#i haven’t been this intensely hyperfixated on anything in so long and uh i have no friends so i. i need to post it here alright

[dragonloanshark]

merry boy meets christmas cory shawn topanga erifjdkbzbcndkld

[thebibliosphere]

I had a question.

So, just an hour or two ago, I was going through some sort of “manic high”, sorta like how somebody with bipolar disorder would have (I don’t have BPD). It felt like a bullet train at max speed and completely derailing, and it was incredibly draining. It also got me wondering.

Do people with severe enough ADHD deal with ADHD episodes like this? My search attempts are often futile because all of it is just talking about how to differentiate between BPD and ADHD and BPD manic episodes, but nobody ever mentions ADHD episodes; the only time I’ve seen it mentioned ever was when somebody made a clip of crankgameplays to show what an ADHD episode looked like.

Do they even exist? I’ve got no idea, so I was just wondering if you knew.

Hey! Sorry, I saw your other ask a while ago, but I wanted to talk to my ADHD specialist before I answered because I’d never heard of the term “episode” being used to describe ADHD. I’m also going to splice both questions together here and answer them in segments in the hope it helps :)

So like I said, I’d never heard of the term “episode” with ADHD, and neither has my specialist. Part of ADHD is having a natural ebb and flow between inattention and hyperactivity, sometimes skewed toward one or the other, depending on your ADHD type. (What are the different types of ADHD?)

Your type of ADHD may also fluctuate because of other factors, such as stress, changes in medication, hormonal fluctuations, lack of sleep, overstimulation, or even under-stimulation, to name a few. Another overlooked part of ADHD is emotional dysregulation, which may cause rapid cycling emotions that may look like an “episode” to someone unfamiliar with what that actually qualifies. The way my therapist explained it and using your example of bipolar disorder, “episode” is used in diagnostic criteria to categorize manic or depressive episodes that last X amount of time, are usually severe, potentially requiring hospitalization, and are accompanied by other symptoms not found in ADHD.

Our “bursts” of energy or lack thereof typically don’t last long enough to be considered episodes. This isn’t to say they are not severe or debilitating, especially if you suffer from things like anxiety or depression that ADHD can feed into. Merely that “episode” is not used as part of the language used to discuss ADHD, which is likely why you’re not finding anything.

So, do ADHDers experience intense bursts of energy that are draining afterward? Yeah, we can do, especially if we lean more toward hyperactive than inattentive. (And again, it's normal to fluctuate and also for things to be affected or worsened by secondary factors.)

And I'm going to put the rest under the cut because this is hella long.

I’ve seen some people think that all hyperactivity has to come with fixation, but that’s not how ADHD works. It’s true if something gets us excited or gives us a dopamine boost, we might be more prone to becoming hyperfixated and burn all our energy up on that. But you don’t need something to fixate on to experience hyperactivity. Some of us are just wired to the moon sometimes, and yes, it can be very draining when it ends. Some people find medication helpful in regulating their hyperactivity/preventing it from coming in such big swings and dips.

Speaking personally, when I'm hyper and nothing is grabbing my attention, the world and people around me can feel painfully slow. It's like I'm going a mile a minute doing everything but achieving nothing. The crash that comes after can also be particularly bad, as I also have dysthymia, which can tip over into a major depressive episode depending on other factors in my life at that time. For years I was misdiagnosed as having "probably Bipolar Type II" by a doctor who didn't believe teenage girls could "get" ADHD* and convinced my parents I needed psychoactive drugs. The drugs I was on didn't help, in fact, they made me worse so I was taken off them.

It wasn't until I found an ADHD specialist as an adult a few years ago that I made any real progress. And I'll be honest, I was shocked when she diagnosed me with ADHD, I really didn't think I had it. Right up until we started doing the work and slowly but surely my mental health began to improve and my understanding of myself with it.

Sometimes there are days when I will be wired to the moon and it will derail my entire day because I can't focus on a single thing/I'll focus too much on a single thing. Other times, like when I am closer to my menstrual cycle, I'll crash into inattentiveness and depression because of how my hormones affect my various different conditions, including my ADHD. Medication would likely help with this, but due to medical reasons, that's currently not an option for me so I do the best I can.

That said, if you’re experiencing something more than hyperactivity but it's not mania, you may be experiencing a form of hypomania and you should talk to a doctor about your concerns.

Hypomania typically occurs in Bipolar Type II disorder, which is less severe than the manic episodes in Bipolar I. I’ve experienced both manic and hypomanic episodes in my life due to medication interactions, and they felt very different from ADHD hyperactivity. It's not just derailing mile-a-minute thoughts, it's something usually completely mood-altering and out of control feeling followed by devastating crashes.

If you're on any medications and are worried you are experiencing something like this, you need to talk to your doctor. You might just need a dosage tweak, or you might be better off on a different medication altogether. Also, make a thorough check of any and all medications you are taking to check for any interactions.

I'm on a cocktail of meds for my MCAS, which if I were to combine them with the SSRI one of my doctors wants me to try, would result in serotonin syndrome. The doctor didn't notice this, but the pharmacist sure as shit did!

Some people (ask me how I know) even develop mild hypomania from overusing the sunlamps used to treat SAD (link), which is why brands like Verilux now include warnings in their leaflets about not using the lamps for more than X amount of time a day. Thankfully it goes away once you stop overusing the lamps.

Which actually brings me to something you asked last time about being unable to sleep at night. Insomnia and delayed sleep phase cycles are not uncommon in ADHD. This is likely because our circadian rhythm is thought to be out of whack (link).

You also mentioned having racing thoughts at night too, which is not uncommon either with hyperactivity. I find if I get overstimulated before trying to sleep, I’ll end up lying there awake with what I like to call “radio ADHD” playing in my head. It can range from snippets of songs stuck on repeat, conversations, things I’ve watched on TV, arguments, or if something is happening the next day, fixating on not being late for it. Hence, I end up getting no sleep because you can’t accidentally sleep in if you don’t sleep. *jazz hands of despair.*

Sometimes I find Radio ADHD soothing if it’s fixating on something chill, but it can get annoying fast and even distressing if I’m tired and can’t “change the station.” (I’d say “shut it off,” but as of yet, I’ve never been able to do that. Medication helps some people with this, as can looking into “sleep hygiene” if you haven’t already.) Conversely, if I’m bored or something is too stressful, I will 100% fall asleep because my brain would literally rather just turn off than do something I don’t want to do or is a low dopamine reward task.

Brains are fun.

Anyway, I uh, I am not sure if any of this is useful to you, but I hope it helps. Mostly I'm just repeating back what my specialist said when I asked her about it lol. Good luck, and I hope you figure things out.

----

*NB: It's important to note that ADHD and Bipolar Disorder can be comorbid. It's not a one or the other situation. I’m just throwing it out there in case hearing that helps someone else pursue the proper diagnosis!

