#my mental health is so much worse after years of gaslighting and that’s going to take work on both of our ends

[spiralling-thoughts]

Loona would make an awful and abusive friend for Octavia

(Sorry if I might be rude and pity in this post , but this have been bothering me for so long and I feel like I should voice my opinion on the matter now disclaimer I mean no ill will towards anyone and I don't harass people who write about this idea neither should you this is just me voicing MY PERSONAL OPINION so are we cool here?)

So I have seen many and I mean MANY fanfics ,fanart,ect of the idea that loona would make an awesome older sister to Octavia and be her "first real friend who understands her " and some take it as far as shipping (sorry but the shipping aspect of this is really gross loona is 22 while Octavia is 17 this is pedophilia) now I will be honest I personally think this is sugar quoting and people giving loona to much credit, this woman is ABUSIVE (yes I said it she's a more accurate representation of abuse than stella and yes abusers could be traumatized victims) this woman beats and attacks her adoptive father who always shower showed her with affection and she knows hed get over it this is an extremely toxic trait, she kept insulting moxxie about being fat (even though he's a stick figure) until she gave him body image issues and she starts pity fights like how she did in queen bee now in what world would someone like this be a good older sister towards anyone?like imagine if Octavia asked loona to dial down her attitude a bit what would loona do? Would she listen to her NAH if she'd beat up her own father for that whose to say she wouldn't do the same for Octavia?, and their conversation in seeing stars....oh boy I was holding back trying not to throw my phone when this part came there are a bunch of posts about how nonsensical this part was but the long and short of it is that loona doesn't have any right to tell Octavia to put up with stolas when she herself treats her father poorly and she straight up lied to Octavia, stolas wasn't looking for her he was pathetically sitting around in the theatre getting thirsty over blitz and he wasn't all that freaked out that he's daughter ran away because of him, so loona literally gaslighted Octavia to apologise and come back to her neglectful father (yes for the millionths time stolas is neglectful) , this just makes their "friendship" all the more jarring and toxic, just because both are goth girls with daddy issues doesn't mean they will be instantly healthy friends their issues, upbringing, situations are completely different, Octavia is getting neglected by her father who constantly puts hes own desires before her will being and constantly makes her uncomfortable and constantly let her down and break his promises and from her perspective he ruined her home life, loona on the other hand is being rude and abusive towards her father who so far gave her affection, protection and while yes he was once over protective of her it's understandable considering where he got adopted her from yet even after all of that and after 5 years of being with him she still treats him poorly with only a few moments where she was nice to him and even then she resorts back to not caring about him and being rude and violent and she knows he'll get over it and come back to spoiling her, Octavia is getting emotionally abused by her father while loona is abusing her father THERE SITUATIONS ARE NOT THE SAME and now loona will basically glue Octavia onto her abuser while also probably abusing Octavia either emotionally, mentally, physically I don't see her at all as a kind or understanding or caring person she only act like that when it's convenient to the plot or as a moment to gaslight people into ignoring her awful actions , so yeah I don't think loona would at all be a good person for Octavia to hang out with under any circumstances she'd probably badly influence her and make her mental health worse than it already is , people go out of their way to make her act completely different from what she does in the show to make this s*** idea possible and that's another problem loona like stolas is coddled by the fandom and they always ignore how much of an awful person she actually is instead come up with excuses for her and try to make her look better than she actually is , I get the appeal people might get from this idea but I really don't like it or see it I feel like people are glossing over alot of issues with this whole situation

Thank you for coming to my rant

[alarrytale]

Hi Marte. How do you separate the stunts from the people? I really struggle with Harry and Louis' images. It's partly to do with how other people perceive them, like Harry as a homewrecker and womanizer, and Louis as a homophobe. Then they do things to push these images. It's especially hard as a queer fan of Louis since the beginning and seeing how flamboyant and free he was and how proud and confident of his sexuality he was to then going deep into the closet and now people think he is homophobic. It breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that there are artists/actors etc forced in the closet and when ones eventually come out they always talk about how much it damaged their mental health and that they wish they CO earlier as they lost so much time. Because if more public figures CO it would pave the way for others to follow in their footsteps and it would give young lgbtq+s people to look up to, and it would normalize lgbtq+ people in industries like you keep saying. There is everything to gain with it, but the industry is clearly really corrupt and more and more dodgy stuff comes out in the news. It's even worse for Louis because he's saddled with a child that isn't his. Do you think anything will change anytime soon? Some people have CO but it's really far and few between.

Hi, anon!

I seperate the stunts from the people because i know who they really are. I know who they are after observing their behaviour, listening to them and picking up on their silent communication. I filter out the noice which are their lies, attempt at gaslighting and fake personas. I know they're both gay, so i don't listen to anyone who says differently. Like i don't listen to flat-earthers or people who believe trickle-down economics works. They're simply wrong, but there is no point in arguing with them. They don't have the information we do and they don't want to see it.

Since they're both gay they must be closeted. You can’t force anyone out of a closet, even if you feel there are no incentives left for them to stay closeted. I believe they're both forcibly closeted. I don't think L would take advantage of a child like he is to enforce his own closet. If i believed that i would hate him. So i don't think they're closeted by choice. Their behaviour over the years tells me this as well. They are fighting to get to be who they are, but they are prohibited by contracts and old fashioned label views.

Louis is viewed as a homophobe because of his past homophobic statements. But none of the people who view him as such know he's got a triangle tattoo, wore a rainbow apple t-shirt when Tim Cook came out, sings i love him i hate it and bathes his audience in rainbow lights. They also don't know he's closeted and with Harry. They don't know how closeting in Hollywood works, how long they're willing to go to closet someone and how much money is at stake. We know this, and we know the truth.

We also know that H can't be a homewrecker or a womaniser if he's gay. We know he's queercoding and not queerbaiting. We know he wants to show us he's queer and took on the role of a closeted queer man, because he identified with it. We know he has to do things he doesn’t want to do to be able to get more freedom to the things he wants to do. We know it's a balance he has to keep.

When they do stuff in stunts that are unacceptable, i always try to give them the benefit of the doubt. They are good people in an ugly business. No hands are fully clean. But i also call them out when they do unacceptable stuff, because the unacceptable stuff shouldn't be normalised and accepted. I'm not down with blind idolisaton. I tolerate bearding and stunting, but i struggle when they mix it with brand promotion. That i have zero tolerance for. I'll empathise with you for having to drag a woman around to seem straight, but i draw the line at you trying to sell me citrus fruit bikes at the same time and acting bothered by the paps. That's emotional manipulation. Fuck that, no sympathy from me.

I hate both their public images. I don't blame anyone who buys into their images and i agree with the people who critisise their images. If somebody thinks Louis is homophobic or a dead beat dad, or Harry a womaniser or a queerbaiter i think fair enough. Publicly they are. H and L don't get to complain about their images, even though that's not who they are because they are perpetuating them.

I think they deal with their fake images, lies and horrible public behaviour by being open, truthful and honest to themselves, and with their friends and family. I think they're only closeted to the general public. Fandom knows who they truly are and don't buy into their images. If fandom did believe L is homophobic or H a queerbaiter they wouldn't have fans at all, who would be fans of that? Some fans buy into some of their images, but not everything.

I'm not sure when things will change for them, i don't think they have much of a say. Best we can hope for is Sony seeing profit in an out H and L or it's a contract running it's course that will make it possible for them to come out. I have no idea. But things are changing, albeit slowly. Younger music artist are not okay with closeting anymore. It's not neccessary either. Being queer is more and more accepted and normalised. The business is still ugly and people have skeletons in their closets. So it's complicated. If H and L were 10 years younger i think they'd be allowed out.

In the meantime, filter out the noice and try to see them for who they are. They're not perfect people, but they're good people in a difficult situation trying to make the best of things. They will come out one day, we just don't know when.

[spoonsforminutes]

So it’s gotten to that point. i’ve been receiving IOP from a mental health clinic, and my group trauma therapist is transphobic. Even more so, she’s been taking advantage of that fact that we unpack serious things in group settings, and I have a habit of dissociating to perpetuate her transphobic ideas in which it is my fault if i feel bad when someone misgender means. I have severe trauma from emotional abuse and neglect which only ended 6 months ago, at least in terms of my family having enough power and ignorance to believe that they were justified in the way they treated me, but i am still very much healing. I’m trying so hard to survive and get away from my abusive environment, but i’m realistic. i plan to move next year in jan, and in the midst of trying to pay all my bills and not go insane from the lack of financial freedom i have beyond necessities and bills, i’m trying to save as much as i can while also being nice to myself.

but today someone in my group was expressing distress over using a feminine term to refer to me when i’ve explained that i identify as transmasculine, and i was too busy doing something else, so my therapist took it upon herself to explain that it was my fault for feeling bad when people misgender me and that it is my responsible to correct people. which like, she’s a white cisgender woman who has trauma and is likely autistic so i’ve been giving her the benefit of the doubt, but no, she’s completely wrong. as a mental health professional currently in charge of my safety, she is directly endangering my health. i sent her an email after i processed what the fuck happened, and basically said this is your one warning to stop being transphobic and read up on all the ways your behavior threatens my physical and mental well-being, and if so necessary, i will seek legal action for discrimination. i have been gaslight a fuck ton so i have no confidence in myself, but my gut has been seeing all the news that more and more confirms the worst, and my c-PTSD symptoms are getting worse. history repeats itself, and i feel like i’m the one who recognizes the pattern except, you know, i’m part of the group that people currently want to see dead. and people praise me and treat me nicely bc they see an intelligent woman (which trauma-reinforced but also i fucking had top surgery last year????) but i think they view me as an “acceptable” queer person. which nooo, i did not spend so many years facing abuse literally just because i felt intense fucking pain that no one thought they could understand only for people in power to continue treating me like shit and then getting angry when i don’t roll over and die. i identify as a threat and a thing you do not want to cross. my years of sickness and illness mean that i don’t respect anything unless it has blood, sweat, tears, and defiance written all over it. you HAVE to feel pain to feel human, and all fucking pain is valid. i am so sick of watching a whole community of people being looked over and forgotten about, for even the “acceptable” ones of us having to beg for crumbs of decency. it’s inexcusable, and i legit do not give a shit for why we have to wait around for a bunch of people to decide that others get to live. i’m living NOW. DEAL WITH IT

[soulbondinghelp]

Revisiting this blog now that we have had time to grow and heal

Hey guys, I am the host for the people who used to post on here and I have recently decided to revisit this blog since I have seen some people talking about it again in a positive light. After reading through all of the posts on here, I have come to the realization that a lot of us (including and especially me) were kind of being assholes when we made this blog, even if our intentions were to help people and we did some small amount of good at the time with collecting resources and advice.

The bottom line is, we were judgemental dicks who tried to tell people how they should or shouldn’t handle their spirituality, something very important and close to the heart. Our impulsiveness and misguided desire to help others I feel like did a lot more harm than good. And the only thing to do about that is to apologize and promise to be better people as we try to move forward with our lives. I suffer from paranoia due to PTSD and when we are not on our meds I am an insufferably horrible person to be around.

I was constantly fighting and seeking drama without even realizing it because I thought it was normal. When every single day you get fifteen phonecalls that have people screaming at you/gaslighting you and you also grew up surrounded by family who would do similar things, fighting and lashing out becomes the norm because it’s all that you really know. In these situations, nothing can help you but yourself and taking the drastic actions you’re too scared to do in order to finally take your life back. I was an idiot and I thought that I was fine because I had a therapist and I was “getting help” when in reality, I wasn’t really being helped at all and I was just spiraling and spiraling into more denial because my therapist couldn’t really keep my abuser away from me and any progress I made in therapy was pretty much instantly undone the second my abuser tried to call me or sometimes break into my house uninvited. And it was a catch 22 because no one wanted to be around us for very long when we weren’t medicated and it was hard to find real support or connections for very long since we kept fucking it up in some way and none of the experimental “system rules” we came up with ever seemed to do any good with preventing it.

But that isn’t normal. And I shouldn’t have let myself or anyone in our system become this kind of person. I honestly kind of hate my past self even reading some of the things I wrote on here and typing out this post lol.

Also, I felt like we constantly had some invisible bar we had to reach to ever be accepted by anyone which is part of why we had such a unreasonably strict approach to this blog. When everyone leaves you because you are a toxic person to be around and you are aware that something is wrong but you don’t know what it is, it makes you try to people please in the desperate hope that it can make you less of a broken person.

