#well. my grandmother only started believing I was autistic like two years ago. and I don't think she understands that

[david-watts]

I think this just solidifies the fact that I can’t trust anyone or anything and I knew already the world was acting against me but the only way to get things fucking done is to do it all yourself. nobody else can be trusted to do anything. if you want something you have to fight tooth and nail uphill to get anywhere.

[ourimpavidheroine]

An Anniversary

Five years ago today, the 13th of February, 2015, I published, all in one shot, a piece of fanfiction called Please Excuse My Penmanship.

I hadn’t, at that point, written - never mind published - any fanfiction for over fifteen years. I had written some X-Files fanfic back in the day but I’d lost it; my backup floppies disappeared when I moved to Finland and, like just about everyone else back then, the places I had posted it to online disappeared without warning. (Toss a coin to your Archive, oh valley of plenty.) I’d been pretty torn up about losing my fic that way, which put me off writing. Time went on; I had twins in 2002 and they both turned out to have non-verbal autism and different flavors of ADD/ADHD and my life got very complicated and very difficult for a lot of years there. Writing for pleasure wasn’t even on the table.

By 2015 my life had settled a bit. My wife was disabled and suffering from severe and untreated depression and the kids were in special ed and a lot of therapies but we were managing. I had watched Avatar: The Last Airbender with my kids (on DVD - they were too young for it when it first aired) and had gone on to watch The Legend of Korra with them as well. 

I really liked Mako as a character; he was too internal and complex for most of the kids watching, however, and wasn’t well liked. Most fans saw an inflexible jerk who caused and fucked up a love triangle; what I saw was an autistic man who was suffering from pretty severe PTSD. He grabbed my interest. I related.

I really liked his dynamic with Prince Wu, despite the fact that he was a really annoying character. Queer-coded as fuck, although the showrunners were plainly ignoring it. And I started to headcanon who they would be as a couple. How to make Wu less annoying while still making him canon Wu? How to humanize Mako while still acknowledging his autism and PTSD? Headcanon was all it was, though, a way for me keep myself occupied. I’ve been writing stories inside my head as long as I can remember. It’s what I’ve always done.

I read a post on here on Tumblr where the OP stated that there was no such thing as a good Letter Fic; I thought to myself, Bet I could do it. And so in the end of January 2015 I sat down at my PC and started to type up all of my headcanon.

I went back and forth with Wu. What I first started to write was too clumsy, by half; I tried to stick to his endless slang and it was as annoying as it had ever been on the show. I knew if I stuck to that shallow, silly, stupid, canon Wu he wouldn’t be interesting to read. I struggled with it for a time until I remembered something.

My maternal grandmother told me a story once about a girl from Mexico. Claudia was her name; she was a year older than my mother. Her own mother had died when she was born; her father, who was one of my grandfather’s business partners in Mexico, had left her in the care of her grandparents, who were extraordinarily wealthy denizens of Mexico City. At some point the adults involved thought that it would be a great idea to send this girl to stay with my mother’s family to learn English; in return, my mother would then go and stay a summer in Mexico City to learn Spanish. (Which she did; she’s fluent to this day.) Claudia had no English at all but my grandmother had working Spanish and I guess they all figured it would be enough for this poor girl? 

The first day Claudia arrived in San Francisco my grandmother kindly showed her into the bathroom and told her to take a shower. My Grams realized about ten minutes or so later that the water hadn’t turned on; she went to check on her and there she was, sitting obediently on the toilet seat, fully dressed, waiting for the maid to come and undress her and turn the water on for her shower. 

She had no idea how to do either of those things for herself. She had never, at the age of thirteen, undressed herself or operated a shower. And there it was, the opening of my story. Wu remembers arriving in Republic City on the run from the Red Lotus, checking into the hotel, and having no idea whatsoever what to do next. And I thought to myself...What if he isn’t actually stupid? 

And there he was. My Wu. Just like that.

I wrote feverishly for a week, drawn into the story that was sitting in my head, waiting to be told. I didn’t have a Betareader; my wife liked my writing but rather tersely told me that TLOK wasn’t her fandom and she wasn’t interested in reading it, something that hurt me pretty deeply, especially since my X-Files fanfic was how we’d actually connected in the first place. 

(She was, at that time, in the process of slowly dying of heart failure, but I didn’t know that then.)

I wasn’t going to publish it. I just wanted to write it, to see if I still had it together after a seventeen year hiatus. Wuko wasn’t at all a popular ship; after the show finale a couple of months prior all the fanfiction being feverishly written and published was Korrasami. (In fact, I checked AO3 at the time and found exactly two Wuko fanfics, both of which were one-shots and not to my particular taste.) I went back and forth with it and then thought, Fuck it. I’ll just do it. And maybe no one will read it but at least I’ll have done it. I read it through one more time and then, on the thirteenth of February, took a deep breath, told myself to stop being a coward, and posted the entire fic at once. 

I got my first comment, and I was elated. And then I thought to myself, Well, fuck, you may as well write some of the other stuff in your head. You might learn something about yourself as a writer on the way.

Then, a few months later, on the seventeenth of June, my world fell apart. My wife, staying at our summer cottage with our twelve year old twins, died of a heart attack while the kids were off playing and I was here at home, getting ready to travel down the next day on the train to meet them all for the summer. My daughter was the one to find her; she was long past saving at that point. Family friends brought the children, our pets, and our car the two hours back home as I collapsed on the floor of our flat and rocked myself back and forth, wordlessly keening, my hands trembling uncontrollably.

The next year was unspeakable. I was a widow at forty-six; I was living in a foreign country with two disabled children, with no family or friends nearby and an imprecise grasp of the language. My wife had told me she had life insurance; she lied. I was flat broke. My grief was deep and whole and devastating; my children were traumatized and barely functioning. I had no one to help me, and I’d cook meals at midnight so my sleeping children wouldn’t hear me sobbing in the kitchen.

And I wrote.

And I wrote.

And I wrote.

I wrote out of desperation; I had to do something to keep me tethered to this world. I wrote of love and families, of a traumatized child from the street that was my daughter’s age, full of bravado and choked fury. I wrote of an autistic boy growing into a man, bullied and shunned, aching to be free, much like my own. 

I took my children to more therapists. I took myself to a therapist that turned out to be homophobic; I found another one. I made dinners; I cleaned the house, I walked in circles around my living room, whispering over and over to myself, You’re okay you’re okay you’re okay you’re okay, before making another phone call.

And I wrote.

In August of 2018 my daughter attempted suicide and was hospitalized. I was trying to write I Do Not Ask The Night For Explanations and I had to stop. I had severe panic attacks whenever I tried to work on it. I brought her home and I cut my work hours down to four hours a week so that I could be with her at all times; she wasn’t safe to be left alone. I cared for her. I cared for her twin, who was terrified, unable to sleep, afraid that if he wasn’t watching her she’d try it again. I fought until I got them different therapists. I stopped sleeping. My health suffered.

And I wrote. When I could. It was, without any doubt at all, the only thing that was keeping me going during that time. I would tell myself that I had to keep going, that I still had so much of this story in my head, I needed to get it out. Sometimes I would write while sobbing. Sometimes I would sit here at my desk and nothing would come. I just kept going, though.

It’s better now. She missed most of last year of school and is making it up this year and doing so well. Her brother is at a new school and has, for the first time in his life, made friends. I was able, in December, to actually leave them for three days; the first time I had been away from them since we lost their mother. 

They’ll be eighteen this summer and we’re finally able to breathe. We’re moving forward, the three of us. We’re still broken, but we’re making something new out of the pieces instead of trying to put them back together.

My writing is what saved me. It wasn’t about how many hits/comments/kudos I got; I appreciate every single one I get, believe me. But the writing was making me hold myself accountable, making myself get out of bed, get dressed, brush my hair and teeth, sit down and try. Sometimes that was all I could manage; the writing just wasn’t happening. But it gave me a goal when I needed one. And boy, did I need one.