[stopeatingwhales]

second chance x damon albarn

i'm surprised i haven't written anything about dilf damon yet bc i've been so obsessed with him recently wtf. anyways enjoy x

i might do a second part to this, idk yet tho

Pairing: dilf damon x reader

Warnings: none :)

Word count: 2.786

Requested by anon <3

༉‧₊˚✧

“Do you want to come over?” I abruptly asked, the silence pouring through the line deafening my ears as my fingers toyed with the hem of my shirt. The desperation and moment that led to me ringing my ex-boyfriend at what was nearing eight in the evening seemed as though it was a fever dream, the words rolling off my tongue so delicately out of apprehension only a fragment of that trance. In all honesty, I had no idea as to why I rang Damon, or to what extent the string of thoughts guided me towards the action of calling - we had been broken up for around a year, and it came as a much larger shock that I was able to muster the amount of courage to tap his contact on my phone and attentively listen to the thunderous rings as the landlines attempted to connect, instead of quickly shutting the phone off before he was able to receive a missed call alert.

“Uh, um - are you sure?” he questioned, the stutter escaping his mouth insinuated that he was just as dazed at my sudden offer as me, the demeanour of his voice accentuating the idea that he was entirely finished with the ephemeral chapter of his life which had me intertwined inside as his partner; that he had gotten over me quicker than the momentary period our relationship lasted. My heart sank, realising how indigent I sounded, as if I had never gotten over him throughout our time apart - which I did, learning to live with myself was easier than I had thought it was going to be; the weeks leading up to the breakup stemming from the distance we shared apart due to Damon consistently being on tour and never providing enough time for me, for us, to consider one another as more than romantically acquainted, though that didn’t mean the gap in my heart had been sealed shut, it was simply brimmed with other, unspecial fragments of things which could only distract the thought of him for so long, until I’d discover myself adventuring for something else to hyperfixate my thoughts upon, though he always returned.

“Yeah…” My voice trailed off, so quiet that I struggled to sustain the volume. Though we had only just spoken, the trance that he had obtained over me for all those months we were with one accord, returned in an instant, having the same rush that a recollection of memories, pastimes that were once forgotten, crumbled to dust, had been reborn; ignited into a new bloom in the height of a harvest, resulting in the scolding of yourself upon how you granted the ability to forget such a thing. It seemed as if all those thoughts, ideations convinced to the point that I had gotten over him, were myriads of masks attempting to say it enough to believe it. Without a doubt, I had never overcome the strains of the acquaintance we shared - and I could only hope he felt the same way.

I heard his throat clear itself before his voice echoed through the telephone speakers once again. “Alright… I’ll be there in a bit.” he mumbled, those words bringing a soft, yet apprehensive grin to my lips. I had no idea what I was doing, or why, but it felt right.

It felt as if only the sum of a few minutes passed when I heard a distinguishable knock on the door; one that had not rang through my ears for an interminable amount of time, one that was able to send me months back in time to a period where he had significantly been a figurehead dictating the story. As I jolted up to answer the door, it felt as if things were normal again, back to how they used to be so many nights previous; me waiting for him to come home after he spent a long day at the recording studio, crafting what could only be assumed was the pure essence of talent, unlocking the door to allow my arms to envelop into an embrace cherished with affection and warmth, proving he longed to have my presence just as much as I craved his. Once my eyes met the sight of him, my heart dropped at the overwhelming feeling of my reminiscing about what once was, the nostalgia for a moment so authentically shaped with what could only be described as true love, my body yearning to relish in the sensation of his arms protectively wrapped around my body, a feeling which could only fulfill one’s heart with all that it desires. "Hi..." I trailed off, stunned by how similar, yet different his appearance was from when we last saw one another. His hair had the same shape, though it seemed a little shorter, his eyebags still prominent on his features, though it seemed as if they had sagged down slightly, posing the idea of whether he had been sleeping alright. His torso still adorned shirts with dark colours, amplified with one of his leather jackets which only made me more attracted to him. Widening the door, he set foot into the apartment, nodding his head lightly as a greeting. Although I was very elated to the fact that he was in my apartment, it felt eerie having him back here after so long, stepping foot into the space that was once served merely as a homely and secure space where we both could simply live and enjoy our time together, no distractions included.

Once I had followed him into the living space, he took a seat onto the couch facing the television. I attempted to make my footsteps omit as little noise as possible, as if to avoid damaging the awkward silence that had been shared between the pair of us. It went without saying that neither of us knew how to break the ice, or where this was going to head. One could only hope that the outcome of this meeting was positive. “Do you want something to drink?” I asked, ushering over to the cabinet adjacent to the television, supplied with all sorts of alcoholic beverages in which I had not touched, simply there as a point of manners to offer when somebody had come over. “White?” I offered, pulling out an almost-full bottle of white wine. I knew he hated it.

"You know I’ve always hated white." he mumbled, a small smile playing upon his lips. Something about that little grin plastered on his lips made my stomach flip and turn, welcoming a swarm of butterflies to accentuate the nervous pit that had formed within myself. The intense feelings reminded me of the same bewilderment your body undergoes during the first date; there is such a raw attraction to somebody that you know far too little about, but you are so hypnotised by their presence it is as if they’re the only thing in the world that matters, to the point that they obnoxiously overtake your mind, every little thought occupied with their name, wondering whether they may like such and such, like an infection spreading without you knowing such cure for it. The atmosphere was intense, carrying the same ambience of two strangers meeting for the first time in an isolated space, though there was also a refreshing element of familiarity that neither of us wanted to admit that we appreciated so deeply.

"Red?" I asked, snatching the half empty bottle as I placed the other wine bottle back in its designated place, turning my head back to fix my gaze onto Damon, raising my eyebrows as a form of derise for the drink. Nodding his head in response, I quickly took two glasses from the cabinet, brimming them both with the alcoholic liquid before slowly making my way to sit next to him on the sofa, handing him one of the glasses as he thanked me in response. The same devilish silence echoed in the room once again as we granted the situation to truly sink in - thankfully alcohol was present. As I took a sip of the beverage, I tried to gulp down as much liquid as possible before I spoke once again. "So... how have you been?"

"Good... Just came off tour actually. Was a really successful one." he replied, his voice laced with a slight tone of doubt, edging the regret of so eagerly returning back into a place that was once so attached to his occupancy. He carried on talking about how the tour had been, my head subconsciously nodding, attentive to what he was talking about. Each time he had told me about something new they had added, or something they had changed surrounding the live performance set-up, it never failed to blow me away. Him and Jamie together, working on such a creative idea and putting it to life on stage was truly something out of rare virtuosity, disregarding the lengthy old ramblings from Damon almost every night he had returned home about how much Jamie had pissed him off, having a petty argument as if it was a be or end all in their friendship. It was actually a good form of entertainment, seeing how riled up Damon had gotten simply because of something that Jamie joked in an interview.

Once he had finished talking, our eyes connected, uncertainty clouded in his eyes as he searched for the reason behind him needing to come over. "Y/N, why did you ask me to come over?" He said, abrupt, almost as if those words had been lingering at the back of his mind the entire time we had been in one another’s acquaintance; the ease of the sting of words rolling off his tongue softly implied that, perhaps a try to prevent the harshness of the asking from offending me in the slightest. "We haven't seen each other for a year, why now?"

