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x0401x · 3 years

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Jeweler Richard Fanbook Short Story #6

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Moonstone’s Charity

“The moon is beautiful, huh!”

By the time that we exited the Shiseido Parlor, it was already completely dark outside. The moon loomed a faint blue, as if overlooking the night view of Ginza. Putting his coat back on, Richard silently averted his eyes when I looked back at him with an “isn’t it”. At any rate, I had gotten wholly used to eating out with this guy on Saturdays after work. It was worth making him puddings as payback, I thought.

“Speaking of which, the stone you sold to today’s customers was a ‘stone of the moon’, wasn’t it?”

“Please call it ‘moonstone’. There are other rock specimens that are referred to as ‘stones of the moon’. Confusing the meaning of the words is deplorable.”

“Is that so?! Aight, I’ll take it to heart.”

Today’s customers were the parents of a naïve young lady, and the goods they bought were a moonstone jewelry set for her. It seemed that the young lady, who still had childish facial traits, was going to get married, so her parents ordered a necklace from Etranger for her to take along when the time came. Bearing a rainbow light over a milky blue color, the cabochon-cut moonstone was combined with white diamonds for the necklace and bracelet. It overflowed with a soulful beauty, almost as if it had borrowed the glow of an aurora from a Scandinavian sky.

Apparently, the moonstone, which was also one of the June birthstones, had been familiarized as a power stone since the distant past, and was renowned especially as a stone that celebrated the well-being and fortune of women. Having the commemorative jewelry delivered to her as a surprise, the young lady had cried until her eyes were bright red, but she recovered by way of a sweet royal milk tea, expressing gratitude to her parents with a sniffling nose. I believed that there were several forms of joy depending on each person, and what I had witnessed today was unmistakably one of them.

Even as we headed to the parking lot where Richard’s jaguar was, the moon followed us from the gaps between the buildings. As I walked while looking up and repeating, “It’s really pretty, so pretty”, Richard seemed exasperated.

“‘The moon is beautiful’, huh. Are college students not familiar with anecdotes of their own country’s literary figures nowadays?”

“Don’t they read that stuff? I’m in the faculty of economics, so there’s lots of people with names written in horizontal characters on our textbooks. Like Marx Weber or Mankiw.”

“What about Futabatei Shimei or Natsume Souseki?”

“I’ll ask you back: have you read them?”

“Yes.”

Uwah. As I cried out, the gorgeous jeweler sighed. “Honestly, today’s youths,” he said.

I ended up laughing at him without thinking.

“What is it?”

“You say ‘youths’ but you’re pretty young yourself.”

“I merely disagree with the worldwide trend of thinking that classical literature is an enjoyment for old age. The world, matured by the various interpretations of our ancestors, is deep and wide-ranging, as well as something that envelopes our hearts, just like stones.”

“Feels like the part where stones come up is ‘just as expected of Richard-san’.”

“I will take that as a compliment.”

“I am complimenting you. I have the feeling that I get smarter when we talk.”

“For you to be the kind who is satisfied with just ‘having a feeling’, my existence must be a harmful one.”

“I shall take this to heart... Aah, by the way, in sociology or some other class, I heard that the phrase ‘had a feeling’ has increased too much in pop music. Why is that? I guess it’s because, when they assert, ‘I can be strong!’ instead of, ‘I have the feeling I can be strong, I find myself inwardly wanting to retort with a, ‘Nope, nope, it’s not like that’ and the mood cools off.”

“Unfortunately, I have not studied the trends of modern Japan’s younglings. But if we are to speak of such things, even the power invoked by stones is a matter of ‘having a feeling’.”

“Is it okay for a jeweler to be saying that?”

“We are already out of business hours. Besides, this is not a negative subject in particular.”

Having arrived at the parking lot, Richard glanced at me and folded his arms lightly. He was a beautiful man from the top of his head to the tips of his toenails, like a doll made of moonlight. I was used to looking at his figure, but beautiful things will be beautiful. I could look at him without ever getting tired and it would put me in a good mood, just like the moon.

“W-What? What’s up?”

“I mean that people can become strong just from ‘having a feeling’. The power of belief is namely the force of human beings who seek hope even in a small gleam. Is that not a wonderful thing? On nights like these, when we ‘have the feeling’ that we are being protected by the light of the moon, people are sure to be in some sort of calm mood.” Saying this, as if to copy me or something, Richard looked up at the night sky above the buildings of Ginza and murmured, “The moon is truly beautiful.” He then smoothly got on the jaguar’s driver seat. I followed him on the passenger seat.

Still, this car’s seat base did an exquisite inclination no matter how many times I sat on it. It felt like a chair sticking to your body.

“Well, are you okay with dropping off at Takadanobaba?”

“Thank you. By the way, should I reply with the ‘I could die now’ already?”

Richard’s face at that moment was a spectacle. His mouth and beautiful eyebrows distorted as if to say, “Haah?”. His eyes stared dangerously at me.

“I mean, isn’t that the context? Futabate Shimei and Natsume Souseki, right?”