Thank you all for reading. For those of you that have been there since the beginning and those who just started reading now. For those who faded away from the fandom over time or who left because they didn’t like how the story was going; I wish you well and thanks for reading when you did. Thank you for the hits and the kudos and the comments. You may not have known you were helping to save me, but you were. So thank you.

I am not done writing yet. I am not oblivious; I know I am so far in AU territory now that you’re for all intents and purposes reading original fic. That’s okay. It’s the story that was in my head, that is still in my head. Maybe someday I’ll try to publish it and maybe I won’t, and I’m fine with that. I’m not ready at this point to do what’s necessary to take it past fanfic and that’s okay. It has served and is continuing to serve its purpose for me; if you all enjoy it then that’s just biscuits and gravy, as my Great-Aunt Margie used to say.

I wrote us all a little anniversary ficlet; this takes it full circle for me. (And then back I go to Wu and Qi’s wedding!) 

Mind the warnings at the bottom if you think you need them.

Chapter 132: 252: Wu

[prorevenge]

Karma is Oh So Sweet

Note: Not really a revenge story on my part, but I believe this is a fine example of cosmic revenge for a larger hole. Long story, TL:DR at the end.

About seven years ago, I was in my sophomore year of high school. Let me just mention this, I was not your typical student:

I came from one of the poorest family in this town of three thousand. My dad was physically disabled for years before this and had been unemployed since I was in third grade. This left my mom the only working member of my family until my dad was put on disability. My dad, however, did not get put on disability UNTIL my sophomore year of high school, so around eight years, my mom was the only one working. In fact, there were times when I didn’t even get new clothes to wear for a new year as we couldn’t afford it.

I am legally mentally disabled. I was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome in eighth grade and, legally, should have been in some special classes. This led the school to alter my schedule without my permission and resulted in my mom’s wrath to the school.

I am clinically depressed and went through a time when I did not take my medication as it made me aggressive. I have since switch medications and have become a lot calmer as a result.

Now, bullying wasn’t something I wasn’t used to. Ever since fifth grade, when I reached puberty, I had gained weight quickly. People immediately would bully me and tease me. They would even laugh at me for buying books for my younger brother to read. My brother is six to seven years younger than me, depending on the month. My brother was not in school yet and wouldn’t be in school until I was in the seventh grade. This was also a time where we did not have cable or satellite television regularly, so I would often bring books home so my brother could read them as well.

The bullying continued well into high school and this is where Principal Cinch came in. Note, that is not her real name, but the name of the antagonistic principal of Equestria Girls: Friendship Games. However, with how she acted, I would not be surprised if Cinch was based around her. 

Cinch had been my paternal oldest cousins’ cheerleading coach and, boy, both of them hated her. My maternal cousin also hated her, especially as she gave my cousin no sympathy when my aunt died when I was in seventh grade. My cousin and I had been extremely close and when her mom died, both of us were greatly affected. She also wanted to drop out after a time as she was sick of being bullied. 

When I entered my freshmen year of high school, Cinch decided to stop targeting her and start targeting me. First off, she would ignore me being bullied and would call me a bully. There had been no proof of that and I have a strong guilt complex. If I had hurt someone, I wouldn’t stop until I made it up to them, as I legitimately felt awful. This made me feel like a piece of shit for a long time and still affects me today.

She also did not care if I attempted suicide in class. This was a legitimate situation, where I was trying to strangle myself in my jacket in Geography. The students were cheering and the teacher didn’t care. In fact, when another teacher walked in, she decided to pull me out of the classroom and take me to the principal, as she was disgusted at the acts she saw from my classmates.

Guess what she did?

She didn’t do anything.

As I entered my sophomore year, things got worse. My dad ended up needing to go into surgery in late January/early February and my birthday money went to his surgery. Note: I was actually born in March, but my family had been saving up to throw me a sweet sixteen birthday party. They were proud that i had survived this long, especially with all of the bullying. Because of this, plus my own depression, I spent several days at home to help my dad around and even just take a breather.

Cinch did not like this and resorted to THREATENING me daily. At my school, we had something called AEP. Think of it as ISS, except for up to three months at a time. I had been sent once for kicking a teacher in the shin in seventh grade, but that was when I was on my more aggressive anti-depressants. I’m not going to lie that I deserved it back then, but Cinch threatened me with this JUST FOR CRYING. 

Not to mention that the man who ran AEP gave me nightmares to the point I was afraid he would legitimately kill or, sorry for the trigger, rape me. He even used to coach my little brother’s teeball team and made my brother play without his inhaler. My brother has acute asthma and needs his inhaler with him if he does any academic sport. Pretty funny, I have to admit, when the giant six foot football player actually has to go to the bench and pull out a blue inhaler so he can continue playing. My dad even thinks I developed post-traumatic stress disorder for a time because of him.

When my dad was in the hospital recovering from his surgery, I finally confessed to my mother and grandmother about everything that was going on at the school. There is no fury like an angry grandmother and, despite my grandmother being extremely tiny and in bad health due to being a smoker, she was prepared to go to war. My mom, however, let me stay home for more days, chalking it up to rough times during my dad’s recovery. 

The last straw, however, came from the vice principal as well. On the day that my dad was taking me out to transfer me to a new school (he had heard from my mom about everything I had endured and he decided enough was enough), he mentioned that his own children were disabled, but they went to school daily. From the tone I heard from my old locker as I cleaned it out, my dad was not happy and said the following: ‘Well, mental disabilities are different from physical disabilities. You have no idea what it’s like to raise a child with autism.’

Cinch decided to chime in that she knew, as she had a step-son with ADHD. Excuse me?

Note: I am not discrediting ADHD as a mental disability, nor am I insulting anyone who has ADHD. My first crush had ADHD and we’re still really good friends. However, if she knew how it felt for her step-son, why didn’t she consider what was going through MY mind? I think this was just an excuse to gain some sympathy.

Needless to say, I flipped the school off as we drove to my new school twenty miles away.

Now, time for the cosmic karmatic revenge.

I had decided to ignore what happened in the school and move on with my life. I made a great number of friends at my new school and we still talk to each other on facebook for the most part.

I graduated high school, got two of the highest grades on my TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) my school had seen and got a free pass to my first college. A government agency was paying for my education and books, so I got to explore what I wanted to do in life.

However, two years ago, my dad tagged me on a news article on facebook.

And I had the widest grin on my face.

'PRINCIPAL OF ********* HIGH SCHOOL FOUND SENDING THREATS TO HERSELF ON LINKEDIN’

As I read the article, my smile grew wider and wider. She had just ruined her reputation as a teacher and was getting her license revoked. She decided to quit, before they could fire her, to save grace.

The best part, people who had dealt with abuse from her were leaving comments and telling their stories. I decided not to, as I was just on cloud nine right now and even I have standards.

I actually saw her a couple of weeks ago while grocery shopping. She decided to act all friendly to me, but i just gave her a cold hard glare. 

As I walked off, I said the meanest thing I’ve ever said to an adult and this is the one thing I never regretted saying.

“I guess you got so bored when you couldn’t threaten me anymore that you threatened yourself? Wow, how pathetic.”

My mom gave me a fist-bump as we walked away.

Note: She’s since found work as a guidance counselor. However, she has negative reviews from several people from my old school. She also claims she can help with the power of god and she understands how hard it is for parents to raise children with disabilities. 

Before the site deleted it, my maternal cousin had posted this: 'You don’t know how hard it is on the parents when you threaten children with disabilities. No one hire this woman. She threatened my autistic cousin in a near daily basis.’

