#so in a way my inability to be detached from myself has caused me to put effort into improving areas that didn't necessarily need any

[lorei-writes]

You know what'd be really cool? A feedback exchange project.

Now, when I say feedback, I do mean feedback -- a commentary on both the weak and the strong points of a given work.

In my experience, nearly all (if not all) fanfic writers are riddled with a certain set of doubts about their own creations. Surely, it is nice to be praised, but... In my opinion, it is also nice to receive information that something could be improved and to be given insight of what possible paths could be chosen. After all, our own perceptions of things can be warped, as we experience the world only as ourselves and are personally attached to what we make.

Hmm... Or maybe that's just me. Oh well.

[aspd-culture]

Hullo! Sorry to bother, but do y'all have any info/resources on identification of ASPD, and/or how to come to a mutual understanding with someone who has ASPD?

I'm BPD myself, and I've suspected my sibling is ASPD for a few years (though they were too young to be diagnosed with it back then). I can relate to some of the things they experience, but other times, the same things make no sense to me at all.

I care about them, but it's hard to know what adjustments can be made when we can't communicate needs in a way we both understand.

Sorry if this ain't the type of ask ya answer, feel free to ignore XD

Don't worry, no bother at all!

Unfortunately I'm having a bit of trouble understanding what exactly you're asking me. I did my best to answer what I believe you were asking, but if I messed anything up please feel free to send another ask clarifying your questions more and I'll be happy to answer.

When it comes to resources of any kind with ASPD, they are pretty next to non-existent, at least without a lot of stigma. Your best bet is to look into more blogs like this one where pwASPD talk about their experiences with symptoms to get an idea of what it's like for the person, and then look into ASPD stigma tags to get an idea of what is stigma vs real fact, then look at the scholarly articles with that understanding of the issues the community has with current ASPD research in mind. I wish I could be of more help, but until the researchers either start actually listening to us or move out of the way and let us write the articles ourselves, that's sort of the best way I can give you to understand ASPD without accidentally ingesting some ableist views.

As for coming to an understanding with pwASPD, as far as I understand it, that can either be super easy or super difficult with BPD. In some ways, the symptoms of BPD and ASPD are almost opposites of each other, while in others they mimic each other a lot.

One thing that might help is picturing how you feel about the world while you're splitting. Many people I know with BPD have described it as feeling like people are just trying to hurt you, or to make you think you can trust them just to abandon you at the worst possible time, etc. This is sort of how many people with ASPD view the world at all times. I think a post that might really help you understand the way pwASPD see the world is one I made about the risk factors and how they affect a child who goes on to develop ASPD, as I get into detail in that post on how our world view gets shaped by our negative experiences.

Here's the link to that post:

Another major thing that might help is to remember that even if your disorders could not feel more different sometimes, at the end of the day they are just different means of coping with the same situation, namely an inability to attach securely to loved ones and especially caregivers during formative years. Whilst in BPD that can create an intense "over"attachment (as far as non CBs describe it), wherein you want to be as close to someone as possible either to make yourself feel secure that they won't leave or to try to make up for the lack of attachment during your formative years, the brain of someone with ASPD detaches because of the same circumstance. We get taught from a young age that people aren't reliable (and sometimes pwASPD even go through a period as children wherein we tried to intensely attach, and might have developed BPD if that had worked, but for whatever reason it doesn't usually due to intense negative reactions from the people we tried to intensely attach to) and that those kind of attachments don't exist in real life, or at least not in our real life, so we have to learn to both survive trusting and relying on only ourselves, and teach our brain against its better judgement that it is actually safer to not attach to anyone.

When you have gone through all of that, I'm sure you can imagine that it's hard to want anything to do with other people and thus we come off pretty cold and detached.

I don't know if I fully understood your question, so again if I didn't my bad just let me know if you want. I hope some of it helped either way.

[amlao]

Day 261 of Being Single for the First Second Time in My Adult Life

I think I fumbled Shawn.

He invited me out for a low-pressure opportunity to meet, and I was super sick with strep at the time but thought that sounded lame and embarrassing (???) so I told him I was busy.

And now he hasn’t talked to me in over a week.

I know it doesn’t make any sense now, okay?!

When someone nice and normal takes interest in me and I have an absolute inability to act right, it really reminds me how messed up I am in the dating realm.

I’m so used to men being insanely persistent and ignoring my boundaries and feigned disinterest that I almost count on it.

I know that every day that I don’t reach out, it’s going to get weirder and harder to reach out, and the stakes are going to feel higher and I’m going to be more anxious, and I don’t know how to fix it.

The longer I go without talking to him, the more I feel like what I potentially say to him has to be perfect and strategic and hilarious.

I see the connection floating away and I feel powerless to stop it.

But the worst part is that I don’t get to be self-righteous or indignant, because he was literally just nice and normal and respected my boundaries and I’m the one acting way too cool and detached on the outside but way too fixated on the inside.

I’ve been lapsing on my connections in general. I’m letting my friendship with Rebecca slip too. She’s put all the legwork into the relationship: initiating it, texting first, orchestrating the two hangouts.

I know it’s time for me to take the reigns.

It just causes me so much anxiety.

And the anxiety is inhibiting, which makes being myself and reaching out harder.

So, how do I fix this?

I like my therapist, but her solution to anxiety just seems like such a do-nothing solution.

“Acknowledge the feelings but don’t try to fight them, and you’ll get desensitized to them in time,”

So, how am I feeling?

I’m feeling inhibited. I’m feeling self-conscious. I’m feeling uncertain in my social abilities.

I feel paralyzed in indecision, because I’m avoiding reaching out to escape rejection, but I also know that my prolonged distance guarantees rejection.

Okay. And what might happen if you put yourself out there?

Shawn has lived so much life and has seemingly been a self-sufficient adult for so long. I think he sees me as an equal in a professional career on the surface, but he doesn’t really know yet. I’ve had like, the world’s longest childhood. I’m immature. I can’t cook, I don’t know how to garden—I just found out that babies don’t drink water last year. I’m sexually inexperienced and have only slept with three people. I’ve also never felt self-conscious about the fact that I’m sober by choice, but when it’s in the context of everything else, it feels…uncool and like a lack of life experience.

But that’s just your life and the stage you’re at now. If he doesn’t like these things about you, doesn’t that just mean you’re incompatible? And wouldn’t you rather find that out for sure rather than making up his mind for him and always wondering?

Yes, but…I also don’t want to witness his disappoint in who I am in real-time.

Who says he’s going to be disappointed in you because you don’t know the same things he knows or have experienced the same things he’s experienced? Isn’t learning from each other the beauty of a new connection?

Does he know about the medical things you’re learning about?

Does he know about your hobbies and interests?

Why do you always discount the things you know a lot about as unimportant or general knowledge, but are mortified when you don’t know something?

Sure, you don’t know anything about kids and you couldn’t pick out a philodendron in a lineup of flowers, but how many people your age are as financially literate as you are?

Sure, you live with your parents in your 30’s, but you’re comparing yourself to someone who was forced to grow up and never even had that opportunity. It’s not a fair comparison.

Okay, true…but what do I do now? It’s been over a week. He’s probably over it by now.

Dude, he’s been DM-ing you since 2017. I don’t think he’s going to be over it in a week.

Just be yourself. If he doesn’t like you, you just get to know it’s not right and move on without regret.

What if I say something stupid or am acting in a way that’s so obviously weird and hot-and-cold?

Remember when you talked to Nick and he was like the way you act when you like someone x 1000? Super hot and cold? Weird and detached and pushing you away, but also very obviously enamored with you under the surface?

You can’t be ANY worse than that, and that didn’t stop you from being attracted to him for like, five years.

You’ve acted normal to slightly disinterested on the surface. Just make your interest in him more obvious.

I think you’ll be fine.

But what if I show interest and he thinks it’s too much and rejects me?

Taylor, SHUT UP. If Liv from Tiktok can text her crush daily with very minimal reciprocated effort for TWENTY-SIX DAYS, you can text a guy who literally put himself out there and expressed interest in you first. JESUS CHRIST.

And what about Rebecca?

JUST TEXT HER AND MAKE PLANS. She knows you were recently sick. There’s no pressure to be alluring.

[mollynicolemurphy]

My Former Boyfriend

I just noticed someone online use the term former husband and I thought to myself… hmmmmm. Why former and not ex? So I took it to google and found a variety of pages with a comparison between the two terms. A few people believe that a parting of ways, when two people are on good terms constitutes the use of “former” rather than ex. It is more formal, honorable and respectable. I’ve gotten back on the Meta social platforms in the last two days and of course my feed is flooded with stuff on relationships. Could be of what I was always reposting or they could be tracking this blog… but nevertheless, reading all the things have been validating. True love is when you’re able to let someone go and detach with love. Now this doesn’t make it any less painful, but I said to my best friend tonight it’s a different kind of pain than I’ve experienced in the past. It’s a standing in my power kinda pain, it’s an inner knowing that I must trust kinda pain and a understanding that surrender is the only option. However, if you love yourself and you love that person, it’s the only real way to show them respect. And let me tell you, my former boyfriend is the only man ive ever truly respected and wanted to really honor. Yet I didn’t know how soooooo many of my behaviors, traits, words, energies and unhealed beliefs were creating the opposite experience for him. Leaving this man I still feel is the most deserving of honor and respect to feel/ controlled and managed. And that is what is most painful right now. A lot of my actions caused him to completely lose himself in the relationship. And that is the exact thing he was trying to find. David Deida talks about this in The Way of the Superior Man. It’s a book I’ve read three times and I really swear by his views on masculine and feminine energy. The masculine must be focused on their purpose or mission in this world otherwise they feel out of alignment. The feminine focuses on relationships. The role of the feminine is to be loving, adoring, acknowledging of the masculine on his journey and meet her own needs. I’m telling you, relationships will continue to fail in this world if we are not putting our own needs first. We become resentful at the other person and end up having to part ways because of the inability to change the dynamic and stand in our power. This is exactly what happened with my former boyfriend, our unhealed codependent parts were in control and we each lost ourselves because of our deep love and connection. So ultimately, a relationship cannot exist in harmony if you each become lost. So my work now is to find myself. And I know that’s the exact work my former boyfriend has set out to do as well. What a beautiful journey we each get to take… My heart does hope there will be a day in the future where can sit down for coffee and share about our individual journeys. He is one of my favorite people to listen to, but who knows what will happen… right now I can tell you for sure that isn’t something in which I’m remotely concerned. All I am focused on is the journey and what I will discover along the way. Perhaps, I meet another man and find even greater love!? Anything is possible! And the only thing I want from my from my former boyfriend is that he finds inner peace and happiness. Well and maybe an apology for ending our relationship via text. 🙈🤣

[eyeless-cunt]

Prompt idea: Eyeless Jack stumbled upon a victims house to find them chained up, covered in wounds and bruises, and obviously poorly treated. EJ is about to nope tf out but she reaches out to him with t h e l o o k. So he has to help her escape. AND THEN LO AND BEHOLD THE RAT BOY (or whoever) APPEARS AND TURNS OUT SHE'S HIS HOSTAGE. -Cat eyes

PART 1: HEALING FIC

PROMT 11

alright listen— ill bite. but we’re gonna change this a lil.

🔪—————————————————————————🌸

word count: 3.5 k

summary: Ej is hundreds of years into his immortal life, the human population has run into their cities and left the woods to the dogs. Ej finds someone in his woods with something to hide, and then finds the hidden

nsfw: no just angst and trying to heal

warnings: gore, blood, violence, mentions of sexual abuse/sexual violence/hintings of rape, kidnapped reader, sensory deprivation, spitting on corpses that deserve it

READ PART TWO HERE

🌸—————————————————————————🔪

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. But then again, it didn’t exactly start out the way it was supposed to either.

I was just hungry. That’s it. I hadn’t eaten in a while, i’m still not sure how long I went without food. That’s not important. I was just hungry. They were just standing there. I didn’t question why they were in the woods, why they were bloody. I didn’t question why I had never seen this cabin before, why someone was in my woods, why he had blood all over him, blood that wasn’t his own.

I was just hungry.

If I didn’t eat soon then another part of me would surface. I needed food. He was my food, and I didnt give him time to blink. I pounced as soon as I saw him, teeth sunk into his throat faster than lightning, to ensure a quick death and the inability to fight me back. I didn’t want a half assed human’s struggle, I wanted food.

I was done with him in less than thirty minutes, I had practically picked him from the bone. My hunger was sated, but my new curiosity in the wake of getting my sense back was not. Why was he in my woods, so far from human civilization. Who’s blood was covering him? I was so hungry I hadn’t stopped to taste him, I hadn’t noticed the difference between that blood and his. I doubt I would find any of it now in the wake of what I had done to him.

I smelt for a trail. What direction had he come from? West. I left him, there was no one else around to see him anyways. He had no use anymore. For some reason, I didn’t think anyone would miss him. I followed his scent trail, it didn’t stay to the path. I went through my woods, I hadn’t been to this area in a long ass time. Years maybe ? Not sure. I had lived too long. It could have been easily twenty years since I’d last visited this area and I would have no idea.

I’m not sure how long it was, I don’t keep time well, I came across a medium cabin. It looked like it’d been added to a few times. It was ugly. I wanted to burn it. Why the fuck was this in my woods? How did the little shit stain even get here? Slender needed work on his cloaking skills, it seemed. I walked around it, Listening keenly. I heard movement. Faint. I could hear things clearly from extreme distances, so why was this sound faint? A basement? That still wouldn’t do much. A sound proof room? Why would he have one of those?

My curiosity peeked, and I found myself trying to open the front door, only to find it locked. I smirked and rolled my eyes. What a weak door. Humans could be cute sometimes too. I delivered one kick to it, and the hinges completely gave out. I scoffed at how brittle it was, and continued inside the cabin. No lights were on, but that was fine. I could see perfectly fine, eyes or not.

I searched all the rooms—nothing to be found in any of them. So it was a basement then. I pulled up all the rugs in the cabin—nothing. What was he trying to hide so badly? I tried listening once again, but could hear nothing of what I had heard before. I smelt around and caught the scent of fresh blood. I followed it to what seemed to be his bedroom, and into his closet. I rummaged around his clothes and lo and behold— a wide wooden board too out of place to be natural. I tugged it and it stayed in place. If i couldn’t move it then how would he? I tugged a bit harder and it came undone in a splintering mess. If I hadn’t been wearing gloves then I would have gotten my hands dirty. This place was a mess.

It was a dark hole. Straight down with a rusty ladder. I definitely had not been in this area for a longer time than I had previously thought. I ignored the ladder and jumped down, hitting the ground about eight feet down. I looked around the space I had jumped into. One room. One door. I tried opening the door only to find a digital lock. I broke it with my fist and tried again. Still wouldn’t budge. I sighed and kicked the door. Why did he need such a thick metal door? How much porn was he hiding down here, hm?

I kicked it harder, once again, harder and again, and eventually it caved in on the side. I grabbed the part that I kicked in and tried pulling it my way, no dice. I moved backwards and stood two feet away from the door, then ramming my shoulder into it hard enough to send the door crashing into the opposite wall, making a loud crashing noise that reverberated through the room. My bad. I looked inside to find it bright, artificially lit, obviously. I almost walked right back out again after seeing what I saw.

In the corner was a slumped figure. She had bandages covering her eyes, arms chained above her and her feet in heavy shackles. Plugs in her ears, rag in her mouth, and gook stuffed in her nose. She couldn’t hear, see, or smell me. He was torturing a girl down here. I couldn’t tell her age or anything, but she definitely felt the tremors I had caused with the door— seeing as she had her head turning every which way and was pressing herself against the wall.

No wonder he had so much to hide. I walked over to her, and took the rag out of her mouth. What do I do with her? Do I set her free? What if she sends the cops to my woods? Slenderman’s cloaking only does so much. She immediately took a deep breath, and started choking on the air. Her chest moved up and down sporadically and she hung limp in her chains. She said nothing.

I took out the ear plugs and waited again. She said nothing. I couldn’t see her facial expression behind her bandages. i took the corner of her shirt and wiped the gook out of her nose as best as I could. She was patient and didn’t put up a fight. How long had she been down here? How long had she been kicked into submission? I was hesitant to remove the bandages, was she injured?

“What’s wrong with your face.”