Both gazes never dared to break contact as if we had attempted to communicate telepathically - the ideation of instigating a conversation as awkward as how this had become, the two of us simply wanting the ground to swallow us whole. His gaze had the ability to put me into a trance upon which I wouldn’t be able to think of anything else except for the utter magnificence that was birthed into his loving eyes. Inhaling sharply, I tried to collect the thoughts in my brain that had been travelling in all directions, searching for all sorts of different possibilities that the conversation could reach. "Can we give it a second chance?" I asked absentmindedly, the realisation of what had just rolled off my tongue not settling in my mind until his eyes widened, speechless and shocked at my sudden questioning.

Sighing, he cocked his head to the side. “Love, we didn't work out the first time..." he began, my heart dropping to my stomach as the thought of him breaking my heart again entered my mind. His expression quickly softened once he saw my face drain colour, explaining all that he needed to know about how I had coped since he had left the picture. "I don't want to hurt you again."

Breaking away from the stare, I gawked at the dark shades of red that had adorned the transparent glass clasped in my palm. Holding in my emotions wasn’t going to do me any justice, and since he was here, it would not make sense for me to stupidly avoid the whole reasoning behind me needing him inside my apartment after so long. “It’s been so hard trying to get over you,” I mumbled, my voice almost inaudible out of embarrassment, though I knew he could hear me. “I need you.”

What I didn’t see from my shameful gaze at the ground, was the miniscule beam that broke out across Damon’s features. What I was unaware of, my body encompassed in such a impotent state of pure isolation, was that Damon had been as dependent on hearing those words escaping my mouth before he could admit the same to himself. Though it had all been answered to me as he softly brought his arm to caress my arm, gently squeezing the skin as a form of reassurance, implying the notion that he understood, that he felt the same way, after all this time. We broke up not because we lost feelings, but because the emotions we carried for one another were too strong to handle, too intense to progress with, that when he was gone for those long hours it had left me in such a stupor of helplessness and melancholy that it was unbearable to handle without it tarnishing my health. Unsurprisingly, at this point we knew where the conversation was headed; my desires to be swathed in his arms once again that I had tried so hard to banish to the back of my mind, to the depths of my distant memories in which by reliving such a hug came flooding back, my body leaned into his touch almost instantaneously, a subconscious reflex that I had craved, such an embrace that no other person could give, the mere side hug from him was able to banish all the pain that I had tried so diligently to mask away for the past few months.

We sat there for a short while, taking in the moment as it had played throughout, our breathing syncing together as comfort relished in the atmosphere, our minds now finally at peace while all the conflict that had battled our minds over the time we weren’t together. "Let me come on tour with you." I said, my head resting against his shoulder.

A chuckle erupted out of his throat. “It’s not that easy love.”

"Why can't it be? You're literally the frontman!" I exclaimed, lifting my head off his shoulder to connect eyes with him. "Damon, it would be so fun!" I exclaimed, attempting to encourage him.

It was as if things had mended back together, all the cracks in the pavements had been glued together to mend the time lost, as if it had never occurred. Through all the hardship I had faced trying to find the remedy to my heartache, I was dumbfounded to realise that it had been sitting in front of me, at the top of my phone’s contact list, right in front of my eyes this entire time. His eyes were calling out to me, enveloping my heart in comfort and warmth, the hunger radiating out eager to the ideation of starting anew and preserving the time in which we had lost, building new memories, unfastening the lock on the clock dictating the length of the relationship, allowing it to elongate, carry on as long as we could. My heart brimmed with homeliness - the house I was inside finally feeling normal to me once again.

"I'll see what I can do," he grins, the beautiful sight causing a small smile to erupt on my face as my body melted back into his arms once again. "No promises though."

It felt nice to wake up next to someone again the next morning, on the mattress that once was a carcass of many tears of sadness and melancholy, authentically conveyed by the essence of nihilism embodied from isolation, the kind of philosophical beliefs one could only develop an understanding towards subsequent to irrational thinking as the hours fell still, leaving you sat there, reliving the last moments from your memory bank with the significant other you had soiled ends with, a person who had supported you from the very beginning, even when things formed a bitter congestion to the relationship devoured by both participants, perhaps from the acceleration of argumentation shared, or the distance that had started to weave its way between, leaving you both stranded to conclude, as if you were both on separate, desolate islands fighting against the starvation of progressing through your lives and starting anew, departing from the old knots and attachments formed once epitomising pure adoration and love, though over time spawning to be the offspring of the devil. A person whom you knew would make your bed every morning, cradle you in his arms at the darkest hours to baptise the negativity coiled in your brain, whispering what seems like sweet nothings, merely sounding like soft raspy groans due to them being exhausted out of their mind, but you knew they were saying something to you, you could hear it, acknowledge it in a language that nobody else was able to understand. I relished in concession that he who lay beside me was the one that bestowed and epitomised all the things that I once lacked a night before. A lover.

[gaycrouton]

I love your writing! Any chance will do more of Mulder sex therapist?

HELL YEAH MY DUDE!! I’ve been saving this ask for so long, but here we go!! I will update this story every time there is a new season of Sex Education. So lets all hope I have a chance to write more! As always, thank you to @admiralty-xfd for the beta!

Here’s the link to chapter one

For the first time in seven years, Dana Scully had no idea where her vibrator was. The pink, compact friend that had been tucked in an easy-to-reach location at all times, all over the U.S, was missing. 

And she didn’t care.

She was certain her little buddy had gotten lost sometime during her initial ‘therapy session’ with Mulder two weeks ago, but she didn’t have the slightest urge to find it. Mulder offered to look for it, but she told him it didn’t matter anymore.

“I hope you don’t think you need to stop masturbating on my account,” he’d reassured. “In fact I encourage it.”

But it wasn’t that. She’d spent years coming with that toy. Scully remembered vividly all the fantasies she’d enacted using it, pretending it was Mulder’s hand touching her, nuzzling into the pillows around her as if the firmness against her back or underneath her pelvis was actually Mulder’s body, desperate to push into her own. She still loved her vibrator, but she had years of human-induced orgasms to catch up on.

She had an inkling Mulder felt the same because she’d never come so much in her entire life as she did with him. His fingers, his palms, his mouth, his cock, even that one time with his knee. She was surprised she could even walk right anymore. She’d never had a lover so in-tune with her body, so responsive to her needs; you’d think they were his own. 

Scully just wished he’d let her reciprocate in kind.

Mulder was satisfied, of that she had no doubt. She’d never seen him as happy or carefree as he was nowadays. But for every instance of him going above and beyond to pleasure her, she was met with a ‘that’s okay’ or ‘wait, I want to try something with you’. Sometimes he’d relent if she told him how much she wanted to focus on him for a moment, but she could see behind his haze of pleasure that he was focusing on whether or not she was comfortable and when he’d be able to return to lavishing her. Her body appreciated it, but there was so much she wanted to do to him. So much he deserved to have done to him.