TL;DR: Principal who threatened me on a near daily basis is found giving threats to herself. ‘Quit’ and lost about twenty years of references because of this.

[alightinthelantern]

Oh my god, I want to die. My mother was an abusive cunt to me for twenty years and she’ll never get any punishment, not so much as a slap on the wrist. She got away with it scot-free. All of my abusers got away scot-free, Delaina and Marcus and all of the cunts at Howard Center. I suffer flashbacks nearly every day and they all have positions of power over other children just as vulnerable as me. Delaina is principal of a special-needs school, my mother is on the board of directors at Howard.

They locked me in a basement at Howard Center for whole weekends at a time as a teen when I misbehaved, a dingy little apartment with an electronic keypad lock and a bedroom with a deep square window that glowed red with city lights at night. I had Chef Boyardee from a metal cabinet to eat every day, and I had to ask permission to use the bathroom, and I was locked into the bedroom at night. I wasn’t allowed to talk to whatever staff member was On Duty except to ask to use the bathroom or for food because the metal cabinet was kept locked and I wasn’t allowed to touch anything myself, and they just sat in their little staff room watching tv all day and night. The stays were so traumatizing that it was multiple years before I could look at Chef Boyardee without having flashbacks. And Delaina, the Case Manager who instituted the policy of locking me up and traumatizing me into behaving, runs a school full of vulnerable special-needs children like I was.

“YOU ARE SUCH A SPOILED, SELFISH CHILD, AND I PUT UP WITH SO MUCH FROM YOU!!” my mother and grandmother would scream at me once a week growing up. My mother once served tomatoes with dinner when I was nine and I hated the taste and texture of them so much I spit mine up while gagging. She ordered me to eat them but I refused, unable to bear it, so she put them on a plate in the fridge and punished me by taking away all my toys and other privileges. The next day she served them to me at lunch, and I refused to eat them. She punished me until dinner, when she served them again, and I refused. This went on for multiple days, she getting ever more violently angry at me all the time, and I finally caved after two or three days under fear of physical violence.

She forced me to grow up as a boy when I wanted to be a girl, but I’ve been abused by so many shitty (White) women, who’ve all treated me like a villain because I’m “a boy” and I’m Autistic, that I don’t want to lump myself in with them, and now I don’t know what I am. Once when I was nine I went up to my teacher in school, and said on the verge of tears, “I wish I were born a girl!” And the teacher, an adult woman in her forties, rounded on me, saying “You know, men rule the world, and women have it so hard! You are so lucky to be a boy, and you are so selfish if you don’t realize it!” Those were her exact words. And yes, she was a blonde White woman. Thus, gender is inextricable from trauma for me.

I tried to kill myself when I was 14, and I spent my entire teenage years borderline-suicidal. She spent her entire upbringing of me alternating between neglect and abuse, withholding her “love” any time I had misbehaved, punishing me whenever I tried to show independence, leaving me with no self-esteem and no ability to care for myself. She isolated me from the rest of the world, preventing me from having literally any social life outside of school my entire teenage years, and she always punished me with whatever hurt me the most for even the most minor infractions.

I’m 26 years old and I’m fucking broken, I moved out at 19 and I’ve spent the past 7 years trying to heal myself but I can’t do it, the abuse and trauma haunt me every day. I have Asperger’s, OCD, Bipolar, PTSD, and depression from all of these. I wish I had a gun, I can’t fucking take it. I have a major breakdown every year and a medium-sized one every couple months. And now, when it’s too late to make a difference, when I’m already broken for good and have given up completely on life, she thinks being nice to me will get me to forgive her, being nice by lending me money for a needed new desk, or some clothes, or whatever. This stupid Catholic cunt thinks she deserves forgiveness, when even now she’s so self-absorbed and fragile that the slightest perceived insinuation that she wasn’t a stellar parent makes her purse her lips and glare and shut down and start ignoring me altogether, even when I wasn’t saying or implying anything. Once, a few years ago, we were discussing the movie The King’s Speech, and she said that King George VI’s father was a jerk in the movie. I said “Oh yeah, he was abusive to his children!” which was true. The conversation wasn’t even about her but she made it about herself, and got angry and defensive and stopped talking to me for several minutes. I recently said that I thought I was suffering burnout in response to my childhood, and she just started sarcastically uh-huh-ing (like nasty women do), and took her smartphone out and started scrolling on it so she could ignore me to my face. Even now I’m forced to babysit my own selfish cunt of a mother.

And I love my dad, he’s the only person in my family who’s ever been good to me, but he is such a fucking moron, and he does not understand when I try to talk to him about it. He remembers how my mom treated him during their divorce, how he suffered a life-threatening brain hemorrhage that nearly killed him, how he was rushed to the hospital and when they cut his skull open blood shot out and splattered on the wall over ten feet away from the sheer pressure inside, and how she didn’t care enough to visit him once. But he thinks she’s just a normal person who was going through a rough time, he gives her the benefit of the doubt, he lived a state away and never saw the abuse my mother inflicted on their children behind closed doors, the constant screaming and shaming and pitting us against each other to maintain her obsessive control over us, and it’s exhausting trying to convince him of my childhood was not normal. That most of the problems he was told I had were made up.

I wasn’t an easy child to raise, but I was not the fucking monster I was treated like. I was the scapegoat for all my family’s troubles, and my sisters, angry and hurting at our mother’s abuse, were encouraged to take it out on me, because of course I was ugly and awkward and talked too much and didn’t know how to behave and embarrassed them in public, and for selfish, shallow people there really was nothing likeable about me. And my sisters bullied me and my mother never punished them for it and she always punished me when I fought back. And I tried to kill myself when I was 14, and my mother cared more about how her daughters were upset by my attempt than the fact that I was miserable with life enough to literally try to kill myself. How awful do you think my life was to have forced a naive little Autistic boy who sang along with the hymns in church to think death was the only way out? And still I am villainized! Still I am the bad guy, everyone in my family both immediate and extended view me as the devil incarnate, everyone has always and will always hate me!

And all these snotty young women on the street and in stores glare and snap at me for being Too Male, acting like I’m their oppressor, because I’m male-shaped and I don’t have Good Socialization Skills (when I was isolated growing up and never allowed to develop them), and I talk Wrongly (which is ableism), when I’m just an ugly, awkward, gangly person with such debilitating mysophobia and social anxiety I literally will not leave my apartment if I don’t have to. I can’t work, I live on disability benefits, and I only leave the house for laundry and groceries.

No one has ever taken me seriously, no one in law enforcement or any of the equally imbecilic, incompetent health organizations in this fucking backwater state have ever believed me. Fuck Vermont.

Well fuck the Catholic God and fuck the devil too, and fuck any and every Higher Power that may or not exist. I am so fucking tired. Fuck my life. Just end me already.

[allurascastle]

There isn't any shame in being upset about somebody who's harassing you. I'm sorry you're going through that. I hope everything works out with the restraining order, or that that guy just leaves you alone in general. Take care.

Aww, thank you! It makes me feel a little better for you to say it, I just…really hate having emotions and being effected by things. Boo.

Admittedly, I’m 60% sure most of my response to this is because this isn’t the typical kind of creeping. THAT I can deal with just fine. This is…wow. Just downright unsettling. (And the conversation we’d been having immediately before the one that sent me into fight or flight mode really just makes the whole thing worse.)

This dude, who I’ll from now on identify as Logan, was someone I first met in early May if I had to guess. It was before Ethan was sent to jail.

(Context of Ethan: he’s one of my two older brothers, who are twins. He is very much the problem child of our family, and is the one getting into legal trouble and drugs all the damn time, is abusive, self-centered, and delusional. Overall: awful person and has done enough shit to warrant me saying he deserves the life sentence he may very well be getting. Back to the story.)

