to change. Didn’t hope for him to suddenly become a goofy cheeky soul; the kind who would sit and chat with his workers.

You loved the man as he was. A little broken but a hell of a lot confident.

‘’Lisa…I don’t really want to date him…’’ You mumbled, eagerly emptying coffee beans into the machine.

She laughed at your reply and peeled her eyes away from the man. ‘’Who said anything about dating love? I just said he was checking you out.’’

It was hard not to grimace at her words but as crude as they were you had to smile politely. Offices were run on brutal honesty and cut throat depositions. There was no room for pleasantries or hospitality and any that appeared were a courteous formality. You hurried in your steps and brewed the concoction with ease. It was 8 am and he required his morning fix, even though he never actually asked you to prepare it. You had just finished placing his black on the tray and had turned around to deliver it when a firm body crashed into yours, spilling the brew all over your clothes and the floor. The heat burned through your blouse and scorched your skin, it had been hard to not curse at the pain but you dealt through it, eyes shut tight in response.

‘’Oh my gosh! I am so sorry!’’ said the voice. It was a man, sharply handsome, his cheekbones were protruding and you were sure his skin glowed. It didn’t take long to recognise him.

Kim Taehyung.

He had been a prospective fiancé, from a year ago.

From a time when you had no viable job, no future and the money the Kim Family offered in exchange for your hand in matrimony, had been a welcome surprise to your household. They were staunchly against same sex marriages and Park Jimin had been banned from their home with immediate effect. The marijuana had inflected your otherwise gentle father and he had agreed in seconds to the proposal, not once considering your opinion. You had declined Taehyung in private, and he had hugged you in thanks. The man was humble and docile in more ways than one, and his heart had been taken years ago- by none other, than his childhood piano teacher. There was no way Taehyung would’ve agreed.  

‘’Tae!’’ You screamed, surprised yet elated at the discovery.

‘’Hey there fiancé. Glad to know you remember me…but really, why do we always meet in the worst of situations.’’ He walked over to the counter as he spoke, grabbing up as many napkins as he could find. His gentle hands took to patting at your chest, handing you the tissues while doing so and it didn’t take long for to dry up your blouse.

‘’I thought you’d be more respectful than that. Letting your fiancé walk into my building and displaying yourself open for the man. Tch Tch…I guess a lowlife is always a low life no matter what her circumstance.’’ Jeon Jungkook stood against the door, leaning onto it with a posture that screamed indifference. But in all reality, Jungkook was seething.

The small Glock tucked into his suit was ready to fire and destroy Kim Taehyung and maybe even leave a flesh wound inside Jamie the accountant.

However in that minute, his primal desire had been to destroy you. How dare you hide the news of your engagement? How dare you wear that damned pastel pink blouse to work, and let another man touch you so unabashedly? How dare you smile when you saw your betrothed? He hated you for everything.

And he hated himself for falling for you.

‘’And who the hell is this Joker?’’ Taehyung turned around to look at Jeon, the tissues in his hand soiled from the spillage. He had been invited to the corporation by Min Yoongi, a dear friend who had promised him help with TaeMin Designs, an upcoming entrepreneurial, founded by his beautiful husband. It didn’t occur to him that he’d meet you, but he was pleased that he had.

You were wonderful.

If it hadn’t been for your confidence, he would have never proposed to Jimin, never left his awful family and never been as happy as he was now. He owed you his life and his prosperity.

‘’Tae…he’s my boss. I’ll talk to you later. Please. I’ll call you hmm?’’ you tried your best to nip the fight in the bud. Taehyung was cool headed but an agitated version of the man could lead to the emergence of fists and blood. You were lucky he understood your pleas, and he grunted towards Jungkook while exiting the room, the daggers leaving his eyes were filled with venom and anger.

‘’I’d like you to pay attention to your job. Not to every single man out there. Why don’t you just do as you’re told? I don’t care what you do and who you do it with when you’re out of here.’’ Jungkook straightened himself against the wall and pocketed his hands. He told himself he enjoyed watching your eyes brim, told himself that his anger was justified. But god knows how much he wanted to cradle you and whisper apologies until you were forced to believe them.

‘’Let’s keep your sluttish acts away from the office hmm?’’

It was a harsh blow, enough to cause the first tear to slip from their confines. Why did he have to behave like that?

