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beneathashadytree · 2 years

Note

Hi! I'm not sure if your write for the La squadra boys, specifically Risotto, Prosciutto, Illuso, and Melone, but if you dont this request could be for the Bucci boys as well!

HCs for the la squadra/bucci boys with an so who suffers with an eating disorder(making themselves throw up) and just being specific about health, constant exercise. But they found out through like hearing them do it.

If this is too much, you can slim it down however you like or simply ignore the request! <3

UNCONDITIONALLY - RISOTTO NERO AND BUCCI GANG X READER

Warnings : mentions of eating disorders, vomiting, this is obviously an AU where everyone is alive, in Giorno’s part he’s already Don, this isn’t proofread, reader is gender-neutral!

Genre : angst & fluff i think?

Word count : 2.3K words

Additional notes : Thank you so much for requesting! I don’t write for La Squadra, but I do write for Risotto alone, so I went with the entirety of the Bucci gang along with him. Personally, I’ve had a very long, tiring struggle with eating disorders, and this felt like a good outlet. I hope you know, anon, that regardless of how tumultuous the path to recovery might be, you will always have people that support your step-by-step achievements and offer you endless support💗 Hope you enjoy this!🥰

Requests : Are open! Check the rules over here.

Want to support me financially? Here’s my CashApp.

Masterlist

Risotto berated himself more than he’d care to admit

He’d always been so perceptive, always picking up on the subtlest of details

Especially concerning his beloved, to whom he paid near-constant attention to, regardless of what he was currently doing

So the fact that he had failed to connect the dots had shame swelling in his stomach

He’d chalked up their concern for their health as just that—being healthy

Something he obviously found important and even a wonderful habit and lifestyle to have

Having a healthy sleep schedule, regular checkups, and exercising daily were great things in his opinion that he even encouraged them to maintain

How he failed to notice their contradictory weakness and frailty as time went on, he had no idea

And hearing them heaving in the locked bathroom after a hearty meal shared over the candlelight had the stand user rooted by his feet, unsure for the first time in his life

He had no idea how to react, almost stunned in place

Risotto decided not to interrupt this, lest they panic

Instead, he carefully planned out a day in which they were both free (a difficult thing to find, considering how demanding being members of the Italian mafia was), and had them spend it at home

His approach of the topic was tentative, but his voice was firm and as reassuring as it was deep

Though he loathed to imagine how long this had been happening, he understood that perhaps he could nudge them in the direction of opening up to him and discussing this

Regardless of whether or not they spoke of they divulged any details, his loving and caring gaze wouldn’t waver for a second as he’d provide them the safe space that always was in his arms

Awkward as he might have been with how openly affectionate he was being, he’d prefer that a million times over than abandoning them in their time of need

He’d make it so they could always rely on him to support them on the road to eventual recovery

After all, their happiness and health would always remain his number one priority

Given how responsible and emotionally intelligent Bruno always has been, it’s almost impossible to imagine him not noticing that something was rather odd concerning his beloved’s behavior

Leading a healthy life was something he’d always encouraged, and he himself loved to join in on their morning runs whenever he could, breathing in the salty air of Napoli that always lingered

However, having them weakly smile over their lunch dates and rush to the bathroom afterwards had major red flags popping in his mind

They often excused it as being caused by “too much grease” or “coming down with something”, but Bruno knew all too well that the restaurants he chose were the finest in town, and that their supposed illness would’ve been apparent through other symptoms

So he was well aware that it was a deeper, more complex struggle that he just wasn’t sure how to bring up without seeming tactless

A couple of weeks after he’d come to the realization, he couldn’t hold it in anymore, his worry and compassion winning over as he walked in on them unwinding on a mission-free weekend

With his warm palms encasing theirs and his heart clearly worn on his sleeve, he then smiled gently at them before he even broached the topic

And they already knew what was coming, having known their lover that well, and having been aware of how sharp he was

Still, it was far better to cry their heart out in his embrace than to force the words down and keep their troubles locked away

He couldn’t promise to be a magical cure, but he could vow to remain supportive throughout their way to wellness once again

Now, Abbacchio runs rather hot-headed, and his passion and emotions often cloud his judgment (though his squad members have often quelled that inferno)

Though normally perceptive on the job, sometimes his muddled emotions caused him to misinterpret or overlook certain points, and the odd habits his lover adopted weren’t an exception to that

At first, he thought that it was mere anxiety or restlessness that had them seeking out more exercise regimens and detailed schedules for sleep and eating, and he even thought that these were healthy coping mechanisms

At least, better than his, which consisted of nursing a bottle of hard liquor

Then, he began to grow slightly indignant when they flat-out refused to have weekly dinner nights that usually consisted of hearty meals and tender moments

And once they did agree, they would leave halfway and spend quite some time in the restaurant bathroom

Feeling a little wounded that they were seemingly eager to cut down on their bonding time, Leone directly confronted them about their disappearances, eyebrows furrowed as he did

Mistaking his concealed hurt for disappointment in them, they couldn’t help but sniffle and admit the truth behind their struggle

And though guilt churned in his stomach at the thought of having possibly pushed them without even being the slightest bit aware of the situation, he worked on schooling his expression to one of calmness

Nothing but patience and love in his expression as he listened, they knew that his close proximity to them and his violet eyes trained on them showed just how much he cared

His was a silent vow to lend an ear and a heart whenever they wanted to fall back on him on the journey to recovery

Mista’s motto to live fast and die young had long been accepted as something unique to only him, and he knew that it certainly wasn’t for everyone

So seeing his darling fretting over their health and trying their best to keep themself in top shape was something he thought was perfectly normal, even a good sign

Them exercising regularly just meant that they could use that as an excuse to shower together often (something he was particularly fond of)

Any other symptoms were extremely well-hidden from him, as they knew just how much the sharp-shooter paid attention to his surroundings

And when it came to them specifically, Mista was ten times as attentive and cautious, given how caring he was as a lover

He only found out when he happened to stumble upon them—quite literally too

Waking up mid-nap with a desperate urge to pee, he blearily walked over to the bathroom, swinging the half-closed door open and nearly tripping over their figure curled up on the floor

With a quick glance to the toilet and their sickly state, it didn’t take long for him to figure out what they’d been doing

However, it was only after they momentarily panicked and tried to apologize for letting their eating disorder get out of hand did his heart sink as he understood

Mista had had no idea, and the revelation had him earnestly rushing to stop them from apologizing, firmly telling them that they shouldn’t feel sorry

Though he admitted he had little to no experience with this, he could offer his unyielding emotional support

Only after their tears had ceased and he’d pulled them up to brush their teeth did be grin reassuringly and ruffle their hair, knowing he’d never let them face their struggles on their own

Now Giorno is far too perceptive and smart to not notice all the little signs

And given the fact that he’s particularly invested in collecting knowledge, he’s almost certainly well-read on the topics of mental health, eating disorders, and the human psyche in general

The only reason why he hadn’t noticed this time was because he’d been completely swamped with work

Becoming the Don was far from easy, and required way too much paperwork and time spent away from his beloved

Though he always felt awful about that fact, he couldn’t just drop everything and rush to their side (as much as he would love to do that)

So they were able to keep their obsession with their health and their rushes to the bathroom after every meal to throw it back up a secret for a while

He found out on a day on which he intended to surprise them with him being at home for a much-needed and missed date night

Coming right after lunch time, he frowned as he found them gripping the toilet bowl and throwing up

Concern evident on his face, he was quick to help them clean the toilet and wash up, gentle hands silently guiding them through as exhaustion marked their face

He settled them under the bed with him, tucking them into his chest and using Gold Experience to conjure up a garland of gentle-smelling lavender flowers

The soothing effect was almost instantaneous, and soon they found themself admitting to their struggle with food and health

Despite feeling his heart being squeezed at the very thought of them having gone through so much without having him by their side, he was ever the good listener and only offered comforting hums and encouraging gazes the entire time

Squeezing their hands with that familiar determined look on his face, they knew that things would change from now on

Should they stumble and fall a million times, Giorno would always be there to help them dust themself off and move forwards

Fugo always took things to heart very easily, and more often than not let his passions take the reins

Though he was a brilliant man, he tended to act first and then reflect later, something he often despised about himself

His lover’s actions were not all that subtle to him, and he couldn’t help that slight twinge of anger that formed in his chest

After all, he couldn’t understand it himself—why hadn’t they come to him?

Was he not that worthy of a confidant? Was he not around enough for them to trust in him being there for them? Did they take him for an idiot who wouldn’t piece things together and understand the whole picture?

He knew that it wasn’t merely them “staying healthy” when they worked themself to the bone with their strenuous exercise regimens

And really, how stupid did he have to be to not realize the real reason behind them knocking back their chair mid-meal to dash to the bathroom?

