#he's also so powerful he can often afford to throw caution to the wind more often than most people he meets. I'd start thinking I was God

[everymadara]

Chapter 623

[goodproofingwater]

A Gentleman | Noah Centineo x Reader

Word count: 2417 Warnings: NSFW content, mentions of an abusive relationship Requested by: @cxxl-gall​ (literally almost a year ago i am so sorry)

The memories of the man before swim in your mind as you wait in line for your morning cappuccino, the strong smell of arabica wafting through months of what you once thought was normality until you started talking to your friends. Words which had been designed to bow you into submission had been dressed in such pretty packaging that you hadn’t even noticed what they were, and you were thankful for having such a supportive group around you to help you remove yourself from the situation.

It was around three weeks after everything had died down that you started filming for your new movie, and although you had originally thought it best that you pass on the role due to the nature of the film being so based on relationships and your horrible experience, your friends were once again there to push you. You had been trying for ages to break into something more than the commercials that you had been stuck with, and you weren’t about to let your ex ruin this for you. He had already done enough.

The first day was apprehensive, scary and exciting, and for the first time in ages, you were thinking about something other than your past. And so you leaned into it, allowed yourself to become obsessed with your craft once more, spent days immersing yourself into your character, the nights re-reading lines and researching aspects of your characters' interests that you would never have done before. Before long, you felt like you knew your character better than you knew yourself, and you felt like you were starting to heal.

And then you met him.

Noah was every inch as handsome as the images you had seen, and every bit as charming as the interviews would have you believe, and although the scenes that you had with him were predictably romantic, his kindness made them easier to swallow.

Even with your research and the depth that you went into to ensure that your character was as multi-faceted as possible (while also distracting yourself) the scenes toward the end of the script in which you were fully in a relationship with Noah’s character were much harder to adapt to.

By the time you had started reading the script aloud in your trailer to prepare for the scenes that would be filmed the following week, it had been a month and a half since the break-up, and although you were much more comfortable with the idea, actually being so close, acting out things which had become so tainted… it was a whole other story.

“I’ve never met anyone like you before.. I can’t believe you’re even real..” You read to the empty trailer, trying to enforce love and passion into your voice but you could feel it shaking, could feel the goosebumps erupting on your skin at the thought of someone touching you, the thought of the words that were so similar o the ones which had fallen unscripted from your lips months ago and how they had been used to trap you.

You were so engrossed in trying to focus that you didn’t hear the knock on the door, and you barely heard the door open. It was only when his calloused fingers grazed your bicep that you spun, so fast that you had to steady yourself against him, wide eyes expecting pain either physical or otherwise.

“Woah.. are you alright?” Concern washed through his features, the mask that he used so often while he was acting stripped away completely to reveal how much he genuinely cared about your wellbeing, and it was then that you realised that you couldn’t remember the last time a man looked at you this way. Each time your ex had looked at you it had been with disgust, with expectation of something that he hadn’t even told you he wanted, and even after nights where you had thought that you had given him everything he wanted there was nothing but cold emptiness behind icy blue orbs.

This was different.

Even though you hadn’t known him long, the warmth of his expression made you feel more validated than any time your ex had attempted to understand your feelings.

“I--” You started before clearing your throat and forcing a smile on your face which didn’t quite fit there, “Sorry I was just really into the scene.”

Curls dropped as he looked down at your shaking hands, and he cupped them in his own, shaking his head. He looked like he wanted to say something, to ask why you were so hurt and what had cause you to have such a reaction to someone grazing your arm, but instead he continued with your charade.

“Well lets practice together. It’s better that we build up our familiarity as much as we can right?” He smiled, and it was a kindness that no one had ever afforded you. Even when your friends had been helping you through hell, none of them had given a thought to how you wanted to deal with it, only how they thought was best. Focussing on work and powering through was perfect, and you knew you would have to find a way to than Noah without letting him know just how much he had helped.

You practised over and over, and it wasn’t long before you were even more comfortable with him. All thought of who he was and the level of this for your career left your mind, he was just your friend who was helping you get through something horrible by immersing you in something that you loved doing, and even improving your talent by teaching you different techniques.

By the time the scene came around you were no longer nervous, you were excited to do this on camera, the words becoming commonplace and any connotations that you had been worried about completely gone.

And so, you stood in the middle of the set which was supposed to be his room, his hands on your waist as you swayed softly to a song that you knew would be replaced in the final cut, words falling with ease, taking on an entirely new meaning now that he was looking at you as his character rather than you off-camera.

“I- I can’t believe you’re real..” You spoke, your bottom lip quivering, his eyes darting down to catch the sight before he spoke

“I’m not special..” He started, looking directly into your eyes and you felt like he was talking directly to your soul, “You just deserve the world” and although that was where his lines ended, he continued, “and I can’t believe that anyone ever made you feel any other way. You’re incredible, perfect really, and I’m so lucky that I get to be here with you..”

He swallowed thickly as you scanned his expression, unable to tell if the improvisation came from his characters' desire for yours or because of how close you had gotten over the last couple of weeks.

