#why is prepping for this trip more stressful than the trip itself. like the trip wasnt anxiety inducing enough | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lune-hime · 3 years

Note

Hi! Are you still writing? If not then disregard this, but I was wondering if you could write the first meeting between Logan and reader that was mentioned in Blast from the Past? I think there was something about a skateboard and a torrential downpour if I’m not mistaken haha. Thanks so much! And I love your fics btw :)

Hi! I am also a big fan of your writing too! :) Thank you so much for being incredibly patient with me on this request. I apologize for how long this has taken me to get out, preparing for graduate school has left me with much less time to write than I anticipated. I’m sorry for the wait, but I hope you enjoy the first meeting of dear reader and Mr. Kitty Claws <3

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Zzzt.

Do tell me, please, why you presently found yourself alone at sunset (which-by the way-you couldn’t even see through the thick, gravely, storm clouds) on a remote hiking trail, optimistically ignoring the forecast for torrential rain, with only a windbreaker, backpack, and your longboard tucked under your arm?

Zzzt.

I mean, really, this is how young women like you got chloroformed, dragged through the bramble, and stabbed on the stale and musty floorboards of a serial killer’s cabin.

Zzzt.

And you can’t even fucking skate on a mountain trail.

Zzzt Zzzt.

Did I mention no cell service either? Oh, and how about that creepy dead, freshly killed deer a few minutes back on the side of the trail?

Zzzzzt-zap.

This time your sharp reflexes and highly precisioned energy electrocuted two mosquitos out of this dimension before they could land on your collarbone.

I get it though, mosquitoes and the sky teetering on the edge of cracking open aside, this was what you needed right now. This is where you needed to be right now, even if this was the world’s most questionable hiking trip.

Canada was indeed everything you needed and more. Sure, you had to constantly use dingy porta-potties and lactic acid inducing manual labor while you were working in the field. But it was rewarding and interesting and most of all it gave you a break from..well...you.

It seemed a bizarre decision by your family to pack up and leave for another country, even if it was only one border away. From their perspective it was hard to comprehend why a woman in her mid twenties in the summer of her first year of graduate school at NYU would want to galivant around in the remote corners of British Columbia. She should be networking with scientists and politicians she’s met during her internships, attending lavish banquets for anthropological research, and of course extending her plus-one invites to her loving, supporting, family.

You audibly scoffed at their idealistic fantasy.

Charles and your friends at the mansion couldn’t have been more encouraging. When the professor had told you about the opportunity to work at archeological dig sites of ancient excavated First Nations villages in the farthest Canadian wilderness from New England yachts and neon kissed skyscrapers, you couldn’t say yes fast enough.

You mentally chanted to yourself that this was a much needed reset as the clouds hungrily followed the crunching of your boots against deceased maple leaves. The looming canopy of conifers seemed to gain density as your steps dodged the slugs that emerged from the dirt to worship the incoming blessings of rain. You let the creaking of the wind against the broad trunks of the pines and the grayed blanket of air wash the stress from the work week away and lull you into a false sense of calm.

The first droplets of rain tapped against the ferns in a gentle percussion as you weaved over precariously growing roots. You used your free hand to fling your hood up and zipped your jacked as far up as it could go in preparation for more precipitation. Through the thin fabric your ears picked up a rustling in the brush that was definitely too grounded to be the wind.

Playful, hoarse grunts erupted from the ferns as two grizzly cubs rolled out of the bushes and onto the path in front of you. Your eyes threatened to pop out of your head as you watched them tumble through the pine needles and bite at each other’s ears.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” Curses looped across your mind as your breath began to quicken in the eerie silence that now overtook the forest. Azure energy crackled along the spaces between your fingers as they twitched in fear.

Shit , you were a city girl. And they never offered classes on how to defend yourself from threatening wildlife at university or the mansion. Are grizzlies the kind you need to play dead with? Or climb a tree? Fuck you couldn’t even climb the stairs half the time without getting winded. One thing you did know, however, was if the babies were here than their mother-

It happened so quickly that your mind struggled to keep pace with your fingers. An unmistakable breathy growl manifested to your right as the mother in question charged you. Your flight instinct was first to kick in as you scrambled backwards down the trail. You only got a few feet until the slick bark of the tree roots caused you to slip and tumble to the ground. Your board flew out of your grip as your butt hit a particularly plump root. You winced at the pain but didn’t have much time to nurse your fall when the lumbering beast was almost on top of you.

You choked out a cry as you sloppily turned over and began struggling to get to your knees. You felt yourself being lifted by your backpack as the bear’s teeth ripped through the canvas of your bag and threw you off the path. You flailed on your descent, landing on your stomach as hot tears began streaking down your terrified face. You felt yourself being shaken by the straps as she roughly tugged you from side to side. With a vigorous scream you flipped to your side, adrenaline contorting your fingers to expel electric energy. A boisterous crack sent shockwaves through the canopy. Angrily your assailant bellowed at the discomfort of your energy webbing itself through her face. She snorted but lurched forward once more, her jaws a ghost on your neck. Her hot breath barely dusted your cheeks before energy shot outwards from your hands that shielded your face from becoming dinner. A pained yelp followed by another crack met your ears as you placed your buzzing palms down. The bear and her babies were hightailing it off in your opposite direction. Instant guilt washed over you as you noticed the bald spots woven through her copper fur where your energy had badly burned her.

As you began trying to calm your spinning mind you glanced up, squinting through the droplets, to see that the crack you had heard was your energy raking through the treetops and searing them straight off. The gateway you had made for the rain now left you damp and wallowing in your painfully heaving chest, sore ass, and shame for hurting another creature.

Logan let out a sigh as the muscles of his shoulder blades stretched with the roll of his arms. His axe was weighty in his hand as he leaned down to pick up another piece of birch trunk and placed it on his chopping block. Arms up and axe over his head, he prepped himself for his swing and brought the axe down with a thunderous clap.

His brows furrowed at the commotion. Indeed, the wood was now evenly split, but the chopping block was still in one piece. He momentarily contemplated the limits of his strength when crows flew from their pined perches.

“That’s definitely not normal.” He muttered to himself. He focused all of his senses in the direction of the commotion when his ears picked up a scream. Instantly he ran to his pick up truck, forgetting he still clutched the axe in his hand. Once he was in the driver’s seat he chucked it into the back as he slammed his foot on the gas, wheels kicking up dust as he sped down the dirt road.

Logan drove until the first trailhead emerged from the thicket. He felt his claws nipping at the skin of his knuckles as he slammed the door and jogged across the soggy dirt. The screaming had ceased, but Logan could smell the musky stench of a bear nearby. Sure enough as he went deeper and deeper into the forest he saw sets of fresh tracks squelched into the mud. Retracing the animals’ steps he let out a breath of relief at the woman who was beginning to sit upright.

Halfway through dragging yourself upward you heard heavy footfalls on the path. Your head whipped towards the sound in dread, not mentally prepared for another attack. Your wide eyes met with those of a man; his sorrel tresses were dislodged from flying through the crisp breeze, his flannel was casually only buttoned mid chest, and lord his hands.

Your mouth fell agape at the metal daggers that resided between his knuckles. Their metallic sheen was amplified by the raindrops that cascaded down them. At first, you felt tinges of fear that he was the axe murderer that you had always been warned about. But in those eyes you could only read concern.

Logan picked up on your uneasiness and put his hands out in front of him in a non threatening gesture. The energy that still flickered about your body did not go unnoticed by him as he put the pieces of what must have happened together. The stench of bear, the booming, a hole in the trees, a young mutant lying on the ground in the aftermath of defending herself. He willed his claws ever so slowly back into his hands as he watched you become entrapped by his anomaly.

He was like you and you were like him.

“You’re-” You began, still gawking at his mutation. Logan was used to people ogling at him in fear, disdain, and abhorrence and even with you being a mutant he wouldn’t have put it past you to react the same. But your initial alarm had washed off with the steady stream of rain and what was revealed was a mixture of relief, apprehension, and curiosity.

“Mhm.” He simply answered with mutual acknowledgement. He battled with taking a few paces forward to help you up but he didn't want to stress you out any more than needed.

“What are you doing in my forest?” He asked as he watched you groan and finally sit up.

“What are you, the fairy guardian of this place?” You mumbled, riding out the final waves of your panic. Logan cocked an eyebrow in mild amusement. He waited while you rolled your wrists and checked yourself for any bleeding or sprains. You were satisfied with suffering only a few cuts to your cheek and arms where sticks had kissed just beneath your skin. The dull ache of where your tailbone struck the root took the place of your endorphins.

“Can I help you up?” Logan asked softly as he kept his hands visible and empty. You answered him with an apprehensive stare as you contemplated. You figured if he really wanted to hurt you, especially after realizing your powers, he would have already. When you nodded Logan walked towards you and offered you his hand.

“Are you gonna zap me?” He lightly chuckled before you could connect your palm with his. His comment offered a small smile from you.

“No, unless you try something.” Your quip faded into a grunt of discomfort as his strong arm pulled you to your feet.

“You alright? You don’t look like that bear took any chunks out of you.” He inquired as the warmth of his hand left your grasp.

“How did you know it was a bear?” You asked with a knitted brow.

“I heard you scream and saw bear tracks on my way here.” He responded simply. You hummed and let out a shaky exhale when the coil in your lower back tightened as you attempted to stretch it.

“I’m fine, just shaken up. I’m more worried for the bear…” You trailed off as your guilty conscience overcame your thoughts. Even when you could have become their next family meal, you had reservations about using your mutation to hurt others. Logan huffed in disbelief at your selflessness.

“Seems like you didn’t really have much of a choice. What else could you do; its not like PETA will ever find out.” He shrugged. You kept your guard tilted high but even gilded iron defenses couldn’t keep you from observing his handsomeness. In the newfound proximity you wandered the hazel pathways of his irises in the company of the distinct smell of cigar and pine. He wore the rugged boyishness of a young man in his smooth skin and wolfish smile. It clashed ever so lovely with the maturity that embodied his stance and sturdy build.

To any dismay you could have had, the roses that bloomed on your cheeks did not go unnoticed by him. Alluring curiosity spread across his face. He wouldn’t deny that-despite your disheveled hair, the dirt that coated your jaw, and the aura of a wet puppy-he found you beautiful. Any seductions that ran through his mind aside, he liked to think he was chivalrous enough to push the brakes on a girl who just got mauled by a bear.

“So, wanna explain why you were electrocuting a bear on a remote hiking trail?” He pressed as he shifted his weight to one side, bringing his boot to prop up and rest on a protruding root. You gulped, your pride about getting lost still dangling from a few frayed threads.

“Do you wanna explain why-uh-you’re also here on this remote hiking trail?” You countered and crossed your arms. Your voice quaked with residual nerves that were the opposite of threatening.

Logan stared at you through the rain. The clouds were weeping more intensely now and their tears kissed his dark lashes.

“I have a summer cabin. Gonna answer my question before we both end up taking showers out here?” He replied with a tinge of annoyance as his hair grew slick with the incoming rain.

In the space that filled your gap in speech, a vivacious thunderclap steam rolled through the sky. As if on cue, the rain absolutely poured through the leafy umbrella above you and instantly began soaking the two of you.

“Shit!” Logan exclaimed at the now sticky feeling of his flannel to his chest. You flipped the hood of your raincoat up as quickly as you could, but not before your head was thoroughly waterboarded.

“WHAT NOW?” You shouted over the roaring water. Logan’s brow furrowed under the assault of droplets.

“My car is parked not that far from here.” He yelled with a nod in the direction he came from. You bit your lip nervously at the thought of following a strange man to his vehicle.

“How do I know you’re not some weirdo?” You contended.

“We’re both weirdos, sweetheart.” The term of endearment slid so effortlessly on the remark about your mutations and left your cheeks hot against the cold rain. “You can trust me, or you can get soaked out here. Your choice.”

What other option did you really have? Your mutation couldn’t protect you from freezing nor could you send sparks into a wet log to create a fire. He obviously knew this area well, he made sure you were unhurt, and he was like you. You took solace in all of these notions and reminded yourself that you could use your abilities as a last resort.

“Fine. But metal is a great conductor for electricity just so you know.” You warned and Logan cracked a half smile. He then began jogging up the trail.

“WAIT.” You called and he halted in his tracks. You ran over to the brush and sifted through the ferns to tuck your longboard under your arm. Logan did not have the time to question the absurdity of you bringing that with you on a hike but a look of perplexity was evident on his glistening features. He ran at a much slower pace than he would have had he been alone. He made sure he could hear the squelching of your footfalls as you pushed through the stinging at your tailbone and followed him back to his truck.

He unlocked the rusty vessel swiftly and the two of you plopped onto the pleasantly dry seats. You threw your longboard on the floor of the passenger’s seat and heaved a sigh of relief to be out of those woods. You immediately slipped your soggy shoes and socks off. While you peeled your drenched raincoat from your form, you glanced around the interior of the car.

Not trashy-save an empty beer bottle and an orange Reese's wrapper.

No guns. You figured he didn’t need a gun with claws like those.

A worn, auburn leather jacket hanging off of one of the back seats.

“At least you don’t have an axe.” You chuckled more to yourself than him. Logan comically averted his eyes ever so slowly to the back seat. He sighed when he didn’t see the weapon in question for it must have fallen under the seat.

Logan's car was getting an all natural, no expenses paid power wash as the two of you stared in awe as the rain slid down the windshield in swift rivers. It left zero visibility outwards aside from the running water.

“I...don’t think you can drive through this.” You stated the obvious.

“No shit.” He replied, his voice laced with a velvet rumble off of the metal frames of the vehicle. “We’ll have to wait it out.”

You nodded and couldn’t fight the large shiver that sprung from your lower back all the way up to your ears. Your torso may have been kept dry but your head was soaked and so were your legs. Logan arched his back to reach behind the driver’s seat to grab his jacket from the back.

“Here.” He offered gently, straightening it out and laying it on your lap.

You blinked at his simple act of kindness. Grabbing the smooth leather, you brought your knees to your chest and layered the jacket over your body from your legs to your shoulders. Heat rose to your cheeks as it did the rest of your body as you curled into his jacket.

“Thanks.” You said and gave him a grateful smile. “Aren’t you cold too though? You didn’t have a raincoat on.”

“I’m fine. One of the...perks of my genetics.” He replied in dismissal of your concern.

“Damn, kitty claws and not being able to feel the cold? You lucked out, dude.” You commented with a light hearted tease. Joking made you feel less vulnerable, less stupid for putting yourself in this situation. Logan rolled his eyes at the frilly name for his adamantium blades.

“I know your mutation before I even know your name.” You commented with a small chuckle.

“Logan.” He answered, the velvety gravel of his voice rippling through the rain at the windshield.

“Nice to meet you, Logan. I’m Y/N.” You said and held your hand out expectantly. When you locked gazes, both of you were temporarily enamored in the chromatics of your eyes. He seemed to realize this before you and smoothly took your hand in his without ever wavering his eye contact. He gave your hand a quick shake and withdrew it back into his lap. His palm was so warm against your clammy skin. It made you wonder how the rest of him felt.

“I honestly didn’t expect to meet anyone out here, let alone another mutant.” You exhaled at the lingering impossibility of the situation.

“That's why I’m here, usually it's pretty barren people wise. That brings me back to my question; what are you doing out here?” He pressed. As he waited for an answer, he shifted to relax into the corner between the seat and the window, amber eyes alight in the dimmed shadow of the rain. You fiddled with the worn hem of your makeshift blanket for a few moments, letting the waterfall outside fill the silence.

“Today was supposed to be a relaxing break from work. Evidently it didn’t turn out that way.” You exhaled and leaned your head back on the seat’s headrest. “I saw this park along the way to one of my work sites and thought it looked like a good place to be alone. Now I know to research bear population concentrations before going anywhere.”

Logan understood. That’s the whole reason he lived half of his life as what some would proclaim as a hermit. Partially to save others from getting hurt by him and partially to keep himself from getting burned by the unknown mistakes of his past and the anonymity of his stolen memories. He wasn’t your dad so he wasn’t going to hound you too much about it. But, even if you held the power to break the trees with a thunderclap, he couldn’t help the protective feeling that bubbled up his throat for the sweet woman next to him.

“Do you always charge head on into places you know nothing about? And with a skateboard?” His words betrayed his increasing fondness for your adventurous spirit.

You didn’t come all the way to Canada to be lectured. (Well, besides in your internship.) The question could have been taken as aggressive, judgmental, or prying even. But in his tone was genuine curiosity framed underneath the light scolding.

“I thought it would be fun to learn how to longboard while I’m out here for the summer.” You confessed and sent a testing look this way. He let out a rich chuckle.

“And a hiking trail is the ideal place for that.”

“I thought maybe there would be a bridge or paved path…” You scowled at his sarcasm.

“I get it though, we all need alone time. And there’s not a better place than the forest to do that.” A sigh tailed his sweet comment. You were grateful for it, for despite his banter, he didn’t make you feel like a stupid kid. Not entirely, at least.

“You’re not from around here then?” He continued.

“No, I’m from New York actually. I’m here on a grad school internship.”