The way they looked away whenever he piled more food on their plate when he cooked for date night wasn’t something they hid well either

In all honesty, he felt rather insulted that they thought they were doing a good job hiding it all

So when they emerged from the bathroom one time after snacking while watching a rented movie, he had a frown on his face and absentmindedly got short with them

Finally snapping, he sighed and told them that he knew all along what was going on

It wasn’t easy, hearing him phrase it that way, and so they could help but tear up at his unwittingly harsh words

Fugo’s expression instantly softened, a deep feeling of shame mixed with guilt settling in his bones

With only one glance at them, he could tell that this truly had nothing to do with him, and all to do with their own struggle with their eating disorder

He felt embarrassed to have taken it personally; how selfish that was of him!

Slowly pulling them into a gentle embrace, he softly apologized to them, explaining how his mindset had led him to drawing up these conclusions

It was a heavy talk that would play a major role in affecting their relationship, but it was far better to communicate and express companionship and understanding than to let these feelings fester and continue braving things alone

After all, clumsy as his approach often was, his love for them wasn’t questionable

Narancia would be none the wiser the entire time his darling hid this from him

It wasn’t that he was neglectful, or that he was inattentive

It’s just that he simply found his attention scattering in the wind, and he generally struggled to focus on minor details that aren’t blatantly obvious

So if they weren’t to outright say that they’re struggling with an eating disorder, he would never notice—especially not with them actively trying to hide it from him

It was easy to cover up them rushing to the toilet mid-eating, or them flat-out refusing to snack with him as they lounged off-mission, or even waking up earlier than he did to go on morning runs

In a rather ironically funny turn of events, he only found out the truth because he’d been desperate enough to barge into the bathroom while they’d left the door ajar as they vomited into the toilet bowl

The sight had erased all thoughts of base needs from his head as his heart plummeted to his feet

At first, he thought that they had fallen ill, and his primary instinct was to instantly ask if they needed a doctor right now, panic taking over his features momentarily as it often did whenever the topic of illness and disease was brought up

When an embarrassed look made its way on their face and they seemingly found no reason to lie and hide anymore, they confessed to the truth of their struggle with food and health

If Narancia’s initial reaction had been frantic, then his reaction when they told him was heartbroken to say the least

He’d always been one to feel things very deeply when it came to the people he cared about and their struggles, and it was doubled when it came to his lover

Not to mention the fact that he felt horrible, knowing that he’d been completely blind to what had been going on for weeks

He instantly teared up, wearing his heart on his sleeve as he almost always did, and made sure to help them clean up and settle on their living room couch afterwards

With his arms wrapped tightly around them and their back to his chest, he had no intention of letting them go any time soon

Small apologies mumbled into their neck as he blinked back his tears, he vowed to always remain by their side and be their safe space, now that he knew everything about their eating disorder

No matter how turbulent their recovery journey would be, he’d never hesitate to offer his endless love and support for them

Taglist: @blondeboyfriend @mrsgiovanna @boorishbrambling

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sup4l3e · 4 years

Text

I’m Crazy...

I’m insane...

I've lost the plot..

I'm hopeless..

I'm worthless..

I'm unloveable..

I'm pathetic..

I'm weird..

I'm strange..

I'm not okay...

I'm a psycho... (ok this one for me might be true... question it, go on try it! i dare you! ;0 lol)

BUT...

I AM!!!

Those are just some of the things my own mind tells me on a daily basis ... yes here it comes a blog about anxiety and depression... omg!! i know right the cliche of it all. like who hasnt written a blog about depression before ...

oh woe is me! am i right?

well... thats where you're wrong!

(before i start i want no sympathy im not writing this for the "aww's" and the "bless her" comments, i dont want sympathy or empathy ... this is simply because ive experienced and lived with depression for about 14 years and if i can help one person feel better about themselves by reading this or help someone realise that they are not alone then, well, i can rest easy tonight. If anything i want to empower people)

I lived for so many years in the dark, keeping all of this too myself and you know what it did? absolutely sweet FA apart from making me so much worse, it gave ammunition to those little voices, telling me all of the above, making them win!

i didnt realise until about 2-3 years ago that talking about my experiences and how im feeling would help.

i didnt realise until about 2-3 years ago how many other people around me were going through the EXACT same thing.

Two and a half years ago i was a completely different person, i was sheltered, i was in a very toxic relationship ... with myself. Most people would disagree, they'd say i was actually in a toxic relationship with my ex partner; but i cant blame him. Dont get me wrong he was toxic and looking back i was lucky to get out when i did, however i am also grateful too him, because he showed me exactly what i dont want in my life. and being fair to him i'd lived with my own toxicity in my mind for a good 10 years before him, so god forbid i'd give him the satisfaction of all that praise coz by god did i do a damned good number on myself without any of his help. ;)

In all honestly though, i do blame myself and my own mind, because 2 and a half years ago those little voices in my own head were the only thing i was listening to, they were winning. I wasnt listening to my family who were worried sick about me, who were practically begging me to tell them what was going on in my head, who i shut out, ignored and pushed away because i couldnt cope and you know what? they didnt deserve that at all. i live everyday regretting that i put them through that, So i now live everyday hoping to make them proud of me and live each and everyday with a promise. I do however live every day regretting that i didnt let them in earlier because if i had of i wouldnt have gone through the hell i did and i wouldnt have genuinely believed "this is what i deserve" "no-one else will love you" "no-one else wants you" "no-one cares"... i wouldnt have had too live a LIE.

The lie was people did love me, i just couldnt see it, people did care about me, i just wouldnt hear it, i needed their help, i just wouldnt speak it; because at that point in time my own mind was telling me that i didnt deserve any of that, and that nobody would ever want to do that for me. So i found sactuary in a toxic person who in the long run made me the strong person i am today because if it werent for him i'd never have the confidence in myself knowing what i overcame, and if it werent for him i wouldnt have seen my family and loved ones take charge and say "Leanne enough is enough" .. they gave me the metaphorical slap across the face i damned well needed and brought me back to reality, they categorically wouldnt allow that behaviour to carry on anymore and for that i will forever be grateful!

i made a promise to them that day that i would always tell them when i was getting low again and i made a promise to myself that day that i would keep them in the forefront of my mind in all of my decisions and i would also promise to try and help anyone else who was ever in the same position i was in.

depression is a funny old thing, everyone will experience some form of depression throughout their life, some people are genetically wired to experience it, some people will experience it from a young age, some dont experience it until very late on in life, some experience it from sad/happy/overwhelming life events, some unlucky souls just never find happiness. but no matter what EVERYONE will, at somepoint experience depression. in this blog im going to try and explain how i've learned to manage and cope with mine.

A bit of a backstory of my depression, it started around the age of 14-15, my depression. I dont know where it came from but it was right around the time of my GCSE's, college, boys, hormones, and being diagnosed with PCOS (for those of you who dont know what that is its Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) i was told at a young age of 14 that i had some sort of syndrome which "would only matter when i got older", and that i had some of the prettiest ovaries the sonographer and gyneacologist had ever seen... in hindsight that wasnt going to be the compliment i first thought it was or the dismissive statement they portrayed it and brushed it off as, at all! THAT diagnosis changed alot of my life, however i will get back to that.

As most teens do around here I started studying for my GCSE's at just 15 years old. i was so stressed out i started actually hearing a screaming voice in my head. i suffered panic attacks daily, sometimes a few attacks a day, and that is where my anxiety started and then, good old depression smashed me in the face. i found the more stressed i became, the more id hear that screaming inside my head which then lead me to thinking " holy fucking shitballs im hearing voices im actually insane" therefore leading to more anxiety and panic attacks. so much so i would come home exhausted at 4pm everyday crawl into my pyjamas and climb into bed ready to do it all again the following day. (dont get me wrong i sat most nights on msn using the latest flashing emojis for EACH and EVERY letter of the alphabet, to the point it looked more like hyroglyphics and obviously getting the colours just right with the codes to make your name and status show in a rainbow. but that was all done in pj's curled up in bed because i couldnt manage much else ... however, if my mam asks i was revising and doing my homework THE. WHOLE. TIME, not talking to my friends about how hot a certain crush's bum looked that day ha! am i right! :P xoxo)

This was all a massive thing for me to go through aswell, due to the fact my dad has mental health issues and lives with schizophrenia, so, naturally at this point, you can imagine i was picturing myself in padlocked straight jackets and padded cells, talking away to the screaming voice in my head. the funniest thing was this screaming voice wasnt saying anything nasty or bad it was just my thoughts screaming at me like everything was angry, so genuinely just everyday life thoughts but those screaming at me, like, imagine thinking "leanne dont forget to pack your PE kit" but in the voice of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket... it. was. TERRIFYING!