“I’m the lucky one... You’re perfect..” You whispered, leaning in and running your nose along with his and biting your lip before the director called cut.

There was a moment where you stayed still, where you both allowed the magic to continue before you were forced to pretend that the scene was normal.

“Excellent!” The director spoke, “Fantastic take guys, give us a few minutes and we’ll move on to the next scene in this room.”

You could feel Noah’s eyes on you for a moment, and you looked over at him with a small smile, “Want to grab a cup of coffee before we go ahead with the next scene?” you suggested, and he nodded, licking his lips and throwing caution to the wind.

His fingers slipped softly into your own, and while you were scared of being so close to another man you felt safe with him, felt like no matter what happened he could look after you, even if it was just for the duration of filming this movie.

--

It was three weeks later that he took you for a drink and you told him everything. Something about him made you feel more comfortable than you had ever been with anyone, so open and honest about everything that had happened and how it had made you feel. He had wasted no time in telling you how much of a prick your ex was, and he bought another bottle of wine for you to share over some food.

Light glinted off of the rim of his wine glass as he spoke so passionately about his life and his career, and you could tell then that there was no inch of this man who even had the capacity to hurt you. He was kind, loving and wonderful, and although even three weeks on you were still not sure if his improvisation was him getting caught up in his characters feelings or him sharing his own, it didn’t stop you taking a leap as he walked you to the door of the hotel room the production crew had put you up in for the entirety of filming.

“Probably shouldn’t have drunk so much wine with us having to get up at 6am tomorrow huh?” You grinned, and he laughed as he watched you slip the key into the door of your hotel room and turn to face him,

“Ahh but this is the best lesson of all,” He grinned, licking his lips in such a way that you had to focus on his words to stop your mind from betraying itself, “work-life balance.” His wink made your knees weak, and you licked your own lips before throwing caution to the wind,

“If that’s the case then I’m not sure you’ve taught me that lesson all too well… perhaps.. Perhaps you could join me for a nightcap on my balcony?” You offered, and his eyes immediately darkened, his body moving from where it had been leaning against the opposite wall toward you and it took everything in you to push the door open rather than let him push you against it.

Pouring glasses of vodka and cranberry, you did everything you could to not read his hand ghosting along your waist, his long fingers stilling your own hands as his lips moved slowly along your shoulder.

“Tell me if this is too much” He whispered, “I don’t want to do anything which makes you uncomfortable.”

You thought that your guide would be straight up, that you would be pushing him away, but instead, it melted into him, your head resting back against his shoulder as he kissed your neck and undid the buttons of your shirt from behind.

“I want to show you how incredible you are, I want to worship every inch of you, I want you to feel how worthy of love you are.” The words could have fallen straight from his characters lips, and you would have stopped him for fear of him feeding you lines if you couldn’t feel him hardening beneath you, if he hadn’t been so consistently wonderful and you hadn’t felt so instantly trusting of him, something which had been difficult even during your relationship with your ex.

Instead of answering you turned to face him, kissing him softly, running your nose gently along his as you undid the buttons on his own shirt, your breath bated as you were desperate to feel a man again after so long, and a man who you knew you could trust.

“I bet you say that to all the girls” You tried, your insecurities falling from your lips in the form of a joke and he laughed, shaking his head. He pulled back from you, holding both sides of your face to ensure you were listening and you could understand how genuine he was being

“I think you’re amazing, and you haven’t been treated the way you should be. And.. don’t feel like you have to, but I would really like to show you how you deserve to be treated. How someone who likes you, who respects you, someone.. Someone who thinks you’re incredible and funny and interesting and fucking beautiful will treat you.”

You don’t even had the words to accept and so you close the gap between you, kissing him in a way that you had never imagined you would kiss again. Full of passion. Full of lust. Full of trust.

Strong hands wrapped around each of your thighs as he picked you up, lips never parting, and placed you softly on the bed. Clothes peeled off of shaking bodies, lips and tongues dancing together in lust and desperation until you lay bare for each other, one arm holding him up as your legs wrapped around him and he sank deep into you.

“Fucking hell..” He whispered against your lips as you gasped at the size of him, tight from months of nothing but being intimate with your own fingers.

He moved slowly at first, holding you tight against him. When his lips were not desperately pressed against your own he was looking into your eyes, sweet nothings rolling off of his tongue as he sped up until the sound of slapping filled the room and you were writhing in pleasure.

“I want you to cum for me baby,” He whispered, kissing softly up your neck as your head fell back at the sheer pleasure which washed through you, and it wasn’t long before you gave in to his request and he came with you, leaving you both panting from an incredible mutual orgasm.

Minutes passed in silence as you came down from your high, and you couldn’t keep the smile off of your face even as he pulled out and lay next to you, pulling you into him.

“So..” You spoke first, tension palatable in the air, “What now?”

His soft laughter filled the room before he placed a soft kiss on your forehead and he spoke, “Well I would like to take you for a proper dinner sometime this week if that’s alright with you? I meant what I said about you deserving to be treated like a princess.”

“You didn’t say princess…” You grinned and he mirrored your smile, nodding and he’s like, “well whatever you want to call it, I’d like for this not to be a one-time thing... If that’s okay?”