She immediately halted any movement, then started to struggle. She didn’t recognize my voice and immediately figured I was a threat, it seemed. She just pulled against her chains, her mouth slightly open and her lungs laboring harshly. She obviously was a harsh breather. I didn’t know how long she had been here. How much of her stamina had been sapped away?

“Calm down. What’s wrong with your face?”

She didn’t say anything, just kept breathing harshly. She stilled immediately though. Obviously she knew english.

“If you don’t answer i’ll take the bandages off myself.”

She pressed further into the wall, and started shaking like a leaf when I cut a bandage with my nail, after removing a glove and sticking it in my pocket. I tugged at it and unwrapped her face, now in full view after a few moments. I didn’t see anything wrong with her. Normal. She however, started to cry as soon as the bandage hit the floor, reaching for it as hard as she could. She shook her head at me, willing me to go away.

“Do you want to be free?”

She only cried harder, grasping at her chains and pushing away from me, gasping for air.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Her sobs racked her entire body, as if she was expecting something that she couldn’t stop. I took her left arm chain into my hands and crushed it. It took more force then I was expecting, yet I did a leg one next, trying not to crush her leg in the process. She was probably scared out of her mind watching me crush her restraints with one hand like it was nothing, so I didn’t look up to see her reaction. I went to the next leg chain and then her arm. When I was done I expected her to run, hit me, scream, freeze up.

Nothing. The clasps of the chains that were now detached from the actual chains were still dangling from her limbs. I wouldn’t be able to crush those without hurting her fatally. She only stood there, swaying, and she looked immensely confused. I didn’t blame her. Where do we go from here? I settled on getting her out of this room.

“Can you make your way out by yourself?”

Nothing. I was starting to get annoyed. I was all for peace and quiet but this kinda pissed me off.

“Answer.”

I felt bad about growling like that, it was deep and could probably make a child cry. She flinched back and hit the wall, her lip trembled. Still nothing.

I wasn’t all too patient at this moment, I was still recovering from who knows how long of hunger. I wasn’t in my normal mental state. I was harsher, meaner, louder, easier to anger.

So I grabbed her arm. Maybe a little too hard. I hadn’t been gentle with something in a long time. I had forgotten how much my strength had increased over the years. This immortal body had forgotten how to be soft. She whimpered and winced, but never pulled away.

I dragged her to the ladder and made her to grab the rungs. Forced her up the ladder and out of the closet. She hit the ground at her knees when I released her. I noticed the blueish purple marks on her, where I had been. Shit. It looked almost mangled. Why didn’t she pull away? How long had she been down here?

I tried again. I tried to be softer. This human wasn’t for eating right now. I tried to remember that when I hoisted her up onto my back, her arms hanging limply over my shoulders, her head pressing softly against my back. Small, fragile. Just like all humans. Even smaller than that man in the woods. It didn’t matter their size, gender, strength— they were all small and fragile prey to me. Something caught my eye. Something I hadn’t noticed before. I set her on the couch, practically dropping her there. She stayed put, didn’t move an inch.

Something that no human would notice, a thin crack in the wall. I pulled at it and it came undone quite easily. A simple hidden door behind water rotted wallpaper. Simple, easy, no one would look here. I entered cautiously, was there another human here?

No. Just a video camera and a computer. Set up at a desk in the corner of the room. I turned it on, it blarring to life loudly. Human technology had grown in the years, and apparently gotten louder with the years as well. I looked around the screen, everything was labeled with dates. The earliest one was two days ago. I clicked on it only to freeze for a moment. Pictures of her. Pictures of his hand at her throat, fingers in her mouth, a picture of him digging his nails into her left breast.

I clicked through them, there was easily fifty of them. Disgusted, I clicked out of them to try to find the earliest ones. sixteen years ago. I hesitated, then clicked. A video.

The screen was dark for a few seconds, then someone picked up the camera and suddenly the soundproof room wall was visible. The man holding the camera sniffed a bit and turned the camera to face empty restaints on the wall. They were different from the rough chains she had previously been trapped in.

“Alright, well, here they are! I think they should hold my little pet fairly well. They’re pretty sturdy and adjustable. God she’s such a thrasher, so I hope these hold as well as the guy who made them said they would. Not like she’d be able to leave the room anyways but... well I’d still rather her be restrained,” he sniffed again, and his hand made it’s way onto camera, reaching out to hold the brown straps and mess with them.

“I’m sure she’ll love this room much better than the previous one. That one was so dark, I know she’s afraid of the dark so I felt kinda bad. Hearing her cry in the middle of the night was so annoying. Made me wanna hit her upside the head and knock her out. Aha, yeah, but,” another sniff, “I really should go grab her and get her into this. bye now.”

The video ended. The next one was two hours later. I clicked it and once again there was a dark screen for just a few seconds.

When the camera got pulled up however it showed not a wall but her instead. She was so much smaller, so worn and bruised. She was glaring at the camera, tugging at her restraints. She seemed so tired, like fighting back and pulling constantly was starting to hurt her arms. She seemed to be in a lot of pain.

“Tell the camera your name. Come on now.”

Her lip trembled, then she started to thrash harder, letting out a scream. He growled and grabbed her by the throat, shoving her head back against the wall.

“Tell. The. Camera. Your fucking name. Now.”

She whimpered and stopped struggling. Tears had pooled in her eyes and her lips trembled harder. He pushed against her throat again when he got no response.

“y/n.”

She said it quietly, but he seemed satisfied. He released her throat and delivered a soft hand on her head, patting there gently. She tried to cower away from his hand but he still followed.

“And how old are you, y/n ?”

She started to cry, a hiccup hitting the air. He moved his hand to her throat again but she didn’t need the warning this time.

“Si-si-six,” followed by another hiccup and sob.

He cooed at her, asking her things like what her favorite color was and her favorite song. She cried through the whole thing, her cries gradually getting louder. The video ended panned on her face, her eyes cast downward and tears streaks down her face.

I was grossed out, disgusted. I had the thought that maybe I should have dealt with him in a slower, crueler way. I searched through the pictures, looking for another video. Maybe it was morbid curiosity, maybe it was the need to understand what she’d been through. It didn’t matter, I just needed to see more.

It panned directly on her face now. She was full out sobbing and thrashing, her cries bordering on screaming. He had a hand at her throat and a hand on the camera. He got up and set the camera down on a nearby surface. He walked into view, and changed tha angle so you could see her full body in the restaints. I got a sick feeling in my stomach, but continued to watch, wondering where this was going. The bandages were now on her face. I looked at the date of the video, july 27th, seven years after the first video. She would be thirteen at this point. Still so young. He walked into the view of the camera, a wild smile on his face. Sure enough, it was the man in my woods.

“Y/n... do you want to be free?”

She sobbed louder, gasping and screaming, “No! Stop! I don’t want to do this again! I hate it! It hurts! Its disgu—

He delivered a swift slap to her face, causing her to whince and cry more. She stopped speaking but continued sobbing. He glared at her, even though she couldn’t see it with the bandages on.

“You know not to talk like that. Especially on camera. And it’s not disgusting! So don’t ever say that. It’s an act of love, you useless and spineless whore. It means I love you.”

He continued insulting her, spitting out insults and praising himself, telling her how much he loved her, how lucky she was to be here with him, ect. It was disgusting to watch. He started to grope her all over, her body shaking. She was scared. She was terrified. He took her face in his hands and upwrapped the bandages, dropping them on the floor. Her facial expression was heartbreaking. She looked so beaten and broken down.

“I’ll ask again, do you want to be free?”

“NO!”

“Wrong answer,” she sobbed harder, her head limp and slouched over as her cries took over her body, “Of course you want to be free, and i’ll show you how to be. Just relax. It’s fine.”

I was sick to my stoumach at this point. The events that transpired next I won’t explain, they were too vile and disgusting to explain in full detail. I didn’t end up finishing that video. I turned off the computer, and walked out the door and back into the living room where I had set her. She was still there. Looking at her after seeing those videos, those pictures, those memories— I still felt sick. She had gone through that in my woods. I had neglected patrolling my woods for so long, and this had happened as a result. I had become lazy, I had relied on slender and his cloaking. That decision had allowed this to occur. It was my fault that she had endured this pain for sixteen years. It was up to me to make it up to her, even though I knew it was impossible to make up for that amount of crushing hurt. I knew it, but I still tried.

I approached her slowly, then kneeling down to her face level where she laid on the couch. She starred at me, but said nothing. She was confused. I didn’t blame her.

“Can you walk? Or do you want me to carry you? If you don’t answer i’ll assume you want to be carried, and I won’t blame you. You probably have no leg strength left.”

She said nothing once again, and so I picked her up, more gently than I had before, more fitting of thin and expensive decorative glass. Her arms swayed limply as I carried her princess style out of the cabin and into my woods. I walked through the trees and stopped a few meters away from the man’s body. I felt that she needed justice, she needed to know she was safe. He was gone. I just didn’t know how to go about it. So I did so cautiously.

“The man who kidnapped you,” she froze in my arms, “he’s gone. Forever. He’s dead. Do you want to see? It’s gross, bloody, a disgusting display. You won’t even recognize him. He’s practically bones and slop now. If you don’t say anything i’ll assume you don’t want to see and we won’t continue in this direction. He’s just past those trees. So, do you want to see what’s left of your captor?”

I waited for a minute, but she didn’t say anything. I took that as my answer and turned around, ready to go in another direction. Her harsh grip on my sweatshirt stopped me. I looked down to see her lip quivering.

“I want to see it.”

She said it so soft, but I heard it. I nodded and turned back towards the trees, steadily making my way there. When I got there I stopped three feet from his body. She looked towards him, face turned away from me. I couldn’t see her expression. She started to cry, harshly and loudly. She went limp in my arms, so I kneeled down on the ground gently, setting her down and moving her so that she leaned against me. She cried for a good amount of time, I didn’t mind. When she stopped, she waited for a minute, then got up, me helping her. She took steps towards him, and when she was a foot away, she spit right on his skull. I almost smiled under my mask.

“Are you ready to go?”

She nodded and I picked her up once again, then making my way to my place. I wondered where to go from here. How much physical rehabilitation would she need to be able to move freely without my help? How much mental help? Did she have a home to go back to? Could I send her back? Would I keep her with me until she died? Humans had such short life spans, it wouldn’t be that long for me. Would she even want to stay with me? And what happens when I accidentally get too hungry and go feral, or on the verge of feral?

Would I kill her?

[brabe]

WHAT IF... MURATA UGETSU HAS BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER?

“Murata Ugetsu was by no means detached from life- nor was he free of worries and grief, he had feelings too- the same as anyone else... But, unlike ordinary people, his heart and his emotions were overflowing.

While I listened to Ugetsu’s music that day—to the sudden flood of music-feeling that was amplified so many times more than usual, I found myself wondering — how... just how was this child prodigy able to live...?

Be it joy, or sorrow, or suffering, Ugetsu lived with feelings which were much more complex, and exponentially larger than those of ordinary people- just accumulating it all within himself.” (Chapter 17)

Murata Ugetsu’s introduction struck a chord with me right away because I recognized the feelings described all too well. So, I asked myself, what if?

 After finishing the anime, I read all the chapters of the manga mainly because I wanted to know more about this intriguing character, and I only kept finding clues that reinforced my initial assumption.

 I am hyperfixated on mental health issues, in part wanting to find characters to relate to, so here is my reading of Murata Ugetsu. I wonder if anyone came to the same conclusion as me.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is an illness marked by an ongoing pattern of varying moods, self-image, and behaviour. These symptoms often result in impulsive actions and problems in relationships with other people. A person with borderline personality disorder may experience episodes of anger, depression, and anxiety that may last from a few hours to days. In general, someone with a personality disorder will differ significantly from an average person in terms of how they think, perceive, feel or relate to others.

“People with BPD are like people with third degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement.” (Marsha Linehan, Professof of Psicology, who has BPD herself and developed the most effective therapy to date for this disorder).

There are many categories of symptoms for this disorder and I reckon Ugetsu manifests the following:

A pattern of unstable relationships swinging from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation):

The most glaringly obvious one is, of course, the relationship with Akihiko. 

“Right after Ugetsu has been away from home for some time, there is a honeymoon phase which lasts a few days. It’s as if we have returned to the past... And then out of the blue, it happens—as if he’s saying, yes, this is a great chance—let's take this opportunity, quit being together and break for real this time. Like he is in a rush... Like I am not needed. Like—he is forcibly shutting me out from his world.” (Chapter 19)

“Him and I... We have been causing each other nothing but despair for almost two years now.” (Chapter 17)  

It’s also notable the lack of other relationships. When Mafuyu asks him, why Ugetsu was confiding in him, even though they were virtually strangers, Ugetsu replies: “Because I don’t have any friends! Perhaps, I really just wanted someone to understand... Just a little bit is enough.” (Chapter 17)

He is actually really kind towards Mafuyu, opening his home to him, freely helping him with music anytime Mafuyu wants even though he is a world-renowned musician and even letting him practice at his house while he is not there. We know he does that because he recognizes the genius in Mafuyu, but still, I think he actually would like to have friends; he probably just doesn’t know how to. We know that Akihiko was his first friend and evidently years later still the only one close to him.

Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger, often followed by guilt and shame:

Ugetsu gets suddenly physically violent with Akihiko two times (and a third one is implied when Haruki first saw Akihiko and he had a bruised cheekbone). He throws a glass on the floor when Mafuyu visits him because Akihiko still hasn’t come back home. He seemingly inexplicably smashes the mug Akihiko gifted him: “Around the time we had just started to live together, when he brought me my first present, somehow... I hated that very much, and I refused it saying—’I don’t want it!’ Even though it was only a mug. Back then, I should’ve just said—’I’m happy. I want to be with him.’” (Chapter 17)

I believe the last one was a dissociative episode, another symptom of BPD, a trance-like state in which one is disconnected from their own mind, body and surroundings. Then the switch turns back on and Ugetsu suddenly starts crying, crouching on the floor, staring blankly at the broken pieces and picking them up, asking himself why, just why did I do this?

The guilt and shame aspect is also shown, when after having recounted his history with Akihiko to Mafuyu, Ugetsu leans his head on the steering wheel of his car remembering everything, clearly in grief, and thinking to himself: “Really... He is a good guy, isn’t he.” (Chapter 17). Here I want to indeed praise Akihiko and underline how well he dealt with Ugetsu’s dissociative episode. He didn’t freak out and lash out at Ugetsu, calling him crazy, but instead he tried to diffuse the situation, laughing and helping Ugetsu to pick up the pieces of the broken mug. As if to say, ‘it’s okay.’

Desperate efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment:  

One way of doing this is leaving the other person before they leave you, which is exactly what Ugetsu does or tries to do. He is terrified that Akihiko will leave him definitely one day, but at the same time he actively tries to make him leave: “I’m the lowest son of a bitch towards Akihiko and I guess he resents me, y’know... But I love him to death.” (Chapter 17)

“I’ve been pushing him away but he hasn’t given up on me at all. I’ve been trying to leave him every chance I get. But it seems like I’m still not good at doing that, so... I’ve always been waiting for him to let go of me.” (Chapter 17)

“What if he never came back, just like that? I’ve thought about it countless times. Yet, I’m still not able to imagine it. Tomorrow, he might come back all of a sudden? Or maybe he won’t? But, just the same, I want this suffering to end. But on second thought, I don’t really want that. All the stuff that’s in this room right now, the thought that everything might disappear... Will nothing... Not one thing remain?” (Chapter 27)

Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self:  

It’s fair to say the core obstacle in his relationship with Akihiko. Ugetsu’s whole existence is ingrained irrevocably in music. It is what gives his life purpose and the outlet with which he deals with his too intense emotions. Which leads me to wonder what would happen if for some reason he lost music. And I am not positive he would survive that.