“I love you”.

Apparently, the literary masters of the Meiji Era had racked their brains about to how to translate a sentence that didn’t originally exist in the Japanese language. This would be a standard drinking party talk. Well, I didn’t know if there was a standard for all kinds of drinking parties, but just recently, during a drinking party we held with a group of men from the Department of Letter’s Faculty of Japanese Literature, we got fired-up over that topic. “Girls like this kind of talk, so you guys from the Faculty of Economics should also keep it in mind every once in a while,” they told us. Futabate Shimei used “I could die now” as a code for “I am yours” and Natsume Souseki used the anecdote “the moon is beautiful, isn’t it” as what was claimed to be a good anecdote for “I love you”. We were thankful for the trivia. That being said, none of the members who attended the drinking party had girlfriends, so I had thought there would be no opportunity to use this trivia, but to my surprise...

Richard, who had been stiff for a moment, exhaled with a loud “haaah” and turned the engine key. The body of the iron machine shuddered.

“That was terrifying.”

“So even you got freaked out! I can say some Japanese-like things too.”

“I will proceed to kick you if you say the same thing again. Be quiet for the time being.” Richard pulled the car out of the parking lot from backward, and as he stepped onto the accelerator and we got out into the street, the car trundled on with us in silence for a while. After we had passed four or five buildings, the beautiful jeweler opened his mouth again, “These words are not meant to be spoken lightly. A sentence taken out of context is like a lonely stone removed from a bracelet. In what kind of situation did people say, ‘The moon is beautiful’ or under what circumstances did they think, ‘I could die now’? What matters is the process until things arrived to that point, and not scraps of words. In the past, during the times when the people of this country were not as filled with imported mentalities as they are now, they probably understood this very well.”

“Hey, why’d you think of reading Natsume Souseki?”

Richard didn’t respond. I’d known for a while now that there were lots of things this guy didn’t want to answer, but his silence at the question was unexpected. Was something up?

Something related to moments when he might feel like saying things such as “the moon is beautiful” or “I could die now”.

It was clearly not a topic that I should pry too much about. Pretending to have found something interesting out the window, I put on a smile with no particular connotation. Leaning my body against the window, I looked up at the sky. “Ah, I can still see the moon.”

“You do not say. Is it beautiful?”

“Yup, but you’re more beautiful.”

Richard’s hand instantaneously glided in a swift motion. He pressed the car stereo switch. What played at an explosively loud volume wasn’t the Finnish rock that I had listened to before. It was a sutra in an ethnic-sounding female voice. That was all I could say. What was this? As I asked in a loud voice what language that song was in, he said it was Bengali. Was it an Indian song then? I couldn’t talk to him unless I shouted in one breath.

“HEY! IF I PISSED YOU OFF, SERIOUSLY, I’M SORRY!”

Richard’s mouth moved in the form of an “I cannot hear you”. It seemed he wasn’t in the mood for conversation. But he didn’t look angry. The corners of his lips were smiling just slightly. Like he wanted to say that this was so stupid it made him laugh. He appeared a lot more relaxed than when listing up the names of those literary figures, so I became kinda happy.

When I got out of the car, the southern country atmosphere was gone at once. At the roundabout in Takadanobaba, Richard took off with the jaguar as soon as he said goodbye. As the same old habit, for whatever reason, I ended up watching him off until I couldn’t see him anymore.

As I looked up the blue moon was floating in the black sky, unchanged. This was also a matter of “having a feeling”, but this emotion I was feeling today at this moment was a definite form of happiness too.

Honestly, the moon was beautiful tonight.

#housekishou richard shi no nazo kantei #housekishou richard #jeweler richard #the case files of jeweler richard #richard #nakata seigi #richard ranashinghe de vulpian #richard ranashinha de vulpian #jr short story collection #tsujimura nanako #yukihiro utako #novel #my translation

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ask-asexual-crystal-gems · 3 years

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What's a common thread between ADHD and the asexuality spectrum? The answer might surprise you.

A while back, an ADHD user said in response to my question, “how did mindfulness exercises go?” a single word, “dissociation.”

It was only long after I had replied, that I had to remind myself that people think of dissociation as a scary thing.

I had to remind myself that a psychotherapist I once knew was pretty unorthodox, and gave me perspective on the matter that defused all the mysteriousness and internalized socialized discomfort surrounding it, which is ultimately rooted in both fear of the unknown or unfamiliar, and maybe a little bit of stigma, too.

Naturally, I do not talk about these sorts of things with general people IRL, so newly having a ‘conversation’ online about it did not jostle my awareness of others’ attitudes like it probably should have.

Things like anxiety and ADHD are, let’s say, more “ordinary” neurodivergences. (remember, the word applies to ALL mental illnesses, also, not just traits. Many don't consider most cases of ADHD an 'illness,' nor a lot of presentations of autism)

Those are more "ordinary." They don’t mash that “this is weird” button, so much as simply “this is very unpleasant.”

But dissociation can be the former, and not the latter.