You answered by kissing him deeply and nodding, finding comfort that you had never expected in just his presence.

[addictedtostorytelling]

Hello ! I just saw your reblog of a daredevil gif and, do you have an head canon on wether or not Matt and Karen would have been back together and how , if the show had been renewed ? Thx !

hey, anon!

i will admit that few things in television baffle me as much as the way the defendersverse powers that be approach romantic pairings.

don’t get me wrong: i generally like the love stories told in this fictional universe. 

i just also don’t know exactly what to make of them.

usually, even without possessing any foreknowledge as to how each individual ship will pan out, i can still be relatively certain as to whether or not a given story world “believes in great loves.” 

but with the defendersverse, i’m not quite sure. 

that so, my short answer here is: i don’t know whether or not karedevil would have gotten back together, had daredevil been renewed. on the one hand, i feel like they were kind of set up to be endgame from the beginning. but on the other hand, i feel like as the wider defendersverse developed, there were also other viable options introduced for the both of them. 

ultimately, i think it would have come down to how the powers that be conceived of the story universe overall—and whether they were interested in telling structured, trope-compliant love stories or not.

more discussion if you click the “keep reading.”

___________ 

a big part of my uncertainty regarding how the defendersverse treats romances stems from the fact that its shows end mid-story, skewing my perspective of what’s there. 

none of the shows has more than three seasons to their names, and all were cancelled abruptly, without really affording the writers a chance to implement final conclusions. they all suffer for having loose strings, never to be tied.

consequently, it’s hard to tell which broken-up ships of the defendersverse were actually broken-up for good and which ones were just at a midgame impasse and might have later reconciled, had they only been given more time and narrative space in which to do so. 

however, another obstacle to making this determination is not in the circumstances but in the storytelling itself, as the defendersverse powers that be tended to be fairly indiscriminate in how they used romantic devices surrounding their ships, which means that a lot of the usual “midgame” vs. “endgame” signposts in this story world are blurred. 

in the first seasons of both dd and jj, the defendersverse powers create deep and compelling romantic relationships for their respective main characters, playing to all kinds of familiar “this relationship has long-term significance” tropes.

you want the jaded female superhero who’s given up on both love and the world, who then meets a guy who’s both so good and so good for her that she has to reevaluate her priorities? check.  

you want the male superhero who rescues the girl-next-door in body, only to have her rescue him in soul? check again.

there’s all sorts of smiles, talk of “before you, i never allowed myself to think about this kind of stuff,” heartfelt sacrifices, expressed vulnerabilities, etc., etc., etc.

in a story world that “believed in great loves,” no one who watched these seasons could be faulted for thinking that jessica jones would be endgame with luke cage and that matt murdock would be endgame with karen page.

the question, however, is, “is the defendersverse actually a story world that believes in great loves?”

in my mind, the evidence is ambiguous.

at most, the defendersverse powers only allow these relationships to progress for one or two seasons before dismantling them—but whether they mean to dismantle them temporarily or permanently is difficult to say.

the characters lead such complicated, dangerous, and ethically fraught existences that whatever happiness they experience in love is generally and perhaps unavoidably short-lived. 

as secret identities are revealed, moral stances compromised, trauma experienced and assessed, and heroic stakes raised, their relationships inevitably crumble under the pressure.

this crumbling could perhaps speak to this fictional universe being one in which all loves come with an expiration date printed on them, with none being given special narrative priority over any of the others.

however, the crumbling could also be a story component.

maybe the writers planned these breakups, knowing full-well they were temporary and that eventually the couples would get back together in the long term. maybe they’re just a midgame detour en route to the final endgame.

so cut to the next leg in defendersverse development, when tptb reshuffle the pairings between their main properties, sending character a from show 1 to be with character b from show 2. the process then continues and multiplies as more properties are added to the ‘verse, with characters spinning off into new shows and coupling in new and increasingly intricate permutations with one another.

of course, the truly interesting thing is that once these reshufflings take place, the new relationships created often prove just as deep and compelling as the relationships which preceded them and are marked by just as many typical endgame signposts.

matt murdock is willing to die for elektra and very nearly does so.

karen page repeatedly throws caution to the wind to choose frank castle over public opinion, common sense, and even her own well-being.

there are indicators to suggest that these new pairings could be endgame, just as there were with the ones before them. there’s deep connection. there’s ride-or-die stuff. there’s cuteness. there’s even potentially destiny. 

so, as a trope-savvy fan, one is left thinking, “well, okay, if the first pairing wasn’t endgame, then maybe the second one will be,” but then by the next season, the second pairing has often been dismantled much in the same way that the first one was previously.

a salient example here would be claire temple’s various relationships: in s1 of dd, her involvement with matt murdock ends because his vigilantism and masochism drives a wedge between them. after their falling out, she eventually starts dating luke cage. while she and luke are devoted to each other through much of lc s1 and the defenders miniseries, their relationship crumbles at the end of lc s2, when luke’s attitude toward “justice” prompts claire to ask him for “a break.” her second relationship within the defendersverse thus ends much in the same way that her first one did: with claire stepping back from her man because she finds his intense approach to heroism unhealthy.  

