#i need my emotional support unhealthy relationships born of trauma but full of love :(((

[moinsbienquekaworu]

The true pain of reading a good AU is you want more of these specific guys but that characterisation only exists in the one specific fic/series

[justicebled]

i was so busy organizing my blog and getting it down to below 50 people, because i genuinely wanted it to be private, that i forgot to make yuri's pri.de icon. his bio is extremely outdated.

ex: he's a sagittarius no shocker there, december 10th is his birthday. i genuinely don't know how the lower quarter survives winter but lemme tell you it's a team effort.

plus yuri has grown with me for three years even when i've taken breaks writing him on this platform. but in terms of loving someone?

he's demi-panromantic. he's not someone to really indulge in physical relationships unless he feels an emotional and spiritual connection to the person. it's crucial that this person understands yuri and yuri understands them, which...isn't really hard for yuri's end, because yuri can see through 99.9 percent of people. he just doesn't care.

what yuri is attracted to is a person's soul, and their heart, and their beliefs, and how well they get along. if they can laugh together, if they can grow together, however the pace. because yuri's actions are borne of a love for the people, a love for a future where people realistically can live unoppressed knowing full well he cannot solve every problem, and a love for the land not through rose colored glasses, but full realism of it's ugliness and goodness.

he embraces all of that, and continues his journey. so much of ves.peria is about love and the way it drives others to act for others good. it generally is a tale of agape love, which is the most selfless form of love, something yuri embodies even before he realizes he cannot stop his hero's journey, and instead embraces it, consequences and all, good things and bad things, like choices are.

edgelord? far from it. broody? far from it. he sees things for what they are, without forced idealism if it's too uncomfortable to face the reality, he does not, and will not ever look away. if he wants to change things, protect people, shake the foundations of a system so thousands may live and prosper, he cannot look away because it's grisly. he hasn't since he was born in a slum where people and bodies were on the street left and right. he's seen things no one should ever see in their life.

he will never judge someone for their orientation, gender or not committing to one, or a person's standing, although he is cagey around nobles, he's slowly growing out of that thanks to meeting estelle.

the hardest thing about even remotely getting near yuri's heart is that for all it's unconditional love and love of humanity in a realistic, non shonen protag way, a person-like way, he has so much trauma and a desire to not involve others in his problems and feelings as he often if not 95 percent of the time will place you above his own needs, and this has been ingrained in him and thrust upon him since he was a child, it will not be an easy habit to break, and he isn't going to coddle you in a romantic or relationship period you yourself, have to make your own choices. you yourself, have to make the decision every day to do good, and while yuri will support and help you along, there is no such thing as 'fixing a person', that is the person's job, and yuri himself will encourage, stay by their side, and walk the path with them, but he cannot walk it for you, and he wouldn't want you to walk it for him. it's unhealthy and unrealistic.

but if you do get yuri to love you in the romantic capacity, there is no more devoted, gentle, noble and kind partner at his core, and ultimately seeks your betterment and your good without coddling you in an unrealistic way that would denote you weren't equals.

yuri's story is a realistic labor of love to mankind and an attainable future, it's why he sacrifices and fights so hard and fights so fiercely without coddling the people who have given up on their life. look at raven. he doesn't give him a speech. it's not his job. look at estelle. it's her choice to live. but he encourages them to make the choice themselves, heavily emphasizing how much they matter to him. it's why he's such a unique fictional hero-protagonist among many things, and so once you have him romantically which....is quite a hurdle? he has his own trauma and baggage hoo. there are few more loving, noble, heroic or benevolent,

one of vesperi.a's strong points though i think it's such a tightly written story, is that yuri subverts the trope you'd think you see of him: 'dark brooding and morally grey bad boy' and shows you he's the exact opposite, a man who laughs until he has tears in his eyes. a man who adores children and can't close his heart to people who need him, resulting in many, many people viewing him as a role model and big brother figure / mentor figure.

but with romantic love . . . ultimately even if he does have feelings for you, don't expect him to act on them immediately. he just wants you to be happy.

tl;dr: yuri doesn't care about gender or no gender or undecided, loves the soul first, is demi-panromantic and so much love is stored in the yuri lowe.ll as much as unstoppable ass-kicking and king level snark.

[inbarfink]

I believe Greg’s claims that his family situation was horrible. When a grown-up man feels like he has no other choice but to run away from his family (remember, Greg was, like, 20 when he left) and then has absolutely nothing good to say about them for years and years later - that’s an indictment of the parents, not the son. They forced him into activities that had nothing to do with his actual intersts (including wrestling which can be... very unpleasant when you’re not into it), and absolutely forbade him from anything associated with the thing he actually LIKED, music. They didn’t allow him to dress and look the way he wanted and not in a “I am not letting my toddler wear the same shirt for 20 days in a row way’, in a “your son is 18 and you are still forcing him to cut his hair the way YOU want it to look”. That’s bad, that’s really bad. Greg wasn’t just sick of a ‘boring, mundane life on the suburbs with too much meatloaf’, he was suffocated in a toxic household.

And I understand why Greg was upset and defensive when Steven started with his ‘maybe your parents had a point’ thing. It must hurt to hear your son, the only family you really have in this world, defend the family you ran away from. Steven’s not thinking totally straight, he accuses Greg of keeping him away from his grandparents but he saw the stacks of unopened letters - implying that Greg has TRIED to keep in contact with them but the DeMayos were the one who refused. He’s focusing on the image of normalcy and humanity that the DeMayos house represents, on school and friends and graduations and home-cooking and adorable spoon collections - and not on Greg feeling they could never accept him and that he had to hide his most treasured possessions from his parents.