Anyways, so yes high school was a massive contributor, then i made the choice to leave college at 17 because i, like many others, didnt have the faintest clue what i wanted to be when i grew up (little did i know id live the life of peter pan and neverland would be my sesh house OIOI!!!) In leaving college i went into full time work, as a 'temp job' until i decided what i was going to do... unfortunately, 8 and a half years later i was still their prisoner! haha, Nah, dont get me wrong i met some absolutely amazing people in that job and i did love it but i knew at the end, if i didnt get out it was going to kill me off. I'd gotten to the point in that job that i cried myself to sleep knowing i had to go back in the next day. that place contributed alot to my depression not because it was a bad job but because id made a wrong decision and was stuck there. i had to leave.

my next massive contributor, and this is where i divulge some of my REAL heartbreaks. PCOS - Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome or what i like to call Poly fucking Cystic fucking Ovary fucking Syndrome or "lets just fuck shit up!" (no im not bitter about it at all lol) because of this shit, from the very young age of 14 (like puberty isnt hard enough - spots, hair in places you never wanted boobs growing overnight, bleeding once a month being the biggest inconvenience) i have also had to deal with weight issues, hersuitism, depression, anxiety, hormones that sent me bat shit crazy, pain, headaches, fatigue, you name it i had it. but the biggest heartbreak, being told that id always have difficulty concieving and carrying a child. Anyone who knows me, and knows me well, knows i have always wanted to be a mam. (and not the sesh mam who looks after all my drunken idiotic friends on a night out ... coz i swear thats all they ever think i do lol) I mean a real mam, to a real baby. and being told at a young age that i had the prettiest ovaries the gyneacologist had ever seen wasnt the compliment i thought it was because it turned out my ovaries were absolutely covered in cysts. And for years i have tried to have a baby but alas nothing ever happens. i've had a few close calls and ive miscarried, or at least i think i did, the test came back positive but then about 3 days after that pretty pink second line, i had the heaviest period i had ever had for around 4 hours and then my body went back to normal as if nothing happened. it broke my heart.

They say the human body is delicate and intricate and should be treated with respect... i say its a machine and its a absolute twat at times, and why should i respect what in essence has caused me heartbreak from a young age FOR NO FUCKING REASON. but hey ho... life. goes. on.

so... thats my life story or just a snippet of it. and some of the reasons why i have depression.

heres how i cope...

Well, for a long time.. and i mean a VERY LONG time i didnt. i hid it, i hid away from the world. i drank alot. i avoided family, i avoided my best friends, i avoided anything that would have brought me back to reality.

For a long time though, thats what i needed. now im not saying running away from your issues is easy and thats what you should do because its definitely not. im saying i NEEDED to do it at the time because i had no other way of coping and i NEEDED too to learn what not to do in the future. So masking, for me, was better than facing things 'alone'. In that time though, i made my issues alot worse and in fact caused more issues. it hurt my family, my friends and well hurt myself too, because in the long run i still had to sober up and i still had to deal with the same issues that got me down in the first place, i ended up in debt which contributed further too my issues. I did some very silly things which when i look back on them now i could have hurt so many people. i took an overdose of painkillers at one point around 2 and a half years ago. I felt so weak i saw no other outcome but instantly regretted doing it and made myself sick so that they came back up. i've told my mother and close friends about this previously but i think to really show how much i've learned and to reach out to anyone who is feeling the same way i did, to tell them IT REALLY DOES GET BETTER AND EASIER. i think saying that, shows my honesty throughout this post and allows for my experience and honesty really show that i want to help anyone going through the same thing.

Masking just makes the pain go away for a short period of time. learning from your pain and making it your strength is how you really overcome your own mind and depression.

It wasnt until i realised i was never alone, just how selfish and stupid id been all that time, because in masking, hiding and running away, id stupidly stopped myself from a faster recovery, less heartache, less pain and mental and physical torture. and really i stopped myself from helping others in the same position as me.

it wasnt until i learned to make my pain my strength that i truly found peace in who i am.

i still have days where those voices wont shut up, and they win and thats ok.

i still have days where i cannot climb out of bed and thats ok.

i still have days where i cry and the pain is too much and thats ok.

because i learned all of it really is ok! everyone has those same thoughts the same feelings the same illnesses. and i know that tomorrow WILL be a better day.

you just need to learn how to make it and own it as your own!

nothing has changed for me, all of those things are still true they're still real, my body hasnt miraculously healed itself, i still made poor life choices, it hasnt changed my hormonal imbalances but it has changed my mindset. it has changed my life. i made a choice to change my mindset and not let it beat me i decided to let people in. my family are my guardian angels because they never gave up on me, they dragged it out of me and frogmarched me to the doctors for the help i needed but some people dont have that support in their lives.

i'm lucky enough now, to have lived with this for long enough to know my signs, and when i know what i call, "going dark" is coming. basically when i start slipping and losing control of it again, i identify it and know how to manage it head on. unfortunately my body because of the stupid "intricate machine" i have and how broken it is (believe me the day i can swap out into an AI robot body imma sign straight up for that shit imma have me a body like Jennifer Anniston) my body however tends to go into a meltdown, i end up with more migraines, pain and infections. i also get extremely tired to the point i can sleep for a good 15-20 hours a day and thats not me being lazy (although if sleeping were an olympic sport i'd be the universal champion of it BED=LIFE) thats really me needing to reset. at that point in time when i know this is coming, thats when i reach out; i tell my friends and my family "I'm not okay" because i know now i can do that, i can talk to them.

i, personally, take medication daily, and for some reason we live in a society where people are actually shamed for doing so. i know if i dont take those 2 little tablets every day i will lose control and become a shell of who i really am. my seratonin levels drop and i practically become a robot barely functioning. so why should i be ashamed of those 2 little 'happy pills' which make me the person i want to be and know i truly am! no chemical imbalance is going to get the better of me! if i can have the help, im damned sure going to take it. along with the happy pills, aswell as alot of sleep, sunbeds, spending time with family and friends whenever i possibly can, i now have a job that i love, i also retrained as a beautician, and i love going to the gym and swimming whenever i can, ive found i can manage mine alot better. one thing that massively changed my life was limitting when i drink. i rarely go out drinking anymore and the reason is because i know deep down i will end up in a very low state afterwards. alcohol is a depressant and i wont allow that kind of thing to get me down. so now instead i choose to drink once a month if not less. i havent cut out the drink completely i just know if i want to get blinding drunk i need to be in a very happy place to do so. so i am careful where i drink, who i drink with and what i do whilst im drinking and unfortunately much to my neighbours disgust that tends to be in the house whilst singing along to whitney houston or disney songs at the top of my lungs, but thats how i know i'll not plummet the day after, and lets face it anyone whose heard me singing knows whitney had nothing on me ;)

In all seriousness though, the best advice i can give anyone living with depression is talk to someone, talk to your family, talk to your neighbour, talk to your friends, talk to your doctor, talk to your dog, your cat, the postman, the man on the bus who sits oddly close too you... just talk to anyone. tell them how you are feeling tell them your experiences. tell them what is getting to you. Find someone who you can trust, find a stranger. write it all down in a blog. video it. GET IT ALL OFF YOUR CHEST! SAY IT OUT LOUD! Just. Bloody. Talk! please!

everyones experiences with depression are different some people mask it, some people show it, some people (like me now) shout it from the fucking rooftops because im not afraid of my emotions anymore.

everyones ways of coping are different too, some people find the gym helps, some rely on medication, some rely on talking therapies... there are so many different ways of coping out there now... the only way that doesnt work is not admitting something is wrong and fighting your own mind without help, knowing something isnt right but still doing nothing about it. The only way of not coping is living a lie, you dont have to do this alone!

Basically do those things just for you, the ones you've always wanted to do! get that tattoo you wanted, quit your job, retrain, change your hair colour, buy that car, buy that dog, book that holiday.

do what makes YOU happy!

live for you and open up, people would rather know how you are feeling than see you struggle or ultimately not be here.

open up you never know someone might be feeling the exact same way you are and it could bring you closer.

but remember most importantly:

You ARE NOT Alone..

You ARE NOT Crazy..

You ARE NOT insane..

You HAVE NOT lost the plot..

You ARE NOT hopeless..

You ARE NOT worthless..

You ARE NOT unloveable..

You ARE NOT pathetic..

You ARE NOT weird..

You ARE NOT a psycho..

You ARE NOT strange..

And..

You ARE okay...

You ARE Beautiful..

You ARE Worth it..

YOU ARE Loved

i hope this helps...

thank you ☺

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gaygwenpool · 5 years

Note

Black Ant and Taskmaster for the ship meme :3c

Hello there oh so anonymous nonnie! :3c Once again under the cut cuz I Ramble… @herbofoo come get your juice too

[ask meme]

Who cooks

Both but more often than not, they just order a pizza or even somethin fancier. Neither of them are particularly good cooks but both of them are also able to eat pretty much anythin… Though actually, im pretty sure while LMDs can eat, they dont derive any energy out of it so Eric basically runs on unstable Pym particles anyway. (Tasky probably bitches Eric should cook more often then, since they buy the pym pars mostly from Tony’s still considerably bigger paycheck and so technically he is already ‘cookin’ all meals for him)

Who does laundry and other chores

neither of them, lazy bastards lol. no okay for laundry, its Tasky mostly, again by virtue of Eric bein a robot and not having many actual clothes anymore (he always uses tasky’s metal polish tho) plus who the fuck wears WHITE to a fight like buddy i know its all an ego trip how you fight so well u dont get it dirty but STILL.