“After we graduated from high school—at the time, when I was actively performing as a musician... one day all of a sudden I realized, the existence of the other—was the one thing we both chased after the most in this world. As long as Akihiko is with me, I’ll be unable to become free with my music.” (Chapter 17)

Ugetsu felt as if he was losing himself and his music in his love for Akihiko, which brings to the unstable sense of self. This terrified him. Love is messy for everyone and anyone but with BPD emotions are plugged into an amplifier and dialled up to the maximum (“But for my heart to be touched like that”). He can’t deal with all of this and the fight-or-flight response is triggered and “Let’s end this already.” (Chapter 17)

Black-or-white thinking:  

People with BPD often struggle to see the complexity in people and situations and are unable to recognize that things are often not either perfect or horrible, but are something in between. This can lead to "splitting," which refers to an inability to maintain a cohesive set of beliefs about oneself and others. Ugetsu seems to be obsessed with perfection and probably to be a world-renowned violinist you need to be to a certain degree. But for example, when asked by Akihiko to come to the band’s first live, he replies with: “Is it at a level that you can show me? Ah... it’s not at a level where you can reply to me right away... then, I won’t come. There’s no point watching a performance if the performer doesn’t have the confidence to do it well.” (Chapter 8)

Ugetsu doesn’t exist in the in-betweens. There is pefection or worthlessness, love or hate, music or Akihiko.

Depression:

Ugetsu manifests many symptoms of depression.

He is either practicing the violin or sleeping. 

He seems to undereat. Almost in every panel in which they are at home, Akihiko worries about whether Ugetsu has eaten or not, and always offers to cook for him, implying that Ugetsu wouldn’t bother if left to his own devices.  

He is untidy and careless to some degree. At the violin concerto where Ugetsu is the soloist, Akihiko exclaims: “Again? That idiot... His hair is a mess.” (Chapter 15) implying that it isn’t the first time that Ugetsu appears somewhat shabby at a formal event, in which furthermore he is the star. This fact in particular surprised me because I had the impression that Ugetsu was vain.

This neglectfulness also reflects in his living space. Once Akihiko leaves, the house is in complete disarray. When Akihiko comes back to say he will move out, the debris of the glass Ugetsu smashed when Mafuyu visited are still there.

Last but not least, Ugetsu lives in a soundproofed basement in semidarkness, a fortress of solitude of sorts from the outside world.

Suicidal thoughts or threats:  

“Well, when I was a kid, I used to go to some unknown old man’s plantation on my own, and I enjoyed killing bugs by squishing them with my right hand, y’know... Then, on one clear sunny day, I happened to listen to some music playing on that old man’s radio. It was ‘In the flow of time’ by Paul Simon... Yet even though I was only a kid, I thought, wow... I want to die... It’s a good day, isn’t it? Well, there were other things too, but somehow, I wonder If I’ve basically been chasing that feeling of dying from back then...” (Chapter 21.5)

Well, this passage speaks for itself. In some capacity Ugetsu has been pondering on death, has been chasing it, since he was a small child. I think this can be linked to the BPD symptom of chronic feelings of emptiness.

Impulsive, self-destructive and sensation-seeking behaviours:  

In this category I think we can include the sleeping around in which Ugetsu engages. While not a harmful behaviour in itself, I think the motive is. Ugetsu has been systematically sleeping around for two years not because he actually wants to and it makes him feel good, but he does it to spite Akihiko and as a coping mechanism to try and get over him. This wouldn’t do good to anyone’s mental health and self-worth.

“Ugetsu and I fought all the time, even after we broke up. That... was because of his timing when it came to finding a new man... It was as though he was doing to spite me.” (Chapter 19)

Intense and highly changeable moods:

Simply, all of the above.

This is all for now. I will edit this list if future chapters will shed more light on the mind and heart of this character that I have come to care so deeply about.

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

Hi, I have a small issue I don't know who to talk about. I was diagnosed with BPD, depression and anxiety with strong disociative behaviours and possible ADHD (yeah.. ) I'm currently in theraphy (CBT) but here's a thing.. a lot of the time I get asked how I feel and. I can't identify it. On a good day theres either an emptiness or some chocking feeling that i can never name very well. Idk how to tell what I'm feeling or access it, basically. And trying to do it during theraphy is even worse caus

cause i instinctually block. so i'm sitting there and i feel like i'm wasting my time and money because i can't put the problem into words even for myself, let alone analyse and express it. Is this a common issue? I told the therapist that's how it is and she just told me to close my eyes and breath and that doesn't really help. I'm honestly at the end of my rope

i’m FAR from a qualified therapist, but i do know that there’s something called alexithymia, which causes an inability to identify and describe emotions. this post and this post talk about what it’s like. i certainly can’t say that this is what you’re dealing with, but it’s definitely something to look into.

however, i think that this could also be a result of your dissociation. dissociating is, by definition, detaching yourself from yourself - your thoughts, feelings, surroundings, etc. not being able to get in contact with your emotions could easily be a natural result of the dissociation you already know for a fact you deal with.

i don’t think that therapy in of itself is a waste, but it sounds to me like you need another therapist because this one just isn’t cutting it. it sounds like she means well but just doesn’t know how to treat someone with dissociation on top of other issues. she shouldn’t just sit there and push you to answer questions you can’t answer, she should be giving you tools and helping to guide you to the roots of the problem. if you don’t feel better equipped to cope with your problems after a session, then yes, this therapist is a waste of time and money. but that doesn’t mean therapy itself is a waste or that you can’t find a therapist who can genuinely help you.

all in all, i’m not remotely surprised by what you’re dealing with, considering how fucked up your brain is. (which i say in the kindest way possible, as someone who also has a seriously fucked up brain.) i don’t know exactly how common this is, but i would say that it’s completely normal considering where you’re coming from - especially if you have a history of trauma. detaching from your emotions can be a survival mechanism, which works great until the need to survive has passed and you don’t know how to re-attach.

my going to therapy tag has several posts about how to find a therapist that meets your needs, and how to better communicate with a therapist. i’d suggest you start ‘shopping’ for a better therapist right away. not clicking with a therapist and needing to keep searching til you find one who really helps you is a totally normal experience.

in the meantime, i would suggest you work on some grounding exercises to help combat the dissociation and maybe (only maybe; don’t pressure yourself) get more connected to your body and emotions. keep what helps and toss out what doesn’t. and remember that therapy and recovery isn’t like flipping a switch, it’s like building a muscle or learning a skill: it takes time, effort, practice, and failure. failure is part of the process, so please don’t give up on yourself, darling.

to be thorough, here are some more useful tags: ADHD, anxiety, borderline personality disorder, depression, dissociation, mental illness resources, therapy resources.

i hope that helps a little bit, dear. i know this is hard, but take care of yourself. <3

[pandoraborn]

Throw me to the Ground (and watch me fly)

Chapter Three (AO3 Link.) Word Count: 2709 words Characters: Schlatt, Dream Content: attempted manipulation, jealousy

-----

The office is unusually quiet this time of night. Normally, Niki or Quackity would be hovering nearby, but evidence shows they’d left early, probably due to the random announcement Schlatt had made, concerning Tommy. He’d been so sure of himself in the initial moment, and after Tommy left, Schlatt had promptly announced it to the entire white house staff. The majority of them had seemed pretty stoked, especially considering Tommy already had experience with leadership and power; it was natural he’d be the perfect fit.

However, now that the adrenaline is wearing off, Schlatt isn’t so sure of himself. Tommy hadn’t seemed as excited as everyone else, and he can’t figure out why. It hadn’t been until he’d agreed to take on the role of vice president that his wings lifted up off the ground, and he’d seemed happy. There had been something off about the teen this time, and Schlatt feels like he’d been played.

It has to be Wilbur’s fault.

No, he’s not going to start thinking like that. Wilbur had never lied to him, Wilbur had never once led him astray. The man was always honest with his words and intentions, and if he had wanted Tommy to be vice president the whole time, he’d have made that perfectly clear. Schlatt has to admit that this had been entirely his idea. It doesn’t mean he’s happy about it.

Who would be? He’d appointed a sixteen year old to be vice president of an entire country. It doesn’t matter if Tommy had helped create and build it, he’s still a teenager and should be treated as such. Schlatt wonders if it’s too late to take it all back, to find someone else who’s older. Then again, Tommy does have the most experience out of everyone who works under him. Tommy would know best how things are run, or supposed to be.

There’s also the question of whether or not Tommy can follow orders. The teen is known to be very stubborn, with an inability to listen very well. Would the new president have his hands full? He hopes not. Tommy is the younger brother of his closest friend, Schlatt has to put trust in the entire family as a whole. They would never betray him. Tommy would never betray him.

He hopes.

Coming back to reality has Schlatt realizing he’s still sitting in his office. He’s still behind his desk, staring at the dark oak, the computer that’s shut off, and the mess of papers scattered around the edge of his desk. Had his office been like this when the others were here, or had he messed it up somewhere in between then and now? He had been jovial when Wilbur and Tommy had been here, sitting on his desk and creating a mess. He barely remembers the meeting though, but that logic does make the most sense.

With a sigh, Schlatt leans forward, reaching out to grab at the mess in some hurried attempt to organize it. He wants to get home and relax. Being here in just making him think strange things, like feeling resentment toward a kid. There’s a mess of papers that still need to be sorted too, like documenting the new addition to leadership.

That alone is going to be another several signatures and faxes for official purposes. Tommy’s going to need a letterhead of his own. Fuck.

“Knock knock?”

The voice is not what he had expected to hear, and it comes with a slight reverb. Schlatt jumps out of his chair, glaring at his door frame. He’d expected Quackity or Wilbur to come back, so to see Dream standing there is different. Dream has no business being in the white house. Schlatt narrows his eyes, but beckons him into the office anyway. If Dream’s there, it’s bound to be something important.

“It’s after hours, Dream. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” The mask on Dream’s face is the only emotion being shown. The rest of him is nothing but a sea of green, with only the vaguest of silhouettes to show he has some shape to him. Schlatt finds himself wondering what Dream even is, if not human. Angel? The wings on Dream’s back would indicate as much. The faceless, endless green would also indicate as much.

“Schlatt, I came because I had a feeling you needed some help.”

“No thank you.” He offers a smile as he stacks papers. Maybe the paperwork can wait until tomorrow. He’s itching to go home at this point. “I’m a very busy man.”

“Oh, don’t worry! I didn’t come to take over your job. I wanted to bring up a few concerns I had.” Dream walks further into the office, pressing his hands to the desk. The more Schlatt looks at him now, the more he can see a humanoid figure. He can see a faint outline of a face underneath the mask, too. There’s an urge to ask what creature Dream is, but Schlatt bites his tongue. That would probably be a rude question to ask in the first place.

“What concerns?” He asks. “I wasn’t aware that I needed help from someone like you.”

“Everyone always needs me for something.” Dream pushes the mask up, showing his mouth. There’s a grin on his face that doesn’t exactly give off a friendly aura. “It’s why I’m here, Schlatt. I’m always needed, whether or not people realize it.”

Sitting back down, Schlatt gestures for the sofa. “Alright Dream, if you’re so smart, then enlighten me. What could I possibly need any help with?”

“Tommy, of course.” Dream takes the silent offer and perches himself in the middle of the couch. He spreads his wings out, overtaking the length on either side of him. Feather flutter to the floor, as if Dream had detached them himself. Shades of black, white and green feathers fall all over the place, almost like they’re taunting him for his lack of wings. Schlatt can’t help but stare at them. He continues to stare until Dream clears his throat, causing his gaze to snap back to the entity.

“Tommy,” Dream repeats. “You appointed him vice president earlier today, if I’m not mistaken. You’re having doubts about the position because of his age. There’s more to it than that though, isn’t there?”

The blood drains out of his face. How does Dream know about that? He’s sure Dream hadn’t been in the office when he told Tommy, unless Dream has the ability to turn invisible. That thought is unlikely.

“How...how do you know that? I barely even told the rest of the white house staff.” Schlatt’s gripping his desk now, refusing to look in Dream’s direction. His mind is racing, trying to come up with every likely scenario possible. More than that, it’s the thought that Dream had just hinted he knows there’s more to the situation. He knows Schlatt is doubting himself. How does he know that?

“It doesn’t have to make sense,” Dream says softly. “Nothing has to make sense for it to exist. Life itself doesn’t make sense. Why else would a sixteen year old help build an entire nation?” He tilts his head to the side. When Schlatt looks at him this time, there’s no trace of humanity in him. He’s back to being a vivid, bright shade of green that’s almost blinding. The wings seem to be glowing as well. Dream is painful to look at. Yet, he’s radiating a sympathetic aura that Schlatt almost finds comfort in. Someone who understands him…

Wait. Dream is speaking about sense while not making any himself. He shouldn’t be listening to the words coming out of the entity’s mouth.

“What are you doing, Dream?” Schlatt asks. “You can’t come in here and start acting like you know what I’m thinking. I trust Wilbur, and I trust Tommy. Furthermore, you can’t possibly know things unless you were actually here.”

“But I was here, and I do know things.” Dream folds his wings around himself, once again drawing his gaze. “I see the way you’re staring at my wings, Mr. President. I’ve seen the way you stare at their wings too. Anyone with half a brain cell can tell you’re jealous.”

“I’m not jealous.” The reply is immediate, terse and overly defensive. He winces at his tone, trying to backpedal. “I’m not exactly fully human myself, you know.” A grin is forced onto his face as he turns his head to the side. “See these horns? I’m also a hybrid. I have nothing to be jealous of, especially not wings.”

“Yeah, that’s obvious.” Dream’s mask seems to smile wider. “Everyone can see you’re a goat hybrid, it’s not exactly a secret. I wouldn’t mind being a goat hybrid, the horns are pretty cool.”

“I guess.” Schlatt’s already done with this conversation. If kept up, they’d go around in circles with this pointless small talk.

“You want wings though, don’t you? It’s why you’ve always kept Wilbur close. You’re clearly hoping to gain something out of the friendship. So I’ve come to offer that to you.”

“That’s not true.” Schlatt abruptly gets to his feet. He’s done with this conversation, and he’s tired of Dream poking holes in his life. It’s decidedly not fun having some godlike entity poking at his vulnerability, pretending to know and understand him. He especially doesn’t like the insinuation that he’s using Wilbur.

Whatever spell Dream is attempting to weave is shattered the second he’s on his feet. “Wilbur’s been a great friend to me, his family’s wonderful. They’re great people, very law-abiding and upstanding. I’m not going to let anyone talk me out of my decisions.”

“If you say so.” Dream stretches out his wings again, mirroring Schlatt. He’s on his feet, and there’s that faint outline of a human face beneath the mask. Schlatt can see freckles. “It’s clear you don’t trust Tommy though.”

“I trust him just fine,” Schlatt snaps. “I think it’s time you leave.” He waves toward the door. “He’s already had a hand in running this country, I know he’ll continue to uphold it to my liking.”

“Yeah, but he said ‘maintain its dignity.’ It’s like he doesn’t trust you, Schlatt. You’re smart enough to see right through him.” Dream lets out a giggle as he moves toward the door, wings fluttering. Dream is still taunting him, and feathers are still floating around. Schlatt has a vision of himself burning every last feather left on his floor.

“I’m busy,” he says instead. “I have a lot of work to complete before I go home, and you’re just taking up time with random bullshit that’s not even true.”

“Oh, of course, of curse.” Dream nods. “Because you don’t wear your emotions on your sleeve, and you don’t get moody whenever someone calls you out on your own bullshit. You’re the president, Mr. Schlatt, you definitely know what’s best for this country.”

“I was elected, wasn’t I?” Again, he waves toward the door. “It was a fair election, and even Wilbur conceded. I’m the one in charge. Don’t come into my office and start trying to dictate things to me. You’re not even a citizen.”

“No, but considering this country is in the middle of my land, I think I have a right to express my concerns. I was under the impression you shared them. I’ll admit I was wrong though, once you admit that maybe, just maybe, I know you better than you think I do.”

Schlatt shakes his head. “You don’t know me at all if you think anything about what you said is true.”

“So why constantly stare at their wings? Or mine, for that matter? It’s like you’re hypnotized. I know that look, I’ve seen it before. It’s envy to an unhealthy degree.”

“Because they’re pretty, duh.” Schlatt rolls his eyes. “The only thing you might be right about is the fact that Tommy’s young.”

“Oh, I didn’t say that part.” The mask seems to grow even wider. If Schlatt squints, he thinks he can see teeth in that poorly drawn smile. It’s downright terrifying, and the implications that Dream has more power than anyone knows is even more so. “You said that, not me. I just said to you that he might be a problem.”

“He’s sixteen years old. Anyone with, what was it you said? Half a brain cell- would be concerned about his leadership skills.” Schlatt is no longer feeling so tired. Adrenaline is pumping through his body, making him feel on edge. Something about Dream’s presence is unsettling, and Schlatt wants to put as much distance between them as possible. “This is my country, and I get to make the final decisions.”