I’m not sure why Logan was in the infant’s diaper aisle, he didn’t grab anything and just tried chatting with me, but he recognised me pretty much on sight (in retrospect, my name isn’t a very common one and we wear name badges, he could have pieced it together from that - and I say that because it was a little too fast for having been three years…or maybe not) as being Ethan’s sister. I say “tried chatting with me” because the second someone utters Ethan’s name, I’m all but gone. I hate him and want nothing to do with him and hia fucking friends need to leave me alone. (But I was at work, so I said “yes, now how may I help you?” and then left with “good night, I have work to do.”)

At the time, I assumed he was one of Ethan’s recent friends. He goes through them like toilet paper, as you’d expect from a serial abuser, and is really great at convincing him he’s great and swell. They never listen and frankly, 8 years of no one listening to you will just have you throwing your hands up in the air and saying “go get your fucking self esteem ruined away from me, idgaf.”

Now…Ethan has this habit of talking about us (the family) and showing off pictures (last I checked), so I chalked it up to that, fumed, angrily ranted with a friend and moved on.

Saw Logan a few other times. He asked me how Ethan was doing once and I angrily snapped “I don’t know, I don’t talk to him.” To which he responded: “that’s a shame, he’s a great guy.” I had no answer appropriate for my workplace so I just walked away from the fitting room with none of the items I intended to put away. I think I saw him one more time before this most recent* time, but I don’t remember any of it.

*the most recent time would be earlier today, 9/24, but I am actually referring to the incident, which happened around 8:10PM on 9/19.

So…the incident. It started off innocently enough - and at this point, I should mention I had bad vibes about this dude already, but brushed them off because he obviously wasn’t neurotypical (which made me disgusted with Ethan, but I wasn’t shocked), I’d guess on the autistic spectrum if I really had to: just the way he talked and seemed to process things.

But so, I figured it was good ol’ social ableism and told myself “you’re better than that” and was friendly with him bc a) it was my job, b) I had no reason to be rude but if he brought my brother the fuck up again I was GONE, okay, GONE. I ain’t here for that shit. I like my life drama-free. I should ALSO mention that thos whole time, spanning a few months, I didn’t know his name AND I was under the assumption he’s the one who turned Ethan into the troopers for the Rikki fiasco, and in my eyes, that was a bit of a redemption most Ethan’s friends would never get.

I really wish I’d just…listened to that bad vibe and gtfo of dodge. At first, he strolled up to Fitting Room while my coworker, an older gal named Sharon, with a cart of Halloween decorations and said he was just in the store buying some Halloween stuff and proceeded to tell Sharon about what he was going to be for Halloween, emphasising that it was the scariest thing he could imagine (turned out to be a “dark Flash” from Flash a few years ago. Idk bc I’m not really into superhero TV shows or movies. Doesn’t sound scary to me, but whatever. We all have different things that really spook us).

We somehow got onto the subject of a kidnapping that’d happened in the area, and from there some dude has apparently been reported watching female employees leaving at night from the parking lot (creepy, and I didn’t know that, but I also get picked up because I don’t have my licence yet). And from there, I mentioned some things to do in that sort of situation, and the conversation shifted towards the subject of kidnap AND rape (he mentioned that it happened to his friend’s niece when she was thirteen and that it broke his heart. This is the only thing that really sticks out from this part of the conversation and for a reason).

Sharon leaves, and Logan starts talking about his relationship woes and saying how when he’s around girls he likes, he gets flustered and starts pouring his heart out - and mentions a specific time he did this with a long time female friend of his and he starts bemoaning about how the friendship they’d had for so long was just gone. (I politely asked him if she had reacted cruelty, because - and I SAID this - there was no reason for the friendship to be gone since she didn’t reciprocate, after all she wasn’t obligated to. He said that she was but…the way he said it sounded Bad.) And then onto cheating (I told him no one deserved to be cheated on while trying to edge away, because dudes getting onto the friendzone is a huge red flag, and then going onto cheating? B y e) and he mentions he caught his recent* fiance cheating on him (and specified that he caught her walking up to some dude. Er…I hoped I was just missing some context from that, but I’m not giving the benefit of the doubt on it).

And then. AND THEN he says this: “You know, I was really into you a few years ago, but your brother said not to try because of the age gap.”

My alarm bells were already going off, but my blood went cold as ICE at this.

I’m eighteen, a few years ago I was fifteen. I hadn’t EVER met this dude, and I commit all of Ethan’s friends to memory so I can avoid them. Also, nice hypocrisy, Ethan (Rikki is either 14 or 15 right now. He’s in jail for dating and fucking her).

Let me emphasise I THOUGHT THIS WAS A RECENT FRIEND OF ETHAN’S WHO HAD SEEN A RECENT PICTURE OF ME AND RECENTLY BEEN TOLD ABOUT ME

Now, back in 2014 before Ethan moved to Anchorage, he did not live with me and my parents, and we were living in one of my dad’s friend’s cabin. He lived with my grandmother a decent way away, and were were pretty fucking livid with both of them. So he only got to come over to see his kids when we had them, bc their mother had a restraining order, but even that didn’t last bc - well, he was abusive and homophobic and screamed at my TODDLER NEPHEW that he would not have a gay son…when all he did was put on a straw hat to get giggles like his sister.

So yes, I have never met this dude. I didn’t even know his name until he mentioned going to grade or middle school with my sister in law (I…am not sure how he knew my other brother was married, that happened THIS year) and her brother, who he called by…well, I’ve only ever hear this brother called “RJ”. I was a little shocked and mentioned it, and he mentioned his name and how he wasn’t called by it much anymore either. I completely forgot this until I was in the car on the verge of crying again to Susanne.

“You know, I was really into you a few years ago, but your brother said not to try because of the age gap.”

Like. I’m going into panic mode as everything I’d thought is being challenged. (I vaguely recall in our conversation with Sharon, him mentioning how much he hates pedophiles and me asking if he was the one who called the troopers on Ethan than, and even after a short summary he maintained he wouldn’t “do that” to Ethan… Also at some point we established he was terrified of my parents, and after that night he has a very good reason to be.)

I don’t remember what I said. I just remember trying to leave again but a customer came by and I had to let them in the rooms because I had the keys, and policy states I can’t leave with people in the room, and Sharon has the radio with management on it.

He then asks me, while I am effectively trapped there, if I believe in fate. “No.” I said as curtly as possible.

“Well I do, especially when it comes to love.” I LEGIT WANTED TO FUCKING DIE. I WAS CRINGING SO HARD. He went on to say something about how love’ll happen of it’s meant to and…

The customer left and I told him I had to go do my job and took off weaving through apparel.

I think I saw him head towars Halloween (the front of the store, where he presumably got the shit in his cart; what brought him over in the forst place was apparently a discarded shit and it drives him nuts whem those get left around by other customers). I didn’t have a radio to find out where a manager was, but I booked it to Customer Service to hunt a CSM down.

I told her, came up with a code (code alex) if I ever needed to be saved from a similar situation. Not even an hour later I was still so nerve-wracked and only getting more anxious as I was there until 10 but Sharon was leaving at 9, that I went and talked to an ASM. Or tried. I staryed crying on the phone with her so she sent me on a break, and I started to break down again talking in the office. She sent me home early at 9:20 PM and told me to contact management if the dude showed up again.

My sis talked to her on Thursday about the guy, since she knew his name, but I don’t remember what Susanne said was the outcome bc I didn’t work Thursday and The ASM wasn’t there today. (I did have to tell another ASM who had me call the police, who recommended me to go get a stalking order after he stopped being stupid.)

Another ASM heard while he was back there and offered to walk me to my car, and hung around for a little bit when I told him I was being picked up. I know he told my sis he’d walk me to my car of I ever needed or wanted someone to, so that was a relief.