For the chores in general, Tony keeps track of what needs to be done and usually tells Ant to fix it cuz buddy’s too dumb and disorganized to do it on his own. And then Eric usually makes ants help him out.

How many children do they have:

none and aren’t plannin any! Eric is still terrified of fatherhood and Tony just.. couldnt care less, neither of them really want to fuck up some poor kid that didnt sign up for it… But Tasky still trains his henchies, not as extensively as he used to but every year he has several “courses”, he loves that and slowly Eric started to enjoy it too. They stay in touch with quite a few of them.

But well, technically there is Finesse. In fact, Tasky keeps tabs on how she is doing and sometimes they even hang out, but not that often, again mostly for Jeanne’s benefit. They started keeping in touch more, slightly before she joined A.I.M. and while Tasky would have been happier if she stuck to the merc life, he can see she’s happier with Nadia and other G.I.R.L. scientists so hey, he’s glad girl’s makin her own way.

Who’s more dominate:

Me on the mysteleon ask - no one, its a beautiful equal partnership Me on taskant - Tony lol.

I mean it’s definitely not as unbalanced as their were in the Initiative! But Tony is just.. used to lead. :’D And Eric for sure doesnt mind! That post with “going legally braindead when S/O picks you up” is ...relevant.

Favorite nonsexual activity:

Whatever they feel like at the moment, mostly just dicking around, lmao! They love partying and drinkin and just havin a good time with clubbing, singing their lungs off at karaokes, all that night life stuff! But also simply chillin at home with a bag of doritos and a cheesy romcom marathon or video games. Or enjoying the perks of luxurious life by shopping for ridiculously overpriced dumb stuff and robots and Weapons. And well sparing can be fun too or goin to pick up a fight with some strong villains/heroes so Tasky can renew his repertoire (that’s not that often though, more often he scores them a job so he can have fun, renew his repertoire AND get paid.)

Their favorite place to be together:

It really ties with what i’ve said in the last bullet point so the Bar With No Name is really a strong contestant, you can get everythin there booze, food, music, karaoke, friends, jobs and sometimes even a workout when heroes bust it up or simply when someone is being an ass (outside of the bar of course).

Any traditions:

Does backstabbing their employer count as a tradition because these two sure do it a lot.

What they do for each other on holidays:

Holidays are often a real busy period for mercs, all these family feuds resurfacing or business enemies tryin to blame it on that etc.. So they mostly just run around, tryin to earn all that sweet sweet moneycash lol. But they manage to find some time to both get and exchange presents, which are often somethin both can enjoy, either tickets for a WWE match or a concert or some cool gadgets for jobs...

Their “song”:

Obviously it had to be somethin fun and pop since Tasky is canonically a big Spice girls fan and Eric definitely loves stuff like that too. I swear i wanted to pick a less ‘classic’ song, but it ended up being really on the nose because it just fitted so well..

so Yeah, anyway, it’s Wannabe by Spice girls :’D just imagine them singin it at the top of their lungs at each other, havin an absolute blast.

Where did they go for their honeymoon:

Oh dont get me wrong, there were Big Plans!!! ….and then they got caught, one by police the other by a cult, so their big casino trip snowballed into running all over the place, trying to free each other, kick some ass, save the money and accidentally help save the world… You know how it goes. They ended up in some washed up place, drinkin with Deadpool and Bullseye (Yes they tried to kill each other like an hour ago during those honeymoon shenanigans, whats your point) but hell, they still had fun.

Where did they first meet:

At the Initiative, Ant was a young cadet under Tasky’s mentoring. Eric was (is) obnoxious, dumb and awkward but he was eager to please while being enough of a lazy bastard for Tasky to appreciate. And ever since that one time when Eric offered to share his Chuck episodes on his phone instead of the two of them answering the call to arms, they started to hang out more and more.

Any pets:

Ants… So many.. ants……….. And not in neat vivariums either, they are simply walking around like they own the place. Tasky definitely isnt happy with that and he threatens Eric regularly, that if he wont stop feedin them or send them away this instant, he’ll just spray them all with DDT, but they both know he wouldn’t.

At some point, Eric wanted to get into beekeeping, but he didnt really have time nor patience for it, not to mention they gotta move often and a lot. So he just. Asked some wild bees to make a hive at their place. (”We’re gonna have honey AND i can command them to attack any intruders, I’m a genius!”) It went about as well as you’d expect. At least the hood+skele mask hides stings pretty ok...

As for Tasky, he kept Tess-1, that giant murder robot from Secret Avengers and he has the Fluffiest snowhite cat as well, like a Gorgeous Soft angel cloud, this cat could win medals on contests. She is a spoiled princess that only eats the most expensive fresh tuna and also all the weird bits and pieces of gore the mercs accidentally bring home on their boots n weapons. Her name’s Kitty Spice because a certain T. Masters is hopeless. She sleeps on Anty the same way cats sleep on computers and in general is super cuddly.

What do they fight over:

Lots of things! Tasky has his temper and both of them can be annoying fucks. From the dumbest tiniest stuff (like Eric leaving his dildo in the fridge who the fuck does that or Tony not lending him his guns, that aint fair you have so MANY of them) to more serious stuff (like the first time Tasky had a bigger amnesia attack, making him forget not just the beer he invited Black Ant to but forget Eric all together… Ant knew a little about Tasky’s memory issues, but they are still both ruthless mercs so Tony didnt divulge much in order to avoid vulnerability or manipulations.. Eric took it hard, he didnt really understand how it worked (or wanted to understand), he just kept going on about how he doesnt mind Tasky forgetting what they did last few years but how could he forget him???

Do they go on vacations, if so where:

Well, they did pay for that beautiful beach house in Belize so… ;)

#taskmaster #tony masters #black ant #eric ogrady #eric o'grady #marvel #mercs #patchwork #kao posts

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bubbleblower · 7 years

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You know, Horace Slughorn is not usually a character that I get feels about. Because the old duffer is obviously self aware enough to realise that Harry Potter knows he's a phony. Dont get me wrong, he's an adept potions master and an adequate professor, but he largely gets by on the coattails of other people's success and he knows that Harry knows it. But you can bet your sweet bippy that the old blowhard would absolutely get in over his head at some ministry gala, telling a skeptical acquaintance about his auspicious mentorship of the boy who lived twice, only to have that aquaintance point out that Harry is in fact at the party and ask to be introduced... And Harry, that sweet generous boy would take one look at the desperate expression on old Sluggy's face and just: "My dear professor! How wonderful to see you again! And a pleasure to make you're aquaintance Mark." "Matthew.." "Apologies, you know I was actually just telling the head of magical games and sports about how instrumental Sluggy here was in the defeat of Voldemort, why without his keen mind and the wealth of information he provided to the cause we might still be out there fighting. I cant divulge exaclty what he assisted with, thats highly classified you know. But I always know who to call on for advice on the reform we're still working on implementing here in the Ministry. Actually Marty.." "Matthew" " Right, could you give us a moment? I know youre a very busy man professor but I was wondering if you would mind looking over a bit of legislation Hermione is getting ready to present to the wizengamot concerning the production and sale of love potions." he says "I recall you being incredibly insightful about them during that nasty business in 6th year where you saved Ron from that stray one meant for me and would appreciate any insight or advice you might have." He finishes with a grin and a rougish wink. And Slughorn who by know is so pink in the face and glowing with gratitude and embarrassment replies. "Of course my boy, I always have time to help a former student" and spends the rest of the night feeling as though a balloon had inflated in his chest. When Harry actually sends him the paperwork the next day he cries.