Why did you have to love him regardless of the way he did? 

~~~~~~~

3.  

‘’How long is it going to take you leave? It’s pretty simple. Take the bag to KM Constructions, drop it there and leave. What���s so hard? '' Jungkook’s anger had sky rocketed ever since the incidence in the cafeteria and he didn’t even understand why he was asking you to be a bag drop. Never once in a career spanning 6 years had he ever made a woman a part of a deal. But it seemed that you were an exception with everything.

‘’I am just leaving Sir.’’ You said, buttoning up the grey pea coat.

He noticed how inappropriately dressed you were, how feminine and vulnerable. He knew how lecherous men could be, knew it wasn’t safe. But annoyance clouded his senses and he threw the thoughts away. It was simple enough, no interactions. You’d be fine.

If only he knew.

Part 2

Part 3 

[letsimportanttreecollection-blog]

New Munich Minnesota Cheap car insurance quotes zip 56356

"New Munich Minnesota Cheap car insurance quotes zip 56356

New Munich Minnesota Cheap car insurance quotes zip 56356

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New Munich Minnesota Cheap car insurance quotes zip 56356

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The DMV's web site says that I need proof of insurance to register my new (used) car. At the same time Progressive wont sell me insurance because the car does not seem to be owned by me. Any help guys?

Car Insurance help No claims bonus?

Ok so i passed my test last month and have been driving about 3 weeks. i got an insurance quote with Aviva for 1800 per year (roughly) and im an 18 year old male, however because i had a provisional license for a year my dad thought i had 1 year NCB so told aviva this. They now want proof of my NCB (which i obviously don't have) so i will have to tell them. But my quotes are about 4500 without any no claims bonus !!!! and i drive a Y reg 1.2 fiesta ghia! is there anyway i can get this premium down? please help! i'd be really grateful!""

When you do not have car insurance in California then ONLY IF YOU GET CAUGHT?

by someone it's a problem right, or is it a problem as soon as your car insurance stops for example, only if someone who does not have car insurance gets into an accident then everyone is wondering about it right, or if you had car insurance and could not afford the bills anymore do they tell DMV and then you're in trouble immediately""

I need cheap car insurance in New York City?

I need cheap (FULL) coverage for a financed vehicle in the NEw York Area...I've tried the popular sites...any leads?

New Munich Minnesota Cheap car insurance quotes zip 56356

New Munich Minnesota Cheap car insurance quotes zip 56356

Car Insurance in England question?

If I am insured but I drive another car (included on policy) but that car is not insured by owner will ANPR pick up car has no insurance and do I commit offense? And if I am not insured but drive a car that is insured by owner does it come up on ANPR as being insured and therefore I wont get caught? Is the driver insured or the car???

Buying car insurance?

I've got my driving test in September and thinking about buying a car if I pass. I'm just a bit confused about how to buy a car and car insurance. Do I need to look around for a car I like, get all the details of the car, buy insurance for that car, then actually buy the car, in that order? Also are new cars or older cars cheaper to insure? I think it's newer cars but I'm not sure. Also what is a good car for cheaper insurance. I've heard Ford and Vauxhall are good for cheap insurance. I've been on price comparison sites and it seems that even if I have pass plus and just third party cover 2k per year is a minimum :( Thanks.""

Medical/health Insurance for H1b and H4 visa holder?

What is the best medical/health insurance ?Is dental,vision and pre natal included? What are HMO/PPO plan?What do i need to know about it? need some input. pls suggest. thanks =)""

How much does THIRD PARTY CAR INSURANCE cost in New Zealeand?

How much does THIRD PARTY CAR INSURANCE cost in New Zealeand?

""I'm looking for an honest, good life insurance company. Anyone with experiences on this?""

Single mother with mortgage, a older teen and young adult, good health so far? I am looking to cover anything that would have to be paid in the event of my death.""

Do i need to add my wife under my car insurance?

Allstate is my car insurance

Maternity Insurance?

Does any one know of a good insurance for maternity. I have been trying to concieve for a year and 8 months with no luck. It is time to visit a doctor. But I think it is better for me to get insurance since fertility treatments are expensive. Which insurance would you go with?

US car insurance rates?

I'm in the market for a midsized or compact car. I'm looking into purchasing a Honda, Toyota, or Mazda brand vehical. I'd like to know which of these cars has a lower insurance rate. (If it helps, I live in the midwest and have a good driving record.)""

Need advice: Parked car hit - Car has no insurance?

Ok, so last night my friends car was hit by a driver who fell asleep. the car was in front of our house and pushed 40ft and his flipped over. Both cars totaled. He has insurance, but my friends that was parked and hit, does not. Will this be an issue for her, or will his insurance be paying for everything since he was 100% at fault? Please help!""

How to get into a new Car Insurance?

About 1.5 yrs back my wife scratched another car while parking. The claim was settled using insurance. The expense was about $1500. Ever since that the insurance company, AAA, has been increasing our premiums by abt $35 on every renewal. Now I cannot switch or shop with other insurance company since they give quotes much higher than this company. But apart from this one incident we do not have anything else on our record. Also I get discount for Home+Auto insurance. The company increased prices on our Home Insurance too. I am badly stuck with this company now. I would like to buy Auto+home from one company itself. But I really cannot move my Auto Insurance. Please give suggestions.""

Car Insurance?

In Massachusetts what do you think a 16 year old driver would pay for these cars for insurance? 1998 Mitsubishi 3000GT VR 4 >100k miles 1998 Audi A4 1.8 Turbo 4 cyl 100K miles 2001 Ford Taurus SEL v6 40K miles 1999 VW Passat V6 5 speed 95k miles Thanks

Does a written warning affect your driver's insurance in Massachusetts?

I just got a written warning tonight in MA. I have a couple of questions, does it affect my insurance (I heard that it does not increase my insurance, but my insurance company is notified and my rates for next year will not decrease, is that true?). Also, how long does it stay on record? Much Thanks!""

Are there any auto insurance companies who dont penalize or raise rates based on a lapse in coverage?

I have gone uninsured for over a few months in Iowa due to being dead broke & am looking into getting coverage again....are there any companies that offer lower penalties than most or no penalties at all? Can an insurance company even check for themselves if you have had previous coverage or do they just rely on your word? If so....tempting lol. Also are there any other options im not thinking of? Any suggestions welcome...Thanks in advance! :)

How can I get Cheaper Auto Insurance?

I'm looking to buy a 03-06 Mitsubishi Evolution was wondering if it is possible to get cheaper insurance? My Father owns a Business can we classify it as a business Vehicle? I'll be 18 when i buy it. I can afford the payments, Just not insuracne, lol""

Car accident and insurance procedures?

I got into a car accident yesterday. I wasn't at fault for the accident, and I know my car is totaled. I was wondering how the whole thing will go down with the insurance and what the process is going to be. I filed a claim with my insurance co. and am waiting for them to call me up. I was wondering if the other person's insurance has to pay for my car and what not. I am also wondering if there will be any consolation since the other driver was dui.""

Insurance and pregnancy...

I am planning to get pregnant in March, 2009. After working things out with my husband, it seems like the best time for us Anyway, my insurance policy will finish in August and I'll have to get new insurance (I won't be able to continue with my current insurance policy for reasons beyond the scope of this question). Will this cause me problems with the new insurance company (I still don't know what insurance I am going to purchase)? Will the NOT cover my pregnancy and delivery and consider it a pre-existing condition? What's your advice? We really don't want to postpone pregnancy any more and now is not the best time for us""

Alternative ways to insure a car?

Im 17 and looking for car insurance someone told me that you can insure it by giving some company a certain amount of money around 15k and then at the end of the year they would give u it back, however if you were to claim, the cost would come out of the money you gave, is this true and anyone know what its called if it is? ty""

Car insurance in new york?

hey guys, I'd like to know what would be the ballpark for insurance. I'm 24 years old and have had my driver's license since 2003 and never have had parking violations, points taken off my license or any type of moving tickets. I'm looking to buy a 96-00 civic and would like to know around how much I would be quoted""

Whats the cheapest car insurance for a 16 y/o boy?

I'm getting my liscense soon and we have allstate and its expensive as hell! I live in texas and i dont plan on buying a sports car so how much would my insurance be you think and where should i go for cheap insurance?

What is the best car in group 16 insurance?

I have been offered a company car at work and can go up to group 16 insurance. I do a lot of miles but would like a sporty responsive feel. Thinking about a Cooper S or dare I say it one of the pokey diesels..! Any suggestions.....?

How much is the normal rate for the instant car insurance quote for drivers between 18 and 25 ?

Hello i am interested to know how much the average car insurance cost would be for young drivers between 18 and 25 years. can anyone help me please?

Looking for health Insurance options in the State of Washington.?

I'm self employed and researching health insurance options. I live and work in the state of Washington. Any good, affordable options?""

Health insurance from a broker?

HI, I need to take out a health insurance policy for myself because my work doesn't offer any. I called a local insurance broker who offers that service in addition to others like life, business, etc. My question is, is there any negative reason to buy from him verses going online and buying a policy by myself? I think I'd get more info from a broker right? Thanks""

Best car for a broke teen driver?

I'm 14, so I wont be getting the car for another year or so. I'd be paying for it myself, so I'd like it cheap, with good mileage and cheap insurance. I'd also like it ...show more""