Let me back up and explain that a bit.

People see dissociation as undesirable.

But why is it, you should ask.

Leave aside questions of physical safety. I’m just talking about sitting down somewhere, and there is no risk to you.

In the typical view, it’s not just another operation the brain can do, or an altered mind state, as we discussed it, rather, it is somehow considered a “bad” outcome.

When, ironically, for many forms of mind training, which we’ll put under the umbrella term “meditation” for simplicity’s sake, the end goal is a type of on-command dissociative state.

Whether you are internalizing your attention, externalizing your attention, or just trying to get that danged mind chatter to shut up for once and give you some peace, whichever way you are sliding along that scale, there is always the route open to you to pursue this ultimate peace.

So this person, who was trying out mindfulness?

Think, if you switched all the aircraft cockpit switches to check if everything was lighting up correctly. But instead of being an experienced pilot, you had no idea what would happen once you started testing everything out.

Accidentally withdrawing your physical senses, and seeming to distance your “self” from your body, which experienced practitioners do without batting an eye, (pun intended) would seem like a dysfunction rather than a built-in feature.

Quieting those areas of the brain dedicated to sense perception is quite a lovely experience, when you are educated on it, do it on purpose, and expect it.

Whereas anxiety is almost never a positive experience, unless it’s not really overwhelming or potent, and you’ve 'reframed' it such that it’s exciting, like any other adrenaline junkie bender.

The milder forms of dissociation, termed depersonalization or derealization, that seem to be quite common among asexual people, are also often considered as a negative thing, instead of just the current, value-neutral state of mind, which is trainable.

A much more common and even milder form happens when we sink into routine. Ever had a stretch of weeks on a job where you look back and you feel like you were sort of “automated”? Like you weren’t really present? You’re somehow a little surprised that that much time has passed?

That “time dilation,” accompanied also sometimes by a distorted sense of chronological sequence happens a lot with ADHD people, regardless of circumstances, but most everyone in the populace has experienced it at some point, barring perhaps the super privileged who have never been forced into a literally “mind numbing” job.

Maybe you’ve also experienced the sensation where you get into a car, perhaps when you’re on a familiar route you’ve driven a thousand times, or especially on long road trips, and you seem to zone out and lose time.

The brain is pretty good at conserving energy.

This is what she tells her patients, to calm their sympathetic nervous system. It circumvents that distress, that health-sapping stress response to this ultimately harmless “weird” experience, vastly improving their quality of life:

Dissociation is a continuum- many forms of it are common. Not some super strange thing corralled in a small corner of the sum total of human experience.

“Reframing” these things is essential to attaining incrementally improved mental health.

Clearing away all the internalized judgement, the feelings of wrongness, etc.

Just one more step out of the norm.

Just another neurodivergence.

It is conceptualized as unnerving when it happens suddenly and sharply, though, because it is so different from “ordinary” everyday experience.

The same way one person who hasn’t been around dogs much might react to a large dog barking with fear, and another person standing next to them having the exact same experience, trained and knowledgeable in recognizing true aggression versus excitement or mild warning, would not feel threatened.

Yes, having that particular toggle out of your grasp may be annoying and to those not given this perspective, frightening. (And if other personalities are involved, that gets much more complicated!!) But, consider. One of my mentors said calmly once, that she lost time for, say, 10 or 15 minutes while sitting down quite regularly, and felt very recharged and energized afterwards. It’s not exactly like sleep, because there’s not that head nodding and relaxation of muscles. Almost instantly gone, and instantly aware again, not that feathery transition as happens when drowsing or gradually falling asleep.

I hypothesize to her that this had probably started up because she’s involuntarily dropping into a deep delta or theta brainwave state for a bit, because that’s what she does in ‘brain entrainment’ recordings. (The frequencies are very good for relaxation when you're anxious and have a hard time unwinding yourself, others are good for focus during studying, and are therefore used by ADHD people) Unless she wants to pay some big lab to measure her neuron firing frequency though, there’s no way to tell for sure. The point is, that she directly benefits from this ‘taking a break’ from thinking. She is not bothered in the least by her mind occasionally saying, ‘you know what, I’m overwhelmed right now, gonna switch off for a bit.’ When someone gives their mind this permission to pause from its worries and senses, each the internal and external input, sometimes this is the outcome. It is not a problem to her whatsoever that this toggle occasionally moves of its own accord.

People are afraid of what they don’t understand.

But she understands it.

People are afraid of new experiences.

But to her, it’s old hat. On an MRI, each of the parts of the brain dedicated to the senses dim. Occipital lobe for sight, temporal lobe for hearing, etc.

If I were brushed up on the neuroanatomy of this process better, I could also name the parts dedicated to internal imput that would grow dimmer as she entered that state. Heck, they study this stuff so much, when interviewing meditation practitioners and testing for stuff like blood flow changes as their attention shifts, those images probably already exist.

Dissociation is not a mysterious thing.

It serves a purpose.

It’s your brain’s ‘energy saver’ mode.

Or in some cases, ‘recharge.’

