#don't worry I will still learn but I still want that funky piece of paper to tell everyone I learnt it

[mokeonn]

"But if college was free, then people would abuse that and get useless degrees" hell yeah I would! If I could go to college without debt I would make it my job to get a degree in every little thing that interested me. I'd get a doctorate in film studies. I'd have a bachelor's degree for every science I like. I'd try to learn at least 5 languages with varying results. I would learn something "useful" like coding and then follow it up with a ""useless"" degree like art history. I'd be the world record speed run holder for getting every degree possible.

But I can't afford college without going into massive debt, so instead I spent the last 5 years trying to figure out what I am passionate enough about to consider going into debt over, because unfortunately being passionate about everything is extremely expensive to pursue.

[the-coffee-story]

Coffee - The Plague Doctor's Revenge

Chapter 7 - The Cryptid has Parents

It was a peaceful frozen morning. The morning sun filled the cold air with golden light and glistened on rows of small old houses, garden fences and a few frozen puddles in the cracked asphalt.

The shiny black Bentley had parked on the side of the street and Doc rechecked the address on a piece of paper. His hands were shaking a little.

"Nervous?", Walther asked, zipping their parka up.

Doc chuckled. "Extraordinarily."

"Don't worry, you can do this." Walther gave him an encouraging nudge and he smirked.

"God, I wonder whether my twin is home."

Walther, who had just turned to the car window to longingly gaze at a cat that just seemed to beg to be petted rapidly spun around, eyes wide open. "You have a twin?? Oh my God does he look like you is he as tall as you is he as weird as you-"

"Calm down, calm down!" Doc laughed. "First of all it's a she, two, kind of, three, absolutely, four, yes, but in a completely different way."

"Jeeesus." Walther fell back into their seat. "Every day I learn something new about you, huh?"

Doc smirked and opened the car door. "Aye."

"Do you want me to stay in the car?", Walther asked.

He hesitated and chewed his lip. "Actually... you know, I think you should meet each other."

"Funky." Walther opened their car door and leaped out. "Good God, it's cold!"

They crossed the empty street to the small house, avoiding the bigger cracks in the asphalt. Doc nervously cracked his knuckles.

"I still don't get how you can do that so loudly," Walther mumbled.

He chuckled and opened the creaky iron gate. Together the pair walked down a short and frozen footpath to the wooden door.

"Ready?", Walther asked.

Doc took a deep breath. "Ready."

With that he reached out and rang the doorbell.

Moments passed and nobody opened. Doc started muttering under his breath: "Oh my God I shouldn't have done this they probably hate me God no-" until Walther elbowed him.

"It's gonna be okay," they whispered.

Suddenly the door opened with a horrible squeaking of the hinges. A small seventy-ish woman with lilac eyes and long grey hair appeared in the doorway, shivering in her lavender pullover.

"We don't buy anything," she said with a pleasant Scottish accent, not even bothering to look up at their faces.

"H-hi Mum," Doc stuttered. His voice gave up halfway through the first word, but it was enough.

Her gaze raced up to his battleworn pale face and her eyes widened. "Maurice???"

He smiled shyly. "Yeah, I know it's been a while and I'm sorry I-"

"MAURICE!", she cried and rushed forward to hug him.

A tall man with snow white curls appeared in the corridor, undoubtedly having heard his wife's yell. He saw Doc in the doorway, still hugging her, and froze.

"Son?"

Doc waved. "Hi Dad...ow, Mum watch out, you're breaking all my ribs...! Hi, sorry I disappeared for like fifteen years...!"

"Thomasin, don't kill him right after he got back," his father finally said and came over to join the hug. "Fancy moustache, son."

"Thank you."

Finally the old woman let go and turned to Walther. "Who might you be?", she asked, looking a little sceptical. It was the same look Doc usually had when talking to Thasfield.

Walther waved and smiled shyly. "Hi, I'm your new grandchild."

The woman's expression changed to surprise. "Oh-!"

"Congratulations, I'm your new grandfather. Balgair LaGrange." Doc's velvety voice was something he'd inherited from his father, who now held out his slender hand. Walther laughed and shook it. "Hi."

Doc's mum looked from Doc to Walther back to Doc, obviously trying to figure out some sort of similarity.