She didn’t understand why he was so reluctant to just enjoy himself without worrying about her. Well, it was kind of in character for Mulder. Maybe she was reading it wrong, but that’s how it felt. Did he think she was going to leave him? Or that this was conditional based on their first time having revolved around her issues? It made her uncomfortable to think that he was worried she’d up and leave if he wasn’t doing enough.

Maybe it was his hyperfixation. She’d seen it in play many times, and it usually held this much intensity. Was her pleasure his newest fascination? Probably. Maybe he was just always like this with other lovers. But why?

“Penny for your thoughts?” he asked from the opposite side of the couch, pulling her out of her mental contemplations.

Lately they were usually at one of their apartments or the other. They were a bit like teenagers when it came to their excitement at their newfound intimacy. Sneaking around, stealing kisses, part of her wanted to roll her eyes at the juvenility of it all, but she was enjoying it far too much. 

One of her favorite recent developments was the game they’d play. Pretending all day like they weren’t going to go home together until one of them caved and asked. Asking was a role usually taken on by Mulder, as he found a lot of enjoyment in finding new ways to ask her. Asking her to come over through a crossword puzzle he’d made was a little silly, but it was cute nonetheless.

Tonight they were at his place, and she’d spent the whole time mentally formulating a way to bring up the question of ‘why won’t you accept my love as easily as you give me yours?’ She didn’t want to scare him; Mulder had the tendency to be as unnecessarily self-deprecating as possible and she didn’t want to give him any reason to go down that rabbit hole.

She turned to him, the Shiner bottle in her hands clammy with neglect. “I was just thinking of our first time,” she replied.

A familiar thousand-watt smile beamed at her as he waggled his eyebrows. “Oh?” he prompted.

“Mhm,” she nodded, slipping a leg underneath herself as she turned to face him on the couch. “I still can’t believe I didn’t know you were an underground sex therapist for so many years,” she mused.

“I’m a man of many secrets,” he joked.

“You tell me everything,” she retorted.

He nodded in agreement. “That’s true. In my defense, you accidentally found one of Frohike’s porn tapes in the office in your third month of working with me. I didn’t want you to think I was a total pervert.”

She rolled her eyes goodnaturedly and teased, “Does Frohike know he has a stash of sex tapes and nudie mags in your office and your home?”

He gasped lightly in mock-offense and replied, “Scully, you snooped?”

“Looking for towels in your hallway closet was not snooping. It was an awful hiding place, Mulder.”

“That’s fair,” he conceded with a smile. “Does it bother you?”

“No, me being mad at your tapes would be-” she started.

“No. I mean, that I didn’t tell you,” he interrupted.

She shook her head immediately. “Not at all. I just think it’s interesting. I’d never talked that candidly about my sexual history as I had then,” she answered.

He smiled, inevitably remembering all of the embarrassing things she’d confessed. “Did you find it helpful at all?” he asked, grabbing the remote and turning the TV down a bit so there could be more focus on the conversation.

“What do you think?” she laughed, looking at him playfully. He smiled back at her bashfully, and she made her move. “Have you ever done it?”

“Done what?” he asked, unsure of her meaning.

“You were the sex therapist, but have you ever talked as openly about yourself as your ‘patients’ have?” she clarified.

He looked down at his pants shyly and she knew her answer before he even spoke. “Uh, not really. I never really had anything substantial to say,” he shrugged.

“I doubt that, Mulder,” she chastised. He shrugged again as if to dismiss the topic, but she wasn’t done. “I want to hear your answers.”

“To what questions?” he prompted.

“Well, like the ones you asked me,” she answered.

“But, Scully,” he started lowly, leaning into her as if confessing something. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m very sexually happy as of late. I don’t need therapy.”

She grinned at his words, but pressed again. “But I want to know more about that aspect of yourself, Mulder. You got to hear about me defiling my childhood teddy bear for the sake of getting off. It’s only fair,” she replied.

He nodded thoughtfully at that and leaned back comfortably against the couch cushion. “So you want to be the doctor today, Dr. Scully?” he asked with a playfully sensual emphasis on her title.

“I do,” she nodded, excited he was taking her up on this.

“So, what would you like to know?” he prompted, turning to face her.

She thought for a moment, trying to think of the phrasing of the first question he’d asked her when the situation was reversed. “Describe your first orgasm, in as much detail as you can.” 

“It was similar to yours, actually,” he began. “A sensation I didn’t understand, but was curious about. As I’m sure you know, Doctor Scully, when I was really young I had some dry orgasms because my body wasn’t mature enough. It was never really ‘masturbation’ though. It was just me rubbing myself all around my bed until I shivered.”

“Shivered?” she chuckled.

He laughed with her and nodded his head. “Yeah, I had no idea. Then a few years later I decided to try and jack off. I knew the basic concept, but I’d never executed it myself.”

“What did you masturbate to?” she asked. “I’m presuming you didn’t have your tapes back then?”

“Don’t laugh,” he warned.

“No promises.”

“Mrs. Brady,” he admitted sheepishly.

Her mouth dropped open in amused shock, bust she kept in the laugh that threatened to escape. “Really? I took you as more of a Farrah Fawcett red swimsuit poster type of guy.”

“Well, that was definitely a heavy feature of my masturbation sessions in my later years, but my first love was Mrs. Brady,” he laughed.

“Was it the Hawaii episode?” she asked.

“It was that episode where the kids tried to scare Alice after having a battle between themselves, but the subplot was Mrs. Brady making a bust of Mr. Brady’s head out of clay to submit for an art competition,” he explained.

“I didn’t know you were such a fan of the arts,” she deadpanned.

“Ha. Ha. I don’t know what it was. Hell, she was in a green smock for most of the episode, but there was something so loving about her. One minute I was watching it, the next my extremely attractive 70s neon short-shorts were tented up to my belly button,” he shrugged.

She made a mental note to ask him for embarrassing photos of those shorts, but in the meantime, “Then what?”

He shifted in his seat and looked chagrined at the idea of finishing the story. “I went to my room and did the deed.”

“No, no. Mulder. Details. What aren’t you telling me?” she asked with a smile.

“It’s so embarrassing,” he laughed. She took pity on him, remembering a similar situation where he’d extended her that kindness. “It’s okay if you don’t want to answer. I don’t want to make you feel bad if it’s-”

But much to the relief of her curiosity, he shook his head with a meek smile. “No, it’s okay. Just bear in mind that I was young with no brothers or friends to give me advice. I was clueless.” 

“No judgement here,” she stated honestly.

“So I went into my room, locked the doors, laid in my bed, and took it out,” he stated, almost becoming entranced by the scene he was setting up. “I just played with it with my fingers and my palm, moving the skin up and down. I could tell something was different because it was wetter than usual.”

“Precum?” she asked.