So, to the person who argued that ADHD people should be cautious about using mindfulness? I must ask again, why?

Why would you forgo the benefits? Why would they tell others to do so??

Usually the main reasons dissociation causes problems, that aforementioned therapist says, is that people are overloaded to the point where it happens not when they’re relaxed, and can daydream or drift, but randomly when there’s too much pressure in their lives.

The fear response to it is just like any other overactive fear response or phobia- with time and therapeutic work, they are all resolvable.

/////////

#this post is NOT about dissociative identity disorder #only mentioned it in passing to separate it from the discussion

#adhd #asexual #generalized anxiety disorder #mental health stigma #mental health #therapy #neurodivergence #neurodiversity #depersonalization #derealization #mindfulness #anti capitalism #time dilation #brain entrainment #delta waves #theta waves

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today-only-happens-once · 5 years

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With Great Power - Chapter 2

Title: With Great Power – Chapter 2

First Chapter | Next Chapter | Read on AO3

Fic Summary: Thomas Sanders is just a regular social media personality. But when he gets bit by a spider during filming one of his YouTube videos, his whole life is about to turn upside down—whether he (or the aspects of his personality) want it to or not. Platonic LAMP/CALM + Character!Thomas. Spider-Man AU (but more the concept of Spider-Man and contains no spoilers for any particular movie/comic series).

Word Count: 3522

Chapter warnings: some panicking, arguing, cursing, some doubting of reality (briefly), discussion/use of Cartoon Therapy, some spoilers for Danny Phantom, vertigo/nausea mention, falling furniture.

A/N: 2019 is off to a crazy hectic start. Sorry for the wait. Hopefully it was worth it! Special shout-out to @creativenostalgiastuff for helping me when I got extra stuck in this chapter. Edited by yours truly, so all mistakes are mine. I would absolutely love to know what you think.

WGP Taglist: @captain-loki-xavier, @magicpanda31, @the-peculiar-bi-tch, @mining-pup, @band-be-boss-blog, @asexual-trashbag, @samathekittycat, @why-should-i-tell-youu2, @theobsessor1, @princelogical, @vigilantvirgil, @always3charcoaltea, @changeling-ash, @logical-princey, @crimsonshadow323, @flickering-raven, @smokeyrutilequartz, @dontbugmeimantisocial (I’ll be keep this taglist separate from my normal one for organizational purposes. Please let me know if you’d like to be added!)

Thomas’s chest feels tight and uncomfortable. He wonders somewhere in the back of his mind if passing out would mean falling to the floor or if he’d just wake up still stuck to the ceiling of his bedroom. Thomas attempts to pulls his hands off his ceiling—praying that his feet would still stick to the wall so that he wouldn’t fall face-first in the floor—but they don’t budge.

“Why can’t you let go, Thomas?” Virgil demands in that deep distorted voice, the words falling out of his mouth in a jumbled panic. “Just pull!”

“I’m trying, Virgil,” Thomas snaps, an edge of panic in his own voice. “It’s not that easy!”

“What do you---” Virgil cuts himself off, pulling at the strings of his hoodie. He takes a breath. “Can someone else get in here, maybe?”

Thomas wasn’t sure who he was expecting to come to their aid, but it certainly wasn’t all three of them at once. Virgil’s hood is pulled so low over his face that his eyes aren’t visible, but the other Sides aren’t looking at him anyway. Roman’s jaw falls slack at the sight of their host clinging to the ceiling with his feet against the wall. Patton scratches the back of his head, his brows pulled together in confusion.

Logan’s eyes are wide. “Fascinating,” he says quietly, mostly to himself, but the room is dead silent except for the Logical Side’s voice. “Utterly fascinating.”

“This is probably just a dream. It’s not like it’s real,” Thomas insists, although now that he’s said it out loud, he can hear in his own voice how much he doesn’t believe it. He looks desperately at Roman across the room for confirmation.

Roman shoots Thomas an apologetic grimace. “Uh…” He rubs the back of his head awkwardly. “I’m afraid that while I may be the dreamer here, it’s more in a more… figurative, metaphorical sense.”

“Regardless,” Logan supplies, “a guaranteed way to wake up while asleep is through experiencing the sensation of falling.”

Thomas feels his stomach squirm at the same time Virgil makes a sound in the back of his throat. “Bad idea,” Virgil snaps, his voice still distorted.

“Yeah, I don’t really want to faceplant into the floor and break my neck.”

Logan glances at the floor below Thomas, then back up at the host. “Unlikely to occur from that distance. Besides, if we’re careful, you may even land perfectly fine on your feet. And on the off chance you are dreaming, you won’t land at all. You will be awakened from your dream state.” He adjusts the knot of his tie. “While I must admit, Thomas, the likelihood that this is a dream seems predominantly rooted in wishful thinking rather than being substantiated in evidence, we might as well permanently remove that option from the list of reasonable explanations.”

Thomas sighs and squeezes his eyes shut. He can feel the blood rushing to his head from looking upside down at his personality traits, and it isn’t helping the vertigo. “Okay,” he says. “Except that I don’t know how to let go.”