#Harry Potter #Horace Slughorn #Headcannon #Feels #Half Blood Prince #Love Potions #Sluggy #Slug Club

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kittensjonsa · 8 years

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Don't Cry

For @jonxsansafanfiction Valentine's Day 10: Stood up. Pardon the deluge of wedding fics, it's all because I had a wedding to attend over the weekend! And also the reason why I'm a little behind! Sorry! But I aim to complete the challenge and all the prompts so here it is! Bear with me please.. 😆 Thanks for reading! xx ----------- Sansa wiped off the hot tears that rolled off her cheek. All she wanted to do was scream and hit at something. Or someone. Especially someone. Angry was an understatement. She was seething. She could not find anymore words to describe Joffrey. This was the lowest he had come to. Bastard, jerk, prick, scumbag were all too mild for him. He was beneath all of that. Leaving Sansa by herself at the airport, hours away from their flight to Robb's and Margaery's wedding and the text that said it all. 'I think we should see other people. This is obviously not working out. You have a good life.' - was all he said. He didn't even acknowledge her by name. Not a call, nothing. Sansa had rung him five times the past two hours and they were completely ignored. The moment her calls were directed to his voicemail, it proved to be the final straw and Sansa had to run into the bathroom and bawl her eyes out. The plans they had made, the sweet promises were all just pretend, for show and for whom Sansa didn't know. And she was foolish enough to trust him. Look where that got me, she thought to herself. Sansa rubbed off the tears again from her face and took a deep breath and pulled herself together. Her flight was going to board soon and perhaps having family around her was just what she needed. She probably had to explain Joffrey's absence but she wished they wouldn't for all she desired for right now was a warm hug. Sansa stepped out of the cubicle and washed her face. The cool water on her skin immediately offered relief. Men can suck it, she fumed. Sansa looked out her window as she fastened her seat belt. A little time in the sun would probably be a good antidote to the canker of sorrow and disappointment taking root in her heart. Highgarden was blessed with lots of sun. It seemed to have only two seasons, spring or summer, all year round. It was a 2 hour flight to Highgarden from Winterfell and it was going to be the longest two hours of her life. "Sansa?" a voice made her look up from her book. She recognised the low raspy voice. Dark curls and deep set brown eyes met hers. "Jon!" Sansa surprise turned into relief as she held out her arms to greet him. She held on longer than she should, she needed it so much. Jon sat in the empty seat beside her. "Well, this is a surprise. I thought you would already be there with the rest." Sansa smiled weakly but didn't say anything. How could she when the mention of Joffrey's name on her lips would send her into another crying fit. "I thought YOU were supposed to already be there. You didn't manage to catch an earlier flight?" Sansa avoided answering and asked Jon instead. "Last minute change in plans. I had to come. Work comes second and you know I won't miss your brother's big day. But my assistant screwed up the bookings and put me on the flight for today so here I am. Great to bump into you though," Jon explained cheerfully, obviously glad he had company. Sansa was also glad her cousin was on the same flight as hers, though it was for an entirely different reason. "Really good to see you, Sansa. Guess I'll be getting to my seat then. See you when we land," Jon shifted to move when he felt Sansa's gentle tug on him. "Oh you can sit here, if you want. I mean, this seat is vacant," Sansa patted the seat next to hers. It was meant for someone else but that person was as good as dead to her. Jon grinned at her offer. "Well don't mind if I do. No one is sitting here?" Sansa took a deep breath and sighed. She shook her head, trying to choke back sobs that were on the verge of coming on. Jon's grin slowly turned into concern as he saw Sansa struggling to speak. It took him seconds to connect the dots and guess what was wrong. Sansa held her head down and looked at her fidgety hands, trying to avoid Jon's gaze. "Sansa, what's wrong? Are you OK? " Sansa shook her head at Jon, this time her tears flowed freely. Perhaps it was her body's way of ridding her system of all the toxic emotions. If she was going to cry the whole weekend to feel better then she would do just that. "Oh Sansa, my dear, I'm so sorry. It's going to be okay. We'll meet everyone and we'll have a great time, it's going to be all right. There, there," Jon held Sansa and stroked her arms as she leaned into him for support. Sansa sobbed quietly trying her best to calm her heaving body. Jon's arms felt so wonderful around her. Just what she needed. "Do you want a drink, Sans ?" he asked as the attendant strolled past with the refreshments trolley. Yes, a drink would be good, she figured and pointed to the miniature vodka bottle and the can of tonic water. It took a few sips of her drink for Sansa to admit to Jon that she had been stood up by Joffrey at the airport and had dumped her like a bag of junk via text message. As Sansa bared her story, Jon's fists kept clenching involuntarily. If only he could his hands on the scrawny throat of his. He didn't like Joffrey, he never did. He could tell nobody in the Stark family liked him either. He didn't know what Sansa had seen in the entitled, arrogant and immature brat that was Joffrey. She was too good for him and Jon always felt she deserved someone who was gentle and respectful. Joffrey was none of those. "I swear to God, if I ever see him anywhere, I'll sort him out. Ass hole," Jon growled. Sansa leaned closer to his chest and nodded her head slightly. Family was definitely the best thing in her life. Jon was a Targaryen but there was Stark in him thanks to Aunt Lyanna, so he was just as good. Having Jon hold her throughout the entire flight almost made Sansa feel like normal again. His voice, his bad corny jokes as he tried to make her smile and the hand squeezes on her arms and shoulders all made for a balm in soothing her broken heart. Sansa had not seen this side of Jon before and she was pleasantly surprised. "You feel better? Look, I know this wedding might be hard for you after what happened and maybe they'll ask questions," Jon spoke with concern as he lugged their bags on to the trolley. "Well, I did tell everyone that Joffrey was my plus one and he was coming with me. So now that he's not, I'm sure they'll want to know why." "Well, you don't have to tell them anything if you don't want to. It's still raw and it hurts, believe me I know a thing or two about being dumped." Sansa looked at Jon for him to continue as they stood waiting for their turn at the car rental kiosk. He didn't divulge anything further. Perhaps, a year gone was still too soon to speak of Ygritte. Their drive was a fairly quiet one to the Tyrell estate, Sansa was too tired to chat and Jon comprehended. She had been fortunate enough to have Jon by her side during this unexpected hard time. Jon seemed to say the right things that made Sansa appreciate him even more than before. "I guess I should tell Robb and Margaery that I have an extra seat at my table now. In case they need it," Sansa said, thinking out loud. "You don't have to. I'll sit with you. I mean I'm not sure I even have a seat at any table since I just told them I would be coming just yesterday. Leave that seat for me. So I can be your plus one. Of course if you don't mind," Jon suggested, his eyes on the road as he spoke. Sansa couldn't bear his heart felt gesture that she felt like crying again. Sansa stifled a sniff to keep calm as best she could. It touched her that Jon would care so much for her emotional well being. The brooding and moody Jon Targaryen she had known was gone. She liked the Jon she was seeing now. Sansa felt a gentle squeeze on her hand as she exhaled a deep sigh. Jon's thumb gently wiped away a tear from her face. Her red and tear ridden eyes met his. Sansa didn't notice any sympathy in them. All she found were kind smiling eyes. "Dont cry, Sansa. I'll make sure you'll be all right."

#jonsa #jonsa fic #jon x sansa #jonsansaff #sad Sansa

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captaingardening100-blog · 6 years

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Im 35 and I love gardening. Deal with it

New Post has been published on https://gardenguideto.com/must-see/im-35-and-i-love-gardening-deal-with-it/

Im 35 and I love gardening. Deal with it

Why do so many people only see gardening as an activity for retired people, asks Tom Smart

I remember the conversation. The man in front of me was the husband of my wifes friend. I didnt know him that well. Wed just started talking when he took a sip of his drink and asked, Youre into gardening, huh?

I tried to smile, Yep. I like my garden.

So do you have a big garden? he enquired.

Its not a bad size for the house long and narrow but no, its not too big, I replied.

He thought for a moment and then said, I dont mind my garden. Its nice to sit out on a sunny day. Cutting the lawns a real pain though weve talked about getting that imitation grass stuff.

I didnt know what to say. I answered with a noncommittal Mmmmm.

Itd be great. Never have to mow the stuff again, the man said joyfully.

I fell silent.

There was an awkwardness building; we were struggling to find common ground. I could tell that it wasnt the right moment to divulge the fact that I love cutting my grass. Also, I probably wouldnt mention that I particularly love trimming the lawn in the height of summer, just after Ive finished deadheading my roses and staking a few flopping herbaceous perennials. Its a task that immediately makes the garden feel tidier, like putting the right frame around a beautiful painting. Instead I fell back on a topic which can rescue any conversation in Britain the weather. We both laughed about the ambivalent British summers, and the conversation moved on.

Gardening is many things: beautiful, meditative, healthy, exciting, rewarding and creative. However, I often feel as if gardening is not particularly popular among my peers. It seems to come down to one thing: age. Im 35 years old and Im passionate about gardening. Unfortunately, whenever I bring up gardening in a social situation at the pub or in a room of colleagues, for example there can be a few wry smiles. I sometimes begin to feel as if Ive admitted to some unusual obsession, like collecting my own toenail clippings or keeping a pet rock. At Christmas, a family member slapped me on the back and informed anyone listening that I was a sixty year old trapped in the body of a thirty-five year old.

So why is it that many people only see gardening as an activity for the older, retired person? Why do I feel as if so few people my own age enjoy gardening? Why do I always feel the need to explain myself or half-apologise in a self-deprecating way when someone finds out I enjoy horticulture?

Gardening can, and does, interest people of all ages. My children love the garden. They love sowing seeds and picking ripe raspberries with jammy red hands. I used to have an allotment, and there were many people my own age working their plots, enjoying the land and the dirt and the intermittent sunshine. Wed talk about potatoes and peas and the best way to beat the slugs. Ive been to gardening shows and talked with people of all ages and from completely different backgrounds; they all loved plants and watching them grow.