by the point of cancellation, the net effect is that because all of these relationships have in some ways been treated as “sacred,” none of them feels sacred overall, or at least not definitively. 

i can’t really look at them and say, “karedevil is the endgame; mattlektra is the midgame”—and especially not when elektra keeps miraculously resurrecting after she’s killed—because both ships have been set up in ways which suggest lasting significance.

i also can’t look to the comics as a cheat sheet, because while most of the relationships depicted in the defendersverse do have some basis in comic lore, the shows themselves don’t strictly adhere to that canon—and, in some cases, actively go against it.

in the new avengers comics, jessica jones and luke cage get married and have a daughter, but in the defendersverse, their relationship is pretty thoroughly trashed in the aftermath of jj s1.

still, where things get truly complicated is in the way that these various relationships interact with one another within the wider defendersverse.

if luke cage is jessica jones’s great love, but he is also claire temple’s great love, then someone is bound to lose out, right? and since the audience should in theory be sympathetic to all three characters, who are we supposed to be rooting for? likewise, if matt murdock ends up with karen page, then she can’t be with frank castle, you know? so does that mean matt has to be with elektra? but what if elektra dies (and for once stays dead)? then what?

the writers are playing “musical chairs” with their ships, but, as per the game, it would seem that someone is going to be left standing at the end.

so.

all of this discussion is a very long way for me to say that i genuinely have no idea what the defendersverse powers intended for romantic karedevil.

they are initially set up using many of the same tropes and storytelling techniques that would be used for an endgame pairing—but that framing only matters if the defendersverse is one where “endgame” is actually a legitimate thing that the writers are actively working toward.

it could be that matt and karen were meant to be a slow burn endgame, but the writers got cut-off midway through telling their story, before they could be romantically reconciled after their midgame falling out.

however, it could also be that, whether they were initially interested in creating a karedevil endgame or not, by s3 of dd, the writers had moved on from the possibility of romantic karedevil altogether, being more enticed to pair karen off with frank due to deborah ann woll’s unexpectedly good chemistry with jon bernthal.

of course, maybe endgame karedevil was never even on the table at all, either because it was always meant to be a midgame ship OR because this isn’t a fictional universe that is geared toward endgames, period.

“endgame” is a concept somewhat antithetical to how comic books work, as there’s always going to be another iteration and another series and another run, and the details will change, depending on who’s doing the writing and which universe the story takes place in; maybe the defendersverse was working on a similar model, where while matt murdock has history with many women, including claire temple, karen page, and elektra, he’ll never be tied one woman forever; his love life will always be a revolving door, depending on what suits the purposes of the story.

or maybe nothing had been decided yet, one way or another.

maybe the powers were more writing from season to season, keeping their options open, seeing what was available to them.

after all, there were a lot of moving parts in play across the wider ‘verse. 

who’s to say what might have happened had some of the defenders shows been cancelled but not others? who’s to say what might have happened due to the changing availability of various actors?

prior to the cancellations, rosario dawson had decided to step down from playing claire, a decision which would have undoubtedly sent ripples across the entire defendersverse, romance-wise.

up until the point when netflix pulled the plug, all sorts of possibilities were still open. there were still so many ways the writers could have chosen to swing things.

as for my personal headcanon (regardless of writer intention or what might have been), i should preface my thoughts by saying that while i enjoy karedevil, they’re not my number #1 preferred ship for either matt or karen, so i would have been perfectly happy with them as a midgame romantic ship that eventually reverted back to a platonic baseline, as per the end of dd s3.

that said, i can definitely see a road that leads to them getting together in the end.

my thoughts are these:

by the end of dd s3, matt and karen are back to being friends again after having been “fallen out” for a long time. since s2, karen has known matt’s secret identity, but now matt likewise knows about karen’s past, meaning that, in a way, the playing field is level between them.

still, their relationship is somewhat fragile. 

for the first time in their history, they’ve been honest with each other, and now neither one of them can “hide” in the ways that they used to. they’re both highly aware of this new vulnerability, and neither one of them wants to screw things up. they’re still sussing out what it will mean for them to work together again.

they don’t want to leave foggy caught in the middle of things like before.

so with that in mind, i see their romantic reconciliation as a slow burn process.

of course, they’ve always had a palpable connection, and that connection would be there from the start, even when they were working hard at “just being friends.” 

gradually, that connection would grow stronger and more impossible to ignore. 

there would be moments when they were working late nights together (after foggy had gone home to marci) when they’d stumble on a lead in their case and start talking excitedly, finishing each other’s thoughts, drawing closer and closer together, until suddenly they realized that there was only an inch of space between their faces and had to pull back, awkward and businesslike once more.

there’d be times when their clients would mistake them for a couple, and they’d laugh and try to brush it off but both be blushing too much to truly convince anyone that they were unaffected by the suggestion.

eventually, they’d start testing the waters—matt purposefully saying flirtatious things, karen touching matt more than she had reason to.

at some point, they’d have to broach the subject.