But ALSO Greg should apologize to Steven and work to be a better parent. Steven wouldn’t have been happier under an upbringing as strict and overcontrolling as the DeMayos. But Greg’s only two options weren’t “toxic overbearing ‘normalcy’” and ‘living in a van and never going to school’ - he is at fault for going into the absolute extreme opposite of his own upbringing and prehaps of projecting his own desires over Steven’s needs. Steven has told him, quite clearly, that he is upset about growing up without a stable roof over his head, about missing out on school (which both an opportunity for his future and a chance to expand his peer group and make a lot more friends), about never going to a doctor’s (nobody could guess what effect Rose’s healing powers could have on Steven’s body! Steven really lucked out that he didn’t NEED to go to the Doc for most issues, but nobody could have guessed it!) and Greg’s response was just “Yeah, but what I had was worse!”. I understand why Greg’s instincts were to go on the defensive but he is the adult and the dad and Steven is his teenage son it’s Literally His Job to be the bigger person in the argument.

And just as I consider Greg’s seemingly 100% negative feelings about the DeMayos indictment enough that they were shitty parents, then I find Steven’s mixed feelings about Greg as an indictment that Greg’s parenting has been flawed. Steven is currently a very messed up teenager, and Greg is his dad; Steven’s healthy development and happiness is his responsibility! I understand why Greg Turned Up the Way That He Did considering his background, but he is at the very least complicit in many of the Shit That Fucked Steven’s Mental State to the point that it is today. Even if I accept the idea that Steven HAD to live off-the-grid due to being a Gem (and I don’t necessarily. Yeah, his mother is a Space Alien, but his dad is a US citizen and he was born on US soil, he can have a fucking Social Security Number), Greg could have... like... tried to find some sort of structured non-Gem activity that Steven might be intersted in (we’re not going Full DeMayo here) like an afterschool class or something to give Steven a chance to develop his nonmagical skills and bond with more children his age. Which would have lowered the amount of time Steven was stuck alone in the Beach House just waiting for the Gems to come back and allowed him to develop his interpersonal skills and create a bigger support network for himself... these are things that could have really helped Steven in the long-run!

Steven opened up to Greg about his issues (and we know how hard it is to Steven to actually open up!), and what Greg ended up offering to him was more about Greg than about Steven. The message of the “Mr. Universe” song is “you can be free! You can be anything!” and that was clearly so meaningful and touching to young Gregory DeMayo, but it is the exact opposite of what Steven Universe wanted and asked for - some sort of direction and stabillity. And it’s... not the worst mistake in the world for a parent to make, to try and give your kids what YOU want rather than what THEY want, especially when you are dealing with such a complex problem as Steven has. But when you realize the You solution isn’t working... you have to process that it’s not working because they are not You and they require a change is perspective and maaaaaybe they might feel a little hurt that you were projecting on them and might want an apology or at least an acknowledgement that that’s what you were doing and that you’re going to Not Do It now?

If you are a parent and you have a child who is as messed-up as Steven is right now, that is kinda your responsibility bcause your child is your responsibility. If you have a child that is mad at you, you should at least have the self-awareness to think about what you might have done wrong. If your child literally shouts at you something that basically means “the source of all of my problems is the fact that I am your son”, then... that at least requires some self-reflection. Steven said stuff that was Dumb and Wrong and Hurtful things in this car argument, that’s true. He WOULDN’T have been happy under the thumb of parents like the DeMayos, Greg probably was justified in cutting them off, it’s not his dad’s fault that he never meant his grandparents. But inside these dumb and hurtful things there is a kernel of real frustration and hurt. And instead of acknowledging that frustration; Showing some sort of regret for not being able to give Steven a more stable and ‘normal’ home life that he now desires, promising to do better in the future, even just a “sorry I messed up, I didn’t mean to mess you up”... Greg just acts like he ignores it completely.

If your child has an outburst that they was clearly ashamed of and was clearly Pretty Unhealthy, you can’t just say “I’m proud of you, you called me out on my bullshit. And if you do, you can at least, like... acknowledge that things you were called on in any way???? Rather than just make it about yourself and YOUR upbringing and how it was much worse, which... even if ya don’t mean it, comes off as just you ‘proving’ that your parenting style IS right, because, hey! You can tell me anything! While meanwhile your kid is processing that no, he can’t tell you anything, because you are not actually doing anything useful for me right now. When your child tells you that your parenting style was bad and harmful to them, you should not immediately go into the same old routines you always do right after that???

I fear that the whole experience might have made Steven’s question Greg’s love for him, that maybe now he sees Greg’s kind and accepting nature as insincere and just as an attempt to overcompensate for his own issues. Is Greg really proud of him or does he just say it because that’s what he’s ‘supposed’ to say? But I have no doubt that Greg loves and cares for Steven a whole lot and that he raised Steven the way that he did because he thought that was the best option possible and that... the whole situation is just hard for him. Steven is dealing with a lot of issues that he never outwardly displayed to his parental figures before and it’s hard for them to adjust and to know what the right solution is. And it’s just plain easier to try and fall into your regular parenting techniques that always seemed to work before (like giving your child more ice cream and telling them their emotions are valid), rather than try and totally dismantle your approach to parenting in one evening.

It’s important to remember that Greg’s probably not in the best place right now either. Just because I think it is Greg’s responsibility as the Dad to be the bigger person in the argument and see what part of Steven’s complaints are valid... doesn’t mean it’s not also a hard thing to do when he’s also bringing up memories of Greg’s abusive childhood and saying his parents might not be all that bad. That’s gotta make it hard for Greg to think rationally about Steven’s words. And that’s not factoring in the supernatural element in which Steven’s trauma gives him Scary Dangerous Powers and Greg is the squishest, most fragile part of Steven’s family.

But it’s still Greg’s responsibility to make Steven happy and healthy,  and on that day, on “Mr. Universe”, he messed that up. And I believe Steven when he says that he messed that up before too. Greg’s not a bad person, but... an apology for the missteps of parenthood is what Steven needed at that moment and what Steven was hoping for, and Greg’s inabillity to deliever it was what caused the rift in their relationship most of all. I mean... The show literally spells that Steven needs to hear some sort of ‘I’m sorry’, not just from Greg, but from all of his parental figures! Remember how “Prickly Pair” ended???