“Precum,” he confirmed. “It also felt like it had a heartbeat, which was really freaky to me.” He licked his lips and took in a deep breath and she had a feeling the embarrassing part was coming up. Then, from out of the blue, he asked, “Do you know what edging is?”

“Almost bringing yourself to orgasm but stopping right before so you can cool down and build yourself back up. Some say it creates a more intense orgasm while prolonging foreplay,” she answered.

“Exactly,” he nodded. “I didn’t know that’s what I was doing, and I didn’t really even mean to be doing it. I just didn’t understand what was coming with the orgasm. No pun intended.”

“What do you mean?” 

“It was my first real time. The only thing I could compare the sensation to was having to pee. Every time I was about to come, I thought I was going to piss myself. So for a good hour I was just edging,” he laughed awkwardly.

“Holy shit,” she balked. “As a kid?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn. Why didn’t you go to the bathroom?”

He pursed his lips a little bit before nodding slowly. “Well… I did. But the reason I didn’t was because the only bathroom was connected to my parents’ room.”

“Oh no…” she cringed.

“So I all but ran in, locked both bathroom doors, and went to the toilet, where luckily a Diner’s Club Magazine was there with a nice looking woman on the cover,” he laughed. “So I ran the water and resumed touching myself and within a few pumps of allowing myself to release, I came.”

“That wasn’t embarrassing, Mulder. We’ve all masturbated to things we’re not proud of,” she reassured, squeezing his hand. She saw his face cringe and she knew there was more. “What?”

“I didn’t know about the ejaculation portion of an orgasm since all of mine had been dry. It was a lot, and I was so scared by the come and the power of my orgasm that I thought I was dying and I just screamed. Not words like you, just an ugly, guttural scream,” he admitted. “My dad burst down the door before I had a chance to even realize I was still on this mortal coil.”

Scully’s face turned into a mask of sympathetic horror. “I’m so sorry.”

“What made it worse was that the page of the magazine had turned so I came all over a McDonald’s ad,” he admitted honestly, but not able to hold in his laughter at the ridiculousness of the situation.

“Not Ronald!” she gasped in mock offense.

“Ronald, The Hamburglar, Grimace, all of them,” he laughed. “My mom never let us eat there again.”

“Is that why you always take us to Wendy’s?” she asked.

He nodded in embarrassment. “I still have shame everytime I see those golden arches.”

This was absolutely not the avenue she thought they’d be exploring when she started this, and while this was a new realization that did inform her on her partner’s eccentricities, she still wanted to get back to her main goal. But she wasn’t really sure how to bounce back from such a story. “Did you masturbate after that? You know, after you realized the Diner’s Club hadn’t killed you?”

“No, Scully. I abstained. I have never touched my penis in two decades. The porn tapes and nudie mags are for decoration,” he deadpanned.

She threw back her head and started laughing and by the time she regrouped she saw him staring at her with mirth in his eyes and a wide smile tugging his lips upwards. “I’m sorry, dumb question. So your shame didn’t keep you from it?”

“No,” he shook his head, still smiling. “I just made sure it was when they weren’t home and learned to suppress my sounds when they were.”

“When did you achieve orgasm by someone else?” she asked before seeing his smirk and adding, “What?”

“Are you copying all of the questions I asked you?” 

“I am,” she nodded playfully, bringing her other leg up onto the couch so she was sitting cross-legged across him. 

“Um…” he contemplated, thinking back. “A school dance when I was fifteen,” he nodded.  “A ball would probably be the more accurate word.”

“You came at a ball?” she asked in shock.

He laughed and waved his hand to dismiss her. “No, the night of the ball. It was a county wide thing. One of those pretentious things to make sure our parent’s children had manners and what not. I went alone, but a girl from a Catholic high school started making moves on me.”

Scully always forgot that Mulder came from money. He never acted like it. His upbringing only ever came out through the polite, chivalrous gestures he’d direct her way. “She kept dancing too close to me. I guess she hadn’t heard to save room for Jesus,” he joked. “I ended up getting a boner and she told me she could help. She took me to some abandoned room and gave me a handjob.”

“The snake handler,” she teased, remembering an offhand joke he’d made a few cases ago.

He nodded his head in affirmation. “Yep. I’d kissed a few girls before that, but my reputation of being the weird kid with the missing sister usually got the better of me and they’d leave before anything happened. That was my first time having a girl touch me like that and I came really fast.”

She frowned at the reminder that his ‘Spooky’ status had been a constant in his life. She couldn’t imagine how hard that type of ridicule would be for a boy who was recently traumatized during one of the most sensitive stages of life. “Did you see her after that?” she asked.

“Uh, no. I didn’t really know how to please a woman, so reciprocity didn’t even dawn on me. I just… I told her thank you and gave her a hug,” he admitted with chagrin.

“Awwh,” Scully beamed. It was embarrassing, but equally endearing.

“Well, she wasn’t thrilled I didn’t return the favor, but she was even more mad that I accidentally came on her dress. She punched me in the face,” he chuckled lightly.

“Oh,” Scully chirped.

“Yeah.”

There was a lull in the conversation before she thought of something to move on with. “Did anything else happen before you became a sex expert at Oxford? Or was that where you flourished?” 

“Well, I wouldn’t call myself a sex expert or say that I flourished per-se, but thank you. But in high school, I only had two other noteworthy experiences. One was another girl from the Catholic school who gave me my first blow job. I accidentally thrust my hips weird and she almost threw up. I felt really bad and she was really mad,” he explained.

Scully had no actual therapist experience, but it was obvious to her that his experiences with girls and getting pleasure in his formative years were marred with shame and guilt. Was that why he wasn’t concerned with handjobs, blowjobs, or any real attention to his body? It evoked the same reaction as whenever he apparently drove past a McDonalds? “What was the other noteworthy one?”

“A girl who lived down the street from me, Millie. Our families were friends and she knew me before Samantha was taken. She was a few years older than me, but one summer day when I was seventeen and she was twenty, she invited me to come to her place for a drink. Her parents were out of town and one thing led to another, but we had sex,” he told her, for the first time this evening he seemed to recall this encounter with a small smile on his face. 

“Was it good?” she asked, eager for him to share a happy memory.

“Well, the very first time wasn’t. Millie had far more experience than I did, and I naturally didn’t last very long. She just… she said I had a lot of potential. She was honest and said I was average, but it was out of ignorance not out of lack of trying,” he stated, leaning forward to grab another beer out of their six pack. 

“Not out of lack of trying?” she repeated.

“I was so scared from the other times that I wanted to to be good for her. But I was just honestly grabbing her chest blindly with no regard to anything, and I just-” he broke off to laugh for a moment before adding, “I wasn’t focusing on the right places at all. I was just kind of groping around and hoping for the best,” he admitted. 

She was about to ask him another question before he continued, “Millie told me to meet her at her place at the same time every week. So of course I did, and each week she’d teach me another thing to do. How to eat a woman out, how to find the g-spot, how to fondle breasts, all of it. I learned so much that summer, and it was her lessons I took with me to Oxford. The few girls I was with afterward seemed to reap the benefits of her guidance.”