What are some affordable/cheap community colleges in the USA for international students?

Hi, i want to study associate in business management so in which state i can find community colleges with low fees or which are the affordable and cheapest community college in USA for study? Thanks""

New Munich Minnesota Cheap car insurance quotes zip 56356

New Munich Minnesota Cheap car insurance quotes zip 56356

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/https-wwwbmchporg-need-affordable-health-insurance-gregory-gordon/"

[claricequinntaylor]

Minimalism with Money - How to get out of debt quick and easy!

We spend too much money on things we don’t need. Rather it is some splurge item you found on Amazon to the pack of Oreo’s at the grocery store (I am guilty of this). We have all done it! Its not something to be ashamed of, BUT it is something that you should be aware of, something that you should be conscious about. A Huffington Post Servery from 2012 states:

"Half of those surveyed do not set monthly savings goals for themselves, according to the survey. Of those who are spending more than they earn, 36 percent are dipping into savings, 22 percent use a credit card and 8 percent are borrowing money in other ways."

This is crazy! I know people in my own life that will spend up to 80% of their monthly income on stuff that they don’t need, things that they can do without. For those who don't know me. My name is Clarice Quinn Taylor, and I used to be just like you. I am just like you in many ways still. I have issues with my money. The biggest issue I currently have is my $6000 in debt that causes me to have to rethink everything I do.If you are in the same boat as me or fast approaching it, this channel and this video is for you.

So a little background into who I am. I am currently 22 years old with a sitting $6,000 in debt. A few years back I was just out of high school, working at Starbucks part time making about $500 a month and spending way more than that on crap I didn't need. I was buying video games, going out and paying for my friends dinner, spending money on my new to me 1973 Chevy Camaro That I spent over $6,000 of my savings to get and restore. Yes, the smartest thing I could possibly do with my money while I was currently running up my Credit cards paying for this expensive lifestyle was to go and buy an expensive car that cost too much in gas. Long story short I was just like the majority of people with a spending problem. Spending money that I didn't have on things that I didn’t need or really have a use for. Around the same time I got very interested in Video Games and decided to go and buy a brand new $700 Xbox and a brand new custom built gaming computer that cost over $2,000. After all these purchases I still didn't feel complete.

That is the point I am trying to make. These purchases, these items. Belongings. These items I have surrounded myself with did me no good whatsoever. They didn't serve my future. Yes, a cool car and a nice computer is nice but for a now unemployed 20 something girl that has dreams of moving to Los Angeles, Ca these spending habits would not do anything but harm to myself.

So, fast forward to three months ago. I am sitting in Los Angeles, Ca spending over $1000 a month on rent, food, car, etc.. you may be asking yourself, "Clarice, how does this have to with minimalism and money? you’re just telling us that you are terrible with money and cant stop spending." Well here is the huge change that came into my life this past April.

I am sitting on My phone scrolling through Facebook, watching Netflix on my desktop computer and mindlessly watching a YouTube video about cool things to buy on amazon that I hadn't collected already and suddenly something dawned on me.

WHAT THE HECK AM I DOING?! I have been sitting here for the last three hours doing nothing. I moved to La to start a modeling career and do acting! What the actual fuck am I doing with my life. This needs to stop.I took a deep breath and closed my MacBook and set my phone down, and opened a new link to YouTube and typed in the following.

"How to minimize your phone usage"

The first video that showed up was a guild on how to set up your phone like a minimalist and how to start using it less.

This took me down a rabbit hole of minimalism. It started with my phone. I got rid of my fancy colorful wallpaper and chose the black background that had no picture on it. Next step I deleted almost every app I had on my phone INCLUDING FACEBOOK! and then organized it to fit my workflow schedule so I could be more productive.

From here I found a few videos on how to minimize debt, your schedule(So I only do things that I want to do) and everything in your life, including money. I will be making videos on all of these things, but for now. I want to start with this big one thing.

How becoming a minimalist will improve your pocketbook and cause you to spend less on stuff that you don't need and in result help you get out of debt.

This first step is easy:

1.) Start a Budget:

What I suggest is start a budget for yourself, either online or on a sheet of paper. The first month you do this. Don't make any changes to how you usually spend money or anything. You can even take a look at the previous months spending's and write them down and from that you can tally them up and know exactly how much you spend each month. I personally use a app called Mint, it is a budget app on your phone and your computer that helps you manage your budget, go over goals that you want to set for your finances and tracks your spending. I have known about this app for year now but I only recently started using it to its fullest potential! You can even link mint with your bank account, credit cards and savings account to automatically track all of your spending and this will give you a clearer picture of your finical health.

After you do this you will be able to have a overview of your spending and be able to manage your money in a clearer way now that you can see it all.

2.) Take a Hard Look at Your Debt and Find a Way Out.

One thing most people my age and even older don't realize fully is the strain of having massive debt causes on your life, and even your ability to do the things that you want. After setting up my budget with mint and getting everything that I wanted, out in the open I realized that the amount I was spending per month to pay it off was less than the monthly interest on my debt itself. Lucky for me a friend told me about this really helpful company and App called Tally. What this company does is pay off your credit cards every month and clump them into a single payment that you pay to them, and lower your APR on top of that. 

So For example, I have three credit cards all at 25% APR, I am paying about $50 on each card and with my interest charge every month I am paying about $20-$25 a month in interest charges EVERY MONTH on each card. SO in short about half of what I am paying is going straight back into my debt with means it will take me about 25% longer to pay it off if I were to just pay off %0 every card a month. Now if I was paying just the minimum amount of $25-$30 a card that is basically like me paying $5 off my debt every month. This is assuming I am not spending anything on credit at the same time.

With this, it is easy to see how personal debt can pile up so quickly. That is why I like Tally so much. They actually have me a APR of 15% and they would pay off my credit cards up to $5,000 and make the monthly payments on my cards so I didn't have to pay each card off and deal with the APR on each. and once all of the cards are paid down you are only left with paying tally one lower easy payment a month. Now that you have a lower payment you have more cash flow to either pay off more debt OR you can stop using your credit cards to buy things and you can fast track your way out of Debt.Lastly, Tally right now will give you $50 just for signing up towards your first card payment when you sign up with my link! You're welcome! <Join Tally>

3.) Cut Ties with Credit Card Debt

- This is probably the hardest step in minimizing your debt and stopping spending on things that you don't need. If you are serious about getting free from debt I want you to right now. Go and get a pair of scissors and cut up all of your cards and throw them away. This way you will no longer be able to use them and you do NOT need the card to make any payments whatsoever. Just do it, thank me later. This step was the quickest, but the hardest part of this whole process.

After I did this it took me about a year to pay off all my debt, loans and cards to become free from debt and become the best version of myself. And after you do this, you can no longer use these cards to spend spend spend and eventually with smart budgeting and using apps like mint and Tally(Like I do) you will be one step closer to finical freedom and finical success. 

I will be writing these posts every week to give you a better idea of my journey and to keep giving you tips on how to unlock your own personal finical freedom! It is hard to do this but with my advice and help I know you can get to where I am today and become the best version of yourself.​ 

[remindme2breathe]

NO- it’s not an option

I am in the process of Selling my home (beyond the process I guess, we are in the middle of closing escrow!!! Woohoo!!!) I’ll be honest, it took 4 days to sell my home, so I hope what I’m saying doesn’t sound like a complaint, this entire entry should be the complaint, ha, ha, just kidding- kinda. My home is smaller then my next home (which is also in process, 3 weeks!!) but it doesn’t lack comfort. Although I have never been a true fan of this particular home, it has allowed us to experience a lot of family-like ‘adventures’ (don’t worry, you’ll hear about some of those sometime in the future). My new home is sitting pretty on 4 and a half acres of clean, flat land! My home has enough bedrooms for EVERYONE to have their own space! This next home is a blessing that I can never describe with all the words in the world. Not only is it gorgeous, but thanks to the help of my parents, I got it all on my own! All they really did was sign, but I managed to save, fix my credit and get approved all on my own. Being grateful doesn't even begin to compare to the actual feeling! What did I do to accomplish that? Refused to let anyone convince me that NO was an option. 

There are 3 things I’ve said to my kids more then necessary. 1. Quiting is not an option 2. Being rich doesn’t mean your successful 3. Always be of service to people

What do I do for a living? You’d be surprised how many people actually thought I was involved in something illegal... no, really... You’d be surprised! It’s gotten so old that now all I do is smile and nod. I’m not telling you this to make anyone think I’m showing off, no, it’s not about that. I don’t like to struggle, I hate to work, and I don’t understand financial technical terms like dows and percentage and whatever other fancy words they wanna use to shine up the real process. Let me tell you what I did, but first let me give you the scale in which it’s impacted my family. 

