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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Doing some writing today off and on between errands and work, and jumping around various Kings of the Sky installments, specifically Dick, Jason and Cass stuff, so probably gonna post snippets from a bunch of them as I go.

(Kings of the Sky is an AU that goes canon divergent from the point of Jason calling Dick for advice for dealing with Bruce after the Garzonas case and where things end up going dramatically different from that point on. Including Jason not dying, being part of his own lineup of Titans between Dick and Tim’s, Dick being adopted not long after the Church of Blood incident, Cass being the third Wayne kid to be taken in and adopted and with Tim and Duke being next and then Damian coming along later once they find out about him. This is basically my ‘the family’s alright’ AU with largely ‘Good Dad Bruce’ except for Dick and then Jason yelling some sense into him about the other, respectively, in the first two installments, just FYI).

Anyway, this bit is from a story called “In Their Shadows Grow Trees Of Good and Evil,” set about a year after Cass has been adopted, when she and Jason are both sixteen and Dick’s twenty-one. Also just FYI, because canon has never been specific about what ways Cass is neurodivergent due to the comic-book style ‘rewiring’ of her brain so that she could learn to speak later in life, I tend to go with her being dyslexic and having aphasia. She sticks exclusively to sign language and being a silent presence in her costumed personas, so that there’s no chance of people connecting the dots between Black Bat and Cassandra Wayne, as she mostly speaks verbally in her civilian persona and doesn’t hide her aphasia. The reason there’s not likely to be any obvious signs of aphasia in the snippets of her I post is because I wait until I complete something to choose words at random to replace with aphasia-born mixups, so its more realistic and I’m not gearing her dialogue towards deliberately placed moments. Just in case you were wondering.

In Their Shadows Grow Trees of Good and Evil

“Hey Todd,” sneered an exquisitely obnoxious voice. “Why’s your sister so fucking weird?”

Jason sighed the sigh of a soul a mere century into its eternity of damnation as he rose from the lunch table he’d been studying at and crammed the rest of his books into his backpack. Then he pasted a cheerfully bland smile on his face and turned around, geared for academia warfare (teenage prep school edition).

“Hey Craig,” he said brightly. “Why’d you come out of the womb so ugly your parents had to tie a piece of steak around your neck just to get the family dog to go near you? Mysteries abound.”

The advancing junior slowed a step, momentarily rocked by his truly impressive return volley. The grimace Craig’s already gargoyle-esque features twisted into made his face even more unpleasant to look at than usual, which was quite the feat. Jason would have applauded if just looking at it hadn’t already turned him to stone.

But the bargain basement basilisk kept on towards him rather than turn tail and skulk off to pop his emotional blisters, so Jason sighed a sequel to his first one. Looked like it was one of those days where Craig felt up to powering through. Guess someone had eaten their self-esteem Wheaties that morning. Joy.

“You think you’re pretty hot shit, don’t you, Todd?”

Jason shrugged. “I mean, to be honest I kinda have a one track mind, so right now I’m mostly just thinking about punching you in your mistake.”

“My what?”

“Your face,” Jason elaborated with exaggerated patience.

“Huh?”

“Oh my god, I’m saying your face is a mistake. See, its not as fun when I have to stop and explain it to you. Ugh, you ruin everything.”

He neatly sidestepped the older boy as R2-Dumbass stayed frozen, smoke coming off of his internal CPU while trying to catch up. For a second Jason thought he was home free, but then he remembered the universe fucking hated him so haha, sucks to suck. Also, a small crowd had gathered to witness the verbal jousting match, and nothing invigorated an asshole like Craig more than an audience of like-minded peers. So there was that too.

“Whatever. Laugh it up all you want, you little shit,” the junior rallied. “But just remember, mocking your betters will never change the fact that you were born street trash and you’ll be street trash until the day you die.”

Honestly? Not his best effort. Jason almost felt bad using any of his good material. Seemed like overkill at this point. But he did have a strict Scorched Earth policy to maintain, so.....

“Yeah but my dad could buy out and ruin your dad so that means I still win, right?”

He smirked as the barb landed and Craig’s face set into a sunset vista of strangled purple and furious red. Bam. Direct hit.

“Listen, you - “

“Oh for fuck’s sake, it was rhetorical,” Jason interrupted. “I don’t actually care what you think even a little bit. Nobody does. You don’t matter. Please go be irrelevant elsewhere, you’re fucking dismissed, you loser.”

“Speak for yourself, charity case.” Oh goodie, Craig’s backup singers had finally arrived. Now if only he could remember to care enough to learn their names in the first place. Seriously, who told the extras they could have lines? “All the jokes in the world can’t change who and what you are.”

Jason shrugged and continued nonchalantly up the hill to where his sister was standing with arms crossed, staring down at something on the other side.

“True genius is never appreciated in its own time,” he tossed back over his shoulder. “I’m sure I’ll be immortalized in song eventually.”

The mob of morons deigned to let him go without further incident. Though he suspected that had less to do with his scathing wit and more to do with him being headed towards Cass. She was immaculately presented as always, wearing the Gotham Academy uniform like she was born to it despite hating its uncomfortable stiffness every bit as much as he did. But that was just Cass for you.

For all that she still struggled at times to engage verbally or speak up in social settings, her mastery of body language remained without peer. She could chameleon-camouflage her way into matching poise and posture with anyone - a skill that had allowed her to walk into school on her very first day with her head held high as though she owned everything in her sight. Exuding so much Queen Bee Intimidation Factor even the other hive queens were afraid to approach her themselves. Sending forth their drones to try and woo her into an alliance, only to see her remain oh-so-casually above it all, a slightly contemptuous smile adorning her lips.

Basically, she scared the shit out of their classmates without them having anywhere close to a true understanding of why, and Jason was outrageously jealous. Rude. Unfair. Why did his siblings always get all the cool toys when all he had was his rakish charm, scintillating intellect and debonair.....nah, who was he kidding. He was fucking awesome.

“Sup, sis,” he said, cresting the hill to stand beside Cass. “Just FYI, I just took a popularity bullet for you, which means you owe me your dessert tonight. Its a family rule that’s totally a real thing and definitely not something I just made up right now because Alf is making chocolate soufflé.”

She made no acknowledgment and remained stock still, a Colossus at Rhodes peering down into the shifting shadows of the parking lot below.

He peered down as well, though with absolutely no idea what they were looking at. Solidarity, yo.

“So are we staring fixedly at anything in particular, or should I just pick my own spot and commit?”

His humor was totally wasted on her as always. Instead of laughing and telling him what a lovable goof he was, she just inclined her head in the direction of a blonde girl where she was standing next to the driver’s side door of a Mercedes-Benz, dictating final commandments to her peons before departing. Well, probably. Jason was just guessing, based on his own body language reads, and like, general disdain for literally everyone at this school that wasn’t related to him.

He made a face. An extra special one reserved just for this classmate in particular. “Ugh, Madison Dunleavy? She’s the worst.”

Cass raised a cool eyebrow. “I thought Craig Hendricks was the worst.”

“He is. They’re both the worst. Its a hotly contested position here at Gotham Academy.”

She rolled her eyes and nodded back down at the Queen of Air and Darkness. “So. You know her?”

“Nope,” Jason said. “Come to think of it, I’ve actually never seen her in my life. No idea who that is. Can’t help you, sorry. Shall we go home?”

The Eyebrow of Inquisition speared him with clear intent. Who the fuck needed words when you could pack the Encyclopedia Britannica into a single facial expression?

Jason sighed gustily.

“I had a slight altercation with her freshman year that led to her declaring her undying enmity for me until the end of time. The word nemesis may or may not have been thrown around once or twice. I can’t recall.”

The Eyebrow of Inquisition lowered nary an inch. Ugh, she wanted more? Why did everyone in his family hate privacy, with the obvious exclusion of himself when snooping through Cass and Dick’s rooms for blackmail material, which was actually intel-gathering and thus another matter entirely.

“Okay so basically what happened was my first week here I overheard her talking shit about me and not even twenty minutes later she was pretending to kiss my ass in homeroom, like probably because of Bruce, y’know? So I just busted out laughing and told her to fuck off and die and she has inexplicably loathed me ever since.”

Avoiding further Eyebrow Inquisition-ing, he made a show of peering around aimlessly. When the silence extended and it was clear Cass was absolutely not going to break first, Jason waved a hand in dismissal and took to peering oh so casually at his fingernails. "I suppose I was less tactful back in those days.”

He chanced a look up, finally, and saw his sister’s eyebrow had somehow managed to mighty morphin power ranger its way into a configuration evoking both judgment and disbelief, with the latter perhaps aimed at the idea he was significantly differing in the tact department these days either.

“I don’t love the implications your face is making right now,” he told her.

She ignored him, because of course she did.

“Does she know Dick?” She asked instead. Jason shrugged.

“I mean, maybe? She’s probably seen him around at one of those stupid galas we have to go to, and actually I think maybe she has an older brother who was either in Dick’s grade or like, one above or below it? I don’t know.”

Now both eyebrows were doing the dance of disbelief. Okay, so maybe that was poor situational awareness on his part, since it wasn’t like Gotham Academy was a big school with a ton of other kids and also he’d only been in the same class as Madison for like over two whole years, but whatever. There were extingent circumstances.

“Look, she’s a total snob who’s always looked down on me and in return I willfully ignore both her existence and that of everyone and everything even tangentially related to her. Its called equality, Cass.”

She pursed her lips and went back to the peering, because of course in the mind of Cass it made total sense that the Grand Inquisition didn’t need to be followed up by any explanation on her part, what the hell. Like was he supposed to have inferred it?

“What’s this all about anyway?”

“I heard her talking about Dick earlier,” she said without peeling her eyes away from her personal recon mission. “I don’t know what she said though, I just heard her say Grayson, and then I was busy looking at what her body was saying. I know it was about Dick because she shut down when she saw me. And I didn’t like the way she....looked....before that happened. The way she was talking. It was.....”

Jason frowned but held back any follow-up questions while he waited - with total patience because he wasn’t an absolute cad, thank you very much - for his sister to find the word she was hunting for. It was a major source of frustration for her, that whatever neural map her brain followed put body language and spoken language in totally different regions of her brain, separated by a fairly great divide. Meaning she usually had to make a conscious choice to focus on body language or conventional languages - whether verbal or sign. But it tended to be one or the other; she’d yet to master taking in and comprehending both forms of ‘language’ at the same time. And none of them had quite figured out how to convince her that she wasn’t actually missing anything when she chose to focus on one specific form of communication - that she was still observing far more than most people ever would.

“Proprietary,” Cass settled on at last. She nodded her satisfaction with her choice of word, and Jason waited a whole two point five seconds before sticking his whole foot in his mouth.

“Proprietary?” He asked with a scrunched nose as he weighed that for possible context and implications. “You sure?”

She glared. He winced. It was a whole thing.

“Yeah, I know, sorry, sorry, I heard it the second it was out of my mouth. We don’t actually have to experiment with the legitimacy of if looks could kill.”

Cass rolled her eyes, but eh. That could’ve gone worse.

Jason swiftly redirected attention anyway. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all.

“So. The Queen of Air and Darkness was talking about our big bro, and her mood was.....proprietary, huh?” He recapped while digesting the info like a boss. “Well. Definitely not loving that, I gotta say. Hold please.”

Pulling out his phone and pulling up his most recent texts, he began typing furiously.

“What are you doing?” Cass asked.

“Texting Tom,” he replied, because duh. Hah, now it was his chance to have the answers that should be patently obvious and thus make with the ‘are you kidding me’ when she asked obvious questions she should know the answer to! How do you like them apples, sis?

“Why are you texting your boyfriend right now?”

Jason rolled his eyes, because fair is fair, but never ceased texting for a moment. Time was of the essence here, probably. Well, maybe. Okay probably not. But it’d still been like half an hour since he and Tom had last texted and that’s a very fucking long time in teenage years.

“To be our getaway driver tonight, obviously.”

She stared at him. He didn’t look up, but he could feel it anyway. He was very intuitive like that.

“What?”

Jason heaved another sigh, one keyed to tones of ‘oh my god, do I really have to spell this out,” exasperation. He was just racking up the bonus points here. It was really too bad this wasn’t an actual competition he could actually win and this was all just pettiness taking place wholly in his own head. Lame.

“Well, clearly we now have to go snoop in Madison’s house aka lair to see if its actually a house or a full on lair. Because she’s either a creeper or like, legit evil, and its important to know which one before we proceed, because obviously we can only bust her for being a weird creeper about our brother as Jason and Cass, whereas if she’s legit evil, that’s gotta go down as Robin and Black Bat. I’ll handle the snooping, you’ll take look-out, but we still need a wheelman and that’s why I’m texting Tom. This is all very mission-oriented, okay. I’m a professional.”

“Right,” she affirmed, while sounding anything but convinced. “Why don’t we just tell Bruce?”

Without looking up or breaking stride, he said: “I’m going to give you til I finish typing this sentence to figure out what was wrong with what you just said. Remember that we are talking about hypothetical danger to our brother, and also Bruce’s idea of a proportionate response to any of his children being in even hypothetical danger. And also our brother’s idea of a proportionate response to Bruce’s idea of a proportionate response. Look, you’re still new so I’m gonna need you to just trust me on this one. Its gonna be a no on telling Bruce without further intel.”

Cass said nothing in response to that, which meant that she was conceding the point and recognized the wisdom of his words. Or maybe that she was just gonna go ahead and do what she wanted anyway and just wasn’t bothering to fight about it, but it was probably that first thing.

“Well you better not just make out with your boyfriend all night,” is what she said at last, and that got his attention reeeeeal quick like.

“Umm. Wow. Okay. So, first off, you’re not the boss of me and who I make out with and when, so jot that down. And second, now I’m definitely going to make out with my boyfriend extra hard, with the exception of when we are actually on our recon mission because as previously established, I am a professional. And also, again, you’re not the boss of me.”

Jason ignored her Eye Roll With Extra Emphasis, and instead just held up his phone to Text With Extra Emphasis, as he read along with what he was typing.

“By the way babe, we have to make out extra hard tonight,” he said, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth while he dragged out his dictation with the kind of focus that usually led to Bruce asking why he couldn’t apply as much intensity to training as he did to pettiness. “Cass has suddenly decided she can dictate terms to me and I need to shut that shit down ASAP, so thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter. Smoochies and other gay stuff to the best boyfriend ever.”

Jason frowned as a response pinged back seconds later.

TheCatsMeow: ....the things I put up with for the sake of your weird family dynamics.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Yeah, yeah. You’re a saint among were-panthers. Must you mock? Why can’t you just tell me I’m pretty instead?