Cactus Steven is a metaphor for Meat Steven, for Cactus Steven to find peace he had to hear Meat Steven acknowledge that he hasn’t been the best parent and that he’s sorry. And it’s no coincedence that Steven has very rarely heard his parental figures apologize to him and that it has yet to happen in SUF, my prediction is that it’s gonna play some sort of part in the finale and with Steven fixing his relationship with Greg and the CGs.

[graveyardarcana-blog]

hello all! so i decided to make an "about me" post for my apprentice (which is really just a self-insert), as i've been seeing them floating around lately and figured it would be a good way for my viewers and followers to get to know me. i hope you all enjoy!

-liv🖤

•《🥀》•

❝A strong-willed magician with a troubled past❞

‣ Full Name: Olivia Vanhelsing

‣ Name Meaning: One who finds peace in horror

‣ Pronouns: She/Her

‣ Sexuality: Bisexual (primarily attracted to men)

‣ Nicknames: Head Advisor Vanhelsing (by all palace staff), 'Helsing (by Consul Valerius), Liv (by Consul Valerius, Julian, Asra, Portia, and Selasi)

‣ Birthday: August 18th, year unknown (Leo)

‣ Height: 5'8

‣ Weight: Around 170 pounds

🖤🥀🖤

》BACKSTORY《

Born to estranged parents, Vanhelsing became an orphan on the streets of Vesuvia. She was on her own for nearly a decade, until she met Asra Alnazar, a young magician in the same situation as her. Deciding to befriend the friendly witch, she pursued a path in magick and earned somewhat of a family bond, something she had wanted for many years. However, even though she had someone to rely on and trust, Vanhelsing went through damaging traumas and later developed severe trust issues. Now a closed off, overly serious head advisor in the palace (with a deadly glare and cold attitude), she wonders the halls late at night, longing for emotional connections and internal redemption.

🖤🥀🖤

》PERSONALITY《

❝Death is a beautiful thing, really. And we all get to experience it.❞

While she comes off cold and dismissive on the outside, Liv is actually soft-hearted and has a strong desire for emotional connection with others. Her troubled past closes her off, however, and prevents nearly everyone from seeing who she really is on the inside. But, occasionally she does put her past aside and opens up to those in need.

🖤🥀🖤

》MAGIC《

‣ Extremely skilled in tarot readings (personally connected to the major arcana Death)

‣ Can preform exquisite protection spellwork and curses (for reasonable purposes only)

🖤🥀🖤

》APPEARANCE《

( beautiful artwork done by @erratic-inspirations )

❝Being strange and unusual is far more beautiful than normality.❞

• Long, sleek black hair that falls below her collar bones (straight)

• High cheek bones (not extremely protruding, but noticable)

• Gray/blue eyes

• Plump lips and long eyelashes, but keeps her eyebrows shaved (draws them on with a pomade pencil)

• Extremely fair skin (nearly pure white in sunlight)

• Her typical makeup look consists of pale foundation, bold eyebrows, black eyeshadow all around the eyes, black mascara, and black lipstick (occasionally adds a touch of purple or red if desired)

• Clothing style is romantic goth. Her normal dressing consists of elegant black dresses, complimentary chokers/silver or black jewelry (has first ear piercings and a septum piercing), occasionally wears arm/leg fishnets, paints her nails black, with practical black boots or heels.

🖤🥀🖤

》RELATIONSHIPS《

❝I don't have many, but the ones I do have rule my world.❞

‣ Consul Valerius - Bestfriend/Potential LI

‣ Death - Personal arcana connection

‣ Asra - Sees them as a sibling figure

‣ Julian - Bestfriend/Potential LI

‣ Nadia - Close friends. Liv is her and Valerius' head advisor.

‣ Portia - Close friends. They occasionally run errands together and have tea in her cottage.

‣ Muriel - Close friends. They enjoy spending time together. She frequently visits the forest to drop off food, teas, etc. for Muriel.

‣ Lucio - Vanhelsing enslaved him as a permanent servant to her out of spite. Nadia encourages this.

🖤🥀🖤

》TRIVIA《

▪︎Favorite Food: Fresh vegetable salad topped with homemade dressing and fine spices

▪︎Favorite Drink: Aloe water

▪︎Favorite Flower: Red roses

▪︎Occupation: Head Advisor of Consul Valerius and Countess Nadia

▪︎Home/Living Space: The Palace

▪︎Relatives: Unknown

▪︎Likes: Gothic literature, tragic sonnets/plays, drama (of any definition), dark/slow music, dancing, gloomy weather, makeup, fashion, advising, commanding, pondering death, mysteries, staying up unreasonably late, wondering the halls, and romantic night time outings

▪︎Dislikes: Insects, disease, anything overly happy/unrealistic, parties, judgemental people, bright colors, spontaneousness, and people purposely bothering her

▪︎Flaws: Vanhelsing tends to make the wrong decisions for the right reasons. This often leads to strong regret and sleepless nights. She also struggles with depression, anxiety, trust issues, and insomnia.

▪︎Improvements: Overtime, she has learned to think extremely carefully before coming to a decision (this has made her a very skilled advisor). She has also learned how to properly manage her mental illnesses and has cut out a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms.

▪︎Additions: Liv loves emotional support/attention, along with small physical things (having her hair played with, hugging, hand-holding, cuddling, etc), but is afraid to show it. She also plays the guitar, but no one knows it.

•《🥀》•

wow okay, that was a big ass post. for those of you who made it to the end, thank you and i hope you enjoyed it! any additional questions can be sent through an ask and i will answer them as soon as possible. im still taking story suggestions as well!

-liv🖤

[the-untitled-writing-project]

The Untitled Writing Project

By: just-another-anonymous-author

I have spent my entire simple - albeit short - existence on this planet searching everywhere for something - a feeling or some kind of meaning, I guess. But, this isn't one of those narratives that will end with a lesson or some assessment of morality or some larger social impact; this is just a story. 