“But it’s not really your country though, is it?” Dream’s hovering in the door frame now, as if that too is framing his silhouette. Everything about him seems to be glowing, and Schlatt once again is staring. This time, with disgust rather than awe. “You appointed the person who found it as vice president. I mean, I didn’t come here to tell you what to do or how to run things. Yeah, it’s your country, but you just ensured that Tommy’s always going to have a say in how things are done. I’m not sure you’re not his puppet anymore.”

“Get out,” Schlatt snarls. “I’m busy, and you’re just throwing random shit out there and hoping to get under my skin. I’m not falling for it, alright? You’re not even supposed to be here. You’re not part of the cabinet, you’re trespassing and it’s after hours. Don’t make me page security.”

“What security?” Dream laughs. “Alright, I’m going. Just remember though, Tommy never lost power. You might be president, but he still has a lot of power and ability to sway people. Where he’s concerned, I’d watch your back.”

“Goodbye, Dream.” Schlatt marches around the desk and slams the door shut. He can hear Dream laughing as he leaves the floor, before the sound abruptly stops. It’s hard to tell if Dream had just left the building or vanished into thin air. He doesn’t even know if Dream can do that.

He goes back to his desk and stares at the mess of papers. He hadn’t made much headway in cleaning up his office, but now he’s especially not feeling it. He thinks back to Dream’s wings and how bright they were.

Why can’t he get them out of his head?

Why can’t he get Tommy’s wings out of his head?

The doubts he’d had earlier come back full swing. He’s not sure Tommy is a good fit for the position of vice president, and previous experience no longer matters. Still, the decision is made, it’d be shitty of him to go back on his word just because of some stupid green entity that likes to play around with words. Schlatt just has to trust in himself. Plus, the other employers will help keep Tommy in line, no doubt.

He’s the president, he’s not going to let anyone forget that. He’s the one in charge, and Schlatt is going to remain in charge. This is his country, the people wanted him in charge.

No idiot with wings, no matter who they are, is going to take that from him. He can instate Wilbur as part of the cabinet and it doesn’t prove anything other than Schlatt deciding who rules with him.

He mutters to himself angrily as he finally cleans up the paperwork. He’ll sort it all out later, when Tommy starts his first day. They’ll work on the letterhead, on the signatures and policies and everything Tommy might need to know, and it’ll be fine.

When finished, he shuts off the lights and heads out, turning back only once to glance at the dark building behind him. By this point the sun had long since set. Streetlamps are the only source of light as he wanders down the path. Hardly anyone is out at this time, most citizens either heading to their homes or enjoying a night on the town.

As for him? He goes home. He has a busy career ahead of him and he’s going to take any downtime he can.

[iwritethat]

Jason Todd: Paint Job

A/N: Here we go again :)

>>>>——————————>

"Oh my god, is this symbol painted on your bike?"

"Of all things, that's what you pick up on?!" The vigilante yelled back in an exasperated yet distracted tone, evidently frustrated as he released his sleeping hold on the final thug.

"I wouldn't have if it wasn't so bad - it's all over the headlight. You do this with your helmet on or something?" You wittily responded, standing from your crouching position in front of his motorcycle.

"I don't have to explain myself to you now run along and stay out of trouble!" Red Hood waved you off, at this point simply wanting to get on with the rest of his night.

"Ooooh, look whose getting defensive - how 'bout you bring it to my shop, (L/n) Autos, tomorrow night once I'm closed and I'll give it a custom paint job free of charge, think of it as a..." Your hands rested on your hips as you drifted off toward the end of your statement apparently in thought. The way your brows furrowed was quite cute actually.

"A thanks for saving your life?" The vigilante cockily finished for you once getting on his bike, but you shook your head and sassily shot him down.

"Ew, no. An upgrade, I mean wow."

"Rude, so ungrateful nowadays." The tone was unbelievably sarcastic and you knew he was rolling his eyes under the helmet but you couldn't care less, only folding your arms and responding with a dead tone.

"Uh Huh, I'll see you tomorrow 11pm. Got it?" You called after him, the male speeding off into the night - maybe Mrs C keeping you late had its meanings. God that mysterious woman...

.

In honesty you didn't think he'd show up, or if he'd even heard you after he'd raced off. Maybe you should've thanked him for preventing those assholes from robbing you instead of insulting his ride yet you stayed up after closing just in case.

A diligent knock brought you back to reality, the sound of clanging metal echoing through your workshop as you heaved open the massive entrance door. There stood your knight in leather armour, helmet still covering his identity as he leaned against the wall.

"That offer still open?"

"For that atrocity, hell yes." You internally winced at your inability to be kind to your saviour but breathed a sigh of relief when he laughed and handed you his keys.

"How long do you want it?"

"Hmm, give me a week."

"Whatever you want doll." And with that he was gone, off grappling across Gothams skyline with nothing but effortless beauty.

.

It had been a taxing week without his baby, but hopefully you didn't disappoint - Jason creaked open the door to your unique workshop, immediately noticing his newly designed motorcycle and it took his breath away.

"Woah..."

He walked around it admiringly, fingers delicately tracing your beautiful handiwork as he went, still unable to comprehend that this masterpiece was once his bike before coming to a stop at the station a metre or two away and inspecting your handwritten checklist.

Red Hoods ‘Thank You’:

• Matte Black = nice finish

• Red line detailing throughout cuz the guy likes red apparently.

• Detachable symbol, nicely painted

• Fixed engine -> more efficient

• Customised weaponry

• Taunt Hood about upgrades

A content laugh escaped him at the mocking words, you truly hadn't changed since he'd been gone and it only made him miss you more - where were you anyway??? He'd carefully scanned the area, finding your sleeping form curled up on the couch and shaking his head he made his way over, stopping in front of you with an amused expression only faltering when he took in your appearance. A red hoodie draped your figure - his hoodie, the sleeves reached the joints of your fingers and it was now stained with motor oil over the time you'd worked in it but honestly you rocked it better than he ever did. He’d given it to you when you were walking through Gothams back alleys together, yourself smugly complaining about the dropping temperatures before Jason had mercilessly thrown it at you rather than admit he cared about your wellbeing as his closest friend. It didn’t stop you from taunting him about his feelings though.

It was apparent you'd attempted to wait up for him so you could check off the last thing on your list but had failed to do so, it was rather late and you'd clearly worked hard on his ride that day. Jason knew he shouldn't wake you, and he couldn't handle making conversation knowing you wore what was once his, that you hadn't forgotten him. Instead he covered you with the fluffy blanket folded over the arm and left $500 on the table beside the takeout bag marked with 'C's Diner', memories of that place came flooding back and he'd silently decided to take Roy there that week. Muttering a thanks before leaving, Red Hood took his bike and left little evidence of ever being there at all.

.

The scent of the 60’s themed diner was always pleasant, it was a common occurrence for you to stop by after working late. It reminded you of Jason, and the elderly owner remembered you two well considering the liveliness you both once brought and honestly that charming woman was basically a parental figure in your life. Although she always has a suspiciously omniscience aura about her - Nanny McPhee incarnate as you and your lost friend had joked when you were children.

Unbeknownst to you, Jason remembered this place too though he regularly avoided it until tonight and ensured to drag Roy along with him out of convenience. The pair sat in a booth discussing Jason's bike upgrades when a mug of hot cocoa was set in front of Jason much to his confusion.

"Excuse me, I'm pretty sure I didn't order this."

"Ah, it's on the house. Mrs Cayce’s orders." The (h/c) waitress who Jason knew wasn't an employee proudly winked, saluting the elderly owner who waved over to him.

"Hey uh... do I know you at all? Just you seem familiar and Mrs Cayce clearly does..."

"Nope, don't think so, I would've remembered a beauty like you." The ravenette shrugged, you nodded walking back over the counter to converse with the owner once more.

Roy gave his partner a questioning glance, the sudden realisation and content smile briefly crossing Jason's features had him worried.

"Damn... Mrs C remembers me, I was hoping she'd forget. A friend and I used to come in here on the regular before the whole death thing, sometimes even help out and we would always order this."

"I didn't know Jaybird, sorry... But for the record this is the best diner we've been to in a while and I get if you don't wanna talk about it - but woah who was the waitress, d’ya think she’s single?" His partner questioned, gaze lazily drifting over to your laughing form.

"That was the miracle responsible for my bike, but (Y/n) doesn't work he-"

"Really?! EXCUSE ME?" Roy abruptly cut his best friend off, ensuring his wave caught your attention - eyes practically sparkling after hearing that information.

"What the fuck was that?! Don't, it's more conplicat-" Jason grabbed Roys offending arm, pinning it down to the table with his hushed warning.

"Despite me bringing over the drink earlier, I'm not actually a waitress here so you might wanna call -"

"(Y/n)! They're nice boys who probably wanted to talk to a beautiful lady, would you be polite for once in your life?" Mrs Cayce's words caused you to wince, your 'motherly scolding' spurring a frustrated sigh but in the end the judgments always brought you not necessarily what you wanted but what you needed.

"... How can I help you sir?" It was incredibly forced, as was the brief uninterested smile you gave them and the low but polite tone.

"I'm Roy and this is Jason. I was wondering if you could take a look at my ride if that's okay? The Red Hoods' or whoever’s is pretty sweet and he gave all credit to you." Admittedly, they noticed the positive change in demeanour at the mention of mechanics as Roy continued his request.

"Seriously?! He did?! Yes, 100 times yes! I’d lo- wait... Jason... as in Jason Jason? I do know you, don't I?" You were on the verge of squealing before that name registered, how the face matched your memories of your long lost friend and almost immediately your attention focused solely on the ravenette in front of you.

"..."

His silence wasn't considered useful, although his signature guilty expression gave it away, the awkwardly sheepish smirk he always wore when he knew you were right, his facial features were more mature and he was more handsome than you remembered - though you'd wished he'd never died in the first place. In fact you didn't even give a second thought to how he was sitting before you, instead trusting in the happiness he always blessed you with when in his presence.

"Fuck you nerd." Instantly you'd excitedly tackled him to the booth cushion regardless of your contrasting vocabulary, his arm wrapped around your waist whilst the other grabbed the back of the booth for stability since you'd almost pinned him to the seat.

"Rude much?" He abruptly commented, a playful undertone to his voice.

"Give me a break, you're supposed to be dead! I don’t know how or why but it's me Jason, we've always told each other everything..."

"I know, I didn't want to put you through anymore pain."

"You were a pain that I enjoyed having dumbass." Your tone was soft, more meaningful than he'd expected and it encouraged him to tell you everything.

"(Y/n) I-"

"Save the explanation for later, let me just enjoy your company for now and then I gotta show you my place! I managed to get my own mechanic shop and I fixed up Red Hoods bike - the Red Hood! God I have so much to tell you!" Despite knowing the excited tone you held was technically for him, he had no intentions of telling you who he was just yet, after all he was more than content to have you in his life again rather than longing for more of your time when saving your dumb ass under his alias.

That was the only reason he'd come to your garage that night, to enjoy your familiar company a little longer, if it were anyone else he wouldn't have bothered but for you? He'd still do anything for you.

"Me too doll, for a start this is Roy Harper..."

.

The owner Mrs Cayce carefully studied the scene, towel drying off your favourite mug as she continued to watch with a small smirk on her features and mysterious glint in her eyes.

"Why, it's about time you finally brought those two together isn't it Universe? Better late than never I suppose - but don’t you start any love triangle business ya hear?"

[funkymbtifiction]

I’ve typed myself as a 5w4, though I’m now having confusion as to whether that’s true. Because I’m starting to see what’s said about other types and relate; I relate with the 6’s worry and pessimism, but also the 7’s need to escape pain and have pleasure. Or maybe the 7 what I’m relating to is actually my 5 that has a reluctance to getting involved/preferring to overthink? Can a 5w4 be prone to the anxiety that I’m relating to within the 6? I’m an ENFP. Sorry I know I’m overthinking this!

Being an ENFP and a 5 core, rather than a 5 wing, is unlikely given the Ne-dom’s desire to engage with ideas and be sociable / outgoing / share these ideas and the emotional withdrawal and ideas-stinginess of the 5 core, who is socially awkward / inept and tends to actively avoid the kind of emotional connection a feeler seeks. If you identify heavily with 5 but are sure of being an ENFP, you likely have a 5 wing (4w5 or 6w5).

Most 5-cores are TJ/TP types due to the low anxiety thinkers have about emotional connections; they are more likely, as a child, to chose ‘avoidance of detachment’ as a means of protecting their emotional sensitivity, which they cannot ‘process’ easily or even understand (“I will just not care, so nothing can hurt me”), thus growing into / exacerbating their own outer coldness. A 6 feeler may develop a 5 wing to protect their sensitive feelings -- admiring logical 5ish types and wishing to control how easily hurt they are and deciding to ‘unhook’ to self-protect when / if the 6 part of them feels threatened, abandoned, or as if they will ‘be’ hurt. The 4 may do the same thing, for different reasons (people cause me much pain by rejecting me so I will ‘not care’ and reject them first!).

I wrote about the 5 cores here yesterday, I wrote about the 4 cores earlier, and will be transcribing the 6 core fears / coping mechanisms today, with the 7 coming soon. All three of the head types feel worry and pessimism, the need to escape and ‘hide’ in some way, but they do it in different ways -- the 5 through shutting off their emotions and refusing to have any emotional responses (pathological detachment), the 6 through free-floating ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’ anxiety, going to war within themselves rather than face the outside world, and warm attachment; the 7 through endless cheerful avoidance, rationalizing of mistakes, and a refusal to slow down and process negativity.

It’s important to focus on the negative aspects of the type, for therein lies the truth of the self-sabotaging behaviors of the core. When you find the right one, you will be able to look back on your life and see where this mechanism has caused you to make deliberate responses / choices that have prevented you from living up to your full potential in some way. (A 5 shutting down / refusing a relationship before it even starts or never being ‘ready’ to start living; a 6 being too apprehensive, suspicious, and self-doubting, causing them to delay their own advancement; a 7′s inability to settle down or commit meaning they create a shallow existence of nothing ‘lasting’ in their life, etc).

Keep digging. You will find out who you are and why you do what you do.

- ENFP Mod

[ayakashiramblings]

What the Foot: Kuya the Debut and Finale

Author’s note: Read this in Sir David Attenborough's voice, please. Actually, I would be still impressed you managed to read this mess. Also, I still don’t know how to use colour fonts, help.

                                      The Mystery of Kuya’s Shoes

It is at this mansion where evolution’s most impressive feat is documented: Kuya’s legs. 

So defined and long. Both can be contorted into any position should the user choose to execute any sort of movement. Little do people realize that the tengu does not even know what they are called because he has never learnt how to use these fine, magnificent specimens in his feeble life. In fact, the only reason why they move is because of sheer desperation in those mad, mad golden eyes to avoid doing work.

Right now, it seems that he has achieved his greatest wish at this warm verandah. There, he slumbers with wings tucked securely against him, curled up for comfort… the only things that stand out are… the shoes... 

Ipponba-geta (one-tooth-geta) or tengu-geta due to Japanese folklore depicting tengu goblins as the most popular wearer. The tengu-geta are mostly used as ceremonial footwear because they give the impression that they are hard to walk with and dangerous. Recently though, studies have shown that such footwear has promoted strength in muscular training...

Yet, none of these solid reasons offered seem to apply to the gentleman Kuya, for he... is rather subdued by nature.These very shoes are more alive than user as even though it is subtle, one can hear the slightest slapping sound as he occasionally shifts sleeping positions...

Gaku, are you getting this on the camera?

How can I not? He is just lying there like a couch.

Point taken, maybe we should wait for him to wake up.

Why am I doing this again?

Because Yura wants to see a homemade movie.

Yes, but why this topic?

Because aren’t you curious?

At the fact that you’re dropping the British accent while speaking in Japanese?

No, I mean Kuya’s attire. Like, if he really wanted to be comfortable, why that footwear of all things. 

Well...

Besides, according to Koga who got it from the maid who got it from Nachi who got it from the fish vendor who got it from Oji, Kuya should be forced to wake up...

In exactly 29 seconds, this particular male tengu shall be roused by the burning urge for sustenance at the chicest restaurant.