TheCatsMeow: Sorry. Let me try again. OMG you’re so pretty Jase how did I get so lucky xoxo.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: No. Its too late. It feels forced and unbelievable now. You’ve ruined it forever.

TheCatsMeow: Got it. From now on I will only tell you that you’re repulsive and hideous.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: I’m breaking up with you.

TheCatsMeow: But after I help you with your mission tonight.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Obvsly. I’m a professional. Why do people keep forgetting this?

TheCatsMeow: And also the making out to spite your sister.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Yeah we should do that first too. I mean we already penciled it in.

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chryuhwan · 3 years

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helloooo i’m sol (21+, they/them) and this is yuhwan. he’s an old oc revamped too many times so if he seems familiar... my b dude i’m attached i guess. anyway, i’m excited to be here! please like this post if you’re interested in plotting and i’ll hit you up. i’m not on twitter and pretty sparse on discord, so i prefer tumblr im! but if that’s difficult for you, we can figure smth out! i have a short (haha) tl;dr under the cut, but you can also read up more on his BIO and PROFILE pages.

RUNDOWN

TRIGGER & CONTENT WARNINGS: physical abuse, underage drug/alcohol consumption, (attempted) suicide (lmk if you want a redacted summary!)

BASICS — born and raised in busan up until the tender age of seventeen, when he was sent (“exiled”) to seoul to live with his aunt and uncle and attend hannam. the catalyst was a rebellious phase turned lifestyle (a lot of really reckless decisions involving drugs, alcohol, vandalism, swiping money from the tithes & offerings, u name it) and his parents deciding they a) didn’t want to deal with that and b) didn’t want that to reflect on their reputations. he’s been in seoul ever since and has never stayed in busan for longer than a couple of days.

ON RELIGION & FAITH — the only son of the head pastor of a well-known megachurch in busan, yuhwan was raised under the strict and watchful eye of his obsessive parents! he’s not religious anymore by any means, but faith (or his lack thereof) has shaped a huge part of his mentality. his lack of belief in a higher power is the foundation of his ‘if i have the confidence to own up to the potential consequences of my actions, then i’ll do whatever i want to’ mindset. he’s not going to be discouraged by a god that doesn’t exist!

ON SEOUL — hates it. yep. he hates seoul, but he doesn’t really have the drive to try to find somewhere he does like because he hates busan too. when he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle, he was treated pretty poorly (still flinches when people raise their hand at him), like a glorified punching bag. hannam wasn’t any better, and the military was nice in the way prison cells might be. he hates cramped things and the only decent jogging path he knows runs him right by the bridge he almost jumped off of after his military service ended so. you know. you win some, you lose some.

ON HANNAM — hated it. yep. straight up hated it. he was pretty good about being friendly around virtually anyone who held his attention for more than a couple of seconds, but yuhwan hates the idea of hierarchies! finds them downright stifling, and he doesn’t like the idea of being placed in a box, etc. hannam felt like an oppressive social pyramid and he thought that kinda sucked so as friendly as he was on the outside, he had zero interest in making friends and has probably only willingly kept in touch with a handful of people since graduating.

ON GOSSIPS, RUMORS, AND SECRETS — he’s a tabloid writer. once a regular editor for a small newspaper, he gave that up and decided to sacrifice his morals for a higher paycheck. he blames his mom because she, as the pastor’s wife, had a lot of access to juicy gossip and liked to tell yuhwan about it. yuhwan’s probably the least trustworthy person he knows. he’s careful to keep the secrets of people he cares about, but as it turns out, he doesn’t really care about that many people. he’s friendly, open to listening, and honestly not that bad at giving advice etc., but be on your guard. wouldn’t want your dirty laundry to be aired out for the world to see, after all.

ON THE PRESENT — he’s minding his own business. really. like i said, he’s probably kept in touch with some people, but otherwise he’s not really interested in the busy lives of almost-strangers unless they’re going to get him a bonus on his next paycheck. yuhwan very much so marches to the beat of his own drum. he doesn’t care much about the world around him and only cares when it inconveniences him. like a kite without a string, he’s floating wherever the fuck the wind’s going to take him!

ON HIS SECRET — after graduating from high school, and then university, and then finishing military service, yuhwan thought he might literally lose his fucking mind if he didn’t set himself free in one way or another. ultimately, he decides he won’t be able to coexist in peace with his parents unless they change. and because they won’t change of their own volition, he submits an anonymous tip about his father’s embezzlement of church funds. in the end, it doesn’t destroy his dad’s legacy or anything; the church is still up and running—but it’s an ordeal that takes months, years of being humbled by the weight of the world. he doesn’t feel bad about it. his mom gossips less and his dad’s less of an asshole, after all. makes family gatherings that much more bearable when they’re all tired of existing!

CONNECTIONS

BEST FRIEND — just one. no dramatic childhood friends story or anything like that. just one person he actually really genuinely sincereeeeeely liked from hannam that didn’t take any effort or slow build to figure out. probably the only person he really trusts in this big, bad city. you’ve got a huge weapon in your hands! he’s not used to putting this much trust in others. (+1000 if in a two-day relationship that ended terribly. ‘i would never date you again, but i’ll still die for u’ kinda vibes)

HANNAM FRIENDS — there won’t be many, but! anyone? anyone?? he was a friendly, easygoing person (still is, tbh) during his hannam days, but was definitely a free spirit who did whatever he wanted. if you could keep up with his pace, then he might have liked your company. he’s not a fan of overly serious people unless they have the patience of a saint! (trust me, you’ll need it.)

HANNAM... NOT FRIENDS — he’s not so conscious of his surroundings as to have enemies himself, but he definitely did get pushed around for a little while when he was first getting settled. and he’s also definitely spoken out of turn and said some rude shit (not on purpose) (he just doesn’t have a filter) here and there. want to hate his guts? please do. negative energy’s welcome in this house!

COUSIN — a similar-aged cousin, also the child of the aunt and uncle yuhwan absolutely fucking abhors. they might have a contentious relationship. might even be a positive one. either way, they lived under the same roof for a few years!

TABLOID VICTIM — got a little fame to your name? have a nasty scandal you didn’t want to get out? well, now it’s out. and sensationalized, too! maybe you know it’s him who leaked it (and wrote the article, while we’re at it). maybe you don’t!

BUSAN BUDDIES — and i use the word ‘buddies’ loosely. grow up in busan? have religious parents? religious yourself maybe? well, maybe you bumped into each other then. yuhwan had the reputation of being a prim and proper pastor’s son, amiable and cheerful and so so devoted, up until he was suddenly sent to seoul. all of his bad habits and reckless adventures were largely done behind his parents’ backs (until he got caught, at least!)—you know of them? partake in them, maybe? or maybe you didn’t know, and you’re wondering why the fuck he came to seoul in the first place

BLACKMAIL — he’s not above using underhanded tactics if they’re made available to him. sometimes he doesn’t even need a big reason. maybe he found out a secret of yours and he wants a secret you know about someone else. he’ll hold it over your head! call it a little game of cat and mouse!

#thank you for the welcomes! will get to them soon #chrintro

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purplesurveys · 3 years

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1177

survey by joybucket

Have you _____ during this pandemic?

Worn a mask? I mean, of course. I put one on even when I’m only picking up deliveries from my doorstep.

got tested for coronavirus? Never. I also hope I’ll never have to go through this, I don’t want a stick up my nose and throat D:

known someone who died from the virus? Personally? Too many people at this point.

gotten the COVID vaccine? Not yet, but I have many relatives who’ve already gotten theirs, my mom and grandmother included, so at least. I know my employer has a plan in place over the next few weeks or months, so I’m just currently waiting for updates on their end.

started a new hobby? Yeah, I started on embroidery late last year. I haven’t been able to keep it up, but I’m still very much interested and want to go back to it soon. I also plan on getting one or two new Klaypel kits so I can finally replace and throw out the ones Gabie gave to me as gifts.

hated being stuck at home? Yeah, especially during the start when there seemed to be no end in sight. When they heightened quarantine protocols again earlier this month, that also made me feel aggravated about being stuck at home indefinitely since I had already started going out on weekends for self-dates.

worn a mask someone made for you? No one has made a mask for me, but one of my uncles got me a supply of a certain kind of face mask that I didn’t initially use.

sewn your own mask? No.

purchased masks at the store? Not me personally, but my dad regularly buys a supply for the family to use.

purchased a KN95 or N95 mask? Again, not me. But we regularly have a stock at home, along with the blue surgical face masks.

complimented someone on their mask? I don’t think so. I barely pay attention especially towards mask designs.

protested mask-wearing? ????? My name’s not Karen.

complained on Facebook? Nothing mask-related, but I have definitely complained about the government’s negligence and lack of proactivity about this entire situation.

read a book? I started on Midnight Sun which my parents got for me, but I never finished it. I got busy immediately the week after since I got accepted into my internship, and it was also because I was dealing with my breakup and could not focus enough to read for more than 5 minutes.

had an event canceled you had been looking forward to? My college graduation, which I’ll forever stay bitter about.

stocked up on toilet paper? I don’t think so. My parents didn’t believe in panic-buying.

been to the store when it was crowded? I do remember the mall being packed when I went last-minute Christmas shopping. Not to a crazy extent, but there was still quite a number of people.

been to the store when the toilet paper aisle was empty? N/A. We don’t have toilet paper aisles, but all stores have hand sanitizers and temperature checks by their entrance.

lost your job? I didn’t have a job before the pandemic because I had still been a student when everything started.

worked from home? Yup, and still on an WFH arrangement until now.

still had to go to work? I’ve had to go two times, but that was because it was absolutely necessary to go to the office to get the work done. My employer is pretty strict about this anyway and if something could be done at home, they’d decline the request.

went to a protest at your state's capital building? Well we don’t have states so this isn’t really relevant to me. Should a credible org plan a protest against the government though, I’d be interested in going.

watched the news for updates on the virus? We keep the TV on during dinner, at which time the news is always on. Whether I want to or not, I always get updates on the Covid situation in the country.

wondered if you had covid? Yeah, when I got extremely sick in May last year.

not left the house for a week? Way more than a week.

watched YouTube videos? YouTube is pretty much a part of my daily routine, with or without the virus.

spent a whole day watching movies? I’ve only watched one movie since the beginning of the pandemic.

cleaned your house from top to bottom? Not me, but my mom.

ordered something online? Too much crap.

ordered a pizza? I’ve gotten pizza a few times for my family, yeah. I remember ordering from Pizza Hut, Motorino, and most recently, Yellow Cab.

prayed to God?

completely forgotten a holiday that you normally celebrate? Nah, I usually remember when holidays are because that means I get a day off hahaha.

voted in an election? There haven’t been any elections that have taken place since the start of the pandemic.

gotten to know your neighbors? Somewhat. I only say hi to them and greet them a good morning/afternoon when I walk the dogs, but I don’t initiate conversations.

sanitized everything in your home? We always do this, especially when a package arrives for someone in the family.

wrote someone a letter? Started one but never finished because I soon realized it wouldn’t be worth it.

wished this pandemic were over? Don’t we all?

been surprised this pandemic has lasted so long? Yeah, I definitely thought things would be normal by now.

worried about catching the virus? I think the worry exists for everyone. I just wouldn’t say I’ve ever gotten super anxious and panicky about it. I feel pretty resigned at this point and just want everything to be over, so I can finally have the life I was meant to have back.

stayed home because you didn't want to catch the virus? That, and because I was required to stay home to begin with.

been to church? We watch a service on YouTube every Sunday morning.

watched an online church service? ^ Yeah, that’s what I meant haha oops.

been stopped by a police officer? No, but there was one time I was cleaning up Cooper’s tray and there happened to be a village guard cycling by our street, and he just kindly reminded me to put on a mask or shield since I had forgotten to do it.

seen a lot of police cars patrolling the area? No. I would definitely be pissed off if this happened - especially in a residential subdivision - and share a pic on social media to alert everyone about the unnecessary mess that is the police.

had someone cough on you out in public? No. But again, this would also piss me off and I wouldn’t hesitate to confront the asshole who would do something like that.

has someone stand less than six feet away from you while waiting in line? Always. Some people here can still be unbelievably stubborn.

had to use an inhaler? Never needed one.

been to the doctor? Yeah, to have my blood and urine tests examined.

had increased asthma and/or allergy symptoms? I have neither.

felt like you were fighting a virus? Like I said, I got a bad fever sometime last year. Even though I didn’t show any of the common Covid symptoms (e.g. I had wet cough instead of a dry cough), I felt as if I was rotting away lmao. I could barely stand up and I felt like fainting the second I would raise my head.

been diagnosed with the coronavirus? No.

felt lonely? It’s natural.

went somewhere with a friend? Just a couple of times. I went to UPTC with Andi at the start of the year, then back in Feb I went to Perfy’s with several friends, well aware of our ignorance but badly craving for a sense of normalcy for even just a night.

attended an online event? BANG BANG COOOOOOOOOON. Best 8 hours of my life during the pandemic thus far.

had a business in your area close down? Like the people I know who’ve died from the virus, too many.

received a stimulus check? Hasn’t happened.

received food stamps? No, and I don’t think we have that system in place here. The government just lets the hungry go hungrier.

applied for disability? No, not applicable.

applied for food assistance? No, thankfully we haven’t reached this point.

visited a food pantry? ^

had a fever? Just back in May. Hasn’t happened again since.

believed a conspiracy theory about the virus? Cringe, no.

had to take online classes? When the whole world was still at a loss on how to handle a global pandemic, aka early March, I briefly took Zoom sessions for some of my classes. But it proved to be difficult what with many students struggling with internet connections or being stuck somewhere without their school supplies, so my university canceled the sem altogether not long after and gave everyone general passing grades.

ate at a restaurant? I did a few times. I frequented coffee shops rather than restaurants, though.

walked through a drive-thru? I’ve...driven through a drive-thru, but not walk.

had your mask fog up your glasses? Every damn time I get out of the car, hahaha.

had to go to the hospital because of covid? Nope, not for myself or for someone else.

had to go to the hospital for a different reason? For my fever.

used hand sanitizer? At least once a day.

felt encouraged, joyful, or blessed? Now, especially. Things are starting to look up, at least for my own life.