“Still are,” she joked in earnest. 

He smiled at her and took a swig of his beer. Mulder really was the best lover she’d ever had. He made her feel things she’d never even felt before. Thanks, Millie. “Do you miss her?” she asked.

“No, I sometimes run into her when I go back home, but we were polar opposites. She’s married to a woman now and I think they intend to move,” he replied.

“Hmm,” she nodded peacefully.

“So,” he prompted, sitting up with a teasing smile. “What’s my prognosis, Doc?” 

“My slightly biased, unbiased opinion?” she asked, waiting for him to agree. “I think your primary focus in sex is always your partner. Which from first hand experience is phenomenal, but I think it comes at the sake of your own enjoyment,” she answered.

“You think I don’t enjoy myself?” he asked, the prior trace of humor in his voice being replaced by concern as his brow furrowed.

She rolled her eyes and rubbed her foot against his leg in a gesture of reassurance. “I know you enjoy yourself, but I don’t think you ever let your own pleasure take centerfield.”

“Keep spouting baseball references and you can see my pleasure in play in no time,” he joked.

“Deflect with jokes all you want, but you know I’m right,” she replied, leaning forward and taking the beer from his hands and taking a swig.

“I’m not sure I understand your point?” he admitted.

Deciding to forego all pretenses of tact, she blurted, “You never let me reciprocate.”

“Wh-yes I do,” he stammered, surprised.

“No, you are always so focused on me that you put yourself second,” she stated firmly.

“But I’m happy, I don’t need anything else but to know you’re enjoying yourself,” he murmured, placing his hand on her calf and rubbing it smoothly.

“Every man enjoys attention, Mulder. I want to make you feel the way you make me feel,” she revealed, her tone coming out a bit more seriously than she’d meant.

He leaned over as best as he could so he could place a loving kiss to her lips. She closed her eyes and kissed him back, enjoying the newness of their open intimacy. After a beat, he pulled back and whispered, “Scully, I don’t even have words to describe the way you make me feel.”

She smiled and felt her face flush under his direct attention. She had no doubt he meant every word he said, but she still felt like nothing was changing. “What if pleasing you is something that turns me on?” she posed.

“Then I suspect that you must be in a constant state of arousal,” he replied. 

She let a little huff of laughter exhale through her nose before leaning forward and pressing another kiss to his lips. He was about to reach his hand around her head before she leaned back, staying close enough that she could feel his breath on her lips. “I want to make love to you,” she whispered.

“I’m all yours,” he replied, leaning in again only to be stopped by her hand on his chest.

“I want you to let me have all the control. Let me be in charge,” she requested.

He stood up slowly, taking caution to avoid knocking her off the couch. He offered her his hand and pulled her to her feet. “I suppose the laws of physics won’t let you carry me to the bedroom?” he joked with feigned disappointment. 

She walked past him, making her way down his hallway to his room. “I have other ways of getting you there,” she teased, whipping her sweater off over her head and tossing it to the ground to reveal her completely bare back to him.

She stepped out of her pants and over the threshold of his room simultaneously, and was pleased when she heard him walk up behind her. Though, as soon as she heard the now-familiar sound of his belt being undone, she spun around and grabbed his hands. 

Mulder paused his motions and looked down at her with a cocked eyebrow. She leaned up on her toes to press an open-mouthed kiss to his lips, throwing her arms around his neck so that her underwear clad body was pressed completely flush to his bare chest. She felt her nipples strain against his coarse chest hair. He extracted his hands from in between them and placed his palms on her bare back, pressing her to him while his hands roamed her skin. 

She smiled into the kiss when she felt his erection twitch against her belly. Leaning back, she watched as his eyes fluttered open slowly, heavy from lust and anticipation. Easing herself back onto her heels, she grabbed his belt and started unbucking it. “I want to do this,” she whispered.

He kept his hands on her while she worked, moving them to her shoulders, then down her biceps. She struggled a bit getting the belt out of the loops, partially glad Mulder’s hands kept her from stumbling back, but he let her do it all by herself. She tossed the belt to the ground carelessly and returned her attention to his fly. She unbuttoned him and pulled down the zipper, feeling a surge of arousal in her core as she felt the heat of him radiating through the fabric of his boxers. 

She hooked her fingers under both waistbands and dragged them down swifty, staying at his feet for an extra moment to help him step out of his socks. When she stood back up, she was met with a smile and Mulder’s hands going straight for the elastic of her underwear. “Wait,” she demanded, grabbing his hands.

Scully felt his hands start to pull away instinctively at the word, a look of worry passing his face as she held his fingers. She looked up at him with a confident smile and stated, “It’s my turn. I want you to just lay back and let me do everything.” She gestured to the bed as she said this, and was glad when he finally took the direction. With a few brief strides, he threw himself on the bed and laid in the middle on his back. 

“This is how I like my Mulder,” she mused with a pleased grin, taking in the sight of him under the dull yellow glow of his lamp. 

He smiled at her praise and squirmed restlessly on the bed. She walked over to the end of the bed, so that she was standing in between his legs and patted the edge. “Come sit here,” she demanded. 

Mulder followed her instructions, scooting himself so his legs were hanging over the edge with her in between them. He absentmindedly raised a hand to her hip and ran his thumb over the skin. She knew she wasn’t being firm in the rules of her own game, but she let him touch her a bit more like that before easing herself to her knees. The hardwood underneath the carpet creaked under her weight as she adjusted herself so that her elbows were on either leg and her breasts were on display. 

She grabbed his swollen erection in her hands and was rewarded with a sharp intake of breath from Mulder. This was one of the first times she’d been able to examine his cock so closely, and while the word struck her as odd for the situation, she couldn’t help but think it was beautiful. He was big, above average by a couple inches, and he had the slightest curve that always felt amazing inside of her. 

She pumped her hand up and down slowly, watching his skin stretch slightly as she did it. He thrust into her hand lightly in reflex and quickly muttered a soft, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. You’re so sexy, Mulder,” she replied, looking up at him only to see he was staring down at her with full rapture.

Scully smiled at him sweetly before turning her attention back to the matter at hand. She licked her lips and slowly moved her mouth towards the bottom of his shaft, sticking out her tongue and placing it at his base and dragging it up slowly to his tip. “Fuck,” he murmured reverently as her tongue swirled around his tip.

She was just about to take him in her mouth when she felt his hand on her shoulder. “Scully, you don’t have to-”

The fact that other women had treated this as an obligation was evident in his voice. He didn’t want to sit here and have her do this under the presumption she got nothing out of it. Mulder clearly didn’t understand the power of having a man reduced to nothing but gasps and prayers just by a few well placed licks and a bit of suction. The thought of what she could do to him brought on another wave of arousal. She could feel her own wetness starting to seep through her lips and onto the cotton of her underwear.

She stopped him with a firm look and purred, “But I want to.” To punctuate her sentence, she licked him tip to base and watched as goosebumps erupted on his arms. 

