#my friend called it Gaul therapy

[alisterix]

Asterix yelling at Obelix and going to Panoramix immediately after to talk to him about it and look smol and defeated like this will never not get to me

[catindabag]

TBOSAS AU ✨CRACK! TAKE✨: The 10th HG Mentors According to Drunk Dean Highbottom. (Part 2)

⭐️❄️⭐️

I advise you, my fellow friends to read part one for context, but here are all the parts anyway: [1] [3] [4]

⭐️MENTORS⭐️

Clam Asia Dove Goat (Clemensia Dovecote)

Very kind, but sometimes rude to me.☹️

Takes note on everything and everyone.

Is the true popular likable girl.

Might be allergic to reptiles and peanut butter.

Is deathly afraid of frogs and spiders.

Hates the snakey snakeys.

Once stole Dr. Gaul’s pet rabbit mutt for “research” purposes.

Gave me free peppermint ice cream for my birthday.🥹

Your family is the only normal and decent family that I have met so far.

Can you ask your father to lower my electricity bills?🥺

Humble, but will punch you if threatened.

Who lied and told you that your skincare routine was superior to mine?

My skincare routine is THE BEST!😤

Will forgive anyone for a cheese tart.

Directly reports to Capitol News if something “bad” happened at school.

Tried to defame me for treating a certain student “unfairly,” just because they were poor AF.🙄

Might give her a demerit for that stunt later.

Threatened to report me for being drunk while giving a lecture, or whatever that mean.😪

Will most likely win the Hunger Games by actually planning a good strategy.

Per Symphony Prize (Persephone Price)

Willingly ate that “maid stew.”

Is maybe a secret cannibal.

Is on her “Unhinged Girl” era.

Might eat anyone anything if hungry.

Has no food preference.

Is currently dating the Dumpster Diver.

Why are you even dating that loser?🤨

Likes to scare people on the holidays.

Your father is crazy AF.

By the way, your meat(?) pies were delicious. 10 out of 10, will want to eat again.

Your family runs the railroad industry, but your food delivery services are slow AF.

I might give you a demerit for that stupid reason alone.

Is passive-aggressive towards me.☹️

Is quite skilled with a knife.

Home economics and cooking are not your forte.

Likes to troll the freshmen.

The only student who will survive a famine.

Will most likely win the Hunger Games by unspeakable means.🤢

Turban Can Bill (Urban Canville)

Is highly intelligent, but socially stupid.

Perfected freaking calculus for goodness sake!

King of the math freaks.

A super nerd of nerds.

You still failed to avoid hanging out with a bunch of idiots in your class.

Your family only got filthy rich by successfully hacking one of Mama Cardew’s bank accounts.

I know that you intentionally broke my very expensive vase last semester, just because I gave you a 98 on a stupid essay.

You need therapy!

Knows how to professionally hack the school computers.

Stop changing your stupid classmates’ grades!!😡🔪

I knew that you were the one who freaking blocked me from accessing the school Wi-Fi as a joke.

I might use you for a secret cyber crime scheme later.

Thinks he’s too cool for school.

Has a short temper. Like, really short.

I can’t believe that your anger issues helped you become a top performing student.😩

Why the heck did you call the National Security when you lost your f*ckin’ calculator?!

Will most likely win the Hunger Games by being too pissed off and too angry to die.

Liver Cardew? Libya Adieu? (Livia Cardew)

Her mama will kill you for a dollar.

Super rich AF.🙄

Haven’t you heard? Her mama runs the largest bank in all of Panem.

Your family is literally the IRS.

Can destroy the economy if you offend her.

Loves anything pink and sparkly.

Is very mean to everyone, especially to me.

It’s really unfair that your car sparkles under the sun.

Why are you bullying a certain student for being a war orphan?!😠

I’m the only one who is allowed to bully that war orphan!!😤

Willing to skip school to shop and gossip.

Cannot and will not be blackmailed.

Spoiled AF, but everyone already knows that.🙄💅

Politically untouchable.

Stop taxing me for being drunk all the time!

I know your family can and will personally send anyone to the poorer Districts for unpaid taxes.

Will assassinate anyone if they wear the same dress as her at the same event.

Yes, I know. Your scary mama will burn Panem to the ground if you were ever reaped as a Tribute for the Hunger Games.

I Owe Casper (Io Jasper)

Super smart, but painfully awkward.

Likes biology and chemistry a lot.

May unlock the secrets of love and the universe.

You almost shut down my school by “accidentally” flooding the hallways with freaking chlorine!!

Stole my dog and dyed it f*ckin’ lime green for some reason.😠🔪

Another certified nerd of danger.

You should consider dating Mr. Anger Issues.

Your family only got rich when they discovered the method of levitating jets and hovercrafts.

Your mommy is an unhinged scientist who works under an insane woman!

Will dissect anyone if given the chance.

May have created a mutt on accident.

You do know that Dr. Gaul hates you for stealing her cute feral squirrel mutt last semester.

Can sneak and kill anyone with a scalpel.

You are an insufferable know-it-all.

High IQ, low EQ.

Will most likely win the Hunger Games by polluting the Arena with deadly chemicals.

Florist Friend? Flower Friend? (Florus Friend)

Your name makes sense because your parents are the friendliest landscape designers that I’ve ever met.

