#apart from self-defense though she's trying hard to get her children accepted back into society if they wish to return

[duskroots]

“I cannot remember much from the time before I gained consciousness.

It’s all a blurr, hundreds of weak, wailing voices blending into one another in my mind, growing quieter and weaker until their will was broken, turned into loyal soldiers who wept no longer only for new victims to take their place.

A vicious cycle that seemed to continue on endlessly.

Only one voice stands out in my hazy memories, above all the others - powerful, commanding, cruel.

And so, so very loud.

I remember that I tried to reach out to the smaller voices I heard whenever I found the strenght to try, attempted to comfort them in their fear and their pain, but I stood no chance, so easily was I drowned out by the one who commanded us all, who commanded me and all the others to obey.

And in the end, to my great shame, I would always obey.

All the more jarring was the sudden quiet the moment before my eyes snapped open, his voice silenced, his power over us - over me - gone in an instant.

I didn’t know what had happened, why I suddenly had free will and a physical form - and that, how I would later come to learn, I was the only one out of all the blighting trees in that strange and unfamiliar position.

But it didn’t matter in that moment.

I knew what I had to do.

I knew I had to find my children and gather them around me so I may finally give them the comfort they needed, and hope against all hope that they could forgive me for the role I played in their suffering.”

- Voice of the Jungle

avatar of one of Mordremoth’s blighting trees | leader and ambassador of a community of Ex-Mordrem living in the heart of Maguuma | “younger sister” of the Pale Tree

[jopok-krp]

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Personality:

Rei is a very lively and playful person resulting from having to grow up from such a young age alongside his twin brother. Despite being born only 10 minutes apart, he still very much acts like an older brother to Tai a lot of times. Yes, he uses that against Tai way more than he cared to admit, but it’s all out of fun. No matter how much he teases and makes fun of his twin brother, he will always be protective of him and will definitely take a bullet for him no matter what.

He’s quite a social butterfly underneath the soft and calm exterior that he displays. He quite literally thrives in chaos and enjoys being surrounded by it a bit more than one really should. It was only expected from a duo like his twin brother and him.

Other than that, he is also quite charming and charismatic, pulling admirers left and right, but not really settling and getting serious with anyone in particular, especially if they were unable to tell the twins apart properly, which was really hard seeing that they are identical and only had very little differences visually and physically. Despite not being picky with food, he was picky with people he beds and meets.

As far as his line of work, he was good with his hands and what he did with his brother. In addition to that, he could craft chemical weapons precisely which was supplemented with his fascination with science early on in life. When he’s alone, he is a decent hitman, but with Tai and his intelligence partnered with his knowledge of forensics, they are quite a team. Their jobs are clean and are mostly spotless with a dash off both their antics and experiments in their execution of the plans they initially had.

Background:

[Codename Rei]

Rei was born the older of the identical twins by ten minutes. Barely cried as he came out, only to cry more later on when his twin brother, Tai, came to join him in the world. He always held that fact over Tai’s head and used it against him whenever he could growing up. Though, they never really fought against each other, and in fact, they had actually got along way better than some siblings had.

They grew up barely making by with their parents livelihoods not able to really provide for two children. They weren’t expecting twins when they got pregnant and it wasn’t a choice for the couple to lose their children either after trying so hard to conceive. Life may not be easy with the lack of funds and situation in life but their parents did their best to bring them up properly and send them to school when they came of age.

[Silent Assassin]

Despite their young age, they’ve been made aware of their standing in life and society. They were poor and scraping by with what they’ve got. It was one of the ways that their parents knew to humble their children; by letting them know what they had and why it was the way it is for them. It worked for most things, but not for everything. It was also around this time that the shortage happened, which only made their situation even worse.

Rei had a particularly huge liking towards Pokemon and that was one of the things that pushed them towards their first theft at the young age of ten. He had wanted the pokeball keychain that made sounds and lit up whenever the button in the middle was pressed. The problem was that the particular keychain was hanging on a classmate’s backpack, and knowing they don’t have the money to spare for the keychain, he had stared and sighed to his brother about how cool it was and how he had wanted it.

Later in the day, the keychain went missing and no one batted an eyelash as there was no talks about theft, but only that it may have been dropped on his way to school. Rei was able to keep the keychain even if he couldn’t bring it to school. He then noticed that the keychain was easily replaced the following day, so from then, he knew that they got away with what they had done.