“Ah, a city girl. That explains the blind enthusiasm.” The corner of his mouth turned up in a cocky half smile. Your glare only grew in intensity at his teasing.

“Long way from home.” He noted and you hummed in agreement.

“Is your degree in wildlife conservation?” He threw you one final lithe jab.

“Haha.” You said pointedly, but you couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across your lips at his handsome amusement. “No, cultural anthropology, actually.” Logan let out an impressed whistle.

“What about you? Are you one of those people who abandoned their life to live off the grid?” You asked tentatively, realizing the conversation had been solely focused on you.

“Not exactly. I’ve got a couple cabins across the country-like summer and winter homes. When I’m out here, I work at the lumber yard. When I’m in Alberta, I work at a bar.” He responded as he wiped the condensation from his side of the window, a hopeless attempt at checking through the wall of rain.

“So you’re both a lumberjack and a bartender? Wow, eclectic.” You praised his line of work.

“More or less.” He left out that the only things he tended to at the bar were bloodied knuckles after embedding them into his opponent's gut during each cage match.

You chatted idly as the rain continued to wash away the hectic afternoon. You talked about your work, about your home. He talked about his cabin, about his travels through BC and Alberta. Between your lips the two of you wove personal stories but excluded intimate details. He was still a stranger, after all. Even if the complexity of his humble nature and mysterious lifestyle made him one of the most compelling strangers you had ever met.

As the storm raged on and time flowed in waves at your windows, you began to doze off. Logan resigned to resting his eyes himself while keeping his ears peeled for a let up in the rain or any disturbances.

Until he heard your little grunt of discomfort.

In your sleep your head had grown heavy and lolled to the side at such an angle that Logan was sure you would wake up with an insane neck cramp. As gingerly as he could, he rolled up your now dry raincoat, gently placed his hand on your cheek, and propped your head onto the makeshift pillow. His eyes softened at the utter peacefulness of your relaxed form; the way your eyelashes embraced your plump cheeks, and in your tranquility the erasure of any semblance of the past few hours.

“What?” You whispered, pretty eyes now meeting his in groggy sweetness. Logan blinked in surprise but didn’t take his eyes off of you. He felt delicate wings against the chambers of his heart.

“Stop looking at me like that.” He warned lightly. Under your honeyed look his nerves felt like they were being bathed in a pleasant hum. He wondered if your energy could feel like this.

“You’re a secret softie.” You declared with a sleepy giggle. Logan pursed his lips at the cute accusation, but didn’t deny it.

“Go back to sleep, bub.” He said lowly. You let the warm tambour of his voice mixed with the crisp pitter patter of the rain send you back to sleep.

When the storm would finally pass, Logan would drive you back into town. You would part ways, then, not knowing the impact you would have on each other’s lives mere months later after the summer rain bled into the crimson fall and arrived on Xavier’s School’s winter doorstep.

#fanfiction #marvel #marvel fanfiction #xmen #x men fanfiction #logan #logan howlett #logan howlett x reader #logan x reader #wolverine #wolverine x reader #reader insert #marvel x reader #Marvel x Y/N

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shihalyfie · 3 years

Text

The difference between the friend dynamics in the Adventure and 02 groups

This is a point I’ve reiterated in a lot of my 02-based metas, but there is a fairly distinct difference between the Adventure Chosen Children having a tight, deep bond and yet not quite being friends in “social life”, whereas the 02 group was a much tighter group on a social level. I always feel that I need to be really careful about saying this, because if I don’t word it carefully, it sounds like I’m trivializing the Adventure group’s bonds (plus, a lot of Adventure diehards will get very upset at you for suggesting this no matter how you put it), so I thought I should write something a bit more in-depth about it.

I think a lot of of this ultimately ties into what each series was about. The fact that Adventure was meant to be a series about “self-recognition of the individual” whereas 02 was about “relationships with others” has been pointed out by many a fan (and official staff too, while we’re at it), and it naturally lends to how the characters and the relationships between them will have a fundamental difference.

The idea that the Adventure group wouldn’t be the type to get together all that easily never really took that long after Adventure to set in. Of course, Our War Game! having this as a plot point also had a meta purpose (basically, limiting the number of people who could participate in the Diablomon battle), but it also has a very important point behind it: the Adventure kids’ social lives were never all that intertwined.

Again, this is something that sounds really awful to say without further qualification. What do you mean, the Adventure kids weren’t friends? Does that mean their entire adventure was for nothing? Did they go through all that only to forget about each other right after it?!

Well, no, that’s kind of exaggeration. I think to properly flesh out the nature of the issue, it’s important to define the differing ways you can be friends with someone. Imagine that you go on the best vacation in your life. You meet a handful of people there. You swap stories and get life-changing advice. You take commemorative photos after some really spectacular experiences. You swap numbers and social media contacts and then you go home. Are you going to keep in touch every so often with the people who gave you some very important advice, and maybe check on their important life events or organize a reunion sometime in the future? Very possibly! Does that mean everyone you met at that trip will now be regularly going out for lunch with you every week now?...Probably not, especially if you already have friends from school. That doesn’t mean you aren’t friends with the important people you met during that best life-changing vacation; it just means that they fill a very different niche in your life from the friends who don’t necessarily understand the life-changing vacation but have the free time to chat with you over lunch.

When the Adventure group found themselves pulled into the Digital World during summer camp, they had already come from very different social spheres. In short:

Taichi, Sora, and Koushirou were the only ones with a background of knowing each other beforehand, thanks to being in the soccer club;

Yamato went to the same school as the others but was a stranger to them, to the point people didn’t even realize Takeru was his brother at first;

Mimi had her own friend circle (see Adventure episode 29);

Jou was assigned as Mimi’s camp group leader but had no other prior relation to her, and Yamato didn’t even initially know his age;

Takeru wasn’t even supposed to be there since he didn’t go to their school and was only tagging along with Yamato;

Hikari was brought halfway into the adventure by virtue of being the eighth Chosen and Taichi’s sister.

Although six of the eight come from the same school, you can see that they’re basically “kids brought together by a certain circumstance” -- they’re not kids who would have normally come into each other’s purview had it not been for this. Which also means that as soon as their adventure ended and some years passed, the aspects of their real lives and social circles started kicking back in:

Taichi continued soccer;

Yamato formed a band (and presumably had a good relationship with his own bandmates);

Sora quit soccer for tennis;

Koushirou quit soccer for the computer club;

Mimi moved to the US;

Jou started attending a private school outside Odaiba;

Takeru and Hikari were never in their age group to begin with.

In the case of Taichi, Yamato, Sora, and Koushirou, it’s representative of how, although they originally had a shared interest in soccer, ultimately, they started to drift into their own specialties. Again, remember that Adventure was a series fundamentally about finding yourself and finding your own path, and all of these choices actually tie into their character arcs: Taichi is a straightforward person and a natural, charismatic leader, meaning soccer was good for him to begin with; Yamato learned to become more sociable and make friends at school; Sora started playing tennis as part of properly reconciling with her mother, and Koushirou decided to pursue a club relevant to his actual interests instead of one purely so that he could have minimal presence in it.

Mimi’s moving to the US is an interesting case because it’s likely because she’s often described (by both fans and official staff) as someone who is easily likeable and can get along with practically anyone. Considering that she’s constantly considerate of others and lacking in condescension or malice, it’s easy to see why; her infamous bouts of complaining were largely because she was under a lot of stress at the time of Adventure’s events (it’s even said that her cracking under pressure was meant to be representative of how an ordinary child her age would react to the situation), and otherwise she has no problems making friends -- hence why she was shown in Adventure episode 29 as already having friends in Taako and Mii-chan that she presumably hung out with prior to the events of the series. So in moving to the US, the point is made that Mimi could move to an entire other country and still hit it up with people there (and she does, given how she makes friends in Michael and the other American Chosen without issue). So thus, Mimi’s moving is also part of her own path -- becoming an effective “ambassador” between international Chosen as they start to pop up all over the globe.

As for Jou, his character arc has heavily to do with the fact that he’s always been on the “elite” academic track -- Japanese school entrance exams stretch back as far as high school, so the fight to get into medical school comes back as early as here, and since the events of Adventure helped Jou come to terms with why he wanted to be a doctor rather than just following his father’s wishes, it’s understandable that he would now be putting everything into that goal -- even if it means going to a different school outside Odaiba and committing himself to the prep school life. And, generally speaking, the other kids respect that too, given that the only time they tried to pull him from it was a time they were literally suffocating on the spot and needed Ikkakumon’s specific backup badly (02 episode 16).

And finally, Takeru and Hikari? The fact that they’re that much younger than the others in this group really is a big deal. When they’re on something “purpose-based” like an adventure, of course the others will have no problem keeping them around, and of course they’ll be happy to participate with these older kids. But if we’re talking about mundane, ordinary life -- there’s not a lot of evidence to suggest they really would prefer the company of kids so much older than them for conversations over lunch. This is especially because it’s hard to imagine they didn’t have other friends at school, too.

Not that they mind being around all these older kids when the time calls for it, but as far as socialization goes, they have their own lives to live. And that’s fine; again, Adventure was a narrative about kids coming to terms with themselves and what they wanted, and it’s not their fault for prioritizing those paths and forming their own social circles rather than insisting on being a specific eight-person group (no matter how much the fanbase wants to have the romantic image of them sticking together all the time no matter what).

Plus, it’s not like they all completely drifted apart and cut each other off!

Just because they’re not “daily life friends” doesn’t mean they’re not still important to each other. 02 episode 38 has Taichi, Sora, Jou, and Koushirou show up for Yamato’s concert -- it’s unlikely they were attending every single one of his concerts, but this was a very important one that was going to be broadcast on TV, so it’s only natural that even Jou (who, again, doesn’t go to school in Odaiba anymore) would still come to support him.

In fact, the fact they can come together when a situation like this happens even without necessarily meeting up every single day of their lives is probably a testament to how strong that bond is in itself. They don’t need to hang out once a day or week to maintain their friendship, and having other friends they’d rather hang out with throughout the day or invite to events doesn’t necessarily mean the other Adventure kids are less worthy friends to them. That experience in August 1999 was so impactful on all of them that they will never forget it, so even if they spent quite a long amount of time not interacting with each other, when a circumstance that necessitates them coming together does bring them together, they can hit it off like nothing happened. Think about how you might have an important friend that you may not chat with on a daily basis, but you talk to them once in a while and hit it off like you never had a break in the conversation. But because that strong bond is based on that one very specific experience that happened in one specific summer, it’s only natural that the majority of meetups over this are going to be based on something to do with that experience, like Digimon incidents; for ordinary things like “band concerts” or “club activities”, it’ll naturally be easier to stick around friends who have more similar social interests, like fellow band or club members.

On the other hand, this is very much not the case for the 02 group.

To understand why the 02 group has a fundamentally different dynamic, we need to dial back to a little before the actual “adventure” part of 02 started.

Right off the bat, we see:

Takeru moves to Odaiba from Sangenjaya, and specifically to the same building Miyako and Iori live in, meaning he’ll be walking to school with them every day;

02 episode 7 indicates that the Motomiya and Yagami families live in the same apartment complex, meaning Daisuke and Hikari are also likely to walk to school together;

Miyako and Iori are established as having already long hit it off with each other as neighbors;

Daisuke, Hikari, and Takeru end up in the same class (with Daisuke and Hikari having known each other already).

In other words: Even before anything to do with Digimon had been introduced (or re-introduced, technically) into their lives, the kids were already being thrown into each other’s social circles. You could technically argue that Daisuke wouldn’t have necessarily met Miyako and Iori if not for the Digimon incident coming into his life later in the episode, but Takeru being neighbors with them basically fills in all of the gaps here -- unlike with the Adventure kids where the adventure in August 1999 threw them together when they likely wouldn’t have been in the same social circle otherwise, the 02 kids are the social circle even independently of the Digimon incidents. In fact, due to being functionally neighbors, there are a lot of ways these kids’ social lives intersect, with Daisuke and Miyako being Taichi and Koushirou’s juniors, Miyako working for Yamato’s band, Yamato being classmates with Miyako’s sister Chizuru, and Jun and Miyako’s other sister Momoe being classmates.

Since, again, 02 was a series fundamentally structured on examining relationships, you can basically view Adventure being a series about “bringing some people together as they find self-assertion even when they’re from different social circles” while 02 follows that up with “so if they were in the same social circle, how would they deal with that?” -- especially since 02 makes it clear that certain kinds of emotional baggage associated with that can actually make it much more complicated.

A lot of 02′s first half is dedicated to the 02 kids doing completely mundane things that have very little relevance to the Digital World conflict -- watching TV in the computer room (remember: this was before they realized the “genius boy” being covered on the news was actually relevant to this), or having a picnic in the Digital World. Mimi even explicitly points out that this kind of thing wouldn’t have happened with the Adventure kids, but it’s not just because of the fact that Adventure involved a lot of running for their lives! It’s easy to dismiss a lot of what happens in these early episodes as “filler”, but a lot of this is dedicated to depicting how the 02 kids were constantly spending time with each other for reasons completely separated from Digimon incidents. This even includes completely ordinary things like soccer games -- Takeru, Hikari, Miyako, and Iori come to support Daisuke with an obvious motive of seeing him do well, so it’s apparent that they’ve come to enjoy hanging out with him beyond just obligation.

Part of this is because of the different nature of the Digimon conflict that they experienced. The Adventure kids had an experience that really was, functionally, “one” experience -- an extremely formative and important one, but one condensed one that they all experienced together. The nature of what the 02 territory war and conflict was, on the other hand, meant that what the conflict “was” to the 02 kids was of a completely different nature. This wasn’t summer vacation; this involved going back and forth between the fight and real life, to the point where Digimon fighting became integrated into “daily life” -- so of course you’d probably hope that the people you’re fighting with are also people you like to bond with on a social level. “Digimon life” and “social life” became synonymous to them.

And when it all comes down to it, it’s hard to pinpoint a “single experience” that the events of 02 embodied, or at least in the same way August 1999′s adventure was. As much as they were running for their lives, the Adventure kids have the luxury of looking at the events of their series as a formative singular time for them, one that they could even look at nostalgically, but for the 02 kids, it’s hard to condense everything into one singular experience (it’s easy for the audience to see it as one series, but for the kids themselves, it’s a very long chain of vaguely connected events). Actually, most of the year involved fighting with someone who ended up becoming their important friend and the other involved helping him deal with his trauma, so it’s not like everyone would be likely to have the most romantic image of this experience itself to “bond” over as much as they care more about the take-home they got out of it: each other.

One thing that 02 doesn’t really spotlight front and center with its starter cast of characters is that, unlike the Adventure kids, who either came with their own social circles prior to Adventure or eventually developed their own in the course of their lives, it’s heavily implied that the 02 kids actually had difficulty making other friends even on a social level, or at least were likely to be in a situation where the other 02 kids really were better company than their other options even for mundane situations. This is especially in the case of the newly introduced characters, who are, effectively, a bit socially “displaced” from others and likely to have struggles fitting in.

There are quite a few signs that Daisuke had serious difficulty making friends prior to the events of the series (with Hikari being the closest thing he had to one), and the fact that the 12-year-old Miyako is portrayed as constantly hanging out with the 9-year-old Iori, brought together by being neighbors, rather than people closer to their own ages stands out. Iori is particularly interesting in that, unlike with Takeru and Hikari, who were portrayed as kids likely to socialize better with those their own age, Iori’s unusual maturity for his age heavily implies that he would actually be out of place with his classroom peers (a very common phenomenon for some people in real life, too!). 02 episode 3 depicting him left alone in the classroom with only a teacher to watch him while his stubborn fixation on principles leaves him slow to finish his lunch says a lot -- his own behavior is liable to isolate him from others, and it’s thus not all that surprising he ended up bonding with some kids who are older than him and more accepting (and even treat him with proper respect, too).

Takeru and Hikari, too. There’s been a lot of arguments over whether the two of them would theoretically be closer to the Adventure kids or the 02 kids, but I would honestly say it’s technically both at once -- they have the same “not socially close, but intuitively understanding” relationship that the Adventure kids all have with each other, but hold the other 02 kids as part of their social circle and hang out with them in “daily life”. So in other words, they have the Adventure kids’ relationship with the other Adventure kids, and the 02 kids’ relationship with the 02 kids. This is presumably why Takeru and Hikari end up hitting it off so well at the start of 02 even though they didn’t interact all that intimately in Adventure; not only do they have that shared experience they intuitively understand, they also were able to start hanging out in day-to-day life and actually, well, socialize.

This applies to them in relation to the rest of the group as well. While neither of them were necessarily portrayed as having social problems, one common thread between the two is that they’re both very emotionally closed-in. Takeru’s response to negativity is to cover it up with smiles, until he can’t hide it anymore and bursts (which scares the hell out of Iori in 02 episode 19 and ultimately forms the basis of their Jogress arc), whereas Hikari has issues vocalizing whenever she’s hurt or in pain (said by herself in 02 episode 31, but with precedent from Adventure episode 48). That means that, even with potential social circles at school, it’s unlikely they necessarily would have had someone they could emotionally bond with deeply off the bat (especially since Takeru had just moved from Sangenjaya), and it’s likely why they kept gravitating towards each other (despite never truly talking about anything in-depth for most of the series) up until the Jogress arc.