I grew up with working parents, both held full time jobs, their own businesses, investments, and had the ability to raise my siblings and I with the little luxuries we wanted (the occasional toys r’ us runs, little things like that). They were financial STABLE, but not rich. They opened their own business about 10 years ago and now both are worth about 3 million each, or so says their business person. I saw first hand the struggle my parents went through when they started up their business, my mom even said that there was a handful of times that they didn’t even have money to buy us food. But when success came for them, it came fast! 

When I turned 16 I took a dab at DJ-ing. Yes, I really was THAT cool back then! I did that for about 4 years. I worked for an actual radio station when I was 17 1/2, I did all their overnight programming and special events. At 18 at these big events I thought I was at the top of everything! My paychecks I spent on myself! All of it! Every dime. It was as through I was allergic to money and needed to spend it quicker then when I got it. My dad then brought it to my attention about my non-existent money management skills. He was right. What was my solution? Open a savings account? No, I’d still spend it. Save hard cold cash? Nope, I’d spend that too. I had to do something. At 18 money beckoned me. I decided to start doing side jobs; weddings, quinceaneras, anything! All that money I’d hand over to my dad and asked him not to give me a dime no matter what I tell him. WHO KNOW HE WOULD TAKE THAT SO LITERALLY! But it worked, I would save about 2800 every month, give or take. And some months he wouldn’t see anything- com’on! I had to have a life too! At 18 I graduated High School and started school to get my nursing degree. At age 20, with only 10 months left to graduate I got pregnant. I worked as long as I could and tried to do as much in school, I didn’t want to be a statistic! I will not be a number on the ‘’lets blame the baby’’ list! I was determined. AND I FINISHED! Once my baby was born I quit the radio station because it was more important for me to be with him then to be in clubs at night. After he turned 1 I decided to get into my field. I was lucky and got into an ER right away. It was exciting, super fast paced! The problem was the 12 hour shifts! I wasn’t being a baby... I wanted to be with my baby. While I worked there I continued to give my dad cash to hold, it wasn’t as much as before (because raising a baby comes with extra costs). But it was imperative that I saved because now my fear was providing for my child. But the hours were tough, mentally and physically, I went part time after 3 years. One day I had a patient that completely changed my life. PUT A PIN IN THAT!!!! He’s worth the story! Anyway this patient ended up influencing me way more then I could have hoped for! This man was put in my path for a reason. 

Closer to today: Last year I asked my dad how much I had finally saved. I never asked him because I was worried I’d be tempted to use it wrongly. Mind you, this was a savings I have accrewed over a span of about 22 years. I never kept track, I never wrote it down. This money had to be OUT OF SIGHT AND OUT OF MIND. I saved $264,464.10, that means I managed to save almost 12,000 a year! A little over $1,000 month! AGAIN!!!!! I didn’t do it religiously! I remember when the $0.10 happened: I TOLD YOU! Sometimes I wasnt able to, but my system was the following: I would carry $60.00 in cash every week on me for any little thing we might want, eating out, treats, toys, medicine, etc. A WEEK! That number went up when I had more people around me. I kept 1,000 in my bank account after bills at all times (this was also never garenteed: THESE BILLS CAN GET A LITTLE OUT OF HAND! If I had over 1,000, I would withdrawl and give it to my dad, no matter the amount. All the change that was under $5 (bill) I would save in an envelope I kept in my dresser and would seal and turn that change over to my dad at the end of the month (that change adds up QUICK!). Any extra cash- tax refunds, these stimulus... it is wasn’t I always had like a paycheck, it was considered extra and I would send it on its way. HOWEVER!!!!! YES I’VE BEEN TEMPTED! I STILL HAVE THAT TEMPTATION! My dad said to invest it to make money on it. Yea, that’s nice but no. I’m too impatient to wait for someone else to put my money to work. Well, I guess I kinda ate those words: here’s what I did. I have a close family friend who has tons of friends all of which could use a job. I made 3 businesses with $10,000 each. THIS WAS A STRETCH! But it’s do-able for WAY LESS!!! I just couldn’t help over buying, geez! 

Long story short, I started a gardening company. I do nothing but cover costs and pay wages. I collect on that and let me tell you- AMAZING. If you intend to do this let me disclose the following: People can be shitty! People CAN steal from you especially is the customers pay cash. PAY YOUR WORKERS WELL AND THEY WILL TREAT YOU WELL! I supply them with the extras. My kids fill refrigerators with snacks and waters or sodas. We supply uniforms at no cost, they get paid time off of two weeks, and rain or shine they get their salary! My son also said MOBILE CAR WASH is good too! There we went, now him and his friend run that truck. They make money, I make money. The 3rd one is a Pool Cleaning Service. This one was a little work because most people with pools have friend references. But this actually holds up pretty good. All three trucks are on my property by 8 pm, my son will fill the tanks, check the interiors, and supplies for the next pick up date. It works out. 

Doing this has allowed me to stay home with my kids. I have been a house mom for the last 8 years. And now, I’m buying my 4 acre property! Thank God! 

It’s tough, especially because I like expensive things! I love to spend, I love to travel. And believe it or not, I was still able to.

Wow, if this wasn’t an epic RAMBLE, I don’t know what would be! Sorry in advance. I’m so excited! I can’t wait to move! Hopefully someone has a small savings that they want to put to work and maybe this helped you get your mind thinking. 

[putthison]

Another Option for Suits on a Budget: Jomers

It’s hard to overstate what a wasteland the entry level suit market was a decade ago. When I was coming out of college (more than a decade ago!), nearly every guy I knew was going to Joseph A. Bank or Brooks Brothers (if they had a little more scratch) for their “interview suit.” I wanted a nicer suit myself, but I was working as a bartender and felt $250 was a stretch, let alone $500--I ended up with a boxy 3-button number from Joey Banks (on sale!). Not much has changed. A few years back, Derek wrote a great guide to first suit choices at any price level--there were only two options at $500 or less.

So I was glad to read about Jomers suits, which intend to offer higher quality and more modern styling at a consistent price of $250, about the same price as the current model of my old Joseph A. Bank suit. (Jomers also makes trousers, shirts, and polos, all in a modern, trim, generally Italian style.) Jomers sent me two suits to review and try on, and I talked over email with Jomers’ CEO Meyer Dagmy. So what can you get for $250 these days?

The Nicest Suit You’re Likely to Find for the Price

The Jomers suits I received were both in 100% wool, Italian fabric from Vitale Barberis Canonico, one in a lighter blue and one in navy with a little tonal variation (you can see my natural light photos of both above--closeups of the jacket are the darker blue). The fabrics are certainly nicer than what you’d find in a mall--more depth to the color, more interesting weave, and they hang well. They seem about in line with SuitSupply, which is our usual recommendation for suits <$500 and the line you most often see Jomers compared against.

The construction and quality is solid for the price. They’re half canvassed, which is a measure of quality you may not appreciate until you’ve worn the suit a decent amount (for what it’s worth, my 2000s Joseph A Bank suit eventually got the dreaded bubbling in the chest and lapel as the fusing fell apart--suits that are half canvassed have a better reputation). The suits are mostly machine made (not a criticism--you won’t find a lot of handwork in off-the-rack suits under $1000). Meyer told me that there is some hand stitching in the shoulder, as well.

The Jomers suit wasn’t stiff out the box and the lapels and body were shaped well--without a long-term test it would be hard to know how it would break in. I did see a few loose stitches here and there, but nothing structural. I’ve seen some complaints online that the suits arrive wrinkled, but that seems like a ridiculous thing to complain about. You should expect to get any off-the-rack suit altered, and your tailor can steam or press the suit. 

Cut and Styling

Jomers cuts a modern suit in a style that should suit most young-ish guys who want a slim suit for work or formal-but-not-too-formal occasions. The suits are two-button, single breasted, with flap hip pockets and double vents. The lapels are a moderate width and the gorge is on the higher side. They have a barchetta-shaped breast pocket (not as exaggerated as I’ve seen on some Italian jackets). Trousers are a standard drop six (e.g. a size 40R jacket comes with 34 waist pants), flat front, trim, and tapered. They have a split waistband in the rear, which in my experience helps the waist give a little with movement.

Jomers’ model is pretty much exactly what you’re looking for in a first suit. A current-looking suit that doesn’t take a lot of chances. If the only suit in your closet has a ticket pocket, contrast stitching, and a peak lapel, you overdid it. Jomers suits are restrained in that aspect--although they do offer a more casual model with patch hip pockets. The horn buttons complement the fabrics and the lining is industry standard Bemberg (pants are lined as well).

Jomers suits feature pick stitching (a decorative line of edge stitching in places like the lapel and pocket flaps), a detail that in the past was seen on higher-priced suits that you see more often these days--sticklers for conservative dress might find it overly decorative.

Fit and Sizing

Jomers aims to make a trim suit (one of the things that differentiates them from the low-armhole, lowest-common-denominator budget suits out there) and they aren’t kidding. I found the suits I handled to be a bit tighter all around than any of my other off-the-rack jackets, save maybe Italian brand Boglioli. Without alterations, the shoulders were trim but OK (see photo); the chest fit quite close and the waist button pulled. The armholes are high, but not constricting. (For what it’s worth, I measured these Jomers size 42 jackets as about 22 inches across the chest, or 44 all around. This measurement can’t capture the shape of a jacket but it’s a decent shorthand for slim vs looser fits. I don’t wear particularly slim suits and most of my jackets are in the range of  45-46 around the chest.) 