He nodded and placed his hand back onto the bed. Taking the go ahead, she leaned forward, blowing on the wet trail she’d created lightly before plunging her mouth down on him. “Oh my god,” he rasped, tensing beneath her as she bobbed her head up and down. 

Mulder was bigger than any of her prior partners and she could feel him hitting the back of her throat while she still had a few inches left to go. Easing herself higher on her knees, she took a deep breath through her nose and relaxed the back of her throat, resulting in her lips hitting his pubic mound as he went all the way in. “Holy shit,” he moaned, clutching onto the bedspread. 

She could feel tears start to gather on her lashline in reaction to the unnatural sensation, but she ignored it and continued her actions, letting her tongue squirm against him as she deep-throated him. Scully could feel him trying his hardest to keep his hips firmly on the bed to avoid causing her any discomfort and she was grateful.

When she needed to take a breath, she eased up and gasped in a quick lung-full air, her subsequent breaths coming out as shuddered pants. She felt Mulder’s hand come up and brush her hair back behind her ear as he stroked her cheek. While he did this, she continued to play with his tip, running her tongue playfully under his head, causing him to gasp. “Scully,” he whispered, a drop of precum leaking out as he spoke. 

She leaned back up and resumed her prior movements, letting him slide all the way down her throat as she rotated her head, letting his cock brush against every surface. His breathing was shallow and she could hear him moaning with every new movement. 

After a few minutes of alternating between different techniques while Mulder demonstrated his surprisingly enduring stamina, he put his hand on her shoulder again. “Scully,” he said in a shaky breath.

She let him bob out of her mouth, a thick mixture of precum and saliva trailing from him to her mouth in a lewd string before snapping onto her chin. Her face was flushed and she knew her makeup was smudged. “Hmm?” she rasped, catching her breath.

“I won’t be able to hold on for much longer if you keep doing that,” he admitted. She laughed and stood up on shaky legs, using his legs for support. When she was on her feet she heard him whisper “Holy shit,” and she looked at him and saw he was staring at her crotch.

“What?” she panted, leaning over to see before being stopped by a hand on her hip. Mulder brought his other hand up and rubbed the cotton front of her panties, making a shiver run up her spine.

“You’re soaking wet,” he murmured, amazed. “I can see it through your underwear and on your thighs, and I haven’t even touched you.”

She grabbed his face with both of her hands and drew his attention to her face, his hand still idly rubbing her through the dampened fabric. “It turns me on to do this, Mulder. Attention directed towards you doesn’t mean it does nothing for me,” she explained, leaning down to kiss him when she was done. 

She broke apart after a moment and beamed down at him with a predatory gleam in her eye. “Now sit against the headboard.”

Mulder did as he was told and she quickly discarded her underwear down her legs, shivering at the trail of slick wetness she felt rub against her inner thigh. She got on the bed, making eye contact with Mulder as she crawled on all fours to him. The usual self-consciousness she’d felt with other partners when she was this bold and wanton was gone with Mulder. He looked at her like she was giving him the best present he’d ever received by simply loving him. In her heart she knew it was probably true.

Scully didn’t sit in his lap immediately. Instead, she kept her head at chest level and leaned forward to playfully lick one of his nipples before bringing it into her mouth and rolling it between her teeth. She felt the rumblings of laughter in his chest begin before it turned into a moan of pleasure. She attended to the other one while reaching in between her legs and gathering some of her own arousal on her hand, bringing it in between them and coating Mulder’s erection with it. 

“Oh my god, Scully,” he groaned, his hips undulating in their spot while she pumped him a few times. 

She suckled on his neck, enjoying the feeling of his erratic pulse beating under her tongue. “You’re so beautiful,” she murmured as she hoisted her legs on either side of his hips, aligning them for the moment they’d both been waiting for.

She could tell he was about to say something sweet back to her, but the words were stolen from his lungs as she sank down on him, sheathing him inside her. She settled until her ass was firmly on his lap and they were panting a few inches apart from the other, sharing a connection with their gaze as well as their bodies. 

Slowly, she eased herself back up on her knees before sinking back down, creating a steady rhythm while the headboard hit the wall and the bed creaked beneath them. None of that mattered to her, all that mattered was the pleasure smattered across Mulder’s face, the way he was coaxing her with his sensual baritone, and the vice grip he had on her hips. 

Suddenly a thought came to her. It wasn’t something she’d really ever done, but with how many tapes and subscriptions he had, it may be something he liked. Leaning towards his ear, she rasped, “You feel so good inside me, Mulder.”

He responded by closing the gap between them and placing kisses all over the hollow of her throat and the crook of her neck. She wasn’t trying to emulate a porn star. No. She just wanted to tell him what he deserved to hear. What she suspected he liked hearing in those tapes. Validation. 

“You have no idea how much you turn me on,” she murmured on a downward stroke. She kept herself on his lap for a moment and rocked her hips forward, grinding their pubic bones together.

“Fuck, Scully. You feel amazing,” he gasped back, drawing his arms around her and pulling her flush to him so her breasts were against his chest.

She continued riding him the best she could in this position, raising one hand to wipe the sweaty hair back and litter kisses across his face. “I love you,” she gasped, her orgasm hitting her suddenly from the angle of his cock and the friction against her clit.

Scully felt his hips thrust upwards frantically as he came inside her, his hot seed spilling out a little bit from each thrust and adding to the mutual wetness between them. 

When their orgasms had both subsided, she collapsed and fell onto him, resting her head against his neck. He nuzzled his face into her hair, pressing kisses against her scalp as he deftly reached and grabbed a blanket, pulling it up to cover them and tuck her even more into him. She felt his eyes grow heavy as she was comforted by the post-coital smell of him and the feeling of being wrapped in each other’s arms.

“I love you too, Scully,” he murmured, rocking her softly in his arms.

She found the strength to raise her head and kiss his chin. “So? How did you like your therapy session?” she teased.

Her whole body moved with his laughter. “I think you have another career path for you if this doesn’t work,” he teased.

She laughed with him and laid back on his neck. “Thank you,” she beamed.

There was a moment of silence as he continued rubbing circles in her back. Then, in a more serious tone he explained, “I’m sorry I’d been reluctant before. I had just never had someone treat me like I wasn’t an obligation before. I never knew how good it could be when both parties care so much about the other.”

“Well, with me you’ll never forget.”

WATCH SEX EDUCATION ON NETFLIX. STREAMING JANUARY 17TH 2020

[master-thief-gray-shadow]

So as of today it’s been exactly one year since I first watched Revue Starlight, and it’s been a really interesting year. I’ve been thinking about the impact the series has had on my life lately and felt like I needed to get some thoughts down.

TW: self harm mention, suicide mention

Love Live changed my life. It was not my first fandom ever, but it was the first one where I got seriously involved with the community. Not only did I manage to make friends within the fandom (and to be honest these friends have proven truer than any I’ve had in real life), but I also managed to meet not one but two amazing partners, which is two more than I’d ever anticipated I’d have. Love Live was good to me, and for a good three years I happily allowed it to consume my very soul. But things like these don’t last forever.