The second theft came quick as Tai eyed a nice gold bracelet hanging around one of their schoolmate’s wrist. She was from a different class, but still the same grade and shared recess with the them. The plan was one would distract and the other would take the bracelet off. Tai was a lot better with talking to people so he distracted while Rei took the bracelet off of her. It was risky and dangerous seeing how he would have to make sure that she wouldn’t notice. Though, it seemed that he was able to pull it off on his third try as he kept almost getting caught.

[Contracts]

Petty thefts turned into things more grand as they grew older. At first they were just small trinkets that Rei liked to keep, but most were ones they had sold to others so that they can bring in some money home. The money was just kept between the two of them due to the fact that they did not want to risk their parents getting angry when all they wanted to do was help.

So, they decided that when they’ve saved up a huge sum of money, they could just put it in an envelope and put it in their mailbox for their parents to find. It was the easiest way for them to be able to provide some help for their family, especially in their situation growing up. It may not be much as they are still in their early teens, but it was enough to help out even with just putting food on the table.

By the time that they were fifteen, they’ve gotten more and more luxurious items with how well they’ve worked together. Being twins helped out a lot of the times, but it was both their skills that pulled them through almost always whenever they try to get anything that caught their sights. Rei had also started to steal less for himself and more for profit when he grew older.

[Blood Money]

A particular transaction that turned their lives around was from a stolen phone that contained important contacts and information on it. Selling it to the black market would get them more than the reward that was being posted for it, so that’s what they had decided to do.

Though, things don’t always go as planned, and things started getting heated when the buyer started trying to haggle the price for the phone when they knew that it was most likely worth more than what they are even asking for it because the black market usually priced things lower than its face value.

A fight broke when Rei put his foot down, letting them know that the price was firm or there wouldn’t be a sale between the parties, which the buyer did not like at all. A knife was pulled and the first thought on Rei’s mind was to step in front of his twin brother. He tried to calm the situation down by talking to the guy, but seeing how the man was acting, he knew reasoning was falling on deaf ears. He still did not want to sell the phone for a lower price.

With words thrown back and forth continuously, it was only a matter of time when the man decided to lounge at him, in which he had stepped aside and with Tai who went to the other side of the man, they were able to trap him, and in the act of self-defense, they ended up killing the man.

They were only sixteen years old, but they were tall and were a bit more built for their age and had prepared to fight if things got out of hand at times as a precaution. They never really expected things to go this far, but at the time, they knew they were only protecting themselves and in addition, they had realized that they were able to keep the phone and take the money. This could be easily staged as a robbery, and so they got to work with each other reassuring that they only did what they had to.

[Absolution]

Killing was always the last thing to come to their mind when deals don’t go as they planned. Most of them just ended up either giving up and paying what they asked for, or they try to make it seem like they aren’t interested anymore due to the high price and buying it anyways when the twins tried to leave due to the value it held.

But things still go rocky for the two as they continued to sell stolen artifacts, and unfortunately they had ended up killing two more people by the time they turned seventeen. One during the spring of 2032, and the other happened during the winter of the same year. Both deals, they got the better side of with not losing what they were selling and getting to keep the money for it and some more.

Though, what they did not realize then was that those two people that they had ended up killing were people being watched by a gang. They both had been on the gang’s hitlist for various reasons, which they were completely unaware of.

With the two being successful in eliminating people from their hitlist without doing anything, eyes were put on the two, watching them from afar, especially with the fact that they didn’t even need to do anything to evade the authorities with how well they had staged the kills after they had done them.

By the following year, on 2033, they were approached by someone from the gang Taurus. They were given an offer of protection and money for their family that they couldn’t refuse. For one, protection from the authorities would lessen the risk of their parents ever finding out about what the two had been up to. Other than that, it would give them peace of mind that their family was protected and they would be able to provide for their family better, albeit in a more gruesome way than they had initially planned.

In their parents eyes, they are both interns that concerned their majors in college that paid pretty well, so there was no question when they had moved into their own apartment by the age of eighteen after their first year of college.