#survey #surveys

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normal-thoughts-official · 3 years

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https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeHHDBpb/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeHHCTwq/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeHHUxHb/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeHHDxww/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeHHCtVm/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeHHCvo3/

She's hilarious but there's two videos where she starts to speak more mumblingly

ok first of all these are brilliant and i'm losing my mind and i love you, thank you for curating these to me.

i will transcribe them in a bit but i just felt the need to leave this "little" (it's long sorry) note:

as someone who's been raised catholic i just want to say that she is pretty wrong about almost everything she said about catholics, and i say that as someone who hates catholicism with my whole mind body and soul and who's been traumatized by this stupid fucking faith to the point where i can't get into a church without breaking into sobs dauihdasiuh. the catholic guilt is real but catholics are absolutely allowed to divorce and use contraceptives, and also have sex before marriage. the first one is met with some guilt esp from women altho honestly i think it's more due to mysoginist reasons than religious reasons, and the second and third ones are commonpractice and if you say that it's wrong and bad everyone will think you're a fucking weirdo

and even with the divorce thing, while the guilt is there (im pretty sure half the reason my mom doesn't divorce is because she would feel guilty about it, although again, i feel like that's got very little to do with religion and way more with internalized mysoginy), i cannot stress enough that divorce is allowed, almost everyone i know has divorced parents and they're all catholics. the church's official position is kinda weird (as of now pope francis basically said that it's "morally necessary" in some cases but he also referred to ppl who divorced and remarried as "imperfect", but like, it hasn't been forbidden for years, so much so that people get second marriages at catholic churches literally all the time, and i kinda feel like ppl overestimate how much ppl care about what the pope says. at least here in latam, cuz we've always kind of freestyled religion since it was imposed on us anyway, but like... in my experience the average catholic practitioner is INCREDIBLY less conservative than the vatican and i feel like most people don't even know what the pope says or doesn't say. and i'm saying that as someone whose grandfather almost became a priest and only gave that up because he fell in love with my grandmother, and he's been a ferverent catholic his entire life. also two of his kids divorced, one married a divorced woman, one is gay and living together without marriage with his divorced boyfriend, one never married, and one had two kids before marriage which necessarily means that they fucked, and none of that was ever a problem to him. oh, also, my dad had divorced AND he was a buddhist when him and my mom married. currently he is a spiritist)

i think it might be possible that u technically have to ask for "permission" to the church to remarry in church, but in practice i think it's more of a ritualistic thing than actually asking for permission, cuz i've never met a single person who had them say no. it was pretty much "hey local bishop guy so my husband sucked and we divorced can i marry again" "sure lol". obviously it sucks that you even have to ask, but it's nowhere near as strict as people seem to think

the contraceptive thing is also absurd. like i cannot stress enough that my family would absolutely flip if they found out i DIDN'T use contraception. that was always something that my family reinforced very strongly, ESPECIALLY my grandpa. i've never met a single catholic who does not teach their kids to use contraceptives. my high school was catholic (literally named the Holy Cross, fun times, although they didn't impose the faith or anything. in fact almost half of the students in that school are jewish, but like, still, there was a priest in the school board) and we were taught to use contraceptives, put the condom in a banana and the whole pizzazz during biology class

like yeah the bible says not to but it also says not to mix different fabrics and that doesn't mean it's actually a thing that's reinforced in most catholic communities doaihdaj at least not here in latam. in here non-catholic christians are actually way more hardcore about the puritanism rules than catholics are, particularly evangelicals, which are kind of overtaken the catholics' traditional role of being colonialist fuckers as they are mostly from the US so they come to further US imperialism through religion here. watch out catholic church they're coming for ur crown

and even outside of puritanism, "non practicing catholics" are absolutely a thing like ppl who are catholic but don't even pray or go to church, much less care about that shit douahdsaohj so like the stereotype that all catholics are like the very small minority of hardcore catholics is like the stereotype that every muslim lives by the ultra-conservative muslim rules. it's not true and it's stereotypical and taking the minority ultra conservatives to be the rule when they are not

there's also the fact that there are many different currents of thought inside the catholic church (a little bit like with judaism although way less flexible than judaism is), some of which are very conservative, some of which are progressive. here in latam in particular the teology of liberation is extremely popular (it's the one my family subscribes to, and i'm pretty sure it was actually born here in latam) and it's pretty progressive. for catholics, that is

and like mandatory disclaimer that i am coming from my own experiences with latam catholicism, which i feel is different from other catholic countries - my polish friends for example have experiences with catholicism that are a lot closer to those stereotypes than mine ever were - but since most of the catholic population in the world is brazilian (like me), and second place goes to mexicans, i feel pretty comfortable taking it as a ruler to measure general catholic practices

with that being said, however, the catholic church can choke and die in a fire as it is a symbol of colonialism first and foremost, its proselitism is one of the worst things ever, and even the progressive currents are still way too damn conservative for my tastes. i just don't feel comfortable transcribing something that i know is incorrect and stereotypical (and that in some cases is used to further oppression like with the Irish in the UK or armenian catholics, and i've even had some US-diaspora latinos hear some incredible things from gringos who assumed they were catholic, or, in their beautiful words, "had latino religion". but obviously in most cases catholics are the oppressors, especially here in the third world)

also, her assessment in the third video is absolutely correct. A/B/O IS just conservative gender roles born of christian and catholic imposition transposed to a fictional world where the genders have slightly different names, which is why i, as a rule, hate it dauhdsaiuhdauhda and even though the assessment that catholicism is thaaat much more conservative than other christian religions (it's absolutely not, it's Exactly As Conservative) isn't true, catholicism is still where most if not all of western conservative rethoric is born of, and ugh, it's so refreshing to see someone understand this and put it into words so well

so yeah keep that note in mind but anyway, transcriptions:

[Video transcription #1: in reply to a tiktok question, which says, "now i'm thinking about the catholic guilt that would come with it oh my god". user @Omarsbigsister is saying, "good morning", she then covers her mouth as she starts to laugh, before continuing, "I guess I'm the religious omegaverse tiktoker now. I did not know catholic guilt was more than just sex, I thought it was just about sex, but nO. people who are catholic, if you don't know, they get guilt over every little thing, they get guilty when they eat, they have guilt when, like... [dismissive gesture] they have fun... it's messed up *cut* [mumbling i don't understand, sorry] in which you HAVE to be bonded before... *sticks tongue out* *cut* and catholics, from what i know, uhm, cannot get divorced, so you can't be unbonded, you're stuck for life with that alpha or omega, and then you can't use contraceptives so if you have a heat or rut, good luck, you cannot escape it, and on top of that, they preach abstinence, right, so if you're having a heat or rut in your teen years you just gotta deal with it alone like you are not allowed to be bonded, so, that would be really intense."

#2: in response to a question, which said, "follow up question: if in the real world hijabis are women, in ABO universe would hijabis be omegas of all genders?". the user is shown stroking her chin in contemplative silence for a long time, before she says, "actually, both men and women have to wear a hijab, it's just more visible on women, but men also have to cover from like, the neck all the way down... so like when you see them [mumbling i don't understand, sorry] that's their hijab. *cut* Islam is actually treating men and women, like, fairly somewhat equally, so, I feel like in omegaverse alphas, betas, and omegas would all be held to the same standards, and alphas and omegas would also be held by the same standards but then culture would ruin it, just like western culture has ruined it. for your other question. 'would muslim families prefer betas more, and would betas be spiritual leaders', i feel like everyone prefers betas more, but then also Islam came to like, uplift women [a written note then shows up, which says, "like girls are seen as a blessing to have as kids"], so like omegas would be seen as like, a blessing to have as a child.

#3: in response to another tiktok question, which says, "fun fact bestie you cannot get divorced in the catholic religion even if your spouse is abusive and horrible to you so in omegaverse how would that work?". she replies, "the reason that Abrahamic religions seemingly fit so well into the omegaverse universe is because catholicism specifically and christianity, uhm, all the gender norms and all the cultural norms especially in the west came from catholicism and christianity, they were forced on people, and then you know, people might not be religious, but the norms stay. but now you have omegaverse which is basically just a bunch of like youth exploring the youth through this, like, werewolf fanfiction trope, using all these gender roles that you have in society on their head, so, really, what i'm saying, is that... omegaverse is just catholicism fanfiction"

#4: she looks at the camera and says, "getting islamophobic comments is one thing, but getting islamophobic comments that say that muslims cannot be in the omegaverse".... she then breaks into laughter for a solid 30 seconds

#5: she is shown reading out loud, in a mock-outraged face, a tweet that says, "about to murder tiktok they try to make Ramadan a 'quirky' trend. it's a religious holiday. stop it, get some help. /srsly /g.", then a follow-up tweet, which says, "saw a tweet saying on tiktok they are asking questions about how ramadan would work in omegaverse. i'm done with y'all, just say you disrespect muslims and go". then another tweet by a different user, which says, "i tried to read, i got secondhand embarrassment-" they then break out of character and say, "oh, that's fair," before going back, "if it wasn't ramadan i'd be boxing those people right now. those people should be ashamed to even think that way wtf". then another, which replies, "well i'm not celebrating it, so as a non-muslim, i'll happily box them". then, back to her normal voice, she says, "i really was just making a silly little tiktok and seeing that stuff really hurts... i'm just kidding, i can't keep a straight face. you like minecraft youtubers, what are you gonna do to me? what are you gonna do to me?"

#6: in reply to a tiktok ask, which said, "prince philip was an omega". she slowly films herself as she takes a walk, finds the nearest trash bin, and tosses the phone there, before putting the lid over the box. end ID]

#i hope u dont take that as me being mad at u anon #honestly i could care less if ppl offended catholics #i just dont like spreading misinformation and once i started writing i couldnt stop #the videos are still amazing and spot on tho except for the first one #long post #discourse #catholicism tw

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godsporncollection · 4 years

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Hi! I’m 17 and I think I’m a lesbian. (I say think because I honestly don’t know right now because of all the other crap I’m dealing with right now). My parents are DEVOUT mormon and would never let me not attend church. I’m getting super depressed thinking about going again and I don’t even believe in God anymore. Do you have any tips for how to distance yourself while still having to attend?

I'm gonna start off by saying that I'm almost twice your age. Church policy, technology, and social media have changed a lot since I was in your position. I also know that there are situations that applied to my family that meant I was able to get away with certain things that many others can't get away with because those situations don't apply to their families. So, all I can tell you is what I did, and hopefully some of those might give you some ideas that you can adapt to fit your situation.

I pushed the boundary of what I was allowed to read (distract myself with) during sacrament meeting. I grew up being allowed to read certain religious things (scripture, books by lds authors, lds magazines) during sacrament meeting. When I was 14, and super into Tolkien's work, I found a book called "Religious Themes in The Lord of the Rings". I had my mom read it, and she approved of the series for church. I legitimately don't remember any talks from sacrament meeting due to this tactic.

I made friends in the ward, with less strict parents, and was occasionally allowed to sit with them during sacrament meeting. Those parents allowed us to get away with reading non-church material and quietly chat by passing notes back and forth.

When I was 15, I got a job. My dad went into the National Guard when I was 13. One weekend per month, he's gone most of the day for drill. Which means he misses church one Sunday a month. This gave me precedent to get a very demanding summer job that required me to work six days a week, including Sundays. It was a very common place for teens to work at, and it was temporary work, so my mom let me do it. But once I was done there, the personal precedent was set. She couldn't stop me from working at other places that were open on Sundays, where I would, unbeknownst to her, often trade shifts with coworkers to ensure that I was working during church as often as possible.

At some point, I started "writing". I took a notebook and pencil everywhere with me. Since I was a hard-core LotR fan, naturally, I knew the tengwar (elvish) alphabet. So, I would "take notes" in seminary and Sunday school, written in tengwar and nobody would ever know that I was just practicing, writing poetry, translating hand outs, or just writing straight up gibberish.

When I was 16, I actually told my mom I didn't believe any more. Obviously, this won't work for most people and will probably make things worse. I was unbelievably lucky, considering how strictly religious my parents are. We reached a compromise where I didn't have to go to Sunday school, young women's activities, firesides, or seminary. But I did have to attend everything we did as a family (provided I wasn't working): sacrament meeting, stake/general conference, and the daily family prayer and scripture reading. (I actually chose to keep going to young women's activities because I'd finally made friends.)

If I really had to attend something, and couldn't have any distractions, I would mentally recite anything I could think of. Favorite poems, passages from books, the words to any song I could think of, etc. Or I would practice the piano on my knees.

The only thing I can think of that I didn't do, is to actually read the bible. I'm serious. Educate yourself. Note how the bible differs from the BoM and how things can be interpreted outside the lds lens. It's very interesting to see how much from the fucking bible mormons ignore and twist to fit their narrative.

Now, as I said in the beginning, things have changed, and my family is not your family. So, if anyone else has suggestions, please speak up!

#exmo #exmormon #apostake #ex mormon #ex christian #ex cult #apostate #cult stuff #ask #exchristian #excult #exlds #ex lds #former mormon #ex religious #agnostic #mine

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miss-lady-uhane · 3 years

Text

Off My Chest Pt.1

I don't see what's so hard about being in a relationship. You are born in to a group of relationships. Your parents, maybe siblings, aunts, uncles, or cousins?

Then immediately you're expected to create more relationships and this time it's with strangers. You're told at a you age to treat others how you want to be treated but who's to say that others will treat you the way you treat them. It's totally uncertain how a person will react to you since not everyone gets along even for the most simple of reasons.

When I was in elementary school I always had the weirdest time making friends and I think it's because no one else was going through what I was going through. At that time I was too young to connect those dots because I didn't even really know what I was going through. I always hung out with my cousin patsy when we weren't in school, mostly because my dad was working and she was also my only cousin who was my age. I think we got along well but we just had different views about things. We both grew up in a Jehovah Witness family, and by that I mean my grandparents were both heavily religious and had 13 kids where majority of them were also heavy in to the JW beliefs. The difference between us was that her dad didn't care about going to church and never let the rest of the family pressure him. My dad was always in the church as a young man but was also a troublemaker and actually was disfellowshiped which means no one in the JW congregation could talk to you because you've basically been banned and the only way to get that back is to do everything you're supposed to do in regards to being a good follower.

I don't exactly know how his obligations transferred to me but we always had to go to church until I was maybe 6-8? And I had to go alone. My older cousins would take me to bible study or come over and study the watch tower. At a young age I started to actually realize how hypocritical that was, why do I have to get dressed up and memorize the Bible when my dad just stays home every night? Boom. All at once I was a bad person even though I never did anything wrong.

As a kid I spent a lot of time with my dad who was really strict. My grandma got me a phone because he would refuse to answer her calls and that was both the best and worst gift. I could have some kind of social life and hang out with my friends but my dad would literally call me every 20 minutes and I'm not exaggerating. It got to the point where I would just turn my phone off even if I knew I would get in trouble.