So again, I want to apologize to everyone we hurt with this blog. We can act like adults now and we are in a much better place. We have mostly retired from the internet lately and I think this trend is probably going to continue since it is just better for our mental health when we don’t post things that thousands of strangers can see and be hurt by if we fuck it up. We have finally managed to cut our abuser out of our lives for good in a way where we can finally feel safe and not feel like someone is going to come after us at any time or stalk us even if it took years to do.

But I’m done with fighting people all the time because the truth is, it doesn’t help anyone in the end, especially not with online discourse. All it does it make things worse and get people hurt. Hell, I’m even done with the community itself because I can’t trust myself not to fall back into the same patterns and fuck it up again. From now on, we are going to put all of our newly found energy and time into becoming the best people we can be and just existing away from the online soulbonding community and most online communities in general.

No more people pleasing. No more being on edge all the time. No more blogs. No more telling people what they should or shouldn’t do or what is or isn’t going on. This is soulbonding. No one even knows wtf we are really dealing with or a lot of the hard gritty things behind why soulbonds are a thing in the first place. All we have is theories and our theories aren’t better or worse than other people’s theories. Even if people don’t see soulbonding the way we do, in the end that is no longer our business because soulbonding should be a personal thing that people should explore themselves.

So while reading through this blog, please take everything here with a grain of salt. Yes, there are bits of good or helpful information here, but some of us were assholes and I 100% admit that and want to not be one anymore.

[pixelrenaissance]

Gemini SZN;

a long overdue update on exes, parasocial relationships and reclamation of my online space.

tw: abusive relationship/sexual assault/racism/

This month I will be turning 25.

I feel like it’s a age I genuinely didn’t think I’d make it to for a long time.

In retrospect, this blog has given me so much I can’t imagine a life in which I didn’t have it. The connections I fostered with people online when I was 16 on this blog have had such an impact on me. So many of my closest friends I met through this silly little ChubbyPixel blog. It and the handle have served me well.

However its time for a change.

-

I started this blog as a video game/video game YouTuber appreciation blog. In the same vein as game/grumps, normal/boots, and hidden/block. At the time there was a larger tumblr user in the same fan space as me who I was in a relationship with. A big reason we did get in a relationship was people “shipping” us together and saying uwu i ship it, yall would be so cute, etc etc. We were both underage, me being younger by a few yrs. This was extremely damaging to my overall mental health and perception of myself in a online space.

Like we weren’t even an adults or famous, we were just two popular blogs in a fan space, her way more than me but still. We were real people being seen as fictional characters to “ship”.

If I am completely honest if there’s any relationship I regret more in the world it would be this one. My ex, archer, truly deeply and sincerely was the worse thing to happen to me. This relationship was extremely toxic, one in which her friends would scream the N-word at me, emotional abuse, stalking, harassment, body shaming, I honestly could go on; But for my mental well being I rather not discuss it all.

For years as an victim of abusive gaslighting, I literally kept everything with the intention of sharing it all to “prove” that I was abused. However, I now come to realize I have nothing to prove to anyone when it come to my abuse story and how it effected me. I know, my therapist knows, and my partner knows and that’s good enough for me to put it away and begin to heal.

The stalking and harassment is the main reason I abandoned my blog; being that for *YEARS* after we had broken up I would get messages from her saying that I was nothing without her and that I would never be happy with anyone else. Not to say I was perfect either, I was also a dumb teenager and I definitely did some petty stuff like the whole “try to warn the exs new partner so they wouldn’t fall victim” thing as well- which went about as well as you would expect.

Intertwined in this were experiences with some adults who frankly preyed upon me as a underage inexperienced queer person to exploit me.

In 2019, however, is whenever it really got bad, as it probably was for many of you. As well as facing pandemic, loosing my mobility, and facing eviction, I was sexually assaulted by someone who I considered a very close friend who I knew for years at this point. This kinda broke my brain and I closed off from the world even more. The internet and tumblr were so stressful for me to look at, I was always just waiting for people to come back to harass me.

But I decided to take an extended break and gather myself. It’s taken years and alot of support from my amazing friends but I’m finally in a safe and somewhat stable place to where I want to reclaim my digital identity and persona.

I will be finally changing my blog name: Chubby/Pixel will be Pixel/renaissance in honor of my new era of growth and enlightenment as an artist and digital human. 

Thank you for reading, thanks for sticking around.

[slipstreamtechnician]

There's something uniquely soul-crushing about being cut off from your friends after being gaslit by someone you thought you knew and trusted, only for him to stab you in the back when you're already feeling low over and over. I get needing to solve my problems myself but when the person who is gaslighting you and treating you like shit claims he's going to improve but then does nothing and carries on treating you that way for months, it makes you feel genuinely helpless.

Add on a second person refusing to tell you what you did to upset them and claiming that you aren't interested in resolving the issue because you asked for it to remain private as it was a private issue and safe to say it's gonna take a toll on you. Like yes, I did something to upset them but refusing to tell me what exactly I did because I didn't want the issue to be other people's problem is super shitty and screams of someone wanting to humiliate instead of acting wanting to resolve the issue.

Throw in losing your job because of layoffs and the person who's been gaslighting you claiming that "You're making too much of a deal out of it" and that you "Stop complaining" too. Doesn't help when he also claims that you're an idiot for trying to look after your mental health. Like at that point, how am I supposed to deal with this myself when the person who has been so shitty to me has chosen to never listen to me and if he does, he belittles me or holds the most petty shit against me even when I can't possibly be the one accountable for it.

I'm honestly just tired of the feeling of betrayal hanging over me day after day and feeling like I'm not going to be listened to when I'm raising concerns about how someone is acting towards me.

It's all well and good telling me I should solve a problem but I can't do that if the person I have an issue with doesn't actually listen to me, never shows any sign of actually improving his behaviour towards me and expects me to bend over backwards just to please him. The feeling of losing control that I have been feeling since August because of everything that's going on terrifies me, and being cut off from people I do care about because of two people deciding to treat me like shit just makes it worse.

I ended up doing something so fucking dumb because of that feeling, because two people decided that instead of actually telling me what I had done, they gaslit me, but nobody wants to listen to my side, so what's the point of me even explaining it? Like, I have tried to explain very clearly he was treating me like shit and not listening to me but nobody seems to actually care. If it had happened once I wouldn't have made a deal out of it, this has happened over and over for almost a year.

It feels like I have been specifically gaslit because he doesn't want me around or I had done something to upset him and instead of actually telling me, he decided that ruining my mental health was the better option. I can safely say that after all this that I have been through, because of this one person this year, I have no interest in being friends with him anymore.

[bringmoresorrows]

Life Update

It's been a long time since I posted a life update. Lots of new things has happened in my life especially since i haven't updated in a year. Last year, I got myself into a situationship with this guy I became really close to really quickly and broke up with my ex of 4 years. We were dating from 2018-2022. Wow. A lot of things happened between my ex and I thankfully nothing traumatizing between us but we were falling out of love a year before the break up. As it got closer and closer to the end, I felt nothing to my ex. I was sick of how my ex constantly made me feel guilty for being myself. Plus my ex was transphobic and homophobic. Theres reasons for it as she came out as trans after we broke up. She never wanted to go out on dates with me, we stayed in the house and she didn't want to get to know my friend until like the week before we broke up. We had an apartment for a week and a half last April because the landlord said it was okay that we had the ferret then last minute they pulled back saying "nah get rid of the ferret" so we left. But it took a lot of me arguing with her for her to stand up to the landlord as my name wasn't on the lease, her name was. After that, anything i felt towards her was gone. I moved in with my parents in July and that was when my situationship with my friend started.

My heart was broken around September/October and I quickly moved onto someone new. But in between, I had no place to live aside form my parents couch and all my stuff was in storage. I even lost my ferret. My ex kept her. I got promoted to manager at my workplace and got a 2% pay increase which landed me at $20/hr where I was working 34-36 hrs a week and towards the holiday season after working 40-42 hrs a week. So I was bringing home a lot of money and had zero bills. I started building up my savings and come October, I moved in with two of my friends.

October was an interesting month last year, we had no furniture and we couldn't afford anything as we just dumped our savings into this place. It's a three bedroom apartment with 1.5 bathrooms. We have an in house washer and dryer and a dishwasher. It was awesome! We have so much space. The friend group kept making plans at my place and a few things led to another and that situationship friend and I broke things off. Mid october, I started talking to this guy over instagram. And we started hitting it off a lot. Turns out, my guy roommate and him are *best friends* so for our halloween party, he came on over! He lives a few boroughs away so its a 3 hour travel to his place and a 3 hour travel to mine. So 6 hrs total. So he came over the 30th and left November 1st. I got so drunk on the 31st and stuff happened between us before we were dating which is kinda another first for me as we just met in person for the first time. But the first time I did stuff with someone I wasn't dating was the situationship.

Come november, we start dating. Our relationship has been a bit rocky as we jumped into a new relationship and I was very much still hurt over the situationship and didn't want to admit it til a few months back. Plus living on my own has only amped up my mental health issues. I started my ed habits back up hard and lost 20 lbs in 2 months. I gained half of that back but its been hard.

January comes around and my ex tells me she cant house our ferret anymore so I was given the ferret <3. Bless.

February comes and my ferret gets very sick, throwing up for three days straight so we take her to the emergency vet and it helped her out a bunch <3

March comes and my mental health takes a worse turn.

April I have zero memories, In may my birthday happens. It was awesome! The friend group and I plus my bf + my sister go mini golfing! June nothing isolated. July: my internet friend from norway comes to visit and wow did it hit the roof. One thing led to another and they guilt trip me hard and gaslight me into thinking *i'm the crazy one* and I wind up having a severe mental break down where I attempted suicide. I also left the friend group. A day later my boyfriend calls me and gives me an ultimatum and tells me really harsh things to me which led me to crying for days and crying through a whole work shift (8 hours)

August comes and my depression is so severe, I wind up reaching out to a therapist and my pcp to start medication. Ella, my ferret, also has some more health issues showing up. Her tail has been losing fur for some time and her ears are getting backed up with ear wax. She wound up getting diagnosed with Adrenal Gland Disease. ;-;.

September; this month; comes around and therapy has been working and so has the meds. My relationship with my partner is getting a lot better and Ella is doing good too. She got her implant for Adrenal Disease this month. I've just been really tired ngl. Like very tired. But my house is getting decorated for halloween and its great!

Things are going really well for me and the people I used to miss I dont miss anymore. They didn't want me in their life then so be it. That's their problems. There was someone I named dropped a long time ago but I dont miss you anymore. You left my life and made it clear you never gave a fuck about me and only yourself. Goodbye to you. And to the other friends that bridges were burned, fuck it. I let go of it. I need to focus on myself and grow.

Next year around this time I will be moving in with my boyfriend and away from this borough where everyone knows each other. It will be rough to be in a more city based area. Its still a bit suburban but its very much on top of each other. I'm excited for it. I'm excited for the future that I'm going to have. I'm excited for the future with out the things that are holding me back.

[proudfreakmetarusonniku]

Ok so here’s the basic framework of the Modern AU. All characters /rp underneath, of course. It’s basically my attempt to recreate c!Tommy's story specifically in a regular modern setting. There’s so much projection here sorry. Not all of it is obviously (I don’t have psychosis, for one, while c!Tommy here doesn’t have my physical health issues) but a LOT of it is sorry 4 traumadumping.

TWs for: death, accidental misgendering (of Fundy, who's an infant), dysfunctional families trying their best, ableism (especially anti-psychotic ableism), bullying, targeted harassment, gaslighting, manipulation, mental health issues, self hatred, suicide (by hanging), kidnapping, medical abuse, physical and psychological abuse, destruction of property as abuse, tampering with meds, overmedication, self harm, Stockholm Syndrome, drowning, imprisonment, broken bones, freezing, classism, gun violence, attempted murder, attempted suicide (by hanging).

After the unfortunate death of their mother, siblings Wilbur and Tommy Craft (along with Wilbur's infant daughter Theodosia) go to live with their father who they haven’t even met in years, Philza, along with their half-brother Techno, in the sleepy town of L'Manberg up north, far away from their previous home in the city.

While Wilbur has a strained relationship with his father, and somewhat resents having to leave behind his old friends (and girlfriend), Tommy's ecstatic to have his estranged dad back in his life, and idolises Philza. Philza, of course, genuinely loves and cares for his boys, but has to keep up a busy schedule to provide for his family and definitely subconsciously favours Techno, the only son of his first wife. All four of them and a crying infant being in a house barely big enough for two, with scant money to spare, tensions are high, especially so soon after everything. Everyone loves each other, of course, but it’s not a great environment.