maybe matt would have taken to walking karen home after work, and one night, after a lot of laughter and arm-holding, she’d stop on the top stair and turn back to him and say, in that breathless, incisive way of hers, “i know you can hear how fast my heart is beating. is yours beating fast, too?” 

but, of course, since their relationship doesn’t exist in a vacuum, matt would probably be on the trail of bullseye or some other villain by this point, and, inevitably, these other story factors would come into play. 

i don’t know exactly how everything would go down, but my sense as a storyteller is that something would have to impede karedevil’s relationship; the path to reconciliation would, by necessity, have to be a long and wending one for them.

maybe for whatever reason they’d decide not to risk their friendship by pursuing a romance.

or maybe they would pursue a romance, only to have that relationship endangered by whatever villain they’re up against OR to have some of their past interpersonal issues resurface.

(for example, maybe as matt gets deeper and deeper into whatever case he’s working, he starts to emotionally shut karen out again, or maybe karen starts to distrust matt because he’s being evasive; etc.)

hell, maybe elektra turns up in hell’s kitchen, flipping their dynamic on its head.

after all, elektra’s body was never found after the destruction of midland circle, and karen has never gotten to talk to matt about finding elektra in his bed in s2; the potential for angst would be huge.

in any case, i imagine that things would deteriorate for a while—maybe to the point where, if they were already together, karedevil might once again break up.

but, ultimately, something would happen that would remind them of the depth of their feelings for each other—one of them would be hurt or captured or undergo another near-death experience; matt might end up fighting elektra to save karen; or karen might do something to help matt, even though they’d been on shaky ground before.

i don’t think karen would ever make matt give daredevil up completely—because she understands his thirst for justice and even his recklessness, to some degree, and she doesn’t begrudge him those parts of himself—but i think that in the end, matt would have to change; he’d have to become less self-loathing and not compartmentalize his feelings to the extent he always had before. he’d have to start to care more about his own life and well-being than he had in the past so that karen didn’t have to worry about him committing passive suicide via superherodom.

dying for a cause is one thing; dying just because you can and because you don’t value your own life enough to take self preserving actions is another.

karen would also have to learn to trust that matt and not to hide things from him. she’d have to learn to be truly emotionally intimate with him, which would be difficult for her at first, considering that she’s spent her whole adult life holding back important parts of her person.

(one of the interesting things about karedevil is that even though they have this deep, implicit understanding of each other, for most of their relationship, they’ve not really known each other, as both of them have been hiding significant secrets.)

i can see an endgame for them where matt is daredevil with karen’s help and blessing, and she provides him grounding and solace, while he proves to her that, despite her prior experiences, not everyone in her life is going to reject her and send her away; he knows her, and he knows her past, and he’s staying for as long as she wants him.

of course, in all fairness, i can also see many endings for these characters that don’t involve them being in a romantic relationship with each other; this is just one of the possibilities.

anyway,sorry i can’t give a more definitive answer, anon! thanks for the question.

[northamptoncouplestherapy]

In every waking millisecond, we sit on the cusp of delight and apprehension

In our daily lives, we often do not know when a moment morphs from creation to cessation. Beginnings command our attention, proclaiming themselves with confetti and sparks: babies are born, we fall in love and build houses. While dancing in our kitchen, we throw caution to the wind, getting drunk on dreams and hope. Equally apparent are finalities, though they declare themselves more somberly: loved ones die, relationships end, and our children inevitably grow up.

In between memorable instances is the stuff of life — moments that make memories, which in turn compost into time and pave the way for the new. It’s in the realm of folding laundry, checking texts, and sitting in traffic that we dwell — not knowing in time, what each interaction and minuscule detail will stand out as, or if it will stand out at all.

I remember one autumn, walking in a meadow with my aging father. He was struggling with worsening heart failure, and his grey eyes and softened coloring seemed to coalesce into the landscape that surrounded us. This man, whose back I rode in tidal pools — who took me bushwhacking, owling and fishing for trout — could no longer cross a stream without taking my hand. In that moment, unbeknownst to me, slept the seeds of an ending, and I now realize that this was to be the last time we’d walk on wild ground together.

Often, only in hindsight do we comprehend that we have crossed such thresholds: moments when endings occur, and we are nescient. Though if we are lucky, we can still recall the last kiss or time we perched our child (now too heavy) on our hip. But, more likely, we will not remember these junctures. How could we? Nescience, defined as the absence of knowing, is more accurately associated with innocence, and less so with ignorance.

That we don’t recognize most endings when they happen is simultaneously tragic, merciful, and perhaps most poignant, profoundly human.

Is there a realm in between? Where the unconscious and the conscious intermingle — affording us daily opportunities to wake to our child’s musings, our mundane chores, and the silenced stirrings of our heart?

Social scientist and bestselling author Brené Brown speaks to foreboding joy (FBJ): windows of beauty and awe so painfully tender and lovely that in the space of a millisecond, we unconsciously flash to terror and shut them down. It seems our minds are prone to transposing the ghosts of catastrophe onto our sleeping children, most intimate loves, and occasions of good fortune.