A competent alterations tailor can tweak some of the fit of a jacket (which anyone buying a new off-the-rack suit should account for, in time and money). Take care, however, that a new suit fits how you like in the shoulders and chest, which are a challenge if not impossible to alter significantly. 

I’ve tried SuitSupply’s Napoli and Sienna models in 42 as well, and I found Jomers’ suits to be slightly tighter in the chest and waist. Meyer told me that some customers have said Jomers suits aren’t as trim as they’d like--based on the suits I tried that surprises me.

Currently, the suits are offered only as a jacket with the accompanying drop-six trousers. Jomers plans to offer separates in the future to allow customers to order trousers in a different size, and may do so in their next run (slated for January 2018).

The trousers fit me rather well. I wouldn’t alter a thing except have the hems finished. I found the rise on the trousers to be neither very high nor very low.

Buying Jomers Suits

One thing Joe Banks and Brooks have going for them is they’re in every decently sized city. Walk in and you can try stuff on, and even line up alterations. Jomers is able to offer their suits at such a low price at least in part because they don’t have to pay for retail spaces and sales associates all over the place. The upside for customers is obvious--you can get a suit that might otherwise be out of your price range. The trade off is that you have to order online without trying on, and in Jomers’ case the supply and demand are such that you pretty much have to order as soon as wares become available (stuff sells out quickly). Meyer told me they intend to double the number of units available in the next batch, which had 200-250 suits available in each fabric.

Jomers offers free shipping, and has a 14-day full-refund return policy (buyer pays return shipping). So the only real risk in ordering is that the suit you want may not be available when your return is complete. If I were ordering a Jomers suit today, I would likely order my usual size and one size up, then return the size that didn’t fit as well, and factor the return shipping cost into the cost of my suit.

We generally recommend you save to buy what you really want, and recommend a lot of tailoring that requires some investment. But many guys just aren’t ready to buy a $500+ suit. Jomers solidly fills a niche for people who want better fabric and non-stodgy styling at a price that doesn’t assume you already have a six-figure salary.

[intimatevoid]

the delirium was fun

written while getting progressively drunk with @littledonkeyburrito

1) How many bank accounts do you have? 3.

2) Have you ever been in an ambulance?

Only once, I was in a car crash and was unharmed, but I still had to sit in one while I answered some questions for the paramedics. 3) Do you remember your first time on the internet? No, but I do remember that when we first got internet, I spent all my computer time going to lego.com :D 4) Have you ever had the flu? I had the flu this year and it sucked so much arse. Ash ended up taking me to the hospital at like 1am. The delirium was fun. :D 5) Would you ever consider going on a cruise? Yeah, I have considered it before.

6) Do you ever drink alcohol? well there was this one time that was now

7) Have you ever had a terrible hangover? Actually, I have had maybe one or two hangovers in my entire life. I don’t get ‘em often. 8) How old were your parents when they had you? I think they were in their mid-20s? I have no idea how old my parents are lmao

9) Is there a big age difference between you and the person you like? Actually my partner is exactly ten years older than me. And the person I lost my virginity to is fifteen years older.

10) Do you try to spend a lot of time with family? Pffthahahaha, no. My bio family and I aren’t on great terms. But that said, I’ve slowly built up a little fambly of my own, and I try to spend as much time with them as possible.

11) What would you say is your favorite genre of music? Electronica, metal, chiptune, and orchestral/soundtrack.

12) Are you good at giving advice to people? I have been told by some that I am good at the advice thing, just once or twice.

13) What is your goal for the next few months? To move house in April, and also to save up for my Sydney trip in May~

14) Do you think you have a good sense of style? On paper, I have a great sense of style. In reality I just can’t afford to look like how I want to XD

15) What is your star sign/zodiac sign/whatever? Aquarius. 16) Does your personality match the characteristics of your sign? I am actually a scarily accurate match to my sign. I don’t even believe in zodiac stuff, I just match it really closely. 17) Would you rather be on a nude beach or at a concert? I would definitely rather be at a concert. Public nudity could be a death sentence for me lmao 18) Have you ever been caught passing notes in class? No, I didn’t have any friends to pass notes to, BUT this does remind me of an interesting story about class subterfuge! Once in year 12 English, I was wearing my spray jacket, and had run an earbud up under it, past my neck, to my ear. I sat next to a wall so nobody could see. However, the guy sitting behind me saw it in my ear, and he was a massive dickhead, so he tried to dob me in to the teacher. 

Just in time, I flicked the earbud out of my ear and dropped it into my collar, out of sight. The English teacher (who loved me and did not like the idiot behind me) asked if this was true, and I turned my head to show that there was nothing in my ear. He insisted that he saw something, and I said maybe he saw a fly or something. He started yelling about it and the teacher sent him out of the classroom. I got away with it, nobody ever suspected me.

A little unjust, perhaps, but he was an asshole who constantly disrupted class and I don’t regret anything.

19) What is your New Year’s resolution? My New Year’s resolution is always the same: to be the kind of person my younger self would be both intimidated and a little bit turned on by. 20) Do you know anyone who suffers from depression? Do I know anyone who doesn’t? 21) Would you rather be 13 years old or 30 years old? 30. It’s closer to death, that’s an obvious benefit. 22) Here’s a personal one. How many times do you pee a day? I don’t keep track, you perv 23) Have you ever had your significant other fall asleep on you? Actually, Ash almost never falls asleep on me. But it’s so nice when they do. 24) Name me a random word that starts with ‘O’. Opulence.

25) Which berry is your favorite? Watermelons and avocados.

26) Have you ever tried to learn a foreign language?

Yus! Japanese and French so far.

Maddie’s trying to pressure me into learning Spanish too lmao

27) Which baby animal is your favorite? Literally any of them tbh :D Whether they’re in my lap or on my plate, I don’t mind. 28) What was the scent of the last candle you burned? The last candle I burned was a scent-neutralising deodorant candle, because I had gastro and couldn’t stop farting :D 29) Are there any plants in your home? I have two beautiful moon cacti named Snuggles and Smooches. 30) If you could have a small garden in your backyard, what would you plant? WEED

Vegetables! I miss having homegrown food, hopefully I’ll be able to grow some at my new place ;w; 31) What pets have you had while growing up? My family has had few dogs and a few cats and even a bird, but the only pet that was actually mine was a big ginger tom. Such a beautiful kitty. I named him Sovereign because he thought he was the king of everything. 32) What type of museum would you like to go to? I like lots of different types of museums! Natural history, science, art, you name it. 33) Have you ever been to the circus? Literally never. Though I kinda hate the concept of circuses. So much potential for animal abuse. 34) What are some of your favourite scents? The ones that add up to dollars! :D

Forreal tho, I love the smell of my Lush vanilla body wash.

35) What branch of science interests you the most? Oooh where do I START. I love chemistry a lot, and that filters down to biology and psychology. But I also fucking love physics, and would even be good at it if I was any good at math.

36) Are you one of those lucky people to own a walk-in closet You can walk into any closet if you try hard enough.

37) Can you play electric guitar?

A little! I have more experience with acoustic but electric is more fun.

38) When was the last time you drank something through a straw?

About six hours ago.

39) Are you a fan of industrial metal?

What, like mild steel?

(lol jk i do)

40) Can you handle the cold?

I desire the cold more than anything. Or at least the Australian version of cold, which is really just “slightly below boiling”.

41) Have you ever been to Canada?

Not yet!

42) How old is the person you last kissed?

35~

43) Have you ever tried to balance the light switch between off and on?

Everyone has been ten years old, so yes~

44) Are your feet touching the floor?

Nope. My desk has a bar running underneath it and my feet are propped up on that.

45) Are you one of those people who keep their feelings bottled up? Literally never. I am not just emotional, but I also prompt other people to release theirs. 46) Is one of your friends extremely odd but you love them regardless? Who wants to be friends with NON-odd people? Odd is interesting. Normal is boring.

47) Do you have any piercings besides your earlobes? 13, but I’ve had 22 total.

48) How many push-ups can you do? *shrugs* idk, i used to be able to do heaps bc it was part of my roller derby trailing but now I’m so unfit

49) When was the last time you wore a button up shirt? Literally today~

50) Do you own any striped sweaters? Alas, I do not D:

51) Write the first person you think of whose name begins with T? Tanya Dobson, a dear friend of mine. 52) When was the last time you got a haircut? Just about a couple of weeks ago! Not a proper haircut, just getting my undercut reshaved.

53) How old were you when you had your first crush? I don’t remember how old I was -- probably preteen -- but it was Lt. Helga Sinclair from Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

[savvyherb]

A Young Man Nearly Lost His Life to Vaping

Gregory Rodriguez thought he had the flu when he went to the emergency room on Sept. 18, feeling feverish, nauseated and short of breath.

He woke up four days later in a different hospital, with a tube down his throat connecting him to a ventilator, and two more tubes in his neck and groin, running his blood through a device that pumped in oxygen and took out carbon dioxide. The machines were doing the job of his lungs, which had stopped working.

“I was basically on the verge of death,” he said.

Mr. Rodriguez, 22, a college student, is one of the nearly 1,300 people in the United States who have become seriously ill because of vaping. Like him, about 70 percent are young men. And also like him, many vaped THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