Now, Tommy has always been kind of a “problem kid”, and he’s been kicked out of more schools than most people have ever been in. He’s kind of accepted what everyone else says about him, and embraces being a chaotic menace, even though he’s a very empathetic kid who has cried accidentally stepping on a bug on multiple occasions. Things got better once he was able to get into therapy- the autism and ADHD were picked up near-immediately, but his psychosis got overlooked for ages because it was rare in kids. Things almost felt like they were getting better, on meds and everything, until everything happened, and so he’s started getting into lots of trouble just to spite authority again.

There’s not really much of that in L’manberg, thought. The local police aren’t really used to doing more than getting cats out of trees and Sam, the local police chief, has a soft spot for kids despite his otherwise comical level of stickling to the rules. There’s probably less than a thousand people around, and most of them are as badly off or worse than the Crafts. Even at the school, Mr Halo is so energetic and genuinely kind to do his best that the worst Tommy really felt the heart to do was swear at him a bit (besides, the man was like seven foot tall and could probably snap him in two, not that Tommy was frightened or anything.)

The only person that Tommy can truly put his soul into pissing off is Dream.

See, Dream is one of the rich fuckers that lives in a big house, always wears fancy clothes, and always seems to be the happiest, sunniest man in the world. He's single-handedly keeping the town running, donating his seemingly endless wealth to keep the town alive despite everything. But there’s something about him that Tommy sees that no one else seems to. It’s all fake. An act. What he really wants is power.

So, Tommy and his friends he made during his time in L'Manberg- Tubbo, Jack, and Niki- make a game out of finding ways to take him down, Wilbur going along to supervise to get them out of trouble. None of them take it seriously, really, except Tommy. And Tommy does manage to find some evidence of this! Through eavesdropping, of course, but he’s done worse.

Tommy, genuinely concerned, tries to spread the word, but he’s met with resistance. Not that of natural skepticism against a random teenager, no. It’s weirdly specific. Everyone looking down on him with pity and fear and reassuring him it’s just his delusions, which is fucking weird because that was his private mental health stuff he hadn’t told them. Come to think of it, people have been treating him weird for ages, ever since he’d started his campaign.

(Maybe he was having delusions? He’d never had these before- the type he had was t one where it felt like he was rotting, dead, where he’d refuse to come out of his room or eat- but maybe the stress was getting to him. Maybe he was just getting worse.)

(No. No, of course he wasn’t. He'd saw shit before, felt things, but he'd never heard things that weren’t real. He didn’t do that).

Suddenly, it feels like the whole town has turned on them. Tommy, Wilbur, Tubbo, Jack, Niki, all of them alike. Everyone cold, everyone aggressive. Whispered rumours, pointed fingers. Even Philza had berated the two for doing something horrible they never remembered doing.

It all clicks, one day, when Dream takes his discs.

Now, Tommy has two discs he keeps locked away at all times. They were the last gifts he ever got from his mother, and have a lot of sentimental value to him. So it was a surprise one day to woke up to Philza yelling at him for stealing Dream's prized discs, and making him give him back. Wilbur tries to back him up, but Philza assumes Tommy can’t be trusted to remember anything and Wilbur is understandably but wrongly trying to protect his little brother, and he’s forced to hand over the last remnants of his mum to Dream, talking kindly about how Tommy couldn’t have known and should be treated fairly while giving him the biggest smirk whenever anyone wasn’t looking.

(Tommy won’t even consider how Dream knew about something only he and Wilbur knew for a long, long time after.)

But what he does consider is that Dream's been turning the town against them. Isolating them, getting everyone to hate them. Out of some sick sense of revenge, to get power back, who fucking knows, but it’s clear to Tommy that Dream's targeting him, and it’s clearer that Dream knows Tommy knows it.

Tommy, feeling guilty, seeks out Dream to make a deal. He'll stop doing anything to hurt him again, and he'll withstand whatever hatred Dream sends against him, but to leave his friends alone. Dream agrees, and coincidentally, every rumour against everyone but Tommy suddenly gets evidence disproving it, as long as he can also keep the discs, to keep control over him. Tommy reluctantly agrees.

(When he tries to tell, everyone says it’s all in his head, and asks if he’s taking his meds.)

Unfortunately, Wilbur never really recovered from the isolation. He starts to believe it’s all his fault for not stopping the kids from taking it too far, and that he’s a terrible influence to everyone around him. He starts lashing out or he just cries all day. He has panic attacks whenever he’s around his child, worried he'll somehow spread the evil he’s convinced is in him.

One day, he can’t be found in the home at all, and when they go out to search Tommy is the one who finds him hanging from a tree in the forest, lifeless and cold.

The funeral is quiet. Just the family. Dream visits the next day to give the grieving family a stipend, and treats Tommy like a sad little helpless child who doesn’t even understand what’s going on while flashing him unempathetic grins when no one else is looking.  Tommy tries to punch him and everyone looks at him like he’s insane.

Tommy starts acting out again, not knowing what else to do. It’s a desperate cry for help, but by this point everyone believes he’s such an unpredictable troublemaker that all he gets is frustration. This reaches a head when he graffitis a house with a new friend of his- Ranboo, who moved in recently too- and it’s painted as a step too far. A step towards irredeemability.

Of course, Dream approaches Philza with a kind-seeming offer. He’s seen how troubled poor little Tommy is, and how it must be because of his trauma losing so much of his family so soon. And, see, he actually has some knowledge in how to help there, and a nice summer house by the coast, and he’d be willing to take some time out of his schedule to take Tommy somewhere nice, help him through some therapy. He really stresses that it might be the only way that Tommy will be able to stay in society, and at his wits end and convinced Dream is trustworthy, Philza agrees.

It’s the middle of that night he takes Tommy to his “retreat.” Groggy, unaware of what’s going on, he's barely awake and unable to really resist as he’s loaded into a clean, luxury car with a suitcase containing the small amount he owns. He falls back asleep in a few minutes, and when he wakes up in a car he doesn’t know, in a place he doesn’t know, with the man he blames for killing his brother. So he’s understandably terrified.

Dream, of course, eagerly explains exactly how he tricked everyone, and how now Tommy's under his guardianship now, and he’s going to make sure he’s never going to be able to pull any of his stunts anymore. This, predictably, makes him panic more, to which Dream responds with confusion, denying what he said just seconds before so convincingly it’s hard for Tommy to argue he didn’t just make it up. And really, the idea that he’s been getting worse, and that Dream's taking him somewhere comfortable to heal seems far more believable, right?

It takes a long, long time for them to get to the home, in a too-posh looking town named Logstedshire. The home is probably as big as Tommy's home times ten, is immaculate in appearance in soft colours, and it looms like a prison.

Time here is anything but therapeutic.

Everything in Tommy's suitcase is burnt in front of him. Even what belonged to Wilbur. He burns his hands desperately trying to comb through the ashes and his wounds are left untreated as punishment. Horus later, Dream asks with concern about how Tommy burnt his hands, and looks at him strangely when he mentions the suitcase. As he bandages Tommy's hands, he explains that there never was a suitcase.

This means his meds are destroyed, but he’s been given something. Something that leaves him so so tired he falls asleep on his feet all too often and feels dizzy and drowsy whenever he is awake. And he feels so sick, coming off his meds, to the point sometimes he can’t leave his bed, not to mention his actual psychosis getting worse again. Dream insists he's been given the same antipsychotics as always.

The rules are ever shifting, contradicting and nonsensical. Tommy inevitably breaks multiple a day. The punishments are ever shifting too. Sometimes he's dragged by his hair into his room and shouted at until he cries, then locked in there. Sometimes he's refused food. Sometimes Dream beats him. Sometimes he uses a knife.

Of course, afterwards, Dream would always look at him confusedly, and explain what really happened. Tommy locked himself in his room, of course. Tommy was too sick to eat. He threw himself down the stairs, and made the cuts himself. Self harm is common in traumatised children, after all. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just that he’s having delusions, and it’s scary, but Dream's kind of like family, right? He'll always be there.

(When Tommy actually scratches at his skin until it coats his bedsheets in blood, the only acknowledgement it even gets is Dream making him scrub it clean).

But the in betweens feel so normal it feels difficult to not believe Dream. A lot of the time, they just talk, or play games together. Sometimes, they go out to the beach and have fun swimming (and sure, maybe Dream sometimes dunks him under the water until he's flailing and panicked, but that’s just a joke, right?) And he always cares for the injuries that Tommy must be calling himself, and is so gentle and kind when doing so, even when he says softly that Tommy hasn’t earnt painkillers. And when he talks about how it’d be so easy to fly away somewhere, forge some documents, and then they can be a real family, that’s just a joke, right? It has to be, right?

(No, no, no, no. What was he thinking? How could he make up Dream smugly talking about how much fun it was to have complete power over someone, even being able to change their memories, even if minutes later he acted all confused over Tommy's shouting? Why were there so many locks on each and every door? Why was he never allowed to speak to anyone but Dream? This wasn’t right. Right?)

Things come to a head when Tommy, terrified, tries to phone back home and tell them he was in danger. While he’s desperately trying to remember the number through the brain fog, Dream comes across him, and in a rage destroys what few possessions he was allowed to keep, beats him so badly he breaks one of his arms, and throws him in his room. He’s confident that Tommy won’t be able to stand, let alone leave, that he doesn’t bother to lock him in.

Filled with a sense of determination, and convinced by the violence that Dream WILL kill him some day inevitably, Tommy uses all the strength he has left to crawl out of the house, and aimlessly across the roads. It’s a freezing cold night, and Tommy's in thin pyjamas, but he doesn’t even hesitate to desperately try and find somewhere safe, somehow make his way aimlessly home. When he inevitably collapses, he's far away enough from Logstedshire that his family, not Dream, are the first people contacted.

After hearing about and seeing the injuries and decline Tommy clearly went through, it’s clear to the Craft family that whatever happened to him was anything but helpful. Spindly limbs, overgrown and messy hair, scars across his whole body, and that’s not even getting into the broken arm and frostbite. Yet, there’s no actual evidence that Dream did anything. Tommy himself switches between insisting Dream is going to kill everyone and desperately calling for his “big brother Dream”, barely even being able to recognise his own father or half-brother, and there’s a litany of believable excuses for everything. Besides, the Crafts have little, and Dream has so much. It’s clear that, no matter how much anyone knows that Dream's committed horrific crimes there’s nothing they can do.

So people huddle together. Tommy's transferred to the closest hospital, and his friends watch over him in shifts. People watch over the Craft house, the gravestone for Wilbur. As soon as Tommy's allowed out of the hospital- he insists on leaving as soon as possible- someone's always on guard sleeping outside Tommy's door, just in case. Tommy detests being treated like glass like this, but at least he’s being believed.

And then the town starts burning.

One building at a time. It’s clearly arson, yet there’s never enough evidence for the obvious culprit. Never too close to the big house everyone's been terrified to approach.

In the middle of the night, Tommy sneaks out to try and put an end to this. Dream's burning the whole place down because he’d rather destroy all his toys than not have complete control- but Dream had control over him, right? Maybe, maybe he could make a deal. Maybe it’d be better if it was just him being hurt.

(Tubbo sneaks out with him, of course, and sends a tip to the police. He has the suspicion this is exactly what Dream wanted.)

Dream is enthusiastic to see Tommy, less so to see Tubbo. But it’ll be fine! After all, he and Tommy are going to be out of this shithole as soon as possible, all trace of them deleted, and if the town that abandoned him has to deal with a corpse in the process that’s of no care to him. He'll be a new man, with a new little brother, and he'll find somewhere else to start the whole cycle again.

Tommy and Tubbo try their hardest to fight back, but they’re unarmed teenagers, and Dream came prepared. For his own amusement, he forces Tubbo to say a last goodbye at gunpoint… and then the doors are busted down.

Now, this was enough to get Dream locked up, considering Sam and co literally walked into Dream holding a loaded gun at an unarmed teenagers head and a whole lot of forged documents and suspicious shit after searching his house. Not for long enough, especially when several pieces of evidence go mysteriously missing, but enough for everyone to breathe a sigh of relief for just a second, to try and move on.

Tommy heals more than he ever has. People learn to not treat him like glass or like an unreliable tool, and more like a kid. The whole town basically unofficially adopts him, at this point. He works on repairing the tone with Sam- something others might consider a chore but something he loves. He dyes a streak of his hair the same pink as Techno, and starts getting to truly bond with him. Philza still feels so guilty that he and Tommy have distance, but it’s healing. All seems fine.

Until Tommy visits Dream in prison.