When I was born, it was because it was the logical next step for my parents. I won’t spend a lot of time on my parents because they were just doing what they thought they should, but it is necessary. My parents were in love once, I think, but by the time I can remember their relationship, that was all gone. My dad was basically a piece of shit. He was abusive and mean and left with my brother and me when I was eight - can you say kidnapping? - but he had some semi-redeemable qualities, I guess, and he’s my dad so I loved him. Only now, looking back, do I understand how truly toxic that man was in my life. But this isn’t about me now, so let’s not get too distracted by that. 

My freshman year of high school, I stopped speaking to my father. He couldn’t support me unless everything was going his way - much like a toddler - and he made his disgust known. He didn’t like the high school I was going to or the people I was spending time with or the fact I wanted to be a writer - in fact, he constantly told me that I was just going to be mediocre like him, so I should stop trying so hard -  and I couldn’t take it anymore, so I hung up the phone on him and haven’t spoken to him since. After one conversation with a judge in chambers, he lost any claim to custody of my brother and me. But I am getting a little ahead of myself. See, my dad’s constant emotional abuse made me anxious and depressed in a very real way. It was hard for me to function in any capacity. My reality was harsh and I would do anything to remedy that fact. 

[Enter a boy.]

When I met him, I was immediately taken. Compulsively searching for any meaning in life, I was a heat-seeking missile looking for something, anything to give me a reason to wake up in the morning.

When I saw him, four things happened almost simultaneously:

My heart skipped a beat - or maybe a few.

My stomach tied itself in so many knots it felt like a necklace chain you would eventually just give up on.

My hands started to shake - though that may have been the fact that I hadn’t eaten all day.

My mouth dried up like the Sahara Desert on the hottest day of the year.

The very moment my eyes landed on him my mind shut down, my body seized up, my life was shifted permanently. I had never felt anything like it before. It was like the most beautiful sunrise, the smell right before it rains, watching hundreds of birds take flight, the perfect sip of tea, a quiet Sunday morning in a cafe. Everything just felt complete. 

The first time we spoke it was like I had known him my entire life. I felt comfortable, I felt safe, I felt like I was home. I suppose that sounds like a cliche, but I am just trying to be as honest as I can. I guess that feeling of comfort and safety is why when he left I felt like I was on fire and drowning and being buried alive all at once. But, we aren’t there yet, so I’ll start at the beginning, yeah?

When I met him, we instantly clicked. I knew in my heart and soul - my mind isn’t really involved in the beginning - that we were going to fall in love. I never could have predicted how fast and hard we would fall for each other. We were like a meteor plummeting to the Earth and wiping out a small island. Our love was powerful. Our love was overwhelming. And, overall, our love was destructive.

The first time we kissed it was like something out of a fairytale or a romance novel or a Lifetime movie. It was sweet, slow, and beautiful. We were just teenagers - young and dumb and naive. We were at a park. It was dark and you could see all of the stars. It felt like there was no one else in the universe - it was just the two of us floating on a cloud way above the ground - and we were pointing out constellations in the sky. It was getting late. He got up from the dew-covered grass and as he offered his hand to help me up, he tripped and caught himself over me. We looked at each other for a second. Then it happened. He leaned in, kissed me, and my entire world exploded. I felt like there was electricity coursing through my veins; like I had just witnessed the Big Bang; like nothing could ever hurt me ever again. Our kiss was short but absolutely and utterly perfect.

We became inseparable. Where I was, he was. Where he was, I was. It was that typical “young love”, I guess. He became a part of me. I hate to admit that looking back, but it is true. There was a room in my heart with his name written all over the walls. It was like I let a toddler loose with a box of Crayola markers and they wrote the only word they knew over and over and over again until they ran out of ink. It may be dramatic, but that’s how it felt to my young heart. 

We instantly became dependent on each other. See, we are both very good at reading people and could tell when the other was upset. When I was anxious, he knew how to calm me down. When he was angry, I could help him reasonably solve the problem. When I was having full-blown panic attacks, he would hold me, soothe me, and remind me that I needed to breathe to live. He could calm even the harshest of storms in my mind. The problem with that is we eventually got tired of solving each other's problems and wanted to focus on our own. 

[Enter a wedge in our relationship.] 

Beyond this, however, we still had a great time together and a great amount of love for each other. 

The first time we had sex it was terrible. Honestly, we both had no idea what we were doing. We were fumbling and just doing our best. It was not good, but I still look back on it fondly. It was two teenagers figuring each other out, doing what we thought we should, using all of our public school education to appease our crazy hormones. 

Speaking of hormones - bad transition, I know, but this is train of thought writing, so I can do what I want - the first time we fought it was like my entire world was crumbling around me. We are two of the most stubborn people that exist - I am sure of this fact and there is no debating this - so every fight, no matter how small, felt like the absolute and utter destruction of all of humanity. We would scream, I would cry, he would storm off, we would make up. No matter what we fought about - how to spell a word, not answering texts, hanging out with an ex, whether it was Johns Hopkins or John Hopkins - we gave it our all and ended up fuming. The great Johns Hopkins debate of 2015 made me feel like my brain was on fire and I had smoke coming out of my ears. Even when it was stupid or pointless, we both had to be right. See, the thing is that we loved each other, but we were young and reckless and thought it would last forever. 

The first time I wrote him a love letter I felt I had finally found my muse - ironic, isn’t it, seeing as I am writing about him here, once again. We wrote each other letters back and forth for months. I would type out everything I felt about him, I would type out apologies, I would type how much I loved him over and over. He wrote me a handwritten love letter once. I folded it up and kept in my wallet from that moment on. Whenever I doubted myself, whenever I missed him, whenever I felt especially bad, I would read his letter over and over again. He wrote everything I had never felt about myself - that I was brave, that I was beautiful, that I was smart, that I was going places.

