#the rational fear of dealing with the irrational will soon just become fear

[fersrsbizniz]

Annnd Van Helsing is vindicated in not telling Seward a damn thing today

[solardick]

Idea for sigma. 18th letter of the greek alphabet.

The idea is this. ΣWM.

Moon, card 18 and 23. Wheel, card 10 and 13.

23rd letter of the English alphabet is W. The 18th letter is R. The 10th letter is J and the 13th letter is M. The two additional cards here are J and R. The chariot and temperance.

Σ is used as a mathematic symbol.

The A and E cards are mused to be interchangeable. As they are often found together. But the final card in this set would belong to З, i come to. There doesnt seem to be any other symbol to use. З is also a stand in for Z. And also draws other connections to the high priestess. Emphasizing a more gental, nurturative side of the spherical and circular connotations. Of the cards. As the wheel is as likely asking as it is pointing where. Where’s the personal disposition of active participation? Attention and discipline, care, and intelligence. May trump all.

Not what i originally imagined. An I-robot type deal manipulating the elements of reality.

The σ minuscule version brings it the O and Q and G and even C itself. Together with the active use of “will” or purpose. Painting a lovely picture. As well as tying it in with the devil card. S and Z. Though im rationalizing. Sex and the machine. The wheel card can now be painted as a sexy robot.

It just does’t fit the circular theme of the set. Other than perhaps the solar system and human automatons.

The σ symbol is used in the same class of calculation as is Σ, adding in the standard deviation from a sum notation. Though it’s used as a fraction. Becoming an irrational symbol, labeled as Q. A fancier Q in another font. But still a Q.

But im not very convinced by it. The card as a whole.

Othwr than that i think im being framed for tax fraud. As someone sent me the T-4 tax slips for walmart for 2023 for 10000$. I didnt work a day at walmart in 2023. And i never got my T-4s for the roofing job i did for a couple months.

And yo get get a screening fie gonareah. Be foiring to have given me a gay desease after they rapedmy spyche. Just to add innthe degenerate sense of homour.

Fuckni hate it here. Today their making the eclipse personal by exlipsing my fucken efforts. Sorry they’re taking your work. Station so uou have nothing to do. Yeah. Go smokw a ciggarette.

Eclipse starts just when i get off work. It’ll pass over has im walking home. Miss it. It looked like evening. Like an hour before evening. I stop paying attention to astrology when o realized they were just ising it to mess woth me.

Anyway this was a crappy post anyway. But, im afraid until i have a confident. Im stuck doing this. Everyone needs someone. I dont know what that feels like. The worlds been agaisnt me since the day i was born. Instead of being completly serrounded by people i don’t like who are actively fucken with me. Literally everything the outside would has sent my way, offord, given, likes my life lesser. Since i was born. I was born in hell. And everyonw wants to rule. Grew up fearing and alone. Am old still fearing and alone. Nothing has changed in over 30 years. Everyone always playing soemthign over me. Since forever. And everyperson brings in something that weakens me. Always been. Theres nothing to learn from being messed with. Its just for others pleasure. As its always been. I dont want to be alive anymore. Whats next? My secret druggings to fuck with me? Beat me down until i freak out more and conveice other peopel to help?fuck with my income taxes? Give me a desease? Frame me for murder?

Im quitting this jon soon and probably gonna hang myself. If this all life is goona do to me. Then ehats the point? Theres nothing else. I could listen to the bible and beleive you’ll syop when im forty. But. That’s a lie. There was never any apple itd been like this from the start. I dont even human anymore. Theres no connecting with anyone. Ill bever have a confidant. Just serrounded by assholes. Likes its always. Been. Not allowed not beign fucken damaged by someone. Hahhahahabwell at leadt im not an unstable wreck anymore. But i cant rely on that. Eve’s a fucken faget anyway. Genesis lietterally makes. No sense. It would be woman pulling at a rib and become man. Cause she wanted to get penetrated. So he lies. And hooks up with her. Done deall. Fuckne hate the bible.

Jesus is a bastard. No father. Left his mother alone in the crowd. He’s super effeminate and cant defend himself. The last person you want backing you in a war. And only go pray to him if someone wants a blowjob. 🤷🏻‍♂️if anythung he’s be a kamikaze warrior. With c-4 straped yo his chest.

Now i got to go to work and deal with some crows. They only say one thing. Caw!!! Try havign a comversation eith that.

Ive been wondring about gods absence lately. Portent of the day. A black cat catches a mouse. Gets distracted by me. Drops it. And catches it again and trotts off. Today at the moment. Conversation is about cats and litter. As for being personally eclipsed yesterday. I refused to be around him after that. I am now working woth a different colleague. The same partner of the guy who eclipsed me. Txted me later that day asking a dumb question. He could easily get by asking the persons themselves. I responded with. “Lilith”. The eclipse happened on my natal lilith.

And apparently they pivked this out of one of the vans im supposed to load today.

Not my hand.

They all laughed and made fun. And tossed it at the manager. Him being an atheist or a satanist or some such. Makes the impression that he doesn’t like the church very much. Theres alot of gay crap tossed around. Like always.

Well, talked to another foreign doctor couldnt ynderstand half of what he was saying. I dont think he understood half of what i was saying so. Its prabably no help at all. So i got cramping meds. See if that works.

I dont thinknits working.

IBS. Apparently. Being around too much gay shit. Gives me a desease.

Fucken kirby. What fucken cokskr. Your with my partner today. Im going home vack to bed. No alwep. And meds gives me weak vision abd weak muscle. And i have 40 000 pounds to load today. Starta yelling at me. Called him aficjen cokskr and left. Sorry i give you the health and security position and that i helped not start start smoking again. Nr. Fucker whos constantly on light duty. Fuck you. Naybe upu found tgat jessus fifure for a reason. You fucken asshole. Go brush your fuxken teeth.

Well at least i dont gave the feeling likw i just got raped this morning. Add a headache to that. Coffee!!!!

Moody lunar men are ten times then women. I hope his saturn return fucks him up the ass like it did me. But, you cant get much worse of a transit. Than i did. So theres no comparison. Sorry yoo have to work today and not walk around stairing at boxes and sitting in the office. If this is how he gets without half the world fucken with him everyday. The. He’s obviously a pussy. Sorry im mad and i have no sleep. Ots an effort to walk.

So those pills seem to be working. Took longer than it said it would. But, i got to sleep around 2;45 ish this morning. Didnt get out of bed till 6:30 ish. After my alarm went off at 5. And made it to work on time. But, nooe. Cant do it today. Its an easy load. Heavy but. 40 000 thousands pounds of 100 pound boxes. Nope. Not doing it. Been doing 50-to 60 thousand pound skid orders lately. Which aren’t bad. But kirby irratates me. Walking around like he owns the place. Never load a van. Always sitting in the office. Or doing light work. And counting boxes.

Others dont sleep around here either!!! Fuck you. You stay up all night gaming. Fuck off. Think he’s mad cause im patronizing and a good parental figure for Keagan. I dont throw shit at the kid, i dont hit. Like the others do. and if he’s wasting time or does soemthign stupid. I make my pressence known. Pick that up! Where have you been?! Oh well cant be sick or downed without atleast soemone giving me a hardtimr for it. These last few years are proof of that.

Hospital is useless. They dont care there. Even the doc at the clinic was, “they didn’t ask you about that? Or soemthing like that. It was hatd to understand what he was saying simce he’s a foreigner and english isnt his 2nd language. Wont work the kid though. Cause he’s alwasy talkign about sex. Amd dick and ass. And carelessness. And goes absent regularly for half hours. Leaving you to do a two man job alone. And kirby misses more work than i do.

Het look its the same goose. Wonder if i talk to it. If it will show me his family. Like last year. And simce ingave him the position for hwalth and safety he has even more time to walk around and do nothing. But i need to het back home. Shut up and take a nap. And neither doni have a family, friends and any children. No moral interpersonal support. Fuck you. And i dont even get to see another member of the opposite sex. Im serrounded by assholes like you.

Think i got my eight hours. Too bad its midnight.

I dont want ti be alive anymore. Dont t go nj im doing tm taxes this year. They can audit me. Apparently i wrorked for 10 000s last year at walmart. And again. I never receivced my T-4s for the roofing job. I dont know if immeven hoing to be alive at the end of theis year anyway.

I do t wven know why thes epeople are doing this to me anyway. The accountant is probably fucken with me too. His too nice to me. Im gonna start calling people pussy lickers cause it cant be taken as sexual derogatory. Guess im just stuck being serrounded by people who say cokskrs all the time. Back to my childhood. And my father and my brothers. And i guess ill never know what life is not being fucked eith. 39 years and counting and it just keeps getting worse by the year.

Its hard to describe what it is being murdered by the entire fucken planet. Whatever ill just pay 3000$ from the audit. And save the headache. Trying to contact someone in charge of taxes from a large company like walmart is a mightmare. And the people there at the building at worked at will jsut play stupid. It’ll be ten times worse then trying to get an appointmen tto see a doctor. And illnprobably have to miss several days of wrok just to yse the fucken telephone. This is my entire life. From the get go. Or ill do it. And if they send me to court ill just hang myself before the trial. I dont remember the last few years have been a haze. They did pay me for a couple months after they fored me right before christmas for fake charges of sexual harrasment. Pending the “investigation”. So maybe. The only thing o remember clearly. Is god speaking to me through portents and stuff. While they tried to lasso me with queer bs. And raped my psyche. I rememeber being drugged, sleep deprived. And set up eith multiple girl while they fucked around in the background.

Hope i dont have to take these IBS pills tbe rest of my life somi dont have the feeling being raped everyday. Spekaing of which, my ass hurts. Need to take another pill.

[transmalewife]

Alright, let's talk about attachment

I can’t find clear information on when exactly the non-attachment rule was added to the code. It was either soon before or soon after the great sith war. Either way, for the VAST majority of the existence of the Jedi, it wasn’t a thing. Jedi got married and had families for over 20000 years, then added the non-attachment rule, which ultimately led to their destruction. And before anyone tries to tell me I believe they deserved to be genocided, I don’t. I have never actually seen anyone say that, but I see people argue against it constantly, and imply anyone who doesn’t think the Jedi were perfect and blameless thinks that. I don’t think they deserved to die, I think they needed to change. And Yoda says that himself, many times. The Jedi weren’t prepared for the return of the sith, or the war. They had separated from the military 1000 years before, and the galaxy was in relative peace all this time, so the order’s role changed to one that worked very well with their rules. Detachment meant they could be impartial when overseeing political disagreements, lack of possessions meant they would be focused on the mission at hand and not prone to taking bribes, and distancing themselves from the general population meant they were more or less uniform, and could be trusted not to side with someone for personal reasons.

All of this falls apart once they become an army again. Impartiality is a flaw when they have to defend one side at all cost and not even allow themselves to consider compromise. Lack of possessions and attachment to people means they are prone to taking unnecessary risks, because they have nothing to lose, and do things like send 14 year olds into battle, thinking of the “greater good” over the safety of children. And the order being a monolith, with set rules and philosophy distinct from the rest of the population meant the Jedi trusted Dooku long after they should have stopped, because he used to be a Jedi after all, surely he still follows the code.

Now, I am not saying non-attachment is always bad, I think it served a very specific purpose in the order, and to some extent worked for many years. However.

Humans are a social species. Human babies NEED physical contact and affection to develop physically. Children need a stable, strong, and supportive relationship to their caregiver to properly develop psychologically. And after last year I don’t think anyone will argue that adults don't need connection with other people just as much. And not just shallow interactions, but open affection and love. Love of any kind, because claiming that the Jedi only forbid romantic love is just untrue. I think people tend to forget that "Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is essential to a Jedi's life. So you might say, that we are encouraged to love." isn’t the actual doctrine, it’s a literal pick up line that Anakin uses on Padme.

Ahsoka and Obi-Wan both get criticized by other Jedi for their entirely platonic attachment to Anakin, and vice versa. Now, humans are the most common species in the galaxy, and in the Jedi order. Many other species are near-human, so it’s safe to assume at least some, if not most of them also need that companionship and affection to develop and live happy and stable lives. I do believe that non-attachment is a valid philosophy and chosen path in life if done carefully and within reason, I just don’t think we have a single major character that actually applies to. And chosen is an important word here. Jedi don’t get much of a choice. I’m not trying to start the baby-stealing debate here. I hear the argument of ‘force sensitives are dangerous if left untrained, and said training should start as early as possible’. I think finding a way to deal with that problem was an insanely complicated decision, and taking children into the temple as young as possible is not a bad solution. I don’t entirely agree with not letting them see their families later, (especially since in legends Obi-Wan was allowed to visit his family, which implies Anakin couldn’t go free his mother specifically because he was already too attached), but the idea is sound. I do also understand that no one is forcing Jedi to stay in the order and they can leave for whatever reason at any time. But that isn’t exactly a free choice either. Leaving the order means leaving the only home you remember, the only people you know to make your own way in the galaxy, and staying with those people means you can never fully love them. It’s a difficult solution to a complicated question, and for the most part, it worked (not always, and not exactly as intended, but I’ll come back to that.) Children grew up in the order, were trained to control themselves and the force, and became Jedi who were impartial, patient, and balanced. But everything falls apart when you introduce someone who wasn’t raised in the temple.

In The Rising Force, 13 year old Obi-Wan had barely been off Coruscant in his life. He describes himself as sheltered and unaware of all the pain in the galaxy, and says it was done on purpose, so younglings wouldn’t have to face the dark side before they were ready for it. But Anakin had seen nothing but darkness, pain and injustice before he joined the order. He was severely traumatized, and while the temple might have had some ways of dealing with trauma and PTSD in adults, they had no experience in treating the same in a child, because their children were kept safe and protected. The idea of letting go of your pain and fear only works if you know you have a safe place to come back to, if you’ve spent the first decade or so of your life in the most protected place in the galaxy. Anakin spent the first decade of his life as a slave. He couldn’t let go of his fear, because fear was what kept him alive. Fear is not irrational if you are constantly in danger, it’s what protects you, keeps you aware of the limits you can push before you get punished. And that mindset doesn’t fade just because you’re out of that situation, especially if your only family, the closest person to you, is still facing that danger every day.

I’ve seen people use every excuse possible to explain why Anakin didn’t see his mother again to avoid blaming the council, including, and I shit you not, “He just didn’t have her comm number”. But to me that seems disingenuous, when we see in his first meeting with the council that they already consider him too attached. It's one of the main reasons they don’t want him to be trained, so it seems logical that they wouldn’t allow him to see her once he became a padawan. I also want to mention that what Yoda says, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” Is just… blatant catastrophizing. Right? Like we can all see that the escalation is not rational there at all. Maybe it could apply to something else, but not to a child who just left his mother for the first time in his life and went from a tiny dustball in the middle of nowhere to the most populated planet in the galaxy, and is now being tested by a bunch of old people with the power to decide his future. Obviously he’s afraid, and obviously he’s not dealing with it the way Jedi younglings do. That, in and of itself doesn't doom him to fall. Also what Yoda misses there is that suffering leads to fear. This is a closed loop, and one that has defined Anakin’s entire childhood.

Let’s come back to how the system doesn’t always work. The way I see it, most of the characters we see are attached. Obi-Wan is considered one of the greatest Jedi of his time. Windu describes him as “our most cunning and insightful Master—and our most tenacious”. And yet, he was not insightful enough to look past his love for Anakin, his attachment, and see how close to falling he was. Ahsoka was so attached to Anakin she refused to listen to Maul on Mandalore, refused to even consider the posibility he could fall. She was arguably the person with the best shot at preventing the empire forming at that point, and she loved anakin so much she doomed him and the entire galaxy. Aayla admitted to thinking of Quinlan as her father, and also, apparently in legends had a long relationship with Kit. Even Mace didn’t follow the code when he decided to kill Palpatine, which directly led to his death and the empire. He also indirectly caused the war to start. According to wookiepedia “Windu viewed Dooku as the shatterpoint of the entire Separatist movement, which meant striking Dooku down would theoretically end the imminent clone war before it even began. However, Windu's prior attachments to Dooku clouded his judgment.” I’m not even going to mention Kanan and Ezra, who are obviously family.

So basically everyone is attached and lying about it. How has no one thought that maybe this isn’t the healthiest way to live and tried to change the code? Well, I have a theory, and it’s Yoda. He was 900 years old when he died, and was on the council for the vast majority of his life. I can’t find when exactly he became grand master, but it’s safe to assume he held some degree of power over the entire order for most of a millennium. At the end of TPM he tells Obi-Wan “Confer on you the level of Jedi knight, the council does. But agree with your taking this boy as your padawan learner, I do not.” Then he reverses that decision by himself. So either he has the power to veto the council’s word, or who gets trained is entirely up to him. Either way, not great, considering his lifespan is so much longer than most Jedi, and therefore his approach to life is vastly different. Humans need love and closeness to live. However, while we don’t know much about Yoda’s species, it probably isn’t a social one. You could count all the characters of this species on two (human) hands, and Yoda lived in complete isolation for 20 years on Dagobah, and only went a little bit insane. They are naturally rare, and therefore probably lead solitary lives in nature. Moreover, Yoda outlived every master who trained him, and almost every padawan he trained himself, (there’s a great post about that here) so even if he wasn’t naturally predisposed to non-attachment, he would have had to learn it to deal with all the loss he had to live through over the years.

A lot of people think that Anakin fell because he had attachments, which is not true. He fell because of how his attachments played out and/or ended. The most obvious example being Palpatine, who used Anakin’s trust and friendship to groom him for over a decade and actively undermine Anakin’s trust towards anyone else, especially the order. (more on that here). Obi-Wan refused to take on the role of a father figure that Anakin tried to shove him into, so he turned to someone who did accept it. It’s not Anakin’s fault that it turned out to be the worst person alive, nor can we expect him to notice when he’s known Palpatine since he was a child. Another failure of jedi non-attachment, because a loving parent or guardian would not let their child be used as a bargaining chip when the most powerful politician in the galaxy blackmailed the order into allowing him to meet Anakin regularly, but a distant teacher and detached knight thinking of the greater good might. The other attachments Anakin had were taken from him (Shmi and Ahsoka, the last orchestrated by Palpatine who was fully ready to give her the death penalty to make Anakin more unstable), or he was forced to lie and hide them, compromising his vows as a Jedi (Padme) or refused to choose Anakin over the order/their principles (Obi-Wan, and again Ahsoka, and to some extent Padme, but he’d already fallen then). All these people had every right to make the choices they made, but it wasn’t the act of loving them that made Anakin turn to the dark side, it was how those attachments played out.

I think everyone agrees that Yoda is as detached as a Jedi should, if not can, be, and that didn’t prevent Dooku from falling. We see that explored in more detail with Barriss and Luminara. Luminara is detached and distant, she’s fond of Barriss, but their relationship is not familial in the slightest, and she repeatedly shows her willingness to put the greater good and the mission before Barriss’ safety and even life. And yet Barriss still falls. A complex combination of events and choices caused each of those characters to fall, not the simple presence or absence of attachment.

And lastly, just as attachment can make you unstable if your relationship with that person is unstable, it can also make you stronger. There is a reason Anakin and Obi-Wan were the face of the army. Not only did their obvious attachment (the strongest between two jedi we are shown) make them more relatable to the public, but they, when working as a team, are shown repeatedly to be more or less undefeatable. They spend half of aotc flinging themselves off great heights because they know the other will be there to catch them. They know from years of experience that they have backup and they know each other well enough (or force bond communicate) that they can trust the other will be where he needs to be to help/save them. Contrast that to how Windu and Palpatine fight in rots once the window breaks- very carefully, clearly holding back to keep themselves safe. Neither of them has backup until Anakin arrives, but until the last second they can't be sure which one he will choose. Anakin and Obi-Wan fight the same way on Mustafar, especially when balancing on that thin bridge. No acrobatics, swinging arms to keep balance, keeping their distance, being almost uncharacteristically careful compared to how they treated heights in aotc, in tcw, and on the invisible hand in rots, because they both know the other won't catch them if they fall this time.