Patton hums thoughtfully. “Well, what worked for the phone?”

Thomas hesitates, glancing at Virgil as he answers. “I… tried that breathing thing you taught me, and the phone just kinda fell.” Virgil meets Thomas’s gaze, his eyebrows raising slightly in surprise. Wordlessly, Virgil nods a little, and Thomas sees him close his eyes and take in a deep, slow breath.

Thomas’s legs swing off the wall. The slight pain in his shoulders from the sudden weight pulling him towards the ground reminds him of the times he’d hang limply from monkey bars as a kid.

“All right, Thomas,” Virgil says in a quiet, measured voice. “I think I’m gonna need your help getting us the rest of the way. Breathe in for four seconds.”

Thomas closes his eyes and follows his Anxious Side’s instructions. Virgil walks him through the exercise even though Thomas remembers it well. It’s oddly reassuring to hear the manifestation of his own Anxiety try to help him calm down. Like they’re in it together. Thomas can’t help but feel like that odd feeling of being less alone—even though Virgil is just a part of him—is really what helps ease the pit in his stomach.

Thomas yelps when Virgil gets to count 7 of breathing out as his fingers abruptly detach from the ceiling and he falls hard on the floor of his bedroom. He lands on his feet, but his legs aren’t ready for the sudden weight and collapse beneath him.

“Thomas!” Virgil cries out.

“I’m okay,” he assures him quickly, really not wanting to risk getting either of them worked up again. The last thing Thomas wants right now is to be stuck to the floor and have to go through it all over again. “Just surprised me. I’m good.”

All the same, Thomas doesn’t try to stand up just yet. He sits on the floor near some dirty laundry that hadn’t quite made it to the laundry basket in his closet and takes a deep breath. His mind is still reeling. He blinks a couple of times.

“You Gucci, Thomas?” Roman asks.

Thomas swallows. “I… don’t know,” he says honestly. “I mean… what the hell was that?”

“Well, we have confirmed one thing that it is not,” Logan supplies. “You fell, and yet are still here in this situation. Therefore, this is not a dream. It’s a reality.”

Thomas can feel Patton’s worried gaze linger on him as he pushes himself to his feet. The father figure figment’s eyebrows pull together. “So what does that mean?” he asks.

“A reality means that the events are not occurring within an imagined construction of thought or fantasy, but rather—”

“No, I—sorry. I didn’t mean ‘what is reality’,” Patton interrupts hurriedly, holding out his hands. “I meant, what does that… mean? For Thomas and… for us?”

The silence that meets the end of Patton’s question hangs heavy in the air. Thomas’s gaze flickers up across from him and falls on Roman. The Prince’s eyes are wide, and he holds Thomas’s gaze for a moment before he looks around at the other three. He scoffs with a note of incredulity.

“I mean… isn’t it obvious?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Thomas is pretty sure he sees Logan bristle slightly. “To what are you referring, Roman?”

Roman raises his eyebrows as if genuinely surprised at everyone’s blank look. He gestures towards Thomas. “Thomas has super powers.”

Logan opens his mouth, then closes it, his eyes narrowing first at Roman and then at Thomas with something akin to curiosity.

Virgil rolls his eyes, but Thomas doesn’t miss the way his shoulders shift uncomfortably underneath his oversized hoodie. “Super powers?” he says. “You can’t be serious. Logan already established that this is reality. We’re not living in some comic book.”

Roman holds an overdramatic hand to his chest. “I’ll have you know, that conclusion is perfectly reasonable.”

“Explain,” Logan says, a finger on his mouth as if in deep thought. His eyes flicker briefly from Roman and back to Thomas. Thomas tries not to squirm under Logan’s steady, intense gaze. He feels like some sort of specimen under a microscope.

Roman gestures in a wide, sweeping arc towards Thomas. “It’s not as if normal people can stick to walls. And wasn’t it just yesterday that he was bit by a spider? A plus B equals C and all that.”

Virgil is shaking his head before Roman has even finished speaking. “Logan, isn’t it you who always said that correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation?” His dark eyes flash a bit as he says it.

“Now, Virgil—” Patton tries, his voice placating, but Logan cuts him off.

“While that is true, Virgil,” he says slowly, “It was Sherlock Holmes himself who said ‘when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’.”

“Ha!”

Logan continues, ignoring Roman’s shout of gloating victory. His gaze looks distant in thought. “Therefore, while it’s highly unlikely that Thomas gained any kind of superhuman capability from a simple spider bite, it cannot be entirely rejected as a possibility. The facts as they stand are that Thomas is not currently dreaming and he has exhibited capabilities that are beyond normal human ability. So far, that only includes sticking to phones, walls, and ceilings.”

Thomas stares at Logan. “Is the logical part of my brain actually saying that the idea that I might have super powers isn’t completely impossible?”