After a million different instances of supporting me through my severance from my father, he showed up to the Court House on the day my father lost any claim to his children. See, he knew we would be there and he knew I was going to be having a very bad day. He came to make sure I was okay, he took my mother, brother, and me to lunch. He hugged me, he kissed my head, he reassured me that what I was doing was right and necessary for my mental health and future successes. The thing is that at this point we were very dependent on each other in an extremely unhealthy way. Neither of us had much of a childhood, let alone an easy one, so it was two teenaged “adults” trying to make sense of trauma we should never have had to experience in the first place. 

The first time we spent a week apart since we started dating was torture. It was shortly after a successful, but literally physically painful and stressful court date. At this point, we were fighting like a married couple and our relationship was mainly texts and FaceTiming late at night. As two very jealous people - we’re both water signs, if you follow astrology you’ll understand - we were not doing well with a slowly separating relationship. I was thrilled to get back from my trip and spend time with him and work on us. He had other ideas.

The first time we broke up it was like nothing would ever matter again. You see, I feel everything so deeply and when we broke up I went numb. He came back the next day and said he regretted it, he didn’t want to lose me, he wanted to pretend it never happened. I agreed, but something was different. Suddenly, the sun rises were duller, the smell of rain wasn’t as crisp, there were only a few birds taking flight, the tea was lukewarm and bland, the cafe was packed and the coffee was burnt. He told me he still had things to think about. He told me he didn’t want to break up but didn’t know if we would be together long term. He told me he just wanted to love me. I told him I wouldn’t wait around for him to make a decision and to take me home. That was the second time we broke up.

The second time we broke up I cried for three days. My mother had never seen me so upset about anything - and trust me I had experienced plenty of hardship before this relationship. The second time we broke up I didn’t get out of bed for a week. After three days of crying, my mother called him. She didn’t know what else to do. She knew we broke up, but she thought he could help me. She knew he was the only person who could. He came over and came into my room. He tried to coax me out of bed with the promise of seeing a movie and going to dinner. I told him to go away and that I didn’t want him to come back. I heard him get up off of my floor. I heard him open the door. I heard him hesitate. I heard him leave. 

The first time I ever truly felt nothing was terrifying in hindsight. After he left my house, I stopped crying. I got out of bed, I showered, I got dressed. I sat in the middle of the room with my arms wrapped around my knees, my chin on one kneecap, and I stared at the walls of my bedroom for hours.  It was like my heart was sealing up the room with his name all over it. My muscles ached as if I had just been stretched on a taffy puller. My head was pounding like a smurf was banging on the inside of my skull with a hammer. My bones ached as if all of the bone marrow had been extracted with a rusty scalpel. My world truly felt like it stopped turning. 

The first time I deleted all of the pictures of the two of us off of my phone it was like burning a part of myself alive in a bonfire. I stared at every picture for what felt like hours before finally hitting that tiny trash can. I guess I thought I could rid my heart of him by deleting him off my phone. When I finally had to change my background, I didn’t know what to change it to. What did I love more than this ridiculous, stubborn, idiot of a boy? Nothing. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to see more on that screen than his face. So, I changed it to a blank black background. 

The first time I saw him after I went numb, it was like we had never met. I felt nothing - no emptiness, no pain, no anger. I was just numb. He acted as if nothing had happened. He talked to me like we were best friends. I deserve an Oscar for acting like I was okay with that. I would laugh at his jokes, I would go with him to the movies, I would sing along to the radio with him. I acted like it wasn’t killing me to sit in his car without holding his hand; like it wasn’t weird to go from strangers to in love to just regular friends so rapidly; like I was okay with existing beside him, yet without him. 

The first time he broke my heart I thought nothing could ever hurt worse than that moment. My entire body was on fire, but after I went numb, I thought I might never feel again. Then, he broke my heart again. He moved on from me like I was nothing, just a short story in his chapter book. He told me he was dating someone new over a cold, short text message. I wasn’t surprised, but I also wasn’t ready. I mean how can someone move on so fast and expect everything to be fine? I honestly felt like I deserved it. I felt I deserved no respect at all. The thing is I was not a secure person at all - I saw all of my flaws and knew one day they would lead to our demise. I wasn’t shy to this fact, so when we broke up and he moved on so fast, I blamed myself and sunk into a sea of bitterness like a boat in a hurricane.

The first - and only - time I returned all of the things he ever gave me I did it in a blind rage. After he told me he was dating someone new, I went home, I found every single thing I owned that reminded me of him. I found books, stuffed animals, cards, handwritten love letters, jewelry, pictures, blankets, t-shirts. I stuffed them all in a bag with tears streaming down my cheeks. My mother called my best friend as she heard things crashing around my room. As soon as they came over, I broke down. The wall of numbness I had built around my heart came crumbling down - evaporated into a cloud of smoke. I cried, I packed, they tried to talk me out of it. I guess what they said was right… I shouldn’t have done it like that. I was hurt, angry, defeated, utterly crushed by what I felt was an act of betrayal. I simply was not ready to give him his stuff back, but I did. I dropped the bag of his stuff off at his house and left without saying a word. He called me heartbroken. I responded with the same coldness as his text. 

The first time another boy flirted with me it was like I had never met someone of the opposite sex before. I didn’t know what to do or say or how to stand. Have you ever seen those videos of giraffes attempting to walk directly after they’re born? They’re all shaky and awkward. I was like that any time I received male attention. See, the thing about him is that he is the jealous type. While we were dating, he constantly told me my male friends had crushes on me, that they wanted to date me, that they were gonna try something as soon as we were alone together. Though he was right about my best friend, it still made me cautious about any prolonged attention. 

The next time I answered his call his girlfriend was across the country. He wanted to hang out at his house. He wanted to talk and catch up. And, I was full of bitterness and anger and wanted the chance to tell him off. Instead, we had sex. Every inch of my body burned as I walked up to his door, but when I saw his face, I felt all of my emotions come rushing back. I left and locked myself in my bathroom, turned on the shower, and sobbed for an hour.