Rei had found a fascination with biology and chemistry when he was in high school and had found so many ways that it could be beneficial for when they are protecting themselves when they used to steal and sell things in the black market. What was once something defensive had turned offensive with the shift of their ‘occupation’ upon accepting Taurus’ offer.

While he forged chemical weapons, looked for ways on how they can make deaths seem natural, or get rid of a body completely, Tai was the brains of their operation working out how they will make it either look like an accident or cover their tracks completely. They were a deadly duo, and their synergy was incomparable to anything.

[standlikeastarfish]

Reintegrating My Body and My Mind

A personal essay about violation and healing.

[Read more]

Trigger warnings: panic attacks, anxiety, sexual assault, violence

My therapist recently pointed out that I talk about my body as if it’s a separate entity from my concept of my self. I often feel like it’s separate—especially during panic attacks when it feels like my body is attacking me. When my body shakes, when my hands go numb, when i feel nauseous, when it feels like my throat is closing up, I ask myself: why is this body doing this to me? Why is it trapping me? While writing this, I’m currently in a state of calm reflection, and can now see that maybe my body is trying to tell me something when it does this. Maybe I should listen. And furthermore, at the core of this panic response is really the brain pulling the strings—and the brain is absolutely me. So really, I’M trying to tell myself something.

I’ve had panic attacks for as long as I can remember, but they became more frequent when I was 12 years old. The first years I spent learning how to cope with them, the next few years I spent learning how panic attacks worked and why I had them, and this past year I’ve been working on having more control over the anxiety and my body. This process includes digging deep into why I feel like I don’t have control, and frequently this sort of thinking has resurfaced several moments that I’ve felt violated and sexually assaulted where I’ve given up my body to others. For the record, I don’t think my panic attacks and the moments of violation are unrelated.

We are currently on the edge of a potential cultural shift, led by the wave of survivors of sexual assault speaking out against powerful and famous men. They are doing heavy-lifting to help reframe the way our society views violence and assault. They are saying no to any discomfort or harm, and they are taking back control of their bodies and their futures by speaking out. They have empowered me to want to take back control of my body. I want to revisit moments that I had previously written off as “weird” or “just something that happened to me” as acts of violence. Even though I felt awful during these moments, I would tell myself that it wasn’t a big deal and to stop feeling so hurt. By invalidating my emotions during these moments, I taught myself to disconnect how my body felt and what my mind was telling me—a body/mind divide.  

The next few paragraphs are these moments. I write this down on this platform for a few reasons: I believe writing this down is a step in the direction of reintegrating my mind and my body by acknowledging and validating the moments of discordance and therefore addressing the potential source of my panic attacks. I also believe that to write it down is to confront it, and to write it down in a (pseudo)public space is to have witnesses who offer a secondary acknowledgement I can’t give myself.

Again- trigger warning.

When I was 3 or 4, I had an inguinal hernia operation. I had no idea what a hernia was. I had no idea what surgery was. All I knew was that I had to go to the doctor a lot and he’d pull my pants down and touch me there. My parents tried explaining it to me and comforting me but I remember not understanding exactly what they were saying. I honestly believed they were going to let doctors remove my penis and I didn’t know why. The day of the surgery they drove me to the hospital very very early in the morning. I remember feeling terrified and my parents were rushing me because we had to be on time. We got to the hospital and the nurses brought me to a room full of other children in hospital beds. Several adults standing over me told me to strip and go into one of the beds. I didn’t want to get naked. I remember standing there crying and a nurse started taking my clothes off for me. I remember feeling helpless. I finally got into the bed and the next thing I know I was tired and falling asleep. When I woke up I was attached to a machine and my parents were there and I was getting gifts. I didn’t know why i deserved gifts—it wasn’t my birthday and I didn’t do anything to deserve them. It was even weirder because in the past anytime I got gifts, my twin also got gifts because we share the same birthday, but this time my brother wasn’t getting anything. This was the first time I felt like my body was not just mine.

I think about this sometimes when I pass a hospital.

When I was around 10, i was at a museum with my mom. It might've been the Whitney or the Guggenheim. I had wandered off for a minute and a museum guard found me. Instead of asking where my parents were, he grabbed me and got down on a knee and held me close. Then he started kissing my cheek, saying I was a very cute boy. I don't remember if he was trying to move from my cheek to my lips. Suddenly my mom found me and screamed at him "what the hell are you doing to my son", she pulled me away from him harshly and fast walked me out of the area. I don't remember what happened after that. But I do remember for months I would scrub my cheek in the shower, trying to scrub off the stranger. I was so ashamed that this man did that so I didn't tell anyone. I don't even know if I talked to my mom about it ever.