FBJ, an instinctual recoiling from delight, is one of the most insidious defenses against vulnerability and is inherently embedded in being mortal. When (or if) we have a history of trauma, we may live for years unknowingly haunted by it, and, if left unchecked, it has the potential to shut down love and connection, two of the bedrocks of a wholehearted life.

Recently, while writing the article: John Gottman and Brene Brown on Running Headlong Into Heartbreak, a thought occurred to me that was so heartrending and breathtaking, it warranted an essay of its own:

Foreboding joy is Negative Sentiment Override to life.

Negative Sentiment Override (NSO), a term coined by John Gottman, speaks to the tendency toward viewing our partner and the history of our relationship through a darkened lens. It is a symptom as much as a state. Characterized by a loss of hope, our memories, once imbued with fondness, get recast in our mind’s eye and become concealed by gloom.

NSO is, in essence, a cumulative byproduct of missed opportunities for connection: sliding door moments, where we turn away (and against) junctures that necessitated our care and presence — we neglect to ask about the biopsy, forget to say we’ll be late, or dismiss the melancholy expression on our partner’s face — again and again.

What if every moment in life is a sliding door moment, and in turn, gifts us with opportunities to love or wither?

A child in utero will move towards its mother’s voice as surely as any day lily seeks out the sun. An infant’s heartbeat will synchronize to the rhythm of its primary caregiver by ticking in solidarity to the universal cadence of life: the crickets chirping, raindrops pattering and the rocking of the tide. We come into this world, turning toward — to love and to be loved. It is our birthright.

But what happens if, from the very beginning, life slaps us down and turns us away, meeting us with desynchronization or silence? If instead of a soft caress or a friendly smile, we encounter neglect, abuse, rejection, or ridicule by those we are wired to trust? What happens if we experience such assaults globally, as a result of factors beyond our control, such as our race, ethnicity, class, gender, or sexual orientation? The implications are staggering.

With each loss, we experience a growing intolerance to risk, and in turn, a subconscious aversion to joy. According to Brown, trauma’s greatest casualty is vulnerability. When we’re no longer able to discern what is safe, good, and life-giving, our compass is uncalibrated. So (understandably), we lose trust in life, dress-rehearse tragedy, and recoil or come out swinging.

Turning away from love is the hallmark of anguish. Our psyches and souls start to hurt when a growing sense of urgency complicates the ageless crucibles of mortality and transience. Have we reached a pinnacle where the cumulative legacy of humanity: intergenerational trauma, patriarchy, racism, genocide and negligent stewarding of our planet is compelling even the sanest among us to dive-bomb into the abyss by swallowing fistfuls of blue pills and disowning our vulnerability in turn?

In every waking millisecond, we sit on the cusp of delight and apprehension, informed by an infinite number of variables. What FBJ and NSO share in common, is a turning away from the potential of love, life and vulnerability — sometimes knowingly and sometimes not. In the belly of the whale lies loss and our relationship to it.

Over the summer, a momma fox and her two gangly adolescents took out every backyard chicken within five miles of our rural home. My daughter and I were standing at the door of a white transport van, in a Cumberland Farms parking lot, when the universe delivered a jumping bean of a rescue puppy into our arms and promptly scooped up seven chickens in exchange. We came home to silence and feathers.

A week later we brought home four new pullets, including a sweet black Australorp that honked instead of clucked. My daughter named her Midnight. We locked them safely away in the run. Several days later, while feeding the hens, I turned to the buzzing of flies and saw the starless shape of Midnight slumped lifeless on the stoop. Despite our diligence, we had lost another bird unexplainably, and I struggled with how to tell my child.

We cannot escape certain realities in life. The fox lives in the hen. What are we to do?

The Imperative to Delight

If joy is a portal to terror, it is simultaneously a gateway to delight — each shimmering moment invites us to embrace the paradox of our mortality. We awaken to myriad experiences: what is bitter may become sweet, what is sorrowful may become luminous. Delight, at its best, is the embodiment of gratitude, and I would argue that we are obliged to revel while together we weep — that in acknowledging we are ephemeral, there lies the potential for a sorely needed tenderness amongst humanity.

As poet Ross Gay so beautifully ponders in his essay: Joy Is Such a Human Madness, “What if we joined our sorrows — what if that is joy?” Such communing requires a willingness, courage, and most importantly, vulnerability. But, we can (and must) turn towards sorrow as surely as we turn towards delight — they are sisters and to embody both is grace at its finest.

Gay also takes it a step further, discerning between pleasure and delight. With pleasure being readily accessible and playing to our senses. Sitting with my ten-year-old over breakfast, sharing steamy black vanilla tea and a platter of smokey bacon and maple-cream frosted toast is a pleasure. It’s the first day of fifth grade. Looking at her face, her eyes the same river blue-green they were as a baby; the angle of her nose, familiar — yet not. Time bends, and I swell with tears and laughter — delight.

Sitting at the threshold of joy is both terrifying and magnificent. Angst is an understandable outgrowth. But when we reside here chronically and unknowingly, it is likely due to a multitude of injuries incurred over time. Trauma has crawled into our beds and slipped a worm inside our ear; it burrows deeply into our hearts and whispers that we are not lovable — the reclaiming of delight, and our worthiness of it, is therefore not a luxury but an imperative.