Vaping is odorless and easy to hide, and Mr. Rodriguez slipped into doing it constantly, inhaling enormous amounts of THC and craving more. He decided to talk about it in the hope that his story might be a warning to other people under the false impression that vaping is safe.

“I want people to stay as far away as they can from vapes, especially THC vapes,” he said.

Lung illnesses linked to vaping were first recognized during the summer. The exact cause is still unknown. Toxic chemicals released from vaping fluids, or from the battery-powered vaping devices themselves, are among the suspects.

So far, 29 deaths have been reported. The youngest to die was a 17-year-old boy from the Bronx.

Image

Gregory Rodriguez has been home since Sept. 30. “When I climb stairs, it feels like climbing a mountain,” he said. “When I run a couple of steps, it feels like I ran a marathon.”CreditHilary Swift for The New York Times

The lung damage looks like a chemical burn, the kind of injury caused by industrial accidents or the mustard gas used as a weapon in World War I, according to researchers at the Mayo Clinic.

So far, no vaping product is in the clear.

Mr. Rodriguez said he started smoking marijuana toward the end of high school. He has struggled with anxiety and depression, and marijuana, he said, “gave me some relief.”

But the smell gave him away, and his parents would not allow it in the two-bedroom apartment he shares with them and his older brother in Jamaica, Queens.

After about two years, friends suggested that he try vaping THC. He ordered a few vaping devices from Amazon, and found local THC dealers.

“When you’re in college, you always know somebody who knows a guy,” he said.

He would text a dealer and they would meet, usually in the dealer’s car. A cartridge holding a gram of THC oil cost $40, which Mr. Rodriguez would pay in cash, money he had earned from a part-time maintenance job at Kennedy Airport.

Vaping THC was “like a miracle,” he said. The high came on faster and felt more intense than when he smoked marijuana. Best of all, he said, “It was discreet.” There was no odor, so he could vape in his room, at school, on the street, just about anywhere, and no one would know. The device was small enough to hide in his hand. He also thought vapor would be safer for his lungs than marijuana smoke, even though it sometimes made him cough violently.

Vaping made it easy to take in more and more THC. When he smoked marijuana, a joint or blunt or pipe lasted only so long. But with a THC cartridge, he could vape for hours, with no need to roll a new joint or reload a pipe.

Eventually, Mr. Rodriguez was vaping much of the time. “I was never without it,” he said. His favorites included flavors like Fruity Pebbles and Sour Patch Kids. The few times he ran out, he could think about nothing but getting more, and sometimes, one of his legs would start shaking. A cartridge that would last most people four or five days, he would finish in a day or two.

“It was a habit, an addiction,” he said.

It is possible to become addicted to marijuana or dependent on it, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

A computer-science student, he explored the dark web to find THC vendors with lower prices than he paid on the street, and turned money from his bank account into Bitcoin, to make purchases that would be encrypted and untraceable. On the electronic order forms, he requested the best and strongest THC available.

Boxes of cartridges, 25 for $400, started arriving in the mail early last summer. The return address was a house on a residential street in Ventura, Calif.

The products had a variety of labels, including Dank Vapes, the same name reported by many other people who got sick. It is not actually a brand, but a label that sellers can put on any product. Some of the other cartridges may have been counterfeit versions of brands that are legal in some states. No one knows what is in the knockoff products or who makes them, health officials say.

In August, distraught over the death of a dog his family had for 13 years, Mr. Rodriguez began vaping even more heavily.

In September, he started feeling ill, with headaches and severe nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. He waited several days, hoping to recover, but did not. He felt too sick to vape.

On Monday, Sept. 16, he went to the emergency room at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills Hospital, part of Northwell Health. Doctors said he probably had a stomach virus and sent him home.

Two days later, he felt worse, and had become alarmingly short of breath. His father, on the way to work, dropped him off at the emergency room at about 5 a.m. Embarrassed about vaping, and worried that it was illegal, Mr. Rodriguez did not tell anyone.

“I was hesitant to believe the vapes could be the cause of this,” he said.

The oxygen level in his blood was way below normal. He was given oxygen. Doctors suspected a lung infection, though they were puzzled because he was young and healthy and had not traveled overseas recently.

His mother, who works nights, arrived at the hospital a few hours later. She insisted that he tell the doctors about his vaping.

His condition deteriorated. By afternoon, he was on a ventilator. He still did not improve. By the next morning, his blood oxygen had sunk to levels low enough to cause organ failure, or even stop his heart.

“A 22-year-old gentleman, and he was, essentially, dying in front of me,” said Dr. Syed H. Iqbal, a specialist in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills Hospital.

It fell to Dr. Iqbal to tell Mr. Rodriguez’s family how dangerously ill he was.

“It was terrible,” Mr. Rodriguez’s mother, Martha, said. “I will never forget the doctor’s face. I prayed, ‘Please, God, don’t let him go.’” She told the doctors to do anything needed to save her son.

Dr. Iqbal recommended a desperate measure called ECMO, a machine that would pump oxygen directly into Mr. Rodriguez’s blood and take carbon dioxide out — breathing for him while, if he was lucky, his lungs recovered. The hospital in Forest Hills did not have it, but the main campus of Long Island Jewish Medical Center did, and sent out an emergency team with the machine in an ambulance. As soon as Mr. Rodriguez was connected to it, his blood oxygen shot up to normal levels, Dr. Iqbal said.

Mr. Rodriguez was transferred to the main campus of Long Island Jewish Medical Center and was on the machine for four and a half days.

“Gregory was in danger of dying,” said Dr. Mangala Narasimhan, a lung specialist there and Northwell Health’s regional director of critical care.

“I think he was our 19th case,” she said. “It’s hitting us pretty hard, and that’s just the ones who are severe enough for us to know about.”

Mr. Rodriguez had extensive damage to the air sacs in his lungs, and widespread inflammation.

Dr. Narasimhan’s team treated him with steroids to quell the inflammation, and other medicines to open his airways. They also performed procedures to wash the secretions out of his lungs.

“The stuff coming out of his lungs looked like flan or custard, it was so thick,” Dr. Narasimhan said. “It was a lot of inflammatory cells. We had to do multiple rounds of washing his lungs out every day. After a few days, his lungs started to heal, and started working again.”

She said doctors do not understand why Mr. Rodriguez, like many other patients, had vomiting and diarrhea before the lung symptoms set in, but she said it may be a systemic response to a toxic substance or irritant that moves into the bloodstream after vaping and spreads around the body.

Mr. Rodriguez spent 12 days in the hospital. He has health insurance, and the family has not seen a bill yet, but they imagine the cost of his care will be astronomical.

He returned home on Sept. 30.

“When I climb stairs, it feels like climbing a mountain,” he said. “When I run a couple of steps, it feels like I ran a marathon. The doctor said that what will help is I’m still young and I can get back into shape. Every day I get physically much better. It becomes easier to walk. I practice my breathing exercises.”

He went back to classes at Queensborough Community College a week and a half after leaving the hospital.

But psychologically, he is having a tough time, feeling anxious and depressed, and unable to sleep. His mother has taken a leave from her job to stay with him while he recovers, and his distress worries her.

“I feel like I am, in a way, going through withdrawal,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “I am going to therapy for substance abuse, and getting the help I need.”

He thinks marijuana products should be legal and regulated, so that people can be sure they are safe.

While he was unconscious and attached to the machines, his mother took a cellphone photo of him, so that she could show it to him later.

“The doctors and my parents told me the severity of my case,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “As you can imagine, I was a little bit shaken up. I had no idea what I was putting into my lungs.”

The post A Young Man Nearly Lost His Life to Vaping appeared first on Savvy Herb Mobile Cannabis Platform.

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[stretchjournalemerson]

Turkey Run Inn

By Audrey Iocca - 

Before my parents divorced, there was a place we used to go as a family once a year, every year: Turkey Run State Park. It is a small forest preserve about two and a half hours from where we lived in Illinois. It has a few good hiking trails, an adorable inn, two horses, and a river. This random state park on the edge of Indiana was a place of tradition for us, one of very few places our family had. My grandma was taken to this place as a child; camping, hiking, and playing in the river were cheap ways to entertain farm kids. And when she was old enough to need a cheap way to entertain her farm kids, she took my mom and uncle there. And then, as the cycle goes, my mom took my sister and me.

But it never felt cheap. It never felt like we were doing this to save a little bit of cash. It felt like an adventure.

Looking back, everything in my childhood was like an adventure. When I was young, I grew up on a lot of land, like my mom and grandma before me; 11 acres of grass and a pond was my backyard between the ages of 0 and 10. My sister, Isabel, and I would saddle up on our John Deere battery-powered mini truck and ride out as far as it would take us, or until my parents yelled that they couldn’t see us anymore. We would ride it down to the dock on the pond, lay on our stomachs, and look down at the blue-green fish swimming around, sometimes even dragging our fingers through the murky water that often needed cleaning. When the pond got particularly green, my dad would haul out the little faded blue, tin rowboat. Occasionally, he would take us on the pond, fashioning us with bright orange life vests before he began to tell us the wonders of the world beneath the moss. It was in this rowboat that I first learned about tadpoles and schools of fish, all while my dad sprinkled pond moss remover into the water.