However, and this is a big however, gardening is still dominated by a particular age group. If you need evidence, visit your local flower show and see how many young faces you find. Try looking up recommendations for what to do when youre newly retired; gardening is near the top of the list. If you dont believe me, just look at who the garden centres market themselves towards. At Wyevale Garden Centres club, members who are over sixty get double points on a Tuesday. As for gardening magazines, my subscriptions are often full of advertisements for mobility scooters and life insurance. While I have no problem enjoying a pastime which is dominated by people almost twice my age, it would be nice to see more young people interested in horticulture.

Why is gardening dominated by the older generations? This is clearly a concern to the RHS – they have numerous groups and awards all aimed at young people: the Campaign for School Gardens, the Young Designer of the Year award, and the Young Landscape Contractor award, just to name a few. The RHS has even created a Horticulture Matters industry group to try to address the problem. They are obviously worried about the lack of new talent entering the industry.

While there are no simple solutions, it is clear that gardening is seen as an activity for the more mature adult. What is it about age and gardening which seem to complement each other? For me, one obvious link is simple: patience. Older people seem to be more able to slow down and notice the finer details in life. Nurturing a seed from a speck of dust into a mature plant takes time and persistence two qualities that can be in short supply in our modern lives. We live in a world where there are an excessive number of distractions and people often seem to expect instant gratification. These days, I understand how it can be difficult to convince many young people that a newly emerged tulip is more interesting than a smartphone.

As for me, I love gardening. I love it the way most men seem to love football. And while many guys my age try to convince their partners to let them travel for that away game to Madrid, Im always trying to talk my wife into turning yet more of our garden into raised beds for vegetables. Its a situation that can leave me feeling like an outsider, but its one Ive come to accept. And no, I couldnt tell you whos leading the Premier League right now, but I could talk you through how to take softwood cuttings from lavender I suppose, in the end, I wouldnt have it any other way.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

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trendingnewsb · 7 years

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Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets

What can we learn about ourselves from the things we ask online? Seth StephensDavidowitz analysed anonymous Google search data, uncovering disturbing truths about our desires, beliefs and prejudices

Everybody lies. People lie about how many drinks they had on the way home. They lie about how often they go to the gym, how much those new shoes cost, whether they read that book. They call in sick when theyre not. They say theyll be in touch when they wont. They say its not about you when it is. They say they love you when they dont. They say theyre happy while in the dumps. They say they like women when they really like men. People lie to friends. They lie to bosses. They lie to kids. They lie to parents. They lie to doctors. They lie to husbands. They lie to wives. They lie to themselves. And they damn sure lie to surveys. Heres my brief survey for you:

Have you ever cheated in an exam?

Have you ever fantasised about killing someone?

Were you tempted to lie?

Many people underreport embarrassing behaviours and thoughts on surveys. They want to look good, even though most surveys are anonymous. This is called social desirability bias. An important paper in 1950 provided powerful evidence of how surveys can fall victim to such bias. Researchers collected data, from official sources, on the residents of Denver: what percentage of them voted, gave to charity, and owned a library card. They then surveyed the residents to see if the percentages would match. The results were, at the time, shocking. What the residents reported to the surveys was very different from the data the researchers had gathered. Even though nobody gave their names, people, in large numbers, exaggerated their voter registration status, voting behaviour, and charitable giving.

Has anything changed in 65 years? In the age of the internet, not owning a library card is no longer embarrassing. But, while whats embarrassing or desirable may have changed, peoples tendency to deceive pollsters remains strong. A recent survey asked University of Maryland graduates various questions about their college experience. The answers were compared with official records. People consistently gave wrong information, in ways that made them look good. Fewer than 2% reported that they graduated with lower than a 2.5 GPA (grade point average). In reality, about 11% did. And 44% said they had donated to the university in the past year. In reality, about 28% did.

Then theres that odd habit we sometimes have of lying to ourselves. Lying to oneself may explain why so many people say they are above average. How big is this problem? More than 40% of one companys engineers said they are in the top 5%. More than 90% of college professors say they do above-average work. One-quarter of high school seniors think they are in the top 1% in their ability to get along with other people. If you are deluding yourself, you cant be honest in a survey.

The more impersonal the conditions, the more honest people will be. For eliciting truthful answers, internet surveys are better than phone surveys, which are better than in-person surveys. People will admit more if they are alone than if others are in the room with them. However, on sensitive topics, every survey method will elicit substantial misreporting. People have no incentive to tell surveys the truth.

How, therefore, can we learn what our fellow humans are really thinking and doing? Big data. Certain online sources get people to admit things they would not admit anywhere else. They serve as a digital truth serum. Think of Google searches. Remember the conditions that make people more honest. Online? Check. Alone? Check. No person administering a survey? Check.

The power in Google data is that people tell the giant search engine things they might not tell anyone else. Google was invented so that people could learn about the world, not so researchers could learn about people, but it turns out the trails we leave as we seek knowledge on the internet are tremendously revealing.

I have spent the past four years analysing anonymous Google data. The revelations have kept coming. Mental illness, human sexuality, abortion, religion, health. Not exactly small topics, and this dataset, which didnt exist a couple of decades ago, offered surprising new perspectives on all of them. I am now convinced that Google searches are the most important dataset ever collected on the human psyche.

The Truth About Sex

How many American men are gay? This is a regular question in sexuality research. Yet it has been among the toughest questions for social scientists to answer. Psychologists no longer believe Alfred Kinseys famous estimate based on surveys that oversampled prisoners and prostitutes that 10% of American men are gay. Representative surveys now tell us about 2% to 3% are. But sexual preference has long been among the subjects upon which people have tended to lie. I think I can use big data to give a better answer to this question than we have ever had.

First, more on that survey data. Surveys tell us there are far more gay men in tolerant states than intolerant states. For example, according to a Gallup survey, the proportion of the population that is gay is almost twice as high in Rhode Island, the state with the highest support for gay marriage, than Mississippi, the state with the lowest support for gay marriage. There are two likely explanations for this. First, gay men born in intolerant states may move to tolerant states. Second, gay men in intolerant states may not divulge that they are gay. Some insight into explanation number one gay mobility can be gleaned from another big data source: Facebook, which allows users to list what gender they are interested in. About 2.5% of male Facebook users who list a gender of interest say they are interested in men; that corresponds roughly with what the surveys indicate.

How, therefore, can we learn what our fellow humans are really thinking and doing? Big data. Photograph: Thomas M Scheer/Getty Images/EyeEm

And Facebook too shows big differences in the gay population in states with high versus low tolerance: Facebook has the gay population more than twice as high in Rhode Island as in Mississippi. Facebook also can provide information on how people move around. I was able to code the home town of a sample of openly gay Facebook users. This allowed me to directly estimate how many gay men move out of intolerant states into more tolerant parts of the country. The answer? There is clearly some mobility from Oklahoma City to San Francisco, for example. But I estimate that men moving to someplace more open-minded can explain less than half of the difference in the openly gay population in tolerant versus intolerant states.

If mobility cannot fully explain why some states have so many more openly gay men, the closet must be playing a big role. Which brings us back to Google, with which so many people have proved willing to share so much.

Countrywide, I estimate using data from Google searches and Google AdWords that about 5% of male porn searches are for gay-male porn. Overall, there are more gay porn searches in tolerant states compared with intolerant states. In Mississippi, I estimate that 4.8% of male porn searches are for gay porn, far higher than the numbers suggested by either surveys or Facebook and reasonably close to the 5.2% of pornography searches that are for gay porn in Rhode Island.

So how many American men are gay? This measure of pornography searches by men roughly 5% are same-sex seems a reasonable estimate of the true size of the gay population in the United States. Five per cent of American men being gay is an estimate, of course. Some men are bisexual; some especially when young are not sure what they are. Obviously, you cant count this as precisely as you might the number of people who vote or attend a movie. But one consequence of my estimate is clear: an awful lot of men in the United States, particularly in intolerant states, are still in the closet. They dont reveal their sexual preferences on Facebook. They dont admit it on surveys. And, in many cases, they may even be married to women.

It turns out that wives suspect their husbands of being gay rather frequently. They demonstrate that suspicion in the surprisingly common search: Is my husband gay? The word gay is 10% more likely to complete searches that begin Is my husband… than the second-place word, cheating. It is eight times more common than an alcoholic and 10 times more common than depressed.

Most tellingly perhaps, searches questioning a husbands sexuality are far more prevalent in the least tolerant regions. The states with the highest percentage of women asking this question are South Carolina and Louisiana. In fact, in 21 of the 25 states where this question is most frequently asked, support for gay marriage is lower than the national average.