The first time I tried to move on was a tragedy. I met a lovely boy, the opposite of the one I had fallen so deeply in love with. He wasn’t well polished or reaching past the stars into another galaxy. He was just a regular boy who had long hair and big shirts and a guitar. He was a nice boy, a sweet boy, a boy who liked me. I reveled in the thought of finally moving on and being happy. I thought about being able to ignore an ex-boyfriend when he called or asked probing questions or came around being jealous and nosey. So, I flirted with a boy. A boy who liked me, but had never had a girlfriend. A boy who didn’t know everything about my past relationship or my family or any of my hardship. We texted constantly, hung out every day at school, and all of our friends encouraged us. The thing was… I couldn’t get my heart to tear down the last few walls with a name written all over them. My mind was constantly running. Will he be jealous? Will he be angry? He already moved on, why shouldn’t I?

The first time I went on a date with my nice boy we went to the zoo. It was nothing magical or truly extraordinary, just two kids getting to know one another. My nice boy didn’t tell me he liked me - he was shy - but he held the door and he told me jokes and he made me a playlist of his favorite songs. My nice boy and I finally decided to date only each other, but after one month, I got a text. A request to come over and catch up. See, the thing is, I had a boyfriend and on the outside, it looked like I had moved on, but in reality, all I was doing was pretending. I still missed him. The way he laughed, the way he smelled, the way his dimples showed when he was genuinely happy. So, I went to his house. It was dumb. No one was there. He started asking about school, about my nice boy, about my mother. Then, he tried to kiss me. He said he missed me, he wanted to “hook up”. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider it. I mean here is a boy I once loved - still loved - offering me a chance to be with him again. But, even though my entire body ached and my heart was in my throat, I told him no. I got up, grabbed my keys, and closed the front door behind me. 

The first time I almost cheated I sat in my car and cried for an hour. I beat myself up for days. My mind was screaming at my heart - Why would you go over there? Why would you think he would want anything else? Why did you set yourself up to fail? But, my mind also knew what I had to do… I had to break a heart. By this point, my nice boy had fallen in love with me - and told me so. I had to break up with him. I couldn’t look him in his eyes knowing I had briefly considered cheating on him. I am not that person, I was not that person, I would never cheat. But, for .05 seconds… I thought about it. 

The first time I broke a heart it destroyed me. I had to break up with my nice boy, but I couldn’t tell him why. I made up some excuse about college. It was one thing to break up with him, but I couldn’t - I just couldn’t - tell him what happened. After we broke up, I was truly and deeply upset, but my nice boy couldn’t even look at me. I felt so much guilt and shame that I avoided all of our friends as often as I could. No one could beat me up the way my mind could.

The first time I decided I couldn’t talk to him any more my heart cracked right down the middle. I knew - was absolutely certain - that we just couldn’t be friends anymore. I mean, how can I move on if he’s calling and texting and sending me funny pictures on Facebook? How could I let him ask me to cheat on someone I truly cared about? How could he even ask me to do that after how jealous he was during our relationship? How could he disregard my feelings so quickly? Was I simply someone to have sex with to him? So, as I dreaded each push of a button, I unadded him on social media, I deleted his contact - though I still had his phone number memorized - and I exhaled the weight of the last two and a half years. 

After cutting off a majority of our contact, he noticed. Of course he noticed, and he was annnnggggrrrryyyyyyy. How could I act like we weren’t friends? He asked. How could I try to cut him off? I told him I needed time, that I couldn’t see him, that I couldn’t read about his new girlfriend or his college experiences. He didn’t understand. He thought that I loved him and we had decided to be friends. Eventually, I stopped taking his calls. 

The next time we actually spoke was two years later. He came home from school and wanted to talk. He told me to meet him at “our” spot - the same spot where we shared our first kiss, where we snuck away to when the world started to close in, where I fell in love with him. I was in the thick of healing and was looking forward to my future, but his voice had a sense of urgency and something in me told me I had to go. So, I went. We sat for hours and caught up, talked and laughed like we used to before anything went wrong.

The first time he apologized to me was genuine and raw. He told me he was sorry for how he mistreated me, how he was looking for something else, how he took advantage of me. I told him I had moved on and accepted his apology, but that it wasn’t okay. I told him that if I found out he was treating someone else like that I’d kill him myself. We talked for two more hours. The more we talked, the more I felt that crack deep in my heart start to truly heal. I was finally making progress. 

The last time I wrote him a love letter was the night he apologized. It wasn’t your traditional love letter and I would never send it in a million years, but I thanked him for every single thing he ever did for me, including hurting me. I thanked him for showing me I didn’t need him to achieve my goals, I thanked him for making me see that I am brave and smart and beautiful, I thanked him for showing me that I was only moving on to get over him not because I was ready. I wrote to him that I loved him and that I couldn’t wait to see him succeed in everything he does. Then, I closed it without saving it. 

Over the past few years, we have met up, we’ve talked, we’ve been polite friends. It doesn’t sting as much as it used to because all of this feels like it happened lifetimes ago. Sometimes the little girl in me, the one who fell in love with him, wonders “What if?” What if you’d stayed together? What if you’d done things differently? What if you’d never met? But those thoughts aren’t helpful to me. 

See, the thing is, he has always been my muse. Even when I was hurt and writing hate poems, I was writing about him. The thing that was different about this last letter is that it felt like closure. I felt like I could finally close our chapter in my life story and just live for me - which, for the record, I am doing. 

So, why am I writing about this now? To be completely honest, I have no idea. It started as a therapeutic way to approach my emotions after all this time. I guess that is what happened. This is the first time I have ever been able to think about our entire relationship - the good, the bad, and the ugly. In the past, I was hyper-focused on my love for him or the things he did wrong, but I have never approached them at the same time before. I guess what I am trying to say is that our relationship was toxic and heavily codependent, but there were also good things. We did love each other, we did have good times, but we were also very bad for each other. 