Does not like outdoor activities for some reason.

Stole bleach for hair reasons.

Wants to become a lawyer, but does not even follow my rules.😩

Is secretly a proud delinquent.

Locked me once in a broom closet!😡

Might break the law for a free gallon of hair conditioner.

Why are you only friendly to kittens baby cats?

Loves to change and dye his hair to match the trends of the season.

Hates rainy days and gloomy nights.

Your parents must be so disappointed when you told them that you hate gardening.

You do know your family only became rich by being the largest landscaping company in all of Panem.

Almost died from eating a moldy cheesy roll. To be fair, it was your fault.

By the way, your mama wants me to pay for your ambulance fee.☹️

Is sadly allergic to dogs.

Is deathly afraid of eating expired food after that last incident.

Will NEVER win the Hunger Games. How could he? This kid is freaking allergic to rain!

[diana-3]

Beware: I got to thinking about missed storytelling opportunities with Destiny 2 and I go on a rant.

Tl;Dr: I'm just bitching because I'd went about it differently. I'm aware my version of things would tick off other players and Bungie needs to stretch the story to fill the rest of the seasons/expansions and that they want players reading the lore as much as playing the game.

Anyone else feel like Bungie totally ignores great story hooks or completely misses a mark storytelling wise?

I've felt this since Beyond Light came out. When Eruopa was introduced, we got Eramis as the main villain and since then not much to do with it.

CLOVIS BRAY AND BANSHEE LORE WAS RIGHT THERE.

Info about Exos, Clovis, Ana and Elsie's family, DER, the vex, The Whispers---all right there. But nah, let's bring back Variks and a one off villain to introduce darkness abilities, THROUGH THE GRANDDAUGHTER OF CLOVIS BRAY.

I feel like Europa was primed to be a huge lore dump about the Bray family, the Exos and the vex and they just...totally missed the broad side of the barn and hit the one tree in the field by introducing Eramis a little too soon.

Idk, I feel like the introduction of Europa could have felt more fulfilling if we'd centered on the exo/vex/Clovis lore and saved Eramis for later when she could have been built up better as a baddie and we knew what was hidden in Europa to begin with and then ending it with the Eramis arc, the darkness powers and the raid.

I also feel like they did it with this season and the Shadow keep expansion. The young wolf has been through so much shit--yet had absolutely no trauma to work through? REALLY? No nightmare to haunt them? We had just lost a good friend and gotten revenge for him by killing someone we'd known for years? We've seen guardians die, been too late to prevent disasters, the whole Gaul arc with losing our light and being vulnerable for the first time since our first rez?

And you really gonna tell me that the YW is just totally mentally healthy/stable/ a-oh-kay?

I call plot armor bullshit.

When Shadow keep came out, I was excited to see how they'd handle the young wolf, only to see the spotlight fully on Eris and her trauma over people I couldn't name aside from Toland. I felt very... disconnected from the story. Hell, I never even fully finished it because it just didn't call to me like others did.

I know I'd there'd been a common thread between Eris and the Young Wolf and the begining of truth shown about their trauma and what they'd been through, through the years--that I would have cared a bit more and finished it.

Also, I'm glad we got backstory on Caital and Zavala and that we got more Crow crumbs-- I devoured the season story in about 3 streams, about 4 hours each.

but Ikora's nightmare is cayde and it's just nodded to in lore tabs? We never actually get to see him haunting her in the tower or have a scene with her to help her heal like the others? To confront those still lingering feelings of regret, remorse, anger and sorrow? Nah, let's just have a few voice messages from Amanda Holiday dealin with it instead and act like the YW is just totally cool with everything going down around them.

The YW is just the driver and the one forcing everyone else to get fucking therapy while Eris is the witchy therapist 🤣

But seriously, we have the vanguard hunter stand in (Crow), vanguard leader (Zavala) and the Cabal Empress getting nightmare therapy but y'all just gonna leave ya girl hanging like that? Standin by herself at home? Being haunted by her lost friend / fire team member?

It's like they come up with all these amazing concepts and then only end up bouncing it off the backboard during the execution rather than a slam dunk by adjusting the main focus

Me lately:

[modernmagdalene]

Saint and Crystal Associations Part 2

Once again, I’m posting this as a potential resource for other Christian witches or Christian mystics (whatever you call yourself). These are my own personal associations, not official associations of any Christian denominations, so if they don’t feel right for you feel free to use different crystals with different saints. Thanks and enjoy.

Saint Francis of Assisi --> Amber

Francis is best associated with Amber. While not technically a crystal it still is used in a lot of crystal magic. Francis is a very complex saint who helps with a lot of different things: voluntary poverty, helping the poor, antiwar, and oneness with nature. Amber is very old and connected deeply to the earth. It helps with grounding, clarity, patience, wisdom, dissolves negativity, eliminates fear, and balances emotions. All things Francis needed to leave his life of privilege behind and follow God. I think it represents much of who Francis is and can help support the same virtues that Francis represents. 

Saint Brigid --> Opal

St. Brigid would be associated with Opal. Brigid is a saint that is very connected to the goddess Brigid. Their stories are extremely intertwined that you can’t really talk about without the other. Both are connected to fire, love, and hope and that’s all things Opal is connected with as well. I also personally tend to associate Opal with the divine feminine and Brigid connection to a goddess makes that work as well.