TODAY I saw him briefly right after I clocked in and was on the salesfloor talking with my coworker E. He tried talking to me but fight or flight kicked in and I noped all the fuck the way to Mark, who had the radio, and then hunted Jaime down with E walking with me.

[unclecrizzle]

A BLOG POST ABOUT MY BROTHER & TV THEME SONGS

It has been five years since I learned what happened to my missing brother Daryl, and my memories of him are beginning to get a bit hazy. Like most remembrances of my formative years, I’ve found myself recalling the bad more than the good.

Recently, I was thinking about the one thing that I knew brought my brother joy, something I’ve briefly written about before: TV theme songs. Like everyone in our family, my brother enjoyed television. Hell, in my home, virtually every room in the house (except the bathroom – and, even then, I had a Watchman, just in case) had a TV in it. Even the kitchen had a small, black-and-white set that sat on the table, usually used by my grandmother when she needed to watch her shows while cooking. So, we were definitely a TV-literate family.

Our thing was mostly reruns, specifically from the ‘70s, since that’s when all the black shows happened: Good Times, Sanford & Son, The Jeffersons, Diff’rent Strokes, Benson, That’s My Mama. There were some white shows sprinkled in there: Happy Days, Three’s Company, The Facts of Life, All in the Family, The Dukes of Hazzard, the long-forgotten Showtime comedy Brothers and, of course, Cheers, a show I know no one in my family watched (except me), but we knew the damn song anyway. We obviously knew all the themes by heart, and my brother would start singing along with them.

I enjoyed TV themes just as much as my brother did. When I was 4, I was so obsessed with the superhero show The Greatest American Hero, I begged my mother to buy me a 45 of “Believe It or Not,” the Joey Scarbury-performed theme song that was also a hit on the charts. But I recently tried to pinpoint the themes he enjoyed the most. What were the ones where he really perked up and started singing verbatim? Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember. What I do remember is that not only did he love TV theme songs -- he also enjoyed commercial jingles. The two that definitely stick in my mind are the jingles for Peter Pan peanut butter and McDonald’s, circa the “Mac Tonight” era, where a dude with a crescent moon-shaped head sang Bobby Darin-style about Big Macs. Daryl was a huge fan of those ads. It got to the point where whenever my family and I would talk to him on the phone, we’d sing the jingles to him, waiting for him to repeat the jingles back to us.

All throughout my life, there were two things I knew about my brother: He was unpredictably autistic, and he loved TV themes. For one birthday during the late ‘90s, I bought him the CBS: The First 50 Years CD, since it contained a lot of the themes I knew he knew. The CD ended up going in my mother’s CD collection, for fear he might decimate it, which he did do when I brought him a couple of Television’s Greatest Hits CDs for Christmas years later. When I moved to Raleigh in the early aughts and got a job in the features section of the daily newspaper, we’d occasionally get DVDs of old TV shows in the mail. A couple of times, I sent off seasons of Alice and One Day at a Time to the home he was staying in back in Texas, knowing he would most likely groove on the theme songs.

Trying to remember what my brother enjoyed the most has been low-key irking me lately. I know he loved TV theme songs, but why can’t I remember his favorites? I usually have a razor-sharp memory when it comes to my past, but my memories with my brother have become scrambled. With the tragic way my brother died, am I repressing these memories so I won’t remind myself of how Daryl ultimately ended up? Or am I such a self-centered prick that the things my brother enjoyed never mattered to me in the first place? Or maybe I’m just getting old and I’m having remembering shit. (I hope it’s the last one.)

I don’t know what brought this on. Perhaps I started humming a theme song in my head and I thought, “Oh yeah – my brother liked those!” Maybe coming back to Houston made me think about how life was back in my younger days, reminiscing on what were the things me and my fam actually had a good time doing. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been watching a lot of Antenna TV lately. (If he was still around, I know he would be watching that all the time.) But, I guess, it mostly comes down to what I remember about Daryl, looking for some positive moments that I shared with my brother. I know that they happened. It wasn’t all pain and mayhem.

My brother may have been autistic, but there were times when he was happy and glowing, as was I. I’m sure it was when we were both placed in front of the Rutherford console color-TV we had, as we watched shows and sang the theme songs that began each one. The last time I saw him ten years ago, he had his own room at this facility for mentally disabled people. In that room was a console color-TV, similar to the one we had when we were kids. I think some reruns were playing on that as well. I don’t know how his last few years on Earth were like, but I’m pretty sure whenever an old TV theme song started blasting through those speakers, he would begin singing – and everything was right in his world.

[tinypaintedthings]

Boy Scout Incident

(If anyone’s interested in reading the ACTUAL Boy Scout Incident Wil’s referring to, here it is written out in chapter 1 of his book that is still in progress. Note: this is an unedited rough draft version I wrote several years ago. This is back when Wil was 12 before he ever came into RP.)

The Artist of Otherly Things

Chapter 1

 They weren’t far behind him. William could hear their laughter and taunting calls echoing through the chilly fall air of Coldike National Park’s woods. It felt like he was going to die. Every muscle in his legs spasmed and his lungs screamed.

He couldn’t breathe.

Forcing a stop, Wil nearly choked on his saliva, collapsing his palms down upon his knees. He tried to inhale and exhale in an attempt to create some kind of more natural rhythm in his chest. With a turn of his head, he spat the dry, dirty grit from his mouth.

Assholes.

“Leave me alone!”

A cool trickle of perspiration freckled his brow. It was the damn boy scout uniform. It constricted his movements, everything too stiff, and tight. He sniffed, realizing he’d already lost the yellow neckerchief from his neck that went with the outfit.

Great. Now his foster dad was going to kill him, too. That was fine. He could die twice in one day. Why not? Twelve seemed like a good age to go. At least he’d get to skip Mrs. Shrouber’s history test on Monday.

Crap … he’d just realized he had forgotten about that.

Okay, make that three deaths.

He didn’t want to go camping anyway. He didn’t even like Boy Scouts. It’d been his foster dad’s idea. ‘It’ll be good to get you out and socializing with other kids your age.’

“Where are you dickwad?” Laughter from the asshole crew followed the bulbous voice of Jacob Fischer. Lights from their flashlights flickered and danced somewhere just off in the cluster of trees.

Yeah, this was a great idea. Boyscouts for the win.

He was supposed to be collecting marshmallow sticks for the fire.

“We’re going to find you, Freak. You might as well just come out now.”

More laughter erupted and he cringed.

“Yeah, we might be easy on you if you do,” Cole chimed in with a nauseating little taunt to his words.

He felt sick; not because of what they were saying or doing, but because it made him feel pathetic and weak. What was he doing? Hiding? Running away from the guys? It made a low cluster of anger boil inside.

He was a freak.

NO!

A bite of rage licked up inside in defiance of himself, pinching his pale, lightly freckled skin into a fiery impish line. He would not believe that. He couldn’t. It hurt too much to, because part of him deep down knew it was true, and he didn’t want to face that.

No, they were jerks.

They were going to pay for this. Give it to the king bullies of Westband Middle School to ruin the woods and everything for him. He liked the woods. He liked getting away from everyone; his foster home, and his label of being a freak and one of the ‘special’ kids in middle school. That was his place – the woods, a place where he could breathe and not have to think about anything.

There wasn’t anything wrong with him.

Shadows skittered out of the corner of Wil’s peripheral vision, and his chest seized, unable to see much of where anything was coming from. Pin prinks of goosebumps littered up the back of his arms.

“Leave me alone!” he called out, again. “Why can’t you pick on something with your own brain capacity, you know, like … a slug?!”

It was stupid to provoke them; they were all at least a foot, if not more, bigger than him, but he didn’t care. They were idiots, and he may have been small, with a scrawny thin frame of a twelve-year-old that still hadn’t reached the onset of puberty, but who cared? They were ticking him off.

Why couldn’t they just leave him alone and go away?