Chic?

Ok, you’re right but I’m not going to correct myself because I am getting tired of this position. How did you even get the camera here?

What? Isn’t it obvious?

No, it... wait, darn, we missed his flight. He’s on the move, after him!

Tensions are high as the tengu confronts another member of the Dawn Faction. 

Aoi from the quaint Milk Hall, Raccord. As a Satori Seer, he wields the ability to peer into people’s hearts... and their afternoon schedules or lack thereof. He stands as the tengu’s lone but powerful opponent against the ever-so-coveted... Oji-san’s omurice.

Oh wow, you really made the camera capture it. 

Erm... actually, it really is glistening and there are sparkles around it.

... On that topic...

It should be noted that within the ayakashi community, there is a clear divide between the ones who do 95% of the work with sensible but fashionably questionable shoes and those who do 5% with weird and fashionably questionable shoes. 

It does not help that Kuya flew all the way over here without being spotted somehow except by Aoi.  

Now, it is no secret that Aoi is a sharp-tongued young man with a caring disposition. It is only his inability to be honest with himself and those around him that plagues him. Thus, he relishes the rare opportunity to be completely vulnerable and engage in a secret hobby that is to be captured on the camera for the first time.

Fighting with Kuya. 

“Hey, deadbeat, we have actual customers so don’t sleep here!”

How is that a secret?

The secret is that he likes it. Now, hush and aim.

Kuya... seems not to care, nodding absent-mindedly to the tongue-lashing he is receiving. Will he finally rise to the occasion? Will he take flight? Will he fight with all of his might?!

Hey, quiet! 

Oh, sorry.

“Shh... I’m sleeping while waiting.”

Kuya alas remains aloof and detached as he lays into a fuming seer, never letting his opponent get a word in. Maybe this is the power of the shoes? 

After all, legend has it that once the tengu bestows his footwear upon a human, the receiver will be able to fall easily and get rich with each fall he takes until he becomes too short to even lift his profit. 

Who knows if Kuya is utilizing the knowledge left by his descendants with something of equal value but with a bitter price — an “I do not care about anything you said to me” attitude obtained only by reluctantly gaining an “I do not care about anything.” attitude as well. 

Then, there is a sound much like a bell’s ring, signalling all present members of the species to return to their dens for more customers and the proprietor of the place.

Seems that the Domeki has abated the crackling animosity over laziness with... more laziness. And asking about tengu-branded cigarettes? Either way, Aoi is distracted by the long-awaited cooking oil.

... This is proving valuable content for my brother, I guess. 

... I kind of want...

No food yet, we are recording it until the end now. Hush.

Ugh, you’re right, ok, zoom in on Kuya’s feet.

Notice that the tengu has propped his feet on the furniture. But wait, that’s not all. Nay, one must observe the new angle taken to accommodate those shoes. So why does he bear such a burden? Is this to justify his lethargy? The sheer struggle against some geta?

Wait, how did he finish his omurice so fast?

My god, he literally inhaled it. 

Fascinating...

His stretch causes big, onyx wings to expand widely outside. Jet-black feathers fluttering about the room for Aoi to clean, as if taunting.

... Oh wow, that is actually a legitimate theory.

You are the one coming up with the script, why are you so surprised?

Wait, look at that. He just took off! How?

... Oh, I think I know why now. 

What? 

Finally, the mystery has been unravelled by the marvellous...

“We don’t have to narrate anymore.” “But this is marvellous...”

“Ugh... fine. But I’m doing it.”

Now, observe this exclusive footage of a tengu gracefully taking flight. The takeoff is the most energy-demanding part. So does the naturally tired creature summon the required force? See how he braces himself.

Due to his large wingspan, he must take a small run up to generate sufficient airflow. Thereafter, comes a significant jump upwards and propped by those shoes. Notice how the single tooth provides the exact position needed that would have required him using another muscle.

Now, he soars, his shoes somehow securely still on him... 

Why is he coming closer?

... Run...

It was too late though once MC had collided into his chest. With an arched eyebrow, the tengu mumbled, 

“What are both of you doing?”

Even Gaku flinched. The times they exchanged furtive, accusing glances, offensive fingers and switching whoever was nearest Kuya was enough for the tengu to roll his eyes, take off his shoes and dangle them in front of the pair.

“So, do you have a better close-up?”

Defeated, MC was the first to squeak out a mortified, “... Yes...”.

“Good, say hi to Twin Number one when you show this to him. Now, do the closing thing or whatever. I’m going back to sleep.”

As they stared at Kuya’s retreating form in the sky, MC-chan chose to do the most important thing...

Tune in for the next episode of WTF, What The Foot!

Italics: MC still pretending to narrate but interrupted

Bold: Gaku having to narrate for his beloved brother but interrupted

Normal Text: Either one of them narrating unless accompanied with quotation marks

                                                          Epilogue

Yura found this hilarious and decided to use the only camera in the house to film animals. One day, the camera broke thanks to a deer. The damage was beyond even Gaku’s control. 

[islamicrays]

Oh sister help me. My boyfriend and I live together and have been on and off for a while. He was my first love. Every time I get angry, when we fight, or be disrespectful he attempts to leave. But I try to hold him back and swallow my pride. I beg for him to stay because I cannot imagine my life without him. I am nothing without him. When he gets angry I swallow it but sometimes I burst. We’re both 20. My family lives overseas and he is the familiar rock I hold onto. How do I survive if he leave

My dear sister,

It’s basically emotional attachment and you feel that you can’t live without him and you feel totally lost. We have emptiness in our heart that we try to fill and it can be the love of a person, wealth, career etc. The emptiness can only be filled with the love of Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala. When we love something more than Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala it will cause pain. So fill this emptiness with the love of Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala.

You need to realize that we need Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala the most. The emptiness that we feel can only be filled with His love. If we love something more than Him it will only torment us and cannot give us inner peace. If you want your heart to be liberated then attach your heart with only Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Don’t attach your heart with people or things if you love something other than God then you will be tormented three times in this world as mentioned by ibn al qayim “He will be tormented by its lack before he acquires it; and once he acquires it then he will be tormented by the fear of losing it and once he loses it, his torment increases further”.

May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala increase our love for Him and don’t get us attach to this temporary world. Ameen

"True or pure love should never contradict or compete with one’s love for Allah. It should strengthen it. That is why true love is only possible within the boundaries of what Allah has made permissible. Outside of that, it is nothing more than hawa, to which we either submit or reject. We are either slaves to Allah, or slaves to our hawa. It cannot be both."

Yasmin Mogahed

"If being ‘in love’ means our lives are in pieces and we are completely broken, miserable, utterly consumed, hardly able to function, and willing to sacrifice everything, chances are it’s not love. Despite what we are taught in popular culture, true love is not supposed to make us like drug addicts.

And so, contrary to what we’ve grown up watching in movies, that type of all-consuming obsession is not love. It goes by a different name. It is hawa—the word used in the Qur’an to refer to one’s lower, vain desires and lusts. Allah describes the people who blindly follow these desires as those who are

most astray: “But if they answer you not, then know that they only follow their own lusts (hawa). And who is more astray than the one who follows his own lusts, without guidance from Allah?” (Qur’an, 28: 50)

By choosing to submit to our hawa over the guidance of Allah, we are choosing to worship those desires. When our love for what we crave is stronger than our love for Allah, we have taken that which we crave as a lord. Allah says: “Yet there are men who take (for worship) others besides

Allah, as equal (with Allah): They love them as they should love Allah. But those of Faith are overflowing in their love for Allah.” (Qur’an, 2:165)

If our ‘love’ for something makes us willing to give up our family, our dignity, our self-respect, our bodies, our sanity, our peace of mind, our deen, and even our Lord who created us from nothing, know that we are not ‘in love’. We are slaves.”"

Yasmin Mogahed

First we need to attach ourselves to Allah then we can easily detach from others. We need to balance the love of Creator and the Creation. Keep the love of the creation in your hand and the love of Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala in your heart that’s difficult to do but with time you will learn. For this we need to make dua and love for the sake of Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala.

Time is the best remedy that can heal your pain. Distract yourself and work on your relationship with Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala. Do productive things that will help you in the hereafter as well. Gain Islamic knowledge and  it will help you to get closer to Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala.

"Call on your Lord when your heart is brittle, that is a time when it’s in pieces and the Light of Allah can fill the gaps. That is why Allāh is with the broken hearted."

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

"The fastest way to heal a broken heart is to find someone better to love, and love more. Know that sometimes heartbreak happens just to push you to Allah."

Yasmin Mogahed

Always remember that Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala plans are better than our wishes. Make lots of dua and while asking Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala always say “if it’s good for me” because we don’t know what’s good for us only Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala knows. Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala loves us more than our mother so His decisions are always for our own good and we have to trust Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala.

“But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. And Allah Knows, while you know not.” (Quran 2:216)

Always remember this:

“No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worrying can change the future. Go easy on yourself for the outcome of all affairs is determined by the decree of Allah. If something is meant to go elsewhere, it will never come on your way, but if it is yours by destiny, from you it cannot flee.”

Umar ibn al Khattab (Radi Allahu Ta’ala Anhu)

On healing broken hearts:

If you are trying to get over a person you can’t be with, treat it like an addiction:

1. Cut yourself off from the drug completely: Cut off all communication and reminders–even if that means blocking numbers, emails, a Facebook profile, and stop checking their Facebook! This is your detox.

2. Replace it with something better: Increase in your thikr (remembrance of Allah) and get closer to Allah. If you aren’t praying your daily prayers, fix that. Pray all and pray on time. Pray qiyam in the last third of the night (just before fajr). Make duaa, tawbah (repentance), cry, plead to Allah. This is your treatment.

(Yasmin Mogahed)

Unlawlful love before marriage…

Ibn al Qayyim al Jawziyyah (rahimahullah) mentions in regards to unlawful love before marriage (i.e. haram sexual relations, or love for someone who you are unable to marry).

“And the cure for this deadly illness (i.e. unlawful love before marriage) is for the person that is afflicted to realise that this love is only due to his/her own delusions and ignorance.

So upon such a person is to first and foremost strengthen their Tawheed and reliance upon Allah, and secondly to increase in worship and busy themselves with it, so much so that they do not have any spare time letting their minds wander and think about their beloved.

And they should call upon Allah to protect them and save them from this evil, just as Prophet Yusuf called upon Allah and he was saved. And they should do as he did, be as he was, in terms of ikhlaas (sincerity) and remembering Allah in abundance.

This is because if the heart is filled with ikhlaas for the sake of Allah, there will be no space left for any unlawful love to be present, rather this only happens to a heart that is empty and has no ikhlaas whatsoever.

And let such people remind themselves that whatever Allah has decreed for them is only in their own best interests, and when Allah commands something it is never to cause harm or misery to His slaves.

And let them also remind themselves that their unlawful love does not benefit them, neither in this world or the hereafter! As for this world then they will be so preoccupied with their love that it will cripple them and will cause them to live in a fantasy world. And as for the hereafter then it will cause them to be preoccupied with the love of the creation instead of love for the Creator!

These people need to be reminded, that the one who is submerged in something will never see it’s ill effects, neither will the person who has never experienced such things. The only people who will be able to relate to them are those who have experienced the same thing but have been saved. Such people can look back and realise how evil it is.”

“When we can’t marry the person we had in mind, our inability to look beyond may even blind sight us from someone who is in fact better for us. When we don’t get hired, or we lose something dear to us, it’s hard to take a step back and notice the bigger picture. Often Allah takes things away from us, only to replace them with something greater.”

(Yasmin Mogahed)

I suggest you to leave separately and work on yourself first. You already know you are in haram relationship so once you mend your relationship with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala then you may think what you want to do in your life. Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala is the most forgiving and merciful. If we sincerely repent He will forgive us. No matter how many times we commit a mistake and after every fall we turn to Him and ask for His forgiveness sincerely He will forgive us. 

You can recite the following dua:

1.‘O Ever Living, O Self-Subsisting and Supporter of all, by Your mercy I seek assistance, rectify for me all of my affairs and do not leave me to myself, even for the blink of an eye.’    [صحيح الترغيب والترهيب 1/273]

2. “Allah is Sufficient for us, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs.”

(Aayah No. 173, Surah Aal-Imran, Chapter No. 3, Holy Qur’an).

May Allah make things easier for you.

Ameen

[imnotcrazyidontthink]

I am so grateful to have artist + mental health activist Kate Elizabeth share her story on the blog today. Her story has really touched me and I hope it can do the same for you - Leon Else

Hello, I’m Kate Elisabeth. I’m a non-binary pansexual, which is a fancy way of saying I’m hella queer. I’m also an illustrator who fancies cartoons, and I’m also a mental health activist!

My experience with mental health goes a little deeper than just receiving a diagnosis and treatment. 

When I was 12 years old I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Hashimotos, where my immune system attacks my thyroid. I now need to take hormone replacements to make up for what my thyroid is lacking. After the diagnosis my parents assumed all of my apparent mental stress was a direct correlation to my autoimmune disease, rather than it being a separate Illness that needed its own attention. While it is true that Hashimotos can cause psychosis, the psychosis goes away once the thyroid is being treated. Mine stayed with me, like an unwanted roommate. 

I grew up in a dysfunctional household filled with marital issues and my parents having their own suppressed trauma and stress. My dad worked hard, and had worked hard his whole life. He depended on my mom to be able to take care of us when he was at work. She often did, and often did it quite well. But I think there were things she was unprepared to deal with, and she struggled to communicate this to her partner. 

My earliest memory of anxiety is when I was 6 years old, and I was unable to write a handful of thank you notes addressed to the students in my class. I remember feeling paralyzed by this sense of responsibility and I was so afraid of writing the wrong words. After all, I was 6 years old and didn’t have much experience writing anything at all. To be fair, my parents were unable to recognize this as anxiety because I don’t think they recognized their own for many, many years. Instead of asking me why I was stressed out, my mother criticized my inability to write the notes myself. She ended up doing it for me, and that was the first time I remember feeling like I had failed, and like I didn’t measure up. Moments like those throughout my childhood would have a direct correlation to the severe anxiety and depression that would develop later on.

 I remember I started hallucinating in fourth grade, and it would happen frequently when I was around 13. In fourth grade I remember visually hallucinating malformations on people’s faces or their body parts. I was probably 10 at this time and had no idea how to explain this to someone, so I went to the nurses office and told them I felt sick. I did that a lot during school, looking for reasons to go home sick so I could avoid seeing or hearing anything I didn’t want to see or hear.

 I began to isolate myself from family and friends as the years went on, and my parents attributed this to teen angst. I felt myself disconnecting from the world around me and I eventually lost my sense of self. By the time I was 16 I was on my third year of highschool and failing, while just doing the bare minimum to advance. I had no desire or will to live, and developed anorexia and other suicidal behaviors. 

When I was 17, I saw a psychiatrist and told him about my visual and auditory hallucinations, and he explained that I have schizophrenia, which is a grossly misunderstood form of psychosis. Unfortunately, his treatment methods got me nowhere, and I was briefly dependent on adderall. My parents stopped taking me to therapy, and I actually can’t say for sure what their reasons for that may have been, since there was always a persistent lack of communication.

 I graduated high school with mostly Ds, because my teachers all knew I was struggling and not receiving adequate treatment. It seemed like everyone besides my parents could realize that I needed intensive care and help.

During middle school, and into my junior year of high school, my main motivation for getting out of bed was artwork. I became known to everyone as the artist and that was the only facet of my identity. I would go to therapy for a few years on and off, but it was always me complaining about my parents, so no real progress on my mental health was made. I was under the impression that life was an illusion, and I had no way of being absolutely sure that the people around me were even real. Schizophrenia changes your perception of reality, and can cause delusional states of mind. It dulls your ability to feel strong emotions, and it can cause severe detachment from your sense of self. I legitimately felt like I was empty, and I couldn’t possibly imagine a brighter future.

 I became increasingly paranoid that people were lying to me about everything, and I had trust issues. I would spend weeks isolating myself in my room, accumulating piles of dirty dishes, trash, dirty clothes, etc. I was essentially living in my own misery. My mom often helped me clean my room, but became frustrated that I couldn’t keep it clean, There were times where she tried to not make me feel guilty, but I felt the guilt anyway. I remember always feeling like I had no control over anything.