Saint Julian of Norwich --> Moonstone

Julian of Norwich I said in a comment that I associated with Lapis Lazuli but then relaized I was already using that crystal with St. Perpetua and Felicity. So I did some more research and decided that Moonstone would work really well for Saint Julian of Norwich. Moonstone is obviously associated with Lunar magick and the moon is also regularly associated with femimine energy. Which works wonders with St. Julian who often depicted God as femimine. One of the things that made her contraversal. St. Julian of Norwich had visions and was a prolific writer. Moonstone helps those seeking wisdom and strengthens psychic abilities. St. Julian of Norwich is also a known cat lover so have moonstone carved into the shape of a cat is even better. 

Saint Mary MacKillop --> Obsidian

(Trigger Warning Mentions of sexual abuse in this.)

Mary MacKillop is the first saint of Australia and one of my favorites! Mary MacKillop reported a priest who was abusing children and not longer after a friend of this priest used his connections to get her excommunicated. Her excommunication was eventually lifted. I have always admired her strength and resilience. That’s why I chose obsidian for her. Obsidian shines a light on the negativity and clears it away, helping us to choose the path leading towards light and love. It is also a protective stone as it used to be used for weapons. If you need to fight the devil obsidian is up there with tourmaline as an excellent crystal to clean house.     

Saint Raphael the Archangel --> Ametrine

St. Raphael the Archangel is another favorite of mine. If you use a Protestant Bible you might not have read about him. Raphael is featured in the Book of Tobit which is only in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. The Book of Tobit is an epic love story between Tobias and Sarah that also features thievery, exile, and fights with demons. Where Michael and Gabriel tend to appear to humans briefly then leave. Raphael, disguised as a human, travels with Tobias throughout the whole book. Raphael is most associated with healing and I connect him to the crystal ametrine. Ametrine is associated with healing, harmony, strength, balancing physical and spiritual life, and aids in contacting spirit guides. This works with Raphael’s connections to healing. Furthermore, Raphael’s role guiding Tobit and being a spiritual being working on earth makes ametrine perfect in helping to connect with him. Use this stone and ask him to help find balance in your practice and assist you with finding spiritual guides.

Saint Rita --> Smoky Quartz

St. Rita is the patron saint of impossible tasks. She is someone I rely on when I really need to overcome an obstacle or problem in my life. She is also prayed to when someone has a deadly illness or serious problem helping with things that seem impossible to deal with is just her jam. Because of this I associate her most with smoky quartz. This crystal is super powerful and is a great grounding and balancing stone. It absorbs negative energy like a sponge (because of this it should be cleansed often-ish use your best judgement). It’s so useful and can even cleanse other crystals. It keeps all the negativity away from you which is something that one really needs when dealing with impossible situations.

Saint Mary Magdalene --> Celestite

Mary Magdalene is one of my favorite witchy women in the Bible. She wasn’t scared away like the other disciples when Christ was crucified, she was the first to preach about the resurrection, and was active in preaching and teaching others about Christ. One of my favorite stories about her comes from the Orthodox tradition where she was preaching to Emperor Tiberius Caesar about Christ and turned an egg red to prove to the emperor that Christ’s story and power was true. I associate Mary Magdalene most with Celestite. Celestite raises spiritual vibrations, promotes spiritual growth, and aides in communication with the spiritual realm. This crystal also boosts self-worth and self-expression, all things Mary Magdalene had in abundance. Mary Magdalene also seems to be the most connected to the spiritual world out of all the apostles (with the exception of maybe John) so this crystal is perfect for her.

Saint Joan of Arc --> Bloodstone 

St. Joan is a warrior and protector. I also consider her a trans and/or genderfluid saint who will naturally protect trans and genderfluid peoples. Because of this I associate her most with bloodstone. Bloodstone promotes justice and strength, it is also good for healing and renewal, but bloodstone is probably best known for boosting spells and banishing spirits. Or as I prefer to use it, boosting protection spells and banishing TERFs.

Saint Francis de Sales --> Kyanite

St. Francis de Sales is one of my favorite saints purely because he is the patron saint of writers and I am someone who greatly enjoys writing. Kyanite is the crystal I use with this saint. It promotes creativity and also dispels negativity aka those negative thoughts that tell you that you can’t write. It’s also supposed to sharpen your focus which can be especially helpful with writing or any creative work, especially if you are easily distracted like me.

Saint Anthony of Padua --> Amazonite

St. Anthony was one of my grandmother’s favorite saints and probably the saint I use the most in day to day life. He is the patron saint of lost items. He was a devout priest and taught students from a book of psalms. He once tried to preach to people who refused to listen to him. He instead decided to preach to the fish who all started to gather near the shore to listen to him. When people saw this they decided they should listen too. So you know when in doubt preach to fish I guess. Anyway, I associate St. Anthony with amazonite. Amazonite helps sharpen the mind, aids communication and promotes good luck all of which are great attributes for learning and teaching, finding lost items (that’s the good luck bit), and aiding communication could help you talk to people or fish, your call. 

Saint Valentine --> Rose Quartz 

St. Valentine did a lot but he is most associated today with marrying couples in the Christian church during the height of Roman persecution. So naturally I associate him with rose quartz, a crystal that promotes love and fertility, dispels loneliness, opens the heart to compassion, and even strengthens faith. The perfect stone for this romantic saint. 