The wind began to move through the trees, making things creek and groan; casting odd shapes to dance upon the leaves and ground. The air began to feel charged, almost too alive, and more nervous energy crawled up his spine-tingling with the anger already rising in there.

‘William~’ something in the air whispered in a high singsong female tone that sounded more like a flute made of honey than something actually human.

William froze. That wasn’t the guys.

The molten airy voice broke into a disarray of giggles and then was gone.

Before Wil could even blink, two hands slammed into his back, shoving him face-first into the ground.

“God, you’re so stupid, you twerp,” Jacob Fisher said from somewhere above him. “Did you really think you could get away from us?”

Wil could hear Cole Parker and Davin French chuckling somewhere above him.

Shit.

“Dude, he’s ‘special’ remember? Of course, he’s stupid.” Cole laughed.

“Yeah, he’s like autistic or skitzo or something.”

“Whatever,” Jacob shrugged. “He’s a freak. You’re a freak, aren’t you dimwad.” Jacob kicked the toe of his shoe into Wil’s side and Wil bit his lip to keep from making a sound. “Come on. Get up. Why don’t you tell them?”

“I said to leave me alone!” Wil’s fingers curled into the cool dirt embedded with broken pine needles. His lips turned down; all thoughts on the wind or whatever that voice had been, had gone. His stomach felt nauseous, but no. He wasn’t going to let them get to him.

“Ooh, harsh replies,” Cole said with a laugh. “You’re right. He is ‘special’.”

The three high fived and jostled about; chuckling.

Wil shifted his body weight back and managed to push himself up to his knees. He could see a hole had ripped into the thread of his uniform there and knew his foster father was going to kill him. Dirt and pine needles fell from his chin and cheek. He winced with an inward growl.

It was embarrassing. Why’d he have to be so weak?

He hated them. He hated them so much.

The wind brushed past, making the leaves cartwheel and spin a dance along the dirt beside him. The darkness of the mostly empty forest sounded hollow, and he shivered.

“Tell us what?” Davin asked.

“You didn’t hear?” Jacob went on, nodding to Wil. “There’s a reason you aren’t at your last foster home, isn’t there, Freak? Tell them.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You’ve seen him with that stupid sketchbook, right? He draws things. Don’t you, twerp? You draw crazy weird creepy things that come true.”

“That’s not….,” Wil started to protest when the thick arms of Jacob shoved him back on his butt; hands now sore, splayed to the side of him on the ground. Coils of anger flushed up inside.

“Apparently, his ex-neighbor’s dog died after - freakboy - went and drew it like road kill … and that’s not all he drew.”

“Shut up, you asshole. You don’t know anything!”

An assault of dirt from Jacob’s shoe, landed in Wil’s face, stinging his eyes, and catching his open mouth. He coughed, wiping his eyes, and spat the grit from his teeth. Rage twisted his freckled impish looking face into an explosive glare.

“Quiet, Twerp, I’m telling a story here.” He chuckled, and more fury fumed under Wil’s skin, and his muscles clenched. “Rumor has it the freak also drew his foster mother’s grandmother singing in the very same room that she died in ten years ago, down to the exact details, and he’d never even seen the woman or that room before.”

“Shut up, it’s not true!”

“Aw, look at him. He’s upset,” Cole teased. “Are you going to go cry to your mommy?”

“What mom?” Jacob jested with a chuckle.

“Oh, right. Foster kid. My bad.”

“Yeah, no wonder his parents didn’t want him,” Davin snorted. “Creepy, and mentally challenged.”

That was it. Wil pushed himself up off the dusty matted ground, and swung his fist right at Jacob Fisher’s big fat mouth.

It hit, but then a rising crushing sting engulfed his own abdomen, as Jacob’s knee came up knocking the air right back out of him. With a coughed wheeze, Wil buckled over, holding his stomach, only to look up from under his tangled auburn hair in time to catch sight of Jacob’s fist, coming for his right cheek bone.

He heard the crack before he felt it, the force knocking his scrawny frame backward to the ground, just as the rising throb bit up from his cheek to his temple. His teeth ground and locked, wincing with a whimpered groan; fighting to keep it in and not cry out in pain.

Laughter.

He could hear them laughing all around him, mocking, while the light of their flashlights jumped and skittered all over the forest growth.

Slowly, Wil curled his index finger into the ground.

‘Die’, he scratched into that cool, dark earth.

He wanted them to die … to go away and to never be seen, again.

Just die.

Stillness covered the air.

The wind stopped its haunting movements, and the trees didn’t groan. Darkness enveloped where he lay. The skittering movements of the flashlights had gone.

Nothing.

The world had gone into a silent void.

“Guys?” he called out, not looking up yet from the ground he lied on. He couldn’t hear them. Where’d they go? Had they run off?

Anger floored him. Why should he care?

“Serves you right, you assholes!”

But his voice sounded hollow, like a shallow echo in a very empty dark woods and a creepy feeling fell over him.

Wil swallowed.

Something wasn’t right. He could feel it, and his fingers began to twitch against the earth, staring at what he wrote.

Breathe.

He had to breathe. They were just trying to scare him. That’s what they did.

He pushed himself up to his feet, staggering just slightly, as he reached up to touch the rising bruise on his upper jaw. A little blood came back on his palm, and it hurt, but his attention was more on what was around him.

Nothing.

Only the dark vast expanse of the forest surrounded him.

No boys.

“Okay, guys, this isn’t funny! You can knock it off now!”

No sound.

Wil’s fingers began to shake at his sides, muscles tensing, and his muddy swollen lip trembled. Eyes wide, he couldn’t move. He wanted to go home. He didn’t want to be in this woods anymore. It felt like the trees were closing in like living tendrils that wanted to swallow him.

A solo leaf danced by him, settling on the dirtied shoulder of his Boy Scout uniform and then twirled up into his rusty brown hair. An indiscernible bell sounding giggle was heard, just as the cool autumn breeze tickled up the back of his neck.

 “William~,” a short whisked female whisper sounded in his ear, making him jump as he turned around.

Nothing was there.

William bolted through the brambling mash of forest branches and overgrowth, not wanting to see, or think of anything. He was getting back to camp.

[pussymagicuniverse]

A Change is as Good as a Rest: Learning Little Lessons From Mercury

As I write this, yet another Mercury retrograde is coming to an end. When this is published, our speedy little space friend should be stationing direct, leaving varying degrees of chaos – or, as we’ll see, solved problems – in his wake. But I like the opportunities Mercury brings, even when he’s backtracking, so I thought I’d share a poem about an experience my son had during a past Mercury retrograde, and my views about how the whole mess can be helpful. 

My eldest son – let’s call him C – is a quadruple Gemini (one of two signs ruled by Mercury, the other is Virgo). His natal sun, Mercury, Venus, and ascendant are all in Gemini and his chart is Mercury dominant by many miles. My second son – E – is a triple Gemini (sun, Mercury, Venus) with Virgo rising and is also Mercury dominant, but Mercury retrograde always affects C much more obviously than it affects E.

One such incident was in Summer 2017: while visiting friends in Llandudno (North Wales), I co-hosted a poetry event, and we held the readings at the end of the pier. Mercury had just started moving backwards that day, or maybe the day before. C was 14 at the time, my other sons 12 and 13, my older daughter was just a year old, and I was four months pregnant with my younger daughter. My sons were all in the arcade right next to where we were reading when C decided to wander off while the other two were playing games. It’s worth mentioning C is autistic and so am I, and while C is a mega Gemini, my own chart is Virgo dominant despite my natal sun and Mercury being in Cancer (the short explanation is: I have three planets in Virgo – Mars, Jupiter, Saturn). A minor state of emergency ensued, with poets splitting off in different directions to look for C. It turned out he’d walked all the way back up the pier to the beach. On purpose, yes, but without telling anyone where he was going. There are always a few sides to a story, and this was no exception. Several months later, I wrote the following poem, which explains our two sides to the best of my ability.