Once a summer my parents would take us across the land bridge to the other side of the pond where the blackberry bushes were hidden. It was something that became tradition over the years: going across the bridge, picking the blackberries, putting them in little baskets. There was nothing better than tilting my head back in anticipation as my mom picked one off the top of the bush before dropping it into my awaiting mouth; it was a blackberry paradise. We felt like Mary and Laura in Little House in the Big Woods, the girls we heard about every night from our mom’s lips before bed.

I never realized then that this was a love project of sorts, our upbringing. I imagine my mom and dad planning this life for us, my mom making the apparitions of her nostalgia come to life through this house that was as close to the farm as she could get. And yet, there is a point where nostalgia is not enough; the gaps in life experience begin to fall in on themselves and suddenly, they need to be filled.

At one point, my mom stopped being at the house with us all the time. My mom no longer chased us through the peony and rose gardens on September afternoons; she watched us become a two-man band from the screened in porch as she scribbled away in her college-ruled notebooks. My mom going back to school was something I didn’t understand when it was happening, and so my memories of this time are very fuzzy: I see the textbooks on her bedside table, I smell more of my dad’s cooking in the kitchen, I hear my parents voices gradually rise each time they fight, I feel the rough fabric of her black robe and play with the tassel on the fancy flat hat. I don’t think my mom regrets being a stay at home mom, but I do think she would have done things differently. She wouldn’t have had her first kid at 22. She wouldn’t have gotten married twice. She would’ve had more of her own life. And I don’t blame her for that. I think she wanted to get far away from that place; she needed to see what else was out there.

***

When I was ten, my parents separated. And when I say separated, I really mean separated. My mom moved Isabel and me to Skokie, Illinois--a Chicago suburb over 200 miles from my hometown where my dad stayed. He got a job as an account tech with the state, sold the house and the land, and opted for an apartment closer to the mall. Just like that, our blackberry paradise was gone.

Our new claim to a half acre hardly felt like an upgrade, but my mom insisted we were on to bigger and better things. She worked part time at the park district as a receptionist for a year before being able to put her MBA to use at the local mall. It was about a ten minute drive from our house. In fact, nothing was more than ten minutes away: the grocery store, my middle school, the bank, the mall, the orthodontist, my friend’s houses. It was like a third grader’s drawing of their street in art class, everything in that town was packed together like the charcoals they would have used to color the picture in with. While there were trees and some parks sprinkled in throughout, Skokie was overwhelmingly gray.

Martin F. Peccia Park was the greenest place I could escape to with my friends. It was a half block of grass complete with an unnecessary amount of “no dogs allowed” signs. Laying in the grass with the sun beating down on my forehead, I am taken out of my city for a moment: the birds chirping, the grass prickleing my bare legs, the breeze blowing through my hair. But with that breeze brings the smell of car exhaust and I am brought right back to reality. The park is surrounded by I-94. Commuters whizz past, their horns overpowering the birds and everything else. The highway is visible from the park: only a chain link fence protected us from the insanity of commuter life, a life my mom would join in a few short years. For some reason she wanted this, wanted to prove to everyone that she could make it here, to this polluted daydream.

At this point, my uncle and grandma had moved away from Springfield as well, both settling in Chicago suburbs a little further out from the city. I guess the consensus among the family was that there was more opportunity in Chicagoland: there were better schools, better jobs, better everything, apparently. As a pre-teen, I didn’t really understand the difference between all those “betters.” School was still school, no matter where I was. But now I think I see what they meant.

At Fairview South Middle School, I was in a class of 80 and at least half were not white, if not more. My class at Farmingdale Elementary school was over 100, and I can remember one asian girl and one black boy. I remember one year, the Skokie school district had so much extra funding that we each got five dollar gift cards to Barnes & Noble in the mail. There was a class at Fairview that taught me Latin roots weekly and incorporated the works of Shakespeare and Homer. I was able to test out of Algebra 1 before high school, along with about two-thirds of my class. Spanish was a requirement for seventh and eighth grade. These were all things that I would not have experienced in Springfield, and my mom was well aware of that because she had stayed there her whole life, without being exposed to any of it.

I think, in the end, whether all this was really better or not, it was a better life in my mom’s eyes. Exposure, education, diversity, wealth. I think they were all things my mom had always wanted for herself, things she never got growing up on a farm in the middle of conservative Illinois.

***

One of my best friends at the time was a girl named Julia who spoke Polish at home and English at school. We would sometimes brave a walk home from school together, usually only on sunny days where it meant enough reward for the hassle. To get home, we had to cross the bridge that took us directly over I-94. I was in Dorothy’s tornado on that bridge, desperately clicking my heels three times waiting for it to carry me home. In a whirlwind of fast cars and heavy backpacks, we finally made our way to the other side.

When we didn’t walk home, we always took the bus. There were five of us in the same grade that always took over the back of the bus. I remember one day I was sitting next to Julia while she stared out of the window when suddenly she started slapping my leg excitedly and yelled: “There’s a deer!” Everyone’s heads snapped to look out the window like it was an exotic zoo animal. But it was just a deer. I saw them every day in my backyard where I grew up, and I could not understand their fascination.

***

When we lived in Skokie, we still went to Turkey Run. It wasn’t every year, but we went. It became the place we would beg to stop at on any road trip that went relatively close. It became the place I wanted to bring friends on long weekends. It became the place I thought I was going to get married. It became the place I knew I would take my children one day.

I want to share the journey there with them, the way I know I’m almost there when the curved road turns straight. After what feels like all day, we finally pass the many canoe and kayak rental shacks, the curved road ends, and there is a brown sign with bright yellow generic font reading “Turkey Run State Park.” I want to share with them what is beyond that sign: the magic of the covered bridge and the punch bowl, the family singing “grandma got run over by a turkey” while hiking Trail 3, the feeling of feet sinking into thick mud and reluctantly rinsing it off in the creek, the beauty of wild animals and how even just their sounds would stop me in my tracks.

***

In 2014, my mom moved us again. By then, my dad had bought a house in Springfield, and we had been driving four hours every other weekend to see him for four years. The driving continued as we started new schools in Naperville, IL. Naperville is complicated for me. It was a happy medium of my two very different worlds. It’s a city of nearly 150,000 with many dog-friendly parks, forest preserves, bike trails, ponds, and geese. It also had a real downtown that contained not one, but two Starbucks and had blocks filled with designer stores like Lululemon, Pandora, and Anthropologie. Once I had my license, it was easy to be more concerned with getting a frappuccino after school than riding my bike through the park. I could also now drive myself to either of two train stations that after seven dollars and 50 minutes had me in the heart of the third largest city in the country.

The high school I attended is ranked in the top 20 in the state of Illinois, having some of the best administrators, teachers, and fine arts directors available. It was a rich area equating to ample funding for the district to be able to provide these things to us. I was lucky to live here. Not just lucky--privileged.

This high school allowed me to fill in my own gaps of knowledge. After taking a history class that taught me the beginnings of all the world's religions, I met a girl that actually practiced Buddhism. And a girl who practiced Hinduism. And another girl who spoke Tamil. A boy who spoke fluent Chinese. I was a tutor for a group of English Language Learning who came specifically here from all over the world. I attended the first ever Women's March in Chicago and reported on the March for Our Lives for my school newspaper. By senior year, I had so much in my college portfolio from leadership positions, to volunteer work, to experiences with diversity that I got into Emerson College in Boston and one of the only undergraduate publishing programs in the country.

I don’t say all of this to brag. I say it because it’s amazing to me how different my life would have been if my mom had not made the choices she did, moving us across the state, leaving behind everything she had ever known.

***

The last time I was at Turkey Run, I was learning how to drive. I like to say I first learned to drive on our bright orange lawn tractor, sitting on my dad’s lap at age ten, barely in control of the steering wheel as my dad’s rough and calloused hands engulfed mine, making sure we didn’t crash. We moved before I got to try using the gas pedal. Eventually, I got my permit and had to figure out how to drive a real car with no one's hands to hold the steering wheel but my own.

We were driving back from visiting my uncle in Viginia when we decided to stop at Turkey Run. He had bought a farm out there--one with a house my grandma moved into shortly after its purchase. We figured the park was kind of on the way back, it would break up our 16 hour drive and let us see a place we hadn’t been in years.

After pulling through the gates, my mom and I switched seats, and I could go wherever I wanted within the park grounds. I remember it was bright out and unusually warm for the season, the sun making me sweat through the windshield. Slowly, I pushed on the gas, and we creeped along the dusty road. There was a fork, left bringing us to the inn, and right bringing us to the horse barn. Without much thought I turned right. We quickly passed the horses, all of us rubbernecking to stare at their sleek brown coats shimmering in the afternoon sun. I had never been past this barn though, and so my curiosity took me to where the road soon turned into uneven dirt, right as the shade from the trees swallowed us into their secret wonderland. After driving through the trees for a while, we reached a loop, my mom explaining to me that this is where the campgrounds used to be. This is where she and her brother, her mom and her dad, would set up tents and look up at the stars. I felt a pang deep in my stomach as I gazed out at the dirt patches in the grass and rotted wooden poles that marked each site. We had always stayed at the inn.