Saint Scholastica --> Citrine 

St. Scholastica was the twin sister of St. Benedict, and was the founder of the women’s benedictine order. As someone who went to a benedictine college I have a fondness for her. If you are a storm witch in particular I think this might be the saint for you. At one point Benedict and his monks visit Scholastica and her nuns. Scholastica didn’t think she would live long enough to see her brother again after this meeting so begged him to stay the night, but Benedict didn’t want to spend the night outside his monastery and told her he couldn’t. So Scholastica prayed and a massive thunderstorm suddenly came making it unsafe for Benedict and his monks to travel. And here is my favorite bit:

“Realizing what had happened, Benedict reproached her: "What have you done, my sister?” Scholastica answered simply, "I asked a favor of you, and you refused to listen to me. So I asked my God, and He, more generous than you, granted my request.” Once again Scholastica’s pleas won the favor she was seeking.” 

With Scholastica I associate the crystal citrine. Citrine is all about manifesting change, protection, creativity, and success all things she needed to live the life she did.

Saint Dymphna --> Blue Lace Agate

St. Dymphna is one of my favorite saints and she is one I utilize often. She is most associated with mental and emotional illnesses. If you are a spoonie witch this is the saint for you. Because of this I associate her most with Blue Lace Agate, which helps people express themselves (helpful when going to therapy or a doctor) and also helps with dealing with any sorts of fears or anxiety. (Reminder: That utilizing this saint and crystal is meant as a prayerful way to ask for help dealing with mental and emotional illness. It is not a replacement for therapy or meds.)

St. Sara-la-Kali --> Jasper

St. Sara-la-Kali is the patroness of the Romani people. She is said to have helped the Three Marys of the Bible arrive safely in Gaul after she had a vision of them arriving. She used her dress as a raft and helped the women get to shore despite the tumultuous waves. She was also extremely generous and often collected alms for the poor. I associate her most with jasper. A crystal native to Romania it aids in peace and wisdom and also is particularly helpful during times of transition by providing stability and protection. It also supports perseverance and acceptance, something we definitely need Sara's help with right now.

[cayde-6]

Here's some stuff that has recently been thought up for Atlas that I don't remember if I've ever posted about.

While he was rezzed in Old America he actually is Scottish/German, his mom was German while his dad was Scottish.

I decided on these because before giving him a name I modeled that Titan after Call of Duty John "Soap" MacTavish. The German came from me naming his Ghost Drachen which is German for dragon. Yes he does have a similar accent to Soap but it's mixed with his German accent as well.

Atlas was rezzed as a Void Titan and not Solar.

I actually sucked at Void Titan in D1 and never touched Arc so when I got Solar it became my preferred subclass. This is how I decided that Atlas wasn't connecting well with Void and Arc so Zavala decided to let him go for Solar with Chad.

Atlas is autistic which is why he hangs onto/is held by his husband Shaxx a lot. This is also why he has so many hobbies, like jack of all trades but master of none type thing. (If you get that reference then sweet.)

This idea is from me being autistic and wanting to hang on/be held by Shaxx, like arms wrapped around his neck and legs around his hips. The second one is from me having different hobbies including art so I just made Atlas's art be sewing/crocheting/knitting.

I didn't originally have Atlas like Shaxx.

This came from me having no sleep and 7 hours left of Crimson Days to make multiple characters to grind the "single person" bounties to get The Vow. I spent everything to get the Sparrows (I like collecting them) then I learned about if you get The Vow then you're married to Warlord Shaxx.

Atlas and Osiris actually get along really well.

I played Curse of Osiris and got Saint-14 back so I figured to go with the canon of Osiris calling the Young Wolf a friend. Osiris really helped Atlas by being there for him more than the others who offered to give some sort of therapy to the young Guardian as he has a decent amount of time to spare since he wasn't looking for Saint anymore.

Atlas actually saved Saint-14 by himself.

This is because my friend @zavala-swallows was taking a break from D2 at the time.

Saint-14 and Atlas are friends as well.

Just going with the canon thing like with Osiris. Saint does take time to sit down and help Atlas with "therapy" sessions.

Atlas and Saladin get along very well.

Being Saladin is Faire's dad the two Titans spent some time together whenever they could. He's the other person who was able to give more attention to Atlas with therapy sessions since he also had more free time compared to someone like Zavala.

Atlas is actually a Young Wolf, sorta of.

He owned a Gjallarhorn and the Young Wolf sword (thanks Gaul for taking those away) but he was more like a part time one, he never took the oath to become one but offered his services none the less. How he got the weapons is that Tyra and Shiro convinced Saladin to give the weapons to Atlas since how much he's done. (Saladin finds it amusing that Atlas is like his husband Shaxx, both willing to help out but not wanting the commitment to the Iron Lords.)

The therapy sessions are different but they're usually to keep Atlas busy when he's not out doing missions, Crucible, Gambit or is out with his friends.

This idea is from me not liking to be alone with my thoughts for too long, I give myself anxiety attacks sometimes. The therapy sessions is also to hear stories from the older Guardians.

Atlas is haunted by Chad's and Cayde's nightmares on the Moon.