The constant calling and over-protection along with my dad always being gone for work coupled with moving in to smaller and smaller housing situations started to change me inside. I started realizing that not everything was peachy-keen. My dads best friends who I would go over and hang out with their kids no longer wanted him around which meant I had less and less friends. I started to wonder why my dad was always so frantic and why these people he's known his whole life started to drift away from him. The final time we moved to Pa'anau village which was basically Kauai's section 8 housing changed everything. After a lot of drama and overhearing arguments I realized that we were poor. I was still to young to understand why that was but I wasn't really bothered by it because I still wore the same school uniform, I still saw my friends from school, I still went to the beach every day. The only thing that was different now was that my dad was unemployed because the union does massive layoffs all the time.

I was still in middle school at this time and things started to change a little, people wanted to come to my neck of the woods all the sudden and I could never think of an excuse to tell them why they couldn't. Because my dad is a hoarder? Because I live in the ghetto? Or what else? Because my dad refused to pick me up or drop me off because he was always asleep? I never questioned why my dad was the way he was. I always just thought he was sad and missed my mom. He would cry a lot and have nightmares where he would yell for her and I would go in and wake him up and he would just cry.

I learned a lot about growing up once we moved to pa'anau. I had to clean our apartment all the time or it would be a mess, I did my own laundry. I definitely got in a lot of trouble because of who I was hanging out with in the environment. Living there and going to school in the city really changed who I was as a person.

I never saw myself as a "hot girl" or let alone a "pretty island girl". When I was in chief was I remember being like wow I thought I was a tomboy before and now I don't even own a pair of short hollister jean shorts. Either way I made my own path, I had the typical "text" boyfriend that I never saw in my life. We'd look at each other after our friends would go tell them something we each sent them on a mission to relay. Never really cared for any of that because in reality I was still shooting my guy friends with airsoft guns on the weekends.

After a while I realized that I couldn't just hang out with my two guy friends (Curtis & Treydon) because they too were finding themselves in a whole new world. I started hanging out with girls.. I just always felt like I never fit in. Girls as a whole are hard to get close with because there is ALWAYS drama. I still managed to have a group of friends wether I was unsure of if they really liked me or not we all ate lunch and we all hung out every lunch and found each other in class.

In the 8th grade things started to go for a wild turn. I got in a lot of trouble since my after school friends were those in my neighborhood and most of the people who lived in Pa'anau Village have drug using parents or drug dealing parents. I ended up getting arrested for the first time when I was 11 years old. We were eating ice cream I. Old Koloa Town when one of our friends said hey that couple left their bag should we take it? I remember everyone being scared and not wanting to but before I knew it she grabbed it and everyone just started running so of course I ran. She started opening the bag once we got to a bush covered pond near by and I realized we fucked up. The bag had her cell phone, her engagement ring, wedding band, Movado watch, everything. When they caught us I didn't have anything in my possession but the only thing that linked me was a phone call to my cell phone from the stolen phone. That call was made by a friends boyfriend who thought it was funny.

I'm now an 11 year old on probation. Grounded for life, can't affiliate with those friends, not to mention that we all had a different version of what happened. After this I found out that not only those friends but also our mutual school friends also had it out for me. As some kind of joke while we were banned from seeing each other they made a fake MySpace page where they started flirting with all kinds of guys including my last friend left in the groups boyfriend.

At this point I pretty much gave up on everyone I knew. I didn't want to hang out with them and I knew that I could find better people to be with. 8th grade summer my cousin Levi who was for some reason two years older than me in the same grade invited me to hang out with his friends. They were all way older and looked at me crazy!

A 13 year old? Who brought her here. But I was a balmores and they knew my older cousins really well. This group wasn't easy to get in to but once again I found my way and stuck around.

This all leads me to what I wanna figure out. Why, do I consistently get shafted? My 9th grade year I met a boy, he was quiet and literally said nothing to me. We would pass at school and for the first time ever I was like wow who is that. Fast forward, I find out he's friends with my new older friends because he was a senior which would make sense why I never saw him before. We eventually had small interactions and then one day at a party we hooked up. Go figure. We danced and kissed and I was like holy shit I'm gonna get in so much trouble. After that he literally said nothing to me until months went by and it happened again and this time it went all the way. First of all as I'm writing this why the fuck would he be the one to choose? Fuckin guy didn't do anything. Anyway.

I'm 14 and I've lost my virginity to a senior who also lost his virginity to me. Everyone we knew found out and made fun of him for hooking up with such a young girl. Everyone was so mean to me and he never talked to me again not a single word. Later I find out he was too embarrassed, what a pussy.

Instead of being sad I got really mad and started partying more and being kind of a tease because I thought it was funny that guys would try to hook up with me and I could say no but a girl they knew for years would be trying to hook up with them and the guy wouldn't want to. My way of killing two birds with one stone, getting over a guy and pissing off girls who were being mean to me.

Eventually I had my first legit boyfriend and that was.. a first. Typical I threw away my whole world for him but it wasn't hard since we were in the same group, things continued pretty much as normal minus the fact that I always had a ride now.

A lot of things happened that would need an entire book to fill in order for me to explain my self enstated independence from my dad, moving in with a friend, moving in with my coupons, then ending up in Washington.

I spent the entire time in Washington flying back and forth to California partially to see my boyfriend and partially to stay with friends and party.

My boyfriend and I ended pretty bad. He had developed depression and became a legitimate alcoholic, was cheating on me with multiple girls who I was suspicious of, then finally he was a complete drunk monster and that was the end of that.

Once again I found my way. I stayed in Washington and completed high school where I also met a whole squad of female demons. But yet again I started dating someone I met at a party. I didn't know him at all just what I knew from parties and social media. I figured we would be good friends and have fun and it was one of those things where he just called me his girlfriend one day. This was the biggest mistake I could've ever made. This guy was abusive, mentally and physically. I've never dealt with anyone like that and found myself at my weakest point. He spat in my face, threw my belongings all over the place, cheated on me physically, cheated on me on social media, fought with me publicly and on social media. Ultimately he ended up hacking any kind of internet profile I owned and was trying to ruin my life and I had to go to his house get my stuff and tell his parents and threaten legal action. Worst person ever.

Then right before I move to college a friend of mine was really in to setting me up with someone and I told her sure but nothing official. I hung out with this guy and her a few times and started to like him just because he was a normal guy. Pretty basic, friends, family, a dog. Most of all worshipped the ground I walk on. Everything was pretty easy going he asked me to be his girlfriend and I didn't see why not so I said yes, we dated in Washington for 3 months. I moved to California and we were still together even though that wasn't the plan. While I was there the day before my first ever jiu jitsu tournament I get a call "Keanna I'm so sorry I should've never done that I feel so terrible" the voice was a girl but the number wasn't recognized. It was a friend of my boyfriend, she told me that they went to lunch and after went back to his place. I didn't care much about him hanging out with girls because he had a lot of girl friends and it just wasn't an issue. She said that she wanted to break up with her crazy boyfriend and she saw an opportunity (to cheat) and took it. They went back to his house after having a long talk about how they used to have feelings for each other. The stories after this don't really add up but what I gather is that they went up to his room to have sex or something and she started feeling guilty, because we were "friends" and told him she changed her mind to which he responded "can I touch your ass at least" and she pulled her pants down and he touched her ass. Doesn't make sense yeah? So anyway I'm not really trying to deal with this and I should've broken up with him but instead I call him and I said "what did you do?" He sounds confused so I ask again but this time louder. He panicks and says I don't know I don't know. He ended up telling me and flew down the weekend after because wanted to talk. While he was there I looked through his phone and saw some other conversations he was having and also saw that when we first were hanging out he had another option if I didn't go through. Another option who apparently was in his bed when they were making out and she got her period and bled on him she felt so inclined to apologize. After this I lost my shit and didn't trust him at all and I just wanted him to leave. He begged me to forgive him and promised nothing would ever happen again and like me, I go with it. We end up dating for a total of two years. After he said he wouldn't do anything he really didn't. I still let him do whatever he wanted if he wanted to go to Vegas with his friends or party or go to lunch with girls. I just didn't really care I guess, my friend told me "do what you want to do so I know what you'd rather do" so I kept that. Eventually I was tired of how dependent he was. I had to do everything for him aside from basic chores. I had to file papers for him (e.g work, school, gym) I felt like I was teaching him how to do things and I just got tired of it. I felt like everything was almost too good and too plain because I was carrying the relationship. I was better than him at everything. We broke up and he moved out which was a long process.

During that process I was working my first full time job, had a recently found new best friend, and was spending most of my time with someone from high school who didn't like me but we ended up liking our adult selfs. This person suggested that I start hanging out with a teammate, a guy I knew since the 6th grade, or at least knew who he was. She said she thought we would be cute together and people always made fun of us for being so close. Never in my mind did I think I would date him. I just didn't see him like that. We started hanging out and realized we have a lot more in common than we thought. Everything happened pretty fast and things were so different. For once I was open to the idea of having a "friends with benefits" because I knew this person for a while and knew he wasn't exactly the relationship type. I told him that this could work out as long as he didn't keep me in the dark and was honest with me. After 4 months of us being kind of exclusive kind of not he told me that he loved me more than anyone else and I felt the same way. We were officially official. I felt so close to him in ways I never felt with anyone else. Eventually we had our first issue. I had found out that he had been chatting with our old classmate who lived in a city near by, he was telling her all kinds of false nothings and she asked "aren't you dating Keanna?" To which he replied "ugh". I found out because we were sitting with each other that night and she messaged him, I said ew why are you talking to that girl? And he said they were talking because she lived near by. I messaged her "hey girl. Bryson told me you live in LA we should hang sometime" to which she responded something like "Keanna I'm so sorry I shouldn't have been talking to him I'm so sorry I did this to you" followed with screenshots of their conversation. I was hurt. I freaked out, he left, he came back and squeezed me tight after hours of us fighting and said he was sorry and it would never happen again. A few months go by and we're sort of living together mostly because I didn't want to hang out at his house anymore and my place was cuter. Every morning before he went to work he spent a huge amount of time in the bathroom and I was always kind of like wtf and I don't remember how I found this out but I found out that he was flirting with girls during those hours because some how one of the girls told me and sent me screenshots of their conversations. Once again I got mad and forgave him and months went by. I go away for thanksgiving break leaving him at our place/my place. I come back to beautiful flowers and more attention than I had before. He told me shortly after that break that he wasn't going to be hanging with his old friends because they were bad news and I was pretty surprised. I kind of agreed but I also think.. idk my friends are wild too. Either way things were good. One day he gets a FaceTime call and didn't want to answer it, I copied the number in to google and found a name of a girl I recognized from a while ago at my birthday. I was drunk and he let me send a Snapchat to a bunch of girls I told them "I will ruin your life" the only one who responded was this girl who said "I didn't even do anything" and I thought it was funny. I find out that while I was gone for thanksgiving he and his friend picked this girl up and her friend and brought them to my apartment and they stayed the night. They made a vlog about how they picked them up in my car and how they hung out at my place and slept so long that they missed their flight. The next morning there were videos of my boyfriend driving them back in my car. My heart stopped.

I've never felt so blind sided in my life. I hated him and I didn't want to see him again but somehow he convinced me that it was all a mistake and he already cut all these toxic people out of his life.

He suggested that we delete social media and I remember the exactly message "if you love me you'll do the same thing" and I was like wow, yeah let's do it. That was probably the most interesting time of my life. For once I didn't have social media and I had to answer to everyone as to why and tell them that I am okay and that I'm just taking time off. We ended up moving to LA to be closer to school. His friend moved in from Kauai and stayed only 6 months. Living in LA was an interesting change. We got to eat a lot and experience a different kind of the city.

Lots of little things happened while we were here, we fought a lot about social media. He would reactivate his Instagram without telling me which I felt like was kind of shady since we were doing this together and I didn't know there was that option on the table but I felt like life was better without it anyway. At one point I saw a call on his phone made from Snapchat to a random girl. I asked about it and it got no where but I became very suspicious. At this point my trust level was low as could be but I just thought that the goods were good and that bads were so stupid and avoidable. One day I just decided to look through his Venmo and the first name said "queenturtlee" I was like wtf kind of name is that so I look it up on google and see that it's connected to a Twitter account of a girl asking people to send her money. I reach out to her and ask why she's friends with my boyfriend to which she sends me screenshots of their conversations and once again I am frantic. I screenshot all of it and send it to him, we go through the apologies again. And yet again I believe that he was going to delete it. Half way through living in Palos Verdes, life at this point is a fucking rollercoaster. I haven't told anyone about anything thats happened I haven't opened up or really understand how I feel about it we just keep moving. One night after he was out with friends he was getting texts and calls from a Hawaii phone number which I thought was strange, I look it up on a google and I recognize the name. I start questioning it but I get deflected, it's nothing it's nothing. Once again we move on.

A few months go by and we're hit with an actual pandemic. We leave LA all together to go to Washington temporarily and it turned in to permanently after realizing that life in California just wasn't going to be sustainable. I graduated college virtually, we were living in my grandmas house for 3-4 months. Things were weird. We were managing to stay positive by doing all the things we possibly could to stay active and have a good summer.

Eventually we got our own place, moved all our belongings up, and got a puppy! Things were still locked down but at least we had all of our things and more importantly we had this little fluffy bear.

I've always struggled with birth control because I would get the worst symptoms so a friend told me about tracking ovulation and taking my basal body temperature in place of taking birth control. This method was risky but I felt like it was okay because she does it. One day I felt really sick and realized I didn't get my period, I took 5 pregnancy tests all faded positive negative. This led to me having to take a bunch of blood tests and ultrasounds to find out that I was exactly 3 weeks pregnant.

I wasn't ready and had no intention on having the baby but I had to wait until a fetus was visible to do anything about it. While I'm in this process I get a random message from a classmate I haven't talked to in years. They say "hey girl sorry to message you about this but I was at a family party and there were some girls talking about your boyfriend subscribing to her only fans" I immediately felt my heart drop lower than ever. The girl who was at the party messaged me, she told the girl with the only fans to message me and she did. She sent me everything and I remembered a time recently when I walked out late at night and saw him on Snapchat which is where the messages she showed me came from. So once again I confront him but this time it's different. I'm going through something that I never thought. I'm waiting weeks knowing I'm pregnant feeling nauseas, anxious, and scared. What am I supposed to do now.

After a huge fight, the solution was that he would delete it again and give me his password.