It’s something he insisted on for so long, to try and get a sense of closure, but when finally reluctantly allowed, it went disastrously. The whole time, Dream showed a scary sense of calm (like this was his plan all along, like he’s not even got a setback), and spent the whole time subtly hinting at stuff happening in Tommy's life he really shouldn’t know- either after he was imprisoned or long before they met- and that after he's released he’s going to go through on kidnapping Tommy and changing both of their identities, subtly enough that only the two of them knew, and Tommy's sudden breakdown and panic attack seemed almost completely out of nowhere from anyone else.

That night, when he gets home, he tries to do what Wilbur did.

Thankfully, Philza finds him before he’s too badly injured- most of his injuries came from him trying to claw himself free- but Tommy doesn’t get better after being cut down. In the months following, his hair starts turning grey and falling out in clumps. He barely eats. Barely talks. His flashbacks are so violent sometimes he lashes out at his family and friends. While sometimes he gets fleeting joy still, it disappears quickly. As Dream's release date gets ever closer, he talks hopelessly about how he knows that he'll immediately go after him, and immediately take him away forever, which grows more towards a tired acceptance as they count down the days with baited breath.

[compassionatereminders]

Beloved, I hope you're doing splendid! Your visual art journey has been giving me such life, reinvigoration and renewed appreciation towards the craft as an artist myself ~

Sadly, it is with a heavy heart that I come to vent a little tonight, but I'm nonetheless glad I can whisper my bitter nothings into the safe nooks of your your blog's walls.

I was coerced into a field of study my parents found acceptible. I know they acted from a place of trauma and fear×of job insecurity; in their eyes they were trying to protect and guide me, but they wound up hurting me more than I ever anticipated.

When it comes to school my parents are very strict, relentless. I'd tried to fight them and exercise my autonomy on many occasions, only to end up with their grip on me tightened. That, along with developing mental health issues, left me mors isolated and dependant on them for survival.

At the beginning of last year I started the first year of the masters course on my reserves which left me totally unequipped to face a woman who was course coordinator, lecturer and my personal research supervisor. She saw something in me that she disliked and began a nesrly year long campaign of abuse, gaslighting, bullying and lies against me. She held so much power in the department that I had no reliable avenues through with to address the issue lest I incurred more of her wrath, retraumatised myself and possibly got blacklisted in the professional field (which she reminded me regularly she had the power to do). There was a time at which I was preparing to defend myself but the institution went to great lengths to protect her.

The who affair made me feel as though as I was going insane and the one thing stopping me from mercilessly blaming and gaslighting myself about what happened was that my classmates eventually started to take notice and validated all my concerns. They kindly tried to speak up for me but were also strategically silenced.

I got to a point where I was getting sick, having intense chest pains, my hair was falling out and the like. I told my parents I needed to stop. They sent me to a therapist thinking it would make the problem go away but after the therapist advised my parents that I take a break and be institutionalised for my health, they cut things off and held an intervention for me where they called the whole family in to pray over me and try to exorcize the negative influences and spirits that were "disrupting my education". At that point so many different circumstances had built up that I just wanted to die. I felt so cornered that I admitted it to them but it only angered them and I was dismissed as being difficult and selfish.

When there were 3 months left of the 1st year, the abuse reached a fever pitch and I secretly quit. I felt so relieved when I did and even though the woman tried to hound me for a short while after, my health started to improve. My plan was to find a job and get financially independent, so I could be free before telling my parents the truth, in order to lessen the blow and consequences of the expected massive fallout.

I didn't expect the trauma to start taking its full toll on me after a brief period of improvement. A couple of months passed and it felt like everything suddenly gave way. I spiraled into the worst depression I've ever lost myself in. I sought therapy and went consistently trying to put myself together as quickly as I could but I only seemed to fall apart worse than before each time. I could not function. I also had worsening of symptoms of a couple of mental illnesses that I didn't know I had until then.

I understand that healing isn't supposed to be linear or quick but now it's September and I've only just started getting some strength to live somewhat like a person again. I'm not sure what I can do or even have that capacity to do as the situation also affected my physical health irreparably to a degree. There's no direct solution and I'm very very tired of the only consolations being that everything will turn out okay somehow or that I'm strong and I'll get through it.

Last year I saw things not turn out okay. I was strong and durable until I wasn't anymore. None of the people that know I dropped out believed I would when I first started considering it. They all told me they understood it was hard but that I would be able to push through it like always.

At the moment I'm feeling quite unsupported, scared and exhausted. Confused too as I'm still trying to make sense of the past 2 years with a few other life altering events that I haven't processed enough to get into here. I also feel random surges of intense anger that leave me weeping and feeling powerless. I don't quite know what to do with those feelings and though therapy has helped a lot, progress feels slow and difficult. I'm really trying but I fear it's not enough and I find it hard not to blame myself. If only I'd known this or that, or had been more resilient or maybe I did do something to deserve this. I keep picking yself apart like a scab. Second guessing and wondering if this all is even something worth getting this grandly affected by. I'm frustrated by how seemingly irrational feelings like misplaced guilt, lowered self confidence and quiet hopelessness can have such sway and impact, despite how I've come to understand them for what they are in therapy.

Hopefully this isn't too much of a novel but I have been sitting with these feelings and I just wanted to express them somewhere where I wouldn't be told I just need to think more positively or told that I've been so strong before so that will get me to a peaceful resolution somehow. I don't want to pry at and rationalize these feelings as in therapy. I just want to communicate them as I feel them and leave it at that. Thank you for holding space for that.

I'm concluding now with a sigh of catharsis. Keep doing the lovely work that you do ~

I'm so sorry you were forced into this unfortunate situation. Your parents shouldn't have tried to choose your education for you. Your teacher shouldn't have bullied and abused you. And it's no wonder that both of those experiences messed severely with your mental health. That's not you failing - that's a healthy response to a very unhealthy situation.

[fuckingfinwions]

[Cleaning up some stuff that I posted on Discord a while back. In the timeline where Fingon outright buys Maedhros from Morgoth.]

Fingon presents this to his family as having rescued Maedhros, who is in a delicate emotional/physical state and doesn't want a lot of visitors.

Fingolfin's Noldor and the Feanorian Noldor don’t have much diplomatic contact, so no one's in a hurry to send him to his brothers, or even tell them he’s back. The Feanorians are, after all, those bastards who stranded us on the ice, and then abandoned their own brother for dead. No one is going to advocate on their behalf.

Maedhros is of the opinion that being Fingon’s property is the best treatment he's had in years, he doesn't want to be given away to someone else. He’ll do whatever it takes to stay with Fingon, including following the scripts that Fingon gives him. So Maedhros is able to come across as slightly unwell but mostly capable of making his own decisions to Nolofinwe or anyone else who checks on him - at least, assuming Fingon has advance notice, and the conversations only last ten minutes or so. But Maedhros is obviously recovering from both physical and mental trauma, so Fingon usually can give excuses about Maedhros’s “poor health” to explain why the conversation can’t happen now or has to be cut short.

But usually isn’t always. And Nolo is going to be paying close attention to the potential competitor for the throne who is also his son’s boyfriend. It’s not any single thing Maedhros says, but eventually Nolo realizes the situation - Maedhros believes he’s still a slave, and Fingon is encouraging him to think so.

Nolo calls Fingon into a meeting, to decide what to do about Maedhros. Nolo refuses Fingon’s idea of letting things go on as they have. They haven’t announced Maedhros’s rescue, but people are going to figure it out pretty soon (especially if Fingon hand-feeds fruit to Maedhros in the garden while Maedhros kneels at his feet again).

But they also can’t let anyone find out now, as Maedhros is completely unfit for company. He can keep quiet about everything that’s happened since he was captured if ordered to, but telling him “you can mention everything but the sex” doesn’t work because nudity isn’t sex really, or being tied to the bed with his his clothes on! If asked to act like all the sex he had since Fingon rescued him was consensual, Maedhros would be very confused. He is obedient, and even eager a lot of the time - Fingon makes it so much nicer than anyone else, and sometimes even focuses on Maedhros’s pleasure!

Diplomatic relations between the Nolfinwean Noldor and the Feanorian Noldor are strained, but they’re not at open war. Keeping their brother captive where they can’t speak to him might spark one. Actually letting them talk to Maedhros as he is definitely will.

So the options are a) keep Maedhros locked away forever where no one he knew can find him or b) gaslight Maedhros until he believes Fingon treated him appropriately.

Regardless of the final decision, Fingon punishes Maedhros for “letting” Nolo find out. Fingon justifies it to himself a little that it was one of the few rules he gave Maedhros, and Maedhros won’t listen to him again if Fingon doesn’t follow through on his threats.

But really, Fingon is worried and angry and Maedhros is a convenient outlet. Fingon doesn’t want Maedhros to be taken away from him. And I think there’s a few hours between when Nolo tells Fingon “this is unacceptable long term” and when Fingon and Nolo figure out a plan.

“You let my father find out what I do to you, Maedhros, even though I told you not to, and now he’s upset. Bad boys get punished, so strip and face the wall.”

Maedhros does so. This is the first time he’s seen Fingon really angry with him, and he’s terrified. And the king disapproving of Fingon’s treatment - what does that mean? Is Fingon being too gentle? Maedhros will put up with much worse if it lets him stay with a Master who gives such clear orders. Or is Fingon too possessive, and the king has heard from his captains that they’re not being rewarded for victories? Maedhros hopes that if that’s the case, he can still spend most night with his Master, rather than congratulating strangers, but of course if Fingon orders him to the middle of the barracks he’ll go. He’s not as practiced at pleasing more than one person at once, but Fingon bought him rather than one of the camp whores and Maedhros is very glad of that.

Maedhros doesn’t ask any of these questions though. His master will tell him what he needs to know when he needs to know it. If Maedhros is going to be sent back to Angband, there’s no reason for anyone to tell him before they reach the gates. He takes off his tunic (he was wearing nothing else), and stands against the wall.

Maedhros has no idea what Fingon will do to him. Acid is the hardest to stand during, but he will try all the same. Or maybe the whole standing and facing the corner is the punishment; Fingon does have some odd ideas at times.

Th first strike is unexpected - Maedhros hadn’t even heard Fingon get an implement. Over the next ten Maedhros realizes why. He’s being hit with a riding crop, likely the same one that Fingon fucked hm with the handle of a few nights ago.

Crops don’t tend to break bones or injure internal organs no matter how they’re used. And even if his skin splits, it’s unlikely to scar. Maybe his Master still intends to keep him, even tough he disobeyed. Maedhros resolves to do his best to stand up to this punishment. He moans or even whimpers in pain but he doesn’t scream, because his Master had said before not to yell, and Maedhros is already in enough trouble for breaking one rule.

Maedhros does eventually run out of stamina; especially as he’s been treated so gently and not building muscle. He stumbles, and catches himself on the wall. He flinches back when he realizes, and tries to straighten his legs before he can be accused of cheating and letting the wall hold him up.

Fingon notices though, and, since he is such a kind master and does not wish to destroy Maedhros, stops.

“Turn around.”

Fingon pushes Maedhros flat on his back on a desk to fuck him. Maedhros bites his tongue until it bleeds trying to keep quiet. Fingon thinks that’s hot, and leaves bite marks on Maedhros’s shoulders and neck while fucking him, breaking the skin several times. (There’s no prep, but it’s not like Fingon leaves Maedhros alone for long enough for him to ever tighten up completely. Fingon’s cock fits without tearing Maedhros’s hole, and that’s the important thing.)

Once Fingon comes he keeps Maehdros’s injured back against the hard wood of the desk and covers the rest of him body in bites, pecs and nipples and ears until he looks like he was attacked by an animal.

Fingon pauses a moment to get a gag, and Maedhros sucks on the dildo compliantly. Then he continues, trailing bites ever lower.

Fingon is a little gentler on Mae’s cock and balls, and doesn’t break the skin at all. With the gag, Maedhros is able to keep from screaming as he grips the side of the table. He knows better than to reach his hands forward where they might block Fingon’s access.

By the time Fingon is done with Maedhros’s cock, Fingon is turned on again. That was the point after all, to have one last time of getting his mouth on his lover and watching Maedhros writhe in pain for him.

Fingon demands Maedhros ride him, and spending an hour on his back means Maedhros’s legs have regained some of their strength.

When Fingon’s done, he orders Maedhros to put in a plug and get dressed. Then Fingon ties him to a chair and leaves.

__

a) is straight forward enough. Maedhros will stay in Fingon’s room rather than going out to the gardens sometimes. The servants will know Fingon has a lover, but not who, or how Fingon got them. Maedhros is well trained enough that they don’t even have to bolt the door so he doesn’t run away; if his Master tells him to stay, he will.

Still, Maedhros might get bored if left alone and peer out the window, or sing a song to entertain himself, or do something else that reveals his identity. So when Fingon is going to be out of the room for long periods of time Maedhros will be drugged. He doesn’t have to be unconscious if Fingon would prefer not to have to wake him up, but something to make his thoughts fuzzy and his limbs heavy and his body slow.