In other words, while the Adventure kids’ adventure of self-actualization meant that their relationships to each other were mainly formed on simply understanding that they had a similar experience and empathizing, the 02 kids -- full of a group of somewhat socially maladjusted and out of place kids, plus two who had been on the prior adventure but were young enough to now still be carrying some deep-seated, unresolved emotional baggage -- were in a position where they arguably needed each others’ help to grow.

Jogress isn’t just an obligatory evolution gimmick; it’s something very important to 02 as a series and understanding what it wants to say about relationships. I think one thing that makes me very sad is how often its constant pigeonholing as a gimmick makes me hear people saying that Daisuke and Ken was the only plot-relevant one and the rest were forced “spares”, saying that something like Takeru-Hikari and Miyako-Iori would make more sense. But when the point of the series is about building your relationships from scratch and learning to grow together, I really don’t feel that a story about relationships that naturally existed already would have helped it nearly as much. It’s not like Daisuke and Ken was that likely of a friendship, either!

This is especially in the case of Takeru and Hikari, who certainly were vibing pretty well with each other, but were still very emotionally closed-in with a lot of emotional baggage until the more to-the-point Miyako and Iori were able to break through their shells. (02 episode 13 is so often considered a “Takeru and Hikari bonding” episode, but while it does do a lot to show off the depth of their relationship that hadn’t been depicted much besides them just hanging out all the time, it also does not solve Hikari’s core problem in nearly the same way Miyako gets to the bottom of it in episode 31.) This is also why Takeru and Hikari have such a different relationship with the 02 kids compared to theirs with the Adventure kids; while they were largely tagging along with the older kids and learning a bit about inner strength back during their summer adventure, the 02 group is the one who not only provided them with friendship on a more equal peer level, but also poked deeply into their emotional issues that they very much needed others to help them out of. These are friends who finally get them.

That Ken ultimately becomes yet another addition to this group of kids in need of friends finding support in each other should go without saying -- after all, it’s made abundantly clear he was very lonely and friendless until Daisuke and the others reached out to him -- but it ultimately culminates in them choosing to integrate this lonely boy from Tamachi into their social life. (Remember: Ken is the only of the six 02 kids to live in Tamachi and not Odaiba, but the last quarter of the series has them going out of their way to meet up.) The episode that establishes that everyone has truly made their peace with Ken and wants to unequivocally support him (with the most originally stubborn against it, Iori, graciously accepting him) is sealed off with a Christmas party. A completely ordinary Christmas party that has nothing to do with the Digimon incidents at hand, where they can play meaningless card games and celebrate the little things like Ken laughing, because it’s not just forgiving him or learning to work with him, but actively enjoying his presence and supporting him.

The Digimon Animation Chronicle profile for Ken in Diablomon Strikes Back refers to him as Daisuke’s “best friend” (親友). Usually, the word for “friends” within Adventure and 02 would be nakama (仲間); you may have heard this word from One Piece fans, but this is a word that roughly means “one of us” and has a stronger emphasis on being in a certain group, or being like-minded. Thus, “you’re a Chosen Child like us,” or, more pertinently, “you have the same goal as us and we’re in this together” (after all, it’s not like being a Chosen Child was ever an exclusive club or anything).

But in the case of Daisuke and Ken’s relationship, it’s not just about having happened to gain a deep bond over the course of 02, it’s that Daisuke now really does have a sense of emotional closeness to Ken that the two are considered best friends by default -- in any situation, despite him living all the way in Tamachi. Even though the franchise loves to put them in the category that “protagonists and rivals” usually get, where most others are ones who tend to have friction but understand each other in the end, Daisuke and Ken are unique in that they’re not like that at all. They have a very straightforward sense of emotionally confiding in each other, at worst maybe lightly bantering a bit, but they are friends before anything else, and that extends to the rest of the 02 group as well.

The aftermath

On its face, it sounds like the 02 kids are getting a pretty luxurious deal -- they got a fun adventure of emotional growth out of it, and they’re tight friends with each other at that! Well, that probably sounds great, but there’s a flip side to all of this.

Firstly, as I mentioned earlier, the Adventure kids’ adventure in 1999 was a lot more “romantic” than the 02 kids’ eight-month-long ordeal. Sure, a lot of it definitely was stressful, what with the running for their lives and the scary villains and the emotional conflict, but there was also the part about getting to meet Gennai and the other friendly Digimon around and getting to explore villages. They were on summer break, so they didn’t even really have to worry about school (especially once they realized time dilation was a thing); it’s basically the epitome of the romantic coming-of-age story. (Fun fact: Stand By Me is really culturally influential in Japan.)

02, on the other hand, was an eight-month-long ordeal of having to fight a territory war crammed into the after-hours of school, juggling fighting this war with keeping it from parents, in a fight that would retroactively turn out to be against what would later become a heavily traumatized and beloved friend, plus eventually watching him get subject to even worse trauma. Oh, and the series also ended on witnessing a bunch of deaths (or in other words, the worst New Year’s Eve ever). While it seemed like the kids had the luxury of enjoying the Digital World in ways the Adventure kids couldn’t at first, actually, they didn’t get to enjoy as much of it at all, since they never got to form any lasting relationships with anyone like Gennai or Elecmon. These kids were basically too busy trying to keep each others’ heads on straight to really be able to focus on that.

The comparative mess that the 02 kids went through, and the messes that they kind of are, means that they’re rather dependent on each other for emotional support. This is not inherently a bad thing, mind you; the fact that some people are more independent than others is a simple fact of life, and the 02 kids (whether it’s from naturally being a bit misfit or from the degree of their experiences) being the type who grow together with mutual support isn’t inherently anything bad. It does, however, mean that they’re likely to have some difficulties ahead coming out of 02 as “growing up” conspires to make it more and more difficult for them to stick together -- after all, how many people have actually been able to stick with their elementary school friends all the way into adulthood? This is especially because Japanese high schools admit students by examination, and rank by academic ability; it’s not particularly common for those from the same elementary/middle school to attend the same high school, even if they live close to each other, and it’s very unlikely that all of them will be sticking together in school by that point.

So, how did they fare?

Well, before we get into anything else, we should probably bring up one thing that seems like such a tiny little detail but is actually very important for this: Technology didn’t stagnate at 02′s D-Terminals, and by the time of Kizuna in 2010, smartphones and group chats existed! (Earlier than they did in real life, at that.) This is actually really important because of how much it does for that question of “how to keep in contact when circumstances like school keep you apart” -- especially when the Adventure group would certainly appreciate the method to keep in touch despite their lives largely getting increasingly separate. That, and even more so if other similar technological things like social media existed; there’s a lot of ways to keep in touch despite physical and circumstantial distance.

Of course, they’d been keeping in touch via email since 02, but a group chat is much lower pressure and actively encourages everyone to keep in touch; think about how useful group chats have been for connecting with your own longtime friends. It’s ambiguous whether the 02 group was privy to this particular chat from To Sora given that they were clearly on call for incidents like the Parrotmon one, but it’s also entirely possible that this is a room for The Ones Who Went on That One Adventure in August 1999, especially since they use the Crests as their icons, and the 02 group has their own (let’s be real, they totally would; think about how many Discord servers with overlapping people you might be in right now). This, combined with the fact that the Adventure and 02 groups seem to have formed a sort of recon squad for the increasing number of Digimon incidents in Tokyo, means that there are actually a lot more opportunities to stay involved with each other than ever before!

As it seems, the Adventure group does seem to be rather emotionally close to the point that Taichi is willing to reach out to Yamato simply to dump his emotional troubles about his future career prospects on him (despite them going to very different universities at this point). Yet, at the same time, there’s still a palpable sense of distance going on here, and a depiction of Taichi and Yamato having developed separate social lives and their own friend circles -- Taichi with Morikawa and Nemoto, and Yamato with Abe (their names come from the novel), who are also acquainted with each other enough to talk about career and worry about each other.

When Taichi and Yamato talk over beer, they don’t even have updates on the same people (Yamato has to update Taichi on Sora and Takeru’s status), and ultimately, Yamato comments on their drifting -- saying that it’s a potentially inevitable part of choosing one’s path. It’s not hard to see why he says this; it’s been a recurring theme for them since after the events of Adventure. Sora and Mimi haven’t been around for Digimon incidents lately because of their careers, and it’s highly likely Jou hasn’t either; Koushirou keeps in touch, but our only depictions have been in the range of business and Digimon incidents.

But for the 02 group? Absolutely not.

The Kizuna drama CD has a lot about what the 02 group was doing (and planning to do) during their little “vacation” in New York. In fact, there’s a lot to go on about here:

Daisuke and Takeru show up together even though Iori was allegedly said to be “first” approached, meaning the two of them were basically hanging out anyway.

Daisuke insists on going on a trip that’s about his own personal career with friends -- and not just any friends, but specifically the group of himself, Ken, Miyako, Iori, Takeru, and Hikari. He also wanted his seniors along, but they were too busy -- but it’s pointed out that the other 02 group members aren’t exactly full of free time either, meaning that these five have a special place of importance to Daisuke in his ramen career trip.

Even the Digimon are aware of what the other humans (the ones that aren’t even their partners!) have been up to lately.

Miyako and Hawkmon say that it’s only natural for them to show up when the group is getting together -- i.e. being with this specific company is a fact of life to her, to the point she invents D-3 gate exploitation to be with them.

The group keeps saying “it’s been a while” for periods of time in which it is made pretty obvious it’s actually not a lot of time at all. (Miyako had just left for Spain to the point her coming back elicits an “already?!” kind of reaction, yet that constitutes “a while”, and the most likely very short time between the trip planning and the movie is also apparently “a while”, and it’s very likely that Takeru’s “a while” in greeting Iori may well have not been that long, either.) It really makes you think about how often the people in this group must be meeting up to think that this constitutes “a while”...

Hikari is ready to fight people for denying her the chance to play with Miyako.

Beyond that, they’ve all apparently been regular enough presences in Daisuke’s life for completely offhand comments and actions to have major impacts on his career thoughts.

In the movie itself, Miyako refuses to take on the exact same request that she ultimately gladly participates in with the rest of the 02 group in New York -- presumably, because the fact her friends are there makes it all better.

As it turns out, despite everything -- despite everyone going in completely different directions with their careers, attending different schools (Iori’s still in high school while everyone else is in university!), the 02 group has been maintaining this attitude of going out of their way to hang out with each other, in a sort of “we do it together, or we don’t do it at all” sense. Of course, that’s not to say they’ve all stayed so socially maladjusted that they’ve become completely incapable of making any other friends at all, but there is a very clear, strong preference of them wanting to be in each other’s specific company to the point that they would do ridiculous things to make it work.

So, you might be asking: what’s the trade-off?

Yamato attributes the alienation between the Adventure group to “choosing one’s own path”. Inherently, this is not quite right (nor is the sentiment that “choices are bad” in general), especially considering that Daisuke, Iori, and Hikari already made their choices in path a long time ago, yet are still behaving like this. The question is actually more of priorities; notice that while the older Adventure characters are mainly portrayed in Kizuna as aggressively pursuing career prospects, the 02 characters, despite having their current educational statuses listed in their profiles, simply seem to have this as not an object.

Iori’s still in school uniform; he’s arguably cramming this all between school club obligations. Ken, Miyako, Takeru, and Hikari don’t have their current educational status involved at all, and even though Daisuke’s ramen trip is technically for his future career, he’s also happy to just “play around” about sightseeing (and, again, there’s also no reason he needed to bring his friends for this). Takeru’s working on his novel, but he hasn’t actually decided it’ll be his career yet. It’s not about whether they’ve made choices or not; it’s about the fact they’re going about this remarkably casually to the point where maintaining their relationship with their friends is more important than career. And this extends to the 02 epilogue as well; compared to their seniors’ more prominent history-making careers, the 02 group’s is more low-scale and community-oriented (the only exception being Sora, but even that ties into individual ambition more than anything else, considering that not succeeding her mother is already a pretty big deal in itself).

The take-home

Adventure and 02 are both very well-known for showcasing people with different personalities and goals in life, and celebrating their differences. I think, personally, the difference between the Adventure and 02 groups’ dynamics is also something that reflects on the different ways to live one’s life as well. This is especially something that most of us can probably understand well now that we’re adults looking back at this, especially in light of Kizuna.

There are some of us who really want to do large-scale things in this world, and will need that understanding of the self to get there but may struggle with maintaining consistent friendships on that turbulent path, and have to adapt by managing the different levels of their relationships and learning to get along with different people in different ways. There are some of us who gain happiness more from mutual support with the people around us even if it means not ostensibly achieving as “great” things, and feel most comfortable with a single consistent set of friends. Some of us are in between, or feel elements of both as we try to experiment with things in life (actually, I’m pretty sure that’s probably most of us to some degree).

Think about your own life and future prospects right now, and then think about the friends you may be in touch with, or haven’t been in touch with for a while, or the ones you talk to for different purposes or fulfill different niches in your life. We’re all trying to straddle this balance; there’s no one right way to live.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #kizuna spoilers

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imnotwolverine · 3 years

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Practical Magic

Summary: AU Practical Magic w/ Henry Cavill x Sally Owens. The Owens family is a fun family, witchy family, but also a cursed family; the men they fall in love with are doomed to an untimely death.

Author’s note: I rewatched the movie for the gazillionth time, and felt like writing something based on it. Witchy ways are my guilty pleasure, so.. get ready for some true love spells.❤️

Word count: 2.859

Disclaimer: magic and super natural activites, love potions and curses. Smidge of angst and alcohol use. And did I say fluff? There’s plenty-a-fluff.

Practical Magic

‘So will you marry me now?’ Henry teased, kissing Sally on the cheek. Sally playfully pouted.

‘You leave me no choice! Look at that grass! Just..’ She dramatically outstretched her hands as if he just performed the greatest deed ever. ‘..would you look at that Kal!’ The large akita couldn’t be bothered to look up as he lay on the freshly mown grass, his large maw chewing on a dog bone. Sally continued: ‘Look. At. That. I have never seen such perfectly cut grass in..my..’

Henry looped his arms around her waist and raised an eyebrow as Sally’s attention wavered. ‘Yes dear?’ He smiled.

Sally's eyes widened as she watched something move behind Henry’s back.

‘Gilly!?’ She gasped.

‘SALMON!’ Another voice responded.

Before Henry could see Sally’s sister Gillian step through the garden gate, Sally had already escaped his arms. With a bound of squeals and laughter the sisters flew into each other’s arms. Dark brown and red hair mingled as the wind lipped around with equal joy. Years it had been. And here they were, reunited.

‘Gillian.’ He whispered, slightly defeated. The fiery Owens sister somehow always brought bad news with her, and though she was ever the lovely thing, he couldn’t help but feel it was a bad omen that she had returned after her “greatest adventure of her entire life”.

What about his greatest adventure of his entire life? With a sigh he turned his lips up in a smile, waiting for the ginger gem of a woman to fly into his arms too.

‘OOPH! Look at how you have GROWN!’ Gillian unwrapped herself from his stiff embrace and smiled with childlike joy.

‘Why..thank you Gillian.’ Henry grunted.

‘Oh please!’ She laughed and poked his arm.

‘Now, where’s my two favourite nieces of the whole wide world?!’

‘At school.’ Sally smiled. ‘But I’m sure they can’t wait to hear that their favourite aunty has returned so...’ Sally’s eyes quickly flitted towards Henry.. ‘..soon.’

The day was filled with bouncing-off-the-walls children and an even more excited Gillian. Stories were there in abundance, and for a moment Sally and Henry wondered if ever she’d shut up. Well she did, eventually. The long trip from Los Angeles had finally managed to tame the feisty maiden and after a round of shots - which were truly necessary according to Gillian - Gillian headed for bed.

‘Wew.’ Henry settled back on a kitchen chair after he finished the last of the dishes.

‘You can say that.’ Sally yawned, shaking her head in disbelief, also settling down. ‘She didn’t even text me.’

‘You think she’s in trouble?’

‘My sister?’ Sally chuckled. ‘Always.’

Henry leaned forward and reached for Sally’s hands that lay atop the oak table. Here in this cute small rural home he still always seemed a little out of place with his hunky chunk, dream boat physique. And yet he was still very much here, father to her children. The self-labeled “average girl” Sally couldn’t believe it.

With hesitant fingers she wrapped her hands around his.

‘You don’t want her to stay.’

Henry shook his head. ‘I’m not saying that. I’m just...maybe..we need some ground rules.’

Sally nodded. ‘I guess we do.’

‘Something the matter sweetie? You’ve been so quiet all day?’

‘No, nothing. It’s...’ Sally shrugged and looked at their interlocked hands. For a moment she wondered what would trigger it. The thing. The goddamned curse that she knew was lurking. For a few years she had nearly forgot. But then came Gillian and she was reminded again that she wasn’t entirely normal. That this couldn’t be.

And Henry didn’t know.