What do our searches reveal about us? Photograph: Michael Gottschalk/Photothek via Getty Images

Closets are not just repositories of fantasies. When it comes to sex, people keep many secrets about how much they are having, for example. Americans report using far more condoms than are sold every year. You might therefore think this means they are just saying they use condoms more often during sex than they actually do. The evidence suggests they also exaggerate how frequently they are having sex to begin with. About 11% of women between the ages of 15 and 44 say they are sexually active, not currently pregnant, and not using contraception. Even with relatively conservative assumptions about how many times they are having sex, scientists would expect 10% of them to become pregnant every month. But this would already be more than the total number of pregnancies in the United States (which is one in 113 women of childbearing age).

In our sex-obsessed culture it can be hard to admit that you are just not having that much. But if youre looking for understanding or advice, you have, once again, an incentive to tell Google. On Google, there are 16 times more complaints about a spouse not wanting sex than about a married partner not being willing to talk. There are five-and-a-half times more complaints about an unmarried partner not wanting sex than an unmarried partner refusing to text back.

And Google searches suggest a surprising culprit for many of these sexless relationships. There are twice as many complaints that a boyfriend wont have sex than that a girlfriend wont have sex. By far, the number one search complaint about a boyfriend is My boyfriend wont have sex with me. (Google searches are not broken down by gender, but since the previous analysis said that 95% of men are straight, we can guess that not many boyfriend searches are coming from men.)

How should we interpret this? Does this really imply that boyfriends withhold sex more than girlfriends? Not necessarily. As mentioned earlier, Google searches can be biased in favour of stuff people are uptight talking about. Men may feel more comfortable telling their friends about their girlfriends lack of sexual interest than women are telling their friends about their boyfriends. Still, even if the Google data does not imply that boyfriends are really twice as likely to avoid sex as girlfriends, it does suggest that boyfriends avoiding sex is more common than people let on.

Google data also suggests a reason people may be avoiding sex so frequently: enormous anxiety, with much of it misplaced. Start with mens anxieties. It isnt news that men worry about how well endowed they are, but the degree of this worry is rather profound. Men Google more questions about their sexual organ than any other body part: more than about their lungs, liver, feet, ears, nose, throat, and brain combined. Men conduct more searches for how to make their penises bigger than how to tune a guitar, make an omelette, or change a tyre. Mens top Googled concern about steroids isnt whether they may damage their health but whether taking them might diminish the size of their penis. Mens top Googled question related to how their body or mind would change as they aged was whether their penis would get smaller.

Do women care about penis size? Rarely, according to Google searches. For every search women make about a partners phallus, men make roughly 170 searches about their own. True, on the rare occasions women do express concerns about a partners penis, it is frequently about its size, but not necessarily that its small. More than 40% of complaints about a partners penis size say that its too big. Pain is the most Googled word used in searches with the phrase ___ during sex. Yet only 1% of mens searches looking to change their penis size are seeking information on how to make it smaller.

Mens second most common sex question is how to make their sexual encounters longer. Once again, the insecurities of men do not appear to match the concerns of women. There are roughly the same number of searches asking how to make a boyfriend climax more quickly as climax more slowly. In fact, the most common concern women have related to a boyfriends orgasm isnt about when it happened but why it isnt happening at all.

We dont often talk about body image issues when it comes to men. And while its true that overall interest in personal appearance skews female, its not as lopsided as stereotypes would suggest. According to my analysis of Google AdWords, which measures the websites people visit, interest in beauty and fitness is 42% male, weight loss is 33% male, and cosmetic surgery is 39% male. Among all searches with how to related to breasts, about 20% ask how to get rid of man breasts.

The Truth About Hate and Prejudice

Sex and romance are hardly the only topics cloaked in shame and, therefore, not the only topics about which people keep secrets. Many people are, for good reason, inclined to keep their prejudices to themselves. I suppose you could call it progress that many people today feel they will be judged if they admit they judge other people based on their ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. But many Americans still do. You can see this on Google, where users sometimes ask questions such as Why are black people rude? or Why are Jews evil?

A few patterns among these stereotypes stand out. For example, African Americans are the only group that faces a rude stereotype. Nearly every group is a victim of a stupid stereotype; the only two that are not: Jews and Muslims. The evil stereotype is applied to Jews, Muslims, and gay people but not black people, Mexicans, Asians, and Christians. Muslims are the only group stereotyped as terrorists. When a Muslim American plays into this stereotype, the response can be instantaneous and vicious. Google search data can give us a minute-by-minute peek into such eruptions of hate-fuelled rage.

Consider what happened shortly after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, on 2 December, 2015. That morning, Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik entered a meeting of Farooks co-workers armed with semi-automatic pistols and semi-automatic rifles and murdered 14 people. That evening, minutes after the media first reported one of the shooters Muslim-sounding names, a disturbing number of Californians decided what they wanted to do with Muslims: kill them. The top Google search in California with the word Muslims in it at the time was kill Muslims. And overall, Americans searched for the phrase kill Muslims with about the same frequency that they searched for martini recipe and migraine symptoms.

In the days following the San Bernardino attack, for every American concerned with Islamophobia, another was searching for kill Muslims. While hate searches were approximately 20% of all searches about Muslims before the attack, more than half of all search volume about Muslims became hateful in the hours that followed it. And this minute-by-minute search data can tell us how difficult it can be to calm this rage.

Four days after the shooting, President Obama gave a prime-time address to the country. He wanted to reassure Americans that the government could both stop terrorism and, perhaps more importantly, quiet this dangerous Islamophobia. Obama appealed to our better angels, speaking of the importance of inclusion and tolerance. The rhetoric was powerful and moving. The Los Angeles Times praised Obama for [warning] against allowing fear to cloud our judgment. The New York Times called the speech both tough and calming. The website ThinkProgress praised it as a necessary tool of good governance, geared towards saving the lives of Muslim Americans. Obamas speech, in other words, was judged a major success. But was it?

Google search data suggests otherwise. Together with Evan Soltas, then at Princeton, I examined the data. In his speech, the president said: It is the responsibility of all Americans of every faith to reject discrimination. But searches calling Muslims terrorists, bad, violent, and evil doubled during and shortly after the speech. President Obama also said: It is our responsibility to reject religious tests on who we admit into this country. But negative searches about Syrian refugees, a mostly Muslim group then desperately looking for a safe haven, rose 60%, while searches asking how to help Syrian refugees dropped 35%. Obama asked Americans to not forget that freedom is more powerful than fear. Yet searches for kill Muslims tripled during his speech. In fact, just about every negative search we could think to test regarding Muslims shot up during and after Obamas speech, and just about every positive search we could think to test declined.

In other words, Obama seemed to say all the right things. But new data from the internet, offering digital truth serum, suggested that the speech actually backfired in its main goal. Instead of calming the angry mob, as everybody thought he was doing, the internet data tells us that Obama actually inflamed it. Sometimes we need internet data to correct our instinct to pat ourselves on the back.

So what should Obama have said to quell this particular form of hatred currently so virulent in America? Well circle back to that later. First were going to take a look at an age-old vein of prejudice in the United States, the form of hate that in fact stands out above the rest, the one that has been the most destructive and the topic of the research that began this book. In my work with Google search data, the single most telling fact I have found regarding hate on the internet is the popularity of the word nigger.

Either singular or in its plural form, the word is included in 7m American searches every year. (Again, the word used in rap songs is almost always nigga, not nigger, so theres no significant impact from hip-hop lyrics to account for.) Searches for nigger jokes are 17 times more common than searches for kike jokes, gook jokes, spic jokes, chink jokes, and fag jokes combined. When are these searches most common? Whenever African Americans are in the news. Among the periods when such searches were highest was the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when television and newspapers showed images of desperate black people in New Orleans struggling for their survival. They also shot up during Obamas first election. And searches rose on average about 30% on Martin Luther King Jr Day.

The frightening ubiquity of this racial slur throws into doubt some current understandings of racism. Any theory of racism has to explain a big puzzle in America. On the one hand, the overwhelming majority of black Americans think they suffer from prejudice and they have ample evidence of discrimination in police stops, job interviews, and jury decisions. On the other hand, very few white Americans will admit to being racist. The dominant explanation among political scientists recently has been that this is due, in large part, to widespread implicit prejudice. White Americans may mean well, this theory goes, but they have a subconscious bias, which influences their treatment of black Americans.

Academics invented an ingenious way to test for such a bias. It is called the implicit association test. The tests have consistently shown that it takes most people milliseconds longer to associate black faces with positive words, such as good, than with negative words, such as awful. For white faces, the pattern is reversed. The extra time it takes is evidence of someones implicit prejudice a prejudice the person may not even be aware of.

There is, though, an alternative explanation for the discrimination that African Americans feel and whites deny: hidden explicit racism. Suppose there is a reasonably widespread conscious racism of which people are very much aware but to which they wont confess certainly not in a survey. Thats what the search data seems to be saying. There is nothing implicit about searching for nigger jokes. And its hard to imagine that Americans are Googling the word nigger with the same frequency as migraine and economist without explicit racism having a major impact on African Americans. Prior to the Google data, we didnt have a convincing measure of this virulent animus. Now we do. We are, therefore, in a position to see what it explains. It explains why Obamas vote totals in 2008 and 2012 were depressed in many regions. It also correlates with the black-white wage gap, as a team of economists recently reported. The areas that I had found make the most racist searches underpay black people.