Fingon doesn’t bother trying to hide the drug from Maedhros. A strong routine and clear rules have worked so far, and Maedhros thanks Fingon very nicely every time Fingon keeps a promise even if it’s just that Maedhros will be allowed breakfast. “I’m going to give you this drug most mornings. It will make you less energetic, so that you don’t get into trouble looking for ways to burn off the energy. Let me know if it’s painful, though it shouldn’t be.”

Maedhros makes sure to drink every drop of the drug. His old masters would punish him for spilling and wasting something they wanted him to drink. And it sounds like a very gentle drug, and just another example of how Fingon is the most wonderful master ever. Fingon gave Maedhros an order that isn’t even very difficult, but he still wants Maedhros to succeed, and is making it easier for Maedhros to do so. In Angband, Maedhros had been ordered before to stay in one place and then given a drug that made it feel like thousands of ants were crawling across him and he wanted to claw off his skin. A balrog once fed him something that made him nearly pass out and then ordered Maedhros to ride its cock for an hour.

Fingon wants Maedhros to stay in the room and is giving him a drug that makes moving harder; this isn’t an order Maedhros is even tempted to disobey. And the drug making it harder to think doesn’t matter either, as the only thing Maedhros needs to think about is Fingon, and Fingon will order him if Maedhros forgets what he was doing.

Fingon skips doses whenever he has a full day free. Maedhros thoughtlessly compliant is pleasant enough, but sometimes Fingon wants Maedhros’s full mind and creativity devoted to Fingon’s pleasure.

--

b) is a bit more complicated. Basically, it relies on lying to Maedhros about everything that’s happened since Fingon bought him. Once Maedhros "has a firm grasp on reality" and "stops getting caught in delusions", Nolo can let Maedhros contact the rest of the Noldor again, without any fear of diplomatic problems. They expect a recovered Maedhros to help keep things secret because he won’t want to admit he's so used to being only thought of as good for sex that he apparently hallucinated sexual slavery to the only people who’ve actually been kind to him.

In terms of actions steps, this plan starts with drugging Maedhros as well - but only long enough to take out the plug and move him to a guest room. When he comes to, he’s lying on his belly in an unfamiliar place while a healer bandages his back. Maedhros is terrified, because if he’s not in Fingon’s room does that mean Fingon got bored of him after all, and he’s being given away or being sent back?

“Good morning there. Are you feeling better now? Do you remember why you hurt yourself?”

Maedhros thinks for a long moment, but has no idea what’s going on. And Fingon told him that refusing to talk to anyone but Fingon would also get Maedhros taken away, when Maedhros had suggested it as a way to not reveal Fingon’s secrets. But lots of people are confused when they first wake up, so Maedhros can just refuse to answer questions.

"I'm not even sure how I hurt myself, much less why.”

“Your back is a complete mess, and your front isn’t much better. You apparently didn’t even wait for a knife, most of these wounds are so ragged and small I don’t know what made them.”

Oh, the healer doesn’t know that Fingon punished Maedhros for disobeying. Maybe he should correct that, so they don’t make him hurt less than his master wanted him too? No, if Maedhros is here its because Fingon wanted him healed, or else Fingon is no longer his master and Maedhros is being given to someone who wants him healed. He shouldn’t try to change what’s being done to him.

“That you for bandaging me.” He doesn’t know what response is appropriate, but he thanks the servant who brings his lunches and dinners on a tray and that’s never been wrong yet.

“I’d say any time, but I hope not to need to again!”

Maedhros can’t control whether he’s injured to the point of needing healing again, and the healer obviously knows that.

“How long will the bandages stay on?” He’s much less pretty with bandages on. He can’t be used as roughly if burns from too much cold or heat aren’t immediately visible, and they cover up his lovely smooth skin. It’s worse than robes, which keep him warm and comfortable when not being used but can be removed whenever his master comes back. How can Fingon enjoy Maedhros’s body if half of it is covered up? It’s very unfair to  Fingon that he can’t mark Maedhros, and that Maedhros’s inability to touch his own cock is due to anything besides his Master’s orders.

“At least a week. It would be a terrible idea to take them off now, and you shouldn’t be in such a hurry about it.”

Maedhros nods, suitably chastised. The healer didn’t say exactly what happens if he takes the bandages off, but he knows not to press further once he hears a threat. Sauron liked to immobilize Maedhros while he healed, but some of the others would rely on orders, and break his arms if he tried to get in the way. The months afterwards of being unable to use his arms were exhausting, and he knew it had been cut short by Sauron using his power to get Maedhros fixed enough to ruin again.

“Do you know where Fingon is?”

“I think he’s in the solarium, but I’m not sure. I can send one of the pages to get him once I’m done bandaging you.”

“No!” Maedhros can’t demand that his master come to him, that’s not how anything works. Fingon will visit Maedhros if he wants to and not if he doesn’t, and Maedhros’s desire to see him doesn’t enter into it all. But now the healer is looking at him, and Maedhros realizes he must have said something odd. Sticking to questions might work better. “I was just wondering what he said was going to happen to me?”

“Why would he decide what’s going to happen to you? You’re not under arrest, and even if you were, King Fingolfin conduct the trial, not the prince.”

Maedhros panics. Did Fingon give him to someone else? Did Fingon throw him away entirely? No, if Maedhros was being thrown away there would be no reason to fix the wounds. Unless they haven’t decided yet, and want to keep their options open? Maedhros has interacted with healers in Angband, when he got too injured to be good at sex, but always being fixed up for someone. If his Master isn't deciding what to fix and what to let leave an interesting scar, than who is?

“Who makes decisions about my medical care?”

“I’m the chief healer, and I’ll be taking care of you personally since you’ve been through so much. But if there’s anything I do that you don’t like, you can always refuse treatment. I didn’t ask before because you were asleep, but most of the remaining welts would heal on their own eventually.”

Maybe Fingon hasn't given him to a new master? Maybe Fingon is doing some sort of test, where Maedhros has to figure out how to recover fast enough before Fingon replaces him? It seems crueler than Fingon has been so far, but Maedhros did mess up by trying to make decisions about what to say to Fingolfin. If he lacks a skill, threats and torture are the fastest way to teach him; he learned to deepthroat with the back of his skull against a stone wall.

“I want to be healed, the faster the better.” And once he’s fixed, his Master will take him back, and everything will make sense again.

Fingon stops by a few hours later. The healer leaves them alone for a private conversation only after Fingon says it’s okay. (They have to be sure that Maedhros, who was just delusional and self harming, won't attack Fingon!)

Maedhros asks Fingon which of the injuries Fingon gave him should stay. Maedhros thinks the scrapes on his cock and balls, though less severe than the ones on the rest of his body, will heal worst because it’s such a sensitive area. And Fingon likes playing with those, so that’s where Maedhros told the healer to give the most attention. But Maedhros of course will change that if Fingon says so, and it’s not like Maedhros really needs full sensation on any body part. He can still be fucked and suck cock quite well, if Fingon wants to test it?

Fingon acts like Maedhros is saying complete nonsense and talks as if Maedhros has been occasionally hallucinating . Of course he would never make sexual demands from Maedhros! That's an evil thing that Morgoth does, and only very disturbed people would even think of it!

Maedhros thinks that Fingon is acting for some reason and apologizes for being too stupid to follow along. He asks Fingon what Maedhros should do, what role he should play

"I can act the loyal servant, or the devoted pet, or even the stubborn guard if you want. I promise, whatever you want to do to me, no one will be able to tell."

Fingon acts horrified! He "discovers that Maedhros has been hallucinating more than we thought"! Fingon had thought Maedhros had been initiating (extremely vanilla) sex out of love, so he didn’t push back even though he was worried Maedhros might be traumatized.

But obviously Fingon is going to stop fucking Maedhros now, since Fingon realizes Maedhros meant it as payment and no longer loves him.

Maedhros is terrified and confused. He might as well stay with the healers, since no one has told him to go anywhere else? Eventually Fingon will explain enough of what’s going on for Maedhros to ollow along. Or else Fingon will just punish Maedhros whenever Maedhros fails, and Maedhros will learn the rules that way. He would prefer the first, but obviously his opinions have no effect on what Fingon does. 

After few days, Maedhros is used to the routine in the healer’s wing. He’s not comfortable, but he can mostly predict what’s about to happen to him even when he doesn’t understand why. His bandages are changed before lunch, and he’s in bed the rest of the time to not put too much pressure on anywhere. The healer will ask gentle questions about why he cut himself that Maedhros won’t answer in the late afternoon, and then it’s time for dinner. Fingolfin stops in briefly in the evening to reprimand Maedhros for upsetting Fingon. The injuries aren’t healing fast, but then Maedhros has no idea what elven bodies actually heal like when you don’t have poisons weakening them or dark power fueling them. He takes each day as it comes, and tries to understand.

The nest morning, Maedhros eats his breakfast as normal. But things seem odd after that. The air is hard to breathe. He opens a window and sees Sauron’s smiling face behind it. He turns back to his bed and the blankets feel like sand, rough but somehow sliding through his fingers so he can’t grasp them. The walls are changing from reassuring brick to dripping stalactites. The door opens, and Maedhros sees his father come in holding a sword. Feanor says that Maedhros is ruined, and will not be brought back to Angband or Tirion. Instead he’ll be bound and thrown to the bottom of the sea, where no one will have to look at him again. Maedhros argues that he’s trying so hard to be good, and when he next looks up he’s in Araman, staring at the frozen wasteland.

(There was a hallucinogen in his breakfast, not that Maedhros ever learns that. What better way to convince someone not to trust their memory?)

The healers manage to restrain Maedhros eventually, but not before he’s pulled most of the bandages off. They tie him to the bed, and post a guard on the door.

After a few times, Maedhros learns to ask the healers what’s happened to him, since he obviously can’t tell what’s real. They don’t always know the details, but Fingon is sweet and patient and loving and endlessly willing to sit by Maedhros’s bedside and help him reconstruct his memory. Fingon always looks hurt when Maedhros asks if he really was constantly locked naked in Fingon’s room, if it’s true that Fingon cut off his brands personally with no anesthetic. (Maedhros had wanted that be true, that Fingon had repaired him so personally.) But Fingon always answers, and in time Maedhros puts together the basic of what happened to him.

(The hallucinations get worse whenever Maedhros fixates on a horrible thing Fingon did to him. It makes sense he supposes, that trying to make his grasp of the past fit such obviously impossible ideas weakens his grasp on the present as well. Fingon for his part listens carefully every afternoon and evening, and decides whether Maedhros will be drugged the next day or not.)

Maedhros led Fingon into bloodshed at Alqualonde and then abandoned him. Maedhros was captive in Angband for decades, while his brothers did nothing. Fingon got him out, and has stayed at his side ever since, building Maedhros back into the prince and warrior he was before.

Maedhros writes a letter to his brothers saying he’s alive. He’ll visit if they wish, but he wants to stay with the one who’s showed him true loyalty.

[htub]

I think what's really most painful to me about Lex's treatment is how much I see myself in him tbh. Putting this baby under a cut to be polite but the last post i reblogged illicited Thoughts and I'm being very autistic about this rn.

I don't wanna get too personal but I also don't actually care so just look. Look. He's just like me fr. This boy's been fucked over constantly from childhood but he's trying, he's trying so hard and so much. And yea, my mother died when I was a kid and left me to be raised by an abusive father, and I got bullied by my classmates, my teachers, even my goddamned therapists that were supposed to help me not make me worse. I swear I'm not trying to make this a sob story, I'm just saying my life was Not Fun, alright? I was just straight up not having a very good time. And one day years ago I just decided this sucks, people suck, and well I want it to be better and for that someone's gotta start. I don't ever want to make anybody feel the way I felt, the way people made me feel, so I'm choosing to do better because this cycle ends with me. So I'm actively trying to treat everyone how I want to be treated, even if they don't do the same, but a lot of times - most of the time - they really do not to the same so it's honestly pretty one-sided and not that peachy. Though thankfully I got no aliens gaslighting me yet, I think. Probably.

Still I'm nowhere near as good as Lex, and my god do I want to be like him, and obviously I also lack the money and influence he has, but I very much try. As much as I hate to admit it, I actually take after my dad a lot, and people even comment on how alike we are when they meet us together, but my dad's an asshole and doing better is a choice. A choice I actively make every day, because it's not how I was raised and not my instinctive behavior. I honestly was raised to be a piece of shit. And it's not always easy, and what I'm trying to say with this incoherent rambling is just, I get it. I get it way too much.