When I was 18, I was raped repeatedly for two months by someone who I assumed I could trust. I was unable to leave my situation out of fear, denial, coercion, manipulation, and gaslighting. I started to smoke marijuana heavily during that time as a means of escapism. I was only able to leave that situation because he hit me over the head with a pair of drum sticks, and he was arrested and charged with domestic violence. 

I now have a restraining order against him. I also have a tattoo on my chest that he gave me without my consent, because I was under the influence of drugs. I remember standing in front of a mirror shirtless, then I remember being on a table getting tattooed. I don’t remember agreeing to getting anything tattooed. When it was over I tried to justify it and convince myself that I wanted this to happen. He treated me like a carnival prize that he had won, and he would objectify me to anyone who encountered us. He would tell me to take off my shirt and show people the tattoo that he gave me. I felt like a billboard for his own twisted personal brand of self aggrandizement. 

My mental health at the time was poor, even without the effects of drugs. I felt like what was happening to me was meant to happen as a means of punishment for not cleaning my room, not doing better in school, or whatever reason I could think of to explain cause of the abuse. I smoked weed every day for a year and a half to cope with everything. I’m 20 years old now, and I’ll be 21 on October 13th. It has taken me two and a half years to fully accept that it wasn’t my fault, and that blaming myself isn’t the answer. I couldn’t even talk about the sexual assault verbally without breaking down in tears until earlier this year.

That experience made me realize that life is not a delusion. Additionally, that I am in fact vulnerable to the same dangers as everyone else. I am not exempt from experiencing the impact of other people’s decisions.

This all made me reflect on my own life and the decisions I was making, as well as the people in my life. It has given me the motivation to take control over my college education, my career, and my art. I still suffer daily from all of my health issues, mental or otherwise, and the trauma of what I lived through. Although, what is different now is that I have a self awareness that could only have been gained from walking through Hell and coming out the other end alive. I also had to make a decision: I could either run away from my problems and ignore them, or I could actually get to know myself and figure out how to overcome these obstacles. 

This is a constant choice that I make every day. I can’t erase what happened to me, I can’t magically make my Hashimotos disappear, and I can’t cure my schizophrenia, but I can make the decision to try and live my best life despite it all. I strongly encourage all of you to do the same thing. I’m in school majoring in psychology now, and I am going to become a doctor in the field of psychiatry. I’m also still making art and I often enjoy it and find great pleasure in it. Having a creative outlet is so fundamental for your mental health. There’s an entire field of study for it, and it’s called art therapy.

If you’re depressed, have anxiety, OCD, or a broken leg, just know that positive things can and will happen when you make the conscious decision to help yourself. People will only understand that their depression or anxiety or mental illness can receive treatment if we educate and spread awareness. Suicide is an increasing epidemic because people are afraid to ask for help or talk about their feelings.

I encourage every one of you to understand the significance of mental health and why it’s morally ethical to assist those who need our help. If someone you know is suffering from depression or mental illness, or they’ve experienced a traumatic event, reach out to them and suggest they seek professional help and treatment.

There is hope, it gets better, and you are not alone.

Kate Elizabeth xo

[thestile1972]

Book Review: Chris Arnade’s “Dignity”

By Jason Segedy

January 6, 2020

Occasionally I read a book that helps me to see things that I knew intuitively to be true, but couldn’t articulate properly, and consequently helps me to have a better understanding of the cultural world that we inhabit.

Chris Arnade’s Dignity is one of those books.  

Why?  

It is partly the stories that he tells.

The stories in this book are poignant – often humorous, and just as often heartbreaking.  You cannot read more than a few pages in this book without reading about poverty, or racism, or – most omnipresently - drugs, and the terrible things that addiction has done to people and to the places that they live.  

It is partly the photos.  

The photos, like the stories, are poignant.  Some of them are heartwarming, while, again, others are heartbreaking.  All of them are compelling, beautifully composed, and masterfully produced.  The complexity and the humanity of the people who are depicted in them comes through in ways that many similar photographs seem unable to capture.

It is partly the writing.  

This book is very readable.  Arnade is a fluid, crisp, and efficient writer.  He is not given over to long expostulations or flowery turns-of-phrase.  The writing is a sort of journalism that we seldom encounter nowadays – prosaic, without seeming detached or clinical; sympathetic, without seeming overly-sentimental.  

But, more than anything, what has helped me is the framework that this book provides for understanding today’s America.  

Before I get into all of that, allow me to briefly describe who Chris Arnade is and how he got to the place where he wrote this book.

After two decades of working on Wall Street as a bond trader, Arnade grew dissatisfied with his line of work, particularly in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis:

“I wasn’t in the mood for listening to anyone, especially other bankers, other academics, and the educated experts who were my neighbors.  I hadn’t been for a few years.  In 2008, the financial crisis had consumed the country and my life, sending the company I worked for, Citibank, into a spiral stopped only by a government bailout.  I had just seen where our – my own included – hubris had taken us and what it had cost the country.  Not that it had actually cost us bankers, or my neighbors, much of anything.”

He began taking long walks from his Brooklyn neighborhood - sometimes as long as 15 miles - to reduce stress, and to explore the parts of New York City that many people describe as dangerous or uninteresting – places like Hunts Point in the South Bronx.  

Arnade began to carry his camera on these walks, talking to anyone who would talk to him, and with their permission, would photograph them and their surroundings.

This process of interacting with flesh-and-blood people, rather than flickering images on a computer screen, ultimately caused Arnade to wrestle with who he was and where he was going:

“What I started seeing, and learning, was just how cloistered and privileged my world was and how narrow and selfish I was.  Not just in how I lived but in what and how I thought. . .like most successful and well-educated people, especially those in NYC, I considered myself open-minded. . .and reflective about my privilege.  I read three papers daily, I watched documentaries on our social problems, and voted for and supported policies that I felt recognized and addressed my privilege.  I gave money and time to charities that focused on poverty and injustice.  I understood I was selfish, but I rationalized.  Aren’t we all selfish?  Besides, I am far less selfish than others, look at how I vote (progressive), what I believe in (equality), and who my colleagues are (people of all races from all places).”

Ultimately Arnade quit his job and began driving all over the country – racking up 150,000 miles on his car over a three year period, and visiting a broad and culturally diverse cross-section of this nation.

As he describes in great detail, he saw how messy life is - all too often filled with pain, injustice, and problems too big for any public policy regime to truly address.  

But he also saw how resilient people can be, and how community can thrive in the most unlikely of places (like McDonald’s) amidst the pain and poverty.  In a word, he found what many people would find most unlikely in stigmatized places full of marginalized people – dignity.

The framework that Chris Arnade articulates through stories, photos, and commentary focuses on three things:

·        The front row/back row dynamic

·        The enduring importance of place in a spatially-agnostic world

·        The power of non-credentialed forms of meaning

I’ll cover the three of them in order:

First, the front-row/back-row dynamic is a powerful lens for viewing our present moment in time.  Arnade’s metaphor, as you have probably already guessed, takes us back to grade school – where the high-achievers, go-getters, and social extraverts sat in the front row of the class; while the kids of whom little was expected lingered unnoticed in the back.

The United States has always been a country that has tried its damndest to avoid acknowledging the reality of social class.  Our meritocracy (which is both real and imagined) has much to offer, but one of its real shortcomings is an inability to grapple with social class.  When we Americans do occasionally think about social class, we always tend to think that it is simply about how much money that one makes.  

But class is about far more than that.  It’s not just about annual income – it’s also about net worth (and the insulation from sudden financial disaster that comes with it); occupation and profession (do your back or your knees hurt at the end of the workday?); and educational attainment (did you graduate from college; and, if so, where did you go to school?)

Paul Fussell, in his book, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, identifies nine social classes:  Top Out-of-Sight; Upper; Upper Middle; Middle; High-Proletarian; Mid-Proletarian; Low-Proletarian; Destitute; Bottom Out-of-Sight.  The first three are clearly the front row, while the last five are clearly the back row.  “Middle” is just that – a way-station between the front row and the back row, and a place that not as many people as we would like to believe pass through.

But beyond income, net worth, occupation, and educational attainment, there is one overriding thing that separates the front row from the back row:  cultural power.  

Cultural power is the power to define reality.  The front row makes the rules.  It decides what is important and what is not.  It decides who is important and who is not.  It decides which places matter, and which ones don’t.

The back row might greatly outnumber the front row, but that doesn’t matter.

The front row has cultural power, and it is a type of power that is self-replicating and self-reinforcing.  It is about who sets the agenda, who decides what will be discussed (and on which terms), what is cool or politically correct; and conversely, what is uncool or politically incorrect.

It is the type of power that is wielded by the insiders in both political parties, by the people who run major for-profit and non-profit institutions, by the people who control the media; and by the upper middle and middle class functionaries who serve and/or benefit from the status quo created by those insiders and the organizations that they oversee.

McDonald’s looms quite large in this book, and it is a great example of an institution that (while a corporate creation of the front row) is very much looked down upon by those in the front row, while being simultaneously embraced and beloved by those in the back row.  

Like many of us in the front row, Arnade had always thought of McDonald’s as a place to be avoided, or joked about, or perhaps visited to “slum it” just for fun. What he realized time and again on his journeys is that for those in the back row, McDonald’s is a place to socialize; to get satisfying cheap food; to get clean water; to charge a phone; and to get free Wi-Fi.  

In short, a place that you and I sitting in the front row might see as a soulless corporation that is part of the problem; many people in the back row see as a low barrier-to-entry community center where they will be accepted, and where they can get simple things that they need without having to follow a bunch of seemingly arbitrary rules, or navigating a big, faceless bureaucracy.

Second, Arnade does a wonderful job of explaining the enduring importance of place to a world that is increasingly spatially agnostic, and often actively privileges certain front row places over back row ones.    

But, as he points out, even in the centers of front row cultural power like New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, there are plenty of back row places.  The South Bronx, Anacostia, and South Central are only a short drive away from the Upper East Side, Capitol Hill, and Brentwood.

And then there are the vast stretches of America where virtually every place is composed of people in the back row – small places like Portsmouth, Ohio; Cairo, Illinois; and Selma, Alabama; as well as larger places like Bakersfield, California; Gary, Indiana; the north side of Milwaukee; and the east side of Cleveland.

Chris Arnade firmly rejects what I call “The U-Haul School of Public Policy”.  His writing about place is honest, realistic, and often profound:

“I was part of a global group of lawyers, bankers, business people, and professors who are their profession first and a New Yorker, Brit, or Southerner second. . .

. . .In their minds, staying put is a mistake.  If you stay, you limit your career, you limit your wealth, and you limit your intellectual growth.  They also don’t fully understand the value of place because like religion, it is hard to measure.  What is the value of staying near the family that raised you or in the valley where you were born?

Had I asked those in my hometown when I visited why they stayed, why they were still there, I would have gotten the answer that I heard from Cairo, to Amarillo, to rural Ohio. They would have looked at me like I was crazy, then said, ‘Because it is my home.’

It is an answer that is obvious, because there is value in home. . .The front row doesn’t fully get that because they don’t see that value. . .

When communities and towns are destroyed, partly because of the front row’s policies of globalization, the front row solution is, ‘Well, just move.’ Buffalo is dying, so just leave Buffalo.  Or Appalachia or the Rust Belt or Texas or Ohio or wherever they see suffering.  It doesn’t matter where people work, where they live, or where they raise a family.  If a factory moves and a town dies, then workers can just move.

Never mind that place, family, and friends are often the only network many people have, the only community that provides them a vital role, because what matters is growth at all cost – even if it is brutal – and that requires everyone to always be economic migrants.”

Finally, Arnade discusses what he calls “non-credentialed forms of meaning” – things like family, faith, place, and race.  These are all things that you inherit without having to do anything:      

“People respond to humiliation in different ways, but the most common response is to find a source of pride wherever possible, even if that means in places the status quo doesn’t approve of.  It means trying to find a community or activity that values them.  For those in the back row, that means a place that doesn’t demand credentials.  

Living in the place that you grew up doesn’t require credentials.  It’s a form of meaning that cannot be measured.  Family doesn’t require credentials.”

Arnade’s writing about religion, like his writing about place, is moving, and impressed me more than anything else in this book.  

He writes about religious faith with a degree of honesty, respect, and authenticity that I almost never encounter in an age where dismissive and infantile rejoinders about “the Flying Spaghetti Monster” are taken by some of the world’s leading intellectuals to be the final word on a philosophical debate about the existence of God that is as old as humanity itself.  

He describes faith and religious people in the complex and realistic way that I know them to actually be in real life, not in the two-dimensional caricatures that people in the front row so often use to dismiss them:

“When I walked into Hunts Point, I expected that the people there, those most impacted by the cold ruthlessness that our world can dish out, would share my atheism.  Instead, I found a strong belief in the supernatural and faith manifested in almost every form, mostly as a belief in the Bible.”

“Mixed with faith in God is a strong belief in the reality of evil. . .When you’re up against evil, whether the mysterious efforts of demons or all-too-explainable effects of drugs, the front row’s world of science, education, and smart arguments doesn’t do much for you.”

Many of the people that Arnade writes about – homeless people, drug addicts, and prostitutes - are people whose religious beliefs and life experiences are nuanced in ways that many people in the front row would have a difficult time understanding.  

They are people whose hardships, trials, and tribulations have helped them to see truths about life that many of us with comfortable lives have trouble seeing.  

As C.S. Lewis said:

“Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.”  

Arnade continues:

“When I walked into the Bronx I was an atheist, something I was sure about. Standing years later outside the Gospel Lighthouse in Bakersfield I wasn’t so sure.  To my educated lifelong friends I might have said I was now agnostic, or still an atheist but one who appreciated religion.

Like most in the front row, I am used to thinking we have all the answers.  On Wall Street there were few problems we couldn’t solve with enough smarts, energy, audacity, or money.  We even managed to push death into the distance; with enough research and enough resources – eating right, doing the right things, going to the correct medical specialist – the inevitable could be delayed, and mortality could feel distant.

With a great job and a great apartment in a great neighborhood, it is easy to feel we have nothing for which we need to be absolved.  The fundamental fallibility of humans seems outdated, distant, and confined to a few distant others.  It’s not hard to imagine that you have everything under control.  

The tragedy of the streets means few can delude themselves into thinking they have it under control.  You cannot ignore death there, and you cannot ignore human fallibility.  It is easier to see that everyone is a sinner, everyone is fallible, and everyone is mortal.  It is easier to see that there are things just too deep, too important, or too great for us to know.  It is far easier to recognize that one must come to peace with the idea that ‘we don’t and never will have this under control.’ It is far easier to see religion not just as useful but as true.”

Reading Dignity put this often antiquated-sounding passage (with its talk of temples, Pharisees, and tax collectors) from the Gospel of Luke (and one that I’ve read dozens of times) into a fresh, contemporary light:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

But the tax collector stood at a distance.  He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’”

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.  For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

-Luke 18:9-14

Chris Arnade doesn’t have a six-point plan for fixing what is wrong with America. This book isn’t a white paper describing an innovative new public policy framework. Some reviewers have (quite unfairly) criticized Arnade for this.

But they are missing the point of this book.  Thinking that there is "a plan" for fixing this is exactly what someone in the front row would think.  I should know, because I'm one of them.  We always think there should be a plan.  And we always expect someone in the front row like Arnade to come up with one.

Yes, it should go without saying that the economic divergence between people and places is having social and political ramifications that are becoming impossible to ignore.  And yes, we need to think, and think hard, about how to fix that.

But the purpose of Dignity is not to offer policy solutions.  It is to listen, learn, understand, and document what is happening to back row America.

The listening, learning, and understanding must come before any policy solutions can be proffered.  

And whether any of us like it or not, we need to recognize that “policy solutions” may be of limited or little use.  Many of the challenges and problems that Arnade is documenting are social, cultural, and even spiritual – and they are deeply complex. They do not easily lend themselves to a tweak of a legislative dial here, or the pull of a policy lever there.

The economic and cultural gutting of Portsmouth, Ohio, or of the east side of Cleveland, was decades in the making, as each fall of a socioeconomic domino knocked down many others.  

Data and statistics, important as they often are, never tell the entire story about a place.  

If we are to hope to help these places and the people living in them, we first need to get to know them as people.  

People like us.  

People with dignity.