And then there is the phenomenon of Donald Trumps candidacy. When Nate Silver, the polling guru, looked for the geographic variable that correlated most strongly with support in the 2016 Republican primary for Trump, he found it in the map of racism I had developed. To be provocative and to encourage more research in this area, let me put forth the following conjecture, ready to be tested by scholars across a range of fields. The primary explanation for discrimination against African Americans today is not the fact that the people who agree to participate in lab experiments make subconscious associations between negative words and black people; it is the fact that millions of white Americans continue to do things like search for nigger jokes.

The Truth About Girls

The discrimination black people regularly experience in the United States appears to be fuelled more widely by explicit, if hidden, hostility. But, for other groups, subconscious prejudice may have a more fundamental impact. For example, I was able to use Google searches to find evidence of implicit prejudice against another segment of the population: young girls. And who, might you ask, would be harbouring bias against girls? Their parents.

Its hardly surprising that parents of young children are often excited by the thought that their kids might be gifted. In fact, of all Google searches starting Is my two-year-old, the most common next word is gifted. But this question is not asked equally about boys and girls. Parents are two-and-a-half times more likely to ask Is my son gifted? than Is my daughter gifted? Parents show a similar bias when using other phrases related to intelligence that they may shy away from saying aloud, like Is my son a genius?

Are parents picking up on legitimate differences between young girls and boys? Perhaps young boys are more likely than young girls to use big words or show objective signs of giftedness? Nope. If anything, its the opposite. At young ages, girls have consistently been shown to have larger vocabularies and use more complex sentences. In American schools, girls are 9% more likely than boys to be in gifted programmes. Despite all this, parents looking around the dinner table appear to see more gifted boys than girls. In fact, on every search term related to intelligence I tested, including those indicating its absence, parents were more likely to be inquiring about their sons rather than their daughters. There are also more searches for is my son behind or stupid than comparable searches for daughters. But searches with negative words like behind and stupid are less specifically skewed toward sons than searches with positive words, such as gifted or genius.

What then are parents overriding concerns regarding their daughters? Primarily, anything related to appearance. Consider questions about a childs weight. Parents Google Is my daughter overweight? roughly twice as frequently as they Google Is my son overweight? Parents are about twice as likely to ask how to get their daughters to lose weight as they are to ask how to get their sons to do the same. Just as with giftedness, this gender bias is not grounded in reality. About 28% of girls are overweight, while 35% of boys are. Even though scales measure more overweight boys than girls, parents see or worry about overweight girls much more frequently than overweight boys. Parents are also one-and-a-half times more likely to ask whether their daughter is beautiful than whether their son is handsome.

Liberal readers may imagine that these biases are more common in conservative parts of the country, but I didnt find any evidence of that. In fact, I did not find a significant relationship between any of these biases and the political or cultural makeup of a state. It would seem this bias against girls is more widespread and deeply ingrained than wed care to believe.

Can We Handle the Truth?

I cant pretend there isnt a darkness in some of this data. It has revealed the continued existence of millions of closeted gay men; widespread animus against African Americans; and an outbreak of violent Islamophobic rage that only got worse when the president appealed for tolerance. Not exactly cheery stuff. If people consistently tell us what they think we want to hear, we will generally be told things that are more comforting than the truth. Digital truth serum, on average, will show us that the world is worse than we have thought.

But there are at least three ways this knowledge can improve our lives. First, there can be comfort in knowing you are not alone in your insecurities and embarrassing behaviour. Google searches can help show you are not alone. When you were young, a teacher may have told you that if you have a question you should raise your hand and ask it, because if youre confused, others are too. If you were anything like me, you ignored your teacher and sat there silently, afraid to open your mouth. Your questions were too dumb, you thought; everyone elses were more profound. The anonymous, aggregate Google data can tell us once and for all how right our teachers were. Plenty of basic, sub-profound questions lurk in other minds, too.

The second benefit of digital truth serum is that it alerts us to people who are suffering. The Human Rights Campaign has asked me to work with them in helping educate men in certain states about the possibility of coming out of the closet. They are looking to use the anonymous and aggregate Google search data to help them decide where best to target their resources.

The final and, I think, most powerful value in this data is its ability to lead us from problems to solutions. With more understanding, we might find ways to reduce the worlds supply of nasty attitudes. Lets return to Obamas speech about Islamophobia. Recall that every time he argued that people should respect Muslims more, the people he was trying to reach became more enraged. Google searches, however, reveal that there was one line that did trigger the type of response Obama might have wanted. He said: Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbours, our co-workers, our sports heroes and, yes, they are our men and women in uniform, who are willing to die in defence of our country.

After this line, for the first time in more than a year, the top Googled noun after Muslim was not terrorists, extremists, or refugees. It was athletes, followed by soldiers. And, in fact, athletes kept the top spot for a full day afterwards. When we lecture angry people, the search data implies that their fury can grow. But subtly provoking peoples curiosity, giving new information, and offering new images of the group that is stoking their rage may turn their thoughts in different, more positive directions.

Two months after that speech, Obama gave another televised speech on Islamophobia, this time at a mosque. Perhaps someone in the presidents office had read Soltass and my Times column, which discussed what had worked and what hadnt, for the content of this speech was noticeably different.

Obama spent little time insisting on the value of tolerance. Instead, he focused overwhelmingly on provoking peoples curiosity and changing their perceptions of Muslim Americans. Many of the slaves from Africa were Muslim, Obama told us; Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had their own copies of the Koran; a Muslim American designed skyscrapers in Chicago. Obama again spoke of Muslim athletes and armed service members, but also talked of Muslim police officers and firefighters, teachers and doctors. And my analysis of the Google searches suggests this speech was more successful than the previous one. Many of the hateful, rageful searches against Muslims dropped in the hours afterwards.

There are other potential ways to use search data to learn what causes, or reduces, hate. For example, we might look at how racist searches change after a black quarterback is drafted in a city, or how sexist searches change after a woman is elected to office. Learning of our subconscious prejudices can also be useful. We might all make an extra effort to delight in little girls minds and show less concern with their appearance. Google search data and other wellsprings of truth on the internet give us an unprecedented look into the darkest corners of the human psyche. This is at times, I admit, difficult to face. But it can also be empowering. We can use the data to fight the darkness. Collecting rich data on the worlds problems is the first step toward fixing them.

Extracted from: Everybody Lies: What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, published by Bloomsbury, 20. To order for 17 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846 Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz will be speaking in London at the Royal Society of Arts on Tuesday and at Second Home on Wednesday

Q&A with Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

The degree to which people are self-absorbed is pretty shocking: Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. Photograph: Christopher Lane for the Observer

Whats your background? Id describe myself as a data scientist, but my PhD is in economics. When I was doing my PhD, in 2012, I found this tool called Google Trends that tells you what people are searching, and where, and I became obsessed with it. I know that when people first see Google data, they say Oh this is weird, this isnt perfect data, but I knew that perfect data didnt exist. The traditional data sets left a lot to be desired.

What would your search records reveal about you? They could definitely tell Im a hypochondriac because Im waking up in the middle of the night doing Google searches about my health. There are definitely things about me that you could figure out. When making claims about a topic, its better to do it on aggregate, but I think you can figure out a lot, if not everything, about an individual by what theyre searching on Google.

You worked at Google? For about a year and a half. I was on the economics team and also the quantitative marketing team. Some was analysis of advertising, which I got bored of, which is one of the reasons I stopped working there.

Did working there give you an understanding that helped this book? Yeah, I think it did. All this data Im talking about is public. But from meeting the people who know more about this data than anyone in the world, Im much more confident that it means what I think it means.

Does it change your view of human nature? Are we darker and stranger creatures than you realised? Yeah. I think I had a dark view of human nature to begin with, and I think now its gotten even darker. I think the degree to which people are self-absorbed is pretty shocking.

When Trump became president, all my friends said how anxious they were, they couldnt sleep because theyre so concerned about immigrants and the Muslim ban. But from the data you can see that in liberal parts of the country there wasnt a rise in anxiety when Trump was elected. When people were waking up at 3am in a cold sweat, their searches were about their job, their health, their relationship theyre not concerned about the Muslim ban or global warming.

Was the Google search data telling you that Trump was going to win? I did see that Trump was going to win. You saw clearly that African American turnout was going to be way down, because in cities with 95% black people there was a collapse in searches for voting information. That was a big reason Hillary Clinton did so much worse than the polls suggested.

Whats next? I want to keep on exploring this, whether in academia, journalism or more books. Its such an exciting area: what people are really like, how the world really works. I may just research sex for the next few months. One thing Ive learned from this book, people are more interested in sex than I thought they were.

Interview by Killian Fox