Normally this is why I'm drawn to Superman as a character, because he's got the same goodness I hope to have as well, the same kindness and forgiveness and just love. I'm getting the symbol tattooed on my arm for crying out loud. It's important to me.

But Smallville is really wanting to hurt me in different ways so they're instead giving me someone who's much more like me in backstory and personality and then they're making me watch him get broken into pieces, and there's no happy ending. Knowing there's no happy ending is the worst part. Normally fiction is an escape from reality, but this time it's too realistic, because yep, that's what the world does. It fucks us all over with no mercy, but that's not what I want to see! I want to see this boy be loved! And knowing I won't get that sucks.

And I'm still gonna be the best I can be even if I know the world's definitely headed downhill, because that's the kind of person I want to be, but the hopelessness and despair that comes with watching Lex's character arc is truly a new level of anguish I've received from a damn TV show. Congratulations on that, Smallville. I guess. At whoever was in charge of this, I hope you'll be pleased to know my therapist asks about this damn show every single week, unprompted. He's got it written down in his notes and everything. Probably not the most healthy reaction to a two decades old tv show? But like, I got all the DVDs. I cherish them. I love this show. Don't know if I'll ever actually watch it because it clearly is not good for my mental health but I love it. I hate it too. It just didn't have to go there, you know? That was just low.

[zemossunshine]

Sunshine Chapter 40

Pairings: Zemo x You  Bucky x You

Summary: Falling in love with a villain. This will start sweet and then go very dark.

Tags: Explicit. Mature. Not for minors. Dark. Angst. Knife play. Depression. Suicidal thoughts. Self Harm . Vomiting. Nightmares. Sleepwalking. Torture. Smut. Broken Bones. Blood. Injury. Violence. Rough Sex. Rape. Kidnapping. Spanking. Unhealthy Relationships. Mental Health Issues. Anal Sex. Orgasm Delay. Fear. Blow Jobs. Sexual Violence. Suicide Attempt. Reference To Domestic Violence. Sleepwalking. Memory Loss. Gen Violence. Threats. Manipulation. Manipulative Relationship. Murder. Death. Loss Of Parents. Implied Alcohol Abuse. Threats Of Rape. Non Consensual Drug Use. Emotional Manipulation. Gaslighting.

Warnings for this chapter: Torture, rape, gaslighting.

Falling out of love is hard, falling for betrayal is worse. Broken trust and broken hearts, I know, I know. Thinking all you need is there, building faith and words, empty promises will wear, I know and now. When all is done, there is nothing to say and if you are done with embarrassing me, you have won, you can go ahead and tell them. Tell them all I know now, Shout it from the rooftops, write it on the skyline. All we have is gone now. Tell them I was happy and my heart is broken. All of my scars are open, tell them what I hoped would be impossible. Lyrics by James Arthur.

–

After seeing that Rebecca wasn’t enhanced, placing your jewellery with Victor for safekeeping, you concentrated only on psyching yourself up for your impending doom. You knew what to expect when you woke up in Hydra’s box. Telling yourself that the longer you experienced this, the years you could grin and bear it, lessened the chances of it ever happening to Rebecca. Lessened the chances of them finding her. That psychiatrist must have given them the plans while she was on the raft, it’s how they constructed their own box. She deserved to die too. The place you gave birth to Rebecca in was the same place Hydra tried to strip your life away. Just another paradox to add to the list. You could take this now your powers grew along with pain tolerance. So when Hydra began their annual ritual, you laughed at their futile efforts. Scoffed as they played grainy images of your past as they reenacted the same disgusting acts, to beat the animals at their own sick and vile games. Be as callous as they were. You even managed to swing the hand clamps, knocking one in the face drawing blood and for that you paid dearly.

You thought that they would get bored with you, if they believed they couldn’t hurt you, if you hid your dismay, hid your suffering, but no. You had only motivated them, to do something so cruel, you knew that this would be burned into your mind forever, doubted you would ever recover. Coming to, after another dart to the neck to Zemo standing in there with you. You rushed over, your heart singing with hope only for your encased hands to go right through him. A hologram. Being wrenched back as the clamps, magnetised to the wall, you took in Zemo’s face, painted in a twisted sadistic smile. You had screamed for Zemo the first time you were here, handing them the perfect ammunition. To have your husband watch this, with the likeness of pleasure on his face as if enjoyed it as much as they did.

This was beyond evil, beyond anything you could have ever prepared for.

Funnily enough, you didn’t dare laugh at them after that. You reverted to telling yourself it wasn’t real, because it wasn’t, thankful that Hydra did not have any recordings of Zemo’s voice to ridicule you with. They could probe at you, scratch away, tear open the scars Victor healed. They could cut chunks of your hair as a prize, they could torment you, humiliate you. They could tell you that you were only the first woman of a string they had lined up for this box. They could rape you. They could make you stare into the monstrosity that they called Zemo’s eyes as they forced gun’s into you. They could plaster ‘property of Hydra’ over every inch of your body. They could break you, maim you, they could do it all. But, they couldn’t have you and you knew that it caused them anguish, caused them pain. They wanted you on their side, their weapon and they would never have it. They didn’t fight hard enough when they made their agreement with Victor, more like Victor fought harder, giving them only one measly day and Victor would save you from this place as he did every year. They would never have Rebecca either and you revelled in the fact that she was kept under wraps from them, that you had a secret. Something they could never take from you.

The last agent left before the countdown was over, you waited for him to return with his next weapon of choice but he didn’t. Leaving only the echo of him ramming himself into you. What? It’s not fun if I’m not screaming? Once the timer was reached on D’s chest and the black dulled, you sat up and pulled the sheet around yourself, seeing the misery on Victor’s face gave you pause. It seemed as if he suffered as much as you had each and every birthday. Still you had a far more pressing matter, you pulled the sheet down just enough so Victor could see the markings, the tips of their words etched on your skin. Victor sucked in air through his teeth, bringing a metal hand covered his mouth, smothering the sound of his distress. You needed him to see so he could cut it out, rid your body of it before you woke up. You jerked your head towards the figure looming in the corner.

Victor blinked in disbelief, his eyelashes wet. You still didn’t want to see it even out of the corner of your eye, his depraved smile, his dull eyes that held no familiarity, not after you had just been violated yet again. Zemo wouldn’t just stand there and watch. You didn’t need to voice what you needed this time. Victor offered you his hand as that repugnant copy of your husband vanished. You stood with your two intact legs, clutching the sheet to your body. You hobbled through the portal hand in hand with Victor with your head held high, ignoring the pain radiating, lancing further up your body with every step, only to collapse the moment the portal closed.

–

There was nothing to feel when you glimpsed the calendar confirming you had been asleep for another four months. No confusion at the lack of aches, or soreness or throbbing. You knew the routine now. Though there was a pang of regret at your attempt to outwit Hydra, an ignorant oversight, one you would not make again. They could make another hologram, make it talk, move, participate even, revulsion crawled up your spine. Have Zemo rape me. They could bring in more holograms, Bucky, Sam. anyone they wanted really, fuck even Victor. Hydra were trying to make it personal and they had got dangerously close. Victor as usual was on his knees holding up that spoon of soup, an elixir he believed could revive you, at least give you enough strength to shower, to weep as you scrubbed Hydra off your skin.

“I need to move.” You croaked. D beeped next to you with a glass of water, you shook your head, Victor freed your arms from his hold. The first thing you did? Check Victor removed that tattoo and he had. You ran your hands over your stomach, fearful they would find a way to breed you somehow. You had no idea how Victor was preventing your pregnancy and you didn’t want to know either. There were some questions that didn’t need answers. Tingles moved through your body as a broken and beaten down Victor relinquished his power. You moved slowly, crawling and curling into Victor’s lap. He dropped your untouched jewellery into your palm with a noiseless whimper, the items that could ground you, untouched by violence. You truly thought that perhaps you couldn’t cry anymore when you were in Hydra’s box, you got through the entire ordeal without a single tear. Yet once you were here, in the comfort of the castle, in the comfort of Victor, soft sobs escaped your lips, you didn’t need to hide your grief, the gruelling distress in the privacy of the shower anymore. After a while you could have sworn that you felt drips on the back of your makeshift toga, as if Victor was crying with you.

–

You justified Sharon's death to yourself easily, her death probably saved lives, stopped others suffering, stopped countless criminal activity. Victor did her a favour because there was no telling what Zemo would have done. Victor gave her a swift end, she should be grateful if anything. Just another body to add to Victor’s pile. It was her utter lack of guilt, her pleas to only save her own skin. No apology for what she had done to you. Fuck her. The psychiatrist, well you didn’t give her another thought, unworthy of occupying any space in your mind, unworthy of guilt or remorse. You didn’t even have a hand in either death so why bother wasting your time thinking about them?

You built a miniature Trevi fountain of metal, well at least if you blurred your vision and really used your imagination you could say it had the general shape. Not even then. It only flowed with Sarah’s perfect drink. A cute inside joke and an endless supply, Victor just duplicated it, he offered to narrow down the chemical compositions, but it wasn’t exactly important. You thought about making one for wine, then the water really could run red, one for coffee and it could run black, well close to it. Victor gave you the best haircut he could manage in an attempt to even out what Hydra had done, in which you both spent laughing, telling yourself you hadn't had a haircut in years so this was needed regardless of Hydra.

You were going through the peach iced tea like there was no tomorrow as Victor had stepped up the training. Hours upon hours of the treadmill building your stamina, along with a few shots of adrenaline. Victor supplied you with small daggers so you could demonstrate the skills you did have. Victor easily managed to knock them out of your hands time and time again without touching you. Zemo was only ever dancing with you, flirting with you, he wasn’t really teaching you to fight. Another lie, a charming lie, one that reminded you to keep going and you would be reunited with him, with Rebecca. Tell him about Sharon and all of her antics. Hopefully Bucky had gotten over his baseless and illogical desire to kill you.

You battled against the doombots, spinning, panting, enthusiastic. They could attack you and Victor wasn’t quite ready to do that, he pushed you to your limits. Covered once again in bruises but they were the last of your worries. Bruises faded, the ones Hydra gave you - gone. Hydra brutalised you. Just like Zemo. You really needed to find a way so shut your mind up, you wondered if you could shove a screwdriver up your nostril and rip that demeaning voice out, it worked for the Egyptians. You knocked the dagger from a doombots hand and pinned it to the floor.

“Machine’s can’t feel pain Sweetheart.”

As that was the case, you tore them apart, blades sharp enough to penetrate the metal casing. Victor had hundreds of these lying around. The battles with the doombots were to improve your agility, your timing, your senses, to rely on your instincts, your intuition, if you ever needed to. The adrenaline pumped through your veins, only increasing with every slash of your knife. Only stopping when D tried to join in on the action.

“Kill D.” Victor sighed exasperated.

You moved to cover D’s ears, well where they should be. “He’ll hear you.” Only letting your lips curl once Victor relented and smiled at you. “I like D.” You countered, logically you knew D was a machine, a robot. But you knew there would be a sense of guilt if you hurt him, And yes in your mind, you could hurt him. Victor rubbed his metal fingers along his lips deep in thought and you had to take yourself over to the drinks foundation to wet your throat.

“The winter soldier was a protector.” Victor withdrew his sword from the depths of his cloak. “And you are protective by nature.” Victor’s gleaming green eyes briefly flickered to D. There was no time to tell him to stop, your eyes zoned in on the thrust of his hand and followed his sword flowing through the air. Launching yourself across the room, you managed to reach out and knock the sword away just in time. Not even feeling the blade slice into your hand you whipped yourself around ready to berate Victor but he was already in front of you, agitation in his eyes, staring down at your hand.

“By the hilt Sweetheart.” Victor growled, clearly annoyed that you had injured yourself.

“I’m the one who is pissed off here.” You glared at him. “It doesn’t hurt so it doesn’t matter how I stop the attack right?” You reasoned. “The same for you, with your metal hands, in the heat of the moment, do you actually try and catch things by the handle?” You scoffed. Victor frowned looking down at his hands, giving yours a quick glance to ensure that D was doing his best work to stop the bleeding. But you could see that slight defeat in his eyes, you made a good point. What was another scar? This sword cut you sure, but it wasn’t that deep, probably wouldn’t leave any permanent mark. D was securing steri strips to your wound and not stitches, so it couldn’t be that bad. You remembered how hard you had gripped Zemo’s sword and Victor’s could do the same damage, you only really averted the blade from its target, it wasn’t the same situation and therefore didn’t require as much force, no need to catch it. All of those thoughts that raced through your mind before you even touched the blade. You could work under pressure, maybe you were always cut out for this superhero thing?