[creativepromptsforwriting]

Hi! I’m really stuck. I’m writing about an agent who is taken hostage by the mafia and is being tortured. She is disassociating to help deal with the pain. she is having flashbacks to when she was first out on the mission and i’m having tour me writing them. any ideas? (for clarification, while she is being tortured she is flashing back to her life before and on the mission, all leading up into the point where she got caught.)

Hi :)

Someone asked for help for writing dissociating a few days ago and there was some great help in the comments, so you can check that out.

I’m also planning on doing a post soon on how to write the mafia, so keep looking for that, if you need some help there as well.

For your story in general, I like the idea. I’ve seen things like this before in TV shows and they’re usually some very good episodes. Having someone being so vulnerable and having them completely lay out their past through the flashbacks is very interesting and a good way to do a character study.

My advice is to not go in the correct order with the flashbacks. Don’t start with the beginning of her story (becoming an agent for example or something in her childhood that made her become who she is). Show something less deep at first. People in extreme pain are not rational, their brains don’t follow a specific order. She could try to cope with the pain and the fear of dying by thinking about the doctor’s appointment she is missing. And this mundane thought leads her to think about other things she will be missing soon. Maybe she thinks about the Christmas office party and that leads to her thinking about her colleagues probably searching for her or how she became an agent. Or she thinks about what happens to her cat now.

So my advice is: make her thoughts and flashbacks irrational, make her brain jump from one thing to another. It should all lead to something and make sense for you as an author, but for the reader it should give off the feeling of not really being conscious and just a distraction from the pain that is not done on purpose and with a specific goal.

I hope this helps and good luck writing it!

- Jana

[papirouge]

hello, i hope this isn't a stupid question: how do you start loving God instead of only fearing him and always being scared of being thrown into hell? (idk whether i already sent this ask or not sth weird happened with tumblr)

Hi!

It's funny you're asking me this bc I made this post not too long ago about how Loving God wasn't necessarily consequential of acknowledging hell. But the thing is, as Christian, we should both Love AND fear God.

You probably know the saying "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" - well that's precisely the mindset to apply when it comes to sin and its ultimate consequence : Hell.

I know that (too) many Christians are very uncomfortable with a concept of Hell because they have a very flawed image of God, where He is nothing but caring, loving, will never get angry at them etc ....but a simple look at the Bible is enough to grasp this isn't true - AT ALL. Sure, God is Loving and Caring and Patient, but let's not overlook the many occurrences where he flipped out and turned against his own anointed people because of their disobedience. If you analyze the storylines of biblical characters who spiritually fell from Grace (literally), all these people either 1) willingly engaged in sin 2) got warnings from God to repent BEFORE being chastised. - Moses he sentenced to never reach the Promised Land and an untimely death because he stroked the rock instead of speaking to it (Numbers 20:11) - David, from whom He took the son he got with the widow of the man (/romantic rival) he murdered AND sentenced to have trouble with his other sons and undergo treachery (2 Samuel 11 & 12) - King Saul to whom He retrieved the whole discernment after multiple act of disobedience and who eventually fell into insanity and disgraceful death (suicide) - Samson whose lustfulness led to becoming a slave court jester with his eyes gouged out - Ananias & Saphira (who accepted the Holy Spirit and lived within Apostolic communities) who got struck dead because of their greed - etc You don't end up in Hell by mistake. Once you grasp HOW and WHY Hell happens, you can start having a balanced relationship with God and feel secure in His Love because this relationship is becoming more "rational". That's why it's super important to consistently study and meditate the Bible. You have to build a personal relationship with God to grasp what saddens Him and what you should let go (I've personally got warnings from God to stop visiting specific websites, talking to some people, entertaining hobbies/interests, watching shows/anime....). and soon enough you'll realize this isn't always what the "Christian bloggers" -who happen to be lukewarm themselves- are telling you.... This "spiritual equilibrium" will become more palatable by the time you get closer to God - your relationship with Him will intensify as you grow more experienced in faith and communication/prayer. Thanks to the Holy Spirit, you can feel when you're on the good track or not - securing this feeling of "rightness" is what's alleviating this anxiety about Hell (although keeping a healthy dose of fear of Hell is totally normal lol Eternal damnation is the worst thing to possibly think of!!). The only question is whether you will be receptive to what the Holy Spirit compels you to do & repent or...pull out excuses and keep entertaining sin....and end up in Hell.

Unsurprisingly enough, Christians who have an irrational fear of Hell tend to either entertain a misunderstanding of it (lack of biblical knowledge - esp the Old Testament) or simply have a moral struggle because more often than not, they are lukewarm Christians with many unconfessed sins (you know, the "haha it's not a good deal, it's just TV shows with magic🙃" "yeah I like witchcraft when it's on TV but I hate it when I'm at church" trope I battled with countless times already lol). They refuse to acknowledge that being Saved does NOT secure a place in Heaven if you keep sinning (i.e King Saul + Saphira & Ananias) so they freak out at the idea of possibly ending up there because their own conscience indicts them and then accuse you of being a fearmonger lEgALisT when reminding them of this reality....SMH

[blucmoon]

━  ☾ ⊹  ( im jaebum, cis male , he/him ) say hello to AE YONGGUK, the TWENTY SIX YEAR OLD that seems to have a lot in his hands with HIS job as a STALL OWNER, DRUMMER AND OCCASIONAL BARTENDER! beyond that, they seemed RESPONSIBLE AND TRUSTWORTHY upon first glance. i heard someone say they’re sort of EVASIVE AND INSECURE though. HE seems to live in a 4 BEDROOM HOUSE in YUNHWA, SOUTH KOREA. anything else to add? oh, yeah! he also RUNS A STALL CALLED “KODACHROME” WHERE HE TAKES PHOTOS FOR IDS, SELLS PRINTS AS WELL AS BOOKS SESSIONS FOR PHOTOSHOOTS. 

basic information

full name: ae yongguk

nickname(s): guk, yonggu (hasn’t figured out why)

age: 25

date of birth: january 6th, 1995

birthplace: seoul, south korea.

hometown: yunhwa, south korea.

current location: yunhwa, south korea.

ethnicity: asian.

nationality: korean

gender: cismale

pronouns: he / him

orientation: demiromantic, bisexual.

occupation: stall owner and drummer of a band called “crux”. sometimes he helps at his aunt’s bar in busan for some extra money.

living arrangements: house #4012, hwesakgu.

language(s) spoken: korean, english (conversational)

physical appearance

faceclaim: got7’s im jaebum “jb”

hair color: like almost everyone, he has naturally brown hair but throughout the years he’s dyed it blonde or black a couple of times. right now, it’s black and he has managed to grow it to a length he really likes below his chin. yongguk can be usually seen with his hair down and every so often he puts it up in a half updo. whenever the band has a gig, he  exerts a little more effort (even if most of the time it doesn’t pay off).

eye color: brown. (likes colored contacts every now and then)

height: 179 cm

weight: 66 kg

build: lean person, with a good muscular frame.

distinguishing characteristics: two beauty marks right next to each other on his left eyelid.

tattoos: has a full sleeve on his left arm from shoulder down to a little above his wrist and another one his right forearm.

piercings: lobe and upper lobe in both ears, anti-tragus on the left one, double helix on the right, anti-eyebrow and nose on the right side of the face (won’t ever use jewelry during the day though).

clothing style: while he’s working at the stall he has a more casual style consisting of jeans, cargos, pants, button downs, sweaters. likes layering with denim shirts, flannels, jackets, windbreakers over t-shirts, etc. mostly in earthy colors, dark reds and blues, white, gray and black. no matter what though, he will always wear long sleeves, even in the hottest summer days and never roll them up, going to these lengths just to not draw any unnecessary attention. (he’s even gotten a fair amount of rash guards for those occasions when he feels like going for a swim.)

at the bar or at gigs, he’s usually clad in all black or dark tones. sleeveless shirts or those with short sleeves are his go-to, not nearly as concerned to conceal the ink over his arms from the public eye at night. he likes to choose style and comfort when performing, thus splurging a little more on his nightly outfits rather than those he uses on the daily. leather and denim jackets, bombers, sometimes harnesses, jeans in either black or leather, boots, sneakers, muscle shirts, graphic t-shirts, shirts with the first buttons undone and rolled up sleeves in dark, rich colors. style varies from street fashion to grunge to rocker depending on how he feels.  

health

sleeping habits: goes to sleep really late but has no trouble waking up early to go to to work, though for the first couple of hours he’s awake and if he has gotten 4-5 hours only, he’d be kind of silent and unresponsive until getting that first cup of coffee. will likely nap before his shift at the bar only for an hour and a half tops.

eating habits: eats 3 - 4 times a day and gets easily hungry between meals. often seen snacking whatever he can.

exercise habits: doesn’t really exercise much constantly, but on the weekends he likes hiking or running around town.

emotional stability: 6/10

body temperature: average

addictions: none

drug use: experimentally a couple of times, hasn’t done it in a while.

alcohol use: socially, medium-high tolerance.

personality

label: the opaque (unable to be figured out; hiding behind a façade; not transparent.)

positive traits: reliable, responsible, hard-working, trustworthy, loyal, thoughtful, generous, creative, passionate, artistic, caring, considerate, devoted.

negative traits: defensive, evasive, cautious, indecisive, defiant, self-doubt, fluctuating self-esteem, conflict-averse, private, self-conscious, sensitive, unpredictable.

hobbies: starting songs he never finishes, watching the same show every year (avatar the last airbender) as well as his comfort movies, cloud/star gazing, jigsaw puzzles, origami, video games, playing guitar sometimes.

habits: knuckle cracking, muttering under his breath, snacking between meals, rubbing hands together, jaw clenching, gesturing while talking, rubbing the back of his neck, running hands through hair, drumming fingers, sings along to songs and sings gibberish for the parts he doesn’t know, doodles on any paper at reach, dozes off when bored/daydreams, bobs his leg while sitting.

zodiac sign: sun capricorn, moon pisces, rising scorpio (read as: impending disaster)

mbti: infp

enneagram: 6w5

temperament: melancholic

hogwarts house: ravenclaw

moral alignment: chaotic good

primary vice: wrath

primary virtue: diligence

element: water

expanded personality

yongguk has a strong tendency to appear quiet and reserved and it might come off as standoffish or easily confused with snoberish, which makes it worse when he doesn’t go out of his way to change this preconception about him. he needs a great deal of personal space, both physically and mentally, and any attempt to control him or forcibly schedule his activities will only strengthen his need for time alone.

he’s responsible, trustworthy and hardworking. relies heavily on his intuition to guide him and knows how to patiently wait as well as how to adapt to any circumstances. in yunhwa, he’s been forced to learn how to interact with the townsfolk and through the years he’s mastered the front he puts on in order to remain below the radar and not get any unnecessary attention; polite, helpful, sometimes even considered as a sweet guy, yongguk has no problem lending a hand to anyone that needs it.

however, in busan, his adaptability is also handy when it comes to dealing with customers. at the same time, it’s in these moments when he feels a little less restrained and allows himself to be less calculative: flirty, playful, sometimes misleading… he’s gotten in several problems because of this and yet he has no plans to stop it anytime soon.

yongguk is a little insecure and with a fluctuating self-esteem: sometimes he’s very well aware and confident on his skills and assets, but other times he will second-guess everything about himself. this combined with an strong fear of failure that stems from poor past decisions, makes him hesitate when it comes to making important calls that could potentially affect his future, but he knows how to play it off… most of the times.

despite appearing simple at a glance, yongguk is more than what meets the eye. friendly but private, polite but passionate about his beliefs, calm and sometimes expressionless. it’s not that he doesn’t have feelings - he actually runs quite deep and strong - it’s just that he conceals them under a mask of politeness because he’s unsure how to deal with them; he’s restrained when it comes to conveying emotion, but has a very deep care for his peers. might be awkward and uncomfortable with expressing himself verbally, but has a wonderful ability to define and reveal what he’s feeling on paper.

yongguk is genuinely interested in understanding others, a good listener, but will exclusively share his sorrows and woes only with the friends he trusts the most, unafraid to display his best and worst with them. his natural intuition allows him to sense the mood without the need of words. however, he can be quite impressionable and be easily influenced by the moods of others, which may often lead him to feel overwhelmed because of this.

incredibly curious, yongguk loves to explore with his hands and his eyes, touching and examining the world around him with cool rationalism and spirited curiosity. he explores ideas through creating, troubleshooting, trial and error and first-hand experience. yongguk can be a challenge to predict, even by the closest people to him. can seem very loyal and steady for a while, but he has a tendency to build up a store of impulsive energy that explodes without warning, taking his interests in bold, new directions.

with a good memory, he can recall experiences from the past down to smallest details. this is both good and bad: remembering the good memories is a way to ease himself when in stressful or sad situations, but he’s also prone to dwell on previous mistakes and regret them for a long time.

he’s not consistently angry. will either let the anger build up and release it all at once in an outburst or let it out slowly through small, critical remarks throughout the day. sometimes, both. he’s very difficult when annoyed, but it usually doesn’t last that long. a perfectionistic through and through, his main source of anger usually comes from things not being up to their standards. not good at sparing others’ feelings when he does become irritable. doesn’t like conflict and will go to great lengths to avoid it. in those occasions where he does have to face it, he will approach it from his feelings and mistakenly place little importance on who is right and who is wrong. yongguk will react to the emotions he’s going through and won’t care whether or not he’s right, which makes him appear irrational and illogic.

background (tldr)

his parents work in the field with doctors without borders.

yongguk was born in seoul and lived there for six years before his parents sent him to yunhwa to stay with his grandparents while they went abroad.

seven years passed, his parents would rarely contact them, much less visit them.

in the meantime, his grandma taught him how to play many instruments, being a musician herself and he was enrolled in kwangsook academy.

at thirteen they returned and guk moved with them back to seoul. around this time he became more reserved and quiet, the conversation always focused on his parents achievements and interests.

he made it his goal to become a doctor in hopes of having something in common with them. it was a way to seek their attention and approval.

a year later, a new plan was announced and yongguk was back in yunhwa with his grandparents. he was actually pretty happy about this.

started taking his studies seriously in his junior year of high school, going to the extent of dropping music and every other altogether.

he successfully managed to get into pusan national university, school medicine.

however, the whole experience was something he wasn’t ready for at all. for a year and half he struggled to keep up with his classmates and was utterly ashamed to compare his simple goal of wanting to get closer to his parents to the drive of everyone else.

he drops out after talking with his grandfather, a successful doctor himself.

initially excited to get the chance of truly discovering what he wanted to do, a single call from his father deterred his enthusiasm. he was supposed to return to yunhwa, instead he decided to move in with a friend and stay in busan… where everything goes downhill.

at only twenty and under the fake pretense that he’d get his act together, he allows himself to make mistakes and act recklessly, secretly wishing that’d be enough to get his parents attention.

he found temporary jobs all around busan and never lasted too long, but he still made money and that’s the only thing he really cared about at the moment. things aren’t great, but they aren’t that bad, or so he tells himself.

at twenty one, he gets a full sleeve on his left arm as well as many piercings. a couple of weeks after this, his grandparents decided to pay him a surprise visit and the state of his apartment as well as life… is not optimal.

coincidence or not, his parents video called them at that moment. it was the first time he heard from them in a year, and it was the last time as well.

seems like only his appearance was enough to finally trigger some sort of emotion from his father, but it wasn’t really the kind he was looking for. it was anger and he could clearly see the disappointment in his eyes. a heated argument ensues, one that ends with “you’re not our son anymore.”

perhaps it came a little too late, but it was the much needed wake up call to get his act together. not in order to mend the relationship with his parents, he knew that’d be impossible. but more so, for himself.

he perks up at a suggestion from his grandmother, one that was about a long forgotten hobby of his: photography. he remembers an old shoe box filled with polaroids and undeveloped films under his bed.

thus, he stays in busan after enrolling in a community college for a year-long photography class. around this time, one of his aunts offered him a job as a bartender in her bar and since then he’s been helping her every now and then. he says it’s for extra money, but in reality is a way to repay her from hiring him when no one else would.

after he was done with his course and had saved enough money to get a decent camera, he decided it was time to go back to yunhwa.

he returned three years ago. luckily, his reputation there remained intact and he wanted it to stay that way thus hiding the ink on his skin with long sleeves and removing the jewelry whenever he was outside.

yongguk moved back with his grandparents, this time to help them out and take care of his grandmother who started to get a little ill. he picked up playing and making music after finding his long abandoned drum set in the garage.

with the help of his grandfather, he opened his very own stall called “kodachrome” where he takes photos for ids, sells prints of his own work (mostly of yunhwa’s scenery) as well as books sessions for photoshoots.

a year and half ago, however, he had to find a new place. his grandparents decided to retire and move to jeju. thankfully, he managed to get a deal to rent a house from one of his grandma’s friends. the house was a little too big thus he decided to post an ad online looking for roommates to share the space and ease the expenses.

in the present, yongguk is still running his stall and getting contacted every blue moon by small influencers and event planners looking for his services. three nights a week, he goes back to busan to work for his aunt at the bar and every other night he has gigs with a band, which was randomly created after having far too many drinks with his roommates.

background (full)

tw: mentions of needles, tattoos, substances but nothing too graphic.

ae yongguk was the name given to you and and your endearing smiles as well as adorable dimples seemed to be more than enough to have everyone coddling and cosseting you from the get-go. nonetheless, permanency was never on your parents’ agenda. by the time you turned six, they moved away and you were shoved into your grandparents’ household in yunhwa.

it’s difficult to comprehend the sudden change, being told that you’d be living with them for some time. how much? they don’t specify, but the next thing you know is that you’re wordlessly bidding goodbye to your parents, who promised to write and come back for you soon. they didn’t. being part of doctors without borders and making it their goal to offer medical aid where it’s needed most, they put their humanitarian labor before parenthood.

the first letter you got arrived eight months after they left. there’s disappointment and there’s also heartbreak, but they don’t last long. you don’t allow them to regardless of your young age. instead, you focus on how your grandfather, despite having severe and strict ways, squeezed your shoulder and offered the small smile that you know all too well now. or how your grandmother, a renowned musician, didn’t hesitate to shower you in unconditional love. your education didn’t cease and your grandfather immediately enrolled you at kwangsook academy.

one of your most prominent traits is how transparent you are with your emotions and your grandmother easily learnt to read this. it was no surprise that the first time you saw her playing a beautiful song on her baby grand and your irises sparkled with curiosity, she immediately beckoned you closer. “hi, my love.” the elderly woman greeted while shifting a little so you could take a seat beside her. you meet her eyes and you wonder if she’s looking for anything by the time an easy smile appears on her face. “do you like music?” you’re unable to respond, but she must’ve seen something because, after that, she started teaching you the basics of piano. a couple of days later, she asked again and this time around, the answer naturally slipped out of your mouth: i love it.

for your regular classes, you were constant and responsible. sure, you enjoyed learning, but your interest wasn’t inherently there. it was just something you had to do. however, when it came to that newfound love for music of yours, you were the one with the initiative to ask for more lessons and practice whenever you had free time; first the piano, later the guitar and a couple of years later you made the stubborn decision to learn the drums.

it was nice staying in yunhwa, it brought you a comforting sense of belonging. it was the beginning of finding your own voice; discovering your likes and dislikes, some of your talents and even the chance of making friends. however, there was always a lingering question in the back of your mind and a deep sadness you rarely showed: when are my parents coming back?

they do, but only for a short period of time.

you had only turned thirteen, but the moment you saw them you were but an excited kid, joyously yelling and running to hug them, but they greeted you rather… frivolously. you try to ignore the breach between you and them, which you felt the most when you were holding your mother’s hand; her skin a couple of degrees colder than your grandma’s. they ask how you were doing and, in your frenzy, you start talking about everything that’s happened all this time only to be interrupted; the voice you were starting to grow inevitably drowned in the sea of their own achievements and stories.