The Capacity for Awe

We must find a portkey — that magical touch-down object Harry Potter reaches for when circumstances necessitate that he transport himself from here to there — a portal to awe that is readily accessible and simultaneously grand: the first two verses of Cohen’s Hallelujah, a glint of light, a lush peony. Each of these can be gateways to joy because awe is non-discriminate.

By nurturing our capacity for wonderment, we nurture fondness and admiration for life. It’s a powerful antidote to negativism and hopelessness, flies smack in the face of nihilism, and is a courageous stance in response to hurt and fear. Furthermore, since awe does not require a shared theology, it is transcendent and is a balm that treats all wounds in a world where there are many.

As a couples therapist, I’ve witnessed my share of marriages ending. Having sat with partners whose love is metamorphosing or dying, I’ve observed the terror on people’s faces, heard the shouting and seen the tears that come from the inevitability of change. I’ve been struck by the palpable beauty and tenderness that can arise in the seemingly darkest of moments — a wife reaching for her husband’s hand while simultaneously weeping and saying goodbye.

Finding beauty and risking vulnerability through joy, is a monumental feat when in NSO to life. What awe is fantastically good at is taking that which rattles us, and instead calms, dazzles or assures us, thus morphing the full catastrophe of living into shimmering stardust. Even amidst suffering, life affords us ample opportunities to pause and take in the beauty, and when we can let our perspectives soften, things like our time-worn hands or the death of a relationship offer up potential in cultivating a gentleness.

I spent years eluding heartache, and in turn, the totality of joy. Despite my proclivity for sad memoirs and murder ballads, I did my best to keep loss at bay and maximize pleasure. On numerous occasions, I grasped when I should have let go, and with the steadfastness of Icarus, I burst into flames, then ash, then water. Loss has given me the gift of perspective and age (ironically) time. Grief is merciful that way.

When I was a child, my father kept honeybees. He’d lull them to sleep with smoke while we plundered their hives. In the space of an hour, I’d taste sweet nectar, get stung by a bee, and doze in the afternoon shade. It was all there: delight, pain, oblivion.

I don’t know much, only that the same force that created that honeycomb ravaged my father’s heart — that there is salvation to be found in mystery, tiny things, and being wrong, that foreboding joy and negative sentiment override are universal wounds of humanity which we must minister to tenderly and with care — and that in time, if we do not turn towards love, we turn towards nothing.

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[dfisherwriter]

The Princess and the Tutor

An experiment with the fairy-tale form, originally written for a friend.

Once there was a princess, a young girl of fair skin, radiant red hair and deep blue eyes. Her family ruled over a modest kingdom from a stately manor, near to the woods and close to nature.

Although she was a warm-hearted girl, the princess was rarely afforded the luxury of friendship; the peoples of the surrounding area were common folk, not the kind of people who would ever be invited to a royal estate, and her few acquaintances of nobility rarely made their way to such a backwoods kingdom.

In spite of this, the princess was able to enjoy her lonely life. She would run with the deer in the forests by the manor, she took great pride in her accomplishments as a dancer - her parents had brought her a renowned instructor who originally hailed from a far-away kingdom - and she had a library full of fantastic stories to occupy her bright young mind.

Young girls are not satisfied with old books for long, though, and one day the princess came to desire knowledge of the world outside of that which her parents had taught her, outside of the words laid out in tomes that she had already pored through time and time again. She implored her parents to find her a tutor that could satisfy such a curiosity, and for a time the king and queen were stumped.

The king, wise as he was, had been trained in numbers above all else. He had a fantastic mind for mathematics, and their kingdom never owed a single coin in debt; but he had lived almost all his life in a small area, and only knew of the outside world through exchanged stories and a small handful of kingly excursions to nearby lands. The queen was even less well-traveled, and had devoted her adulthood to rearing the prince and princess; tender as though she was, she was unable to satisfy her daughter’s thirst for knowledge of the lands outside of their realm.

With this in mind, the king had an order sent out throughout the kingdom, a declaration that the royal family would pay handsomely for a tutor with experience of the world, who could teach their young princess the things she so desperately wanted to know.

Many replied to the call, and the royals turned down just as many. It seemed those with great knowledge of the world were too often made rough through the experience, and they would not have a drunkard sailor filling their only daughter’s head with the kind of stories sea-dogs exchange amongst themselves over rum. After weeks, they were just about ready to call off the search and simply tell the princess that what she was looking for did not exist, when they unexpectedly found their perfect candidate.

A bookish type, tall but not imposing, bespectacled and with skin almost as fair as the princess’s own, the tutor had traveled to many nations in the name of academic curiosity, having published volumes on the exotic cultures he encountered in his travels. As deeply as they probed, he did not betray the slightest bit of roughness, and the king and queen saw in him a suitable educator for the princess. When lessons began, the princess took a liking to her new tutor instantly. Her father’s business most often kept him away from home, attending to various kingly matters, and she never had known such warmth from a man as this one seemed to exude. His tales of far-away lands captivated her, as did the trinkets he would sometimes bring to lessons; truth be told, she had fallen in love before she even realized it.