When you looked up D was holding a new blade. The hilt was a solid black, no crest like Victor’s or Zemo's, no initial. Just a simple block of colour, your favourite colour. Victor raised his sword with bright eyes and a big bashful grin. You were finally going to learn to sword fight. You jumped up, heart soaring taking your new sword into your hand when a ball of deflation hit you.

“Yours is bigger.”

“Sweetheart, you’ll make me blush.”

–

“Everyone has an absolute point, would you like to see yours?” Victor checked with you.

An absolute point, the moment your life went off on many different paths. The moment where everything was the same across all of the multiverse. It was obvious surely, the day you got your powers. After that more and more came to light about your life, it was the very reason Rebecca was so protected. From there on there would be many variations, some you had seen. You had already walked through a portal with a green ring, this was in your past, no need to go into the multiverse for this. Walking along a residential street, that wasn’t the house you were still searching for you were confused. Unless your absolute point was from your time in Louisiana, but then the houses didn’t have the usual characteristics. The air wasn’t thick with humidity, the houses were smaller, no white picket fences. All these things you would notice now whereas before you wouldn’t, you would just walk on by, none the wiser.

After climbing a fence, which always surprised you at how human Victor could be. He could turn the fence into a block of cheese if he wanted to. You peered through the window. Your memories on this were hazy, hence why you didn’t recognise anything from outside. Outside was a rare occurrence back then anyway. Was it something particular they had done to you on this day? Your past self was cuffed to a table, head down, matted hair, scared to even look up or breathe. She barely flinched at the sound of the front door slamming closed. A freshly caught fish was slapped down on the table in front of her.

“Eat it.” The man, no Hydra goon, snarled. That brief hesitation was all it took for him to bounce her head off the table. You put your head to your own head with the sound of the crack, imagining the pain that would now be pulsing through her head. Her frantic hands, trying to grip the slippery fish through the nails embedded into her fingers. With Hydra's clamps they were unable to do such things now. It was strange the only thing the past you showed on her face was frustration, not pain at this point; it was obviously a close companion. The frustration for not being able to do what she was asked. No winces of agony as her fingers moved, knowing those nails were tearing further into her hands. No attempt to wipe the blood from her broken nose, drops falling into her lap. You subconsciously did it to yourself, wiping away blood that wasn’t there.

“I think you are beautiful.” Victor admitted shyly.

Hydra didn’t touch your face now. After giving him a compassionate smile you turned back, the man had ripped the fish from your hands. With his other hand he was dragging the table and you along with it and that’s when the past version of you started to panic. She didn’t say anything, she just squeezed her eyes closed, stumbled over her own feet. Knowing that no matter what she did, she wouldn’t be able to stop whatever was coming. You and Victor moved around to another window, a better vantage point and you wished you hadn’t. The fish was thrown on the floor in front of a dead woman. Dead long enough that there was no colour to her face, eyes turning white, staring right at you. They wanted you to eat your meal off of her.

Hydra were trying to make it personal, to hurt you emotionally, psychologically, in the same way they had on your last birthday. They were frustrated that nothing was working. Frustrated that they didn't have their weapon despite their efforts. Watching your past self shuffle over to the dead woman, she had broken, tears were falling, her mouth was moving, wanting to beg, to make everything stop.

A gunshot rang out and the cruel man sneering down dropped to the floor. Your past self only cowered at the footsteps racing down the stairs. He fell down with the same terrifying sound. Then the next sound came, the splintering of wood, the door had been broken in. You gasped watching Nick Fury storm inside, his only heading was you. He shot at the chain of the cuffs as your past self screamed. Fury in his black get up, did just look like the next Hydra man in line. His permanent frown, no compassion, no caring, no sign that this was a rescue mission. And his cause wasn’t aided when he asked if you were ready. Instead of waiting for an answer, he ripped those nails out from under your fingertips as fast as he could, he didn’t explain himself. His goal was to get you out of this place as comfortably as he could. But he hadn’t said that, all your past self would feel was a flaming red as he tore the nails from your hands. All she witnessed was a cold murderer, causing her more pain, she wasn't given an explanation. His hands that should feel like relief, comfort were gripped around her withering bicep, and all she would feel is threatened, being forced out.

“NOOOOO!” Your past self screamed, a mistake, this should have been a quiet operation for Fury, an easy one, only now he had to subdue you. So when he put his hand over your mouth, you knew he already lost, your past self wouldn’t trust him, he terrified you, was moving in the same way Hydra did, manhandling you. The reason it took Maria so long to get you to open up to them. You shook your head as your past self thrashed against Fury and disappeared through the door.

You specifically asked Victor if Fury had rescued you, so he went back and he checked in every world. It happened to be the one thing that was the same. The one thing that couldn’t be changed. You were rescued from Hydra across the multiverse. You were saved, to then live this life anyway, to continue to suffer. That one choice by Fury was all it took. You looked like you were on death's door back then. If he just left you, perhaps you would have just slipped away and not have to continue to endure. But then no Rebecca. Even Rebecca’s existence was getting hard to justify, you didn’t know her, had never seen her.

“You survived.” Victor said proudly.

I’m not sure that’s a good thing anymore.

–

After a while the conflict in your mind quietened. You survived and that was a good thing. You met Bucky, were able to take his pain. Met Zemo and gave him a child and you could carry on, you could survive. You didn’t really have a choice in the matter anyway, after another day as a doombot slayer and drinking all manner of liquids from your various fountains and a few adjustments of your legs. You and Victor were winding down for the day, not that you were ever convinced Victor slept, he didn’t have a magical cabinet that could force his mind to stop. You traced a finger down the bottle of Zemo’s whiskey, collecting dust and soot with a fingertip, one of the few things that survived the explosion. Why did you feel guilty drinking it without him?

“How did you get your powers?” Victor asked, he was in awe of your perseverance and your simultaneous struggles, always hand in hand. He saw how bad Hydra were, healed your body from their torment. Yet it was your face that showed bewilderment, you assumed Victor knew how you became, well whatever you were now.

“Zemo.” You sounded it out slowly, hoping that Victor had a temporary lapse of memory.

“Yes.” Victor said with slight agitation confirming that he knew it was Zemo.

“Love.” You said a bit too brightly, knowing that Victor didn’t quite believe in your cure for the world. Love and pain are entwined.

“Sweetheart I understand he would have had to hurt you.” Victor stated, putting an end to that anxiety bubbling in your stomach. “I’m just trying to understand your powers.”

“After-” You moved your hand in air hoping that Victor would gloss over everything you were not saying with the movement, “I passed out.”

In your peripheral vision you saw the now repaired and patched up doombots moving around on the floor, all searching for something. Victor was waiting hand out chanting under his breath, staring straight at you, that look you had seen from so many others before. That they knew something about you that you didn’t. A doombot placed something in his hand that looked like nothing, like air, but the flames from the fire revealed it to be a single strand of your hair.

Before you could blink you could feel the cold chill of the basement that familiar musty damp smell. That single light dangling over you screaming after Zemo had shot your arms. Your own hairs tickled along your neck in fear. It’s Zemo. You reminded yourself, this wasn’t Hydra. You wanted to reach out to tell the past you that everything would be alright. For a little while anyway. You were interested in what actually happened, as always you didn’t ask Zemo, you just passed out and woke up. You remembered the feeling of the red vibrating within you, spreading out, flooding your limp body. The light was turned out and you heard Zemo shifting behind you. You were very thankful Zemo did that as you didn’t want to see whatever emotion was on Victor’s face, who stood next to you stoically, silently. When Zemo whistled your blood turned cold, that sinister sound, evoking terror in your heart.

Zemo’s screaming ended that. Closing your eyes despite the darkness as if it would somehow shut out sound too, you wanted to reach out again. Only brave enough to open your eyes after Zemo began panting into the darkness, he turned on the light in time for you and Victor to see wisps of black float in the air. That wasn’t really any more than you already knew. Zemo would remove the cuffs, the nails and take care of you.

That is not what you were witnessing. Zemo stood behind you, running his fingertips up your spine parting that hospital gown further, it felt as if he was slicing you open the higher his hand moved. You shuddered ridding yourself of the feeling on your own back. His hands moved possessively to your waist, rubbing his thumbs over your bare hips, slumped over the table. The only thing you could see was that hunger in his eyes, in his touch, that burning need he had, that would only be sated when he took you and claimed you as his. When Zemo reached down to his trousers which he had not yet fastened, you knew you didn’t need or ever want to see anymore.

This was inconceivable.

“Take me back.”

Swallowing the vomit that made its way into your mouth, physically shaking off the dread, you looked up at Victor who was looking at you as if he possessed knowledge that you didn’t have. “Zemo would never do that to me.” You barely got the words out. But, you had to say it out loud, make the words tangible, so you could believe it, make it true.

“How often were you put under sedation?” Victor said stiffly.

A lot.

But it was for when you hurt yourself and it was dangerous to him and to keep the location of the house a secret and every time in between, not the reason Victor was suggesting. You glanced at the whiskey bottle in front of you, looking away quickly, not quite understanding why you couldn’t continue to look at it.

“How often did you wake up in different clothing?”

Hundreds. You swallowed thickly. Placing your trembling hands over your mouth, holding everything in, holding everything together, letting go would mean that you would have to face this. You shook your head vigorously, you couldn’t think that way.

“Have you ever wondered if your nightmares were memories?”

That calmed you for a moment. Taking in air through your nose to ensure your voice was level. “I would have scars.” More than what Hydra left you with. You nodded as you said it, that this was all it was, your own mind playing tricks on you, horrific vivid nightmares where Zemo tore you apart.

“Would you?” Any semblance of calm was gone, you lifted your wrists to your eye line, to inspect them, to see what you already knew. There wasn’t a trace of your suicide attempt because Zemo and Bucky had a machine that could erase every mark they left on you. Not the bruises, but Zemo left bruises on you all of the time anyway. Marks of what he was doing. The nightmares that increased ten fold after you moved to Louisiana which you blamed on pregnancy, to live closer to Bucky. You couldn’t allow yourself to believe this. Zemo was a good man, you gagged hearing Zemo’s voice whisper to you, telling you himself that he wasn’t.

“You belong to me.” You all but whispered. The words Zemo recited to you, did Zemo tell you what he had done? Without explicitly stating it? Those words felt like a stab to the heart, more than the way Victor was looking at you, as if he were waiting for you to understand, to catch up, to know what he already knew.

“No.” You spluttered.

Remembering how Zemo told you that he couldn’t control himself around you.

“No.”

How he got off on your screams.

“No.”

How his need for you was insatiable.

“No.”

How violent he could be. Just like Hydra

“No.”

Scream for me Sunshine.

“NO!” You launched the untouched bottle of whiskey across the lab, shattering before you, shattering your heart. Sinking down to your knees. Clutching your chest, devastated at the evidence that lay in front of you, staring at you in the face all along. Beating itself into your mind, screaming at you to pay attention. The crippling pain in understanding this truth.

“No.” You croaked.

Yes.

–

Hysterical wracking sobs consumed your body. The noises filled with such anguish that came from you broke your heart all over again. The kind of crying that gripped your head so tightly you were sure it would explode. The kind of crying that you didn’t believe would ever end, the kind that told you that you would never be happy again. The kind that crushed your heart, your soul. You.

Victor didn’t shoot you up with endorphins, he knelt next to you, allowing you to let it all out. Smashing that bottle allowed the scent of Zemo to fill every nook and cranny of the space. To feel as if he were in the room with you. As you cried into Victor’s chest your mind was consumed with every moment that Zemo derived satisfaction from your terror. How you felt his stiffness rub on you after Mark. Perhaps that night was a turn on for him, a reminder of how he knew he could do what he wanted to your limp and unmoving body. How he planned to fuck you until you begged him to stop. That awful night. Your wedding night.

Zemo didn’t lose his mind because you were part of his life now, it’s that he was never in his right mind. How he would find it necessary to punish you if you had hurt yourself or put yourself in danger and he had been, over and over. The lines between Hydra and Zemo were not becoming blurred, they were one and the same. Because Zemo was the same. You had seen and met the real Zemo and each time you were terrified.

Maria outright asked you if Zemo had raped you and looking back you answered, Zemo didn’t say a word, he just sat there. How Zemo and Bucky ever so helpfully knew that putting you in a coma wouldn't stop your powers when you had only used your powers a handful of times. Because they already knew, they had been testing it. You really had to question if your powers attracted people who wanted to hurt you because it sure as hell seemed that way.