I have the utmost respect for Chris Arnade.  In addition to the pleasure of having read his book, I have had the fortune to interact with him every now and then on Twitter.  He is a thoroughly decent person.  He was willing and able to acknowledge his own imperfections, and he decided to get out and begin to do something about them.  

I have learned a lot from his example.  His book has helped me to see my own selfishness and narrowness more clearly, and to think hard about what it might mean for me to be a better person.

I hope that you will take the time to read his book, and to look at his photographs. The people and the places that he depicts are worthy of your consideration.

[yespoetry]

Control the Echoes

By Jonathan Russell Clark

Her spoken sentences tended to omit proper nouns, leaving only discursive, aimless run-ons that veered off one point, switched to another, swooped again, got murky, and finally landed not really anywhere specific but simply where a period arbitrarily stopped them.

“You were here when they told me,” she’d say, “and so you know that I’m not trying to do anything like they said I did, but they keep coming at me, and I don’t know who or what or where anymore, because there isn’t anything like that that I want, and I said that I was fine yesterday because I saw her over there, you know the young one, the one with the, oh what’s her hair like, and she wasn’t asking because like I said I wasn’t saying anything if I didn’t want to.”

The hospice info pamphlets said to go along with whatever she said, but how do go along with that? It didn’t take long, though, for me to figure out the purpose of going along with the things she said. If you don’t, you have to ask for clarification, or you have to contradict them, or you have to interrupt an already tenuous thread—and none of it with any results. It’s the flow that’s important, not the content. If I’d stopped my grandmother and said, for example, “Who are they?” she’d look at me as if I’d just asked her the most nonsensical thing, since of course she didn’t know who they were, because who they were didn’t matter. What mattered for her was some deep need to express, to communicate something, even if that something didn’t come out explicable. It was the act of talking that compelled her, and any obstruction jammed the rhythm and frustrated her. And since no actual clarification or sense came from any question we asked her, it was obviously better to let the linguistic current expel forth unimpeded.

Among her verbal hemorrhaging were numerous references to her long life: sometimes she’d wonder why her parents hadn’t been around to see her; sometimes she asked if I knew her brother, and where was he; and other times it seemed the words were some uncontrollable reverberation of various points in her nine decades.

An echo of herself.

*

In Aleksander Hemon’s novel The Lazarus Project, there is the following line: “Nobody can control resemblances, any more than you can control echoes.”

If there is a sound and a reverberating obstacle, there is an echo. There is no judgment in the existence of that echo, no choice, no accusation of agency, no life in it. Nobody accuses an echo of hyperbole, of lying, of falsifying the expanse of its resound. It is simply there because it is there.

*

 Three years. Three years. Three years. Three years.

I’ve never reached a fourth anniversary with a partner. All four of my major relationships ended at three, never developing the ability to speak in complex sentences, never learned to count past ten or understand the concept of time or tell a story about what happened to them.

My relationships died before they began to truly become independent. The failure of my love—its inability to keep something alive—repeats in my mind and through me when I meet someone who moves me. The joyous noise of new love echoes off the obstacle of my past failures, and I can no more control it than I can family resemblances.

*

My mother looks like my grandmother, and my sister looks like my mother, but my sister really looks like my grandmother. I see each of them in each other, in little softly articulated ways, as subtle as color schemes in well-decorated interiors, minute spots of this shade, that one, which unite a space of otherwise unconnected things.

*

Echoes are beyond our control—unless we alter the geography of where the sound is made.

*

Echo is a nymph in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, who is condemned to repeat the last few words of whatever Narcissus says. So when he asks, “Is anyone there?” she responds, “One there?”

I am standing in a cavern at Old Man’s Cave in Ohio, where I’m from. I yell out, “HELLO!” and hear loud and clear my voice coming back to me: ELLO Ello ello lo lo o.

Echoes do not return our words; rather, they transform them.

*

From Lacy M. Johnson’s essay “The Reckonings,” in which she grapples with notions of justice and retribution for the man who kidnapped, raped, and tried to kill her:

I carry these stories with me because I don’t know what else to do with them. The details may differ. If it is not the story of an abusive lover, perhaps it is a mother, or a father, or an uncle; or it is the story of a friend who has been killed by a stranger while trying to do the right thing, or a woman who is shot in the back of the head while asking for help; it might be a story about the abuse of power, or authority, of the slow violence of bureaucracy, of the way some people are born immune to punishment and others spend whole lifetimes being punished in ways they did nothing to deserve.

These horrific and common stories demand a corresponding action—some form of symmetrical absolution, as in movies where the villain is righteously killed by the victimized hero. “Then, as now,” Johnson writes, “we want to transform our suffering: to take a pain we experience and change it into the satisfaction of causing pain for someone else.”

Later, on becoming a writer: “I’ve called myself a writer now for more than half of my life, and during all this time, I have learned that sometimes the hardest and more important work I’ve done has meant turning a story I couldn’t tell into one that I can—and that this practice on its own is one not only of discovery but of healing.”

*

The American Psychiatric Association has this to say on PTSD:

People with PTSD have intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings related to their experience that last long after the traumatic event has ended. They may relive the event through flashbacks or nightmares; they may feel sadness, fear or anger; and they may feel detached or estranged from other people. People with PTSD may avoid situations or people that remind them of the traumatic event, and they may have strong negative reactions to something as ordinary as a loud noise or an accidental touch.

*

Echo tries to touch Narcissus, but he repels and rebukes her, saying, “Hands off! May I die before you enjoy my body.” To which Echo replies: “…enjoy my body.”

*

Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves features a chapter dedicated to echoes. This chapter has caused much consternation in readers: if you Google “house of leaves echoes” you’ll find numerous threads asking why this section is included in the book at all.

From that chapter:

Nevertheless, above and beyond the details of frequency shifts and volume fluctuations—the physics of ‘otherness’—what matters most is a sound’s delay.

Point of fact, the human ear cannot distinguish one sound wave from the same sound wave if it returns in less than 50 milliseconds. Therefore for anyone to hear a reverberation requires a certain amount of space.

*

My grandmother, out of necessity, does the same things everyday: she gets out of bed, takes medications, eats some fruit or toast, sits in her chair and watches TV. And she talks. In circles, full of non sequitors, wholly incomprehensible. Though there is sometimes a hint of frustration or helplessness in her words, she does not seem unhappy.

And yet she is losing herself. Has already lost most of herself. This self now—the one that still lives, functions, talks—isn’t her. So she isn’t happy; she is gone.

It is this echo that seems happy.

*

From Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence:

The painting is an allegory of the evils of power, how they pass down the chain from the greater to the lesser. Human beings were clutched at, and clutched at others in their turn. If power was a cry, then human lives were lived in the echo of the cries of others. The echo of the mighty deafened the ears of the helpless.

I repeat: echoes do not repeat; they transform. It may be slight, it may seem miniscule, but it is not the same as the original vibration; it is like a recollection of it, a memory.

Memories fuzz the details. They make them murky. They soften the edges of some parts, intensify the sharpness of others. But we do not mistake memories for current realities, no more than we believe that a son and a father are the same person, merely because they share traits, look alike, echo each other.

*

Imagine the inside of yourself. Not the physical inside but the abstract inner space—the spirit or the soul or the heart or the essence—whatever you want to call it or believe it to be.

Imagine it as an open expanse of sky, or an endless field of grass, or a wide ocean. Imagine these impossible geographies filled with items: the house you grew up in; your first pair of glasses; your crush on your neighbor; the backpack you lost on the subway; the books you read and remember; the words that hurt you, that healed you, that gave definition to something that before was inarticulate; the shape of your calf; a painting by a friend; the hope you carry that persists in the face of repeated failures. It is you who connect this space of otherwise unconnected things.

Now imagine moving through these expanses—flying, walking, swimming—brushing up against the items, through them, past them, around them; touching them, holding them, feeling them. Imagine the culmination of these touches, these brushes, how they add up in your fingertips, give you a sense of surfaces, a variety of weight.

Imagine a sudden interruption in these spaces—a wall bounding upwards forever, a cliff with no foot routes, a curved shaped you can’t get above or below or around or inside. Imagine trying to continue moving through the space, but not matter what you do, you can’t get above or below or around or inside this interruption. In vain, you attack it with your fists, which only serves to confound your sense of touch, which before had been the entire point of moving. You have no options. Like some Biblical figure, like some mythological cypher, you yell at the interruption, condemning, berating, pleading, accusing, decrying…

But your words do nothing to it; they only echo back, mocking your futility.

*

When Narcissus first hears Echo in the woods, before he rebukes her, he calls out to her, “This way! We must come together.” Echo replies: “We must come together.”

*

We do not know what to do about my grandmother. She is not she and yet she is.

I do not know what to do with my new love, how I can deflect the echoes of my three-year pattern. Every love is different and yet shades of similarity persist.

We do not know how to get over trauma—not fully, not completely. Those echoes will always be there; we can no more control them than we can control the cause of that trauma.

We do not control the echoes of us; we can only control our own volume, the spaces we create sound in, our voices. We cannot control the sounds of others—“the physics of ‘otherness’”—but we can to the best of our ability change our distance, our space in relation to the echoes, to maybe get close enough to the source, that we can hear it no longer. We must turn the stories we can’t tell into ones that we can. We must reverse the echoes of power.

We must come together.

Jonathan Russell Clark is a literary critic. He is the author of An Oasis of Horror in a Desert of Boredom (Fiction Advocate), on Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. A former contributing editor at Literary Hub, his work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, the San Francisco Chronicle, Vulture, Tin House, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the Columbus Dispatch, The Georgia Review, The Millions, LA Review of Books, The Rumpus, Chautauqua, PANK, and numerous others.

[roseonhissleeve]

Have A Little Faith: Chapter Twenty

“Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.” - Anne Roiphe

content warning: mentions of domestic abuse

“Rachel?”

I spun around and my eyes immediately began searching for Harry. I located him within seconds—he was smiling and chatting with Gemma, both of them perfectly content. My heart was beating out of my chest, hands sweating. I could feel drips of sweat roll down my back as well, and I had to close my eyes to stop the world from spinning around me.

“Rachel, are you there?”

I shuddered slightly at the voice, my hands shaking and chills running down my spine in the worst way possible.

“What do you want?” I whispered softly, unable to utter his name. My gaze was still attached to Harry as I stood perfectly still, trying not to call attention to myself. I didn’t want anybody thinking that I was a freak.

“I…fuck, Rachel, I…I can’t…” I heard a small sob come from the other end of the line, which caused my eyes to wide as I tugged at a loose lock of hair that had fallen out of my braid. There was something wrong…something was definitely wrong, and despite my best judgment, despite everything that he’d done to me, a little part of me was worried. 

“What’s going on?” I murmured, turning my back to Harry as I lowered my gaze to the ground. I knew that if he saw my face in the state it was in, he’d know something was wrong instantly.

There was a long pause, and I turned around once again to look at Harry who was now dancing with one of the older ladies. I thought I recognized her from the bakery. The silence on the other line continued, and all I could hear was Elijah’s breathing.

“Eli, what the hell is happening?”

I heard another soft sob, and what I heard next quite possibly broke my heart into bits.

“My…Rachel…fuck, Rachel, my mom…she’s dead.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“Rachel, my mother….”

She’s dead.

She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead.

I replayed the words in my head over again, but they didn’t make sense. Even though I knew it was coming, it still didn’t make sense, and I suddenly was overcome with a wave of guilt for detaching myself so much from my reality back home. I could feel the blood pounding in my head as the feeling in my limbs slowly disappeared—I was suddenly quite unaware of the presence of the hundred-or-so people surrounding me. I was in my own world, trapped again.

“Rachel?” I heard Elijah’s voice choke out over the phone, causing me to lose my footing a little in my heels. I caught myself before I had the chance to fall over, but I was definitely drawing some attention from the other guests. There were some whisperings around me, and I quickly walked over to an unoccupied corner of the backyard.

“What…what happened?” I exhaled, nibbling on my lower lip gently as I fiddled with the fabric of my dress. I was beginning to feel claustrophobic. Tears began forming behind my lids, and I clenched my jaw in an attempt to prevent a meltdown right then and there.

“She w-was just sleeping, fuck, she was sleeping and I left for the evening…I was so tired…she was sleeping and she died and I wasn’t even there.” He wept on the other line, and I squeezed my eyes shut tightly as I held my hand clamped in a fist. I bounced up and down on my heels before beginning to pace back and forth, doing anything and everything to not lose it.

There was a small part of me that yearned to reach out to him and hug him. That small, tiny fraction of me that used to mourn for the man that he was when I fell in love with him—the more forgiving side of me, the me that always tried to see him for the good things he was. My first instinct was to tell him that it was okay, but that instinct was buried deep. I was no longer that woman.

She died alone.

“Pam?”

“Yes, honey?”

I lowered my gaze to the knitting needles that were in my hands and the deep blue yarn that rested on my lap. A few days ago I decided that she needed a hobby, something to learn, so I asked Elijah to go out and buy us some pairs of needles and yarn. We were both absolutely horrid at it—the scarves that we were attempting to make looked like they had been through a paper shredder, but it kept us busy and amused. We spent more time laughing about our inability to knit than on the knitting itself.

“Do…Do you ever get scared?”

I looked up at her after I spoke, my hands falling still in my lap. Her lips were pursed and her eyes were slightly crinkled. For a split second I could see hints of Elijah in her features.

“I’d be lying to you if I said that I wasn’t scared shitless every day.”

My eyes widened and  the corners of my lips tilted upwards at the sound of profanity leaving this sweet older lady’s lips. It was perhaps the first time I’d heard her say anything worse than “oh, shucks,” and it made me giggle a little bit. Her eyes lit up as she chuckled a bit to herself before continuing.

“Of course I’m scared…but these are the cards that I’ve been dealt. And I can either give up, or I can accept them and be at peace.” She explained, a serene smile on her features.

I thought for a long moment.

“What would you have done differently?” I continued, completely in awe of her words. “If you could have another chance, if you knew that this would be it…would you have done anything different?”

I watched as she smiled, her fingers adding another stitch to her (kind-of) scarf as she pondered the question.

“I want to say no, because I really do think that everything happens for a reason. Everything that I’ve done in my life has made me what I am…but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t have regrets. I think that I would have done a lot of things differently with Elijah, with his father.”

“He’s never told me about his father.” I commented, my interest in the conversation peaking. A part of me felt like we maybe shouldn’t be talking about it without Elijah around, but I also knew that I would never get it out of him.

“His father…” She sighed lightly, closing her eyes at the memories that were running through her thoughts. “Rachel, when people face hardships in life, they either grow stronger because of it or they choose to give into the worst part of themselves. Elijah’s father…well, he was the latter. But despite it all, Elijah adored him…I never understood that, how he could love someone who abused him so deeply…but I realized that I was doing the exact same thing. Loving someone who didn’t deserve it in the slightest, and harming myself in the process. So I picked up my things and I took Elijah and I left.”

My eyes widened momentarily as the weight of what Pam had said sunk in.

“I left when Elijah was about ten. I should have left sooner…his father passed away about a year after. Drunk himself to death. And every single day since I left him, I’ve wished that I would have left sooner…but a part of me still loved him, despite it all…and that’s okay, Rachel. It’s okay because there was a reason I fell in love with him, and that doesn’t make me naïve or stupid or clueless. Do you understand?”

It suddenly realized that she wasn’t only talking about herself anymore.

“Have you thought about what I said the other day? About leaving?”

“No, ma’am.” I lied, eyes attached to the material between my fingertips as I attempted to free a knot in my knitting that I’d unwillingly formed minutes before.

“Rachel.” She repeated, and I looked up from my task to look in her eyes. They were serious and solemn, and it brought a chill to my bones. “This isn’t all there is. You know that, right? These four walls…this is my reality. Not yours.”

My jaw clenched as I looked deep into her eyes, and it felt like she could practically see every corner of my mind.

“I can’t leave you here, Pam.” I argued.

“Of course you can!” She disagreed, setting her knitting down as she furrowed her brows. “Promise me, Rachel. Promise me you’re not going to wait until I’m in the ground to leave, to see what else is out there. Because if you do that, he’ll always need you…he’s always going to need you. And if you don’t leave now, you’re never going to let yourself go.”

“What kind of person would I be if I left when the two of you need me the most?” I admitted, my voice weak.