it’s then that they tell you they’d move to seoul and you’re to go with them. apparently, with the intention to settle down and give it a go to having a normal family. you say goodbye to your grandparents, and unlike your mom and dad, the promises of staying in touch with them are real.

you were silent and reserved around your parents. you had to after learning that no matter what you tried to tell them, the conversation always ended being about what interested them. for a while you pretended to be okay with it, but soon you started wishing they paid as much attention to you as they did to their cause. it made you think that, by immersing yourself in that world, you might be able to keep them interested long enough or make them proud, and your very own obsession to become a doctor started right there. simple questions that had your parents perk up are what made you believe that your plan isn’t too far fetched.

luckily, you were able to retreat to your music whenever everything became too overwhelming, but even this wasn’t enough to stop an ever growing beast called dissatisfaction from making your chest its home. it increases in size and sometimes it’s so big that you’re unable to keep it in your ribcage, coming to light with rebellious little acts such as not doing your homework or bluntly strumming your guitar late at night. eventually, unspoken words and jumbled thoughts find their way into old notebooks full of an amateur’s unfinished songs.

it’s exactly a year later that they announced their new plans of moving to the other side of the world, plans that didn’t take you into consideration at all. it was disappointing, but not really surprising. still, you were able to comprehend the nature of their jobs, after all they were brilliant doctors and only a handful were willing to offer the assistance your parents did. you stop expecting things to change after the farewells you exchanged with them. you wished them the best and truly meant it.

going back to yunhwa at fourteen is something you anticipate; your grandmother welcomed you with your favorite food and your grandfather with a blank notebook. “for your songs, son” he said with that smile of his, learning about this new hobby of yours from one of the many mails you sent them. both were happy about your return and helped you pick up your studies where you last left them.

it’s in your junior year at high school when you truly get serious about your studies, medical school was your single goal. even though you’ve come to terms with the relationship you had with your parents, a hopeful part of you genuinely believed that becoming a doctor would help breach the distance.

and so you do, dropping music altogether and every other hobby that “needlessly” consumed your time and energy. it was admittedly exhausting and you were obviously miserable without playing any instrument. the sleepless nights and the isolation you brought upon yourself paid off the moment you received the news of your acceptance at pusan national university. that very night, you got a call from your parents congratulating you.

for the next year and a half, however, things prove to be extremely challenging when you find yourself amongst thousands of students whose drive and ambition is stronger than simply wanting to get close to their parents. it’s shameful, you admit and the constant pressure as well as the competitive environment soon takes a toll on you, but it was much needed for you to start questioning everything; yourself, your goals and if it was really what you wanted.

the person who helps you to fully come to this realisation is none other than your grandfather, another renowned doctor in your family. it’s shocking to hear him encouraging you to drop out and follow your dreams. truth is you were far too concerned chasing after a hopeless goal than to craft ambitions and dreams for yourself. still, you follow his advice even when you are completely at loss about what the next step would be.

if news of your acceptance travelled fast, so did the news of your departure. you got a call shortly after and all you heard was “we’re very disappointed” followed by radio silence before your father hung up. you were nineteen, about to turn twenty, when they last talked to you.

their silence becomes one of your many excuses to make mistakes and act recklessly; if your good behaviour and your previous little act didn’t catch their attention, this surely will. it’s your shield against the disapproval in your grandfather’s eyes, and that very shield is what stops him from stopping you. even when you told him you wouldn’t return to yunhwa, instead moving to one of your friend’s apartment in the heart of busan.

it’s amusing how easily your grandfather believes your fake promises of trying to get your life together and you feel awful for being such a good liar. you find decent jobs, but never stay too long. unnecessary fights with customers or blatant irresponsibility are the main reasons that force you to find a new one every couple of weeks. you’ve been many things: a busser, a server, even a mascot. you didn’t mind much as long as you were paid.

you willingly dive into a void filled with indulgence and bad decisions. all in order to not think, to not dwell on the future. you used every situation you could possibly get yourself into as a distractor from the painful reality. you were lost, so utterly lost.

twenty one comes around and you decide that, for the first time ever, you’re going to gift yourself something. a permanent work of art, its canvas your skin.

three monthly salaries were spent on black and red ink which reminded you of your favorite place. the needle pierces your skin once, twice, hundred times until your arm is almost fully covered… maybe it was a metaphor, a feeble attempt to display something bright and wonderful on someone who otherwise had long lost every trace of that. it was not enough and a couple of piercings follow in trying to beautify the sheer mess you’ve made of yourself.

some nights you question your own strength and sanity. you used to be pristine, someone to be proud of and an exemplary resident of the town you fondly call home. you were constant, had talent and a midas touch that turned meaningless words into beautiful songs, scribbles onto paper into melodies that had every listener humming along.

what happened to you, boy? says a voice in your head… or is it from your chest? is it the dissatisfaction you’ve tried to keep locked for years? all it took was to be called a disappointment once for you to willingly become one?

it consumes you and every passing day it becomes louder, but you’re stubborn and simply take it as a challenge to find new ways to drown it. headachingly loud music, poisonous substances, liquid trust or the ecstasy under someone’s fingertips… the city swallows you whole and provides you with momentary sweet oblivion but… is the aftermath of impeding remorse worth it? it is, you convince yourself while running back into it’s arms night after night.

one day, without warning, three knocks come onto your door and when you’re about to curse whoever disrupted your game, you’re met with your grandparents. your appearance is deplorable; bloodshot eyes, greasy hair and alarming signs of lack of proper sleep. it hurt to see your grandmother, as crystal clear as you wear, worried and at loss of words. a thing the city taught you was to be a pretender and so you ignore every sign of concern in their faces while smiling at them. “long time no see!” you say cheerfully.

it’s a quiet visit. they don’t know what to tell you or where to start, and neither do you feel a need to fill the awkward silence when your grandfather’s phone went off. he answers without thinking to a videocall and the voice that greets him has you freezing on your spot. father. your face falls and your eyes widen in obvious panic when he asks about you. the older man in the room seems to be equally as frantic as you when he glances at you, taking in how you look before your father speaks again.

“oh, is yongguk there? let me talk to him.” his authoritative tone was enough to have your grandfather turning the phone towards you. it’s late, far too late to fix yourself or even try to hide the glaringly bright red ink on your arm. so, in your frenzy, you decide to play cynical. what else could you lose, right? “hey, dad.” you greet with a shameless smile upon your lips. “your timing is as impeccable as ever.”

the argument that ensues forces you to retreat to your room and you thank whatever universal force that your roommate decided to have a weekend-long trip. it’s a heated fight, and you realize midway through that this is the longest conversation you’ve ever had with your father. why is it that the most display of emotion you get from him is when you don’t follow his ridiculous standards? he gets louder, so do you and it escalates to irreversible words. the last thing he says is “you’re not our son anymore” followed by silence.

then you laugh.

you laugh over the irony of an absent father saying such a thing. you laugh because you don’t want to allow him see you hurting. you laugh at how fucked up the whole situation is. “doesn’t make a difference, does it?” you say between unabashed chuckles. “not like you ever acted like a father, anyway.” and you hang up, your legs giving in and only then did you notice that your whole body had been shaking this whole time.

you muffle a scream on a pillow while feeling so alone and like the butt of the cruelest joke. you want to hate your father and your mother. you want to despise them for their horrible behavior. instead, you find yourself crying like an abandoned kid wanting, yearning for the love that wasn’t given to him. you want to run, to disappear, to hide where no one can find you.

then, two arms wraps around you and even though your grandmother is a little smaller than you, you find yourself feeling protected under her embrace. shortly after comes a pat on your head from your grandfather. you look up at those brown eyes full of wisdom and, when he tells you “everything will be okay, son.” you wholeheartedly believe him

because, a year later, things started looking up.

[jjuzoir]

A dangerous fellow hc with Zion where mc is hurt bc Zion is choosing Scarlett over her and do mc becomes increasingly brash and charging into danger which worries Zion? It’s a lil complicated sorry haha

Request:

A/N: anonieeee:;; i’m sorry TT it took me sooo long ahh;;; kdjsjsn,,, i hope you like it,,, 😔👉🏻👈🏻

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Jealousy | Zion

For a week or so your boyfriend, Zion, had been paying more attention to Scarlett.

Not that big of a deal, right? Yes, you guessed, but at the same time it kind of… hurt you? Maybe not so much the fact he was spending time with the pretty blonde but how pushed back you felt.

He constantly pushed you away with excuses involving her and it got to the point even the other guys thought something was up. Eugene and Harry began hanging out with you, out of what you could only guess was pity.

So, instead of bottling the feelings up any longer you decided to confront him. You knew that keeping the frustration in would only hurt you and the relationship.

So, you gathered all your courage and knocked on his classroom door.

As it slowly opened you were able to take a small peek to find, to much surprise, that it was empty.

You stepped inside quietly and looked around worried, it was already past the established bedtime and Zion was nowhere to be found.

“Zion,” you whispered as you squint your eyes, the blue-tinted room dark from the lack of light source.

No answer.

You felt a headache coming to you as worry washed over you, where could he be? Had he left with- no, he wouldn’t?

“Did he leave with her?” You bit your nails in worry, the thought was irrational no matter from what angle you looked at it but for some reason your distraught mind made it seem like the only rational solution. He had been spending an awfully long amount of time with her.

Your chest felt contacted as if it had shrunk in size and tears blocked your vision; you were scared, standing in his room at night, of losing him. You felt like the relationship was going nowhere, it was stuck in a limbo where neither of you could understand the other, you didn’t want that.

You rub your eyes before turning around and leaving the room quickly, maybe he was just checking up on food? Water? What would he be checking in on anyway!

You hurriedly make your way to your room when you hear a giggle, a girly giggle; Scarlett, soon followed by a deeper laugh… Zion was with Scarlett.

Somehow, the prospect made your chest hurt more than if he had suddenly left. He had chosen her over you, again.

You turn on your heels, it felt like your feet were glued to the ground and you couldn’t move; you felt small. Had Zion regretted being in a relationship with you instead of being with Scarlett?

You gulp down a fat tear before sprinting down the stairs and into the back of the school where you felt your legs give up.

He had been your only comfort for a while, a sign of you not being alone and yet he felt like he was slipping away.

You felt tears rapidly fall down your cheeks as your whole body trembled as you sobbed, before long you felt yourself grow tired and limp; exhaustion soon became present in all of your muscles.

You were sure you were alone, no one was going to be with you anyway- not even your boyfriend stuck with you, but apparently, a zombie would.

You heard a low growl coming from your right, a growl similar to that of a disfigured wolf threatening because you knew what it once was but terrifying of what it had become.

You turn around slowly attempting to move quietly, you squint your eyes trying to find the source of the movement when you catch a glance of a tall silhouette hanging from a tree.

“How did it get here?” You mumbled as you slowly crawl backwards in fear, if you could run fast enough maybe it wouldn’t see you but it was too late as it snapped its neck to face you, burnt skin that had come out of its face and yellow teeth drenched in dried blood became visible as it opened its mouth and screamed.

Adrenaline pumping in your veins your scramble upwards and attempt to run back inside only to trip on a stick and fall face first into the ground,

you were now scratched and bleeding. Your whole body burned as you turned around to see that thing trying to climb down the tree, it didn’t seem to know how so you tried your luck again and forced yourself up and sprinted down the back of the school.

You heard a thud behind you and almost tripped again when you saw it laying on the ground trying to get up; it had a few missing limbs and you could see the flesh and bones where they had been amputated, you were trying your hardest not to puke.

Just as you were about to give up you extend your finger in hopes of finding anything to protect yourself, you feel a cold metal blindly grasp for it; a pole, it was awkwardly cut and it had a sharp edge in the end, and right now it was the only thing you could use to attempt to use for protection.

You use it to try and stand up and quickly change the way you grasp it before awkwardly raising it and hitting it against the floor as a warning, but it didn’t care and only continued getting closer to your panicking form. You raise it again now that it was a bit closer and shove it inside the things neck, blood splattered around the floor and up the metal and you felt your food travel up your throat, just as you were about to repeat the moment you heard someone scream your name.

“What the fuck are you doing-?!” A bush of red hair darted from behind the creature and tackled you in a hug, it was Zion.

“I-I was trying to,” you attempt to form a coherent sentence as he smothered you against his chest.

He looks at you dead in the eyes with worry, it was the first time he had looked at you like that in a while, before turning around to the impaled creature he slowly took the pole out of its neck and shoved it in the chest, not that you could see well with tears forming around your eyes, and just like that it slowly died.

“You were looking for me?” You asked softly.

“I just told you that,” he ruffles his hair annoyed, “why were you out here this late?”

“I don’t know…”

“You don’t know why you’re out here?” Zion raised his eyebrow at you.

“I- yes I know but it’s dumb,” you cough slightly.

“Of course it’s dumb, I can’t think of a single damn reason why you’d willingly walk outside and into a darn zombie,” he looked at you confused, “Just tell me.”

“I-I was,” you take a deep breath as you felt the scars and bumps you got, “I was jealous of- of Scarlett.”

“Jealous of Scarlett?” Zion breathed out confused, he walked over to you with furrowed eyebrows as he laughed awkwardly.

“Yeah, I- you were spending so much time with her I-I thought you, maybe, regretted being with me,” you explained shyly, “I tried looking for you to talk it out but- I heard you two hiding or something and I didn’t wanna bother you…”

“S-So instead of waiting you ran here up to a zombie?” He tried to understand your reasoning as you two stood under the bright moon.

“Not really, I just wanted to walk it out and it was there…”

“You could’ve died, you could have died!” Zion whispered to himself before realizing how it could’ve ended, “[Name], are you stupid?!”

“I didn’t mean to but it just happened-“

“You happen to find a coin not try taking down a fuckin’ zombie by yourself! Not even Ethan and I can do that, you’re lucky this bastard had only two days left before becoming fossil fuel!” Zion exclaimed, “You should’ve told me before, you-you should’ve at least waited or something!”

“Waited for what? For you- you to turn me down whenever I try talking to you?” You spit back annoyed, had he not realized how he was pushing you back, “Haven’t you noticed how little time you’ve spent with me? I-I have been trying, Zion, for a week- hell maybe even more- to talk to you about it but you’re always running off with her! So go ahead, dump me and go for her! You spend so much time with her I’m not even sure you’re my boyfriend!”

You felt your chest rise and fall rapidly as you finished your rant, finally getting it all out of your chest. You couldn’t find it in yourself to look him in the eye either tears jam-packed in yours, your hands trembled on your sides as you attempted to calm your heart down.

“Oh?” The red-haired boy whispered, you look up to him and find him standing in front of you, “I-I didn’t know that you felt like that, I-I’m sorry…”

“You should be,” you stutter, “I just need to know, and be honest, is this even gonna work?”

“What? Us? Of course it will, what are ya’ saying?,” Zion was taken by surprise, “This was just a lack of communication, whenever you feel like this again, just tell me… Okay?”

“Fine…”

“And whenever you feel like you need some space or that Scarlett’s hogging me up,” he approaches you slowly before hugging you tightly, “Don’t be a fucking idiot and tell me.”

“Sure,” you hug him back. Even if he was rough around most edged, even if he had a hard time reading the signs you dropped- he could be nice, yeah… he could be.

[dama-metztli]

Flash Fiction No. 10: “The House on Huxley Lane”

I have a writing request! Can you please write about a haunted house? Thank you ^^ (Credit: Anonymous Ask)

Auden laid awake at night, eyes set hard on the ceiling above as he kept his movements to a minimum. Drops of sweat rolled down his face, short breaths escaped his mouth is shallow puffs. His skin broke out in goosebumps as the hair on his arms stood on end.

The new house he had just bought had seemed like such an ideal buy and he had rushed to seal the deal before anyone else could snatch it up. Who in their right mind would ignore the beautiful home? It was one-story and small, but the wood-and-brick house was alluring. The polished wood interior, furnished in color-coordinated red and grey furniture, gave off a pleasantly comfortable and cozy vibe. And the land surrounding the place was equally as attractive—the lush green meadows that seemed to roll in soft waves just added to the building’s appeal. 

But the house wasn’t quite sitting right with him now. There was something off.

For these last few nights—and always at this same time—he would be overcome with fear. Not a rational fear, not an irrational fear. But a deep primal fear that set off multiple warning bells in his head.

He had chalked it up to his unfamiliarity with the place. After all, he was living by himself out in a rather rural area. There were wild animals out there that could kill him, so maybe that’s why he was so afraid.

He froze suddenly, his body becoming paralyzed as he didn’t dare to even breathe.

Footsteps. Slow and steady, but coming in his direction. His eyes darted to the door, which he couldn’t quite see in the dark. The distanced thump of the footfall came to a sure stop in front of his door.

Only the door separated Auden and whoever was on the other side. But even then, Auden didn’t feel any safer. His body couldn’t move. He couldn’t run or hide. He couldn’t do anything but wait.

“Dennie?” a woman’s voice called out, familiar and reassuring. And with that, Auden’s body relaxed. He moved his head, letting out a scoff in disbelief as he ran a hand through his matted red hair.

“Mum?” A feeling of euphoria suddenly overcame him, filling his head and blocking his thoughts. “Mum!”

A smile stretched on his face and his eyes lit up. It had been almost a decade since he had last heard her voice, and even longer since he had actually seen her.

He shot up out of bed, rushing to open the door. He had to see his mom. He needed to see his mom. He just needed to.

He swung the door open, and there in front of him stood his mom. She looked the same as in the pictures he had of her, with her matching red hair full of white streaks. Her kind, weathered eyes became crescents as she smiled at him, cupping his cheek.

“Oh, my little Dennie. You’ve grown so much.” A tear beaded and rolled down her cheek. “Come, let’s catch up, shall we?”

He held his mother’s arm and exited the room.They both turned to the hallway and walked together. Auden gazed at his mom, not looking away. The broken windows didn’t deter his attention. Nor did the strong wind that caused papers to fly and scatter. He didn’t even flinch when the lamps and vases shattered. No, nothing could break the attention he held on his mom.

“Mum, where are we going?” A crunch alerted him that he had stepped on something, and he managed to look away from his mom long enough to see what it was.

A cracked picture frame, with his mother’s black and white photo inside. There were numbers that seemed to mean something and some text inscribed at the bottom, but he quickly brought his attention back to his mom.

At least, he wholeheartedly believed that the being with him was his mother. A large, smoky, black mass writhed around next to him, it’s face only decipherable by the dark void that made up it’s mouth.

“You know that gated park you loved when you were little?” the mass whispered, using voices that didn’t belong to it. It was a cacophony full of ragged, hollow, shrill, and raucous tones. And yet, Auden only heard his mother.

“Of course I do! We would sneak in sometimes when it was closed, and we had the park all to ourselves!”

“That’s where we’re going.” The mass all but dragged Auden with it. But Auden only saw his mother leading him by the hand. They kept walking together, going to the front of the house and out the door, which was off its hinges.

Auden eagerly followed his mother out the door, the giddy feeling in him making him act like a little boy again. It never crossed his mind once that it was past 3 AM, nor did he remember that his mother had passed away 14 years ago.

Days later, Auden’s friend went to check up on him. Auden had not been answering his calls and he was getting worried. As soon as he pulled up, he noted the broken door and windows. Inside was just a mess. Shattered glass littered the floor, along with papers and porcelain. Photos were off the walls, and all the furniture was upturned. But everything was there. Broken, but there.

The only thing missing was Auden.

© Beautiful Anemoia

[hamliet]

MXTX Ladies Week: MDZS

I did Scum Villain’s awesome female cast last night, and now it is time for my favorite of MXTX’s novels, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. 

In MDZS, my main critique is that, while all of the female characters do get fantastic arcs, the vast majority of them die (though, granted, their deaths aren’t usually done just for the male characters’ sadness, but often do make sense for their own arcs. So that’s. Something. Still grumbly about it though). “The woman dies” is a similar trope to “bury your gays” and it’s... tiring. That said, I did find all the characters’ arcs incredibly well done. No one is fanservice; they are all complex and human.