During the past few years of reflecting with trusted and loved confidants, I have received a single question hundreds of times: “Would you ever go back to him?” My answer is always the same: We are not the same people, we have different dreams and different paths in life, paths which most likely will not cross in that way again. I’ve made progress, I’ve made peace, and I’d like to truly thrive on my own for a while. You can’t do that by living in your past. 

So, after I finish the next few lines, I am going to close this document and stop thinking about it for a while. Like I said before, there is no lesson or moral to this story, this is just my train of thought on a document no one will ever read. 

It’s cheaper than therapy, I suppose.

[star-anise]

So. I’m currently reading Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey, since it was finally released on audiobook this year. Re-reading, in fact; reading these books as a 31-year-old therapist instead of a starry-eyed 13-year-old. 

I ranted the other night about the book's depiction of Elspeth as "spoiled" instead of "abused", and @feathersescapism (as part of the post's excellent and thoughtful contributions) said this about Mercedes Lackey:

It’s so effing messy for me because like on the one hand she saved my life. She was the VERY first place I saw loving, validated, celebrated queer relationships and ironically Vanyel was the first time I saw an example of someone who was angry and hurt and messy and bad at people and bullied but not a passive victim be portrayed as fundamentally loveable. As in fact valuable enough, worthy enough to be PURSUED, even, to have someone make the effort to get past his hostile defense behaviors. That was priceless to me. Unfortunately it’s like….it was water when I was dying of thirst but it turns out it was water laced with heavy metals that then did a lot of long term damage.

Which is partly just a concentration thing; if you are drinking from many wells, having one be poisoned won't damage you as much overall. But if it's your only source of water, even trace amounts get dangerous. And, well, we were Eighties babies, mentally ill queer kids with access to small-town libraries who ducked guidance counsellors who pushed conformity as the path to happiness.

So I just found a scene that I think really shows that Lackey was writing from a specifically 80s understanding of psychology, before we knew almost anything about trauma; as considered today, it's bad practice on multiple levels, and can point to some of the underlying problems with the Valdemar worldview.

TW child abuse, child neglect

So in this part of the book, 13-year-old Talia, who was rescued from her awful abusive life among the Holderkin by a giant magical horse, is settling into her new life as a Herald-trainee. She attends classes during the day, and then sleeps in her own room in a dormitory wing of her fellow trainees. Her teachers know that she displays all the symptoms of an abused child, and that she's from an extremely insular and rigid culture.

Her teacher, Teren, asks her to stay after class, and she does, wary and panicked because she doesn't know what's going on. He explains that the Heralds sent a letter back to her family to explain that her disappearance was because of the magical horse choosing her as a future Herald, and they get half-taxes that year and she's going to be very important. Her family, however, replies to say only, "Sensholding has no daughter Talia." Because she ran away instead of staying and getting married, she is disobedient and bad, and therefore totally shunned by her entire community.

She didn't realize she was weeping until a single hot tear splashed on the paper, blurring the ink. She regained control of herself immediately, swallowing down the tears. [...] It was odd, but when she'd chosen to run away, their certain excommunication hadn't seemed so great a price to pay for freedom; but somehow now, after all her hopes for forgiveness had been raised only to be destroyed by this one note-- Never mind; once again she was on her own--and Herald Teren would hardly approve of her sniveling over the situation. "It's all right," she said, handing back the note to the Herald. "I should have expected it." She was proud that her voice only trembled a little, and that she was able to meet his eyes squarely. Teren was startled and slightly alarmed; not at her reaction to the note, but by her immediate iron-willed suppression of it. This was not a healthy response. She should have allowed herself the weakness of tears; any child her age should have. Instead, she was holding back, turning further into herself. He tried, tentatively, to call those tears back to the surface where they belonged. Such suppression of natural feelings could only mean deep emotional turmoil later--and would only serve as one more brick in the wall the child had placed between herself and the others around her. "I wish there was something I could do to help." Teren was exceedingly distressed and tried to show that he was as much distressed at the child's denial of her own grief as with the situation itself. "I can't understand why they should have replied like this." If he could just get her to at least admit that the situation made her unhappy, he would have an opening wedge in getting her to trust him. [...] "I'm going to be late--" Talia winced away from the outheld hand and ran, wishing Teren had been less sympathetic. He'd brought her tears perilously close to the surface again. She'd wanted, above all other things, to break down and cry on his shoulder. But--no. She didn't dare. When kith and kin could deny her so completely, what might not strangers do, especially if she exposed her weaknesses? And Heralds were supposed to be self-sufficient, self-reliant. She would not show that she was unworthy and weak.

What I took away from this book, at 13 and during most successive readings, was that the fault in this situation is Talia's unwillingness to trust Teren and break down. It is her inability to open up emotionally to her deep, vulnerable feelings that causes problems. I suspect that my reading is not terribly far off the narrative's own perception of the central problem. In the 1980s, psychology was very based around the individual, the dance of the id, ego, and superego. Talia's problem is that she has an overactive superego, which prevents her from expressing her natural feelings in a healthy way. She uses unhealthy coping mechanisms, which must be overcome to achieve health and full congruence with her feelings. This runs very much on the catharsis model, where emotions build up like a boil, and must be lanced; once someone "vents", they feel better.

Now, at 31, and trained to help vulnerable 13-year-olds, I can see a lot of differences in how I'd assess the problem now. The trauma field especially has come to understand that humans are essentially relational beings; our brains are born in relationships. We function best in relationships. We need, more than anything else, to feel connected and understood. And then, above that: we are beings in brains and bodies. Our consciousness is limited by the hardware it runs on. If our body is dedicating all its resources to fight-or-flight, we cannot be rational, logical thinkers. We need to understand how to regulate our own emotions, both by personal actions and through relationships with others, to achieve health. It takes repeated, patterned practice to master the skills of understanding and moderating those emotions. Coping mechanisms may be unhealthy, but as I was taught in grad school, "All psychopathology was adaptive once." If you're going to take away someone's unhealthy coping mechanism, you need to have first replaced it with something healthier.