‘It’s nothing.’

The next day Henry woke to an empty bed, leaving him the time to yawn and stretch with the knowledge that Sally had taken the morning turn for breakfast and school prep for the kids.

But no more was true. With a loud yelp and whine heard from the garden, Henry shot up from the bed. It was Kal. And Kal rarely made such noises. With a leap and bound Henry rushed to the window, hands pulling open the curtains.

Down on the lawn, a red headed woman waved her hands about like she was dancing. Gillian. But even more interesting was Kal bouncing up and down on the grass, trying his best to reach something that..that.. Henry focused his vision a little better. It floated. The goddamn dog bone was floating.

Henry blinked and yet it still was there until Sally came storming out the house and the bone fell like gravity had found its course again.

The glass of the window muddled the sounds, but from the way Sally was pounding into Gillian with an accusative hand, Henry realised one thing; he was right. He was right all along. All those years, he knew something was a little off. The dishes were always done too fast when it was Sally’s turn. And though nobody ever touched the cloth iron, nothing everything wrinkled. And the roses. The goddarn impossibly perfect roses that Sally never seemed to touch with one hand. Neighbours had commented on it so often, he had to come up with the most ridiculous of excuses.

Was it...was this..? He saw the women look up at his window and he waved at them awkwardly. Sally frowned and Gillian waved excitedly.

..something like magic?

Sally avoided him like the plague, and yet she knew she had to get this conversation over with sooner than later. Henry wasn’t a fool. And the way he had tried to get a word in after breakfast before leaving for work, made her know that she had to talk to him.

She hated it.

The whole situation was anything but “practical”, like her aunts so dearly would call it. Magic was giving her a plain old headache as she stood here in her sunroom, tending to her African Violets. The late afternoon sun was hot and outside she saw Gillian stretched out on a blanket, a book holding her fickle attention for the moment.

Why was Gillian even here? Even with all the chatter going on last night, not a word was spelled on why. Why, why, why!

A wet nose planted itself in her elbow and with a little gasp she awoke from her daydream. It was Kal. Henry’s trusty four-pawed friend, meaning Henry had likely returned from grocery shopping.

‘I’m home!’ - yep, there he was.

Sally bit her lip and gave in. It was time for the talk. With silent steps she traced back to the kitchen where a truckload of paper bags stood, the food within them ready to be unloaded into the pantry and kitchen cabinets.

Bent over one of them was Henry, his eyes clearly trying their best to not look at Sally directly.

Sally halted in the doorway. ‘Hey.’

Henry looked up as if surprised. ‘Hey you.’ A sweet smile formed on his lips - ever the actor.

Sally wet her lips and looked at Henry’s hands as they fumbled just the way they always did when he was nervous or stressed. The paper bag beneath his touch crumpled.

‘Ugh...’ She let her shoulders droop, knowing there was no way out of this. ‘I don’t even know where to begin.’ With a sweep of the hand she made a few of the bags float up in the air. Henry blinked, but tried to hold his surprise as he raised to his feet. His Adam’s apple bobbed nervously as he watched the bags float before him mid-air.

‘Are you going to kill me now?’ He swallowed.

‘What?!’ Sally gasped. ‘NO! No-no-no-no-no.’ With hasted steps she got closer to Henry and pushed the bags to gently drop down on the kitchen counter next to Henry. It was like they had never floated mid-air at all.

He leaned back against the kitchen cabinets, but didn’t flee. With a gentle hand Sally touched his chest. Could she get rid of him before he too would find his untimely death? She looked at where her fingers slightly sank into the soft grey material of his tee. ‘No..’ She whispered.

‘Please tell me that was some fancy little trick with strings and..’ Henry folded a hand over hers and squeezed it slightly.

‘Eh..yea..no.’ Sally scrunched up her nose as if tasting a sour fruit. ‘Unfortunately.. it’s not that. It’s..’ She finally dared to look back up into his eyes. His blue eyes were the size of saucers, yet there also spoke some quiet plea of hope there.

‘Did you ever use it on me?’

Sally immediately shook her head. ‘No. I did not. Please! I never wanted this to get in between us. I...I don’t know why I never..never..’ Her eyes teared up slightly as the whole situation seemed to fall down upon itself.

He would die, wouldn’t he? She could feel it in her nervously fluttering heart. It had been fluttering more and more of late - especially when he teased about marriage.

‘I’ll never fall in love Gilly. That, I swear.’

‘But what if you do?’

‘I can’t. I just swore it!’

Gillian chuckled and shook her pigtailed head, legs hanging from the garden swing. ‘Then I swear that you’ll do!’

‘Sal?’ Henry waved a hand before her eyes.

‘Yea! I’m here. I’m here.’ Half-automatically she turned to pick up groceries.

‘Sally look at me.’

Sally turned back to him.

‘Is it ..magic--?’

‘HEyyyyy there you two are. Oh look at ALL THAT FOOD.’ Gillian gasped. With the clip of slippered feet she waltzed into the kitchen. A pair of sunglasses was tipped off her nose as she smiled down at the groceries. ‘I know just what we’re going to cook tonight!’ Gillian exclaimed.

Sally rolled her eyes and turned to look at her sister.

‘What?’ Gillian asked, as if completely unaware she was intruding.

Sally wiped away a stray tear on her cheek. ‘Mom’s soup?’ she sniffled.

Gillian stepped in and wrapped her arms around Sally and Henry, squeezing them until they were all cozied up in the small kitchen corner. ‘Oh I missed you all so much!’

Sally sighed and also wrapped an arm around her sister, her eyes just managing to find Henry’s behind the waving sea of red locks that had pushed in between the two of them.

‘Later.’ She mouthed.

Henry bit his lip, but remained quiet. He had just found out his loving partner of four years was a ..witch? Wizardess? What would he even call her? With hesitant eyes he looked at the bags that stood dormant on the kitchen counter. No strings were there to be seen.

This. Was. Real.

‘Alright.’ Gillian plopped back down on the couch. She looked truly smug with her self-satisfied little smile. ‘Told you. Fifteen minutes and they’re down. Snug as bugs in fluffy little rugs.’

Sally peeked at Henry, who sat up from his chair in the corner of the small living room. A small fire was lit in the fireplace and glasses of red wine littered the coffee table. It felt perfectly homely, were it not for there to be one ginormous elephant to float around in the room.

‘Will the girls be able to do it too?’ Henry hesitantly shifted his gaze from Sally to Gillian. Gillian raised her eyebrows.

‘Get their children to sleep in fifteen? Maybe..’

‘No..’ Sally interjected. ‘Gil...he saw. I told you he saw it. He..he knows.’

‘What?!’

‘I told you not to and..’

They both looked at Henry, who reached for his wine glass. Even after reading fantasy books all his life, it was still very, very unnerving to have two witchy women right here before him. What could they even do?

‘Well he didn’t run yet.’ Gillian snickered and also reached for her wineglass.

‘Do I need to?’ Henry tried to smile, but Sally saw it didn’t reach his eyes. He was one nervous boy. Kal, on the other hand was one sleepy boy. Right before Henry’s feet lay the sleeping Akita, softly snoring as the logs in the fireplace crackled.

The two sisters shared a look.

Henry turned his full attention to Sally. ‘Do I?’

‘I-I don’t want you to.’ Sally shook her head and new tears started to form.

‘Oh no...please don’t cry.’ Gillian scrunched up her face and watched as Henry moved to Sally in two strides, his thumbs finding her tears before they could tumble don’t her cheeks.

‘Hey. Don’t cry. I’m not mad, okay? Confused yes, but..’ He ushered her to scoot to the side on the loveseat and he squeezed himself right next to her. ‘..I’m sure we’ll get through it. Hey love. Sshh..’

‘I’m sorry. It’s just..so stupid.’ Sally sniffled and quickly wiped away another tear.

Gillian watched as the two lovers hugged the tears away and with large gulps of her wine she soon was some two full glasses ahead. It was then she decided they needed something better. Something stronger.

‘I’ve got an idea!’ She exclaimed, jumping up from her chair and moving to the large cabinet in the far corner. With a knowledgeable hand she moved over the upper right edge, and surely enough she found the key that led to the booze that was hidden inside.

‘Gotcha!’ She grinned, swinging open the door and grabbing for a large bottle of gin. ‘Tonic in the freezer?’ She asked, rushing past while placing the bottle on the table.

Sally blinked and wished to sit up, but Henry stopped her. ‘Just let her. It’s probably a very good idea. Brew me one of your love potions or something.’

Sally pouted and playfully poked his arm. ‘Don’t joke about that.’

‘So you DID use a love potion on me, hmm?’

‘What? No! Absolutely not. Which is perhaps why I’m still a bit confused to why you like me so much.’

Henry smiled and wiped a bit of hair out of her face. ‘But will our kids be able to do it too..you think?’

Sally looked into his eyes. If the curse continued on: definitely yes. They’d practise magic. And he would die. This beautiful blue eyed man with his rough-gentle hands and his impeccable lawn mowing skills. He would..find that untimely death.

‘Maybe, maybe not.’ Sally mumbled, looking up as Gillian returned with a tray full with glasses filled with icecubes and a bottle of tonic.

‘Let’s do this!’ She cheered.

Hours passed. Drinks were drunk. Smiles were shared. And as Sally felt rosiness tease her cheeks, she saw Henry study Gillian.

‘Say Gil - Gillian.’

Gillian looked up.

‘What would make this woman next to me fall in such deep love that she’d marry me?’

Gillian laughed a touch too loud. ‘Oh Henry. You’re a funny one. You do know love potions wear off right?’

‘I don’t.’

‘But then there’s of course the curse and..’

Sally stiffened but Gillian laughed on. Henry had no idea this was no longer some silly joking about.

Gillian continued. ‘Man even I have to suffer for it. You know I met this great guy in LA. The best. And..fuck Sal.’ She looked at Sally who still sat curled up with Henry on the loveseat.

‘I think I love him.’

‘You do.’ Sally said quietly. Little cogs and wheels started to turn in her head and Henry finally caught on.

‘Is that why you won’t marry me? A curse?’ His voice remained light due to the excessive alcohol that had lightened their spirits, but his eyes were still sharp. Sally sat up a bit and looked into his eyes.

‘Yea. Or I think it is.’

‘You can lift curses right?’ Henry asked.

‘So I was thinkin!’ Gillian interjected. ‘So I was reading a bit. Yea I know. Paint me surprised - The one and only Gillian Owens.. reading. Ha! But.. Sal I think there’s a way.’ Gillian pushed off her chair and nearly toppled over on her unsteady legs. But, after a tiny swerve she managed to get to Sally and Henry, where she squatted down, one palm turned up towards Sally’s face.

‘Remember this?’

A thin scar ran over her palm, which was similar to the scar that was there on Sally’s palm. With a raised eyebrow, Sally also turned up her palm. ‘Sure.’

Gillian’s lips slowly turned up into a wide grin.

‘What?’ Sally asked. She didn’t catch what Gillian meant.

‘Oh bloody hell.’ Henry grumbled. ‘Do you need my blood for this too or what?’

Gillian smiled at him. ‘Would you do that for love?’

‘What? NO! GIL! You can never use humans under influence!’ Sally shot up, but Gillian already sat back.

‘I know you silly Sally. But I’ve been reaching out to the aunties with my ideas and I think..just maybe..’ She looked at one of the windows where a near full moon shone. ‘Hallow’s eve this year, might be spectacularly practical.’

Sally looked back at her palm and then Henry.

Not even after all this ridicule and weirdness had he flinched an inch. Instead he smiled. Truly this time. Even his eyes.

‘So you want to be with a weird witch like me for the rest of your days huh?’

‘I’d be cursed if I wouldn’t.’ He smiled, and kissed her sweetly.

General tagsquad: @harrysthiccthighss @tumblnewby @magdelen69 @thereisa8ella @darkbooksarwin @summersong69 @madbaddic7ed @luclittlepond @maroonmolly @just-a-normal-fangirl18 @hell1129-blog @agniavateira @tillthelandslide @elinesama @maddyreads14

#henry cavill fanfiction #practical magic #practical magic au #henry cavill x sally owens #owens sisters #witchy fic #let me indulge a little

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dangan-meme-palace · 4 years

Text

Analysis – Kokichi's Plan in Chapter 4

The concept, the execution, and the failure.

Before we start, it's my personal recommendation that you read this analysis before rewatching the chapter 4 trial, and then reading it as you rewatch it. Unfortunately, due to tumblr limiting the number of pictures I can put in a single post, I've decided to refrain from adding screenshots as I just have too many I want to add. However, my points are evidenced by the trial itself if you watch carefully with them in mind, and so I'm encouraging you to do so. Please, please do so.

Concept

By my analysis, Kokichi's plan was to implicate himself as the culprit and for Gonta to get away with the murder in order to mercy kill the rest of the students and save them from despair.

Kokichi mentions this much before and after the trial, most people remembering the moments after and not the moments before; probably because between subtle admittance and loud screaming and crying, you'll remember the screaming and crying more. This analysis is based on the fact that his words pre- and post-trial are true, which is backed by several canon instances and also it just makes sense.

Execution

Now! This plan required a few things to work:

It required Kokichi to make everyone hate and be suspicious of him

It required Gonta to cooperate

It required Kokichi to be able to get around Shuichi's deductive reasoning in some way

It required a majority of the class to vote for Kokichi

If that wording seems specific, it's because it is!

I'll be talking about each major component of this plan and how each factor (almost) worked together to create a perfect storm + when, how, and why this plan failed despite quite frankly being a fantastic display of Kokichi's talent as the Ultimate (Supreme) Leader.

The 1st component is pretty much accomplished before the chapter even begins, he is a self-proclaimed liar that annoys people regularly after all, but in order for the 3rd and 4th components to really work he needed to sink his reputation even lower. He does this in a multitude of ways both before and during the trial: making sinister faces or looking nervous at appropriate times, antagonizing everyone (but most importantly Gonta and Kaito), and just in general being a lying nuisance that no one really wants to listen to.

The 2nd component was accomplished inside the Virtual World... and then immediately undone as soon as Gonta logged out due to a couple of crossed wires. The fact that Gonta forgot remaining undiscovered by everyone (including Kokichi) until two-thirds of the way through the trial is important to how the plan failed and adds perspective in areas, but I'll hold off on explaining why until it's time to talk about it in-depth. Make a mental note and let's move on.

The 3rd component explains why during the investigation every single surviving member of the cast told Shuichi that they trusted him but then when we get really into the trial we start seeing them doubt him immensely, Kaito being among the people that doubted Shuichi the most. Why is that? How did everyone go from relying on Shuichi to thinking for themselves and doubting his reasoning, and what does it have to do with Kokichi? It's simple: Kokichi lead the others into doing so.

We see this a lot during the investigation period, or at least the prep work of it. Kokichi constantly encourages the others to say things like: "We can't leave this all to Shuichi, we have to work hard too!" by telling them that they should all rely on Shuichi and to never doubt his judgment. Kokichi was using his bad reputation to make them come to a conclusion that is the exact opposite of what he said. More on that a little later as well!

Kokichi knows his reputation, he's the one that made it that way after all, and frequently you will see him use it to his advantage. Whether he's trying to cover up an emotional outburst or he's trying to make someone admit something, you will often see him use his reputation as someone untrustworthy to lead conversations in subtle ways.

I use the word "lead" with great emphasis as that is his Talent. He is the very best of the best at leading people; The Ultimate (Supreme) Leader. When he wants someone to think a certain way or do something they end up doing it whether they realize it or not, because he is extremely talented in his field. I cannot stress enough how good this man is at leading conversations and people into going where he wants them to go. Oh shit back to the point–!

During this time we also see Kokichi acting strange, so strange that Shuichi mentions it four times in his internal dialogue. Following him, being helpful, offering advice and hints... it seems nice until you realize his intention wasn't to become good partners with Shuichi, but to instead ruin Shuichi's reputation with the others by having them associate Shuichi with Kokichi, who they already hate thanks to component 1.

During the trial you'll see this subtle manipulation working as soon as Kokichi starts calling Shuichi partner and making Shuichi agree with his points, putting on a false show of partnership. To the others it seemed that Shuichi was picking Kokichi over all of his friends even when Shuichi himself tries to explain otherwise, and this is absolutely no coincidence.

Kaito is especially affected by this because Kaito and Kokichi are sworn enemies, and in Kaito's mind, Shuichi just picked his enemy over him. It really hurt him to be "betrayed" like this, causing Kaito to turn his back on Shuichi despite the numerous promises that he would never do such a thing he made prior to this trial. Kokichi really focuses on breaking their friendship too, interrupting Shuichi multiple times when he tries to tell Kaito that it's not personal and making sinister faces while saying that Shuichi is his partner now, taunting and gloating to Kaito's face about the loss of his sidekick. Breaking them apart was actually key to how Kokichi used Kaito's influence to his advantage in component 4.