I want to talk about the characters whom I haven’t talked about as much before, so that means less on SiSi and MianMian, as well as less on Madame Lan. See here for my meta on SiSi and MianMian, as well as here for my meta on Madame Lan. Throughout all of their arcs, there’s a common thread about calling out sexism. MianMian calls it out directly:

The person replied, “You’re...calling white black no matter how irrational it is. Ha, women will always be women.”

MianMian fumed, “Irrational? Calling white black? I’m just being considerate it as it stands. What does it have to do with the fact that I’m a woman? You can’t be rational with me so you’re attacking me with other things?”...

Holding in her tears, she shouted a moment later, “Fine! Your voices are louder! Fine! You’re the rational ones!”

She clenched her teeth and took off the crested robe she wore with force, slamming it onto the table with a loud bang. Even the sect leaders in the front rows, who weren’t paying attention to this side, turned around to see what happened. The ones beside her were indeed surprised. What she did meant that she was ‘leaving the sect’?

Soon, some began to agree, “Women will always be women. They quit just after you say a few harsh words. She’ll definitely come back on her own, a couple of days later.”

“There’s no doubt. After all, she finally managed to turn from the daughter of a servant to a disciple, haha…”

MianMian is looked down upon by the social hierarchy for being a woman and for being the daughter of a servant. Her lack of power against a sexist world is eventually countered by the fact that she’s one of the women who survive the novel, with a husband who follows her in night-hunting. As I said in my past meta, she steps outside a corrupt society.

Mistreated Wives Mistreating Children: Madame Jin and Madame Yu

Madame Yu is probably one of the most complex characters in the entire novel, which says a lot since she’s a minor character. But she and Madame Jin are said to be best friends who arrange the marriage of their children, and the two women are also foils. 

Both of them are mistreated by their husbands in a sense. Madame Jin has to deal with Jin GuangShan sleeping around and impregnating numerous other women, while Yu ZiYuan has to deal with the fact that Jiang FengMian clearly was in love with CanSe SanRen, not with her, and brought back CangSe SanRen’s child after Wei WuXian was orphaned. To be completely fair, Madame Yu’s dislike of and lack of respect for her husband is completely valid over this. However, what isn’t valid is her taking it out on all three of the kids at Lotus Pier. She abuses Wei WuXian and mentally abuses Jiang Cheng as well, and isn’t exactly awesome towards Jiang YanLi either. She constantly reminds Jiang Cheng that he can’t live up to Wei WuXian (projecting her own bitterness at not being enough to be loved like CangSe SanRen in her husband’s eyes), whom she despises for whom his mother was, and thereby exacerbates Jiang Cheng’s already deep insecurity issues (granted Jiang FengMian is responsible for this as well). But, she ultimately dies to save both Jiang Cheng and Wei WuXian, refusing to cut off his hand when she knows he is innocent. It doesn’t erase how she treated them while they lived, but it does add a level of complexity and tragedy: she knew Wei WuXian was powerless in these circumstances, as she had always felt, and she saves the kids before dying to defend Lotus Pier--with her husband, whom, it’s implied, did care about her but sucked at showing it. Almost like that’s a Jiang family trait.

Madame Jin is no better towards Jin GuangYao when he shows up. She did not object towards a child being kicked down the stairs on the basis of something he could not help, and Lan XiChen notes that she has him beaten regularly after he is accepted in the Jinlintai. Yes, she told off her husband for his arrogance, but she was trapped in her marriage with him and projected her pain onto someone who was not responsible for it (regardless of what Jin GuangYao did, she was abusing him). 

The point of both women isn’t that they’re horrible or that one is redeemed; it’s once again calling out the double standards and corrupt power structures at play. Jin GuangYao and Madame Jin are actually foils in that both abuse the power they have to target children who can’t help who their parents are (A-Song), because neither of them are able to truly demand justice from the person who is actually responsible: Jin GuangShan. 

The Bad Girls: Meng Shi, CangSe SanRen, and Madame Lan 

Or the women whom no one cared about enough to hear their stories. Madame Lan was a murderer and a parallel to Jin GuangYao and Wei WuXian as a result; the only way to save her life was to marry Lan WangJi and XiChen’s father. She’s noted to have been playful and fun, but she was only allowed to see her sons once a month, and she was confined her entire life, which is basically symbolic of how the cultivational society treats people: it traps them and isolates them.

CangSe SanRen is not described in much detail besides that, like Xiao XingChen, she left BaoShan SanRen to join cultivational society. Yet she still continued to flout its rules--cutting off Lan QiRen’s beard and marrying a servant instead of marrying a sect leader and gaining power. Rumors about her--that she had an affair with Jiang FengMian despite no evidence--and that she flouted society are then projected onto her son (symbolic of society’s unwillingness to change its corruption and power system)...

...which is just like how Meng Shi’s having been a prostitute is projected onto Jin GuangYao. People won’t even accept tea from him, believing his skin dirty on the basis of whom his mother was. However, everything we know about Meng Shi suggests she cared deeply for her son and chose to have him despite knowing what it would do to her popularity as a prostitute. Even when the other prostitutes comment about how she was a fool who kept hoping he would return, she still cared for her son and he repaid her by carving her face into the GuanYin temple’s idol. Jin GuangYao also expressly says that his father “wouldn’t buy [her] freedom,” implying that she did not have much of a choice about her lifestyle. Good job, society. Not. 

The Mean Girl: JiaoJiao

Okay, she’s kind of loathsome in personalty, petty and cruel and having an affair with an even crueler prince. Yet in a story that comments so much on privilege, it’s hard not to see her as a victim of circumstance as well; however, her proximity with the (then) pinnacle of corruption in Wen Chao and Wen RouHan means that she too misuses her power once she has it. She hurts innocents in Lotus Pier, she tries to kill MianMian just for being pretty, etc.

However, keep in mind that JiaoJiao’s prettiness is said to be what attracted Wen Chao to her, and it’s said that her family then received favors, such as the creating of their own sect. Her name is also noted by translators to be comparatively unsophisticated, implying that she likely came from a family that wasn’t exactly high up in society. None of this excuses her, but what exactly makes her fear of someone else being prettier than her and thus losing all the power she has (which she knew would happen eventually), and potentially her family suffering for it as well, all that much different than Jiang Cheng’s bitterness towards people more powerful in cultivation than him? Jiang Cheng had ShiJie and Wei WuXian and others to show him love and help him not become as cruel of a person (until she dies and then he does, indeed, torture people), but we know nothing about whether JiaoJiao had that. 

Desperate people cling to what they have. JiaoJiao, Wei WuXian, Jin GuangYao, and Jiang Cheng all show us this. It doesn’t excuse them, but neither does it mean they’re demons. 

Integrity and the Limits of Sacrifice: Wen Qing and Jiang YanLi 

Jiang YanLi and Wen Qing are in many ways the opposite of JiaoJiao: both are brave, kind women, and wonderful older sisters, even if Jiang YanLi is unassuming and Wen Qing bold. Both are inhibited by their power, though: Jiang YanLi’s talents are not cultivational in nature, and Wen Qing may be talented and brilliant as a doctor, but she is limited by her role all the same:

Lan XiChen responded a moment later, “I have heard of Wen Qing’s name a few of times. I do not remember her having participated in any of the Sunshot Campaign’s crimes.”

Nie MingJue, “But she’s never stopped them either.”

Lan XiChen, “Wen Qing was one of Wen RuoHan’s most trusted people. How could she have stopped them?”

Nie MingJue spoke coldly, “If she responded with only silence and not opposition when the Wen Sect was causing mayhem, it’s the same as indifference. She shouldn’t have been so disillusioned as to hope that she could be treated with respect when the Wen Sect was doing evil and be unwilling to suffer the consequences and pay the price when the Wen Sect was wiped out.”

The thing is: she did try to stop some of them, helping Jiang Cheng and Wei WuXian, but Jiang Cheng doesn’t speak up for her. Sigh. 

Both of them are also foils in how they both ultimately sacrifice their lives to save Wei WuXian... and it turns out that their sacrifice doesn’t protect Wei WuXian. Wen Qing tells Wei WuXian the story’s catchphrase “thank you, and I’m sorry” before turning herself in for execution with her brother, but all this winds up in is the BurialMounds being seiged anyways, all her relatives except Wen Yuan being killed, and Wei WuXian still dying. Wen Ning, too, is not killed but is made a weapon. Jiang YanLi, despite Wei WuXian having led to the death of her husband, pushes him out of the way of a soldier looking to kill him, and gets killed instead. But this only results in Jiang Cheng becoming enraged and helping kill Wei WuXian, and Jin Ling being left an orphan. 

However, because MDZS has a pretty nuanced view on sacrifice, it’s neither pointless nor to be admired. Wei WuXian is both Wen Qing and Jiang YanLi’s foil in this: he, too, is self-sacrificial to a fault. The novel pretty clearly implies that self-sacrifice can be a form of self-harm, as it is for all three of them. Yet, all three of them have a defining trait of deep love that ultimately enables them to have legacies that continue: Wen Yuan, Jin Ling, even Wen Ning survive, and Wei WuXian is given a second chance at life. It’s not that their sacrifices were ultimately selfish and didn’t matter or shouldn’t have happened; it’s that, without an unjust society, they should not have had to happen. Wen Qing should not have been condemned on the basis of her name. Jiang YanLi should not have been killed because Wei WuXian should never have been seiged. And Wei WuXian should never have had to feel like he had to prove his worth (keep in mind Yu ZiYuan’s last words to him are literally that he should protect Jiang Cheng with his life). 

The Victims: Qin Su, Mo XuanYu’s Mother, and Madame Qin

In this house we stan Qin Su. 

Talk about a woman who goes after what she wants. She is said to have pursued Jin GuangYao after he saved her during the Sunshot Campaign, rather than the other way around. 

However, during the sunshot campaign, Qin Su had been saved by Jin GuangYao. She fell in love with him and never gave up, insisting that she wanted to be his wife. In the end, they finally drew the period on such a romantic story. Jin GuangYao didn’t let her down either. Even though he held the important position of Chief Cultivator, his behavior was drastically different from his father’s. He never took in any concubines, much less had a relationship with any other woman. This was indeed something that many wives of sect leaders envied.

And yet, again, because of circumstances beyond her control and because of the abuse of power, she can’t have happiness. Jin GuangShan raped her mother (seriously, he’s the very symbol of power abuse in relation to sexism in this novel), who is too ashamed to tell her husband that his best friend assaulted her. We can’t fault Madame Qin for staying silent, and with Qin Su already pregnant, it’s difficult not to empathize with Jin GuangYao for feeling trapped and marrying her anyways--though it is his fault for not telling her, and for killing their son, as Qin Su basically states that the dividing line for her is because Jin GuangYao killed A-Song, not because of their blood relation. 

After a moment of silence, Jin GuangYao answered, “I know that you won’t believe me, no matter what I say, but it was sincere, back then.”

Qin Su sobbed, “… You’re still speaking such blandishments!”

Jin GuangYao, “I’m speaking the truth. I’ve always remembered that you have never said anything about my background or my mother. I’m grateful for you until the end of my life, and I want to respect you, cherish you, love you. But, you have to know that even if A-Song hadn’t been killed, he had to die. He could only die. If we let him grow up, you and I…”

With the mention of her son, Qin Su couldn’t bear it any longer. With a raise of her hand, she slapped him on the face, “Then who’s the one that did all this?! Just what can’t you do for this position?!”

In some ways Qin Su and Madame Qin could be seen as a potential foil for Madame Jin and Madame Yu, in that they both loved children who were forced upon them, who would have been scorned in the world’s eyes, and defend their wellbeing and life. 

Mo XuanYu’s mother was sixteen when Jin GuangShan found her, and she was noted to herself be the illegitimate daughter of a servant--but her father was not scorned for this, yet she was scorned for having a son outside of wedlock.

the elder one was the daughter of his principal wife, looking for a husband to marry into the family, while the younger one was the daughter of a servant. The Mo family originally wanted to hastily give her to someone, but an adventure awaited her. When she was sixteen, the leader of a well-known cultivation family was passing by the area, and fell in love with her at first sight.

...In the beginning, the people of Mo Village regarded the topic with contempt, but because the Sect Leader* often helped out, the Mo family received plenty of advantages. And so, the direction of the discussions changed, and the Mo family took pride in the matter, while everyone else also envied the opportunity. 

She was respected only for the value she could bring a poor village. And then when Mo XuanYu was cast out of the Jin Sect, it’s noted that:

After he went back home dejectedly, he was bombarded with ridicule. The situation seemed like it was beyond redemption, and the second-lady of Mo was not able to withstand the blow, shortly choking to death because of the trauma.

Considering Mo XuanYu’s makeup is of a hanged ghost and the mention of how she died, it’s pretty likely that she hung herself. 

Mo XuanYu’s mother, just like Qin Su, commits suicide in the end to avoid a cruel society that would not respond to plights that were in no way their fault with anything but cruelty. Jin GuangYao notes that Qin Su would be the “laughingstock of the world” and soon after she grabs a dagger in which her soul would be trapped forever--a dagger originally owned by again The Symbol of Abuse of Power in Wen RouHan--and kills herself in a chamber of secrets (literally, a secret treasure vault, because she could not survive these secrets coming to light not keeping them silent). Just like Madame Qin, neither of them have anywhere to turn to for justice or for compassion. In the cultivational world, they are already disadvantaged for being women, and their tragic ends show again how disgusting the society in MDZS is. 

Hope and Bravery: A-Qing

Of course it’s not the righteous cultivator and it’s not the strongest in cultivation who is the hero who finally gets justice in Yi City. It’s the beggar girl who pretends to be blind, the thief, with no cultivation. A-Qing’s ghost may be blind and mute, but she sees and speaks more than any of them. Her empathy enables the heroes to figure out what happened in Yi City, and she is mourned and lauded for her bravery for it.

She has little power in the world, so she lies to get the money she can. But what she does have is love and loyalty that foils Lan WangJi’s (though I don’t believe in any way that it’s remotely implied this love for Xiao XingChen is romantic!) Even after Xiao XingChen’s death, even after her own physical dismemberment and death, she continues to look for justice for him, and this eventually pays off.

Further Hope: MianMian

I addressed this a bit in my meta with her, but MianMian’s happy ending comes outside of society, and includes her marrying a man who respects her autonomy and wishes:

Luo QingYang gazed at her husband, smiling, “My husband isn’t of the cultivating world. He used to be a merchant. But, he’s willing to go night-hunting with me…”

It was both rare and admirable that an ordinary person, and a man at that, would be willing to give up his originally stable life and dare travel the world with his wife, unafraid of danger and wander. Wei WuXian couldn’t help feeling respect for him.

And MianMian still has a keen observation: that society in the world hasn’t changed (which Wei WuXian will also note in the last chapter when they find a new scapegoat villain in Jin GuangYao):

Luo Qing Yang sighed, “Oh, these people…” She seemed as if she remembered something, shaking her head, “They’re the same everywhere.”

But as long as there are people willing to be empathetic, to believe in justice and be brave, who can combine these--like A-Qing, Lan WangJi, Wei WuXian, and more--there is hope for healing, even if it takes thirteen years. 

[wordsandshawn]

Prohibited

A/N: Honestly, I’m really proud of how this piece turned out. I am still working on the other imagines I’ve promised. I just really wanted to get something up today so I was planning to quickly do a few dialogue blurbs, but I got carried away with this one. I put my whole heart into it, so I really hope you all like it.

Prompt: “Look, I never meant to fall in love with you, I just did.”

~

Everything has become all too clear in the last few months, and you don’t know what to do about it at this point. There are some things you can ignore, and there are other things that get to a point where ignoring them is utterly impossible. This is one of other those things. You can’t decide what is worse, ignoring it or speaking the words out loud. You know that no matter how hard or long you ignore it, it won’t change things between you and Shawn. What you have isn’t going to just disappear if you keep from saying the words out loud, but confronting it is scary because that makes it real.

You signed a contract. When you took this job as a paid-intern working directly under Andrew to learn the ins and outs of management six-months ago, you signed a contract. At the time, you thought it was stupid that you had to sign it at all, but the possibility of this happening was so completely impossible that you didn’t think it was a big deal at all to sign it. A formality, really. That’s what Andrew said, to keep things from getting complicated. It made sense at the time. It made sense, and it didn’t matter. But now, here you are, and suddenly, it matters.

Shawn is “in a relationship” with someone. An actress. They walk events together, post occasional pictures on Instagram, publicly support each other, and stay tight lipped about intimate details of a relationship that they really want to keep “private”. They’ve been keeping up this stunt for about six months now, about as long as you’ve been working for Shawn. It’s the wholesome relationship everyone hoped Shawn would get into one day, wholesome in every way except for the one that matters because it’s all a lie. However, very few people know it’s a lie. So not only is the contract standing in the way of what’s happening between you and Shawn, but now, if anyone catches you, you’ll also be known as the girl that ruined “the best thing that ever happened to Shawn Mendes” because right around that time, people started to notice that Shawn seemed happier, less stressed, more inspired, and of course they credited it to her presence in his life, not knowing that she wasn’t the only new presence in his life. 

Nothing has been explicitly spoken between the two of you. Again, because you’re afraid. You know that you’re afraid. You’ll lose your job, no doubt. Yes, you could get a new job, but this is the industry you want to work in, and you can only imagine what something like this could do to your reputation. You haven’t spoken to Shawn, so you can only imagine what he’s thinking about all of this, but you can’t help but think he has his own fears and reasons why he hasn’t brought it up either. Not speaking of it makes it a little less real, and for a long time, you’ve both needed it to be as “less real” as you could keep it.

At first, you thought he was just being nice, and you’re sure at the very beginning, he was. But “nice” slowly turned into something more. You know because of his early morning texts that changed from Good morning! What time is the flight today? To Morning, did you sleep well? Come by when you get up? All business conversations turned into stolen touches when no one else was in the room. Quick goodbye hugs turned into lingering hugs where neither of you wanted to let go. Breaks turned into, “I miss you” and “Can I come see you? I can book a flight tonight.” The things you used to keep to yourself turned into things you wanted to tell Shawn and only Shawn. Andrew used to be the one Shawn would speak to when his anxiety got the best of him, but now even Andrew knows to go to you first if anyone mentions Shawn is struggling with that.

This has gone too far. To the point where there isn’t really any turning back. It’s like the elephant in the room, both you and Shawn are so aware of it, but neither of you are willing to speak of it. Someone has to do it. And really, you just can’t keep going on like this.

You march over to Shawn’s hotel room and knock loudly before you lose your nerve. As you wait for him to open the door, you have to fight the urge to run. He smiles when he sees you, that smile that makes your heart skip a beat. He immediately opens the door wide enough for you to slip in quickly, a habit of yours now. When the door is closed and its safely just you two, he says, “I was hoping it was you. I was just about to call.” He wraps his arms around you in a way that feels so familiar. In a hug that makes it seem like you didn’t just spend all day together, together, but not together because this is the first time he’s really touching you all day, and you both know it.

He intertwines your fingers with his and leads you further into the room, maintaining contact to make up for an entire day together without any real contact. “Room service?” He questions, and your mind immediately goes to Cez’s offhand comment earlier today about how he wonders how Shawn possibly eats as much food as he’s been ordering from room service at every hotel lately. Cez gets the bills. Shawn always charges it to his room, knowing he pays the bill at the end of the day, even if he never actually sees it.

“Cez made a comment today.” You say, not bothering to look at the menu with Shawn. There’s something off in your voice, and Shawn picks up on it right away.

He looks up at you, questioningly for a moment before asking. “What did he say?”

“Just a comment about how much you’ve been spending on room service lately.”

“Oh, that’s it?” He asks, obviously anticipating something much worse based on the tone of your voice.

“Maybe we shouldn’t get room service tonight, that’s all.”

“Y/n, it doesn’t matter.” Shawn responds. “I’m paying the bill, not Cez. It’s my money.”