So looking at this scene now, I can point out that Talia represses her emotions instantly because in her family of origin, she got beaten up for crying. Her teachers have already observed that she has the defensive and startle-reactions of an abused child. It should not be very hard for Teren to put two and two together and think: She has been systematically trained to view emotion as unsafe. 

He could, at this point, make the rules of their current situation clear: "It's all right to cry. You don't have to put on a brave face for me." This would let Talia know that she won't lose support or status if she cries. But that assumes, frankly, that she can cry; that the experience of being vulnerable in front of another human being wouldn't be too overwhelming, perhaps terrifying, for her to bear. He could also validate that, and let Talia know he sees her and understands. "It'd be all right if you let that guard down, but it looks like you've got a lot of experience with dealing with hard knocks. If you ever do want to talk about it, I'm here."

It's important for him not to try to force her to show feeling the way he thinks she should. He doesn't actually know that it's safe, or that he's safe. Traumatized people need, more than almost anything else, to achieve a measure of control over their own emotions and bodies. They need to be able to make themselves calm when they need to be calm, and not to be ambushed with sadness or fear out of the blue. It should be, more than anything, Talia's decision of when and where to express her emotions. Is bottling it all up unhealthy for her? Oh, probably. She might get depression later this month, or heart disease in 40 years. But being forced to cry when she's not ready to can leave her feeling violated and retraumatized, right here, right now.

The thing that makes crying comforting for most people is that they have a very deep pattern etched on their brains: They cry, someone comforts them, their pain recedes, they feel calmer. It's the pattern of a thousand hungry wakeups as a baby where someone was gentle and kind and fed them. It's skinned knees kissed and broken toys mended. But Talia probably doesn't have that; her experience of crying has been that she's punished and abused for it, and as an infant whose mother died in childbirth, she probably wasn't adequately nurtured either to build those good associations in the first place. Crying just takes her into a deeper place of loneliness and self-hatred. So for her to soothe herself, she might need to be taught very basic ways of doing that--to take a break, to do something she loves, to get a hug from a friend. Her traditional reaction has been to mask her emotions, and to self-isolate and let those feelings of pain and alienation swamp her.

What he could even do, as I sometimes do as a therapist, is respect that repression as a way of coping and roll with it. If someone can only bear the most glancing reference to their trauma? Then glance. Use black humour or obvious irony to acknowledge the situation without engaging with its emotional depth. “So, you know, no big deal. I bet that’s what you’ve always wanted.” So long as it’s paired with other kinds of real caring--especially useful, immediate help and close emotional attunement--that’s not out of place.

One thing he seems to have assumed is that of course, if your family is awful and devastating, you get to take the morning off to cry. I can only assume that's why he's pushing her to cry at the end of class, when she has another one to go to right after. But she might not know that. Certainly her familyexpected that if they did something awful and devastating, Talia needed to get back to work as soon as possible. Teren doesn't discuss this, and I think it's important; Talia goes to something like four other classes, has lunch, and reads for an hour before she finally gets to do anything relevant to taking care of her emotions. Implicitly, the idea that schedule and routine supercede emotions, and that emotional work takes second place, gets reinforced by the system that thinks it's "saving" her.

The other thing traumatized people struggle with, next to control, is connection. Trauma is hugely isolating; it reroutes resources away from the parts of the brain that foster social connection, so people literally lose track of anyone who might be loving and supportive, and it's hard to make ordinary people understand what you're going through. This is part of why Teren showing Talia all his distress isn't really good for her; he's overloading her still further with natural empathy for his emotions, increasing the weight she has to carry mentally, but not reinforcing her connections. He doesn't remind her that other Heralds are her family now, nor does he give her help in how to reach out to anyone.

Who might Teren remind her of? As much as he's taking on the role of The Person She Can Be Emotional To, he's hardly ever in her life; this is the last day of their week-long class where he met her for one hour a morning. He could encourage her to talk to one of her regular teachers, including his twin Keren, who teaches her equitation, or the cook, in whose kitchen Talia is most confident and in her element. If her dormitory had older Heralds who lived there in a kind of supervisory or mentoring role, spending hours of unstructured free time with the trainees, he could direct her to one of them. He could even direct her to her age-peers, with whom she lives, who might not be the most emotionally attuned but certainly seem to be the group with whom the Heralds expect her to do most of her emotional bonding.

Or he could--now here's a thought--suggest she spend the rest of the morning with the magical psychic horse who can beam rays of love and devotion directly into her brain.

But he doesn't. It is only after Talia has attended classes on history, geography, mathematics, etiquette, and archery, eaten lunch, read for an hour, and cried in the back of the sewing room, that she finally sees her magic horse. And she does feel a bit better! But by then, her major adrenaline has worn off, and with it the ability to etch memories deeply into her brain; the first hours after her shock were spent ignoring her feelings and being disconnected from people who didn't notice she was in pain, thus reinforcing all her old traumatic impressions.

So the book sets up a recurring number of incidents where Talia's loneliness and isolation is reinforced by the world around her; where no one provides her the necessary scaffolding to help her build bridges with other people and develop the skills to be healthier; and then, as happens throughout the series, when something bad happens to her, she is blamed for being so isolated and repressed. 

When I was 13, I had no framework to understand any of this. On the schoolyard, I'd been taught many of Talia's lessons about the dangers of showing weakness, and in the classroom, about the importance of repressing emotions; I used her as an emotional model. (Later in the books, Talia lbecomes an Empath and Mind-Healer, which hugely impacted my decision to become a therapist.) But then, when her loneliness turned into defencelessness and her lack of emotional control turned into instability, the narrative said it was her fault for not being healthier. And so I thought: Yes. It is completely reasonable to provide a young person with no emotional support at all, and then get mad at them for being fucked up.

And so there's lead in the water.