Focus on Kaito aside, everyone else also refuses to agree with Kokichi –and Shuichi by association– which means that no matter what Shuichi says or how hard he tries to prove it, as long as Kokichi interrupts him and spins the story to make it look like he was somehow involved in that deduction, no one will agree with Shuichi no matter how much logic he throws at them. He has placed Shuichi's deductions in a permanent state of check. No matter what Shuichi says or does, Kokichi can and will get in the way of it immediately to control the narrative of the trial.

During this time Kokichi also says that Gonta is the culprit and I know that it tripped a lot of people up so I'll elaborate on what he was doing before we get to the next component. You have to remember that Kokichi's style of lying for this trial has predominantly been him saying the exact opposite of what he means in order to make the others do it. If Kokichi says "go left" they will all go right, that is how he uses his reputation. Notice how when he says Gonta is the culprit everyone's immediate reaction is to defend Gonta and persecute Kokichi even more than they were before, effectively framing himself by making it look like he was framing Gonta. When looking at Kokichi's lies it is sometimes essential to analyze the reaction he got than the lie on it's own because what he wants out of people is just as important as what he says to make them do it.

This leads into the 4th component: Kokichi getting the majority vote.

Kaito unquestionably holds the most influence in the trial after Shuichi loses all of his, gaining more by spearheading the hate campaign against Kokichi, and because of this everyone almost lost their lives in a mass execution.

After Shuichi's reputation in the eyes of the others is seen as being led astray and therefore less trustworthy, Kaito is the one that causes and loudly encourages everyone to rally against Kokichi, and by extension, doubt Shuichi's deductions. Kaito doing this more out of a hatred/distrust of Kokichi than anything related to Shuichi, with the rest following suit because they can't trust Kokichi, who they've been lead to hate so much in this trial by both Kaito and, unbeknownst to them, Kokichi. Kokichi essentially created his own witch hunt, with the cast's irrational anger without proof almost leading to a false conviction.

Allow me to further emphasize the fact that everyone but Shuichi was convinced that "Kokichi was a cold-hearted murderer trying to frame poor Gonta for his own crimes." Also allow me to remind you that according to the rules you don't need everyone to vote for the same person in order to win, you just need a majority. Kokichi had that majority and was about to "win" the trial.

...So why didn't he?

Failure

Two. Crossed. Wires.

That's it. All it took was one little piece to be out of place and Kokichi's astonishingly brilliant strategy crumbled in an instant. Allow me to clarify:

Everyone remembers the moment when Kokichi yelled at Gonta, right? The big, bad moment? That one? Good. I'm about to explain to you what Kokichi was thinking while he yelled.

In Kokichi's mind, his plan was almost complete. He had done the impossible! Everything had gone according to keikaku! He had gotten Gonta's cooperation, he made everyone blame him, he made everyone stop listening to the Ultimate Detective, all that was left was for Gonta to condemn him in front of the others and they would all vote for the wrong man. That one little nudge at this very crucial turning point and the plan would finally be complete, his effort made to bear fruit...

Except... Gonta never condemned Kokichi with any sort of evidence, all he said was "I don't know!" and "I didn't do it!" Gonta was about to trip them at the finish line and so Kokichi, as subtly as he could, told Gonta to blame him, the "culprit". Once, twice, a third time... he really tried to explain to Gonta what he was meant to do without alerting the others. It didn't even have to be true, as long as Gonta denounced Kokichi with even the slightest bit of evidence, the others were in enough of a frenzy to believe anything that pinned Kokichi as the culprit. Still, Gonta doesn't catch the hints from his collaborator. How could he? He didn't remember ever becoming partners in the first place. However, Kokichi doesn't know that and gets very frustrated that Gonta is about to throw away their one ticket to stopping the game, so he screams "Just make up an excuse or whatever" in his anger, still trying to get his point across. Gonta can't fuck up now. This is their only shot. Despite this, once more Gonta doesn't know what's going on and misses his cue.

Shuichi finally notices this as well, coming to the conclusion that Gonta's avatar had been the one with the error. Kokichi quickly realizes that his partner isn't available to him anymore, his memories lost in a bundle of wires and code. The moment is over, the frenzy has cooled off by the time Shuichi was done explaining and there was no way for him to lead the conversation again after ruining his own reputation like that. The plan failed.

All because of two little wires.

From here on out we see Kokichi visibly withdraw. There isn't anything left for him to do but complete the trial and think of a new plan. He's less motivated than before, insults everyone less than before, offers his input less than before, and generally seems like he can barely keep up his facade. You can't blame him though, with everything that happened that day and the fact that it was all in vain anyway really must have taken it's toll on Kokichi. From his friend trying to kill him to trying and failing to plan around his own murder to orchestrate and get away with a mass mercy kill... it's an unbelievable understatement to say he was having a bad day.

He speeds the trial up as much as he can with Kaito stubbornly getting in the way, forcing Shuichi to cross everyone off the suspect list except for Gonta, the unwitting blackened. Whether it was out of pity for Gonta's confusion or just him wanting the trial to be over already due to emotional exhaustion, or perhaps even both, doesn't neccesarily matter. Shuichi ends the trial regardless, and it's all over. Kokichi wasn't able to save anyone from despair and two of his friends died for nothing. He has no one to rely on now and no one left would ever consider letting him close to them. Roll credits... until he comes up with a new plan moments after Gonta is executed because if there is one thing about Kokichi you can always bet on, it's his quick wit.

Afterword

Now that we're at the end, I would like to make something very clear because with how much emphasis I put on Kokichi's capabilities as a leader I'm worried that I might be misunderstood.

I do not believe Gonta was manipulated into murdering Miu. Canon proves that Gonta was a willing collaborator due to external factors not relating to Kokichi's talent as a Leader, but instead because of despair and his own desire to protect everyone and that's that.

It's not really related to this anaylsis, however if I see someone using my own analysis to try and prove that Kokichi was anything but friends with Gonta I will go apeshit. Do not fucking do that.

#kokitea #danganronpa analysis #drv3 analysis #kokichi analysis #not sure what to tag this because i dont wanna put it in the main tags...#sorry for the sheer length of the post and the fact that im unable to add a read more because im on mobile #its not d1sc 0urs3 and its not criticism so idk what i should tag this as

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traumatized-motherfuckers · 3 years

Text

Stress-based sickness, psychosomatic disorders, and the F word. Fibromyalgia.

Read up or listen up @t-mfrs.com (podcast available wherever you stream.)

Waking up, like I didn’t sleep for weeks. Falling asleep after five minutes on my feet. A pounding head. That sense of dread. Sticky sharp pains through in my shoulders and neck. Brain short on energy, missing a few cards from the deck. Waves of nausea and stomach cramps. Chills and sweats, depending on the body amps. Swollen lymph nodes. Muscle weakness poorly bodes. Insatiable hunger but nothing sounds edible - shit, now desire to throw up is incredible. Eyes shriveling, dry, back into my skull. The aches in my legs, pulsing and dull. Foggy thoughts. Racing heart. When will this end, why did this start?

Did I finally catch the ‘rona? Or am I just past my limit for being stressed out again? Well, I just moved, so this time I know that the answer is very likely… stressed.

So who wants to talk about getting sick? Yeah, among this group, the answer might be surprising. A lot of us do.

Why? Not because we love bitching and complaining when we feel less than ideal - spoilers, that’s every day, there’s really nothing left to say about the raging shit storms inside of us after a few years of it. We’re tired of hearing about it, too… just like we’re tired of living it, feeling it, and fearing it.

No, for us, it’s because it feels like there’s always a surprising ailment right around the corner when we least expect it. One that seemingly has no logical basis or reasonable solution. One that no one else understands. One that feels like it’s born of mental illness, somehow, while being very physically present. One that we don’t even bother bringing to doctors anymore, because no one needs to be shamed and shoved out the door again by their flippant disinterest in anything we say after the words, “Yes, I have anxiety.”

Yep. If you haven’t tried to mingle mental health with western medicine before, let me give you a quick disclaimer: unless you’re missing an arm, don’t bother. In my experience, the only thing you’ll get is an eye roll, possibly a prescription bandaid that somehow makes you feel worse, and a bored recommendation to see a psychiatrist - even if you already do.

All of this, of course, has the effect of only making you feel more upset. First, mentally, as you ruminate over the disrespect of essentially being called a liar just because the doctor doesn’t have enough training. Then, physically, as your increased stress and systemic arousal pushes your body into a new level of overdrive.

Oh, was it a mindfuck just to make the doctor appointment, get yourself there, and deal with the social anxiety of a waiting room for 30-120 minutes? I bet it felt great for someone to then invalidate your health concerns, recommend you calm down, and send you out the door without even looking you in the eye. Feeling more upset, now on a highly emotional basis? Enjoy the shame, hypertension, and lost sleep, as if you needed any more of that.

Today, I want to talk about the stress-central area of my health that hasn’t been completely figured out… and the label that I - embarrassingly - just recently learned is highly applicable to my physical condition.

But also, the outrage that I feel over said label, because, well, it explains nothing. In fact, if anything, it probably does all of us a huge disservice after we’re granted this diagnosis by pushing us into the express lane for being written off. It also separates two issues that are poorly explained, rather than combining them into one full picture that might actually yield answers. Oh, and should I mention that I think this is a larger problem of gender bias in the healthcare system? Yeah, why the fuck not. Might as well air all my grievances as a nice lead-in to another upcoming episode; is mental illness diagnosis skewed by gender?

I don’t want to let my pounding head and aching shoulders deter me too much, so let’s just get started.

History of ailments

I’ve talked about this before, but to briefly cover how fucked up this body is… let’s take a trip back to 2013 when my system failed me out of the blue. And by “out of the blue,” I mean that I had chronically overworked myself running on anxiety, obligation, and starvation for 2 years, leading to physiological revolt.

So, looking back, “duh.”

But at the time? This was all-new. It was crisis-inducing and beyond comprehension that I went from a perfectly healthy, physically resilient, surprisingly strong and low maintenance specimen to a chronically pained, systemically ill, digestively impaired, and constantly exhausted sack of wallowing self-hated.

After a lifetime of zero health concerns, I found myself bedridden and obsessed with every weird thing my body was doing to me. Which, as you’ve probably guessed, came hand in hand with the new weird things my brain was doing to me.

You’ve probably heard the “What IS CPTSD?” episode by now, so I’m guessing you’re not a stranger to the details about the common emergence of complex trauma symptoms. Yes, that’s based on a lot of research, but it’s also a throwback to my own experience. I was a long time depression and anxiety lurker, first time complex trauma contributor around age 23, when my brain was suddenly uprooted by a series of new social and therapy-based traumas.

My depression became debilitating negative self-regard and stronger suicidal ideation. Suddenly, my social anxiety became agoraphobia. My new health issues became topics of obsessive and intrusive thoughts… you know, when I wasn’t ruminating about my role in every trauma, my worthlessness as a human, and my recently-unsettled childhood memories. My early twenties were a great time.

And with all the mental strain, came the unresolvable insomnia. Which fed right into the health problems. Which circled back to spark more mental duress. Health anxiety is not a fun way to live.

So, to call my illnesses psychosomatic is completely appropriate. But, also, completely insulting when a western medicine practitioner utters the phrase as if it was a turd slowly coming out the wrong end. And that’s exactly what happened every time I tried to seek help.

To be clear - back in the day I had some very easily detectable physical problems. I understand that doctors have a difficult job when it comes to interpreting the immeasurable inner experiences that their patients detail, but that wasn’t entirely the case here. When your body stops digesting food, well, there’s some evidence to prove that it’s a fact. When a 96oz medical grade laxative used for colonoscopy prep results in zero percent colon cleanse… uh… somebody isn’t doing their duty (pun intended). And boy, did my digestive system just decide that it was DONE doing its only job.

Everything I ate seemed to spark unpleasant physical responses, but moving materials through my guts and extracting nutrients wasn’t one of them. After months of garbage disposal failure, I was basically a walking sewer mixed with a compost pile. I found myself chronically starving, exhausted, puffy, distended, intestinally inflamed, and generally sickly. Your body doesn’t fare so well when it has no sustenance, it turns out.

At the same time, or maybe slightly predating my digestive protests, I started getting ill in weird ways. Things I had never experienced before started popping up, like chronic respiratory tract infections, sinus infections, and gum infections. I was having what seemed like allergic responses to something in my inner or outer environment. I was often covered in hives or my face and stomach were inflating like balloons for no apparent reason. I had near-constant pain in my continually-locked shoulders and neck. My actual skin, itself, hurt, as if I was being stretched to the brink of bursting. My lifelong migraines transformed into something new - disorienting tension migraines that came with horrifying loss-of-vision auras and feverish shakes.

Generally speaking, I was so tired all the time that I could barely get out of bed for more than a few moments before retreating back to my safe place to feel like garbage. My limbs felt like someone had tied weights to them and extracted several major muscle groups. I struggled even showering or washing my face, because both required holding my arms up higher than I was capable of enacting. I was so deliriously tired that I couldn’t see straight, think, or complete basic tasks.

On top of giving up my impressive life trajectory in the aftermath of the physical breakdown - because I was too fucking exhausted to consider the next steps I needed to take for grad school - this is also where I’ve previously mentioned my drive-aphobia coming into play. When you can’t count on your own faculties, you definitely don’t want to be behind the wheel. And suddenly, life gets very restricted.

I gave up my… anything life trajectory at that point. I went from a wildly social and focused student with a fantastic sense of humor about life and stronghold of self-determination to… Hiding indoors. Keeping isolated. Obsessing over my health. Googling the most embarrassing things late at night. Having no answers. Feeling like a crazy person. Hating myself. Fearing that this was the end. Assuming that my future was over. Guilting myself for fucking up my past. Replaying my tragic story of a rapid flight and a crash, after everything I had fought so hard to accomplish. Giving up.

This is riiiiight about where I pull most of my inspiration for talking about living in perpetual “trauma states” from. Being consistently triggered, out of control, and terrified. Having no answers and no one to even ask. Watching mental illness take over my world without the slightest clue of what was happening. And, oh, the perpetual torment of unpredictable physical breakdowns.

Everyday a new surprise. Every moment the opportunity for a shocking change in vitality. Every night a battle of my brain versus my chronic pains versus sleep.

And so it persisted, throughout 2013 and into several later years… despite the fact that I actually came up with an answer for myself that vastly improved a good part of the sickness struggle... but definitely didn’t fix it all.

Finding AN answer

I’m sure I’ve already mentioned this, too… but eventually I found some respite in my health struggles through no help from modern medicine. In fact, I helped myself thanks to familial clues when I decided to exclusion-diet my way into an answer. My grandpa had celiac’s disease long before it was trendy and I decided gluten was a logical place to start. And what do you know? That helped about 60% of my ailments.

So began years of obsessing over figuring out the gluten free life. Which, contrary to popular opinion, fucking sucks. I get that it became a trendy idea at exactly the wrong point in my life, but goddamnit, I hate the question, "Are you ACTUALLY gluten free, or is it by choice?" It is not a dietary walk in the park when essentially every item is contaminated with some form or another of secret sauce and your body is going to flip out at the slightest dusting.

I remember being so distraught over having these drastic dietary considerations to figure out on my own that I would spontaneously break down into tears in all sorts of places - the fridge, the grocery store, restaurants, social contexts when people kindly asked, “how about you choose where to eat this time.” I can’t choose! I can’t eat anything! I would privately bawl to myself. What a fun time that was.

But that was not nearly the end of it.

It turned out, yes, entirely cutting the glutens helped immensely. I also realized that sugar was not my friend. In fact, processed anything was not going to have a great outcome. But then… there was this other weird pattern that I started noticing in my life… sometimes I was pretty healthy and (relatively speaking) happy with the way things were going off-wheat. But sometimes I was just as sickly and digestively screwed when I definitely hadn’t consumed anything questionable. As if other tried and true components of my diet randomly became gluten analogs that upset me just as much.

Plus, there were some ailments that just never seemed to go away. The insomnia was a persistent problem that stretched back to being about 5 years old, but got more severe with time. The aches and pains in my neck and shoulders only worsened, no matter how many tennis balls I rolled on, yoga classes I attended, or muscle relaxers I popped. The exhaustion came and went with connections to my mental health and diet, but not directly related to bready food items. The brain fog didn’t clear up when I had a strictly regimented diet. The tension migraines never fully returned from where they came.

I was still finding myself bedridden and ready to give up on the whole idea of living on a semi-regular basis. Sometimes it was every two weeks, sometimes once a month, sometimes a few months apart. But I never knew why, how long it would last, or how to control the system-wide failures.

And if you want to know how western medicine helped me with any of these continued challenges… it didn’t. I tried to get answers for years before I finally gave up. Every doctor turned me away. Every specialist was critically uninterested. Even the Mayo Clinic neglected to listen to what I said or utilize applicable resources, after I was so sure they could solve the medical mystery of my life.

So. I stopped trying at a certain point. I resolved myself to being health anxious and perpetually confused by myself. I realized that I would never know what any day was going to bring, because my discomforts and continued sicknesses seemed to come and go with the tides.

Eventually, after years of this bullshit, it got a bit better. I buckled down with - you guessed it - strict routines designed to circumvent some of the challenges.