I don’t talk about it much (there’s a reason why but that’s another story), but I am autistic and I do have ADHD. Obviously hyperfixations are a big part of my life. The big ones tend to last for years. Naruto was three or four, Touhou was a solid three, Kancolle was less than a year but I feel like it would have been longer if I hadn’t forcibly divorced myself from it due to the fact that my mental health at the time was spiraling out of control. Love Live was just another one of these things. For years it was constantly in my thoughts, and at the height of all this I couldn’t watch a movie without thinking “hm, what if this was Love Live characters?” It gave me a reason to live and got me through a few rough patches. But my interest did eventually start to wane. Unfortunately this coincided with one of those rough patches, and this particular one had something that I hadn’t had to deal with in a while: uncertainty.

Early last year I quit my job. It was a customer service job, one that I had been at for a few years and was starting to get tired of. I figured that I would be unemployed for a month or two (which at the time sounded refreshing, one of the reasons I quit was because the job had become so soul-sucking that I didn’t have energy for anything else) before getting a new one, preferably one with better hours and better pay. What I hadn’t counted on was my depression, which was already a contributing factor in my somewhat fragile state, utterly consuming me now that I didn’t have any kind of routine or purpose, and was therefore at the mercy of my thoughts at all times. I tried to take refuge in Love Live like I always had, and for a while, it worked. But eventually it just kind of...stopped working. So here I was, unemployed, depressed, and rapidly losing the ability to find joy in things. All that, but thankfully in no actual, real, physical danger. But apparently my brain thought I was. So that’s what it started telling me.

I’m not gonna go into what I specifically believed was happening. The long and short of it was that I started having irrational fears about my health, brought upon by some discussion that was going on in the spaces I hung out in. At first I was able to just dismiss it as paranoia, but certain things happened that only served to deepen it. Eventually I started thinking that I needed to go to the hospital, but what for? Nobody would believe there was anything wrong. I didn’t even believe it myself, at least consciously. But my brain was telling me I needed to go. And if I didn’t have an obvious reason to, I should give myself one.

I did not actually reach the point of doing self-harm, fortunately. But I came close. One evening something triggered a massive panic attack, and I, sincerely believing my life was in danger, began seriously, seriously considering it. I was very lucky that my parents kind of knew what was going on and rushed me to the hospital before I could do anything I might regret. I ended up spending a few days in the hospital’s psyche ward, which from what I’ve gathered was actually pretty okay as far as psyche wards go, but it was still a quiet and sterile place with no clocks and no contact with the outside. I was relieved to get out, to say the least. Even spending five and a half hours a day in intensive therapy, five days a week, was an improvement. I even managed to keep the job I had just started.

And that was the state I was in when I first watched Revue Starlight. Crawling my way out from the bottom of a pit. I had heard of the show, I’d seen it on my dash a few times, and this one anon, you know who you are, kept recommending it to me, which I had responded to every time with “okay, I’ll consider it.” For the past month or two I had been watching JoJo for the first time, and I had just finished Stardust Crusaders. Stardust Crusaders, if you haven’t watched it, is not bad at all. But it is very long and has some pacing issues. I needed a break from JoJo. A short one-season anime like Revue Starlight? The perfect palette cleanser. After all, it’s just Love Live with swords, right? It’s not like it’s gonna take over my life or anything.

And it didn’t. The first three episodes were...uh...well, I was more than a little confused. I didn’t really gel with any of the characters or understand what was going on, so, upon finishing episode 3, I unceremoniously closed the tab and declared myself done. At least that was how it was initially. One evening a couple days later I found myself bored, and figured that I might as well just finish the thing. I had time to kill, after all.

Now this was what did the trick. This time I found myself blown out of the water, especially by the finale, which had just aired that day. Revue Starlight quickly flooded in to fill the void Love Live had left, and I found myself giddy with that new hyperfixation feel. Therapy was going extremely smoothly, I started getting the hang of my new job, and I was even going to the gym regularly. I had something to live for again. A rope to hold onto so I wouldn’t fall deeper and hit the bottom that I’d struggled so hard to climb away from. No matter what happened, I would have the 99th Seisho class to fall back on.

Things, of course, did happen. I grew to resent my job, which wasn’t well-suited for me, so I started looking for a new one. A better one. I had my eye on one in particular, it seemed like a nice cushy desk job that probably had good pay and benefits. I was sure I had nailed the interview. I’d opted to finish the holiday season with my current job, but I really, really wanted that new one. I’d just start once I was finished with my current one, and I had gathered the next starting date was early in the spring. It was for this reason that I wasn’t too concerned when the place I was currently working at got closed down. No problem. I’d just wait for my new job to start.

And so I was unemployed again. In winter, no less, so my depression was particularly monstrous now. For two months I sat in figurative and literal darkness, clinging onto two things: the expectation that I would hear back from the people I was hoping to hear from, and my love for Revue Starlight. I was absolutely miserable. But I held on. I held onto those two things. And finally, the date where I would be called in for an initiation drew near.

Unfortunately, it turned out I actually hadn’t gotten the job after all. I nearly fell apart completely.

I’m kind of convinced that if I hadn’t gotten into RevStar and renewed my need to hyperfixate on things I might’ve actually gone through with killing myself. The sheer despair I felt when I found out I had just spent so much time sitting around for nothing, that I had wasted a whole two months of my life, was crushing. In the heat of the moment, I really did think about it. I felt so utterly worthless and foolish, and if I took my own life I wouldn’t have to feel that way anymore. But I couldn’t. Because I did have a reason to keep living and to move on. I still had Revue Starlight.

Eventually I did manage to get a job, my current one. It’s not ideal, but the pay and hours are better than either of my previous ones, as is the nature of the job itself. The effects of my hormone replacement therapy, which I had only been on for about a month when everything had fallen apart, soon started to become more apparent. Now that I had a steady and regular source of income I decided to make plans to go out and see my girlfriend, who I figured it was about time I met in real life, which I eventually did, and she was wonderful. And those were just things that happened within my personal life. As for Revue Starlight? Shortly after I’d gotten the job, I managed to actually watch the stage plays, which I hadn’t seen yet, and they were amazing, especially the second one. Starira got an English release, pulling new blood into the fandom. Sato Hinata was slated to appear at Anime Central, which is the one con I actually bother to attend, and I got to meet her. For real. In person.

And if I’d gone and killed myself? I would never have gotten any of that. I would have missed out on so much. As much of a fool as I had felt like at the time, at least I didn’t do the single most foolish thing that I could have. And I’m glad. And thankful.

So thank you, to that one anon (you know who you are) for pointing me in the right direction. Thank you to the fellow fans who make up this community that I’ve settled down in. Thank you to the seiyuu in front of the mics, and the artists, animators, composers, writers, and coders behind them. I’m here right now because of you. Thank you.