This was probably the worst it ever was. A couple nights I unlocked his phone and then got nervous and locked it again. I wanted to look but I was scared of what I would find. I couldn't sleep every night, I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know if I could trust him anymore. Everything was so good how was I going to deal with a breakup, a puppy separation, all after moving to a new state. I thought to myself, if I don't look now I'll never know. So I do. I find messages that date back to a year. I find all the extra messages that no one sent me, I find money trails sent to females for nudes or sexual messages. Worst of all I find the girl that I saw calling him a year before when he came home late that one night. He had been talking to this girl the entire time, telling her stories about things we were doing. Worst of all is that he wrote the words "I love you".

I completely lost my shit. I woke him up in a rage showing him all the things I saw asking him how he could do this to me.

I never wanted to see him again I felt like I was going to throw up. I was crying so much I felt like the world knew.

He went to his moms house and I tried to stay out or away as much as possible without telling my family anything. At this point it hurt so much. I love him so much, everything outside of social media is a dream so why would he risk that? I felt insecure. A few days before my surgery he told me that he wanted to be there for me and that he was a changed person and realized how fucked up he was but he didn't want me to go through it alone. I didn't want to go through it alone either, I couldn't stop thinking about what I saw and all the names I read. I felt alone and like I was looking at a stranger.

He came back and we slowly tried to figure out how to be normal again. Since then we've moved on far but I think he moves much faster or at least it seems like it. He is my best friend and someone I care about differently than I've ever before. We make a great team, we support each other and know each other on a deep level. We can be our selves with each other. We know each other more than I've ever known any of my friends.

Today, we are still together. He is still my best friend. Our little fluffy bear is now a semi-huge German shepherd who is the cutest and most well behaved 9 month old ever. We've established ourselves in Washington and he actually got a really good job doing what he went to school for. In regards to loyalty things have been going well so far. It's taken me a lot to get to where I am now, I feel like I lost myself for a long time. I'm trying to work on myself lately and trying to stay focused on things that really matter. Our life is pretty much picture perfect but we're still growing up.

Our most constant argument is always social media, but now it's all over the place. It's me being crazy, it's him being careless. A constant circle of misunderstanding each other and breaking each other down emotionally. Sometimes I wish there was a way to forget everything. I wish social media was as it were before, simple. I wish communication wasn't so aggressive and that there was an easier way to mediate instead of getting a therapist. I don't know I wish there was a way to make the pain go away. To not think about what's made me who I am today.

I think it's hard being in your 20s. Everyone is at different stages of life. They have different priorities. People who you grew up with are now spread across the world and you may go years without seeing someone you consider your close friend.

One thing that's hard for me now is not knowing what's next. I feel as if I've given all of the emotional gas I have and if anything else makes my heart drop I think I'll completely give up.

I wish it was easier to get over a fear but some people including myself need extra support. Unfortunately for my boyfriend, not only does he get to deal with what we've been through but he has to deal with all that I've been through.

I always feel like no one I know actually knew what I went through growing up. Boyfriends or best friends are usually the ones who get to know you best and so far only one person who's not my family knows so much about me. Life has shown me how easy it's been for people to leave me or treat me badly. I know that I am not a perfect person but I do know that I don't deserve half the things I experienced. I blame myself for being too forgiving, I blame the church for teaching me that trait, I blame my dad for making me go and making me think life was different than it was.

At this point I have no one to blame but myself for how things have gone. All I can hope is that all that I have now stays afloat and keeps growing in the positive direction that it has. I can't control everything even though I want to.

#self care #relationships #mental health #exercise #diet #friends #making friends #switching schools

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first-son-of-finwe · 4 years

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So this is my “leaving the fold” essay, which I mentioned some time ago. I wrote this mostly for myself because writing things down always helps me make sense of them, but quite a few people expressed interest in it, so here it is.

I was raised as quite a strict Orthodox Christian, and the religion is a huge part of my mum’s life. This is mostly my experience of its ideas and processes, and how and why I ultimately decided to leave. It’s a bit rambling, all over the place and very long, but I kinda wanted to post it somewhere, so 🤷

TW for mentions of abortion, alcoholism and general conflict.

When I was twelve or thirteen, my parents and I set off on one of our regular trips to Russia. We used to do this every year before time and money became restricted, and one of our compulsory stops was always a large, sprawling monastery on the outskirts of the city of Nizhny Novgorod.

It’s a place of smiling nuns but very strict rules, where God forms a part of every sentence and church is mandatory for both mornings and evenings. It’s a place of communal meals, harvesting vegetables and milking cows, ringing bells, and lots and lots of praying. For me, it was a taste of pure rural life. I loved running through the fields, swimming in the pond and helping out with the manual tasks of running a communal settlement. I gasped in delight when I saw the lone horse in the field. Deep down I was never meant to be a city kid, and being at the monastery fuelled my dream of living the simple life.

But the fact that we were there purely for religious reasons? That was only an afterthought. An obligatory thing I had to go along with, because the adults expected it. Perhaps I tried to feel the same spirituality they seemed to experience, but I never quite got there.

I put on the headscarf, held the candle, wrote the names of my loved ones on prayer notes for the living. I bowed to the icons, made the sign of the cross when everyone else did. But I never truly connected.

One year on the day of a particularly significant celebration, a huge icon was carried over a horde of kneeling worshippers, and my mum told me to kneel down and pray for my dad to recover from his alcoholism. And so I did.

This is something I’d been praying for for a long time. It’s something I was told to pray for at every holy site, and before every relic. And no, he’s never quit drinking.

But I already knew that he wouldn’t, even as I knelt, closed my eyes and begged whichever saint was on that icon to help my dad quit drinking. I simply knew that it didn’t work that way.

I knew it the same way I knew that Santa wasn’t real. Every child seems to have experienced a shock-horror moment upon learning that they’d been deceived, but I recognised him for what he was right from the start - a story. For someone who’s always thrown themselves wholeheartedly into stories and fantasy, I’ve always had a very clear distinction between fact and fiction - though I’ve also not been so close-minded as to think that there isn’t a grey area in between.

No matter how hard I tried to convince myself, I don’t think I ever truly believed in their version of what was supposed to be happening.

But I think my moving away from Orthodoxy truly began the day I heard my mum on the phone to her friend, who was at the beginning of a difficult pregnancy and was considering an abortion. She and her husband were on different pages with regards to this, though I don’t quite remember who wanted what. My mother’s advice was this: “Well you should really listen to your husband, because you know that a husband’s word is God’s word.”

Even being the believer that I was then, my immediate reaction was complete shock, followed by a thought process that went something like “Are you joking?? SERIOUSLY?”

And of course, it was hard not to think of my own father in his worst moments of drunkenness. So it seems “God’s word” is actually a whole lot of slurred, barely comprehensible nonsense occasionally sprinkled with some insults. That’s really the logic we’re going with here? And beyond that, how can you hand such a deeply personal decision to someone else??

When I went away to university for three years and spent considerable chunks of time away from my mother’s influence, my skepticism only deepened with every day. I couldn’t reconcile the science-driven environment I saw around me with the ideas being propounded in church. Sincerely believing in the Adam and Eve story, in this day and age? It didn’t compute.

Having said that, I would certainly not call myself an atheist even now. I think it is just as presumptuous to assume your absolute knowledge of the infinite universe and declare it contains nothing, as it is to declare that your religion is the only correct one. I find many things about the Christian God to be extremely convenient (just so happens to be an old white bearded man, oh fancy that), but I am certainly not convinced that there are no intelligent forces in the world, whatever shape they take. We are simply not in a position to know these things, and I’m okay with that.

In turn, I treat anyone who claims to know them with intense suspicion.

Ultimately, leaving Orthodox Christianity was a long and painful process (I say ‘was’ in the past tense, but the truth is that it is still ongoing) filled with guilt, second-guessing, deliberate habit breaking and an extremely distressed and persistent mother. But my reasons for it boil down to four key things.

Their ideas did not match my ideas. I will never believe that women are obliged to be submissive to men. I will never believe that being gay (or in any way not straight) is a sin. I will never believe that Eastern Orthodoxy is the one true faith among all the other hundreds and thousands of faiths that exist on this planet. Living with your partner without being married is not a sin. Eating some chicken on a lent day is not a sin. A woman on her period is not “unclean.” Their ideas of good and bad, right and wrong seemed so incredibly outdated and arbitrary that it became hard to take anything they said seriously. And I felt so uncomfortable standing there, surrounded by people who I knew believed in all of this wholeheartedly.

Despite the religion branding itself as ‘Christian’, I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of the priests or worshippers talk about helping others. It is not on the agenda. People walk into church and think that because they’ve said their prayers, abstained from meat and dairy and then said their prayers some more, they’re now good people. But what have they done to make anyone’s life better? Who have they helped? Who have they listened to, cared for, understood? It’s not about that. It’s about making yourself feel good because you recited the Lord’s Prayer before eating your lunch.

The process of participating is extremely rigid, and trying to remember all those rules and traditions is honestly just stressful. Which hand do I kiss? How many times do I have to make the sign of the cross before approaching that super special icon? Do I have to touch the floor, or is that optional? Oh, everyone is kneeling...I guess I should kneel too. Once, I accidentally addressed the Archbishop as ‘Father’ and got a slew of disapproving looks from everyone around me. I think perhaps people find a certain kind of comfort and stability in routine, but having one imposed on you when you’re constantly unsure of the rules is not a pleasant experience.

Sometimes there is a very thin line between a religion and a cult, and Orthodoxy is toeing it a little too closely for comfort. I’ve seen it overpower people’s rational thinking and tap into their most powerful emotions in a way that’s honestly quite frightening.

The first step to leaving was progressively going to church less and less. I’d only ever really gone because my mum demanded it, but now, I put up a bit more resistance. I got screamed and yelled and cried at, and at first, of course I gave in. But little by little, I began to get the message across that I was simply not interested anymore.

Then, I deliberately made the choice to break certain habits. We always faced a row of icons on the wall and made a sign of the cross before leaving the house, and coming back in. It was such an ingrained habit that I did it automatically, and for the first few months, I had to physically catch myself in order to stop. That came with its own sense of guilt and hesitancy, and with the feeling that hey, now God is mad at you - hope a brick doesn’t fall on your head when you’re out there without his blessing.

The next step was removing the cross I’d worn around my neck ever since I’d been christened as a baby. Even now I can’t not wear something around my neck, so I have a little key necklace there in its place. Having a bare neck just looks too weird to me.

That cross came off and went back on at least three times. Each time I’d be persuaded, guilted, given the simple but effective phrase of “just do it for me.” I’ve removed it for what I hope will be the last time, and “just do it for me” won’t cut it anymore. If I converted to Islam tomorrow, would it be okay for me to ask someone to wear a hijab “for me”, even though they don’t share my faith? No, it wouldn’t. Religion and expression of religion is a personal choice, and not something you can strong-arm your adult children into.

Now, I’m in a fairly comfortable place where I’ve shed most of that initial guilt and am happy with my choices. I’ve even been back into church a couple of times just to meet a family member, only catching the end of the service - and even then, I’ve been reminded of exactly why I left. My mindset is simply too far removed to find any spiritual value in Orthodoxy.

Does my mother still try to get me into church? Yes. Are the attempts extremely mild and infrequent, compared to what they used to be? Yes. On one hand, I’d like to have a deep conversation with her and explain all the reasons why I have no interest in the religion anymore, but on the other hand, I know it’ll likely make her extremely upset.

Perhaps it’s better to just let it be.

#out of silmarils #religion #personal

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13-reasons-ideas · 4 years

Text

Marry Me

A/N: I decided to take a stab at doing a songfic. It is MontyxOC and I hope you guy’s like it. I based it off of Thomas Rhett’s Marry Me. This part is from the bride’s perspective. For this part, I recommend listening to the bride’s perspective linked below. There will be another part from Monty’s perspective coming soon. This is a long one. I hope you like it as much as I do. As always, much love. Word Count: 7963

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqxEYUcW-cU

My fiancé, Evan, and I finally made it to San Fran International Airport, after a long day of traveling from Atlanta. I managed to get some more wedding planning done on the plane from Dallas. My parents were throwing us a second engagement party at home, so we made the trip out early on after he popped the question. Once we had left baggage claim with our bags, I led him through the airport to pickups.

He insisted on holding the bags while I looked for Scott. My parents weren’t able to get off work, so he had kindly offered to pick us up in San Francisco. I searched the crowd and spotted him standing off to the side, near a vending machine. “Scott!” I called as I waved and broke into a run towards him. He caught me in his arms and twirled me around.

“There she is.” He muttered into my hair as he put me down. I felt Evan put his hand on my back and I leaned into him. “You must be the one who stole her heart. I’m Scott.” He said, sticking his hand out.

“Evan.” He replied, shaking his hand firmly.

“So, let’s see the ring.” I smiled brightly at him and showed him my round two carat pave ring. He whistled when he saw it. “That’s nice. It suits you. Did she pick it?”

“No, I looked at her Pinterest.”

“Smart man.” Scott said as he picked up my bag and walked us out to the car, Evan’s hand firmly in mine the whole time.

On the way back into town, Scott shared stories of all the trouble I used to get my friends in and out of in high school. “There was this one time none of us had studied for a midterm coming up and so Ellie here called us all over to her place, and sat us down with colour coded notes, charts, the whole thing and spent the whole weekend tutoring us.”

“Only because you all had to pass that exam to stay on the team.” I interjected.

“El, it’s not like they would have kicked the whole team off the team. We were all pretty antsy by the end of the weekend.”

“But they could have cancelled the rest of your season. How happy would you have been then, hmmm?”

“Fine, fine. You win. But what about that time Monty and Bryce decided to climb in that old treehouse in Bryce’s backyard and you had to call the fire department?”

“You mean the time they almost fell out a tree? Yeah, I remember that. I also remember not speaking to either of them for like three days afterwards.”

“Oh, don’t think I forgot that detail. Monty wouldn’t shut up about it until you finally talked to him again.”

“Not my fault genius one and genius two climbed into a treehouse they hadn’t been in since they were like eighty pounds lighter. Bryce cried, Scott.”

“You didn’t talk to them because they went in a treehouse?” Evan asked.

“No babe. I didn’t talk to them because they got stuck in a treehouse. And I couldn’t climb up there to save their genius butts because any more weight would have sent the whole thing tumbling to the ground. And then Coach would have had my ass for breaking them.”

“I’m guessing there was alcohol involved in these shenanigans?”

“Oh yes.” Scott laughed, “they were drunk off their asses. Monty hugged one of the firefighters.”

“Ellie mentioned something about him not being a hugger.”

“He isn’t. Took him like 4 years to hug me. And I’m his best friend. We had food poisoning together when we were younger, and he still wouldn’t do it.” I shuddered at the memory.