Logan flashes him a dry, unamused look. “Yes. This is already a highly improbable circumstance. The explanations in relation to it are likely to be equally improbable. Therefore, since I can’t definitively prove that super powers do not exist, I can’t fully rule it out as a possibility.”

“I…” Thomas starts to say, but trails off. He rakes a hand back through his hair and blows out a breath. He squeezes his eyes shut against his reeling thoughts. He has super powers? Does that make him like some kind of super hero? Is he supposed to crawl on walls and ceilings and drop down and somehow rescue people from…what? Some unidentified danger?

Thomas looks to his left towards Patton. His Moral Side is looking worriedly at him, his brows pulled together in thought. “Patton?” he asks, his voice sounding smaller than he expected it to, even to his own ears. “You doing okay with all of this?”

Patton sighs, averting his gaze with a small shrug. “Honestly, kiddo? I’m… not sure.” He glances up, then across the room towards Virgil. “Maybe we all just need a minute to process this.”

Thomas rubs the pads of his fingers over his eyes and shakes his head. “I…” he says. He knows that Patton may have a point, but it all feels like too much too fast. He suddenly wants everything to just stop for a minute, but it won’t and he knows it. “I don’t have time for this right now. Joan is waiting on me for filming.”

He snatches the pair of jeans and dark t-shirt he’d chosen from his closet and changes quickly.

“Thomas,” Patton says as Thomas tugs the shirt over his head with perhaps a bit more force than was really necessary, “Are you sure we shouldn’t… stay home for the day until we figure out what’s going on? We could tell Joan you… caught a bug?”

“Is now really the time for puns, Patton?” Logan asks dryly.

“I don’t know,” Thomas replies as he brushes past Virgil and snatches the phone off his bed. “Right now, I just want to focus on the things that I do know. So I’m gonna go film the rest of this Cartoon Therapy episode, and when I get back I’ll… we’ll figure it out.”

Even Logan looks a bit concerned as Thomas sits on the bed and jams his feet into the closest pair of sneakers he can find. “I’m not sure that is wise, Thomas.”

Thomas doesn’t reply as he pushes through the door and closes it behind him with an echoing bang.

…

“Sorry I’m late,” Thomas says as he rushes into the familiar office space half an hour later.

Joan already has the lighting fixtures and camera set up in front of the couch. Thomas drops his bag in the corner and shoves the bangs falling into his eyes back into his hair. He tries to flash Joan an apologetic smile, but from the way their brows furrow in concern, Thomas has the feeling it probably looked more like a grimace.

“It’s okay, dude,” Joan says. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” Thomas says, hoping he sounds more confident than he feels. For a brief moment, he thinks about telling them. But he wouldn’t even really know what to say, and he has a feeling that it wouldn’t exactly help Joan’s evident concern if he told them he’d somehow found his way stuck to the ceiling of his bedroom and that he now thinks he maybe has super powers. “Just… a weird morning,” he says instead.

He can feel their lingering gaze on him as he turns to grab his laptop out of his bag. “Wanna talk about it?” they ask.

“Not really,” Thomas replies honestly. “I think I should probably just focus on filming.” He sits in the chair across the brown couch and opens his computer, pulling up the needed software and studiously ignoring Joan’s eyes.

“Okay,” Joan says after a moment. Thomas feels his shoulders relax a bit. “I was thinking we’d finish up filming Elliot’s scenes nad get what we’re missing of Picani’s. We got the last of Corbin and Sloane yesterday, so we should be good on that. And Valerie is doing her filming tomorrow.”

As Joan walks through the schedule, Thomas feels himself nodding along and doing his best to not let his thoughts drift. The normalcy of it all—the familiarity of the office, the routine of filming, hearing Joan lay out a concrete plan for the next couple of days—helps quell the jitteriness he’d felt the entire drive over. He can focus on the things he knows. The things that are familiar to him. And as he does so, he feels like it’s a little easier to breathe.

“So what do you want to tackle first? Since it’s just us to film today, we can kinda do whatever,” Joan says.

Thomas shrugs. “I think Picani is gonna take longer, so maybe we should start with that.”

Joan nods their agreement, and Thomas grabs Picani’s costume and changes quickly in the bathroom before hurrying back. He adjusts the pastel green tie as he takes his seat in the office chair. Joan has the camera set up and Thomas glances into the viewfinder and adjusts his hair slightly as they grab the laptop and pull it up into their lap.

“You ready?” Joan asks.

Thomas gives them a smile, and it feels a little more natural this time. “Yeah.”

Joan tugs the beanie down a little as it starts to slide back on their head, typing a few thing on the laptop before nodding. “Cool. We’re picking up in the scene with Elliot, right?”

Thomas agrees, grabbing the notebook off the shelf behind him. Joan, carefully balancing the laptop on their legs, grabs the script off the floor. Thomas takes a steadying breath. “Elliot has the first line, right?”

Joan nods, flipping a few pages before they find it. They cast a quick glance up at Thomas to double check that he’s ready before reading the line. “’Wait, there are two Danny’s?’”