Atlas is more used to Chad's nightmare but Cayde's still hurts as Atlas held Cayde as he passed. Atlas is still learning not to blame himself for Cayde's death.

Atlas carried/held Cayde's body from the Prison to the Tower.

He only let him go when Zavala told him to.

Atlas does call Ikora and Zavala his parents.

This won't change when they retire or have their final deaths and new people replace them.

I might add more to this later.

[honeypharaoh]

This has been a long time coming but I’ve finally said fuck it, y’know? So without further ado I present you with

A PLETHORA OF “FUCK YOU”s

*ahem*

FUCK your victim complex

FUCK your boring, shitty personality

FUCK your microaggressions towards me when you were trying to be my “”friend””

FUCK your weird babyfaced man

FUCK your elitist bullshit about EVERYTHING

also

FUCK YOU for hurting the people I love

FUCK YOU for using me to fix your dying relationship and then getting upset when it backfired on you

FUCK YOU for pulling the suicide card when you didn’t get your way

AND FUCK YOU for deleting my mom and blocking me then having the absolute GAUL to call me out for blocking you elsewhere. You’re a hypocritical cowardly bitch. HOLY SHIT.

If you’re gonna talk big actually step up and practice what you preach????

Have fun being miserable forever because you don’t know how to treat people with respect and, therefore, don’t know how to love yourself.

I’m sorry you’re bad at manipulating people and can’t hold meaningful relationships GO TO FUCKING THERAPY!

I’m gonna go move on with my life, career, and loving friends and boyfriend who actually give a shit about me so I can do my best to be happy because fUCK am I over this shit

THANKS FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK

[samosoapsoup]

Living with a Visionary

For more than fifty years, my wife and I shared a world. Then, as Diana’s health declined, her hallucinations became her own reality.

By John Matthias

January 25, 2021

You would think it was a performance of some kind. When she wakes up, if she has slept at all, she tells me about the giants carrying trees and bushes on what she calls zip lines, which I am able to identify as telephone wires. Beneath the busy giants, she explains, there is a marching band playing familiar tunes by John Philip Sousa. She is not especially impressed by either of these things, and the various children playing games in the bedroom annoy her. “Out you go,” she says to them. Then she describes the man with no legs who spent the night lying beside her in bed. He had been mumbling in pain, but nobody would come to help him. She remembers her own pain, too. “I could hardly move,” she says.

And she can hardly move now. Her legs are stiff, her back is cracking as I lift her out of bed. Although still clearly in pain, she gives me a sly look and gestures with her chin toward the flowerpot in the hallway. “The Flowery Man,” she says. “He’s very nice.”

She is fully articulate, in many ways her familiar self. She asks me if I saw the opera. I’m not sure which opera she means; we’ve seen many over the fifty years that we’ve been married. She means the one last night in our back yard. She describes it in detail—the stage set, the costumes, the “really amazing” lighting, the beautiful voices. I ask her what opera was performed. Now I get another look, not a sly one but a suspicious one.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

I say that it’s not a matter of belief but of perception. I can’t see what she sees. She tells me that this is a great pity. I miss so much of life. I used to have something of an imagination, but I’ve evidently lost it. Maybe she should start spending time with someone else. Also, she knows about my girlfriend. The one in the red jacket. There is no girlfriend, but there is a red jacket hanging over the back of her walker. Suddenly, she forgets the girlfriend and remembers the opera. “Oh,” she says. “It was ‘La Traviata,’ and we went together with Anna Netrebko before she sang.”

Now I have my own brief vision. Diana is only twenty-one, I am twenty-five. We have just arrived in South Bend, where I am teaching English at Notre Dame. A friend wrote about us in those days as having appeared to him like two fawns in the grove of our local Arcadia. Diana wore the clothes she had brought from England, including her miniskirt, and people in cars would honk their horns and stare. In London, where we had met, it had been the middle of the nineteen-sixties; at our Midwestern college, it was more like the fifties. A former student told me that when I held classes at home, for a change of scene, he and his classmates took bets on who would be lucky enough to talk to her.

I see her walking in from the kitchen with tea and her homemade scones. College boys—only boys were admitted back then—lift china cups balanced on wafer-thin saucers. Some have never eaten a crumbly scone or sipped tea out of such a delicate cup. Diana is often told she looks like Julie Christie, and my students all want to be Omar Sharif, Christie’s co-star in “Doctor Zhivago.” Some write poems inspired by Lara, Zhivago’s muse. Diana smiles at them, greeting those whose names she remembers. Hello, Vince. Hi there, Richard. She dazzles them. She dazzles me.

Art was her passion. Later, she earned an art-history degree and became the curator of education at our university’s museum. She devised a program of what she called “curriculum-structured tours,” ambitiously proposing to organize museum tours that would be relevant to any class. This she did—chemistry students learned about the properties of seventeenth-century paint, psychology majors studied portraits for signs of their subjects’ mental health—and eventually she exported her innovations to other college campuses. Because of her, students began looking seriously at paintings and sculptures. They followed her hand, pointing out some luminous detail; they listened to the music of her voice, her British accent slowly becoming Americanized over the decades.