“Lovely.”

“Yeah, but anywho. They barely made it into the pool house before they passed out.”

“We don’t call her Mom for nothing.”

“Okay designated Dad friend.”

“At least when we hung out after homecoming we didn’t-” Scott started. My eyes widened. Are you serious Scott?!

“Trip and fall flat on our faces in front of the whole school?” I cut him off quickly.

He gave me a weird look in the rear view. Thankfully, Evan was looking out the window as we were getting closer to town. I gave him a what the fuck look back. “Uh, yeah. That was pretty funny actually. Matt and Garrison were so excited we won that they tripped over their own feet and faceplanted.”

Evan didn’t appear to be listening anymore. Scott drove the rest of the way and when we got into town, I texted Monty. Hey you. I just got into town with Evan for the weekend. Are you free tonight?

He texted me back a few minutes later, yeah I’m free. What’s up?

“Don’t worry about showing him the noteworthy spots. We are going to look around after church on Sunday.” I mentioned to Scott, not looking up from my phone. I replied to Montgomery swiftly, drinks or coffee? Just you and me. My parents are going over some details for tomorrow with Evan that they don’t want me around for.

Sure. Meet you at Monet’s at six?

I’ll save you a seat. Usual order?

You know I don’t change things Elliebear. I smiled affectionately at the nickname and put my phone away. Scott had pulled up in front of my parent’s house.

“See you tomorrow Scotty.” I told him, reaching around the driver’s seat to rub his hair.

“El, not the hair. I’ll see you. It was nice meeting you Evan.”

“You too, Scott. Have a good night.”

The door opened as soon as we set foot on the front walk and my mom poked her head out. “Hey Mom. I’ve missed you.”

“Oh, come here and let me look at you.” She cooed, pulling and prodding me to get a good look.

“Mom, relax. I haven’t changed that much since the last time I saw you.”

“Hello Mrs. Davis. How are you?” Evan asked her as he pulled me closer to him to stop her examining.

“I’m lovely dear. Robert set up the guest room for you. Ellie, you’ll be in your own room.”

“I know Mom. Wasn’t expecting anything less.”

As we walked into the living room, dad looked up from his newspaper, “hey sweetheart, Evan.” “Mr. Davis.” Evan greeted and shook his hand firmly.

“Now now, what have we told you? You will be family soon enough. It’s Robert or Dad.”

“And Jillian or Mom.” My mom added.

“I know. Habit.”

“Well Ellie-muffin, what did you want to do tonight for your first night back in town?”

“I thought you had to talk to Evan about stuff. And I understood from mom that I wasn’t supposed to be there. So, I kind of already made plans….”

“That’s right. I told you about it last week Rob. We have to go over stuff for tomorrow.”

Dad thought for a moment, trying to remember the conversation, “that’s right. Sorry Jill, I’ve been busy with work and stuff that it must have slipped my mind.”

“What are you doing tonight, beautiful?”

“Just going to get a coffee with Monty now that I’m back in town.” I told him, casually. It’s just coffee and catching up with a friend.

“That sounds like fun. Let him know I’m looking forward to meeting him tomorrow.”

“I will. I’m going to run upstairs and change. You guys have fun down here.”

“What about dinner, Ellie?”

“It’s okay mom, I’ll just grab some soup or something at Monet’s.”

At about twenty to six, I decided to head out. I chose a cute, casual ensemble. I had thrown on one of Monty’s old baseball shirts, that I stole in the ninth grade or something with some jeans and sneakers. It was comfortable and he never asked for it back, so I kept it. Sometimes I wore it to run errands or when I was running late to class in college. “Bye guys. Love you Evan.” I called from the door. My family had holed themselves up in my dad’s office to talk about the party tomorrow, and I had strict instructions not to disturb them. I heard a chorus of ‘bye’s from the house as I left.

I beat Monty to the café but that wasn’t surprising really since I had left so early.

“Hey, what can I get you this evening?”

“Can I get a-”

“She’ll get a skinny vanilla bean latte with only one pump of vanilla, a dash of cinnamon, and extra foam in a for here cup. I’ll get a regular black coffee. And she’ll also have the chicken and spinach sandwich.” I heard Monty say behind me. The barista looked at me, unsure if she should ring it in or not. I nodded at her and turned around to face him. Before he had a chance to say anything, I jumped into his arms for a hug. I did manage to salvage some dignity and not screech in his ear.

“Hey Elliebear.” He said after grunting from the impact.

“I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

Our orders were finished quickly as it was surprisingly slow for a Friday night. Luckily, that meant our table was free. We sat down and conversation flowed easily. It was almost like we had never been apart.

“The ring is nice. It suits you. Bigger than I thought you would like but it’s nice.”

“It is nice, yeah. That reminds me, Evan said he’s looking forward to meeting you tomorrow.”

“So am I. See who finally caught your interest.”

“I was interested in other people before Evan.” I told him, scandalously.

“Ellie. That guy from drama class doesn’t count. And neither does your chemistry partner.”

“I was not interested in Adam. And Zach was my chemistry partner. I can assure you I was not into him.”

“Please, enlighten me as to these people you were interested in before Evan.”

“There was,” I paused. You. “Dylan from sophomore English was cute. Ian. Couple other guys in high school. Peter from my first year anthropology class was… very attractive, and smart.” I’ll just leave out that Peter was the professor.

“One guy aside from Evan? University of Georgia is a big school. There’s no way you only had eyes for two people.”

“I was busy. I practically lived in the library when I wasn’t in class or my dorm. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Is there a girl I should be hearing about? Or should have heard about?”

“Nah. Nothing important or anything to write home about. I was busy.”

“Oh please Monty, you played ball at OSU. You honestly expect me to believe there was no girl in your life?”

“No, no. There were girls. Just nothing really serious.”

“Uh, huh.” I replied, sarcastically. When I reached for my cup, he reached for his, and our hands brushed. I was immediately transported back to the day of homecoming in senior year.

Flashback

“Remember students. The homecoming game is tonight at 6:30. You’ll want to be there early as our Liberty Tigers take on the Hildebrandt Mustangs if you want good seats. It’s sure to be a nail biter.” Principal Bolan’s voice boomed from the intercom during the morning announcements.

“In order for it to be a nail biter, our team would actually have to have a chance at winning.” Alex muttered to Clay and me.

“They are playing Hildebrandt. We could literally not show up and still win.” I told him, as I adjusted my bag on our walk from Alex’s locker to mine, where Zach was meeting me before chemistry.

“Maybe they got good over the summer. Didn’t Bryce spend the summer in Greece or something? Relaxing and drinking poolside?”

“I think it was somewhere in Italy, actually.”

“Either way, I don’t think he spent his summer bulking up and practicing for the season.”

“I mean, they have Monty.”

“And? What did he spend his summer doing Ellie?”

“When I wasn’t at camp, we spent the summer together. There was no poolside drinking. When I was at camp he hung out with Scott and did boy stuff. They also worked out a lot.”

“How was camp by the way?” Clay asked.

“It was good. Learned a lot from my campers. They learned a lot from me. Only one incident of blood. It was pretty good.”

We had made it to my locker, and I was arranging my books when I felt myself being pulled into someone’s arms and lifted off the ground. “Montgomery, put me down!” I laughed, feeling my whole body shake.

“Never.” He laughed, evilly.

“I have to grab my chem book. And go to chemistry.”

“I’ve got it.” Zach’s voice drifted over to me, “you carrying her to class today?”

“Nah, I thought about it but since I had to come find her this morning, I figure she can make it there on her own.”

“I was running late. My alarm didn’t go off when it was supposed to.”

“Excuses, excuses.” Monty replied, putting me down and shaking his head. I turned my attention back to my other friends.

“I’ll see you guys later? Zach and I are running late.”

“Sure. Justin said if I don’t go to the game tonight, he’d tell mom and dad about Ani. And I don’t want to deal with that.”

“Someone has to keep Clay company, so I have to go too.” Alex said, pushing clay lightly.

“Great. I’ll see you then. See you at lunch Monty.”

Lunch seemed to take forever and a half to arrive. I knew sleeping in would mess with my day. The guys were already at their usual table when I arrived and sat next to Monty, no closer than we usually did. “Ellie, think you could pray for us to not lose this game tonight?” Bryce sniggered from the end of the table. I only rolled my eyes in response.

“Hey, quit being a dick.” Monty told him. Bryce responded by chucking a grape at him.

“It’s fine Monty. Not like he hasn’t done it before.” I didn’t have to look up from my lunch to know he was sporting a displeased face. “It’s going to take a lot more than God to help you win if you don’t learn to throw better than that in the next six hours. But sure.” I made a show of getting myself ready to pray verbally, but not with intention, “Lord, please help the guys win tonight. Give them the ability to not trip over themselves when they make plays. And God, please show Bryce how to make the ball go where it’s supposed to and not hit some poor kid in the head again. Maybe, just maybe, then he will get laid tonight and we all know that’s really why he asked me to pray.”

The boys laughed hysterically around me as I smirked at Bryce.

“You need to quit hanging out with Monty, he’s rubbing off on you too much. And I was serious.”

“I know. I’ll do it for real after lunch. You can sit with me if you want.” I offered but knew he would decline.

I ran home to change after school for the game. “Mom, have you seen my baseball shirt?” I called, searching my room for Monty’s shirt.

“The last I saw it, it was on your dresser.” I dug around on my dresser for a bit until I found it.

“Thanks Mom.” I called, shrugging it on. I quickly fixed my hair and grabbed a sweater before bolting back out the door to meet Alex before the game.

I met him in the school parking lot, at about six. “Hey Lex.”

“Hey El. Clay should be here soon and we can go find a seat.”

“That’s good.” We made small talk for a few minutes before Clay pulled up in one of the Priuses. Pri-i?

“Hey guys. Ready to go watch us get our asses handed to us on the field?”

“Your brother is playing Clay. Have a little faith.”

“I guess you’re right. I can’t say he isn’t a good player. But even still. Justin and Monty can’t carry the whole team all night.”

“Scott and Charlie help. Zach is good.”

“Oh goody. Five of forty-seven players are good. That makes me feel so much prouder of them.” Alex joked as we found a decent seat in the middle of the stands at the beginning of the row.

“Well, just think, if we do win tonight, then the team will be too busy celebrating to give anyone a hard time for a few days.”

“Now that you mention celebrating Ellie, if they win are you going to go with Monty after the game?” Clay asked

“I told him I would meet him at Monet’s with the rest of them whether we win or lose.”

“Okay. Can you keep an eye on Justin? I don’t really feel like going out with the football team for the evening.”

“No problem. Is everything alright?”

“I think he’s just trying to figure out where he fits now that he’s doing better and on the team. I don’t think he thought he would get this far.”

“That’s fair. I’ll make sure he sits with us for a bit. See if I can make Monty play nice.”

“See if you can? Ellie. He would jump off a cliff if you asked him to. I don’t like him, but I know he likes you.” Alex argued. Likes me? I mean sure, as his friend. Right? I brushed off the thoughts and where they could lead and have occasionally led in the past.

“He doesn’t really like heights. But I guess you’re right. He’s my best friend.”

“Sure. Best friend.” Alex said, shaking his head. I watched him share a look with Clay.

“I’m going to go grab a water, you guys want anything?”

“No, I’m good thanks.” Clay said, his eyes scanning the crowd of arriving students, likely for Ani.

“Nah. Mom sent me with some kind of weird protein thing. It doesn’t taste half bad, so I’ll just have that.” Alex said, shaking a bottle. I nodded and ran down the bleachers to the concession.

After getting a bottle of cold water, I ran back up just before the game started. The teams had just gotten on the field and had lined up. As expected, the game was in our favour most of the first half. I waved at Monty occasionally when he was on the sidelines and he looked over at me. He smiled and waved back. During the second half Hildebrandt seemed to find their groove and the game was at least interesting. It wasn’t really much of a nail biter as Principal Bolan had promised this morning, but it wasn’t really boring either. Everyone knew that regardless of how we played, we would probably win. The game ended and the team and the crowd were excited. Matt and Garrison were so excited by the win, they tripped over their own feet and faceplanted on the sidelines. The excitement died down for a moment until they shot up and went on celebrating. As the team filtered off the field, students began leaving. “See you Monday Ellie.” Alex said as we hugged goodbye.

“See you. Have a good weekend guys. I have to go catch up with Monty.”

I spotted him waiting for me by the locker room, gym bag on his shoulder. “Good game.” I said as I walked up to him.

“Of course, it was. I was on the field.”

“Modest as ever I see.”

“Do you expect anything else at this point Elliebear?” “Not really. But I can hope, maybe one day.”

“Maybe, but not likely.”

“Oh hey, while I’m thinking about it, Clay asked me to keep an eye on Justin tonight.”

“Is everything okay?”

“I think so. Clay said something about him having issues adjusting and stuff. Do you think you can play nice with him for a while?”

“I suppose, since he is your friend, I can try and be nice for a while. But not all night. I want some Ellie time.”

“And you’ll get your Ellie time. After you make nice with Justin.”

He sighed and was about to respond when Bryce called us, “are you two going to stand there and chit chat all night or are we going to celebrate?”

“We’re coming. Give us a minute asshole.” Monty called back to him. Bryce waved him off and walked away, leaving us alone.

He turned his back to me, “hop on”, he told me as he bent down slightly. Once I was secure against his body, he began to walk us out to the parking lot. Because he wasn’t paying attention, it was the perfect time to steal his hat. Plucking it off his head, I placed it on mine. It was slightly too big, but I didn’t mind.

“That’s my hat El.”

“I know. I happen to like it though, so I’m wearing it.”

“I’m not getting it back tonight, am I?”

“Nope. It is now mine. Might even write my name in it.”

“You do that Ellie. I won’t care when I steal it back who’s name it has in it.”

“Fine. Then I’ll readjust it.” I smirked.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, I would.”

He laughed as we arrived at our cars and he set me down. “No, you wouldn’t.” He shook his head for emphasis, calling my bluff. I pushed him lightly and rolled my eyes.

“Whatever. I’ll see you at Monet’s in a few with your precious hat.”

True to my word, I arrived at Monet’s a few minutes later, Monty’s hat placed firmly on my head. The place was packed with students celebrating the win. I went to the counter and greeted Skye, placing our usual orders and adding whatever Justin usually got. Once placed, I turned to look for a table. Luckily most students knew where Montgomery and I sat so our table was clear. Making a couple of trips, I placed the drinks on the table and pulled out my phone. I texted Justin quickly, hey Justin. I grabbed you a coffee. Feel free to sit with Monty and I when you get here. Don’t worry, he agreed to be nice. He replied with a thumbs up. The sound of a chair scraping the floor next to me startled me. “I see you told the truth. Can I have it back now?”