“Maybe I should pay you back.” You say, something you had suggested at the very beginning and Shawn completely brushed away, refusing so adamantly that you didn’t bother to offer again.

He closes the menu now, turning so he’s facing you completely. “What is this really about?” He questions, his voice is soft, kind. He really wants to know.

“I don’t know. I mean, Shawn, what are we even doing? I signed a contract. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“It wasn’t a legal contract.” He says, as if those words are supposed to make you feel better. They don’t. He knows that they don’t. “Hey, y/n,” He says, getting you to look up at him. “It’s okay.”

“How can you say that? How did this even happen? This wasn’t supposed to happen.” You repeat the words you’ve told yourself so many times already.

“Look, I never meant to fall in love with you, I just did.”

He had never said he was in love with you before. You both hadn’t even said “I love you” to each other yet. Your relationship or whatever it was between you two was weird like that. Weird in the way that you said so much to each other, shared so much, felt so much, but also let a lot go unsaid as well. He just dropped a bomb on you, and its going to take you some time to recover from it. That’s not where you expected this conversation to go tonight.

Shawn probably notices the stunned look in your eyes. He can read you better than anyone else. “Hey, stay with me.” He says, reaching out and taking your hand in his. Part of you wants to pull away, thinking you should, but even more of you wants to hold on tighter. He squeezes your hand gently. “It’s okay, y/n. We’re okay. I’m not going to let anything bad happen.”

“You can’t say that.” You say, feeling your heart breaking. The words are being said out loud for the first time. You’re talking about how you know this isn’t supposed to be instead of just going with the feelings that led you both to this point. “You don’t know that. Shawn, you have a girlfriend. This job is the best opportunity I’ve had in my life. Andrew’s been so good to me. I’m trying to start a career. This could ruin both of us.”

You may be overreacting a little bit, but these are thoughts that have been floating in your mind for months, ever since there started to be anything beyond the strictly professional going on between you and Shawn. Now that you’re talking about it, really talking about it out loud, you can’t help but let all of your fears, rational and irrational, out at once.

“We’re not ruined, y/n.” He speaks, ever the voice of reason. “And you know as well as I do that she’s not my girlfriend. I know I haven’t said it before, it never really seemed like the right time, but I’m yours. I’m all yours. I have been for a long time, and I think you know it, you’ve known it.”

As much as those are words you know in your heart to be true and you’ve longed to hear out loud for a while, they still don’t seem right. You’re still caught up in all the reasons why this can’t be.

“Hey, look at me.” Shawn says gently, but firmly enough to get your attention back, to reel your wandering mind back in. “You’re not going to lose your job. I won’t let Andrew fire you. And I’ve already been talking to my management and hers about ending the PR relationship. We’ll be done soon. We just need to time it right. I told them a month is the longest I’ll keep up this charade. I don’t want to do it anymore. I swear, you’re the most important person in my life right now, and I’m not going to give up on us because things are a little complicated right now.”

The way he talks about it makes the big scary stuff that’s been lingering on your mind seem a little less big and a little less scary. “Andrew’s going to find out.”

Shawn moves so he’s sitting closer to you. He wraps his arm around you. “He’ll be fine.”

“He’s going to hate me. I signed a contract.”

“The contract was bullshit. And he won’t hate you. I promise, y/n. I’ll take care it. I’ll take care of you.”

“I’m supposed to be taking care of you.” You say, somewhat grumpily, it is part of your job description after all.

“And you do,” He says, smiling now, knowing he’s reached you, knowing he’s managed to convince you that things will be okay after all. “You do the best job. So now, let me take care of you. We’re okay. Don’t worry about it. I’ve got it figured out. I do. I promise.��

[elisaenglish]

How We Grieve: Meghan O’Rourke on the Messiness of Mourning and Learning to Live with Loss

“The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.”

John Updike wrote in his memoir, “Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?” And yet even if we were to somehow make peace with our own mortality, a primal and soul-shattering fear rips through whenever we think about losing those we love most dearly — a fear that metastasises into all-consuming grief when loss does come. In The Long Goodbye (public library), her magnificent memoir of grieving her mother’s death, Meghan O’Rourke crafts a masterwork of remembrance and reflection woven of extraordinary emotional intelligence. A poet, essayist, literary critic, and one of the youngest editors the New Yorker has ever had, she tells a story that is deeply personal in its details yet richly resonant in its larger humanity, making tangible the messy and often ineffable complexities that anyone who has ever lost a loved one knows all too intimately, all too anguishingly. What makes her writing — her mind, really — particularly enchanting is that she brings to this paralysingly difficult subject a poet’s emotional precision, an essayist’s intellectual expansiveness, and a voracious reader’s gift for apt, exquisitely placed allusions to such luminaries of language and life as Whitman, Longfellow, Tennyson, Swift, and Dickinson (“the supreme poet of grief”).

O’Rourke writes:

“When we are learning the world, we know things we cannot say how we know. When we are relearning the world in the aftermath of a loss, we feel things we had almost forgotten, old things, beneath the seat of reason.

[…]

Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me. A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable.

[…]

When we talk about love, we go back to the start, to pinpoint the moment of free fall. But this story is the story of an ending, of death, and it has no beginning. A mother is beyond any notion of a beginning. That’s what makes her a mother: you cannot start the story.”

In the days following her mother’s death, as O’Rourke faces the loneliness she anticipated and the sense of being lost that engulfed her unawares, she contemplates the paradoxes of loss: Ours is a culture that treats grief — a process of profound emotional upheaval — with a grotesquely mismatched rational prescription. On the one hand, society seems to operate by a set of unspoken shoulds for how we ought to feel and behave in the face of sorrow; on the other, she observes, “we have so few rituals for observing and externalising loss.” Without a coping strategy, she finds herself shutting down emotionally and going “dead inside” — a feeling psychologists call “numbing out” — and describes the disconnect between her intellectual awareness of sadness and its inaccessible emotional manifestation:

“It was like when you stay in cold water too long. You know something is off but don’t start shivering for ten minutes.”

But at least as harrowing as the aftermath of loss is the anticipatory bereavement in the months and weeks and days leading up to the inevitable — a particularly cruel reality of terminal cancer. O’Rourke writes:

“So much of dealing with a disease is waiting. Waiting for appointments, for tests, for “procedures.” And waiting, more broadly, for it—for the thing itself, for the other shoe to drop.”

The hallmark of this anticipatory loss seems to be a tapestry of inner contradictions. O’Rourke notes with exquisite self-awareness her resentment for the mundanity of it all — there is her mother, sipping soda in front of the TV on one of those final days — coupled with weighty, crushing compassion for the sacred humanity of death:

“Time doesn’t obey our commands. You cannot make it holy just because it is disappearing.”

Then there was the question of the body — the object of so much social and personal anxiety in real life, suddenly stripped of control in the surreal experience of impending death. Reflecting on the initially disorienting experience of helping her mother on and off the toilet and how quickly it became normalised, O’Rourke writes:

“It was what she had done for us, back before we became private and civilised about our bodies. In some ways I liked it. A level of anxiety about the body had been stripped away, and we were left with the simple reality: Here it was.

I heard a lot about the idea of dying “with dignity” while my mother was sick. It was only near her very end that I gave much thought to what this idea meant. I didn’t actually feel it was undignified for my mother’s body to fail — that was the human condition. Having to help my mother on and off the toilet was difficult, but it was natural. The real indignity, it seemed, was dying where no one cared for you the way your family did, dying where it was hard for your whole family to be with you and where excessive measures might be taken to keep you alive past a moment that called for letting go. I didn’t want that for my mother. I wanted her to be able to go home. I didn’t want to pretend she wasn’t going to die.”

Among the most painful realities of witnessing death — one particularly exasperating for type-A personalities — is how swiftly it severs the direct correlation between effort and outcome around which we build our lives. Though the notion might seem rational on the surface — especially in a culture that fetishises work ethic and “grit” as the key to success — an underbelly of magical thinking lurks beneath, which comes to light as we behold the helplessness and injustice of premature death. Noting that “the mourner’s mind is superstitious, looking for signs and wonders,” O’Rourke captures this paradox:

“One of the ideas I’ve clung to most of my life is that if I just try hard enough it will work out. If I work hard, I will be spared, and I will get what I desire, finding the cave opening over and over again, thieving life from the abyss. This sturdy belief system has a sidecar in which superstition rides. Until recently, I half believed that if a certain song came on the radio just as I thought of it, it meant that all would be well. What did I mean? I preferred not to answer that question. To look too closely was to prick the balloon of possibility.”

But our very capacity for the irrational — for the magic of magical thinking — also turns out to be essential for our spiritual survival. Without the capacity to discern from life’s senseless sound a meaningful melody, we would be consumed by the noise. In fact, one of O’Rourke’s most poetic passages recounts her struggle to find a transcendent meaning on an average day, amid the average hospital noises:

“I could hear the coughing man whose family talked about sports and sitcoms every time they visited, sitting politely around his bed as if you couldn’t see the death knobs that were his knees poking through the blanket, but as they left they would hug him and say, We love you, and We’ll be back soon, and in their voices and in mine and in the nurse who was so gentle with my mother, tucking cool white sheets over her with a twist of her wrist, I could hear love, love that sounded like a rope, and I began to see a flickering electric current everywhere I looked as I went up and down the halls, flagging nurses, little flecks of light dotting the air in sinewy lines, and I leaned on these lines like guy ropes when I was so tired I couldn’t walk anymore and a voice in my head said: Do you see this love? And do you still not believe?

I couldn’t deny the voice.

Now I think: That was exhaustion.

But at the time the love, the love, it was like ropes around me, cables that could carry us up into the higher floors away from our predicament and out onto the roof and across the empty spaces above the hospital to the sky where we could gaze down upon all the people driving, eating, having sex, watching TV, angry people, tired people, happy people, all doing, all being—”

In the weeks following her mother’s death, melancholy — “the black sorrow, bilious, angry, a slick in my chest” — comes coupled with another intense emotion, a parallel longing for a different branch of that-which-no-longer-is:

“I experienced an acute nostalgia. This longing for a lost time was so intense I thought it might split me in two, like a tree hit by lightning. I was — as the expression goes — flooded by memories. It was a submersion in the past that threatened to overwhelm any “rational” experience of the present, water coming up around my branches, rising higher. I did not care much about work I had to do. I was consumed by memories of seemingly trivial things.”

But the embodied presence of the loss is far from trivial. O’Rourke, citing a psychiatrist whose words had stayed with her, captures it with harrowing precision:

“The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.”

In another breathtaking passage, O’Rourke conveys the largeness of grief as it emanates out of our pores and into the world that surrounds us:

“In February, there was a two-day snowstorm in New York. For hours I lay on my couch, reading, watching the snow drift down through the large elm outside… the sky going gray, then eerie violet, the night breaking around us, snow like flakes of ash. A white mantle covered trees, cars, lintels, and windows. It was like one of grief’s moods: melancholic; estranged from the normal; in touch with the longing that reminds us that we are being-toward-death, as Heidegger puts it. Loss is our atmosphere; we, like the snow, are always falling toward the ground, and most of the time we forget it.”

Because grief seeps into the external world as the inner experience bleeds into the outer, it’s understandable — it’s hopelessly human — that we’d also project the very object of our grief onto the external world. One of the most common experiences, O’Rourke notes, is for the grieving to try to bring back the dead — not literally, but by seeing, seeking, signs of them in the landscape of life, symbolism in the everyday. The mind, after all, is a pattern-recognition machine and when the mind’s eye is as heavily clouded with a particular object as it is when we grieve a loved one, we begin to manufacture patterns. Recounting a day when she found inside a library book handwriting that seemed to be her mother’s, O’Rourke writes:

“The idea that the dead might not be utterly gone has an irresistible magnetism. I’d read something that described what I had been experiencing. Many people go through what psychologists call a period of “animism,” in which you see the dead person in objects and animals around you, and you construct your false reality, the reality where she is just hiding, or absent. This was the mourner’s secret position, it seemed to me: I have to say this person is dead, but I don’t have to believe it.

[…]

Acceptance isn’t necessarily something you can choose off a menu, like eggs instead of French toast. Instead, researchers now think that some people are inherently primed to accept their own death with “integrity” (their word, not mine), while others are primed for “despair.” Most of us, though, are somewhere in the middle, and one question researchers are now focusing on is: How might more of those in the middle learn to accept their deaths? The answer has real consequences for both the dying and the bereaved.”

O’Rourke considers the psychology and physiology of grief:

“When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity is wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the mental work.

The first systematic survey of grief, I read, was conducted by Erich Lindemann. Having studied 101 people, many of them related to the victims of the Cocoanut Grove fire of 1942, he defined grief as “sensations of somatic distress occurring in waves lasting from twenty minutes to an hour at a time, a feeling of tightness in the throat, choking with shortness of breath, need for sighing, and an empty feeling in the abdomen, lack of muscular power, and an intensive subjective distress described as tension or mental pain.”

Tracing the history of studying grief, including Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous and often criticised 1969 “stage theory” outlining a simple sequence of Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance, O’Rourke notes that most people experience grief not as sequential stages but as ebbing and flowing states that recur at various points throughout the process. She writes:

“Researchers now believe there are two kinds of grief: “normal grief” and “complicated grief” (also called “prolonged grief”). “Normal grief” is a term for what most bereaved people experience. It peaks within the first six months and then begins to dissipate. “Complicated grief” does not, and often requires medication or therapy. But even “normal grief”… is hardly gentle. Its symptoms include insomnia or other sleep disorders, difficulty breathing, auditory or visual hallucinations, appetite problems, and dryness of mouth.”

One of the most persistent psychiatric ideas about grief, O’Rourke notes, is the notion that one ought to “let go” in order to “move on” — a proposition plentiful even in the casual advice of her friends in the weeks following her mother’s death. And yet it isn’t necessarily the right coping strategy for everyone, let alone the only one, as our culture seems to suggest. Unwilling to “let go,” O’Rourke finds solace in anthropological alternatives:

“Studies have shown that some mourners hold on to a relationship with the deceased with no notable ill effects. In China, for instance, mourners regularly speak to dead ancestors, and one study demonstrated that the bereaved there “recovered more quickly from loss” than bereaved Americans do.

I wasn’t living in China, though, and in those weeks after my mother’s death, I felt that the world expected me to absorb the loss and move forward, like some kind of emotional warrior. One night I heard a character on 24—the president of the United States—announce that grief was a “luxury” she couldn’t “afford right now.” This model represents an old American ethic of muscling through pain by throwing yourself into work; embedded in it is a desire to avoid looking at death. We’ve adopted a sort of “Ask, don’t tell” policy. The question “How are you?” is an expression of concern, but as my dad had said, the mourner quickly figures out that it shouldn’t always be taken for an actual inquiry… A mourner’s experience of time isn’t like everyone else’s. Grief that lasts longer than a few weeks may look like self-indulgence to those around you. But if you’re in mourning, three months seems like nothing — [according to some] research, three months might well find you approaching the height of sorrow.”

Another Western hegemony in the culture of grief, O’Rourke notes, is its privatisation — the unspoken rule that mourning is something we do in the privacy of our inner lives, alone, away from the public eye. Though for centuries private grief was externalised as public mourning, modernity has left us bereft of rituals to help us deal with our grief:

“The disappearance of mourning rituals affects everyone, not just the mourner. One of the reasons many people are unsure about how to act around a loss is that they lack rules or meaningful conventions, and they fear making a mistake. Rituals used to help the community by giving everyone a sense of what to do or say. Now, we’re at sea.

[…]

Such rituals… aren’t just about the individual; they are about the community.”

Craving “a formalisation of grief, one that might externalise it,” O’Rourke plunges into the existing literature:

“The British anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, the author of Death, Grief, and Mourning, argues that, at least in Britain, the First World War played a huge role in changing the way people mourned. Communities were so overwhelmed by the sheer number of dead that the practice of ritualised mourning for the individual eroded. Other changes were less obvious but no less important. More people, including women, began working outside the home; in the absence of caretakers, death increasingly took place in the quarantining swaddle of the hospital. The rise of psychoanalysis shifted attention from the communal to the individual experience. In 1917, only two years after Émile Durkheim wrote about mourning as an essential social process, Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” defined it as something essentially private and individual, internalising the work of mourning. Within a few generations, I read, the experience of grief had fundamentally changed. Death and mourning had been largely removed from the public realm. By the 1960s, Gorer could write that many people believed that “sensible, rational men and women can keep their mourning under complete control by strength of will and character, so that it need be given no public expression, and indulged, if at all, in private, as furtively as... masturbation.” Today, our only public mourning takes the form of watching the funerals of celebrities and statesmen. It’s common to mock such grief as false or voyeuristic (“crocodile tears,” one commentator called mourners’ distress at Princess Diana’s funeral), and yet it serves an important social function. It’s a more mediated version, Leader suggests, of a practice that goes all the way back to soldiers in The Iliad mourning with Achilles for the fallen Patroclus.

I found myself nodding in recognition at Gorer’s conclusions. “If mourning is denied outlet, the result will be suffering,” Gorer wrote. “At the moment our society is signally failing to give this support and assistance... The cost of this failure in misery, loneliness, despair and maladaptive behaviour is very high.” Maybe it’s not a coincidence that in Western countries with fewer mourning rituals, the bereaved report more physical ailments in the year following a death.”

Finding solace in Marilynne Robinson’s beautiful meditation on our humanity, O’Rourke returns to her own journey:

“The otherworldliness of loss was so intense that at times I had to believe it was a singular passage, a privilege of some kind, even if all it left me with was a clearer grasp of our human predicament. It was why I kept finding myself drawn to the remote desert: I wanted to be reminded of how the numinous impinges on ordinary life.”

Reflecting on her struggle to accept her mother’s loss — her absence, “an absence that becomes a presence” — O’Rourke writes:

“If children learn through exposure to new experiences, mourners unlearn through exposure to absence in new contexts. Grief requires acquainting yourself with the world again and again; each “first” causes a break that must be reset… And so you always feel suspense, a queer dread—you never know what occasion will break the loss freshly open.”

She later adds:

“After a loss, you have to learn to believe the dead one is dead. It doesn’t come naturally.”

Among the most chilling effects of grief is how it reorients us toward ourselves as it surfaces our mortality paradox and the dawning awareness of our own impermanence. O’Rourke’s words ring with the profound discomfort of our shared existential bind:

“The dread of death is so primal, it overtakes me on a molecular level. In the lowest moments, it produces nihilism. If I am going to die, why not get it over with? Why live in this agony of anticipation?

[…]

I was unable to push these questions aside: What are we to do with the knowledge that we die? What bargain do you make in your mind so as not to go crazy with fear of the predicament, a predicament none of us knowingly chose to enter? You can believe in God and heaven, if you have the capacity for faith. Or, if you don’t, you can do what a stoic like Seneca did, and push away the awfulness by noting that if death is indeed extinction, it won’t hurt, for we won’t experience it. “It would be dreadful could it remain with you; but of necessity either it does not arrive or else it departs,” he wrote.

If this logic fails to comfort, you can decide, as Plato and Jonathan Swift did, that since death is natural, and the gods must exist, it cannot be a bad thing. As Swift said, “It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.” And Socrates: “I am quite ready to admit… that I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded in the first place that I am going to other gods who are wise and good.” But this is poor comfort to those of us who have no gods to turn to. If you love this world, how can you look forward to departing it? Rousseau wrote, “He who pretends to look on death without fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, without which the entire human species would soon be destroyed.”

And yet, O’Rourke arrives at the same conclusion that Alan Lightman did in his sublime meditation on our longing for permanence as she writes:

“Without death our lives would lose their shape: “Death is the mother of beauty,” Wallace Stevens wrote. Or as a character in Don DeLillo’s White Noise says, “I think it’s a mistake to lose one’s sense of death, even one’s fear of death. Isn’t death the boundary we need?” It’s not clear that DeLillo means us to agree, but I think I do. I love the world more because it is transient.