I realized that my diet needed to be incredibly tight, and by that, I mean “boring.” Beyond gluten, I cut out basically everything sugary, carby, and processed. I noticed that without a certain variety of physical exercise on a regimented basis, everything started slipping. I prioritized finding ways to get to sleep at night, even if it meant being rigid and assessed as “dramatic” by less slumber-impaired humans. I gave up any activities that caused neck and shoulder strain, and tried to be better about things like stretching. I also noticed that dealing with my emotions was a gateway to pain and discomfort relief, which was an uphill battle all it’s own. And, you know, eventually I learned about this Complex Trauma thing that explained a HUGE part of early to mid twenties, including a majority of the physical ailments.

But, although I began to live like an above-averagely healthy human again… I’ve still always had a few mysteries about my health.

Sure, over the course of many years I’ve figured out how to live with a semi-predictable body after long periods of never knowing what tomorrow would bring. But, unfortunately, there are still times when my system throws me a curveball. During those unanticipated spans of health failure, I’m left ruminating on a question or three that haven’t ever been answered consistently.

One of the most common inquiries is coming at you next.

Stress or sick?

So, even after all my life changes and careful modifications. All my sacrifices and seemingly over-the-top regimes. I’ve still had an ongoing health obsession that pops up from time to time when my shit starts to go downhill.

The incrementally-observed question that runs through my head on repeat… “Wait, am I communicably sick, or am I just fucking stressed out again?”

I realized a while back - maybe in my mid-late twenties - that holy hell, I sure felt like I was coming down with the flu more often than it was logical. The thing was, my symptoms only ever progressed to the point of feeling like I was still actively fighting off the sickness as it took hold. I would get the temperature dysregulation, the headache, the muscle pain, the foggy feeling, and oh boy, the exhaustion - that generally serve as your first signs of contagious trouble.

I would be too deliriously tired to get up and do anything. If I made myself go to work, it felt like wading through a dream. Half present, half falling asleep at my desk. My body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Even my head was too heavy for my neck to manage the task.

Beyond the energy void, I would genuinely start to experience pre-illness complaints, like swollen lymph nodes, congestion, and the aforementioned shivers and shakes. I would find myself incredibly hungry, as though my immune system was ramping up for a fight. I would get weak, like all my electrolytes were purged from my body. I would characterize the experience as feeling “generally under the weather” in preparation for something much larger slamming into town.

Beyond the energy void, I would genuinely start to experience pre-illness complaints, like swollen lymph nodes, congestion, and the aforementioned shivers and shakes. I would find myself incredibly hungry, as though my immune system was ramping up for a fight. I would get incredibly weak, like all my electrolytes were purged from my body. I would characterize the experience as feeling “generally under the weather” in preparation for something much larger slamming into town.

And I would respond in kind. I would retreat to bed, Nyquil and vitamin C showering over me on frequent intervals, gearing up for the systemic war of a lifetime. I would drift in and out of sleep for a day or two, fending off the weird muscle aches and sweat sessions that come with an emerging fever. Interestingly, many of my old food reactivities would rear up during this period. I would get my neti pot and vomit-bags ready for action.

And then… nothing else would happen. Assuming I chilled out and retreated to a state of forfeit when I actually treated myself with kindness and care, everything would work out. After 1-5 days of being back in my bedridden state, determined that significant contagious sickness was headed my way, it would seem to just disappear overnight. Or, clear up by about 70% overnight, to be more realistic.

It took several rounds of this pattern - I couldn’t tell you how many - before I finally realized… heyyo, my body shuts the fuck down when I’m stressed out. Every time I experienced one of these sudden falls from health, it followed (or ran in tandem with) a period of significant stress, anxiety, and/or depression. And if I let myself relax for a week, it would all be okay. If I tried to push through it because ObLiGaTiOnS, I was signing myself up for a prolonged and far more serious health failure. It happened too many times; I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. Like I had postulated earlier in my adulthood - my health seemed to be drastically affected by my mental state. Particularly, my interpretations of stress, obligations, and fears.

And I can tell you, my health anxiety quieted down for a while in the aftermath of the acceptance. Call it immersion therapy. When you’ve experienced the same event over and over again, but A never leads to B, and C-alming your shit makes condition A disappear back into the ethers... well, eventually you take it for what it is and just stop panicking so much. I think I got tired of preoccupying myself with the whole dumpster fire at some point and preferred to extinguish the flames by letting them run their course.

This is where I’ve lived for the past many years now. Realizing that if I push myself too hard mentally or physically, or if I let too many stress signals infiltrate my brain… I’m about to get fucked up. My health will slip quickly. I will be reactive to essentially every food on this planet. My body will be puffy, inflamed, and painful. Not to mention, so goddamn tired all the time. But that’s it. It won’t last forever. I’m not going to die. Telling myself the opposite makes it all last a lot longer. Don’t pile stress about your stress-induced sickness onto your existing stress, and you'll be better soon.

And yet, when it’s happening, I also never know for a fact that my stress-based illness is definitely what’s going on. The result is getting trapped in a “will I or won’t I” obsessive spiral of anticipating the worst while reassuring myself that it might be nothing at all. There’s a lot of internal and external conversation about it, as people want to know if you’re sick and you want to be able to warn them that you feel like death… but also have to throw in the caveat, “Iunno, you have to realize that this happens to me all the time and it’s usually nothing, though.”

Of course, this creates the opportunity for my brain to 1) tell me I’m probably fine, quit complaining, pussy, and 2) compare myself to everyone else on the planet, who doesn’t crumble when their brain interprets times are hard. Because, of course, I have to make myself feel mentally ridiculous for feeling physically horrible. Other people are always happy to help in this regard, too. "You sure get sick a lot. I thought you had the flu last month. Wow, it always seems like something is wrong with you." Mhm, I feel the same on all accounts.

And, Fuckers, that’s why I stopped talking about it or looking for answers a long time ago. Instead, I've just relied on the most logical answer and quit worrying. I’ve done enough research on my own, not to mention all my Animal Science schooling, to know how stress responses work. They’re significant. They have the potential to disrupt your entire body through hormonal dysregulation. And they work differently - as far as we can tell - depending on the organism.

So that’s what I’ve leaned on. Acknowledgement that stress really screws with me. It zaps my energy. It fogs up my brain. It makes me overstimulated. It causes weird pains and immune system responses. It churns up my digestive problems. It also makes me feel like I’m starving but nauseous all at once. Over long periods of time, it can lead to infections. It, obviously, ruins my sleep, which reaaaaally doesn’t help with any of it.

That’s that. Pretty complicated but simple. Try not to stress yourself out and god help you, if you do. Chill for a few days and you’ll be alright, probably. No one knows why it happens. Doctors don’t care. Just watch out for yourself, because no one else deals with this shit.

Unless… they totally do.

So, that’s fibromyalgia

I guess this is where I tell you something that a lot of folks have probably already figured out. Sorry if you’ve been yelling at me through your headphones this whole time - chill, I’m getting to it.

There definitely is a term for everything I’ve described. There are millions of other people who experience it. And, yeah, doctors often still don’t believe it’s real… but the numbers and anecdotal evidence don’t lie.

Ever heard of fibromyalgia?

Of course you have. But have you ever really looked into what it meant? Because… I hadn’t.

Annnnd then a listener and I were chatting on Instagram a few weeks ago. And she mentioned... everything I just mentioned. And her diagnosis had been? Fibromyalgia.

Via DM, your fellow Fucker started telling me about being tired all the time, mysterious aches and pains that worsen with stress, IBS symptoms, improper temperature regulation, and over-exertion that leads to required days of recovery. My jaw hit the floor.

You know I hopped online and started doing more research of my own. And all of the information was confirmed and expanded upon in a way that drove my mandible straight into the basement.

Hey, you know how fibromyalgia is synonymous with “widespread pain?” Oh shit, if you dig into it, there is a lot more to learn. Here’s a (maybe, complete?) list of the currently known associated symptoms. Keep in mind, I couldn’t find a single comprehensive resource for this information. This list is compiled of information from the the peer-reviewed article I'm going to read from later, the American College of Rheumatology, the CDC, Healthline, and Medical News Today. And if it sounds like a bit of a "catch all" pile, I think you're right.

Pain and stiffness all over the body

Fatigue and tiredness

Depression and anxiety

Sleep problems

Problems with thinking, memory, and concentration, known as “fibro-fog”

Headaches, including migraines

Tingling or numbness in hands and feet

Pain in the face or jaw

Digestive problems, such as abdominal pain, bloating, constipation, and irritable bowel syndrome

Tenderness to touch or pressure affecting muscles, sometimes joints or even the skin

Irritable or overactive bladder

Pelvic pain

Trouble focusing or paying attention

Pain or a dull ache in the lower belly

Dry eyes

Sleeping for long periods of time without feeling rested (nonrestorative sleep)

Acid reflux

Restless leg syndrome

Sensitivity to cold or heat

Problems with vision

Nausea

Weight gain

Dizziness

Cold or flu-like symptoms

Skin problems

Chest symptoms

Breathing problems

Insulin resistance

Wait, wait, wait. THAT’S what fibro is? Because, I’m sorry, I have literally never heard any of that detail before… and although it gets so ambiguous that I suspect these ailments are all the conditions that just haven't been explained before by medical science... this list just described my life. All the way down to the tiniest detail of dry eyes, as I now recall chronically dumping drops into mine for those same years in my 20s. What. The. Shit.

Prior to this research, my symptomatic knowledge of fibro was essentially - pain, of the unexplained and incurable variety. No one ever once has mentioned anything else about the condition to me, or allll the ways that it correlated with my years of health trauma. Not my peers, not my doctors, and not even my amazing, well-informed therapist.

So, maybe I’m really late to the game here, but long story short, my mind was blown when I heard that there’s actually a term for this experience which I had forfeited to processing as a “unique way that my body individually destroys me” for all these years. I thought I was just uniquely uncomfortable all the time and stopped burdening others with my experiences.

Maybe that’s why I never had anyone clue me in to the diagnosis - I honestly stopped talking about the cyclical sickness a while back, after recognizing that people didn’t respond favorably to the narrative, “I just get too stressed out to function.” Shutting my mouth and writing off my experiences may have halted my potential for hearing a realistic account of living with fibromyalgia. Oh, how the trauma shame shenanigans never stop royally fucking you.

Of course, based on my own recent education, now I’m wondering if fibromyalgia applies to far more of us in the trauma community. Because if I hadn’t found reliable information on it in all my trauma and inflammatory illness research over the years… how many other people are in the same boat?

And this brings me to my next point. I really hate the term fibromyalgia.

Why I hate the term

There’s actually another explanation for why I never heard about everything that fibromyalgia describes. Uh, you’re going to hate me for this, but I didn’t think it was a “real” diagnosis.

Yep. I’m telling you with moderate guilt that for the longest time, I appraised fibro in the same way that western medicine considers all psychosomatic illnesses - not valid. And I’m unhappy with myself, too. Believe me, I feel like my least favorite kind of person... a hypocrite. But this also points to the systemic issue that undermines so many of our attempts to get help, and that makes me far more unhappy.

You see, a number of years ago, as a budding counselor with a few years of experience, my therapist friend mentioned something about fibro. Specifically, that it was a common label granted to more seriously mentally affected patients… and it wasn’t believed to be a real thing. I wish I could remember more detail on the context, but the basis of the story is, someone that I trusted - someone with many trauma patients - told me that in her experience, no one took fibromyalgia seriously. People with intense mental illnesses regularly presented with unfounded complaints of pain, and this is the term they were assigned as a result.

There was no proof of their physical discomfort. The patients tended to have myriad mental and physical health issues. They tended to be more difficult clients. Professionals had doubts about how serious the complaints were. No evidence, no respect. It was just about that simple.

To give more weight to the story, here’s one quick excerpt that is actually validating to read, from an article titled, The management of fibromyalgia from a psychosomatic perspective: an overview.

“People with FM often reported dismissive attitudes from others, such as disbelief, stigmatization, lack of acceptance by their relatives, friends, coworkers, and the healthcare system, that consider them as ‘lazy’ or ‘attention seeking’ people, with their symptoms ‘all in their head’. Such dismissiveness can have a substantial negative impact on patients, who are already distressed, and also on the degree of their pain.”

So… similar to the asshole social associates described above… for years after that, I paid no attention to fibromyalgia. When people brought it up, I nodded and moved on. I didn’t disbelieve that there would be a connection between mental illness and the onset of bodily pains after my own experiences, but the term had also been shuttled to a file in my head that sidled up next to, “seeking prescription pain meds.” This was an incorrect judgement based on incorrect, oversimplified information. But unfortunately, it left an impression.

So… similar to the assholes described above… for years after that, I paid no attention to fibromyalgia. When people brought it up, I nodded and moved on. I didn’t disbelieve that there would be a connection between mental illness and the onset of bodily pains after my own experiences, but the term had also been shuttled to a file in my head that sidled up next to, “seeking prescription pain meds.” This was an incorrect judgement based on incorrect, oversimplified information. But unfortunately, it left an impression.

It took the real life account of someone with the diagnosis to show me all the ways that my previous perception was completely incorrect. I suddenly realized how reductive and insulting the false information had been. Annnd all the ways that I could have really helped myself and a few others a lot sooner if I had just investigated the term on my own, rather than lazily falling back on someone else’s casually-expressed opinion.

So, I’m saying… fuck me. 100%. That makes me really upset with myself. But it makes me even more frustrated with the medical field.

And this is why I hate the term fibromyalgia.

It doesn’t actually explain a fucking thing… and it doesn’t seem like anyone is actually trying to.

At this point, there is no known cause for the development or persistence of the disorder. Fibromyalgia has essentially become more of a label for a grouping of symptoms that we “allow” people to assume when we don’t know what the hell might be wrong with them. I say “allow” very purposely, because it feels like our medical overlords have granted us this word as a way to pacify the uncomfortable masses - not treat them.

At this point, there is no known cause or organic mechanism for the development or persistence of the disorder. Fibromyalgia has essentially become more of a label for a grouping of symptoms that we “allow” people to assume when we don’t know what the hell might be wrong with them. I say “allow” very purposely, because it feels like our medical overlords have granted us this word as a way to pacify the uncomfortable masses - not treat them.

Millions of humans have detailed the same experiences, but science hasn’t yet come up with a way to explain them, so let’s go ahead and give them a new diagnosis that boils down to “Not sure what’s going on, but they say it’s unpleasant and it sounds a little something like widespread pain. Cool, let’s call it a day. Nah, we don’t need to educate the medical community or the public - we don’t need a single list of all the known comorbidities - because we don’t get it, ourselves. Let’s make sure we put that disclaimer right in the definition, so everyone knows it’s a controversial topic."

And implicit in saying that doctors and scientists don’t understand the term, comes a negative connotation of assumed delusion or attention-seeking complaints.

Essentially, what I’m bitching about is the tendency of researchers and practitioners to shuttle things they can’t directly measure to the back of the relevancy line. Despite all of the anecdotal evidence from fibro sufferers that corroborate the same causes, symptoms, and outcomes… we can’t see what they’re talking about and we don’t have an easy explanation, so we put this in the “fake news” stack of information - AKA psychosomatic illness.

Now, it’s also worth mentioning that fibromyalgia is deeply intertwined with trauma. Something like 2/3rds of fibro patients also have confirmed PTSD symptoms, if not higher. Exact numbers depend on which study you trust. Just know, it is a prevalent, accepted, correlation between trauma and the development of fibromyalgia. And of course, no one has determined the causative or affective relationship between the two at this point in time.

Hell, we all know that a lot of mental and physical health professionals don’t even want to acknowledge trauma at this point - or, do so with a smirk and an eyebrow raise, at best. So tethering the two poorly-comprehended disorders together? Oh boy, it’s a sure-fire way to ensure that no one listens to a word you say after honestly answering their background information questions. Might as well throw down your wallet and walk yourself right out of the office at that point.

The medical field’s lack of trauma education is a big problem. Making “psychosomatic” a dirty word isn’t helping millions of folks out there. Being invalidated by the people who could possibly help you is another mental health crisis waiting to happen. And all of this is infuriating to me, following my own experiences and thinking about other people’s.

Should we take this one outrage step further? Sure.

You know that a vast majority of fibromyalgia sufferers are… women. Sorry, about to get a tad feminist. Is anyone here surprised that primarily female voices tend to be written off by medical professionals? Ha, ha, ha. No, probably not.

For all of human history, the ladies have been getting the shit end of the stick when it comes to medical care. We all know that women were given amazing explanations for their ailments, such as having “hysterics” or "the vapors" not so long ago.

Furthermore, there is research showing that doctors do not take women’s accounts of pain severity seriously, in particular. Even fellow female doctors and nurses are given different treatment by staff when they go to the ER, versus male counterparts. And if you’re a minority or socioeconomically challenged woman? The data says you might as well take two aspirin and see what happens the next morning, because the medical attention research is even worse for those demographics. Huge surprise.

So, pulling this all together: Considering that the majority of us who receive complex trauma diagnoses are women… considering that implicit in this label, comes the increased likelihood that we’re not economically well-to-do and belong to minority groups one way or another… how do you figure we’ve ever had a chance of receiving real help for our unmeasurable physical conditions?