Diana trained a new set of gallery interns each year, teaching them about all there was to see and find in the museum’s art. She loved them dearly, and they loved her back. She had been conducting tours for thirty years when a former intern, Maria, came by the house—ostensibly on an errand to collect some of Diana’s library books. Really, she wanted to talk to me. She explained that Diana had started seeing things. The first time Maria noticed it, Diana was showing a class of French students a reduction of Charles Louis-Lucien Müller’s “The Roll Call of the Last Victims of the Reign of Terror,” from 1860. It’s a very busy painting, with dozens of figures waiting to be transported to the guillotine. Diana told the students that at the center of “The Roll Call” was a man named General Marius. But General Marius wasn’t there; he was around the corner, in a painting called “Marius and the Gaul,” about which Diana had written her thesis, many years before. She was speaking in French, and at first Maria thought that Diana had got tangled up in the language. Surely it was her words, not her reality, that had become so confused.

Not too long after Maria’s visit, Diana returned home one day looking tired and depressed. She sat down on the sofa next to me, took my hand, and said, “The students tell me that I’m seeing things that aren’t there.” I admitted that Maria had already told me about this. By then, Diana had begun treatment for Parkinson’s disease, taking a standard cocktail of medicines in small amounts: levodopa combined with carbidopa, in a drug called Sinemet. She had received the diagnosis only because her doctor couldn’t otherwise explain her onset of general weakness. Aside from fatigue, she had virtually no symptoms, and her behavior had been absolutely normal while taking Sinemet. Now she confessed that she was seeing things at home as well. She pointed at a wadded-up sweater on a chair across the room. “That’s not really a cat, is it?”

I asked her what else she saw. “Little people,” she explained, “like Gulliver’s Lilliputians.” Objects had been changing shape—“morphing” was her word—for some time, but recently things had begun appearing out of nowhere. We saw a specialist in Chicago, who, like the neurologists Eric Ahlskog and Oliver Sacks, called these “illusions.” We suspected that the hallucinations were a side effect of Sinemet, and, after consulting many books and articles, Diana and I began to titrate her medication ourselves. Most Parkinson’s patients end up doing this, experimenting with how much they take of each medicine and at what time. There were new delivery systems for the basic mix of levodopa and carbidopa, and we tried them all, along with a number of adjuvant therapies.

At first, Diana could identify her illusions as such, and sometimes even dismiss them. (“Scat!” got rid of the cat.) The things she saw were not always frightening. Many of them seemed inspired by her work in the visual arts. Visiting a neighbor, Diana enthusiastically described a painting on a blank wall where, we later learned, one had been hanging until several days before. Her knowledge of eighteenth-century art may in part explain her delight in seeing topiary figures cut into very large trees, where I saw nothing but leaves. Some of the visions she told me about were clearly breathtaking. “If only you could see this,” she said.

I couldn’t see what she saw, but I could see her. She was somehow growing more beautiful—or beautiful in a new way. Everyone noticed this. Never one to use much makeup or even visit a hair stylist, she would wash her face in the morning, put up her hair or let it hang at shoulder length, and come downstairs to start her day. Her striking good looks belied the condition that would bring her down. It was Julie Christie all over again, but not from “Doctor Zhivago”; she was the aging Christie of Sarah Polley’s movie “Away from Her.” Adapted from Alice Munro’s story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” the film is about a woman with Alzheimer’s disease. Her decline is slow, until it is suddenly fast. Diana watched the movie without anxiety. She had not, so far, suffered any significant memory loss. When I reminded her that decades earlier my students had compared her to the actress, she laughed. During a trip to Chicago to see her doctor, we had been approached by a man on the street, who said, “I just have to tell you how beautiful you are. Forgive me for intruding on your day.” We got into a taxi, and Diana growled to me, “I sure don’t feel very beautiful.”

For two or three years, Diana’s condition was manageable through modifications in her medications, and through her ability to recognize the hallucinations for what they were. At the art gallery, she avoided confusion by writing out scripts for her tours. She managed to retire when she was scheduled to, not before. It was shortly afterward that her hallucinations began to increase in frequency and intensity. She insisted that the topiary trees were the work of giants, and she described the giants’ elaborate uniforms. Plays and operas were staged in our back yard, spontaneous parades appeared in the streets.

It became harder and harder for her to understand that her visions were not real. She sometimes asked me why these events were not written about in the paper or covered in the news on television. In the house, nothing held still: objects danced on the mantel, the ideograms on our hanging scroll of Chinese calligraphy flew around like butterflies. At the beginning, many of these transformations had given her pleasure. More and more, however, they annoyed and alarmed her. Three women were “hanging” in her closet and refused to leave. The Flowery Man roamed the house. There were rude people who masturbated into a dresser drawer and had sex on the living-room sofa.

When Diana could no longer shake these things off, she began to surrender to them. She slowly ceased to see them as hallucinations. I had read that it did not help to deny the reality of these visions, so I stopped doing that. I began trying to deal with them as if I could see what she did. Friends were encouraged to make the same allowances. For a while this helped. A fifth person at a dinner for four did not pose a big problem once you got used to this kind of thing. I informed the members of Diana’s reading group that she might refer to people who weren’t there, and they, too, made the adjustment.

One day, she shouted for my help. A housepainter in white overalls, she told me, was painting over the portrait of one of our daughters that hung on the living-room wall. The man didn’t speak; none of Diana’s human apparitions ever spoke, though their mouths would move without sound, and sometimes they would respond to stern rebukes. I could say things like “I’ll see the painter to the door.” But often the damage had been done. In the case of our daughter’s portrait, it continued to exist, for Diana, partially erased. She referred to the painting as “the half-faced child.”