•

Mercurial  

The younger ones ask where the eldest has gone, say it’s been half an hour since they saw him— in this moment the pier is ten miles long instead of just over one.

He’s the child who refuses a phone, and in this moment all bad things are possible; it’s like he wants to disappear. In this moment you almost hate the sea you love, because you know if he jumped in, he’d never make it. That’s a fine fate you’d keep for yourself, but not your children.

Everyone separates, leaves you to the vacuum of your headspace— you wander through murk of candy- floss, choking on doo-wop pumped through loudspeakers, the buzz of 2p slot machines. The sea is serene and you think it is waiting, or sated…

then someone’s calling, someone’s found him, on dry land, solid pavement beneath his feet. Your son lopes back down the pier to you, you look up to his his face, tell him how it scares you when he goes missing—his eyes clear, curious: to him you speak a dead tongue—he insists he knew where he was all along. 

*reprinted from my chapbook Land and Sea and Turning (CWP Collective Press, 2018)

 •

It’s interesting how Mercury retrograde played out for both of us that day in equal but opposite ways. We are both autistic, we are both heavily influenced by this mischievous planet – so while C went his own way, following his natural Gemini butterfly curiosity, it felt like everything he’d detached from – the noise, the lights, the smells, the caring about his own personal safety… – overwhelmed me instead. But there’s no point to astrological insight if we don’t allow it to teach us something. I learned to trust more in my son because of this experience – the older my boys get, the more I learn that letting them go their own way is gradual, not something that happens when they turn a specific age or leave home – and he learned to be more careful about communicating with his family.

Thankfully this most recent Mercury retrograde has been tame (though there’s still some hours left, so we’ll see how it goes). C had some misunderstandings with friends, but nothing too troublesome. It’s been a little stressful for me where communication is concerned, and deliveries have been slow, muddled, or non-existent. But I’ve used the time for quietly working on poetry projects, domestic organising (a never-ending task for a family of seven, and this Mercury has been transiting my 4th house of home and family!), and as usual, setting some things right that went a bit wrong previously – including preparing an anthology for publication after a nine month delay. I also finished my allocated therapy sessions for cptsd, complete with practical spellcraft to help me stay on track. 

I’ve learned over the years that when I’m being guided to slow my pace, I better do it – and ironically fast-moving Mercury is the number one teacher for me where that’s concerned, surprisingly more often than my chart’s own slow-but-steady dominant planet, Saturn. Even the poetry reading I did this month – a guest spot at an event I was supposed to do over two years ago but had to postpone (see what I mean about setting things right?) – was in a relaxed environment.

Because it’s tinged with chaos and drama – always fun for everyone – Mercury retrograde has become well known outside of astrological or witchy circles, but it is somewhat misunderstood. I’m only a witch with my head in the stars (plus one foot on the ground and the other in the water) not a professional astrologer, but in my experience it’s not worse than anything else the planets and the zodiac throw at us – it’s a party compared to what some planets can do (yes I’m looking at you again, Saturn). And even when it isn’t fun, it’s all energy to be harnessed and used in specific ways. I always feel like the most important thing Mercury can teach us is how to change and adapt when necessary – and it can be especially effective when he’s the reason we need to do it in the first place.

Born in Southern Ohio, but settled in the UK since 1999, Kate is a writer, witch, editor and mother of five. She is the author of several poetry pamphlets, and the founding editor of four web journals and a micropress.

Her witchcraft is a blend of her great-grandmother's Appalachian ways and the Anglo-Celtic craft of the country she now calls home – though she incorporates tarot, astrology, and her ancestors, plus music, film, books, and many other things into her practice. Her spiritual life is best described as queer Christopagan with emphasis on the feminine and the natural world. She believes magic is everywhere.

Find Kate on twitter and IG - @mskateybelle - and at her website.

[crabsticksforbreakfast]

I haven’t been on here for a while...

In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I updated you. I guess I could sum it up by saying, things were going well, really well, and then they weren’t, and now I’m confused and a little bit screwed up.

A few weeks ago everything seemed fine. S2 and I were talking pretty much every day, but underneath, something was bubbling up that I only vaguely suspected... S2, it seems, got scared.

During the last half term, he was getting pretty brave, and so was I. We even had a few “almost” moments. One of these was him messaging me to tell me his parents had gone out, effectively hinting that I could come round, but then he said they weren’t out for long which put me off going over. I really didn’t want the “first time” to be rushed. Going round his for a quick one would have cheapened the whole thing and I would have regretted it. As well as “almosts”, there was also one time when I invited him out for a drive. He neither said yes or no, and when it came down to it, and he got in touch with me that day, he decided it was too late, but he “would have if it had been earlier”. He also fobbed me off with the old excuse that he’d be working a lot during the week. When we reunited after the holiday, he told me he hadn’t gone in at all. Although to any sane person, all of this would have set off alarms, I settled it in my mind as I knew he was always going to be difficult to pin down.

Back at work, things were good. The banter flowed, and after hours, we still messaged. There were a few days when it trailed off, but I put that down to him leaving me to revise for my uni exam. And sure enough, once the exam had been and gone, he started messaging me again. This was on the Friday after he had made some hints about having a boring weekend ahead of him. I deliberately ignored his hints as I had told him during the holiday that I wasn’t going to ask again, and if he wanted to do something, it was up to him to ask me.

On the Friday we flirted, and on the Saturday, I went out with WW and Twin all day, which S2 knew about, so we didn’t talk at all. On the Sunday, we messaged again a little during the day, then a lot in the evening. Things got steamy, scarily so in fact. The things he was saying and coaxing me to say pushed me out of my comfort zone, and in the end I kind of snapped. Then, everything spiralled out of control between us and it ended with him telling me he hadn’t meant any of it and it was all just a “fun conversation”. I was mortified and said that if that was the case, we should stop. And it did. He said a couple of irrelevant things, then I pleaded for him to let me sleep, and when I checked my phone an hour later, he had deactivated his Facebook account. I felt the bottom fall out of my world. It was over.

The next day at work was awful. He avoided me like the plague and in the few moments we were in the same place at the same time, I couldn’t look at him. I felt humiliated. If this was all a joke, then I was surely the punchline. I felt the need to protect myself from him, and the only way I could do that was to shut him out. He stayed away, and as much as I wanted this, it also made me angry. I wanted him to fight to keep me. I was livid, yes, but I still loved him.

During that dreadful Monday, we finally found out about our jobs and whether they were safe or not. Mine is, S2′s isn’t. As the week went on and the odds were worked out, S2′s hopes of remaining at work seemed slim to none. He was devastated, but I didn’t know that because we weren’t talking. From what he had said to me on Sunday, I believed he wanted to leave. Either way, I was still too emotional to say or do anything. I didn’t even know what to feel most of the time.

On Thursday, I was in a mess. I was so confused and angry, and I missed him. All I could do was stare at his greyed out face on Messenger, willing him to return, but it seemed unlikely. Nothing made me feel better, even though I was really trying to keep afloat. Then, in the evening, a friend of mine who lives down the street posted something on Facebook which I commented on, and somehow it ended with her inviting me over for a cup of tea and a rant. I gladly accepted and went over, and I was shocked how she already seemed to know what was wrong.

“It’s about a guy, isn’t it?” She asked, sorting the tea. “Or should I say, a boy? Well, he’s not a boy, but he is very immature.”