***

When I’m missing my childhood blackberry bushes and large expanse of grass, when I’m regretting the money and time I spent at Starbucks, when I’m sometimes wishing that I had never been brought to the city, I imagine my mom riding in the back of her parents car without a seatbelt on, looking out the window as the curved road turns straight. After passing the gates and reaching the fork in the road, I see her watching the lights of the inn fade away as they drive down to the campground.

It is then I remember all my mom has ever been trying to do is give us a life she never had, a life she dreamed of. And I thank her for it.

Acknowledgements

I would like to first thank Professor Kovaleski Byrnes for giving me this call to write. I’m not sure I ever would have attempted memoir if not for this assignment, and I am so grateful that she presented me with the task. I would next like to thank Kayla and Diti for being amazing peer reviewers and encouraging me throughout the whole revision process; your comments and support was more helpful than you know. I would lastly like to thank my mother. She is an incredibly strong woman who would do anything for her children, and I can’t thank her enough for all she has done for me.

[wasalwaysagreatpickle]

Sunday 18 February 1827

6 3/4

12 5/60

My bowels pretty well – I seem to have got over my bilious attack – Colder than ever this morning – finished dressing – done at 8 1/2 – then got my clothes ready for the wash, and write the washing bills ready to put the numbers and prices tonight – which took me 1/2 hour – then did last week’s summary and at my accounts (calculating 1 thing or other) till 11 20/60 – then breakfast – 

I think I can pay all but my private expenses for two hundred franks a week? – 

In my weekly housekeeping account has never been so little as last week – and it might have been 7/. less well enough – nothing like these weekly summaries, and constantly looking over one’s account – wrote the last 4 lines, and went in to read prayers at 11 35/60 - read the prayers and sermon 12 bp. [Sandford] – and came back to my room at 12 40/60 – 

Read over my letters written yesterday to Mr and Mrs D- [Duffin] mention my aunt’s being marvellously recovered [nobody] as happy is she ever was in her life, and as Dr Tupper observed, may live these dozen years, but cannot bear travelling. I see no prospect of her bearing to return [more] present end of our remaining here’; yet if she continues as well as is now, I can leave her quite well for a few weeks per summer, and shall try the D- [Duffin’s] hospitality – count upon being in England if not next summer, next summer 12 month – in the meantime ‘I much wish Mr Jonathan Gray to send me his account’ – of course he will take care of the probate copy of my uncles will – got the rough draft of my own signed and witnessed at Lawton – 

Our apartment ‘a little too high up’ but ‘the picture of comfort’ when we got into it – we should have preferred a 2nd – it is the floor generally preferred – people think nothing of 60 steps – mention the situation and its [malice] – say I have ordered 25 dozen excellent Burgundy ‘of the best vintage there has been for long, 1822’ – ask the D- [Duffin’s] to come and help us off with it – and say I will try to give Mr D- [Duffin] some good claret, his favourite wine – have no spare room – nobody has here – but will get them lodged somewhere near – never minded the exports of war – ‘though our apartment is furnished for us, et cetera of one set or other have cost us a hundred pounds’ – ‘on comparing the prices with Mariana, she says, ‘I think all household goods are higher priced with you, than here - …. their linen would have cost you 1/2 what it has done in France’ – there is no saving in English – frequented foreign capitals, but by reducing establishments, and living abroad like little people, instead of although – like great ones’ – say I did not visit at all – 

Mention not having been quite well since my arrival – having ‘suffered from what I never suffered before, indigestion’ – seem better for my late bilious attack – ‘our wood and charcoal will cost us about £80 a year 4 constant fires’ … ‘How is Eliza Raine’ – will see Mr Marsh said to winters low the next time I go to England – Have anxiously expected hearing from Steph – have made all allowances – so well satisfied with the effect of his medicines, will now excuse him if he does not write at all – my rememberances to him and Mrs Henry Stephen Belcombe, the Bests, Mrs Anne and Miss Gage, the Yorkes and Cromptons – 

P.2 (to Mr D- [Duffin]) contains great part of the quotations from the pamphlet (vide p.111) observing ‘the above passage bear some striking an analogy to the corresponding sentiments expressed by our able minister; they are, therefore, so doubtedly interesting for the [pen] of a foreigner, and so curious as an illustration either of the borrowing of opinions, or of the sameness of opinions upon the momentous subject in great and original minds, that I made no apology for thus filling my paper …..there is plenty to talk of, I think of here, without war – these are altogether eventful times – that one line, ‘fera triompher la raison universelle ….. will make me reason universally triumph over all superstitions politcial and religious’, contains the secret of our national incompatibility with all the [apostolics] of our day – Here may be the soil, and here the seed ahead sown, of future discord; but I think the time of harvest is not come as yet; and a few more summers may have passed us by, ere that ‘war of opinion’ commence, whose end no human foresight can foresee – surely it is impossible for an Englishman to live here, and not reflect, - and to reflect without being thankful that he is what he is, a subject of the happiest, and perhaps the best, and most perfect government that was ever yet vouchsafed to man – our croakers may croak as they please – send them to this next happiest country to our own, and let them bear with their ears, and see with their eyes, and understand with their understandings if they have any, and surely, they will return home, and be satisfied. I mean not to complain of France; it is a good an pleasant land; I am resident and comfortable here; but take it all in all, there is no place like England’ - …… ‘but the climate is delightful; one is happy by the mere influence of the air; and, as I sauntered the other morning before breakfast in the Bois de Boulogne, I could not help saying to myself, we have no air like this in England’ – ask him to wafer his next letter – 

Wrote the last 21 lines of the last p. and so far of this which took me till 1 50/60 – from 2 to 5 1/2 read over Mrs James Dalton’s last letter; and wrote her 3pp; small and close and the ends and under the seal – mention our apartment as ‘all we wanted; but we [soar] for it; and you certainly would have no occasion to say, ‘Friend go up higher’ – ask if she is ‘turned radical reformer, and determined to abolish all places whatsoever’ that she will not let me remain ‘purveyor general of jujubes’ – beg to ‘keep my appointment for life’ – ‘my memory towards my friends is better than many of them seem to imagine – so think continental air bad for it; so think it cannot live without letter writing; - so think one thing some another – I recognised Marianne’s handwriting in the direction of your letter – she never sends her love to me – give mine to her, and tell her, ‘caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt’ – hope to see them at the Rectory one of these days – fancy Isabella not well – uneasy about her ‘should I be able to cross the water for 2 or 3 weeks next summer, perhaps she will return with me’ – 

‘I have not been quite well since our arrival here (in Paris), and am still listless and lethargic’ – do not visit at all – have not been once to the theatres this winter – do not like to leave my aunt in an evening – ‘I have not yet made an attempt to get into any literary society’ not therefore seen Mr Bankes – should I meet with him will think of Mrs James D- [Dalton] should like to know him – 5000 English here, instead of the 1500 last winter – the [comte/count] de Montlosiers works have produced a strong sensation – the duch d’angoulême said to have gone on her knees to prevail upon the King not to dismiss the 3 members of the academy – the duke d’angoulême said to have prevailed the dissolution of the whole academy and the creation of new peers among the [groups] being against cramming the press low down the peoples [thoughts] whether they will or not – 

Mention the excess cold – Diligence horses covered with a sheet of icicles – ‘I was particularly struck by this the other day’ (last time but I went to Madame Irlande) ‘having never before seen 5 dark bay horses so completely metamorphosised into as many white [bears]’ –

Distress here among the lower classes – no trade, and bankrupts every day – Mrs L- [Lawton’s] remark on the dearness of our linen good [brief] and [neat] at 6 1/2 pence a lb and veal at 9 pence – with this exception, we found all eatables [dearer] than in our [dear] [past] part of Yorkshire, at home – House rent enormous – our wood and charcoal will cost us about or upwards of £80 a year for only 4 constant fires during the winter, and bedroom fires very occasionally – Live from hand to mouth - …. ‘no spare rooms – no store – rooms – one markets every day – They have a proverb here ‘(Madame Sené told it me just before we came here), ‘Les provisions ruinent ‘les maisons’ – True, if, as they say, all French servants are thieves – But the climate is delightful – we have everything in the world we want – we have made ourselves at home, and are really very comfortable – I wish you could come, and see…..Believe me, my regard for old friends cannot die away; and absence will be the last enemy that prevails against it – my heart is in its old place, and will not budge for time and distance – Trust me, I am no forgetter of my friends and am, and always shall be very truly and affectionately yours A L – [Anne Lister]’ 

From 5 1/2 to dinner danced about a little – washed my hands – sat musing – Dinner at 6 5/60 – in the drawing room at 8 – slept – came to my room at 9 40/60 – 1/2 hour over the washing bills – then wrote the last 22 1/2 lines of the last page and so far of this which took till 10 50/60 – very fine day – hard frost –

Sat ten minutes on the pot and had a little motion – 

I think the raisenet de Bourgogne does my bowels good –

Very hard frost, coldest morning. 

Fahrenheit 13˚ at 7 a.m. 15 at 8 a.m.  27 at 12 3/4 p.m. 26 at 6 p.m. 25 at 10 p.m.