Scrubbing him away in the shower, remembering that Zemo was able to completely bathe you without you even stirring, you came to a horrible realisation, you couldn't just wash him away. Zemo was your destiny and he did that to you. Even after everything you still wanted him, you wanted to talk to him, to hear his voice, to understand why. Perhaps it was just the one time at least that’s what you planned on telling yourself.

The only problem with that: Once you start seeing the bad in someone, it’s the only thing you can see.

Next Part: https://www.tumblr.com/zemossunshine/700177623411736576/sunshine-chapter-41?source=share

[loudmouthedllama]

Sup! I love the aesthetic of your blog, I just wanted to pop by and say that I left the rpc a long time ago back in 2022 and I never looked back knowing just how fucking bad it is and focus my time on my art blog that is personal and none of those old mutuals know about. I just grown so damn tired of the foolishness of so-called adults with highschool mindset and it has greatly affected my mental health man :/ at least I'm feeling a lot better.

I had to set my tea on my other side for this one, this hurts my soul frankly. Rp/Rpcs are supposed to be great revenues for original work/escaping mental health... Today rpcs just attack and make things so much worse than actually helping... It hurts when RPCS are doing the opposite of what they were once intended for. It's utterly disgusting and ridiculous how this mindset has taken over.

This hurts my soul, these lovely roleplyers are DYING, losing their muse after legitimate YEARS of waiting, and hoping for just one person to like their stuff. So many wonderful potential plots/worlds/stories related to these fandoms that just... Fizzle out over time. All because they DEMAND they put forth no effort, simply for writing as a published oc.

And yes, I know there is the 1% of published oc (Canon) writers that DO honestly love unpublished ocs. But, they ain't doing much to help either. They ain't speaking up like this, they ain't putting a foot forward to get more unpublished ocs on their blogs... They ain't doing jack, cept saying they sorry for the 'hard times'.

I ain't gonna come at them as agro, but damn...

Actions speak hella louder than just words... Don't just say you support them, fucking actually SUPPORT them, otherwise y'all fucked. Like if yas honestly like the headcanon, or ooc post of an unpublished oc writer...

FUCKING HEART THAT SHIT, COMMENT ANYTHING. JESUS LLAMA CHRIST, HOW THE FUCK THEY GONNA KNOW TO INTERACT WITH YA IF YA DON'T GIVE THEM A SIGNAL YOU WANT IT??? FUCKING HELL A LLAMA HAS TO SPOUT THIS SHIT...

A LLAMA

LIKE WHAT ARE YOU SO SCARED OF? THE BACKLASH OF THE CLIQUES? ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT THE ANON HATE TO COME FLOODING IN?

SURPRISE, THEY JUST WORDS COMING ROM ACTUAL LIVING SHIT WHO THINKS IT'S GOD.

HOW DO THEY KNOW YOU IN REAL LIFE? WHAT HONEST-TO-GOD EFFECT COULD THOSE PEOPLE REALLY HAVE?

Is psychological.

THEY ARE USING PHSYC WARFARE AND IT'S FUCKING GROSS.

Yes, yes SOME of you are taking a stand and TRYING your best. BUT BRUHS, AND HEAR A LLAMA OUT, THIS ISN'T ENOUGH PEOPLE.

I lied I am going that agro on 'em they are just as at fault as the cliques.

These fuckwads are getting away with gaslighting and saying there's no issue because NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE are speaking up. Change starts like this.

Unpublished oc writers really out here fighting the fight alone until there's nothing left. I take every muse's death personally, so this stings that you had to leave. I'm truly sorry for their crap, these fandoms deserve a cleansing.

We need to talk about this people, otherwise, roleplay will die. For good.

[wedontneedeachother]

im so tired. i don't want to talk to anyone. im struggling to do anything and the uni deadlines are getting closer. it's almost exam season and to actually get to it i have to do some silly assignments like a history essay or a videoblog for my social communications class. but im so awfully tired. mostly mentally but i slept for 15h yesterday so i guess physically too. i hate myself so much. and it's my birthday tomorrow. 22nd. i wasn't supposed to make it this far. i wish i had the courage to end it all. I've been unemployed for 3 months. nobody wants to hire me and i don't have anymore money left. honestly i don't even want to work, i barely have the energy and will to get out of bed. i only want a job so i can have money for my silly little treats and meds and like the stuff i need + being busy with uni and work would make fasting/restricting easier. bc im so old my parents won't give me money. they're already mad at me for still living with them. i hate it here. and i hate having adhd bc it makes me unable to restrict and follow a diet plan. i wish i could have never been born, honestly. every day i hope i won't wake up again. but i do. and it never gets better, it only gets worse bc i keep getting older and im still in the same spot I've been since i turned 13. all the people i went to high school with are getting their bachelors degrees this year. and im struggling to pass the first semester of uni :''') im a failure. and im so mad at myself for keeping myself alive. my life is a nightmare. it'll never get better, not with this brain. my psychiatrist prescribed me anti-depressants again. but they cause weight gain and i can't have that. I'd rather be depressed than fat. i lost 10kg after getting out of the psych ward and i don't intend to gain it all back. especially not after I've made my comeback to ed twitter, ed tiktok and tumblr ofc. i want to suppress my adhd and actually commit to my ed. i have a couple of diet plans saved on my phone and i plan on following them. i wanted to let myself do nothing the first week of 2024, but i will start my wl plan on my bday. it's the perfect time imo bc i have so much stuff to do at uni and i'll have to study a lot and take my adhd meds. it should be easy to restrict with all that uni shit going on. i plan to be too busy to eat. i want to deep clean my room and that will take a while (i haven't deep cleaned it in years). and i plan to get back to my silly little workouts in my room. when spring rolls around I'll revive my mental health walks. it all sounds like a great plan and all but rn im so depressed i don't know if i have the strength for it. i think i have to gaslight myself constantly and pretend im not depressed and im in my honeymoon era or sth. fake it till you make it i guess.

[jamiebluewind]

To my father,

I remember when I was younger, you told me that it didn't matter if I dated a man or woman, black or white (or purple?), as long as I was happy. I was sitting on the sectional couch at our old house. I didn't know I was bi yet. I didn't know I was genderfluid yet. But you saying that made me cry and feel so safe.

What changed?

You were my protector. My safe place. My only parental figure left after my mother left and mamaw died. And yet... as I grew older, the insults started. The controlling and gaslighting. The racism and sexism and transphobia and all the other bigotries just lumped together. It hurt so much. It made me wonder if the kind man that used to brush my hair was all an act. It made me wonder if I had done something to cause you to change.

You reacted badly to me telling you I was bi. You forbid any mention of it, even if you were going on a rant about LGBTQ. And I did it. I sat there and let you tear me down. I don't think it ever even mattered to you that I was single for most of my life or that I've never dated a woman (only dated that one guy for a bit).

It got so bad that I had to move away for my mental health, but I still loved you and wanted you in my life. What was it about me telling my older sister that I was bi that made you quit loving me? That made you call me to disown me, hurl insults worse than any before, and tell me I had to stay away from "your" family?

It hurt.

It still hurts.

I know I'm probably better off without you, but I miss the man I used to look up to. The one that told me he would always love me as long as I was happy. And that's what I am now. I've never been more happy in my life than I've been the last four or five years. I've got a support system and all these amazing friends and family of friends, better doctors, and a therapist that genuinely cares. I'm not in the closet anymore. I have my own place with my best friend/roommate and we each have a cat of our own to spoil.

I am happy now. I want to live now. But I still mourn you. Not who you became, but the dad that loved me once upon a time that I'll never see again.

So since I can't tell you that, I'll write a letter that you'll never see and watch it drift away like a message in a bottle. I wish you could have gotten to know me when I was happy.

Sincerely, the daughter you threw away

[introspective-journaling]

Journaling 1

Recently I forgot everything I know and all of the promises I made to myself to love myself💔. For four years I ignored red flags, gaslighting and manipulation, alcoholism, cheating, secrets, lies, and my own emotions and intuition. I lowered my standards until we were wrapped up in the cycle of a toxic and mentally abusive relationship. Conversation after conversation, argument after argument, chance after chance until I ended it with the police to keep things from blowing up. Being in this type of relationship physically alters the brain, but I didn't know that! I was asking my therapist about my memory and telling my psychiatrist I still have anxiety. Adjusting medication dosages, which probably only made things worse. A person can't heal or grow in toxicity anyway. It's hard to let the people we love go, even when they aren't good for us and we're no longer good for them either. That's hard to accept, but I didn't like who I was becoming.

I couldn't understand someone with seemingly good intentions, asking for more chances while not truly valuing me, themselves, life, or the relationship they're in. Why stay? There was a time they were too good to be true and I'd still get glimpses of that person, so in some way I understand why people struggle to leave. I saw the patterns, but couldn't link my partner specifically with terms like "psychological abuse," if that makes any sense? I'm still not sure if everything we went through was related to their alcoholism, or mental health, or if it's truly a part of their personality too. I really struggle to believe it's who they are deep down, but I can still hear the irritation in their voice from me wanting just a moment out of their day. I still see the emptiness and boredom in their eyes, while I could hardly keep back the tears. I can feel the burning intensity in the same eyes that were empty and cold only hours ago. Turning them on and coming suddenly to life, to convince me you'd never do anything to hurt me. It's hard to respond, my heart is in my throat and my mind is screaming... "Then why do you keep hurting me?"

Regardless of whether it's intentional, hurtful behavior cannot go unchecked or unresolved. If someone can't respect your feelings, take accountability, or follow through on an apology, they don't have the maturity for a healthy and sustainable relationship. When a person is invalidated and manipulated long enough, they become insecure and start contributing to the toxicity. I know this, I've known for a long time yet I kept letting it all slide when nothing got better. I knew this was unhealthy, it felt unhealthy, my feelings and boundaries were ignored, I felt unwanted and intentionally misunderstood, arguments were heated, I wasn't taking care of myself, I called attention to words and behaviors that hurt to no avail, and I still didn't come to the conclusion from all of that, that my partner was using me, keeping me around. Or I simply wouldn't accept it.

The other side to them could be incredibly caring and I think maybe they actually did care at one point a few years ago. They were affectionate, helpful, shared my responsibilities, helped with projects, listened to my thoughts and feelings, prioritized our quality time (all of which I'd hear about during arguments, even if I didn't ask for anything). They spoke kindly, and would repeatedly say they'll treat me better, talk to me respectfully, communicate more, get help with drinking, be more open and honest. They talked beautifully about the future, life together, sent me love songs and promises to change, even talked about buying a house and getting married, reassured me that they truly wanted me. Wanted me... Yes that much was true, but wanting me isn't valuing me, isn't loving me.

Those glimpses of who they were when we met and how wonderful we could be together, are what kept me going... It was rarely followed through, but they used all of the above to say they've "been trying". This led to more confusion, I questioned my own perceptions and thought I might be overreacting. I wasn't sure if I was coming or going in that relationship. All I knew in the moment was that I loved this person. I came to trust them enough to open up in ways I never thought I would, and to hope for a future I didn't realize I wanted. I was craving their quality time and seeking validation, but they had withdrawn to an emotionally unavailable place that I couldn't reach. I cried for like a week and a half thinking I missed them after they left, until one phone call and the texts that followed put it all into perspective. I don't think most people get this moment of clarity, brutal honesty from the person who keeps hurting them. It's the shortest recovery time I've ever experienced from the intense crying phase of a breakup. I do still cry and have moments of deep sadness, but honestly that call and some of the texts made things so clear to me that I have very little to grieve over anymore. The reminders still hurt when I'm hit with intrusive memories, but I'm allowing myself to accept and honor my feelings. Then I have to move on with each day. I have chosen to forgive her and I'm trying to forgive myself too.

*****************************************************

🔒Now for the 🔑self love and words of affirmation🔓

❤️LOVE YOURSELF!❤️

🌹I love myself!

🌹I am beautiful!

🌹I love my body!

🌹I love my face!

🌹I love everything about me!

🌹I am caring!

🌹I am passionate!

🌹I am strong!

🌹I can achieve anything!

🌹I deserve everything I want in life!

🌹I have a big heart and all of my love is for me!

🌹I won't give anyone space in my life who loves me

less than I love myself!

Would the person you're with be okay with you acting the way they do in the relationship? 🤔 Mirror them for a week and find out. Recognize what you deserve and have the courage to leave someone who doesn't deserve you!

Think about this 💭. What would you tell your best friend, your sister, daughter, niece if they were going through what you are? Treat yourself as another loved one, and only allow people into your life who respect and appreciate you. Would you want anyone else to feel the way this person makes you feel? You are just as important and worthy of genuine, healthy love! Bring people into your life who you feel safe and proud to also bring into your family.

Love yourself, take care of yourself first!