“You’re a kind person, love…” her lips wobbled a little as she spoke, but she continued with a strong tone. “But in being kind to my son you’re being very, very cruel to yourself. And you deserve your own kindness more than anyone else. Certainly more than he does.”

“Rachel?”

I swallowed thickly, lifting my hand up to my mouth to cover my trembling lower lip. Harry was bound to know by now that I had wandered away, and I needed to keep it together.

“I’m here,” I croaked. “What do you want from me?”

“Look…I’m—I’m not asking you to come back, your mom told me that you aren’t coming back, I know that…but her funeral’s in a couple of days and…fuck, Rachel, she loved you…She loved you so much, when you left…” I heard him struggle to keep his composure over the other end of the phone, and it caused a pang in my chest. “Well, she would’ve wanted you to be here.”

My lids fell shut as he spoke, and the words left my lips before I even had the chance to think about them.

“I’ll be there.”

“Okay…” I heard him sniffle, his voice struggling to keep it together.

I hung up the phone without another word and exhaled an audible sigh, and I took a breath before spinning around to look back at the party that was taking place. I shoved my phone into my clutch in a clumsy manner and brought my hands up to my eyes, wiping away at the tears.

I had to leave.

But first, I had to talk to Harry.

I walked back to the more occupied area of the backyard, my eyes scanning all the people. A few of them flashed me a smile which I was way too distracted to reciprocate. I quickly located him standing by our seats, and it only took a few moments for him to make eye contact. I could tell that he had been looking for me, and there was a shift in his face when he saw my own expression.

It took everything inside of me not to fall apart right there and then.

He crossed the dance floor faster than I’d ever seen—he was in front of me within the span of ten seconds, and his hands immediately found their place in mine.

“What’s wrong?”

My face crumpled a little bit at the sound of his voice, so caring and understanding.

“Do you remember when you told me that…that we could leave the wedding whenever I needed? That we could just g-go?” I struggled to keep my composure, and he could tell; he took another step towards me so that there was less distance between us, so that he could act as a barrier between me and everyone else. So that nobody else could see the tears rolling down my cheeks.

“Let’s go.” He said simply. He slipped his coat jacket off his shoulders and draped it over my own. It was something I desperately needed; I immediately slipped my arms into the large sleeves and wrapped myself up in the garment, inhaling his scent. It made me feel safer, and I followed his movements as he guided me towards the house and back up to his room, his hand securely in mine the entire time.

The moment we entered his bedroom I walked over and took a seat on the edge of his bed, and I watched as he shut the door behind him and locked it. He turned around, his eyes softening with care as he laid eyes on me. He closed the distance between us in a total of three steps and immediately knelt in front of me, his hands on my knees as his brows furrowed with concern.

“Baby…talk to me.” He murmured, reaching to tuck a strand of my hair behind my ear.

“I just…I need a minute, please, I need a minute to think and figure everything out, please just give me a minute.” I rambled, lowering my gaze from his features to the ground. I couldn’t think while looking into his big worried green eyes, I really couldn’t.

“Okay…Okay, love. Take as long as you need.” He reassured, standing up off of his knees to press a kiss against the top of my head.

I could feel all my walls slowly building back up again.

But then again, had I really ever tore them down? The past several days with Harry had been magic—but they’d also been a fantasy. We were tucked away in a fantasy and the real world was out there waiting for me; this was merely a reality check.

“I need to leave.” I whispered, standing up off the bed and taking a few steps away.

“What…Where’re you going?” He asked hesitantly, and I could sense the fear in his voice. The last time I said I needed to leave, I said goodbye to him and we thought we’d never see each other.

“I need to go back home, I need to go soon. I need to be back, something happened, I can’t explain but I need to go now.” I sobbed the last word, blinking away tears as I shook my hands up and down in front of my frame, an attempt to rid myself of the trembling of my fingertips.

“Ro, what’s going on? Are your sisters okay, is everybody okay?”

“I can’t tell you, Harry, it’s too—”

“Don’t.” he argued, standing up and walking around me, planting himself in front of me once more. “No. You’re not pushing me away again, Rosie, I’m not letting you.”

“Harry please, I can’t—”

“You’re my team mate, Rosie.” He interrupted, bringing his hands up to my cheeks softly so he could bring my gaze back up to his. I saw the warmth in them, the kindness and empathy, and I exhaled a delicate sigh. “I…you know, the past couple of days I’ve been struggling to think about what to call you. What we are, and I mean, I didn’t think we really needed a label. I always thought that we were kind of beyond them, kind of...undefinable? But today when people were asking me if we were dating or if you’re my girlfriend, I had no clue what to say. Girlfriend sounds so…casual. Ordinary.  Anyone can have a girlfriend…you’re more than that. You’re so much more than that, Ro.”

“Harry—”

“Ask me what being team mates means.” He insisted, and I could see his eyes pleading me to hang on for just a little while longer.

“What does being team mates mean?” I whispered shakily, finding that I felt a bit more grounded the longer I looked in his eyes.

“It means that we do it together,” he explained, “whatever it is, we do it and we go through it together. It means that whatever happens to you, happens to me as well. It means that when you’re about to fall apart, I step up and catch you. And the other way around. It means that we have each other, no matter what. It means that I trust you and you trust me, and God, Rosie, it means that you don’t have to do it all alone anymore…it means that we don’t run. Please, don’t run from me…”

His words resonated in my head long after he finished speaking, and the tears were still forming behind my lids.

I looked in his eyes, and I could tell that he meant every single word he spoke.

I felt a wave of serenity wash through me, and suddenly I felt every muscle in my body relax. With every passing moment that he looked at me, I believed him. I believed it all…and I didn’t know how, but for the first time in a long time, I believed that I was worth it.

You don’t have to do this alone anymore.

“I…I have to tell you something.” I whispered, exhaling shakily. There was still a corner of my mind that was shouting no, that was yelling and screaming at me to stop. Telling me that he won’t feel the same, that he wouldn’t understand.

But finally, the braver part of me was winning.

“I have to tell you something and I don’t know how you’ll take it.” I explained. He nodded his head slowly, his mind obviously searching for possible explanations to what I could be hiding.

“I…Well, I had…fuck.” I muttered to myself, turning around and taking a few steps before angrily kicking off my heels that I’d been wearing the past few hours. I inhaled softly and tried to form a sentence, but I was struggling to form an explanation.

“S’okay, baby,” he reassured, his voice calm and patient, “take all the time you need.”

I nodded my head, my back still turned to him.

“Have you tried saying it out loud?”

I fiddled with the hem of my sweater as I sat in the large office chair. I was frustrated, angry and exhausted…but most of all, I was just sad.

The woman who was sitting in front of me had kind eyes. They were big and blue. Serene, like the ocean after a stormy day. She had short hair, only about four inches long, and it hugged her features and made her look like a fairy. She was pale—her lips were delicate and perfectly designed for smiling.

“Rachel? Have you tried vocalizing it?”

“Vocalizing what?” I asked, tucking my hair behind my ear.

It was my third session with her. The first two sessions had been spent entirely in silence.

I felt guilty about it. My parents were paying good money for me to be able to see Dr. King, and I didn’t want to waste her time, but there was nothing I had to say. I was here because my little sister asked me to come to therapy, and that’s it.

“Whatever’s bothering you…the reason you’re sitting here.” She explained, her voice soft.

“I’m here because my parents told me to come here.” I stated stubbornly.

“Why did they ask you to come?” She continued to prod, setting her notebook on her desk. She leaned forward slightly, resting her hands atop of her lap.

“Because they’re parents.” I retorted angrily, my eyes looking everywhere except for her face.

There was a long pause, and her voice was stern when she spoke next.

“You can leave, then.”

I glanced at the time, brows furrowing in confusion.

“Don’t we still have another twenty minutes?”

“Well, Rachel, if you’re not willing to put in the work, I’m not sure why we’re wasting our time.” She stated plainly, leaning back in her chair as her eyes scanned my features.

“What does that mean?” I argued, my defenses at an all-time high. “That makes no sense. What, you meet with someone two times and then what? You realize that they’re too broken for you to fix so you toss them aside? What kind of doctor are you?”

“Do you think you’re broken?” She replied, tilting her head to the side as her eyes softened once again.

I exhaled a soft huff, lowering my gaze to the ground as I realized what she was doing. If I wasn’t already so constantly riled up I wouldn’t have been dumb enough to fall for it.

“I…I don’t know,” I admitted, sitting down in my chair again as my gaze attached to the book that rested at the corner of her desk.

“Here’s the deal, Rachel,” she began. “Therapy can be a bitch. It’s not a vacation, it’s not necessarily fun to do—it can be draining, it’s emotional, it’s not pretty all the time, and at least fifty percent of the time it’s hell. I didn’t get into this profession because I think it’s thrilling. Therapy and recovery after trauma like yours might be one of the hardest things that you will ever have to go through—you will have to relive parts of your life that you would rather forget about, and you’re going to have to ask yourself questions that you’d rather not know the answer to.”

“Wow, do you do your own marketing?”

“But,” she continued, ignoring my snarky reply, “there’s a reason why people do it. I’m not promising instant results, and I’m not saying that it’ll come easy. But if you stick with me, and if you have a little faith in yourself, you’ll be glad you came. But you have to put in the work, Rachel, because nothing worth doing ever came easy.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to make guarantees.” I bantered once again, jaw clenched tightly.

She looked at me for a long moment and I thought she was going to kick me out again.

“How’s this for a guarantee? We’re going to go through hell and back together, you and me. You will feel pain and sadness and loss. But I swear to you that at the end, you will rise like a phoenix from the ashes.”

I stared at her for a long time, lips pursed and fists clenched. My mind was racing—she’d definitely managed to shut me up, and earned some of my trust in some weird way. I exhaled a sigh, leaning back in my chair, my words unsteady and barely audible.

I could feel my lower lip quivering softly, and I closed my eyes…I was so tired of being angry.

“My fiancée would beat me every night when he got home from work.”

“A few years ago, I met a guy.” I began, taking a seat at the edge of Harry’s bed. “I was…I guess you could say I was a hopeless romantic when I was in high school. I was a late bloomer so I’d never had a boyfriend, and I was waiting for a long time for something…swoon-worthy, I guess, to happen to me. So when Elijah walked into my life, well, I fell head over heels. Hard.”

“He did all these huge gestures for me.” I continued, replaying the memories in my head. I felt Harry come closer to me and take a seat beside me, but I refused to look at his features—I knew that if I did, I would lose it. “He would bring huge bouquets of flowers to my locker during breaks, he would always kiss me right there in the hallways. At the time I thought it was romantic, but now I know that it was really just his way of being possessive. Showing that I belonged to him. He was the golden boy—he was student council president, he drove a motorcycle, he was never alone because he had friends all over the school. And when he picked me of all people…well, I thought that made me special.”

“He took me out to expensive dinners but refused to let me meet his parents. He bought me expensive jewelry but never wanted to listen to my favorite songs,” I mused, my voice surprisingly steady, “And one day he offered me the diamond ring…the one I’d always dreamed about. My parents both told me that they didn’t approve, and I think even my sisters hated him. But with him I thought I was special, and the within the next couple of months I moved in with him, several hours away from home.”

“The first couple of weeks it was a dream,” I admitted, lowering my head in shame, “he brought me flowers every day when he got back home from work, and we had his friends over for dinner every week…but eventually the flowers stopped coming.”

“About two months in…” I began, pursing my lips softly. This was the hard part. “He came home from work one day and was absolutely torn. Heartbroken. He…his mother was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. There was no hope, really. That…I want to say that night changed him, but maybe it really just brought out the side of him that I had yet to see.”

“Rosie…” Harry murmured, his voice soft.

“At first he only hit me on his bad days.” I continued, swallowing thickly as I clenched my fists a bit. I closed my eyes, my lower lip trembling.

But my voice was surprisingly steady.

“He would come home from a visit to the doctor with his mom, or a particularly irritating day at his work, and he would just…I would slip up. I’d accidentally drop a plate or I would forget to make sure that there was enough alcohol for him in the house, and he would…”

That’s where my limit was. I hiccupped a little sob, more involuntary than anything, and I felt Harry’s hand at my back. I looked up at him and as soon as I did I saw that there were tears forming in his eyes as well.

“I thought that it was my fault,” I choked, holding my hands up to my chest as I continued, “I thought that if I tried harder to keep him happy, that maybe he’d be better. I told myself that he was going through a tough time, that he was losing his mom, and that it would be selfish of me to not forgive him because he was going through hell. So I forgave him…fuck, I forgave him over and over again…and I let him beat me and hit me and use me, almost every single night…”

“I was hollow.” I concluded, sniffling as I looked up into Harry’s eyes. “I numbed myself, and god, Harry, I was so alone…he took me away from my family, he didn’t let me out of the house for days on end. Eventually people stopped looking for me, they stopped checking in, and I lost all of my friends…I was lost. I was so, so lost, and every single day while he was at work I would just lay on the ground, because his bed felt too disgusting, I would lay on the ground and I would ask myself over and over again how it got that bad, how I ended up there. And I still don’t know, Harry, I still don’t know.”

“Come’ere.” He whispered softly, opening his arms.

I crawled into his embrace quickly, wrapping my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck. My face burrowed into his shoulder as I choked out all the sobs that I’d held back. My limbs were all shaking, and the tears were streaming down my cheeks steadily, staining Harry’s dress shirt.

But he was there.

His arms wound around me tightly, tighter than they ever had before. I was still wearing his suit jacket, so I was quite literally enveloped in his warmth—I could feel his lips at my head, pressing kisses over and over again to my temple. He ran one of his hands up and down the length of my back soothingly, repeating the motion until it caused a wave of peace to rush through my body. I sunk into his embrace.

“I’m right here…you’re here with me. You’re with me now, my love.” he repeated, the depth of his voice resonating in my belly and bringing me warmth. “Shhh, it’s okay, I’ve got you. I’m not letting you go…I’ll never hurt you…Shh, it’s okay. You’re so beautiful…it’s okay, angel…”

I didn’t know how long we sat there like that. It could have been hours—eventually I fell silent, my face still hidden in Harry’s shoulder and his arms still wound around me. He continued whispering sweet nothings into my ear and he never complained, he never even attempted to break the embrace. I could feel his body shake under me with anger, but I knew that none of it was directed towards me.

He was there, and I knew he meant it when he said he wasn’t letting go.

He was my team mate.

“Are you still with me, beautiful?” He murmured after a little while, his lips at my hair.

“Mmm.” I sighed, tightening my hold around him a little bit. After a few seconds I exhaled a sigh and unwound my arms from his neck, only enough to pull away so that I could look at his features.

When I looked into his eyes, there was no pity—there was only understanding, compassion, and something else that I couldn’t quite put a name to.

“Thank you.” He whispered, lifting his hands to tuck my loose strands of hair behind my ears. He pressed his palms to either side of my face, cupping my cheeks as he brushed his thumbs across the area under my eyes, wiping away any tears that were left.

“For wh-what?” I sniffled, palms resting on his shoulders as I blinked a couple of times to get rid of the stinging sensation leftover from all the crying.

“For letting me in.” He explained. “For trusting me. It can’t have been easy.”

And that’s when I knew.

That’s when I knew that I was completely, undeniably in love.

“Rosie, why are you leaving?” He spoke hesitantly.

“Oh,” I exhaled, closing my eyes, “I…Elijah’s mother died. Pam. And I know how that sounds, I really do, but she’s the reason I left, Harry. She was the only person I had, the whole time. She’s the reason I left…I think…I think she understood what I was going through more than anybody else. She saved me.” I explained, my eyes tearing up once again as I thought about her. I brought my own hands to Harry’s face, settling them on either of his cheeks. “Harry…if it wasn’t for her, I think I would still be there, with him. I…I think I quite literally owe her my life.”

I watched as he furrowed his brows, deep in thought.

“Okay…but I would like to go with you,” he said, tilting his head to the side slightly, “if you’ll let me. If it’s okay with you…”

“Harry…are you sure? You just got back home,” I stated, brows furrowing, “this is my problem, you don’t have to—”

“Oi…what did I say?” He replied, offering me a small smile as he playfully tugged on my braid. I caused a smile to form on my lips, a genuine one, and I leaned in to press a tender kiss against his cheek before replying.

“We’re teammates.”

“That’s my girl.”

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