Some medications work for Parkinson’s patients with hallucinations, but for Diana they all seemed to make things worse. In November of 2019, a new kind of confusion about both space and time took hold. One morning, I found her with her suitcase packed, ready to travel. When I asked where she was going, she wasn’t sure. “Away,” she said. She wasn’t sure why. But, she insisted, “we certainly can’t stay any longer in this person’s house, in a place where we don’t even speak the language.”

Christmas approaches, and I return to the present tense. Everything that happens after this feels like it’s still happening now. Slowly, through the winter, Diana’s benign hallucinations become terrible and threatening presences. (Meanwhile, in China, a new and deadly virus is unleashed on the world.) Diana loses her ability to sleep, a common and debilitating feature of Parkinson’s. Because she is either sleepless or tormented by nightmares, I am also unable to sleep. For a while, I am able to soothe her and offer comfort, but often her dreams continue unabated when she wakes up. Eventually, I am simply incorporated into them. When I ask her if she is awake, she says she does not know.

Her eating also becomes a problem, and I know that she is not getting proper nutrition. I use the blender again and again, counting calories, mixing in anything containing protein. She is getting very thin. I sleep only when she sleeps and eat a quick sandwich as I cook for her. She looks at me one morning and says, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Because Diana hides things, then promptly forgets where they are, I often find myself searching for her medical-insurance cards, her driver’s license, some kind of I.D. with her picture on it. She sends me on a wild-goose chase all over the house. This drawer. That closet. But I can never find what we need. The hallucinated people begin to take on more life than the living. And they have names. Not generic and rather charming names like the Flowery Man but monosyllabic American names like Bob, Pete, Dick, George, Jack. No one seems to have a surname. “Jack who?” I ask her. She gives me a straight look and says, “Jack the Ripper.” She keeps asking, “Who’s in charge?” I wish I knew.

In March, as the pandemic descends on the Midwest, I try to explain why she cannot go out or see friends. She doesn’t understand. I don’t dare leave her alone, even for a short trip to the grocery store. She begins going outside when my back is turned, and she frightens some of the neighbors with things she claims to see. I make rules. No phoning friends after 10 p.m. No going outdoors after bed or going downstairs for breakfast in the middle of the night. I finally move to a bed in a separate room.

With the country in lockdown, I can no longer reach Diana’s neurologist in Chicago. Local doctors help us refill some of her medications over the telephone, but have nothing to offer that might help the dementia that is now clearly part of the picture. My most recent reading makes me wonder whether she might have not Parkinson’s but something called Lewy body dementia, which produces vivid hallucinations. Its terrifying symptoms are believed to have led to the suicide of the actor Robin Williams. Diana talks about “jumping in the river.” (The St. Joseph River is only a few hundred yards from our front door.) Neighbors offer to do some shopping for us, but as the pandemic gets worse I hesitate to ask them for more help. When I finally make contact with two or three “senior helper” organizations, I am told that all their programs are on hold. I can do nothing but try to continue on my own. I begin taking pills myself—sedatives washed down with glasses of Merlot. We are living on cans of beans and prescription drugs.

There are still moments when Diana is very happy. Sometimes, she seems to be in a state of bliss. She stands at the open doorway and gazes into the sky. I stand behind her. “Look!” she says. “Why can’t you see?” I tell her that I’m trying, but maybe need some help. She becomes angry and shouts, “The gods! The gods!”

One day, I find Diana clutching a balled-up blanket to her breast. “What have you got?” I ask her. “A dead baby,” she says. I have never seen such terror in her eyes. I have never seen it in anybody’s eyes.

At some point—a day later, two days later—police arrive at the door. In the street, an ambulance is flashing its colored lights. The three policemen at the door have masks on, and I’m initially frightened by this, because I don’t know that many people are now wearing them. Someone has called the police about a lady who lives here who may need to go to the hospital. I stand there gazing stupidly at the policemen. They ask if they can talk to the lady. I tell them she’s my wife. Diana is on the sofa, more or less catatonic.

When I step onto the front porch, I notice some of our neighbors watching from their yards. I am asked questions about Diana and who has been looking after her. I begin to fear that I’m about to be arrested. Someone suggests that maybe it would be good for her to be completely checked out in the E.R., and possibly admitted for a day or so. The next thing I know, two of the ambulance men are bringing a stretcher up to the porch. One of them asks if he can talk to my wife. Finally, I’m able to say something. I say no. They are immediately suspicious. To my amazement, I hear Diana saying, “I’ll talk to them. It’s O.K.” They ask her what’s wrong. She describes a few of her hallucinations. She’s worried about what’s happened to the dead baby. What dead baby? I try to intervene, but already she’s explaining that she had the dead baby in her arms just a moment ago. Perhaps it has rolled away. She gets down on one knee and reaches under the sofa. “Oh, good,” she says, reappearing with the blanket. “Here it is.”

While the medics are conferring with one another, Diana suddenly says, “I think I should go to the hospital.” The ambulance guys seem delighted by this. Diana is put on the stretcher, and the ambulance disappears. No one asks what I think should be done. No one asks me to come along. In the confusion, the blanket has been left on the front porch. When everyone is gone, I take it inside.