So, pulling this all together: Considering that the majority of us who receive complex trauma diagnoses are women… considering that implicit in this label, comes the increased likelihood that we’re not economically well-to-do and belong to minority groups… how do you figure we’ve ever had a chance of receiving real help for our unmeasurable physical conditions?

Yeah, we haven’t.

We’ve been given a term - complete with a wink and a nudge - that no one wants to meaningfully research or prioritize understanding. We’ve received a new phrase that doctors will “generously grant us” when we’re drowning in unexplained symptoms and pain. We’re then labeled with a word that essentially amounts to “disregard and humor” for all our future appointments. On top of it all, we’re carrying the burden of traumatic histories, which immediately qualify us for misunderstood diagnoses that more or less equate “ghosts in their blood” - because, hell, we can’t quantify mental illness, either.

The whole ordeal makes me really upset. The fact that I was inadvertently pulled into this biased disbelief makes me more upset. It also serves as quite a demonstration of how powerful or deleterious knowledge can be after it worms its way into your head involuntarily and becomes your only “go-to” piece of data, true or false.

One seemingly-trustworthy person mentioning a negative opinion of fibromyalgia one time in my past somehow infiltrated my thoughts to the extent that I didn’t have a second thought for 5 years? And we're talking about a goddamn trauma researcher - with, what I consider - an otherwise open and connection-happy mind?

The power of assumed authority and truth in opinion is significant. If I can be swayed in this way, how could less mental health informed medical professionals stand a chance in responding differently? That’s frightening and clarifying… though immensely upsetting.

So, since biomedicine hasn’t bothered to find any great information for us, despite the rapidly increasing rate of fibromyalgia diagnoses in the past two decades - how can we make sense of the information to actually help ourselves?

Let’s talk about that next.

What we can conclude

So it kindof blows finding out that you probably qualify for a new medical term… only to find out that we don’t actually know anything about said term. I say this, because if you’re waiting for me to pop off with some sweet research on fibromyalgia… uh… I haven’t found it yet. But not for lack of trying. So far every article I’ve seen has been pretty basic and uninspired.

Does fibromyalgia correspond with trauma? It does. Does stress mediate and moderate fibromyalgia, PTSD symptoms, GI problems, and depression? It does. Does it take a long time and numerous appointments to receive medical help for fibromyalgia complaints? It does. Does the comorbidity of post-traumatic symptoms make fibro more uncomfortable and challenging to overcome? What do you know - it fucking does.

(Wow. So enlightening. Having two debilitating disorders is less fun than having one. Who’s funding these research studies, anyways?)

The first thing I can conclude is, there’s not that much to conclude. This is to say, no one - that I’ve seen, so far - has revealed anything super shocking or thought-provoking about fibromyalgia.

Really, the most interesting things I learned from my reading are that

1) insulin resistance is another associated disorder, which explains even more of my baffling life

2) sex hormones are leached from your system under stress, which, refer to point number one... explains another huge chunk of my existence, and

3) the recommendations for treating fibro long term are the same recommendations I’ve given for getting your trauma life re-ordered.

You know how I always push for people to find out what’s manageable on their own through trial and error, rather than approaching trauma recovery with preventable fires burning in every area? Hey - someone agrees.

Namely, it's recommended that in order to manage fibromyalgia you establish routines including strictly nutrition-based eating habits, non-threatening forms of consistent exercising, prioritizing tons of sleep, and controlling your environment as much as possible for stressful stimuli. Doctors can also supplement your rehab with antidepressants, because, again, fibromyalgia is related to the same underlying hormonal imbalances as depression - but the larger health issues are managed best by changing your behaviors. Just like I’ve said.

I suppose this is no surprise, since this entire time I’ve unknowingly been talking, in large part, about how I’ve controlled my own fibromyalgia symptoms. I just thought it was mandatory trauma pains I was dampening. But the word is out! There's a separate phrase for it. The doctors and I agree; stop treating yourself like a turd, and maybe you’ll stop feeling like one. Whatdoyouknow. Sometimes there are reasons for the things I notice experientially, even if they aren’t originally informed by medical lingo.

Secondly, looking at what we can conclude at this point about fibro… Well, it justifies my previous hypothesis that stress is the root of my body’s evil. There’s not much to definitively say about fibromyalgia at this point, but we know for a fact that it is agitated and potentially caused by stress.

This perfectly aligns with my observations that a terrible work week mixed with a personally challenging month on top of a physically exhausting cleaning marathon will lead to a systemic breakdown every time. And, conversely, those times when life has actually been pretty chill correspond to periods of bodily health and limited upset - the times when I wonder “was I ever really sick at all?” and start to health gaslight my damn self.

Realizing the link between stress and sickness, of course, also begins to explain the correlation to trauma, and particularly, complex trauma.

Now, let me start by saying that there’s some debate over the downstream effects of PTSD - some researchers swear that it decreases system arousal in the face of later stress, others have collected data reflecting that a nervous system hyper-sensitization takes place. From my own trauma involvement, I’ve seen and heard more cases of the latter; we’re quick to upset and easily pushed into stressed territory. I don’t know many, if any, trauma folks who are non-responsive to disturbing life events... but that sounds more like a deep, dangerous, clinical depression symptom to me.

Personally, once I’ve been chronically stressed for a few weeks or months, then I notice the loss of stress response take over. My limbic system gives up, the HPA axis stops responding, and therefore nothing can rattle me. Perhaps you’ve also had the experience of laughing when your car breaks down, because it’s already been 3 months of disaster around every turn and there’s nothing else you can do for yourself. So, sure, people can reach a point where they legitimately don’t respond to the chaos anymore, but I’m not so sure that’s a consistent norm. I think it’s more likely that you turn off your stress reactions if you’ve been adequately prepped to dissociate for the sake of sanity or your chemical balance is so wack that your danger center has powered down.

I can tell you without a doubt that before the point when my stress threshold has been raised sky-high thanks to repeat exposures and wiring disconnections... I’m a rapid-responder when anxiety comes calling. Stimulus - rapid survival reaction - no space in between being startled and shaking from head to toe. And this is the case for basically every Motherfucker I know. I’m no expert, but I think we tend to fall more into the hypervigilant camp surrounding this podcast, rather than the laxadonical one. Always on the lookout, always ready, often bowled over by our own responses.

I’m a rapid-responder when anxiety comes calling. Stimulus - rapid survival reaction - no space in between being startled and shaking from head to toe. And this is the case for every Motherfucker I know. I’m no expert, but I think we tend to fall more into the hypervigilant camp surrounding this podcast, rather than the laxadonical one. Always on the lookout, always ready, often bowled over by our own responses

This nervous system sensitization, as they call it, explains a lot of trauma symptoms. I’ve regularly discussed the hypersensitivity problem it creates, when your brain doesn’t adequately filter out or assess neutral stimuli because it considers basically everything to be a threat. This can also contribute to the ADD and ADHD diagnoses that we receive, when our heads are too busy trying to sort all that data streaming in to direct our thoughts in a steady way. Or, the ways that we’re uniquely thrown immediately into panic mode when we sense a risk. Plus, we’ve probably all had the experience of tiny, secret triggers sneakily upsetting our bodies when the stimulation wasn’t even significant enough to pass through our cognitive recognition centers. These are all caused by the same systemic over-sensitization problem.

In general: yes, we trauma folk are sensitive to our environments - inner and outer. We are easily pushed down survival pathways to fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses. We rapidly catastrophize ambiguous information, which can convince our brains and bodies that the worst has already happened. We’re hyperaware and easily overstimulated, often agitated, and regularly on edge.

I maintain, in the face of controversial evidence, that we get stressed out easily. And our bodies react dramatically.

I feel like I should also state that this is especially true, as most of us have read, when we have unresolved emotional strain floating around in our meat jackets. We can be overstimulated and aroused (in a bad way) from the inside, out. Since the majority of us are not skilled in emotional recognition or resolution, we’re often walking around with a lifetime of hard feelings stored in our guts. And there’s been roughly zero doubt in my head about emotional and environmental stress contributing to dissociation, contributing to a vagal nerve shutdown as a big part of the digestive failure that characterizes fibromyalgia, IBS, Crohns, and so many autoimmune disorders.

On top of the unresolved emotional root of stress, this pings another episode that I've previously released. The one about being overly restrictive in your diet and exercise for the sake of appearance perfectionism. If you physically exert yourself too strongly through caloric deprivation or extreme work outs, you can easily stress your body into a survival response. It can't tell the difference between starvation for bikini season and starvation for lack of food. Running your ass off for your upcoming wedding or running your ass off for your upcoming bear attack. Your danger sensing center is sensitive and it overreacts, much like myself.

Now, considering that all these examples of central nervous system sensitization and physiological survival states that go hand in hand with Complex Trauma and Fibromyalgia, so many weird health mysteries are potentially resolved. But, not exactly the pain component. Or, is it.

Again, the authors out of Italy and Brazil who penned, The management of fibromyalgia from a psychosomatic perspective: an overview, have a potential way to think about that. They state:

“Even if the causes and pathophysiology of FM are not completely known, widespread chronic pain could be explained by a vulnerability due to a perturbation in the central processing of sensory information, named ‘central sensitivity’ or ‘central sensitization’, that amplifies the response of the central nervous system to a peripheral input. Hence, people with FM and/or other central sensitivity syndromes have a lower threshold for interpreting sensory information as noxious. Several factors, such as genetic predisposition, deficiencies in neurotransmitter levels, biochemical changes in the body, endocrine dysfunction, mood states, anxiety, sociocultural environment, psychological trauma and past experiences in general, expectancy beliefs, and catastrophization have been proposed as explanatory mechanisms of patients’ subjective experience of central sensitivity. Current research indicates that abnormal sensory and pain processing is a key factor in the pathophysiology of FM. There is robust evidence that abnormalities in central pain processing, rather than damage or inflammation of peripheral structures, play an important role in the development and maintenance of chronic pain in patients with FM.”

Interesting, huh? I still think inflammatory responses are a big part of the 1000 piece stress puzzle, but I don’t disagree with the idea that our finely-tuned danger detection systems amplify pain and discomfort signals to deafening levels. Putting all the system data together, you can deduce a fairly complete picture of how strain, physical degradation, and pain are all related.

Finally, I have confirmation that being overly stimulated causes everything from my energy drain to my dietary responses, migraines, and autoimmune attacks... all the way down to my temperature sensitivity, random presentation of allergic reactions, and even that occasional sharp pain in my jaw… not to mention all my life-altering functional problems, like being unable to sleep at night, existing with debilitating pain, and living while feeling sedated?

All of my strange health complaints from the past decade have aligned with this new label. And that label corresponds perfectly with my inkling that running on cortisol and overzealous guardsmen have been the major source of my health anxiety sauce. Welp, it’s been validating research for all of my educated guesses, to say the least.

Long story short, there’s not a ton of helpful information about the reasons for developing fibromyalgia or what makes it get worse. But there’s one thing we do know for a fact; stress is the enemy. At least I think it’s comforting to conclude that stress is the root of many of our C-PTSD complaints, as well as depression, anxiety, insomnia, obsessive thoughts, and now… a whole list of common maladies, labeled fibromyalgia.

Whether or not it’s really understood, at least there is a connection between everything. At least there’s something that ties ALL the random, disjointed pieces of torture together. I’m guessing that for many of us, fibromyalgia is similar to complex trauma, again, in that regard.

And, lastly, I can conclude that… I have more questions

More questions than answers

Here’s one last excerpt from the aforementioned article, which is the only one I found that’s worth hearing from.

They state: “FM is labelled, often with a negative connotation, as a ‘functional somatic syndrome’, part of a ‘somatization disorder’, ‘fashionable diagnosis’, ‘idiopathic pain disorder’, ‘non-disease’, ‘psychosomatic syndrome’, dismissing the true suffering of the patients. In the absence of a univocal identified biological cause, subjective reports of symptoms by the patients are often viewed derogatorily and discredited as ‘psychogenic.’”

Like I said, there isn’t a lot of helpful information out there if you’re looking to learn more about this controversial condition. Unfortunately, it has been categorized as a “functional somatic disorder” which essentially means that we don’t have an explanation for the organic basis of the disorder.

Uh, I don’t know what could be more organic than the endogenous hormones in our own bodies creating downstream health effects, but hey, I’m not a biologist anymore, what do I know?

The fact remains - there’s a lot more to understand about the assorted mechanisms that lead from trauma into depression, generalized stress disorder, and physical manifestations of a biochemical system that’s running off-balance. And this is where I have the biggest questions.

First, I have to get this out of the way. I’m wondering about the known gender split in fibro. The numbers are horrendously skewed towards women as the primary sufferers, and that’s not helping the medical legitimacy case. So, what are the chances that men just don’t have fibromyalgia at the same rate as women? Either they don’t get stressed to the same magnitude or their bodies respond completely differently? It’s possible. OR. Is it something else?

It seems to me like this follows another similar mystery - what are the chances that men just don’t suffer from Complex Trauma at the same rate as women? Pretty poor? Probably more of a diagnostic or seeking-help issue? Yeah, I think so, too. Yet, if you look strictly at the numbers, it sure seems like there are more women hearing about C-PTSD than men.

This analogous labeling issue between the genders makes me think of a few explanations…

1) Men don’t seek help for their physical ailments the way that women do, either because they’re less in tune with their bodies or because they’re shamed for not being tough enough if they complain. Just like C-PTSD.

2) Men don’t hear about fibromyalgia, because it is an engendered diagnosis reserved for dramatic women at this point. Just like C-PTSD. They receive other partial diagnoses, like IBS, that are less controversial. This leads me into a whole spiraling rant about several genital-dependent psychological diagnoses that I feel similarly about, but one of them is…

3) Men don’t receive the same level of fibromyalgia labels as women because men don’t often receive Complex-PTSD labels, which would serve as a hint to their doctors, since trauma is a well-known predisposing factor…

This brings me to the next set of questions.

It’s unpopular opinion time, but, frankly, I don’t know that any of these trauma and fibro issues are really that separate.

It seems to me like we’re talking a lot about one particular problem that splinters off into a thousand different outcomes, depending on the circumstances, the biology, and the human in question. Not separate conditions.

First comes the trauma, then comes the presentation of downstream physical and mental symptoms. Presentation, magnitude, and personal recognition of these symptoms varies, just like severity of Complex Trauma does. But under both conditions, our experiences are often so similar - the hard part is that we struggle to describe them and often lean on abstract language which can be used in such diverse ways. We focus on different problems, depending on our own life impacts.

So, maybe we notice and report internal events differently, but it’s hard for me to believe that the two disorders aren’t more than corresponding diagnoses - and are, in fact, one and the same.

I could be very wrong, but I’d sure like to find out.

So, to the small percentage of fibromyalgia sufferers who don’t have trauma… you sure? To the depressed and anxious folks who can’t seem to get a grip on their physical health, but never saw their life as traumatic… want to take another look? To all the traumatized folks with Raynauds, food allergies, hypertension, ADD, aches, and migraines… have you really looked into the full definition of fibromyalgia?

ARE these conditions of trauma and fibromyalgia different? Or is this another complication in identifying unseeable symptoms in a population of folks who never learned to name their mental and physical experiences? Is this an artifact from a group who tends to underestimate and under-report their own experiences in light of unhealthy others’ core beliefs? How prevalent is fibromyalgia, really? Especially in the context of Trauma?

Is it possible that everything boils down to one underlying event - trauma - that produces a whole host of other biological adaptations down the line? Did we create a separate term for it, simply based on a lack of standardization?

Or is this an exclusionary problem?

Have all the various ways we’ve learned to categorize and describe our experiences actually separated one full disorder into two half-disorders; one that encompasses the brain and another that covers the body? Is it our societal misunderstanding of the connection between our perceptions and our meaty husks, forcing us to separate the issues of mental and physical health that would be better understood together, as one?

I’m not sure! But I’m definitely thinking a lot about it.

Partially, from personal bias. I always considered my physical issues to be part of my trauma life, not separate from it - and that explanation made perfect sense to me. Where do these disorders really split? Maybe it’s possible to have Complex PTSD without the physical symptoms, but that's really not what I hear from people. The most of us have at least some periods of physical ailments, even if they're not persistent. To me, it seems like a distinction that should be made within the trauma diagnosis - with or without physical wellness degradation - rather than piling a separate, largely-ineffective diagnosis on the vast majority of us who have some variety of said bodily ailments.

I feel like the real issue isn’t “what is fibromyalgia?” The actual problem is a lack of biological understanding in the Psychology field. And a mirrored failure to understand Psychology in the medical field. Then, throw in a reluctance to study the conglomerate of bio-physiology and mental health issues in the scientific research literature because both experiences are difficult to measure or confirm and the studies would be less elegant.

If more psychologists actually learned system biology and more medical practitioners actually studied abnormal psychology, maybe we wouldn’t have disparate diagnoses that each come with a half-recognition. Maybe we could have one term that encompassed the full experience of trauma. Maybe these professionals could confirm all the details that we don’t understand by working with a more comprehensive approach to how humans work as a whole, rather than organ by organ. Just a fucking thought.