[…]

One would think that living so proximately to the provisional would ruin life, and at times it did make it hard. But at other times I experienced the world with less fear and more clarity. It didn’t matter if I was in line for an extra two minutes. I could take in the sensations of colour, sound, life. How strange that we should live on this planet and make cereal boxes, and shopping carts, and gum! That we should renovate stately old banks and replace them with Trader Joe’s! We were ants in a sugar bowl, and one day the bowl would empty.”

This awareness of our transience, our minuteness, and the paradoxical enlargement of our aliveness that it produces seems to be the sole solace from grief’s grip, though we all arrive at it differently. O’Rourke’s father approached it from another angle. Recounting a conversation with him one autumn night — one can’t help but notice the beautiful, if inadvertent, echo of Carl Sagan’s memorable words — O’Rourke writes:

“The Perseid meteor showers are here,” he told me. “And I’ve been eating dinner outside and then lying in the lounge chairs watching the stars like your mother and I used to” — at some point he stopped calling her Mom — “and that helps. It might sound strange, but I was sitting there, looking up at the sky, and I thought, ‘You are but a mote of dust. And your troubles and travails are just a mote of a mote of dust.’ And it helped me. I have allowed myself to think about things I had been scared to think about and feel. And it allowed me to be there — to be present. Whatever my life is, whatever my loss is, it’s small in the face of all that existence… The meteor shower changed something. I was looking the other way through a telescope before: I was just looking at what was not there. Now I look at what is there.”

O’Rourke goes on to reflect on this ground-shifting quality of loss:

“It’s not a question of getting over it or healing. No; it’s a question of learning to live with this transformation. For the loss is transformative, in good ways and bad, a tangle of change that cannot be threaded into the usual narrative spools. It is too central for that. It’s not an emergence from the cocoon, but a tree growing around an obstruction.”

In one of the most beautiful passages in the book, O’Rourke captures the spiritual sensemaking of death in an anecdote that calls to mind Alan Lightman’s account of a “transcendent experience” and Alan Watt’s consolation in the oneness of the universe. She writes:

“Before we scattered the ashes, I had an eerie experience. I went for a short run. I hate running in the cold, but after so much time indoors in the dead of winter I was filled with exuberance. I ran lightly through the stripped, bare woods, past my favourite house, poised on a high hill, and turned back, flying up the road, turning left. In the last stretch I picked up the pace, the air crisp, and I felt myself float up off the ground. The world became greenish. The brightness of the snow and the trees intensified. I was almost giddy. Behind the bright flat horizon of the treescape, I understood, were worlds beyond our everyday perceptions. My mother was out there, inaccessible to me, but indelible. The blood moved along my veins and the snow and trees shimmered in greenish light. Suffused with joy, I stopped stock-still in the road, feeling like a player in a drama I didn’t understand and didn’t need to. Then I sprinted up the driveway and opened the door and as the heat rushed out the clarity dropped away.

I’d had an intuition like this once before, as a child in Vermont. I was walking from the house to open the gate to the driveway. It was fall. As I put my hand on the gate, the world went ablaze, as bright as the autumn leaves, and I lifted out of myself and understood that I was part of a magnificent book. What I knew as “life” was a thin version of something larger, the pages of which had all been written. What I would do, how I would live — it was already known. I stood there with a kind of peace humming in my blood.”

A non-believer who had prayed for the first time in her life when her mother died, O’Rourke quotes Virginia Woolf’s luminous meditation on the spirit and writes:

“This is the closest description I have ever come across to what I feel to be my experience. I suspect a pattern behind the wool, even the wool of grief; the pattern may not lead to heaven or the survival of my consciousness — frankly I don’t think it does — but that it is there somehow in our neurons and synapses is evident to me. We are not transparent to ourselves. Our longings are like thick curtains stirring in the wind. We give them names. What I do not know is this: Does that otherness — that sense of an impossibly real universe larger than our ability to understand it — mean that there is meaning around us?

[…]

I have learned a lot about how humans think about death. But it hasn’t necessarily taught me more about my dead, where she is, what she is. When I held her body in my hands and it was just black ash, I felt no connection to it, but I tell myself perhaps it is enough to still be matter, to go into the ground and be “remixed” into some new part of the living culture, a new organic matter. Perhaps there is some solace in this continued existence.

[…]

I think about my mother every day, but not as concertedly as I used to. She crosses my mind like a spring cardinal that flies past the edge of your eye: startling, luminous, lovely, gone.”

The Long Goodbye is a remarkable read in its entirety — the kind that speaks with gentle crispness to the parts of us we protect most fiercely yet long to awaken most desperately. Complement it with Alan Lightman in finding solace in our impermanence and Tolstoy on finding meaning in a meaningless world.

Source: Maria Popova, brainpickings.org (9th June 2014)

[hecallsmehischild]

Burned

“Why can’t I just move on?”

I must have asked this question dozens of times last year from the depths of depression, regret, and the constricting cycle of questions I have that will never be answered. Almost a full year ago, I ended a ten year friendship that had, perhaps, never actually been a friendship to begin with. Her absence left a hole ripped straight through me. I knew that would happen, I’d told her as much myself, though it was not for the reasons I’d always thought. I had to accept that this relationship had caused a great deal of damage in both my head and heart, and that I would never get solid answers to some of my questions. 

And yet I would still get sucked into the questions. How could she have done {specific incident}? Was {incident} real or pretense? Did she ever care? When is the other shoe going to drop? I have to understand everything that happened so it never happens again.  If I put every piece where it’s supposed to go, it will stop hurting. If I know what was real and what wasn’t, I’ll be able to forgive myself for the things that were my fault and let go of the things that weren’t. I could probably write an essay on all the magical thinking I was doing that perpetuated my need to find solid answers.

For a time, I feared running into her. Completely irrational, given the amount of states between us. And yet I’ve already decided I never want to go to the city I know she lives in again, and may avoid the state altogether if I can help it. In my head, I played out endless scenarios where we somehow ended up face to face, and I made the arguments go well for me this time. Usually this only cemented some poisonous sense of self-righteousness and deepened my bitterness. It was a futile, fruitless exercise that brought me no relief or healing.

I divested myself of almost everything having to do with her in the immediate aftermath of going “no contact.” But I made exceptions. Things that, I rationalized, didn’t have quite as much of her fingerprint on them that I liked, or things I’d sunk large amounts of time into.

“Why can’t I just move on?”

As months went by, I kept finding pieces I’d overlooked, digital or physical, and removing them from my life. But I kept a few. It made no sense that they could hold any sway over me.

“Why can’t I just move on?”

Many months ago, I finally released the last couple items that had she had given to me. But I kept the children’s books. Between the two of us, we created two children’s books, fully illustrated. She wrote the stories, I illustrated them in ArtRage and formatted them for BookBaby. The first one took me about 9 months because I was unfamiliar with what I needed to do and ran into issues that I would not carry over into the second book. The second book took me about 6 months.

I’ve never been an amazing digital artist and I haven’t the inclination to become incredible, but that much practice sharpened my skills a bit and taught me the ins and outs of ArtRage. I even researched, re-purchasing some of my favorite childhood books to look at how they laid out their text and illustrations. And though the team at BookBaby probably thinks I’m a bloody idiot at this point, I finally got through my head what needed doing in order to correctly produce a printed copy. To date I have created four distinct books (and some copies) through Bookbaby for various projects.

But, you see, these books were mine. Mine. As much as they were hers, they were mine, and I was not willing to concede this ground when I had already lost so much. I asked my husband to take the books and put them out of my sight, though, because seeing them on the bookshelf every day hurt too much for me to handle. I harbored hopes that I would be able to page through them fondly in the future.

“Why can’t I just move on?”

From time to time I would get this niggling little notion that maybe I ought to let go of the books. I promptly shoved those thoughts aside. These are the only printed books with my name on them, even if it is as illustrator instead of writer. I signed these copies to myself, like I always wanted to do. I also asked her to sign them the last time we saw each other, and I knew each bore a lengthy message I had yet to look at. I would have to look at it someday, if I kept the books. But I didn’t have to think about it yet.

“Why? WHY?!”

I had begun, in the last three or so months, to realize that most of the time period during which I found this person as a friend was not one I really wanted to hold onto. There is precious little about that time period, or the city I was in, that was good. Why hold onto these things, still? I began slow, deleting photos I’d held onto because they were of a birthday that had meant a lot to me. She had been there celebrating with us, her birthday soon after mine. The whole folder of photos went.

Seeing an older friend on facebook was working through her own, similar issue, I asked her how you forgive. I understand forgiveness to be much more about my own health than the other person’s. I don’t want the anger and poison that come with long-term bitterness, but forgiveness is such an intangible concept that it is difficult for me to figure it out in practical implementation. I asked this friend how she managed, and she mentioned that every time the person who hurt her came to mind, she would pray for God to work in their life and bless them, even if she didn’t feel anything good or positive when she prayed. Pray for your enemies, huh? Suddenly that part made a lot more sense, and I started doing that even when I didn’t feel like it. It was another step, but sometimes I still got sucked into the futile mental argument scenarios.

I had to reformat my computer recently, and as I scrambled to save the files that I wanted, I intentionally left behind the digital files for the children’s books. I would never, I realized, be able to publish them anyway, since that would require an agreement between me and her. Anyone I’d wanted to give copies to already had them. I’d sent her the digital files from the start, so she already had them if she wanted to make her own copies, but I didn’t want any more copies. So I “lost” the files.

A few days ago, I went through my facebook contacts and trimmed about seventy duplicates, deleted profiles, and people I simply didn’t contact anymore or had accepted as “friends” because I felt I had to. I DON’T have to, and while it disheartened me how many of these I had allowed access to my circle, within a day I felt lighter for having narrowed my list down closer to reality. There are still some contacts I probably should release, but am not ready to accept that. It’s okay, it takes time. I will be ready eventually.

Yesterday I wrote up a description of one of the instances with her that bothers me the most in terms of unanswered questions and brought it to a private group, hoping to find some answers. Writing it up brought everything to the surface again, and it hurt. Once again, I flailed at why I couldn’t let go. Why did I have to keep asking? Why couldn’t I just get a damn answer about all this? Why couldn’t I drop it and never look at it again? I needed to forgive her, and I was already trying to do this by offering a quick prayer whenever she came to mind, but the hurt was always there. Just waiting for a good opportunity to come out roaring, claws extended, screaming, “WHY?!”

The books have to go. I don’t know whether to attribute this realization to God gently leading me toward this understanding all year a step at a time, or my own thoughts. Make of it what you will, but I don’t tend toward letting go. I want to, but I don’t actually do it. I have hoarded painful incidents, using them as fuel, as inspiration, as defense. I have, however, asked God to lead and guide and mold me into the person He means me to be. I often fail or misunderstand, but I have asked for Him to help.

I realized I was okay with letting the books go. It wasn’t a waste. I had gained valuable skills in the process of making these books. So, last night, I asked my husband to bring the books down. In a fireplace, we built up a small stack of flat, cardboard boxes and packing paper, set the books on top, and lit the pile. In retrospect, we definitely could have restructured that pile to burn better. As it was, we had to prod and bank and flip pieces over for it to catch right, but in the end it was all a cold pile of ashes. I chose not to read the inscriptions.

Afterward, I laughed my head off at the irony. I don’t hold truck with book burnings. I think it’s a lousy way to express what you think of the book at best and censorship at worst. I never thought I’d end up doing a book burning myself, let alone burn books with my name on the cover. My husband teased I was following in the “proud Christian tradition of book burning” and I just lost it. It is so good to laugh in a situation that has been saturated with tears.

I know this particular book burning was the right thing. I don’t know if I’ll still find myself asking, “But why can’t I let go?”, but I’ve done all I can think to do for now. I have let go of that part of my past in every tangible way I can, keeping no digital or physical remnants to mull over. I’ve taken another step out from under this shadow, and I’ll keep taking steps whenever they become obvious to me.

[alargebear]

Long Distance

Summary: A bit of distance wasn’t anything to worry about. Was what Riko told herself.

Pairing: ChikaRiko

Word count:2.9k

Link: AO3

Note: I wrote this for the ChikaRiko secret valentine for @starluck40 on twitter. Super sorry this is so late but work has been a lot lately.

The apartment's balcony was different. Riko looked out and saw the sprawl of a large city, a skyline littered with different, bright lights, and streets that bustled with all the commotion she’d thought to have left behind. Two years since the view had been something she saw every day of her life. A view that she wanted nothing more than to forget about when leaving Tokyo for the first time was back as it had never left.

Different from the gentle sounds of a small seaside town that she hoped to never leave, but life wouldn’t allow that. High school had to come to an end, which meant that a future that Riko once felt was so far off was upon her. Numazu didn’t have a school with the music program she’d always imagined herself in. Which meant leaving behind the place that became her home.

Leaving behind a school that she felt comfortable in. Leaving behind a group of friends that she found hope and acceptance in. Leaving behind a town that became home. Maybe worst of all leaving behind a simple, shining girl who changed her life forever.

It was a decision made on her own, and with the support of everyone whose opinion she cared for. A dream was meant to run toward, that was something Chika would always make sure she knew. So there was never any regret. No looking back thinking and wondering if it was the right decision to leave behind everything that became so dear.

There was never regret, it was a decision made with confidence, but that couldn’t fight back that budding loneliness. Even in classes filled to the brim with young, talented musicians, and streets packed with passersby shoulder to shoulder, there was a hope to see eight girls she missed. One more than the others.

“So, how was the first day?”

Riko sighed into the phone held against her cheek, even so far away, Chika’s voice was a balm that could soothe any anxiety.

“It was good,” Riko said.

“Just good?” Chika chuckled. “Isn’t this the school of your dreams? Shouldn’t the first day be shiny and magical.”

Riko laughed for the first time that day. “We didn’t really do anything. Just went over what we were going to do for the rest of the year, talked about everyone's interests and instruments, and stupid icebreakers that just made things more awkward.”

“I bet you’re awful at those.”

“Very funny.” Riko rolled her eyes at nobody. “Not everyone makes friends with the whole class on the first day, you know?”

“Maybe you should just try harder.” There was a playful mocking to Chika’s voice.

“No, icebreakers are stupid, and I don’t care if I am bad at them.”

“So, you are bad at them?”

“Shut up.” Riko leaned her elbows on the balconies railing, resting the phone against her shoulder. “Did you call me just to make fun of me?”

“Of course not.” Chika scoffed. “I haven’t talked to you in a week. I missed hearing your voice.”

Riko blushed, Chika’s blunt affection hitting her just as hard through the phone as it did in person. “I missed talking to you, too.”

A brief silence took hold, and Riko wondered how things would go. Only a week of no Chika that seemed so much longer. Sweaty palms gripped at the cool metal of the rail. She would need to get used to the distance that she knew was coming. It wasn’t a surprise, but that didn’t make it any easier. Seeing Chika every day had become the norm. Having to wait months between visits was weird, and just a bit scary.

“How are things at the inn?” Riko broke the silence, fearing thinking too much.

“Fine.” Chika’s voice was indifferent. “I’m mostly just cleaning and helping customers with luggage and stuff. My mom and sisters said I’d get more responsibilities when I’ve worked more.”

“Sounds like you’re working hard.” Riko smiled, soft and to nobody in particular.

“You should tell that to Mito.” Chika sighed. “I’ve gotta go soon. There’s this family coming in a little bit and we need to get some stuff ready for them.”

“Alright.” Riko’s smile dropped. “You’re going to call me more than once a week, right?”

“Duh. Since I don’t see you every day anymore how else am I going to get my dose of Riko?” Chika asked, but didn’t leave anytime for an answer. “I love you, Riko.”

Riko took in a sharp breath, the three words setting her heart aflutter. “I love you, too, Chika.”

A subtle click and Riko was once again left to the sounds of the busy streets below. She relished in the warmth in her stomach and flutter of her heart as her talk with Chika ended. The distance something new after two years of getting so lost in each other. A distance that would take time to acclimate to.

A sharp breeze brought with it a shiver despite it being late summer. With a deep breath, Riko turned, opening the sliding door and stepping into her apartment. The content warmth in her stomach replaced by a chill not yet cold enough to worry about.

The weeks passed, but the phone calls stayed the same. Like clockwork at the same time at the end of her day. A time that Riko found solace in amongst the hustle and bustle of a new, frightening, and exciting college life. The calls were moments she could lose herself in with the person she wanted to see more than any other.

Chika’s voice was still the same. Lovely and bubbly in a way that set Riko’s heart pounding. Warm enough, loving enough, that Riko could continue to bear the brunt of the feelings their new distance caused. They’d talked about this move, they knew the distance was coming. Riko couldn’t let that small seed of doubt take root. It would be unfair to Chika who cheered her on, whose encouragement lead her to chase a dream she’d had since childhood.

A bit of distance wouldn’t be enough to break what they had, Riko hoped.

“Sorry, I can’t talk very long tonight.”

Chika’s voice was frantic and stuttered over the phone. A sound that didn’t put Riko at ease.

“It’s alright, Chika,” Riko said, staring out over the city lights. She knew better than to lie, but she couldn’t bring herself to put more pressure on Chika. “You did say you were going to be busier lately.”

“I know, but I didn’t want it to cut into my time talking to you.”

Riko didn’t know how to respond, opting to stay quiet and bask in the sentiment. Always aware that Chika loved her, but hearing it put so plainly never failing to make her fall further.

“I’m sorry, Riko,” Chika said again. “We’re just getting so many new customers all the time, and my sisters are trying to teach me a whole bunch of stuff, too.”

“Don’t worry,” Riko answered without thinking. “I know you’re doing your best.”

“I love you a whole bunch.”

Riko blushed, not able to dwell on the sweetness too long, hearing familiar yelling that she’d come to learn was usually Mito. It meant things were coming to an end, and she gnawed on her bottom lip at the realization.  Bitting back a selfish urge to ask for Chika’s voice for a few minutes longer. Selfish and childlike, she thought, so she wouldn’t. Even if it wouldn’t help quell the twisting of her heart.

“It sounds like they need you to get back to work.” It was all Riko could find in herself to say.

“I guess,” Chika yelled something unintelligible back before returning, voice faster than before. “I’ll try and call tomorrow. Bye.”

“Bye, Chika.”

Riko hung up, staring at her phone with an unreadable expression. Inklings of doubt seeped into a mind that would have never questioned love before. Small enough that they were fought off with a simple shake of the head and reaffirming thoughts, but their presence scary altogether. She didn’t head back inside, choosing to bask in the crisp air of coming autumn. The chill offering comfort that never fit before, used to finding that comfort in the warmth of Chika.

It was already past the usual time. Riko checked down at her phone for the umpteenth time that night, standing out on her balcony once again in anticipation. Waiting for a call that she was becoming more and more sure was never going to come.

Not calling at all was new. Scary, and Riko dreaded anything that it meant, but new all the same. Chika had become incredibly busy with training to take up the mantle of her new life, the rational part of Riko understood that fact. Knowing that even if she wouldn’t be able to hear the voice of the girl she loved that things would be okay. They’d still be together, and the temporary distance wouldn’t wear that away. Chika wouldn’t let any of that happen, and deep down, Riko knew she wouldn’t either.

That wouldn’t make it easier. From becoming accustomed to seeing Chika every day, spending every possible moment together without wondering where the other was. To whatever it was they were dealing with now. Not even able to set up a routine phone call without those plans falling through.

Riko learned her wandering thoughts were no good. Dwelling on fears that once could be pushed out with the melodic sound of Chika’s voice. That comfort being gone only allowed those ugly, intruding thoughts to fester. Festering into an irrational fear that maybe, and only just maybe, things wouldn’t be alright.

Before sinking too far, her phone buzzed. Looking down at her hand, she saw the name she wanted.

I’m super sorry I can’t call you. We’re crazy busy again and Mito would kill me if she caught me slacking off. It’s gonna be like this all week so idk if I’ll be able to call or not. Sorry but I love you so so so so so much.