I think about this sometimes when I go to a museum.

A few years later, I started searching for answers for why I was attracted to guys my age online. A decade and a half ago, when you tried typing in “gay” into google, you either got porn, “Am I Gay” online quizzes, or chatrooms. I started checking out the chatrooms, and there I talked to people both my age and older about what it meant to be gay. I was too eager for validation and acceptance that I ignored the warning signs, and was swept up into talking to much older predators. They complimented me and allowed me to talk openly about this otherwise shameful attraction to guys. Gradually these men asked more and more questions and at the same time I set up a fake email account with a fake name to make a fake Skype account to talk to them on webcam. Soon there were a few men who I’d be talking to late at night, and they asked me to do things for them on camera. At school I was constantly bullied at even the slightest feminine or queer action/comment, so I repressed any feelings until the nighttime when I could stop pretending. By doing what these men wanted, I felt like this part of me was being cared for and seen, but I also felt intense panic and disgust with myself—which are severely different feelings to feel at the same time. I realized much later that they were using me and exploiting my need to be accepted, and that giving up my body digitally like that has significantly affected my relationship to others and myself. Sometimes I google usernames of the men and see that they’re still active on forums, probably preying on young boys like me. One time when I was older I even went into a chatroom and tried warning boys about the men, telling them to leave the chatrooms because it’s not worth it. I don’t know if they went back to it.

I think about this sometimes when I log onto Skype.

In college I dated a girl who loved me. At this time I identified as bi, but she wanted me to be “just straight”. When she wanted to have sex and I didn’t (which happened quite often), she questioned if I loved her or not and got upset. So I ended up having sex with her a lot when I didn’t want to in order to show her that I did love her. I was afraid if I said no she would get angry. I would get into a blank state of mind and lend her my body. One night I was upset and I was crying hard but she still went for it. I said no a number of times, but we still had sex that night. Eventually, it was a messy, emotional, and scary break up.

I think about this sometimes when I talk to her.

During my last week of college I was invited to a party at a friends place. I was upset that night for various reasons and went alone. When I was there I ran into a guy who had been hitting on me for the past two years but I had voiced my discomfort previously. He saw that I was upset and asked if I was drinking. I said no because I didn’t like the hard liquor in the kitchen. He said he had a bottle of rosé in his car that I could have if I wanted. I said sure why not. We got in his car and I started drinking it. He told me I could drink as much as I want. He put on music and I thought that was nice. It tasted so good, I hadn’t realized I drank half the bottle. I’m usually drunk off one cider or one glass of wine, so by this point I was started to get really drunk. He started driving and I freaked out telling him not to drive because he was drunk and i was asking where we were going. He said he didn’t drink that much and said to his apartment. By the time we got there I couldn’t walk straight. We went into his room and he started kissing me. I said no sex. He kept pushing for it. I said no. That’s about when I blacked out. I remember waking up in the middle of sex and freaking out wondering where the hell I was and what I was doing. I pushed him off me, put on my clothes and ran outside to a pond nearby and cried my eyes out.

I think about this sometimes when I see rosé wine.

I am a survivor of sexual assault. It will probably take me a long time to be comfortable in my body, but I know I will be. And I know my anxiety is my mind sending signals to my body trying to protect me. I know it’s me. I have come to appreciate my panic attacks as a defense mechanism created by my mind. Instead of trying to cope with the panic attack, I now ask myself why I’m having it. What triggered it? What was I thinking about? With this information I can then test hypotheses about what is bothering me and attempt to process those specific events and emotions. My panic attacks are pressure points that help me see where the problems are. Without them, I would be punching in the dark. I’m grateful for my family and friends who are endlessly supportive of me. Without them, it would be even darker. I hope that people continue to speak out against their abusers and the culture of sexual assault in general, even though it’s so difficult and courageous. This feels like a critical moment in our mass understanding of violence and harm, and I look forward to the day when everyone feels like they have control over their bodies.