What she didn’t know, though, was that the feelings were mutual. From the moment he laid eyes on her, the tutor had been enraptured. He would think about her in his every waking moment, and dream about her as he went off to sleep. The way her eyes sparkled when he would show her something he had brought, the way she would smile and laugh without any pretension when he told a joke, the sound of her voice, everything about her captivated him. He looked forward to their lessons more than anything else in his life, and time with her was always the highlight of his day.

One lesson, the princess sought to interrogate her tutor. She had long harbored affection for him and desired to know if it was returned, so she asked him what he thought of her.

He praised her almost to excess; telling her of every thing about her that made his heart sing. She blushed deeply at his praise, finding it almost too much to take, but also feeling so very glad that someone she so admired could speak this way about her. She confessed that she, too, felt that way about him, and the tutor was absolutely stunned.

He told her that it was not right for a princess to say such things of a mere commoner, and she told him that he was so much more than a commoner; and, throwing caution to the wind, at this moment that common man decided to kiss the princess.

From then on, lessons grew longer and longer, the tutor refusing extra pay for the extra time; being with the princess was more than enough. Unfortunately, though, the king and queen soon grew wise to what was going on within their walls, and they spoke with the princess.

They told her that it was well and good to learn of the world, but she was to marry a nobleman when she came of age and it would do her no good to have a common man sully her maidenhood before that was to occur. They told her, in no uncertain terms, that she would never marry this tutor, and that lessons were to cease immediately.

This made the princess very sad, and that very night she ran away from home. She had heard rumors of an old witch in the woods, and although she had always turned back before getting deep into the woods before, this time she decided she would seek out and find that witch, if there was one to find.

The woods at night can be a frightful place, especially for a young girl of high birth. Menacing sounds of the animals of the forest surrounded her, cracking twigs telling of footsteps near her presence, and yet she kept on, determined to find the witch at all costs. She had been threatened with the loss of that which she held most dear, but perhaps an old witch would have just the solution she desired.

After hours of walking, she came to a clearing, where a ramshackle hut was accompanied by a fire, on which an uncertain sort of soup was boiling in a black cauldron. Tired and worn out, the princess suspected she may have been delirious, but a voice came from within the hut and she walked slowly toward its source. The voice told her that she was expected, and that the witch could give her just what she wanted - but that the price may be too much for her to bear.

Entering the witch’s hut, she saw that the witch was nothing like in the fairy tales she had so often read as a child. Fair-skinned just as she, but with jet-black hair instead of her brilliant red, the witch appeared to be around about her mother’s age; she was a very beautiful woman by all measures, a far cry from the wart-covered, monstrous witches of mythology.

The princess asked the witch what she thought it was that she desired; the witch replied knowingly that it was the love of her tutor, who was just now heading to the manor, oblivious to the fact that there would be no more lessons to teach.

The princess confirmed that this was her desire, and inquired of the price. At this, the witch’s mouth turned up only slightly, but conveyed an infinite malice through the gesture. The price, the witch said, was that she would get exactly what she wanted.

The princess, young and in love as she was, could not possibly fathom any way in which getting exactly what she wanted could be anything but ideal. She accepted the witch’s price, and the witch guided her to the cauldron she had seen before. Gifted with the power of foresight, the witch had already prepared the potion that would grant the princess her wish, and the princess gulped down the foul-smelling liquid greedily.

“Now, my child,” the witch told her, “you will learn that you should always be more careful what you wish for.”

And with that, the princess’s eyes closed and everything went dark for her.

When she woke again, she was in her tutor’s arms, on the road to the manor. The tutor was frantic, trying to get her to respond, but when the princess tried to speak to her beloved, no words came out from her throat - and, furthermore, she could feel sharp pains all over her body. To even move slightly hurt her, and there was a lightheadedness accompanying it all; she did not know in what state the tutor had found her, but she was certainly not in a good state now.

The tutor carried her into the castle, calling out desperately for the king and queen. They had sent out men to search the surrounding area for her, and in their relief at seeing the princess they had forgotten all about that which they were going to say to the tutor.

In the weeks to follow, the princess was bedridden, unable to speak and barely able to move, yet her tutor was always by her side. Although it pained him to see her in such a state, it made him feel happy to know that he was able to be with her in her time of need, and he loved the princess ever so.

However, it was not love that grew inside the princess, but rather it was fear. She thought of the witch’s words, and realized her own foolishness. Although they had unquestionably grown close, she had barely known this man who was now eternally by her side. She could not speak up to object if he proposed something she did not wish for, she could not escape if he had chosen to do something against her will. That the man was simply happy to be with her, and only wished to do well by her, was immaterial; regardless of his desire, he had absolute power over the princess, and that is something no man should ever have over another person. The princess’s eyes that once looked at her tutor with love, now could only look at him with fear. And it was a fear that nothing could ever assuage, a fear that paralyzed her in a way that the pain in her body never could.