It wasn’t a phone call. The words on a screen only a band-aid fix to deepening trouble. Riko mulled it over, reading each line over and over and over. Trying, and with little success, to get that same reassurance that Chika could always bring. It wasn’t there. The comfort brought on by such a blunt love not conveyed in the same way in text. Missing a bubbly exuberance that Riko loved more than ever once thought possible.

It’s ok. I’ve got tons of homework anyway so it’s not a big deal. I love you too Chika.

A sigh as Riko pressed send. None of it a lie, but she knew none of it the full truth either. There was always homework, but there was never enough time talking to Chika. She couldn’t say that. Not if their many talks before graduation meant what she thought. All that time telling each other they’d be fine despite the distance, and they would, if Riko thought hard about it, but the new doubt was unexpected.

Over a year into a relationship where nothing ever had to be questioned. Where each other's love was always enough to quell even the biggest issue or patch over their biggest fights, but what happened when they couldn’t see each other? A question that Riko was learning she might not want the answer to.

Riko didn’t bother waiting for the phone calls the rest of the week, knowing full well it would be useless. Chika had been more than happy to keep her bombarded with text after text. Trying so obviously to make up for something that was out of her own control. The messages were sweet, just as anything from Chika tended to be, but they were texts.

The piano in front of her didn’t want to cooperate, and the dim light of her room made it all the more worse. Stuck in a way she hadn't been in well over two years. Fingers that grew accustomed to moving freely, uninhibited by fears of a distant past, sat frozen above the keys. Mind occupied with what she knew were senseless worries. Though senseless worries were still worries that chipped away at love once thought untouchable.

Running a hand through her loose hair, Riko sighed. Frustrated at her inability to focus, frustrated at how quick those past anxieties could come back, frustrated that even a hint of doubt could seep into her mind.

It wasn’t late, sometime in the midafternoon after finishing the day's classes, but Riko was done for the day. No hope in getting anything finished with a mind that couldn’t focus on anything but a need to see Chika. That need to reaffirm something she shouldn’t be doubting in the first place.

She thought of calling. Maybe hearing that voice would be enough to get her through another month as it did before, but that was selfish. Chika was busy, and Riko knew. It wasn’t her place to get in the way of that, and what would Chika think anyway? What would she think of these doubts of a love that Riko knew Chika never questioned? Would things still be the same if she told Chika she was scared of the unknown future they shared? That it only took a couple months apart for doubts, no matter how small, to seep in?

The knocking stopped Riko from spiraling too deep into her thoughts. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Ignoring the sound, she leaned forward over her piano, head down.

The knocking wouldn’t stop, only getting louder. Resigning herself to the fate of an awkward talk with some stranger, Riko got up and tiptoed toward the front door. Hoping if she took enough time they’d just go away on their own.

She was wrong. The knocking turned to banging and wondered what type of weirdo goes up to some strangers door and started beating. Hand on the handle she took in deep breaths. Getting better with these types of interactions over the years, but strangers were still scary, and this one too loud for her own good.

A click and the door was open. Riko stared, processing the orange hair and braid that were unmistakable.

“Riko!”

There wasn’t a wasted second. Arms were around Riko’s waist and she was pulled in tight by a girl she hadn’t seen in some months. Her hands were glued to her side as she processed. Chika was at her apartment in the big city holding her like they were still in Uchiura.

“What?” It was the only response Riko could find, still frozen in place.

“I came to see you.” Chika backed off, hands still on Riko’s side as she pressed a kiss to her girlfriend's cheek.

Riko floundered, opening and closing her mouth, trying for any words. Chika was with her, hugging her. Gone were pestering fears brought on by irrational doubt, replaced with the girl who held her close.

“Aren’t you happy to see me?” Chika smiled as wide as she could, teeth on full display.

Riko nodded, swallowing down a growing lump in her throat as she stared into Chika’s bright eyes. Another kiss to the cheek, forcing them a dark shade of red. The burst of affection too much.

“It was a good surprise, wasn’t it?” Chika asked, Riko again nodded. “I had to beg Mito to let me have this weekend off, but even then she wouldn’t let me. Shima had to tell her I deserved a break because I’ve been working so hard.”

Riko still stared, quiet. The entryway cool but Chika beyond warm as she was held in close. Overwhelmed she bit her lip, meeting your girlfriend face to face again for the first time in months wasn’t the time to cry, so she fought it back. It meant her voice couldn’t be trusted.

“What’s up?” Chika tiled her head, never letting go of Riko’s waist.  “You’re so quiet. I expected you to be all like ‘oh my god Chika you came to visit me you’re the best girlfriend ever’.”

Riko chuckled, covering her face with her hands to hide the embarrassment. “I just missed you so much.”

“So did I.”

Riko took a deep breath, face still hidden behind her fingers. “I’ve been so scared since we haven’t talked a lot lately, and I haven’t gotten to see you since I moved. I just didn’t know anymore. I love you so much and it’s hard not seeing you every day anymore.”

Quieter as things were laid bare. Riko quivered behind her makeshift defense her hands provided. Feeling silly trying to keep any of it hidden. Chika would notice if given enough time, it was just the type of girl she was, but being open about it scary. Even if she knew Chika would never judge her for it.

“Well.” Chika’s hands went from Riko’s waist up to her wrists, tugging down to reveal a deep red face with shimmering eyes. “I’m here now, and I’m going to try and come even more.”

At a loss again, Riko nodded. Fears driven off by a look in Chika’s eyes that wouldn’t leave any room for doubt.

The short distance between their faces closed before Riko could react. Lips on hers that she’d missed. Comfort found in the way Chika’s thumbs rubbed small circles on the underside of her wrist held with such care.

Riko pulled back first, mind only able to form a few words.

“I love you, Chika.”

[doomedandstoned]

Closer To The End (part II)

~By Billy Goate~

Art by Ruso Tsig

Everyone has bouts of sadness, loneliness, heartache. For better or worse, it's a part of the human condition. There was some discussion after my last article about whether depression is something we can choose to walk into or away from -- like a bad attitude -- or whether in some people it may be more deeply ingrained in the psychological makeup, whether by nature or nurture. I thought it would be helpful to give you a window into my own background so you can understand when depression first made itself manifest and the different strategies taken to deal with it over the years.

Banished from this world, and from its toil I can only watch, grieve and pity Stare at stupid likes, wonder at people's smiles

I get more and more stress Nothing anyone can offer, more or less Done grieving, closer to the end

DON'T KNOW WHY

I vaguely recall spells of melancholy in childhood. The return from summer camp to a boring home with mom vacuuming and dad at work had me feeling quite empty and blue. It was a strange, bewildering state of mind to be in. Mom told me to snap out of it or else. There were a few moments that shattered my reality as a child. Realizing, for instance, that mom and dad were having marital problems. Hearing my pastor of a father say a swear word. Often, I would be startled awake in the dead of night to my mom shrieking at my dad, throwing dishes, insisting that he was against her. My dad was a patient man and knew that all was not right in her world. These things jolted me into new layers of reality, each accompanied by periods of moodiness and anxiety.

By the time I was in the 4th grade, I started having trouble in school. I was placed in one of those "talented and gifted" programs, though I never really understood why. I knew I couldn't see what my teachers were writing on the chalkboard. Panicked, I would ask students nearby what the hell the teacher was writing, only to be scolded for distracting the class. One particular teacher was downright mean to me, until she found out that I was having vision problems and needed glasses. Once she realized I was also the son of a preacher man, she tripped all over herself to be kind. Maybe she felt guilty?

Something else odd happened around this time. I came home with division homework one day and just decided not to do it. I don't remember if it was because my parents were too busy to help or I was just too stubborn to ask. There was no rational reason for it. The next day, I was shamed in front of the entire class by an Admiral Ackbar looking mother fucker named Mr. Davis. "Billy Joe, why didn't you do your homework?" he demanded. "Why?" His hand lifted my chin, forcing me to stare up into his beady little eyes peering menacingly behind his spectacles. Mr. Davis' rosy complexion turned beat red when I answered: "I...don't know."

I don't know anything I don't know anything I don't know anything I don't know who I am

I don't know anything I don't know anything I don't know anything I don't know who to be

SATANIC PANIC

My parents were tethered to a particularly pernicious strain of fundamentalist Christianity that got caught up in the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s. That meant no D&D for me! Urban legends were shared in Sunday school and from the pulpit about young people who had necked because their character "died" in this forbidden game. It was the most sinister proxy for evil that I could envision at that time.

The Satanic Panic put everything else under the microscope: toys, comic books, and popular music were all suspect. A copy of Phil Phillip's 1986 "expose" Turmoil In The Toybox lay on the coffee table, pages well-worn and highlighted. He-Man, G.I. Joe, even Star Wars were viewed as tools of the Devil to recruit a desensitized generation of youth into his heathen horde. I'd wake up from one day to learn about something else I couldn't have, play, watch, or do. Video games would not be far behind.

One day, my mother caught me rocking out to the Scorpions in my room and immediately confiscated my radio, outlawing metal from the house (and basically anything with a rock 'n' roll beat). MTV lasted only long enough for me to be exposed to Metallica's visceral "One" and Guns 'n' Roses' "Welcome To The Jungle." While the classic days of rock's infancy were viewed as a time of innocence (I don't think my folks really got what "Blueberry Hill" by Fats Domino was about), anything stemming from the late '60s counterculture forward was viewed as dangerously corrupting.

Various factions within the church began playing games of connect-the-dots with the songs of Jefferson Airplane, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath, tying them into a subservice plot by Luciferian cults and the shadowy elite (at that time Communists -- a favorite boogeyman of the era) who were trying to undermine undermining of God, family, and country by subverting its youth. All of popular culture was roped in with the conspiracy, too. Though the house was cleansed of its ungodly influence, the worst was still ahead.

Soon, my mother started cutting me off from neighborhood friends and finally pulled me out of public school altogether around middle of 5th grade. She had learned about this radical new response to America's failing education system through friends from another church who had just taken their own children out of school. Emboldened, she began homeschooling us in West Texas in the mid '80s, during a time when it wasn't a clearly legal practice. Every time the doorbell rang my siblings and I would run and hide, thinking the truant officer had come to take us away to foster care. I didn't understand at the time what I do now: my mother was mentally ill. Furthermore, she was in over her head. This became apparent when she tried to take on the role of teacher.

While I am extraordinarily grateful for the year or two of solid education she gave me (particularly in the writing and public speaking departments, two areas she and my father were naturally gifted in and which have been the buttress of my career), it wasn't long until she became frustrated with the Abeka and Bob Jones University curriculum we were using. One day, when I was struggling with algebra, she declared that we wouldn't have to learn it. "After all, who actually uses algebra in daily life?" she wondered. We were now self-directed learners, a radical new idea that was controversial even in the homeschooling movement ("un-schooling," they called it). Of course, I wasn't allowed to just sit around and watch TV. Consequently, I shifted my focus to the things that were more interesting to me: music, art, history. Math and science? Not so much.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

For years, I remained blithely unaware of what was happening in the world around me in the world of music. I lived in Arlington during the rise of Pantera, Topeka during one of Guns ‘n’ Roses most controversial shows, and Oregon during the height of the grunge era and the sunsetting of the Grateful Dead -- all of it veiled from notice. My life was devoted to church and, if anything, I tried to convince fellow Christians to separate themselves from the tainted allure of the fool’s gold of popular music, television, and video games. For a while, I was a true believer. Call it Stockholm Syndrome, if you like. Infractions of the moral code -- and the slightest temperament of rebellion -- were met with a freshly cut switch, which would leave stinging welts up and down my calves, tights, arms, and back. Thus my conscience was conditioned.

I remember happening upon the pornographic scene in George Orwell’s 1984 and afterwards feeling that the only right and proper thing to assuage my guilt was to burn the everlasting shit out of this smut. Even then I loved the novel, but I couldn't reconcile my faith with this section of it, so I purged it in the flame of backyard trash barrels. At my most fervent, I also lit the match to a stack of MAD Magazines and comic books. As harmless as they might have seemed to the average Joe blinded to the wiles of the Devil, these were gateways into realms of the flesh. “Walk in the spirit, not the flesh,” I recited to myself as fire brandished the yellowed pages of print, slowly turning them black until they were embers caught up by the wind and scattered into the sky. True story: I once threw away a perfectly good copy of Downward Spiral after one hearing the demonic screams of "Becoming" (not to mention the brash blasphemy of "Heretic").

The me that you know doesn't come around much That part of me isn't here anymore

The me that you know is now made up of wires And even when I'm right with you I'm so far away

This kind of extreme separation from the world really fucked me up socially. For years, I couldn't hold on a conversation with another person my age. What would we talk about? I was clueless about anything happening in the world of sports, music, television, or the culture at large. Even though conversation is no longer a problem for me, I still feel odd about friendships. I have an irrational fear that they're going to be taken away from me at any moment, so I keep everyone at a comfortable arm's length. At times, intimacy feels painfully awkward.

Maybe this is why I'm so notorious for leaving shows immediately following the last song. I’ll give my smiles, shake hands, and say goodbye, but avoid sticking around long enough to really get to know people. I’ve been invited to crash on couches to avoid the long drive home, but I always politely decline. Certainly, I don’t want to come across as rude, I just feel like an outsider to the world -- someone who just doesn’t fit in, doesn't belong. Not now, not ever.

TEENAGE ANGST HAS PAID OFF WELL

As I reached my adolescent years, I began going through prolonged spells of melancholy. The prospect of sharing this with others was extraordinarily embarrassing, so I kept it all bottled up inside. Mostly, I tried walking it out on long excursions through the open field next to our house. I worked through a lot of issues during that time and credit those walks with helping me to keep my sanity. As a matter of fact, I recommend daily constitutionals to everyone as a general principle of good mental health. It would be a mistake not to mention that my belief in an omnipresent God at this time played a medicinal role in helping me to cope with my depression, though my views on religion would one day reverse course.

By 18, symptoms of major depression surfaced like a noxious weed and even God could not get me through it. I prayed, too. God, how I prayed, sometimes hours on end. That year, I fell into a downcast mood that refused to dissipate and remained there for months -- four of them straight. I sought refuge in the music of Tchaikovsky, working my way from the fateful Symphony No. 4 to his Symphony No. 6, the Pathétique. The sounds I was hearing tapped into a new emotional alphabet, impossible to transcribe into any tongue. It was remarkable: somehow the music knew precisely what I was feeling. I finally had a soundtrack to my depression.

One day, a buddy and I joined the military on a whim, though he'd later get disqualified for asthma. I felt the Army would provide a much needed "Be All You Can Be" boost to my confidence and a crash course in normie life. I shipped down range to my duty station, Fort Benning, Georgia, for infantry training. My new home would be with Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 58th Infantry Regiment -- the infamous "House of Pain." In the space of 14 weeks, I was exposed to every aspect of humanity imaginable. From the "shark attack" welcome of the drill sergeants on Sand Hill to the rude middle of the night awakenings for physical training, I was in shock most of the time. Slowly, though, I eased into this strange new world and got my bearings.

Almost a full month into this prison world, we were allowed to visit one of the on-base shopping exchanges. I immediately looked for a CD player and began checking out the music section, trying to see if there were names I recognized. "Guns 'n' Roses? Sure they're cool," shrugged my buddy Bradley, a floppy-eared Gomer Pyle looking dude. "But you really need to check out some Soundgarden, dude." I did, picking up their latest, Down On The Upside, and it was like salve to my soul. The music spoke of being trapped ("...and I don't like what you've got me hanging from") and being eternally at odds with the world ("Born without a friend and bound to die alone"). There was even a song about "Boot Camp," the short album closer. The nihilistic despair was strangely comforting.

I must obey the rules I must be tame and cool No staring at the clouds I must stay on the ground In clusters of the mice The smoke is in our eyes Like babies on display Like Angels in a cage I must be pure and true I must contain my views There must be something else There must be something good far away Far away from here And I'll be there for good For good

The song did not resolve happily, and I feared my life wouldn't either. After a serious injury left me permanently wounded, I began to feel my life wasn't being guided by the Hand of God of all, but the random throes of Fate. Maybe they were the same thing. I resigned myself to the misery of a long recovery, during which time I had to learn to walk again. It's a three beer kind of story, maybe I'll share it sometime. Probably not. Returning to civilian life proved to be even more of an adjustment than the military had been, and my shadows of depression lingered with me even as I tried to remain one step ahead of them.

MELANCHOLIA

I have long held a theory that human beings are not built for the world that we have constructed for ourselves. Whether we're talking Seattle traffic or the constant buzz of social media, the frantic pace of our rapidly evolving technocracy has left us a worried, frazzled mess. The studies are conclusive: almost one in five have experienced depression and one in four struggle with anxiety, with PTSD being a household acronym.

A counselor once asked if I enjoyed being depressed. I found it a bit of a repulsive question. I can tell you that there is nothing glamorous about depression. There's no reason to idolize the angst of those sad Kurt Cobain eyes. Everyone has experienced feelings of being bummed out, and for most folks it is a transitory feeling. It comes when one of life's storms arises and leaves when the situation resolves itself. There's a whole section of us, however, for whom the dark clouds never leaves. It just hovers around our heads, like the oppressive, low-hanging specter of an Oregon winter.

Depression isn't always about feeling sad, either. Often it manifests in a general malaise -- you can't bring yourself to care about the things you used to. Other times, it works in tandem with anxiety, seizing your heart at the thought of all the day holds in store, then punishing you with the feeling of dread. We may feel sad, anxious, or fearful and not be able to give a rational explanation for it. In those moments, I cannot imagine a more miserable place to be. With that said, I hasten to add that my description of depression may not align with your own, as it is an intensely personal experience.

Release your head from the world Keep yourself underground No one understands your mind

Humans programmed like robots Making sure you don't belong No one understands your mind

I suspected I had depression in the clinical sense, when I realized that though I wanted to feel better, all I could do was subsist in the misery. Those of you who've been able to talk yourself out of such states will scoff. My mother, who suffers from a host of afflictions that have never been properly diagnosed, was notorious for telling us kids to "snap out of it." I do understand that kind of no-nonsense perspective. Her father and mother were staunchly independent homesteaders of the WWII generation who braved the untamed wilderness of Alaska and the exotic dangers of Australia. The '60s and '70s generation grew up fearful of losing such independence to mental institutions that locked up people, merely because they acted in ways society didn’t understand. The stigma of psychiatric care was every bit as real as the stigma of mental illness. Thus, her approach was quite practical: take Saint John's Wort, get on a good diet of vegetables and fruits, drink plenty of water, get fresh air and exercise. If that doesn’t work, there’s always Jesus.

Despite plenty of prayer and a multitude of home remedies, depression continued plaguing my mind. People frustrated by what they viewed as an easy fix would imply that depressed folk like me just wanted to be depressed, maybe because it got them attention or they were just spoiled rotten. Soon I stopped sharing altogether. As one friend of mine, a real no-nonsense type, told me: “No one cares. You have to get on with your life.” “How do you manage that?” I asked. “What's your secret?” “You just have to shrug it off,” she concluded. I envied the cold, pragmatic stoicism and wished that I could just shrug my shoulders and let everything slide off. At one point, my depression was so acute, I looked into electroconvulsive therapy, memory loss be damned. During my consultation with a specialist, I learned the procedure had advanced since Jack Nicholson’s unfortunate end as a mental patient in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Ultimately, I decided against it.

SEARCH FOR ANSWERS

As with most human situations, our problems stem from a complex mixture of nature and nurture. I posed a question to my psychology professor one day: "Does depression cause us to think depressing thoughts or do depressing thoughts cause us to be in a state of depression?" His answer surprised and relieved me. "Both," he said.

In Psychology 202, we were in the midst of a chapter on depression and other mental disorders. Having recently experienced the loss of my grandmother, I was feeling especially hopeless and decided to ask my prof another burning question at the end of class. "If a person were to see a therapist, does it go on his record?" In my mind, counseling was for the weak and hideously broken. "Not at all," he responded with a smile. "Even psychologists seek help from other psychologists for their depression and anxiety." Then he really blew my mind: "I have a therapist myself. See her once a month. Sort through a lot of life decisions that way." He also assured me that there was no master file of such visits. While a therapist might keep her own notes, it's certainly not something shared with employers and as a rule is kept strictly confidential, as are all medical records.