That night, Diana is admitted to the hospital for observation. I won’t be able to visit her, because of covid restrictions. I am frantic: they’ll get all the Parkinson’s meds mixed up, they don’t know her schedule. What will happen if she misses a dose of Sinemet?

What transpires in the next days and weeks is sometimes vividly clear and sometimes swirling in a surrealistic fog. At some point, it is decided that I, too, should be examined in the hospital. In the E.R., I am told that I am suffering from exhaustion, malnutrition, and dehydration. I end up on the same floor as Diana. By the time I arrive, she has told everyone that she is a movie director working on a documentary about art therapy in hospitals. From my bed, I explain to her doctors, who are different from my own, as much of her medical history as I can. I am allowed to talk to Diana only by phone.

Social workers keep appearing with documents for me to sign. My daughter Laura and I have agreed, in theory, that eventually Diana will have to move into an assisted-living community. A new facility for patients with dementia has recently been built near Laura’s house, in Worthington, Ohio. Laura wants to take Diana there, and I have to admit that I am no longer able to look after her. I am barely able to look after myself. I sign the papers giving Laura power of attorney for Diana and me. There are decisions to be made, bills to be paid, and I am flat on my back in the hospital.

Covid is tearing through the country. The hospital is filling up with patients, my bed is in demand. My doctors ask if I want to be sent home or to spend three days in the psychiatric hospital associated with the general hospital where I am being treated. They talk about rest, recovery.

Where I end up is not a health spa but more like a boot camp. Before I am moved, all my possessions are taken away. No shoelaces, no belt. At the new facility, I am given a handful of large and small pills every three hours. At night, all patients are on suicide watch. I barely sleep. While I am in the psych ward, Diana is driven in a long-distance ambulance to the care facility in Ohio, where, after a fourteen-day quarantine, she will now live. How Diana deals with this news, what she understands and doesn’t understand, I do not know. She still thinks she is directing a documentary film. I am not allowed to see her before she leaves.

In the second psych ward where I find myself remanded, I am the oldest patient by far. The program of endless group therapies seems designed for adolescents. At seventy-nine, I am too weak to do many of the things demanded of me. When I do not immediately respond to the pills I’m given, there is talk of electroconvulsive therapy. I object, and an online hearing is convened, where a judge concludes that, although I must stay beyond the hospital’s mandatory seventy-two-hour observation period, I do not have to undergo shock therapy.

Meanwhile, I am terrified of covid. Locked out of our rooms for most of the day, we are all in one another’s way, and patients share a common bathroom. One day, I am required to cut off my beard. Looking at myself in the mirror, I discover the corners of my mouth locked in a permanent grimace. The beard has hidden this from me: I can’t smile.

I try to explain to the staff that there has been some kind of mistake, that I need to rescue my wife, who has been taken to Ohio. The things I say to the nurses and therapists must sound mad. When I am finally allowed to see the chief psychiatrist, I hear the desperation in my voice. I watch the unbelieving faces of everyone around me, and wonder how often Diana saw the same incredulity in my own face.

Somehow, our family lawyer gets in touch with a woman named Mary, a registered nurse and “personal health-care advocate,” who is the one to finally secure my release from the psychiatric facility. I am asked to sign some papers that I haven’t read, and then I am free. On the way home in an ambulance, driving back the same way Diana came, I consider asking the attendants riding alongside me if they have heard of the Flowery Man, the topiary trees, the little people—any of Diana’s hallucinated cast of characters. For years I have tried as hard as I could to see these things, to share Diana’s view of the passing world. In her absence, returning to the home where I must now begin to live by myself, I long all the more to understand the reality that she inhabits.

When covid insinuated itself into the facility in Worthington, Ohio, in November, I had been at home for five months. For a couple of weeks, I had managed to communicate with Diana through screens. This confused her, though, so we started using the telephone instead. The last time I saw her face was on Zoom. She told me that she had something beginning with the letter “C.” Then she suddenly smiled her wonderful smile. “What a sweet little girl,” she said, following a hallucination with a sharp turn of her head.

Diana almost survived covid. After testing positive, she spent several nights at the hospital, but was sent back to her facility with a normal temperature and a negative test result. For a few days, I was able to imagine seeing her again, even touching her. I had it all figured out. I would be among the first in line to be vaccinated, among the first to embrace a loved one who had been unreachable for so long. I didn’t care how many hallucinated people came along, as long as Diana was around to see them.

Then her blood-oxygen level dropped. She was not likely to live through the night. Laura put the phone to Diana’s ear, and I read the first poem I ever wrote for her—about waking together in a small Left Bank hotel in Paris before we were married. Finally, I started reading from a book of poetry I had written about her struggle. The dedicatory poem is about the Greek goddess Artemis, known by the Romans as Diana. Its final lines return to Diana the mortal, my wife:

If she could change, she Might be like the woman called by her Roman name Reading in a book beside the fire in my own house. She has come down all these years with me

I couldn’t continue. “You’re doing great, Dad,” my daughter said, “but she wants to know about the Flowery Man.” So I told her everything I knew. ♦

John Matthias, a professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, has published some thirty books of poetry, fiction, memoir, translation, and criticism.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/01/living-with-a-visionary