"Before you even ask, Welle's adopted," the Doctor finally explained, a smirk playing on his pale lips.

"Ahh." She nodded and finally a welcoming smile spread on her lips. "Welcome to the family, dear. I'm Thomasin."

"Thanks." Walther grinned.

Thomasin turned to Doc. "Where have you been? Fifteen years not a word, we thought you were dead!"

"Graytown, England," Walther said.

"I told you Thomasin, the English got him," Balgair mumbled and all four of them chuckled. "First the firstborn, what next? The sheep?"

"Balgair, we don't have sheep," Thomasin sighed.

"We have a garden gnome, that's almost the same!" He stared at Doc with a haunted look in his light blue eyes. "Will I lose my beloved garden gnome?"

Doc sighed. "No dad, I guarantee you, you won't."

"But how sure can you be?"

"A hundred percent."

"Why are we standing around anyway?", Thomasin asked. "Come on, join us for breakfast!"

***

"Eugenia happened to move to Graytown," Doc explained five minutes later while trying stop his mother from giving him a third plate. "Mum, I swear, I'm not hungry anymore!"

"Son, I can see your ribs from here, you will eat."

"But Mum-!"

Walther giggled. "Oh, how the tables have turned."

"Aye, reasonable." Balgair sighed. "She hasn't been the same since the fire. I guess the girl needed a fresh start."

"That's what I wanted to ask you about." Doc looked up from his plate. "What... what exactly happened?"

"Oh dear." Thomasin sat down and ran a hand through her long grey hair. "What do you expect to hear? A candle probably fell over while Geannie was working. Wilhelm tried to put it out and his sleeve most likely caught fire. Geannie smelled the smoke and heard his screams. She rushed to the boy's bedroom, grabbed him and ran. The kitchen was on fire, there was no chance of saving the husband. By the time the firefighters managed to put the fire out they couldn't even find the body."

Doc scrunched his nose in surprise. "It wasn't found?"

Thomasin shook her head. "Nothing."

He frowned. "Huh. That's odd."

Balgair shrugged his shoulders. "It happens. Why, what are you implying?"

"Oh, nothing." Doc waved it off. "I was just thinking of something that happened to one of my co-workers."

"Oh, what are you working as anyway?", Thomasin asked. "Still a surgeo-"

Doc quickly shook his head and pulled his sleeves down. "No!"

"Private investigator." Walther grinned.

Balgair raised his bushy eyebrows. "Sherlock Holmes style?"

"We work in a team," Doc explained. "Constellations change often, but the basis mostly remains the same."

"Yeah, last month one of us died and now we have this fu-"

"Language," Doc interrupted Walther.

"Oh, look at him, pretending to be a good role model." Balgair laughed. He leaned over to Walther. "Trust me, in this household you can swear however the fuck you want."

"Language, Balgair!", Thomasin pointed out.

".....as long as your grandmother doesn't hear you."

"I heard that."

"..... also her hearing is extraordinarily good."

"How's Tina?", Doc suddenly asked before his parents could further embarrass him.

"Why don't you ask her yourself?" Thomasin smiled.

His eyes widened. "She still lives in our apartment?"

"Hasn't left. She's been waiting for your return for the past fifteen years."

[ineedrelationshipadvice]

so my gf and i recently have been getting more sexual. we were texting and things got pretty heated. i was sure i wanted it but i just feel weird now. i don't want to have sex yet, but i was fine with that conversation up until it ended. i had a similar issue with my ex, where i'd be fine at the time but i'd panic once we stopped. i thought it was because it was a casual relationship, but i'm serious abt my gf and it's still happening. i think it's my anxiety, but i just don't know what to do.

Definitely sounds like anxiety. And sadly, you're going to have to take my advice here with a grain of salt, because I do not share these circumstances in anxiety, so I'm definitely no authority on the matter.

That being said, it definitely seems like you're happy and consenting to everything that's going on, but you really just have this strong, emotional/physical reaction to the act ending. So on the bright side, at least you're not doing things you actively regret, or at very least, you're enjoying them in the moment. Things would be much more tricky and complicated if that weren't the case.