“’Well’,” Thomas says in that thick Midwestern accent, “One is Dani with an ‘i’ and the other is Danny with a ‘y’, but we’ll just call ‘Dani with an i’ Danielle for clarity’s sake.’”

“’Okay…That’s not confusing at all…’” Joan reads with that familiar sarcasm from Elliot.

“Bear with me, Elliot,” Thomas says, holding his hands out. “Now, Danielle was created by Vlad because Danny wouldn’t disown his parents and become his son instead. In the eyes of Vlad, Danielle was just a poor imitation of what he really wanted.”

Joan pauses before they read the next line. “How did she react?” their voice is quiet, subdued. Thomas feels the corner of his mouth quirk in sympathy that is somehow a blend of acting and his own actual reaction.

“She didn’t let it stop her from being who she was,” Thomas replies gently as Picani. “When Danielle found out, she helped bring Vlad’s plan to a stop and then committed herself to doing as much good in the world as she could.” Thomas pauses, knowing they’d want to cut in with Elliot’s reaction briefly. “Just because Vlad created her to be one thing didn’t mean she couldn’t define who she was for herself.”

“I…” Joan falters on the line. “Cool? Nope. Fuck. Hold on.” They laugh as they look down at the script. “I forgot the line.”

Thomas laughs, the serious ambience of the moment breaking. This is what he remembers and what feels safe: making things he loves with his friends. Being creative, having fun with them, and laughing their way through the mistakes during filming. It’s a comforting routine.

“Wait, okay,” Joan says. “I got it. Turn Serious Picani back on, Thomas.”

Thomas laughs again. “Is this where I say ‘Going Serious’? Instead of ‘Going Ghost’?” He crinkles his nose after he says it. “Doesn’t really have the same ring.”

Joan shakes their head, smiling. “You could do something like the Box Ghost.”

“I am Picani! Beware!” Thomas laughs again. “Pretty sure therapists shouldn’t be yelling at their clients to ‘beware’.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” There’s still a twinkle of amusement in Joan’s eyes.

Thomas shakes his hands out and takes a deep breath in an effort to get back into character. “Okay, okay. What’s the line?”

Joan glances down at the script. “I just don’t really know where to start.”

“That’s okay,” Thomas says encouragingly. “Figuring out who we are independent of who other people think we should be is no easy task. Danny struggles with this too. Stuck between half-ghost and half-human, Danny always feels caught between worlds. And he finds it hard to be himself when neither side wants to fully accept him.”

“Well that sounds familiar,” Joan says dryly.

Thomas gives a sympathetic smile. “But the important thing, Elliot, is that both Danny and Danielle learn to accept who they are, complications and all, and they do what they can to help others.”

There’s a quiet, weighted moment after Thomas has finished speaking. The words echo in his head for a moment. Accept who they are, complications and all, and they do what they can to help others. The events of the morning flicker back through Thomas’s mind briefly. The two blend together in a combination that swirls uncomfortably in his stomach.

Joan cracks a small smile. “I feel good about those takes,” they say, pulling Thomas out of his thoughts. “What about you?”

“Yeah,” Thomas agrees, shaking his head quickly in an attempt to clear it. “Yeah, I feel good about it. I, uh, I think I’m gonna grab some water real quick.” He stands up suddenly, the chair pushing back into the bookcase behind him in the process.

Everything seems to slow down around him.

A voice in his head that sounds an awful lot like Virgil yells Thomas, behind you! He ducks out of the way instinctively as the bookcase wobbles.

Joan shouts his name as it starts to fall forward. If it falls, it’ll hit Joan.

He reacts on instinct. His hand darts out, catching the corner of the heavy bookcase as it pitches forward.

Joan has their arms thrown up to protect themself from the falling shelves. Books, stuffed animals, and other knick-knacks fall to the floor and Thomas uses his one arm to pull the bookcase back to the wall.

“You okay?” Thomas asks, looking to Joan with worry and adrenaline.

It’s not until he sees Joan’s wide, surprised eyes as they lower their arms that Thomas realizes what just happened.

He shouldn’t have been able to stop a bookcase full of things from falling on Joan with just one hand.

And he definitely shouldn’t have been able to pull it back with just one arm. Not one that had taken both Thomas and Joan to move into the office space to begin with.

Thomas thinks he can actually feel the color drain from his face. Joan is staring at him.

“I, um, y-yeah,” Joan stammers out. “Yeah, I’m fine.” They open their mouth, their brows pulled together and head cocked as if they’re about to ask a question. They close their mouth a second later.

“Good,” Thomas says tightly. “That’s good.” The bookcase hadn’t even felt like it weighed anything at all.

Joan nods slowly, uncertainty and doubt simmering in their dark eyes. “Did… did you just… I mean, have you been working out or something?”

“What?” Thomas asks absently. The question breaks through his racing thoughts in the next moment. “Oh. Yeah.” He knows he doesn’t sound convincing and it’s all he can do to avoid cringing.

The tie around his neck suddenly feels too tight. Thomas tugs slightly on the knot, unable to help the way his hands shake slightly. He doesn’t know if it’s the lingering adrenaline from the bookcase almost falling on him and Joan or if it’s something else.