How did she know? I was dumbfounded. As much as I credit S2 with a lot of maturity in some ways, he does have some very childish aspects, and in fact, during our spat, he admitted to being childish. It seemed weird to me that my friend, let’s call her Hen, knew so much. She led me into the garden and we sat on a bench. She told me to spill, so I gave her a summary of the whole story from beginning to end. Her perceptions were:

* He likes me, he’s just scared of commitment * He is autistic (she put it as eccentric, but later clarified that’s what she meant) * This wasn’t a lost cause, but it would have to be me who made a move to fix things * I should do something to show him how I feel - a handwritten letter

I resisted her idea at first (aaaagh, emotional vulnerability), but then she said something that really resonated with me.

“At this point, you have nothing to lose, do you? Pull the plaster off.” She was right. I really did have nothing to lose. He wasn’t even speaking to me, so if I lost him officially, it wouldn’t really be that different. I decided to do it, no matter how scary I found the idea.

Then, as we were discussing the situation further, Hen turned to me suddenly.

“Who’s Alice in your family?” She asked. I couldn’t think. There is no Alice in my family. Hen then said she was someone no longer living and I vaguely remembered there being an Alice far back in my family tree. I asked Hen why and she said, “She’s standing right here.”

My heart skipped a beat and a rush of positivity ran through me. Hen then gave me a few images to prove the validity of her claim, such as describing something in my house (a house she has never been inside). She then started to talk about my Grandmother, and to my amazement, she was also there! Hen passed on several memories from my Grandmother that she could never have known about, and then my Grandad appeared too! I said to Hen that I’d have loved to know what my Grandmother would have thought of S2 as it all started around the time she died. To my astoundment, Hen said, “This is very out of character for her, but she’s standing here doing this...” and put her two thumbs up. Thumbs up! That was mine and S2′s “thing”. The amount of thumbs we must have sent each other! I hadn’t mentioned that at all when I told Hen the story!

The spirits didn’t stop coming, and before I knew it, my brother was there, as well as my beloved Great Grandmother who has visited me before, my Grandmother’s brother, my old manager, my missing cats, and some other animals. The messages kept coming and coming, and some of them were so scarily accurate that there was no way this could have been fake. Hen knew all the names of my relatives, as well as details such as how old they’d been when they died, and how long they had been dead for. She even knew there was a cat buried in my garden. That happened YEARS before she moved into the street!

Hen’s husband cooked her some dinner, so I had to leave, but I felt like I was floating on a cloud! I’d been pulled back from the brink, if I’m honest. I had had a few worrying thoughts, but this boosted me to the point where I felt determined to fight and fix things, not just in terms of S2, but I wanted to take steps to make my whole life better. My Grandad had told me off for hating my body so much, and also for constantly checking to see if S2 had messaged me. He said he knew it would be hard for me to stop completely, but told me to ween myself off of it. I knew he was right. It was time to hang back, and as he put it, “go with the flow”.

The next day, I knew it was time to talk to S2. The plan was to get him alone and ask if we could stop being awkward. I didn’t need to in the end. When I arrived at work, I went to the exam room where the team were setting up. S2 was sitting with his back to me as I entered, and at that moment, I was too nervous to even look at him. As I buzzed around, I glanced at him and saw that he was watching me with a painfully sad expression on his face. It cracked my heart in two, but now wasn’t the time, not with everyone else there.

Once I’d gone to complete a small task, I returned and sat in the exam room, which was now empty. S2 was talking to the kids outside the door, then he came in and walked over in my direction, and as he glanced up at me, I managed to give him a tiny smile. It was as if I had pressed a button as he suddenly started to mumble something. I asked him if he was OK. He said he was and asked the same of me. We then had a very pointless conversation about tea until a student came in for a chat, which further helped to break the ice as it bridged the gap between us a little more.

Later on in the day I got another chance to talk to S2 alone and I asked him what was going on for him job wise. He was planning to apply for a teaching job, which in my mind seemed perfect for him, but he said he didn’t really want it. I couldn’t see why, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up by assuming he wanted to stay here for me. I gave him some reassurance then he went off to do something else.

That afternoon, Diva and I were discussing the work situation and I ended up getting really passionate about things, probably to the point where I made my feelings for S2 quite obvious, but of course Diva didn’t let on that she knew. We were pondering about the various people who for some bizarre reason are able to apply for S2′s job before him, and how we could put them off so he stood a chance of staying. I felt like a warrior and I no longer cared how obvious it was. Despite all the crap that had gone on between us, I still cared about S2 and wanted to fight for him.

Over the weekend, I had a chance to get my head together a bit. Skittles and I went to a gig to see one of my all time favourite bands. Their songs reduce me to tears and have always been somewhere to turn to when I’ve felt sad. At the gig though, I felt nothing but happiness as I sang along just a few feet from the stage. The next day, I felt inspired to work on some more music of my own. My Grandparents had also suggested I do this. As if by magic, I ended up writing a really good song that said everything I was feeling and also would have been obvious to S2 that it was about him. Even the title gave it away. In a moment of bravery/recklessness, I posted my song on Facebook. I kind of wanted S2 to hear it, but I didn’t expect him to, seeing as he wasn’t even active any more... I checked one last time and saw he was still missing, then went to bed.

In the morning I woke up and almost jumped out of my skin. He was back! I almost cried. But then I noticed that even though he was back, and still my friend, I had no ability to message him. What? Had he blocked my messages somehow? I couldn’t work it out. It would have been such a harsh move, and it didn’t make sense for him to do it, so I decided to go into work and see what happened rather than try to find explanations for it all - go with the flow.

At work, I was amazed at how normal S2 was being with me. I also caught him perving at my boobs. I knew even more than before that all he’d said about not meaning to flirt with me was a lie! He didn’t mention Facebook and neither did I, and when I got home, I had an idea. I deleted Messenger and reinstalled it, and that fixed the problem. I was now able to message him. I wasn’t going to, but at least I knew he hadn’t blocked me.

Throughout the week, things got better and better between us. We were talking like nothing had happened and sitting together at lunch. It also seemed like there was a little more hope for him staying around at work. I even played a part in this as I had managed to convince Nem to apply for a job elsewhere rather than go for S2′s job. There was no way I was going to let her take him away from me and weedle her way even deeper into my territory. Of course I put on a great act as supportive friend/motivational speaker, and there was no malice in my plan as such. It was all about preserving S2′s job.

Then, on Friday, I did something stupid. Stupid isn’t even the word... Embarrassing... Shameful. Yeah, those could work! I did something that would scare the living daylights out of any Facebook stalker... While hovering inside our chat, I accidentally managed to press to invite him to Messenger, which he has obviously not reinstalled. Crap, crap, crap!!! I panicked, the blood draining from my hands. How on Earth was I going to talk my way out of this one???

In the end I decided the best thing was to tell the truth, or a less pathetic version of it, that I had opened the chat then pressed it by accident. If he questioned me any further, I guess I’d just have to admit that I was looking at the chat because I missed talking to him. I think I’m beyond the point where I’m going to fight to preserve my dignity. Being made to feel like a joke had already put an end to that. Plus, with this uber emotional letter in its draft form, there was already a whole sack of emotional vulnerability to come...

I went to work knowing he wouldn’t see the notification until he next went on Facebook. I’d just have to act normally and enjoy my last day of freedom before he realised I was nothing more than a crazy stalker. Ugh. Luckily, the day was great. At lunch, he was ridiculously chatty and positive. It really did feel like old times, but I could tell he was still very conscious of how he was acting with me, trying not to be flirtatious. I tried not to over analyse it. He may have just been holding back because he knew how much he’d hurt me before. Who knows?

Then, at the end of the day, we bumped into each other as I was leaving and he gave me the biggest, most excited smile, like he was so pleased to see me. I still felt wary at the time, but once I walked away, I just felt happy. Things are OK between us, whatever that means at this point! Maybe this is just a bump in the road. Maybe hope isn’t lost!

Oh, and he still hasn’t seen my invite on Messenger! Aaaagh!!!