What should you do? I think the best option is to explain these thoughts you're having to your partner. Let them know that you're having really strong anxiety to your sexual relations. Let them know you like it, and you're having a good time, but you kinda freak out when you guys end the event. Why would you share this with her? The reason is in case you act differently in any way. Let her know this is just your reaction to things, that you don't know why it's happening, but it's just something that you're doing and you kinda have to deal with it on you end. At very least, hopefully she'll be more comforting to you, and not get confused or weirded out if you seem to be acting hurt or awkward after you guys get all sexy and stuff; she likely has noticed already, but having a solid, grounded explanation from you on why you're acting that way will likely waylay lots of concerns on her end.

From there, your best bet is therapy. The big point when people need to consider reaching out to therapists or mental health professionals are when your brain is doin' all that funky shit, and when that funky shit is actively upsetting or impeding what is otherwise normal, healthy activity with you and the relationships around you. Hey, you qualify! Although it's fine to panic about sex sometimes, because sex can be very complicated, we now have a pattern of behaviour to track between your last casual relationship, and your contemporary serious relationship. If you aren't sure what's going on, and there isn't an obvious fix for it that you can diagnose beyond talking to your partner and trying to get advice from them, then a mental health professional is going to be your best bet to help yourself get over this issue.

Okay, but how do we deal with this NOW?

One thing you can try to do is keep an anxiety journal. This is the way it works. Any time your anxious - not just about this issue, any anxiety, or anxious thoughts, or intrusive thoughts, doesn't matter - write it down in a journal. Write down the thoughts you're having, write down the emotions you're feeling, and just get all those feelings in your head OUT of your head, ideally on a physical piece of paper in a IRL journal, not just on your phone. Spill all your emotions out, and then CLOSE IT UP. Shut the journal and forget about it. Tell yourself, "Okay, I'm panicking. I wrote down all my feelings there. When I'm not panicking, I will worry about these feelings then." And legit go do ANYTHING else to take your mind off of the feelings.

What's the point of this? Firstly, engaging your anxious and intrusive thoughts is a good way to fight them. Anxious thoughts are like weeds: if you let them grow, they take over the entire yard, to the point where it damages all the grass around them. If you cut a weed, it just grows back. You have to rip those suckers out by the roots. But if you don't know what the root problems are for anxious thoughts, you can't very well deal with them. However, I can guarantee that you are ACTIVELY ENGAGING with the roots of your anxious thoughts whenever you start getting anxious and panicking. So DO IT. Engage with those thoughts, write that shit down on paper, and then do any self-care you normally do to feel better. Even if you can't pull these weeds out by yourself, at least you'll know exactly where the weeds are, and where their roots are, so you can deal with them later.

Secondly, this is good data. The other thing anxiety hates is being understood. Anxiety thrives off of raw emotion; it's like a force of energy in your body, except it's loose and out of control. It actively tries to syphon away your brain's power by exploiting your most emotional moments, and it does that by making you MORE EMOTIONAL. It creates this feedback loop of:

1) Everything is normal2) Event occurs3) THIS IS NOT NORMAL PANIC MODE ENGAGE4) Panic5) Anxiety makes you panic more. 6) Panic more5) Anxiety makes you panic more.

It'll happily continue doing that until you drive yourself bonkers. So the key to solving that negative feedback loop is by trying to figure out both the triggers for the anxiety, and also the reactions to the anxiety. For instance, one thing that triggers my anxiety is not knowing something. If you actively keep a secret from me, my brain goes into overdrive, because it assumes the secret is about me, and makes me go into a spiral of doubt for the person who is keeping a secret around me, even if the secret has nothing to do with me. Your trigger is likely different, so you need to learn what that trigger is.

Then, try to notice when that trigger is being activated. What starts you down the spiral of anxious thoughts? For me in the previous example, it's when someone deliberately hides a thing from me. "Here's this thing. I can't tell you the thing. It's secret." That's when I can start saying, IT'S OKAY TO NOT KNOW, IT'S NOT IMPORTANT, RELAX, BREATHE. I can start my self-care right when the anxiety begins, as opposed to after it's gone on for awhile. The same applies for you. Once you learn your triggers, and learn how your brain works when it's experiencing anxiety, you can better address those needs immediately, rather than later, which can shorten how long you experience the bout of anxiety, and also sometimes lessen the severity.

That being said, all this is self-care. If you really need help with all this, seek out that therapist immediately! Don't wait, check out all the resources that may or may not be available to you to help you deal with issues like this.