My first visit to a counselor was nothing like I'd imagined. I wasn't given pills, invited to lay on a couch and look at ink blots, or even asked questions about my parents. Instead, the counselor initiated an open-ended conversation that encouraged me to articulate the tangled mess of thoughts and feelings I'd been bottling up inside. It was the first time I'd ever talked about my experiences in the military or about the emotional upheaval of my childhood. I felt liberated after just a few weeks of these sessions. For a time, I felt very much on top of my problems. Maybe this counseling thing wasn't so bad after all. I even began to recommend it to my friends and stood up for psychologists when mom would bash the profession in one of her trademark rants.

Promises abound You rarely find it to begin Maybe I'm afraid To let you all the way in

I excuse myself I'm used to my little cell I amuse myself In my very own private hell

I noticed a pattern to my depression: it seemed to be triggered by situations in which I felt helplessly incapable of controlling my environment, decisions, and destiny. You know, other people taking advantage of me, a nightmare roommate, an overbearing boss, unrequited love -- that sort of thing. It was like a switch flipped and all of the sudden the feelings flooded in and surrounded me for days, even weeks.

Feelings of loneliness and disquiet were often compounded by negative thinking about the situation. "What's wrong with me that I can't find someone to be with? Am I that unattractive or uninteresting?" The negative self-talk wasn't helping my situation. In some ways, it even turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'd walk around with a scowl on my face, prompting friends and family to constantly ask, "What's wrong? Is everything ok?" That's why I realized it may take more muscles to frown than to smile, but that undersmile sure is a lot more comfortable. No wonder people kept themselves at bay.

I actually started practicing my smile in the rearview mirror on the way to school every day, just so I remembered what that felt like. Fake it 'til you make it, the saying goes. Even if I was feeling like a miserable wretch inside, I certainly didn't want to betray those feelings to the world outside. So I got good at being a fake. When people asked, "How's it going?" I'd say, "Fine, just fine, thanks. And you?" (One of my counselors would later call me on that every session: "How are things really?").

When I got married, depression reached peak levels, only now that oppressive, low-hanging cold front wouldn't burn off with the sunshine. The mood never lifted. It was with me 24-7. It wasn't unusual for me to be severely depressed during the normally halcyon days of summer. I knew something had to be done, so I confronted another long-time stigma of mine: medication.

To be continued...

This whole house of cards crumbling slow If I disappear would you even know? The trap is time and no one gets off of this ride alive

So far under Too much pain to tell And now I'm ripped asunder So far under

[nocteverbascio]

watolock - i’m useless now

Pairing: Sherlock/Wato Tachibana Summary: Wato can’t sleep and just wants to be near Sherlock but her presence "is bothersome" to Sherlock A/N: Started as a cheesy ploy for cuddling but ended up being subtext with unresolved romantic tension. Also Sherlock is basically my child that cannot deal with her emotions like a normal human being 

ao3 link

Wato wakes up in a cold sweat again.

Her eyes shoot open and she’s staring at the ceiling, blinking until her eyes adjust to the darkness. She doesn’t move, clutching the blanket to her chest; the sensation is paralyzing. All of her nerve endings fire signals across the synapses that she can feel it all over her, but she can’t move.

In. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Out. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

She counts her breathing until it becomes innate to her again.

The LED clock reads 3:42 AM and she lets out a quiet sigh. She has to be up for the clinic soon and she can’t go dead on her feet.

The adrenaline doesn’t stop coursing through her veins even though she knows the rush will stop soon enough. Then she’ll be able to go back to sleep.

Except she can’t.

Because when she closes her eyes, she dreams about falling. She dreams about Sherlock’s screams to her. The brief moment she feels Sherlock’s cool hands around hers before she pulls away. Wato reaches, always, she always reaches for Sherlock’s hands but she’s falling backwards over the edge, watching Sherlock scream for her.

Wato clutches the blanket up to her chin. It doesn’t bring her comfort though. The hollow sensation in her stomach remains like she’s still falling.

When she tries to close her eyes, the only thing she sees is Sherlock.

Sherlock screaming her name. She says that emotions impede logical thinking, but Wato can only see the worry and fear and anguish on her face.

“Shit,” Wato curses as she shoots up from her bed.

Sherlock is the only thing on her mind. And it’s obvious that she can’t sleep until---

Wato hops out of bed, forgoing her slippers to go downstairs. She has to know. She has to see for herself.

There’s a light from under the door of Sherlock’s room. Her racing heart starts to slow as she gently pushes the door open.

There she is.

Wato releases the breath she didn’t know she was holding. The air rushes into her, relieving her of the stress.

Sherlock sits, fingers pressed against each other, eyes focused on the empty space in front of her.

For a brief moment, Wato thinks that Sherlock hasn’t moved since she went to bed, but she sees a few chocolate wrappers open on the small table in front of her. The papers of their current case are scattered on the table, on the stack of books next to Sherlock, and on Wato’s chair.

Wato bites her lip. Her heart stops racing and beats normally once more.

Instead of calling for Sherlock, breaking her from her deep thought, Wato creeps into the room quietly. She wants to be nearby because her room is too far from Sherlock in that moment. And she wants to get sleep knowing that Sherlock is really there.

Wato makes her way as carefully as she can towards the couch until she feels a hand grab her wrist quickly. She looks at Sherlock’s hand gripping her wrist firmly.

“What’re you doing here?” Sherlock slowly asks.

Wato swallows as she slips out of Sherlock’s grasp slowly. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Sherlock sits back in her chair, looking up at Wato. Observing her. Wato feels warm under the stare. “Go back to sleep,” she waves off. “You are exhausted. Even if you can’t sleep, you won’t be useful helping me solve this case.”

Wato pouts. “Why do you say such things?” she mumbles without any ire.

Sherlock narrows her eyes. “Can you tell me why Tanaka ended up on that dock when she had no reason to be?”

Wato winces because she doesn’t really have an answer. At least for a moment. She thinks about Tanaka at the dock. She thinks of Tanaka dressed as if she got off of work with a simple charm since high school around her wrist and a necklace with a ring too big for her. She thinks about Tanaka staring out into the water; the beautiful sunset in the horizon.

Wato takes a small breath. “Maybe she just wanted to be there,” she answers with small resignation. “Somewhere she found beautiful and safe.” She looks at Sherlock, staring at her dark eyes that always seem to twinkle in the right angle. It looks different at this hour because Wato can spy the quiet calm when Sherlock gets time to focus by herself.

Sherlock stands up from her seat, still observing Wato. “That’s irrational.”

Wato sighs with a smile on her face. If anything, she finds Sherlock’s antics more endearing because she’s there and she’s unapologetically herself. “I must be useless. It is 4am.” She resigns and moves to lie down on the couch.

Sherlock follows her curiously. “The couch is uncomfortable. Go to sleep in your bed.” She nudges Wato’s shoulder.

“Lies,” Wato returns, reaching for the throw. “It’s fine. I want to sleep here.”

“Why?”

“Because-” I want you nearby. Wato feels her heart skip a beat and she doesn’t know what to say because Sherlock is just going to say she’s being emotional and irrational. She just feels so tired but she can’t sleep unless she knows Sherlock is there.

“You had a nightmare.”

Wato snaps her attention up to Sherlock. Of course. She doesn’t let on though, looking away. “No, I didn’t,” she lies.

Sherlock bends over until her face is inches from Wato’s, eyes searching hers carefully. Wato gasps and sits up straight to give them space.

“Don’t do that so suddenly,” Wato chastises.

“You’re lying.”

Wato fakes a yawn, arms coming up to stretch quickly to make Sherlock move out of her personal space. “I’m suddenly very tired, I’m going to sleep.” But Sherlock doesn’t move.

“If you are having nightmares because PTSD, you should tell me,” Sherlock informs as if it’s the easiest thing for Wato to do. “We can approach the problem rationally so that you can move past your PTSD and perform optimally.”

Wato sighs. “Sherlock, it doesn’t work like that.”

“Of course it does. Try me, tell me what your nightmares are of,” Sherlock demands as if it isn’t a big deal.

“No,” Wato settles the throw over her and relaxes onto the couch. “I don’t want to.”

“Eh?” Sherlock quirks her head to the side. “You don’t make any sense. Tell me. You’ve already interrupted my concentration.”

“No,” Wato turns away from Sherlock so she can sleep. “Go back to your case.”

Instead of hearing receding footsteps like she wants, she feels a weight at her legs and suddenly she’s being pulled to sit up.

“What, Sherlock?” Wato whines. She doesn’t want to talk about her problems. They’re her problems. They just happen to involve Sherlock and she’s already doing her best to put herself at ease. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“No, I want to know. I don’t understand what is going on,” Sherlock insists, brows furrowed. “You need to explain it to me.”

Wato sighs. “I’m having emotions. You never want to hear about that.”

Sherlock scrunches up her nose in distaste. “You may be right about that, but that is clearly what I don’t understand. You are bothered by something that is causing you nightmares and you are here in the middle of the night in my room when you have a perfectly comfortable bed in your own.” She lets out a sigh of frustration. “This is bothersome.”

“It is late Sherlock,” Wato points out. “You need your rest too.” Wato is getting tired. Or maybe it’s the comfort of knowing Sherlock is there. She feels at ease and she wants to rest her weary limbs. She drops her head back onto the couch, facing away from Sherlock.

Sherlock huffs and pushes against Wato’s back. “Move, move,” she urges.

Wato tries to look back, “What? What’re you doing?” but she’s pushed further into the couch.

Sherlock lies down behind Wato, curling up behind her. No doubt precariously because the couch isn’t all that big. She throws her an arm around Wato and shoves the other underneath Wato until she actually holds Wato against her chest.

“What’re you doing?” Wato carefully asks, feeling warm instantly. She doesn’t dare look back, shocked at the fact that Sherlock is actually holding her. When she wanted Sherlock nearby she didn’t mean this close. It feels warm though, right to her core.

“You’ve made me useless for the rest of the night,” Sherlock grumbles into the back of Wato’s neck. “I can’t concentrate anymore.”

Wato heats up at Sherlock’s breath against her neck. She involuntarily shivers. “Sherlock…”

“Shh,” Sherlock quickly snaps. “I want to sleep and not be---like this.”

LIke this?

Wato glances back or at least tries to but Sherlock’s arms wrap around Wato firmly and she buries her face into the back of Wato’s neck. Wato momentarily freezes at Sherlock’s lips pressed against the back of her neck. She unconsciously reaches for Sherlock’s hands to hold.

Sherlock doesn’t fight it, letting Wato’s fingers intertwine with hers.

Mm, Sherlock is here. Wato reminds herself. She relaxes into Sherlock’s arms and falls asleep, feeling Sherlock’s warmth enshroud her. Sherlock is here.

[roceit]

Overflow

Title: Overflow

Summary: Deceit shares nightmares with the Light Sides when the nightmares involve deception. He’s usually good with helping out the other sides with their personal problems, but has trouble getting Logan to open up when he shares a nightmare with him for the first time.

Warnings: Sympathetic Deceit, dream logic/surrealism, nightmares, implied character death (as a part of the dream sequence) 

Pairing: Platonic Logan and Deceit? Not really though. 

Wordcount: 1825

Deceit, in a wild frenzy, shoved aside the sheets covering him as he awoke abruptly. His eyes widened and the entire frame of his body shook in fear at the memories racing through his head of the last visual he had seen. Deceit had to glance around the room and feel his arms to make sure that he was truly awake He felt his eyes begin to water after comprehending what had just happened. After a moment of recovery, Deceit let out a deep sigh and fell back onto his bed. The water in his eyes finally flowed from the sides of his face down onto the pillow. Deceit didn’t bother wiping the tears away.

Once again, he had experienced a nightmare involving one of…the light sides. He couldn’t control it. It wasn’t like he could choose the types of dreams he had. The lies that the other sides told manifested into nightmares in Deceit’s mind during the night if he didn’t take care of the issue properly. It wasn’t the small white lies that tortured Deceit. It was the important ones, the ones that hid the other sides’ insecurities and fears. Especially the insecurities of the know-it-all.

Deceit rolled around restlessly in his bed before sitting back up. He checked the time on the alarm clock next to the bed. It was 3:23 in the morning. Wonderful. He sat in silence for several minutes, contemplating on what he should do. Logan was a stubborn person. It would be hard to start a discussion with him.

Deceit shuffled out of bed and stepped towards the center of the room. In the end, he decided that he had no other option but to head out. He sunk out of his room to pop into the living room. As expected, Logan sat at the breakfast table with a book in his hand and a glass of orange juice to his right. Deceit made his way to Logan, and Logan noticed Deceit’s arrival.

“Good morning, Deceit.”

Deceit stared at Logan for a brief moment before moving into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of milk. Logan looked up from his novel, slightly confused by the lack of a response. Before Deceit could make eye contact with him, Logan quickly turned his attention back towards his novel.

“What has you up this early in the morning?” Logan inquired while keeping his gaze on the words of the page he was on. Deceit again stared at him ominously, now holding a full glass of milk in his hand. Deceit strolled over to the table and took a seat right in front of Logan. Logan watched Deceit awkwardly until Deceit finally decided to answer.

“I’m awake for the same reason you are.”

Logan smirked. “So you’re finally becoming an early bird?”

“Don’t lie to me. You know the exact reason why we’re both awake,” Deceit hissed.

It went silent as Logan’s face dropped. The atmosphere of the room became tense, but Deceit wasn’t going to relent.

“The silence tells me everything,” Deceit pressed, “I always know when someone’s hiding something from me.” He glared when he saw Logan attempt to escape the conversation by looking at his book.

Deceit slammed his hands on the table, startling Logan.

“Deceit! The others-“

“Dammit, Logan! Just tell me the truth!” Deceit interjected as he reached over to snatch the book out of Logan’s hands. “I’m fed up with this and with not being able to sleep all week!”

Logan’s surprise allowed Deceit to successfully grab the book and toss it over towards the living space onto one of the couches. The noise seemed to echo in the darkness. Logan left his hands suspended in the air as if he was still holding the book.

“I don’t believe I understand…why are you unable to get proper rest because of me?” Logan questioned with a confused expression on his face.

Oh right. This was Deceit’s first time ever confronting the logical side about this kind of issue. With Patton, Roman, and Virgil, Deceit would frequently see their nightmares and confront them about their situations. Logan was an anomaly. None of the sides had the capability of avoiding a personal conflict quite like Logan, who repressed his feelings as if his life depended on it.

“I saw you crying out for help from the mirror to him. I feel what you feel,” Deceit responded. His fists were beginning to clench.

“Oh.”

“Oh?” Deceit mocked in a sour tone.

Logan made a face at him before continuing.

“My nightmares…they correlate with the lies I have told recently. Is that the reason why you have been seeing my dreams?”

Deceit rolled his eyes. “Definitely not, I’m so shocked that you know how to connect the dots.”

“I apologize for the inconvenience, I will handle that so I’m not a bother to your sleeping schedule any longer.”

Logan had completely ignored Deceit’s taunting, and Deceit raised an eyebrow at Logan’s words.

“No? You have to talk about this with me first,” Deceit countered, “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve had to do this with the others too, so don’t think that you’re the only mess I have to deal with.”

Logan grabbed his glass of juice and began rolling his wrist around while watching the orange juice slosh in the cup. His eyes rapidly shifted between watching the glass and Deceit.

“Deceit, I…um…appreciate your willingness to help me through this, but I would prefer handling this on my own,” Logan insisted. “It’s getting late and I think we should speak about this later.”

“Logan, I made sure to check on you this early in the morning so we could speak in private. Now stop making this harder than it needs to be.”

“I am not. I am simply not in the right state of mind to discuss the issue at the moment.”

“I’m sure that’s what you always say.”

“I don’t make excuses -- unlike you, Deceit.”

Logan had landed a direct insult on Deceit. Oh, it was on.

“At least I don’t keep my little sensitive feelings all locked up like a diary.”

“You’re acting childish.”

“Says the man who can’t handle the fact that he has emotions just like the rest of us.”

“I don’t experience emotions.”

“Goodness- of course you do Logan!”

“I am a logical component! Imbecilic feelings would never have a part in my rational way of thinking.”

“Incredible! So how would you describe the way you’re acting right now?”

Logan took a moment to breath and felt a wave of shame hit him as he realized how agitated he had gotten. Anger? Embarrassment? How irrational. He reached up to adjust his glasses.

“I’ve had enough. I’m going back to sleep,” Logan announced.

Finally, it seemed like Deceit was going to let him go. Logan left his glass, still half full, on the table and got up from his seat. He could feel Deceit’s stare pierce into him as he pushed his chair in.

Logan walked over to the staircase and began making his way upstairs.

“You know you can’t repress them forever. It isn’t smart to make decisions for Thomas based entirely on your intelligence.”

Logan glanced from the stairs at Deceit, who was still seated at the table. Deceit’s eyes narrowed.

“Patton would be disappointed if he ever found out what you were doing to yourself.”

Logan ran his fingers through his messy hair as his other hand clenched the railing with a death grip. He took a deep breath before addressing Deceit.

“Have you ever considered that we may take more deliberation in what you do if you stopped involving yourself in everyone’s personal business?” Logan implored, “Maybe it’s why everyone harbors hatred for your presence.”

The look of sudden distress on Deceit’s face made Logan unusually pleased in his frustrated condition.

“I’m afraid of you, Deceit…we’re all afraid, so stop giving us more reasons to be afraid.”

As soon as he finished speaking, Deceit frantically rose from his seat and sunk out of the living room, leaving Logan alone in the dark. Within seconds, the realization of what he had said to the deceitful side flooded him with regret. What was he thinking, attacking the only person who knew what he was facing? Deceit was only trying to help, even when Logan felt like he was being backed into a corner.

It was 3:48 in the morning, and Logan’s racing thoughts were confusing him and giving him a headache. Logan fled upstairs back into the safety of his room where his words couldn’t hurt anyone else. Nobody would see Logan for the rest of the day.

~

Deceit wandered around in a storage room. The first thing he noticed was the deafening screaming that echoed through the room. Deceit wished that he knew what was going on. There were wooden boxes, curtains, and stage props littered all over the floor. Maybe this was the backstage of some theater production? Or, otherwise, somebody’s abandoned hopes and dreams...

An unknown force was pulling him towards one end of the room he heard screaming and banging noises from. He felt as if he was being carried over to the area rather than choosing to walk over of his own accord.

He reached his destination, and the screaming was now unbearable with how close it was to him. The voice now sounded familiar.

There was a curtain separating him from whatever terror was on the other side. Deceit was hesitant to open the suspended curtain, but finally allowed his curiosity to make the decision for him. He quickly opened it and gasped at the sight.

Logan was trapped within a mirror hung on the wall, banging his fists against the glass. His pleas made Deceit’s face pale.

“Patton! I’m sorry! I’ll do better! I know my actions hurt you sometimes. There is just so much responsibility I have to handle, Patton…you don’t understand.”

Deceit shivered as he felt a figure walk through him and stand in front of the mirror. Morality.

Morality was carrying a hammer in his left hand, letting it dangle loosely at his side.

“Patton, I admit I have more problems than I like to believe. I apologize for everything I’ve done to you, I shouldn’t release my frustrations on you, I-“

Morality tapped the glass with the hammer, and Logan’s voice became shaky.

“No, no, no, no- Patton, I understand now! I’ll do better for Thomas, just please let me out and-“

Morality lifted the hammer.

“NO! NO DON’T! YOU’RE GOING TO-“

The hammer made contact with the glass and shards of the mirror burst out. Deceit could only stare in horror, the only witness to the crime. The pieces of what was once Logan scattered across the wooden floor.

Patton…Morality turned around to take a good look at Deceit.

“What are you looking at?”

Deceit gulped.

“Nothing,” he lied blatantly.

Morality laughed.

“I thought so,” he smiled.