“Are you okay, Thomas?” Joan asks. Their voice sounds far away.

Thomas swallows. His chest feels tight, and it sounds like more than one voice in his head is telling him to get out of there. Joan’s intelligent, careful gaze certainly isn’t helping. “I just… need some air, I think,” Thomas replies. He’s half-way out the door before the words are out of his mouth.

“Do you—”

“I’m fine,” he insists. He doesn’t meet Joan’s eyes. “I’ll be fine. I just need to stretch my legs.”

He’s out the door before Joan can say another word.

#sanders sides #sanders sides au #platonic lamp/calm #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders sides fanfiction au #spider-man au #tw cursing #tw panic #not a panic attack exactly #tw doubting reality #tw nausea #with great power #with great power fic #danny phantom spoilers

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letsdiscoverkitty · 7 years

Text

Let’s talk about ‘body image’

I want to talk a little bit about ‘body image’ this evening, mainly because I have been having some truly awful ‘bad body image’ days recently and it got me thinking...Firstly, what even is ‘body image’? I suppose it is the way that we ‘see’ ourselves and how we ‘feel’ in our bodies at a particular point in time. For someone who suffers from body dysmorphia or may struggle with an eating disorder (note: not all people who have eating disorders struggle with body dysmorphia), this ‘image’ that we see of ourselves can be very skewed/distorted for a whole array of reasons. When I stop and think about ‘body image’, I don’t really think of it as a fixed thing but more of a fluid concept. Body image, as you probably well know, can go from one end of the scale to the other in mere minutes, which doesn’t always make sense. And I think that is one thing about ‘body image’, I don’t think that we will ever really be able to ‘understand it’ completely, however I do think that we can learn about it and overcome it. Now, for someone who is going through the weight gain process when recovering from an eating disorder it can make this a very sensitive area/topic as the body begins to change/heal/return to health. Seeing parts of your body begin ‘grow’ and change can be mentally exhausting, and not to mention the outgrowing of clothes. The best thing that we can do for ourselves in recovery is to eliminate and get rid of these types of clothes that our disorders may be holding onto. Whether it be due to them being a certain size or holding a certain memory, part of the process is learning that it is okay to let go of these things as we begin to let go of our ‘sick bodies’ in a similar way. The thing is that this ‘body image’ that you have of yourself at one moment on one particular day, is not a fixed fact, it is not a rubber stamp seal. It is not something that defines the person that you are or the things that you are capable of. It does not determined what sort of person you are, your traits or personal qualities. As hard as it can be in the moment, you must remember that these negative feelings and overwhelming thoughts will pass. Feelings are unfortunately something that can often be intercepted and twisted by disorders, so it is important to not take these feelings as facts at a moments notice. It can be hard to accept, but sometimes we can’t trust our own minds. Now, although we may know that these feelings will pass, it can be pretty hard in the moment to feel ‘okay’ about anything let alone that what we are experiencing is part of the illness and that it is not ‘fixed fact’, however over the past two weeks or so I have been experimenting with something when bad body image has hit and I thought I would share a little with you. My instinct, when these moments do arise, is to hide myself away, wear very baggy clothing and pretty much lock myself away from the world/refuse to see anyone. Some days, over these past two weeks, I have done this, and I think it is fair to say that I have been left feeling quite fragile in myself by the end of the day. However there were a few days when I started asking myself what would happen if I didn’t listen to those thoughts and instead of immediately grabbing the ‘safe’ clothes, went for something different. So I set myself the challenge of fighting against my automated response and instead choose to wear something completely different. This in itself was hard to even think about on some days, but I persevered and there were days when I did just that. I went against the thoughts. And do you know what happened? Each time I wore something different that I have not “allowed” myself to wear for whatever reason, I felt BETTER in myself. I felt STRONGER. I felt more like ME. The ‘bad body image’, although still there, was not the foremost thing in my mind and on a few occasions it did pass.

Of course I am not saying that just changing your clothing is going to be a magic fix, because we all know that that is not the case and it is the neural pathways and communications in the brain that need rerouting/healing, however through challenging the thoughts and going against the disorder I have learnt that nothing bad would happen if I, god forbid, wore a CROP TOP for example. Now I am not a girl for crop tops, at all. The thought of wearing them in public used to terrify me beyond belief as ‘who would want to walk around showing off their stomachs?’ however one of the items of clothing that I have been ‘experimenting’ has been said crop top. And I have to say that just by wearing them around the house it has given me a confidence that I never thought I would have. And who knows I may well wear a crop top out in public one day. Sure it might not be tomorrow or next week, but I don’t think it is an impossible task. Body image, just like any other disordered thought, grows stronger and deeper the more we give into it. But so too is it true that the more we fight and go against it, the stronger we become, and the more we begin to grow.

There may not be a ‘magic’ fix or answer, but there are many things that we can do to make sure that these illnesses do not define us. There is always hope. Always.

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