“No. I think it looks quite fetching on me, if I do say so myself.” I spoke regally, swiveling my head to show him from multiple angles.

“Fetching?”

“Yes. Do you disagree?”

“No, I think it looks good on you.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Monty and I chatted quietly before Justin showed up. “Hey guys.” He said, standing slightly awkwardly to the side of the table.

“Justin! You made it.” I exclaimed, smiling. Monty shot me a tone it down look. He smiled back at me as I stood and moved next to Monty. “Make room.”

“Can do sweetheart.” He charmed, patting the chair next to me. I rolled my eyes and tried to ignore the flutter in my stomach when he called me sweetheart, before sitting down.

“Thanks for the coffee Ellie.” Justin told me, taking a sip.

“No problem.” The three of us chatted idly for a while. Monty was nice to Justin and even laughed a few times at one thing or another he said.

Somewhere along the line of our conversation, our hands drifted towards each other under the table. I felt his hand wrap around mine and I felt my cheeks flame. The flutters were back, and I looked at him from the corner of my eye. He acted like he hadn’t noticed that we were holding hands. “Hey Justin, come over here and look at this.” Charlie called over to our table. He was looking at something on Garrisons’ phone. Justin waved to him and stood up, taking his coffee with him. I wonder if he noticed we are holding hands. Maybe he’s leaving us alone for a reason. Maybe….

“And then there were two.” Monty spoke, pulling me from my thoughts before they could go any further.

“Then there were two.” I echoed.

“That shirt looks good on you. It’s pretty familiar too.”

“Oh, yeah. There may be a reason for that.”

“Need to go talk to Mike?”

“Not if you don’t have a problem with it. I think he would agree it was simply borrowing, rather than stealing. No need to involve Jesus.”

“I am. So now you’ve got my shirt and my hat. Anything else you intend on taking of mine?”

“Possibly. Depends what else you’re willing to offer.” I flirted slightly, moving my hair behind my ear.

“I think there’s a thing or two I could offer you Ellie.” He flirted back, leaning in slightly. Oh my goodness. He’s going to kiss me. My thoughts immediately began flashing forward at a rapid pace. Us going for innocent coffee dates. Introducing him to dad as my boyfriend. The possibility of church on Sundays. Introducing him to Pastor Mike. Our first fight. Making up from said fight. Getting accepted to the same college. Graduation. College. A ring. Coming home and getting married in the little white church just out of town. Marriage. Kids. Sitting on our porch when we are old and grey. Before he could kiss me, Bryce called him from across the room. He stopped just short of my lips and looked over at him, “what?”

“My place, half an hour.” He called back. Monty nodded in response and turned back to me. I was smiling at him, trying to hide the fact that I was mildly hurt he stopped short of kissing me. Or that I was annoyed that my mind had gone so far once again. I chuckled and took a drink of my coffee. I looked at my watch and saw that even though it wasn’t necessarily late late, it was late enough that I could get away with leaving on account of the time.

“Shoot. Is that really the time? I have plans with my mom in the morning. I should get going.” I said, getting up and grabbing my bag.

“Oh, okay. Are we still on for waffles Sunday afternoon?”

“Yeah. Be at my place around one? I need to talk to Pastor Mike about a few things after service.”

“I’ll be there. Text me when you get home.”

“I will.” I said, trying to keep the hurried tone out of my voice. I just want to get out of here. I took my cup back to the counter and made my way to the door, trying to keep an even pace. I didn’t look back as I left the café.

End Flashback

Shaking the memory from my mind, I pried some more. “What about the blonde girl you told me about briefly?”

“Sara?”

“Yeah.”

“She was nice. Very peppy and chipper though.”

“Ah yes. Need to keep up that stoic exterior. Can’t have someone too chipper, lest people think you have a soul or something.”

“Exactly.” He laughed. He took a long sip from his cooled coffee. “Can you imagine if I brought her home?”

“Well, knowing your mother, I would probably be attending your engagement party tomorrow instead of the other way around.”

“Oh probably.”

“How is your mom doing, by the way?” “She’s doing okay. After dad died, she was pretty out of it for a few months. She’s gotten better with time though. Really started to come into her own and forge her own path.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Not going to ask how I’m doing Ellie?”

“No. I know how you’re doing.”

“Oh really?”

“Montgomery. I am your best friend. Your dad was never a parent. DNA doesn’t make someone your family. You’re doing the same as you did the day you left and vowed to never speak to him again.”

He looked surprised at me. “Sometimes I forget how well you know me.”

“I know. That’s why I have to remind you all the time.”

“Yeah, yeah. How did Evan react to Scott on the way from the airport?”

“I’m not totally sure. I don’t think he realized how things worked at Liberty and exactly what you and I being friends meant. Scott told him about the treehouse.”

“Oh no. Ellie. I need to look the guy in the eye tomorrow.”

“I know you do. Don’t worry. He didn’t seem upset or anything. I think he found it amusing actually.”

“Did he tell him anything else?”

“About you?”

“Yeah.”

“No, mentioned how you guys fucked up and didn’t study for midterms and I singlehandedly kept you all on the team. And how Matt and Garrison managed to keep themselves above their feet until after homecoming senior year.”

“Of course, he did.”

“Don’t worry. Evan will like you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I like you. And even though you think you are, you really aren’t a bad guy.” We talked for about another hour or so, just catching up, before we decided to call it a night.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Three o’clock sharp.”

“Good.” I said squeezing him in a hug. When we pulled apart he looked down at me, seeming to finally notice my shirt.

“Is that my shirt?”

“Yes it is.”

“I thought I lost that years ago.”

“You never asked for it back. We agreed that I technically borrowed it, remember?”

“Yeah but I also thought you would have given it back by now.”

“I mean, I can give it back to you tomorrow if you want it.” I offered.

“No, no. You keep it. You seem comfortable in it.” I smiled at him in response before he hugged me again and we said goodbye.

The next morning was somewhat hectic in the Davis household. My mom was up at a time God himself would shake his head at, doing last minute cleaning. My dad was up shortly after, making sure the yard hadn’t disappeared overnight or something. I woke up around ten and before I could even get a sip of coffee in me, I was already being bombarded with questions about what I was wearing or how I was doing my hair by my mom. Jeez Louise, if the engagement party is like this, what will the wedding day be like? “I have a white dress with flowers I was going to wear. It’s strapless and cute. Dressy enough for a party.”

“Strapless?”

“Yes Mom. It is strapless. I brought a cardigan to wear with it before you have a coronary.”

“Well I suppose that is alright then. And your hair?”

“A simple curled high ponytail. I have an elastic with a bow on it to use. I have thought about this you know.”

“I know dear. It’s just all so exciting, isn’t it? My only daughter is getting married.”

“Very exciting, yes.” I grumbled. “Now will you please let me go get a cup of coffee?”

“Can’t that wait darling? We have so much to do.”

“She will be much more of a help after a coffee Jillian.” Evan spoke from the hall upstairs. “Give her a few minutes to wake up and she will be ready to go, won’t you El?”

“Yes, I will.” I replied, moving towards the kitchen in search of the rich black liquid. Evan came down and grabbed the milk from the fridge to steam for my latte. “Thank you, I appreciate that you did that.” I whispered to him, gratefully.

“Of course, Buttercup.” He muttered into the top of my head and measuring out the perfect amount of milk into the pitcher, before half emptying a packet of Splenda into my mug. I set to work grinding and packing the espresso powder. I enjoyed my latte over my Bible while Evan got ready for the day’s events.

Shortly after I had gotten dressed, the caterers arrived, and it became even more hectic. They were finishing various dishes and trying to make room in the fridge. I watched on from the sidelines and tried to stay out of the way as much as possible. Evan came over to me and placed his arm around my waist. “You look beautiful.”

“You look great too, handsome.” I blushed, placing my arm around his waist too. Finally, around 2:30, the caterers had finished all of the food and set up. Cupcakes had been delivered and were set out on cake stands. Balloons were up and fairy lights lined the crown moulding around the living room. The room looked perfect.

Guests began arriving just before three. Justin and his girlfriend Sasha were the first to arrive. Justin and Jessica had broken up halfway through their first year of college, the strain of long distance becoming too much for them. They were still amicable in social situations though.

“Hey Justin. Hello Sasha. How are you guys?” I greeted them, warmly.

“We are good.” Justin replied, his hand firmly placed in hers.

“Hey guys.” Evan greeted them. The pair waved in acknowledgement.

“Let’s see the ring Ellie.” Sasha gushed. I held out my hand while she examined and fawned over the ring. I caught Evan and Justin share a look. Oh boy. This could get interesting for the man.

We continued greeting guests, accepting congratulations and gifts, and smiling as they arrived. Monty showed up right at three, as promised. “Hey you.” I greeted, beaming at him.

“Hey Elliebear.” He said, pulling me into a quick hug. Evan stood to the side, giving us a moment. I pulled away and turned towards Evan.

“Evan, this is Monty. Monty, this is Evan.” I motioned. They shook hands.

“So, you found the way to Ellie’s heart, huh?”

“Yeah. She is something special. I thank God every day that she decided to give me a chance.”

“Don’t I know it?” Monty replied, almost whistfully.

My mom called me over and I decided it would be a good idea to perhaps not leave the boys alone together. “Coming Mom. Scott is over there by the cupcakes.” I said, pointing him out. “Try to keep him from eating himself to a sugar high?”

Monty laughed, “can do Ellie. It was nice meeting you Evan. Congratulations.”

“You too Monty. Enjoy the party.”

I watched as he walked over and greeted Scott, taking a glass of champagne and a cupcake for himself. My mom called me over again and I ran over to see what she wanted. The party went off without a hitch. The only thing that concerned me was the way my eyes sought out Montgomery all afternoon and not my fiancé. Not to mention the all too familiar fluttering in my belly whenever I was near him or made eye contact with him.

The day had finally arrived. After a year of meticulous planning, it was finally my wedding day. All of the stress and details and late-night crying had all led up to this one day. The church was beginning to fill with guests. The loving memory sign was placed near the altar. I thought of how my granddad would have been the one to preach the service if he was still with us when I decided on the placement. My bridesmaids had already left the room to line up to walk down the aisle. Evan would be at the altar by now. I stared at my reflection in the mirror. I couldn’t shake the feeling of fear that was becoming harder and harder to ignore.

My off-white wedding dress was on, my veil in place on my head, and my makeup and hair looked flawless. Everything was perfect. Almost everything. I shook in the bridal room, waiting for the planner to call for me. You can do this Ellie. I fiddled with my engagement ring for a moment before I heard Melissa knock on the door, “we are ready for you Ellie.” Forcing a big smile on my face, I nodded to her and walked out of the room where my dad was waiting to walk me down the aisle.

“You look beautiful sweetheart.” He told me as I handed him my engagement ring for safe keeping and took his arm. The chapel doors opened, and Evan turned to look at me from the altar. I could tell his eyes were wet with unshed tears and when he saw me, he covered his mouth and looked up, trying to hold the tears back. The crowd was standing watching our reactions. My bridesmaids smiles beamed from the altar, brightly. I trained my eyes on him as my dad walked me down the aisle. My dad gave me to Evan and Pastor Mike began the service.

“We are gathered here today, before God and those closest to Ellie and Evan to join them in in celebrating their love and commitment to one another.” He continued speaking, “when Ellie called me to announce her engagement, I was thrilled for her. By the time they got around to coming back to Evergreen County from their home in Atlanta, and they asked me to officiate, I knew my answer would be a resounding yes. Getting to know Evan and see these two together over the last number of months, has opened my eyes to how these two help each other in their journey to seek to know and have a relationship with the Lord. Ellie mentioned early on in planning to me, that her favourite verse in the Bible is 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 and expressed the importance of including it on this special day. I would like to read you that verse now. 4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages[a] and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever!”

Pastor Mike continued speaking, but my eyes had begun to scan the crowd. They swept from one side of the church to the other. Near the back on the right side, next to the door, I spotted some of my friends. I saw Scott and Justin, along with Sasha, sitting with Charlie and Zach. Bryce surprised me and RSVP’d yes, even if part of me knew he knew I only invited him out of politeness. He was sitting next to Charlie, sandwiched next to Clay and Alex. As my eyes continued to scan the room, I didn’t see him. When they landed on Scott and I maintained eye contact for a moment, he shrugged, and frowned slightly. He isn’t here. He didn’t come. Tears filled my eyes and I turned back to Evan, my hand still resting in his. I made sure to smile so it appeared that I was merely overwhelmed with joy and not feeling my heart be crushed with despair. “Evan Andrew Taylor, do you take Ellie Marie Davis to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part, according to God's holy ordinance?”

“I do.” Evan replied, wholeheartedly.

“And do you Ellie Marie Davis, take Evan Andrew Taylor to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part, according to God's holy ordinance?”

I took on last look at the crowd gathered around us and made eye contact with Scott before turning back to Evan, “I can’t. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I spoke quietly, letting go of his hand. I looked back at Scott and nodded to him. He turned to Justin and Zach, as the crowd gasped. I stepped down from the altar and it seemed to kick my friend’s butts into gear.

“Shi-” Scott started before realizing he was in a church. “Shoot.” He amended, quickly. He stood up and met me at the end of the aisle as my friends joined me in running out of the church. To our surprise, Bryce tossed Scott his keys and Zach picked me up to carry me to the car. “Zach drives.” He said, giving me a thumbs up.

We were in Bryce’s car before Scott spoke again, “did that really just happen?”

“Yeah. Yeah it did.” I was still in shock.

“Why?” Justin asked as we drove away from the church.

“He wasn’t there.” I said simply, staring out the window. “I couldn’t marry Evan knowing that I was in love with someone else. I couldn’t stand up there and say I do to him when I was praying for someone to stand up and object. Or to be up there with me instead.”

The boys were silent for a while as we drove around. Scott was in the front, looking for Montgomery’s car in every lot we passed. Justin was holding my hand tightly, trying his best to soothe me.

“You should know that he was. There.” Zach advised, “he wanted to be, but he couldn’t mess things up for you and he couldn’t sit and watch you get married to someone that wasn’t him.”

I didn’t respond, I merely tried to absorb the information I was being given. He was there. Why didn’t he come and tell me anything? Why didn’t he mess things up? I was pulled from my thoughts when my phone vibrated, alerting me I had a text. It was from Bryce. Monet’s. Your table. I never thought I would see the day where I would honestly thank Bryce Walker and mean it once, let alone twice. “He’s at Monet’s.”

“How do you know?” Zach asked, glancing in the rear view to make a lane change and turn us around.

“Surprisingly, Bryce.” I watched as my friend’s brows all raised. They couldn’t believe it either.

I was silent as Zach drove the rest of the way and parked across the street from the coffee shop. I scanned the building quickly, searching for any sign of him. I spotted him in the window, at our table, just like Bryce had said. Monet’s had become licensed a couple of years back, so they could serve alcohol. Monty was sitting alone, in his black suit, nursing what appeared to be a tall bourbon, neat. “Go get him El.” Scott encouraged me. I nodded and checked for traffic before opening the door and stepping out of the car. Damning laws at this point, since the street was clear, I half ran across and yanked open the door. The few patrons and baristas looked up and appeared slightly annoyed at the sudden, rude intrusion, before they took note of my attire. White dress, veil, hair and makeup applied. It became clear that I was here on a mission and it wasn’t only coffee or a quick shot of liquid courage. Picking up my dress slightly so I didn’t trip on the stairs, I walked over to his table. “Is this seat taken?” I asked, softly.

He looked up at me, his eyes widening in surprise and full of unspoken questions.

“I couldn’t do it if you weren’t there. You’re my best friend Monty.”

He scoffed quietly before replying, “it’s not taken, no. Sit if you want,” and taking another drink from his glass, not looking at me.

“Hey,” I started, reaching for his hand. He looked at my hand and after a pause let me take it, “I mean it. I couldn’t marry him.”

“Why not?”

I was quiet while I thought over how to explain my feelings. Noticing he had about fingers width of bourbon left in his glass, I grabbed it, downing the rest of it.

“Hey. I was drinking that.” He protested. That was all the courage I needed.

“I couldn’t marry Evan because he wasn’t you. And you weren’t there to say anything by the time I walked down the aisle. You were just going to give me away and live the rest of our lives wondering what if.” I told him while I stared into the bottom of the now empty glass, too afraid to look him in the eye.

“You- really? How did you know…?”

“Zach told me.”

“I know I wasn’t there Ellie. I just. I couldn’t sit there in that church and watch you marry him. And I knew I was and would be too much of a coward to stand up and say something when I saw you standing up there with him. I had to let you be happy.”

“Don’t you get it Montgomery? I wouldn’t have been happy. Not really. Or at least not for long. Not with Evan.”

“So why did you agree to marry him?”

“Because I thought it would be easier? My friends liked him, my family liked him, I liked him. I just thought that it would be easier to ignore my feelings. I could marry him, officially move to Atlanta, come home a couple of times a year, have a couple of kids. It all seemed easier than admitting to myself that I was in love with my best friend and if I really, truly wanted to be happy, I would need to be with him instead. And that admitting that would change everything. But I’ve learned over the past year that easy doesn’t always mean happy. And sometimes what we think is easy in the short term, isn’t always easy in the long term.”

He chuckled lowly, “took you long enough.”

I furrowed my brow at him, “what is that supposed to mean? I just confessed my love for you, and that’s all you have to say?”

“Yeah. It took you long enough to come to that conclusion. You were what? Half-way through the ceremony before you put a stop to it?”

“Not exactly. I knew a while ago. I spent the whole morning shaking and waiting for you to come and tell me that I was making a mistake. When you didn’t come, I thought… that you either didn’t feel the same way, or that you were going to do the kind thing for once and not say anything, but I thought at least you would be there. When I saw that you weren’t, I knew I couldn’t marry him. Even if it was the easy choice.” When he didn’t say anything I added, “you picked a great time to do the kind thing.”

“Yeah, well. You knew it would happen sometime. You owe me another shot by the way.”

“Oh please. There was barely a fingers width in your glass.” I told him, sighing dramatically.

He looked at me through his impossibly long eyelashes, “they won’t serve you that small an amount.” I rolled my eyes and stood up to go order him another shot. You owe me another shot… men. I was surprised when he grabbed my wrist to stop me, before pulling me into his lap, rather gracefully given the fit of my dress, and kissing me deeply. Monty pulled away first and turned to look out the window. Our friends had gotten out of the car and were clapping and high fiving each other.

“How about that shot now?” Monty smirked.

#monty imagine #monty x reader #montgomery de la cruz x oc #montgomery de la cruz #monty de la cruz #monty x oc #Marry Me #thomas rhett #montgomery de la cruz imagine #montgomery de la cruz x reader #scott reed #Alex Standall #clay jensen #justin foley jensen #zach dempsey #charlie st. george #Bryce Walker #original character #scheduled

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sahidchettair · 4 years

Text

FATHER

She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Dressed in some kind of garb that Phil had only ever laid eyes upon in movies, she went about the room drawing all the eyes.

It didn’t take long for him to find her and get her attention in return, stunning dark eyes acknowledging his presence, fierce beauty and deep grief, but also intense longing. He understood it all, he was drawn to her emotions that she wore so openly and at the same time wished to be in her arms, or her in his.

“Phillip Walters,” he introduced himself, smiling.

“Laji,” she answered.

In her words he found answers, her eyes told the rest.

“I am sorry for your loss.”

Through her grief she smiled.

——

“And this has to be Sahid.”

Laji, dressed in her beautiful ocean blue shiva brought her son of four down the stairs on her arm as she carried the last of her bags. A whole life and a half fitting in three suitcases. He would buy them new things.

He sat down on his heels in front of the skinny boy with the same color skin as his mother, the same deep gaze, and with a distrusting mean look that spoke of anger he did not yet understand.

“Sahid,” he said.

The boy looked up at his mom, who sighed. “Sahid,” she corrected him.

Phil nodded, though he had not liked to be corrected, and would never pronounce the name correctly.

“You are going to live with me from now on, you and your mom,” Phil explained.

The boy started crying without sound and Phil let him.

“I want my Bapa back,” he said.

“He isn’t coming back, Sahid,” Laji countered, also sitting down on her haunches, fabric hitting the dirty streets of Atlanta in front of their one bedroom apartment.

The boy sniffled.

Phil scooped him up in his arms and brought him to the car. “I’ve got you, boy,” he whispered into the boy’s ear, and felt him relax.

——

As Sahid came down, Phil tenses slightly, then offered the boy a smile as he walked into the kitchen. He looked worn, tired, exhausted at such a young age.

“Boy, why don’t you take a sip of my coffee and then follow me outside,” he said with a huge grin.

Raising Laji’s son hadn’t been easy, he had stopped crying for his father roughly a year ago, but now other things seemed to linger in those dark eyes.

Phil had been at the school several times over the last two years. Always leading the conversation with “what has he done?”

He hadn’t done anything. It was just the color of his skin and the deepness of his grief. He never told Laji of this. He remembered his own son and told the headmaster that none of this was his boy’s fault, and she should educate the students better.

Sahid stepped forward to take a sip, his face pulling at the bitterness.

Phil smiled. “When I turned seven my dad let me have my first coffee, do you think you are ready for that?”

Despite the bottomlessness of the boy’s grief, Phil had always liked his spunk. Sahid nodded firmly, and drank a full cup of coffee in four sips, making a face only once, then letting out a huge sigh which he must’ve copied from Phil.

“Good boy, well then, are you ready for your birthday present?”

Sahid’s eyes went wide at the notion.

“Come on then, follow me.” Phil walked to the back porch, stepping out of the way so that Sahid could see the trampoline that stood in the garden. He yelled happily and ran at the thing, needing a few moments to drag himself up onto it. He started jumping right away, laughing. Meanwhile his stepfather watched him from some distance, smiling.

——

“Mister Watler, I have asked you here because of Sahid,” the headmistress said. She was a firm woman, strong, a well-known individual in the church community. She had also gone to school with Phil back in the day, she knew having this conversation with him was going to be difficult.

“What are these issues, Andrea, because we both know Sahid is no trouble to you, nor his fellow students. He’s a great student, always does his homework, hands it in on time.”

“We are concerned about his attitude.”

Phil laughed. “Andrea, we both know Sahid has no attitude. He looks mean, sure, but he doesn’t hurt a fly. Has he been violent? Has he used curse words or been too outspoken in class?” He could see right away that she wouldn’t offer neither of that. So he shook his head and sighed. “If you ever call me here again, for something like this, you know we have a problem. My boy looks different but he’s a good kid, and I won’t have him being treated worse than all the other kids.” And with those words Phill stood, didn’t give her a second look before leaving the office.

——

Phil was brought out of the house by the sound of a scream. He already knew what had happened, or at least could guess at it. He ran down the stairs and bounded onto the porch, naked feet falling into the grass as he made his way to the trampoline.

Sahid lay on it clutching his leg, crying out, sobbing, his foot caught in the metal railing of the trampoline’s springs. His friends, all of whom Phil knew the names of, the names and the names of their parents, the names of their parents and what made them infamous. Except for Jimmy. The kids moved away as Phil got closer, an eleven year old Sahid didn’t even notice him coming closer, his eyes were solely on his foot.

“Stop crying, boy,” Phil said, taking a look at the huge wound where the metal stuck into. It would need stitches, and he was certain neither of them should try to remove it. “Jimmy, go get Mister Drew from across, tell him to come here as soon as possible.” Then he looked back at Sahid. “You crying isn’t going to get you anywhere, boy. The pain won’t get any less, you have to power through that pain, understood.”

“Yes sir,” Sahid said through gritted teeth. There were still tears, but they left his eyes soundlessly.

Phil had to give it to the boy that he adjusted quickly, he didn’t go against anything Phil said, he followed it with conviction. And he was glad for it, because he ran a strict household. He stood to get pliers from the shed, and returned to cut the string that was stuck in Sahid’s foot, telling him to hold tight, because it might snap off and move. Which it did, but the boy gave no kick.

Mister Drew came into view some minutes later, he was a retired doctor, but he didn’t ask any questions, just looked at the wound and scooped up Sahid in his arms to bring him back to his house so he could remove the spring. As Sahid left the garden, carried by Mister Drew, his friends left as well, leaving Phil alone with the now broken trampoline.

He felt a little bad that his plan to sabotage the trampoline had resulted in his own kid in an accident, but it had to be done, he wouldn’t have people talking behind his back about letting those kids come play with his son.

——

Phill sat in church smiling. He knew exactly why he was smiling, and while Laji on his side did not carry the same emotions, he wished she too was smiling, if only on the inside.

There he stood, that skinny scrawny kid who packed a punch and could look so angry that people felt uncomfortable around him, ahead of all the other kids, singing with his angelic voice. He had a handsome face for his age, strong, with dark eyes you could fall into like his mother, and thick hair that was neatly combined, that always shone.

Phil felt proud.

But more importantly, he wished he could show all of this to Marsha. That he could get that woman and put her down next to him, point at that little brown boy that he had been raising, and tell her: see, Brandon would’ve been safe here, I would’ve protected him. I protected Sahid.

And as those thoughts crossed his mind, he also felt sad.

Because as much as Sahid lived in his house, ate his food, laughed at his jokes from time to time, and did exactly as Phil asked of him: he wasn’t blood. Phil didn’t see himself in those features, he saw some of Laji, most of all he started to imagine seeing Sahid’s dead father.

But despite that, he would protect him. He would protect the good Christian boy who lived in his home, ate his food, laughed at his jokes from time to time, and did exactly what he asked of him. And he would be proud, because he saw on the faces of those around him that eyes were turned to his boy - HIS boy - that they didn’t see a little Indian kid, they saw Phil’s son.

——

Laji had called him in rage. At first Phil hadn’t been able to understand her words. Afterwards he wasn’t even sure what he had done. Everything, every movement he made was done out of hate. How dare he?!

HOW DARE HE?!!!

Phil had seen Sahid’s face and knew right away that Laji had been right. This boy who did everything he asked him to do, went behind his back and did the one thing he must’ve known would hurt Phil the most. He had turned his back on God, turned away from the faith that had taken him in, that had offered him a home and a podium, and instead taken to a different practice. A practice of heathens. A false religion.

He didn’t calm down until hours later when Sahid pushed him into the table. He didn't cool down until his mother had told the boy to get out. When the last of the sounds of his truck had gone, Phil had cried. Because this was the boy he had raised. No matter what he did, no matter how much he had given the boy, he had still turned his back on him. Turned his back on family, and for what?

“I am sorry,” Laji said. She too knew what it all meant to him, she had told him right away after they married that of course she would convert to his religion, of course so would Sahid. Hinduism had no place in their household.

——

“You should’ve asked for more money,” Phil told his lawyer. “Now the boy goes free.”

“He’s already in a cage, Phillip, he’ll never be able to get out of this image you’ve created for him.”

“He better not.”

——

“He killed her, Nadia, tell Bandon that. He might not want to believe it from me, but he did it. She was the only thing that made all of that happy. He’s not happy, so he doesn’t want us to be either!”

“Perhaps you are right Phil, but you do know he has an alibi right.”

“He probably paid someone to get her,” Phil said over the phone before hanging up.

——

Phil held Sahid’s hair in his hand, pushing back his head. He was knocked out, closed eyes looking up, shiny dark skin gleaming with sweat. He opened his eyes a little, and even when it wasn’t there, Phil still saw the anger in the boy’s eyes. He fired one bullet next to the kid’s ear, and he screamed before falling back.

“Phil don’t!”

“Don’t do it!”

He heard his friends yell behind him as he lifted the boy off the floor again and fired another bullet, next to the other ear. He was smiling as he did it, the boy’s head falling back, horror in his eyes. Good. He should suffer for all he had done to them. Perhaps now he would finally leave, leave for good and never come back.

“Phil, shit, what have you done?”

Phil shook his head. “Don’t worry, he won’t ever tell. He doesn’t dare to.”

He turned back to his friends, and walked away from the little figure on the floor, the skinny disaster that had been taking away his peace and quiet for the past five years. He had no pity.

——

“Phil, yo- the boy has become deaf.”

“Deaf-deaf.”

Only one friend shook his head, the rest just stared at the glasses of beer in front of them. Nobody had said much about what had happened, nobody had tried to stop him from walking away. They were all in this together now. He could see in their eyes that they didn’t pity the boy, they just worried for his soul.

“That is inconvenient. But perhaps he finally understands that we mean it. He better have Cassie back soon, or disappear completely.” Phil turned away from his friends as he ordered himself another beer. Whenever they weren’t looking, whenever they weren’t trying to give him comfort, he would cry. Cry for Cassie, for his son who he could’ve raised to be stronger in the face of this tragedy, and for the boy who he had wished to be his son, but who had broken his trust.

#selfpara #head injury tw #guns tw #violence tw #blood tw #injury tw #racism tw

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