Because, I can tell you, if my therapist friend had the same biological education that I did at the time, I guarantee that she wouldn’t have told me fibromyalgia was a “pseudo diagnosis.” If she had knowledge of the connection between stress hormones and bodily breakdown, plus the trauma physiology that determines our sensitivity to stress - there’s no way she would have been so flippant or insensitive with her words. But under the influence of her counseling peers, the diagnosis became a fallacy.

I think this highlights the danger of the problem at hand. It only took one industry-determined void of knowledge to pass along an unfair opinion that skewed at least my perception for years down the line. And, think about it, how many times has one innocently-baseless comment in the psychology or medical fields probably created a lifetime of bias in an up-and-coming professional?

Maybe this is why we have the self-perpetuating negative connotation of psychosomatic illness in our society that seems to crawl its way towards improvement, while every other disorder makes significant strides. A lack of personal understanding of the biology-psychology connection is easily turned into a respected opinion, and readily transmitted to unknowing people who are eager to learn from their wise mentors. And so, the next generation inherits the same set of half-baked progress-stunting ideas. Over and over and over.

Depressing! And enlightening.

And that’s roughly where I stand today, after days of fibromyalgia research and very few satisfactory answers. Depressed and enlightened.

More or less, asking myself more questions about the legitimacy of our entire mental and physical healthcare system and all the lines we draw in the sand. Confident that trauma leads to increased stress leads to increased brain and body trauma. Somewhat happy to know that I’m actually not the only one who consistently apologizes for feeling like shit and questions if it’s “valid” or not because it seems connected to my brain. But also, pretty pissed off that we’ve been given a word that comes with no explanations and a hellofalot of medical field judgement, as if we needed more of that.

Oh, one more factoid to throw into the end of this conversation. There’s a link between low socioeconomic status and fibromyalgia.

Hey, the same link exists between socioeconomic status and complex trauma. Hey, it’s another predisposing factor for post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms’ emergence. Hey, big surprise, if you have a stable and predictable physical and financial environment, you’re less likely to develop the terror-based conditions brought on by earlier trauma.

If you have financial resources, you’re also less likely to be chronically stressed by the demands of life. You’re probably also more likely to receive respectable medical care. Therefore, meaning that you’re both less likely to have enough perturbation to develop over-sensitive nervous system responses and less likely to be dismissed by doctors with a label they don’t believe exists. Plus, probably more likely to have access to mental health care that could prevent the onset of Complex Trauma presentation, and likely fibromyalgia, altogether.

Oh, look, logic explains so many things. Or, fuckit, let’s just choose to believe that poor people are lazy and always want to complain about something, whether it’s in their heads or their bodies. Whatever the rich white men say.

Big issues to think about.

Like I state way too often on this show, it’s the small things in this trauma life that bring you comfort. And monumental societal failures that make you scream. (Okay, I just added that last part today.)

Wrap it

Okay, let me get out of here before I question more beliefs that are way out of my paygrade. Sorry, medical and psychological practitioners. I know that I’m just a critical observer who, like that kid everyone hates in class, perpetually asks too many questions.

At the bottom of all my complaints, I just wish that we could come up with a way to characterize these disorders that actually helped people understand what was happening. If you know how your body is reacting to what stimuli and how the symptoms are all related, that's a lot more powerful than throwing assorted barely-defined titles at them.

If we can't definitively say that fibromyalgia and trauma symptoms are one and the same, fine. Let there be a distinction. But I think it would be preferable to call fibro something more telling and true to the accepted cause. Call it semantics, but something like Stress Affective Syndrome would be more useful than the made-up word of fibromyalgia. Please, anyone feel free to come up with a better phrase, because I just made "Stress Affective Syndrome" up so I could say "I've got SAS." It already fits the bill.

I guess I’m just up in arms that I’ve tried to find answers for my brain and body health all these years, and turned up completely empty handed until random connections have eventually given me the information I’ve needed after a decade of effort. Maybe if I had my complex trauma diagnosis before I had my health complaints, someone would have mentioned fibromyalgia. Maybe, they would have knowingly smirked and sent me to a psychiatrist. Hard to say.

Even if I had gotten that information about fibro, would it have helped separate from the C-PTSD diagnosis? Honestly, probably not. I would have just been harder on myself for suddenly being too weak in the face of stress. And after reading that medical professionals doubt the validity of fibromyalgia, in the first place? Well that would have been a whole other source of disbelief, anger, and negative self-regard. Maybe a whole new crisis, once my inner critic got a chance to hammer away at my head.

I suppose that figuring out the patterns of my strange bodily conditions actually needed to happen organically for this Fucker, because any semi-questioned diagnosis would have just been more fuel for my trauma fire at that point when I so thoroughly despised myself. Confirming to myself, for a fact, that stress fucks me up may have been a prerequisite for accepting that I might be “one of those fibro people.” You know, the ones who lie about their symptoms. Ha.

And, again, this says a lot about the potential damage that poorly-described labels can do to people… just as much as it says about my own reluctance to be considered a weak-minded over-reactor by outsiders.

All of this being said, I’m so grateful for finally finding out exactly what all fibromyalgia actually entails. It took too long, but honestly, the information came at the perfect time. Two days after I got it, I was stress-sick. Ahhh, it's fibro time. How’s that for irony?

As always, I do think there is some empowerment in the basic root understanding that you aren’t the only one who’s dealt with any of this. The mysterious illnesses, the pain, or the lack of care from modern medicine aren’t individual experiences. Hey, you might even be relieved to know that someone else on this planet routinely asks herself, “Do I have cancer for real this time, or am I just overworked again?”

After years of nobody I spoke to having a tale that even mildly resembled my autoimmune breakdown, finding anybody who related to my issues was extremely relieving. Not only was it a common experience, but it meant that I hadn’t somehow brought the discomfort on myself - through mental illness, physical shenanigans, or plain old weakness - the ways that I feared.

Furthermore, it proved that I hadn’t imagined it all. Because believe it or not, you’re surprisingly willing to throw yourself under the bus after all the pain has passed. I’ve spent the past decade telling people, “I think I have the glutens, as I call it... but I don’t really know though, it’s never been explained, sometimes other things bother me, and sometimes it’s really not a big deal, I don't know what it is” as an almost-apology. A disclaimer that I, too, doubt my own memories and conclusions because they weren’t properly validated by who I considered authority figures.

Hearing that other people had digestive disorders and autoimmune disasters in the wake of Complex Trauma, via the book The Body Keeps The Score, shocked me into self-acceptance of my prior experiences. Hearing that all of it can be encapsulated by this term fibromyalgia a few days ago - well, shit. This is a more mainstream occurrence than I ever previously thought.

And you know what? It does matter to me that I’m not the only one who falls apart when my brain gets overwhelmed. Even if it doesn’t fix anything. Even if my own postulations for how fibromyalgia is born from trauma feel more applicable than the scientifically proven ones. Even if I don’t believe the term deserves to stand alone as a medical label without further delineation - especially of the connection to and overlap with trauma. Even if I think… it might be inseparable.

And you know what? It does matter to me that I’m not the only one who falls apart when my brain gets overwhelmed. Even if it doesn’t fix anything. Even if my own postulations for how fibromyalgia is born from trauma are more enlightening than the scientifically proven ones. Even if I don’t believe the term deserves to stand alone as a medical label without further delineation - especially of the connection to and overlap with trauma. Even if I think… it might be inseparable.

Now I know. When I feel a physical breakdown coming on, with the suspected cause being stress… I don’t have to apologize for it. I don’t need to tell people that I just can’t handle the pressure with unfettered shame for my own biochemistry. I can rest assured that what I’m going through is common - far more common than we know - and completely valid. Even if there are people ready to tell you that it's not.

But, to be honest, I still probably won’t tell anyone that it’s called fibromyalgia. I’m not proud to say, I wouldn’t want them to think I’m just being dramatic.

UGH.

#cptsd #healcptsd #actually CPTSD #just cptsd things #traumabrain #Complex Trauma #trauma recovery #complextrauma #complexptsd

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Mushroom Hunting at the End of the World

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While the rest of the country focused on something other than the forest floor, I started foraging for chanterelles

I’d been staring at the ground too long. That’s most of what foraging is, by the way. It’s ignoring the blue sky and the trees to focus your gaze on the dirt. I was walking through cobwebs, surveying the woodland floor for almost an hour, when I finally saw one: a tiny, pale chanterelle mushroom sticking up near the trail’s edge. It looked sickly, or at the very least elderly. Perhaps it was a sign that this section of the woods was untraveled, or maybe nobody had ever thought to pluck it from its habitat.

I peeled it from the ground with my paring knife and placed it into my netted, purple sack, which once housed grocery-store red onions. This lonely mushroom wasn’t the haul, mind you, but rather an indicator. When one chanterelle appears, more will follow. A few steps off the trail and they emerged in droves. Soon, my bag was filled with corpulent, spore-bearing fungi — big chanterelles with deep-orange hues and fantastical shapes, like something a Nintendo animator might draw.

Walking back with my giant bag of wild mushrooms, I ran into a couple, the first people I’d seen that day. We all scrambled to put on our masks at the distant sight of one another. “You get some chanties?” the man said in his familiar, spectacularly unusual Pittsburgh accent. “It’s a gold mine out there,” I said, trying unconsciously to disguise any hints of that same Pennsylvanian elocution. After they disappeared back into the woods, I put my mask in my pocket, where it stayed for the rest of the hike. For about 30 seconds, I was reminded that the rest of the world was focused on something other than the forest floor.

For about 30 seconds, I was reminded that the rest of the world was focused on something other than the forest floor.

A few years back I had tasted some wild mushroom conserva courtesy of my cousin, Andy, during a trip to my hometown in Pennsylvania. Andy is a budding locavore, a self-taught forager, and a mad scientist in the kitchen. His passion is infectious. Eighty percent of the meat he consumes, he hunts himself. He cures venison and butchers whole pigs in his garage.

That first spoonful of Andy’s mushrooms, meaty chanterelles salted in a strainer, then simmered in white vinegar with gothic-looking thyme and peppercorns, is preserved in my mind, so much so that I can access that memory whenever I want. The dim lighting in my parents’ dining room, Andy standing in the kitchen with his arms confidently folded, the sound of the Mason jar lid spinning loose, and the immense joy of my first bite — stocky chanterelle mushrooms, piquant vinegar, gentle aromatics, and then the brilliant opulence of olive oil, used to preserve the mixture.

I asked Andy if I could take a jar of them back home to Los Angeles, and he obliged. Every so often, I unscrewed the lid for a small bite. I would close my eyes and feel the cold air in my hometown. If I listened carefully, I could hear the train whistles in the distance. Those mushrooms became a portal to my hometown, a culinary object so emotionally resonant, so distinct from the food I bought at my grocery store in California, that I always longed to forage and conserve a jar of my own.

I began to miss rural Pennsylvania as the pandemic encroached into summer. Like a lot of people, I felt trapped in the big city, and so in June, I went home. In Pennsylvania, everybody’s houses are set at a distance, but everyone barters home provisions, ranging from venison pastrami to crooked cucumbers to gargantuan zucchini. The summer is when the Amish sell sweet corn, and when the berry farms open their orchards. The old-timey ice cream shops end their winter break, and people start roasting whole pigs and marinated legs of lamb. It was also not lost on me that a hot, wet climate is the ideal condition for chanterelles, and that this would be the perfect time to chase that dragon: the jar of preserved mushrooms.

Once I began mushroom hunting, the calm followed. I embraced foraging, an oft-maligned word after the chef-bro boom of the 2010s. If your reaction is to recoil, you’re not alone. Before my mushroom-hunting days, I usually laughed when I saw the word “foraged” on a menu or in a magazine. Oh, did you really go out foraging, m’Lord?

The first time I went, I rode in the passenger seat of Andy’s car, down the winding rural roads of Amish country. To be honest, I didn’t immediately connect with foraging; the experience felt educational. Of course, when you’re dealing with something that can be either good in a stir-fry, consciousness-expanding, or deadly, education is important. Poisonous mushrooms actually look evil, though, an offer of good faith from Mother Nature. They often have a sinister gray or red color, with warts and scales reminiscent of the toxic fungi in fairy-tale illustrations. Andy made sure to teach me enough that I didn’t end up hallucinating through the woods — or, worse yet, dead.

People in my hometown definitely don’t fall into the stereotype of knuckle-tatted, beanie-wearing “foragers,” but they’re pretty keen on the good mushroom spots. There’s an old Polish woman, for instance, whose stiff, territorial energy I can feel whenever I show up to Gaston Park the day after a rain. Because I didn’t want to move in on another gang’s turf, I had Andy show me a few of his favorite areas. Still, it didn’t feel right: These were his discoveries, not mine. I wanted to make my own way. I wanted that excitement of stumbling across a rare mushroom, of encountering a field of freshly sprouted chanterelles. I wanted to find my own mushroom haven, and so I went to Hell’s Hollow.

daveynin/Flickr

A view from the Hell’s Hollow Trail in McConnells Mill State Park, Pennsylvania

Hell’s Hollow is a national park and trail in New Castle, Pennsylvania, about a mile down the road from my childhood home. Apparently, it’s called Hell’s Hollow because some time ago a man fell asleep in those woods, and when he woke up, he was convinced that the place he was in was actually Hell. Are the woods deep and dark? Sure. Spooky at night? Yeah, of course. But, Hell? As in the place where sinners go and are tormented for eternity? Like, Satan-owned and -operated Hell? I scoff at the idea whenever I pass the old wooden sign for the trail. What kind of idiot would think that the woods is Hell? It’s beautiful out here. I mean look, there’s a flowing river. Why would the Devil keep a freshwater source in an eternity of suffering? Rule No. 1 of Hell must be to stay hydrated. Rule No. 2? No running.

Hell’s Hollow has been a constant throughout my life. When I was a kid, my mom and dad let me splash around the creek trying to catch minnows and small crabs. When I was 10, I gleefully collected rocks and declared that I was going to be a geologist (my family would be disappointed). As teens, my friends and I smoked shag weed and smashed cans of Mountain Dew together like Stone Cold Steve Austin there. The point is, I’ve been wandering around Hell’s Hollow my whole life, and it never dawned on me that I would ever find myself foraging there. But sure enough, it was my spot.

I did not expect hunting for mushrooms to clear my head the way it did. People say that about prep work, by the way. They say that peeling potatoes and kneading dough lets the mind wander and alleviates stress. But, to me, prep work is just that: work. Dicing onions pierces the eyes, lemon juice stings, and I will always associate chopping parsley with the incoming threat of a dinner rush at one of my restaurant jobs. When people say that cooking soothes the mind, they’re not taking into account all the people who do this shit for a living. What are those people supposed to do to get away from themselves? For me, I found that wandering in the woods alone with a sense of purpose was exactly the thing I needed to weather the fire tornado of anxiety the pandemic had produced.

The act of foraging, a completely unchanged activity in a pandemic, possesses the acute ability to make me forget about the state of things entirely. Specifically, it was easy to forget about a global virus. Hunting for mushrooms in the woods alone is already distanced; there are no guidelines to follow. Walk down the street in Los Angeles and you’re immediately reminded that restaurants are shut down and live performance spaces are shuttered. But in the woods? Go ahead — sneeze full force in any direction you please. Let off some steam, pal. You’ve earned it. Sure, I had a mask, but it stayed in my pocket on the off chance that I ran into another human being, though I was more likely to spot a deer.

When I’m hunting for mushrooms it feels like I’m achieving something tangible.

This wasn’t just a way to pass time, mind you. These weren’t nature walks I was taking. There’s a sense of ambition at the core of mushroom hunting. Purpose, the thing so many of us have felt without this year, I suddenly possessed. When there’s purpose, there’s a sense of reward, and when I’m hunting for mushrooms it feels like I’m achieving something tangible. All my energy is focused, my aim clear. Instead of staring at the ceiling in my studio apartment, I found myself scanning the ground for edible treasure. The dopamine you receive from finding a cluster of chanterelle mushrooms in the damp woods is immense, somehow both frivolous and survivalist. There’s a real sense of childlike treasure-hunting tied to foraging.

Take the elusive cauliflower mushroom, Sparassis, which is as rare as mushrooms come. They grow sporadically; their appearance is psychedelic and aquatic. It looks coral in a way, like a living, breathing self-sustaining organism that belongs at the bottom of the ocean. Jarring, then, to find one surrounded by leaves and mossy logs. The mushroom itself is wavy and ethereal, with petals like a flower. It’s so rare that when Andy and I found one, he jumped in the air with excitement. For seven years he had been hunting for a cauliflower mushroom, and he finally got it. His triumph felt like my triumph, and in a way, it was. Later, I fried the petals of the cauliflower mushroom in oil and ate them salted. The texture was outstanding and the flavor delicate, like a homemade noodle but with the specific earthiness of a fungus. “How many people are eating a cauliflower mushroom right now?” I thought.

I felt like jumping in the air like Andy when I spotted that lone, feeble chanterelle in Hell’s Hollow. To reach that first chantie was a hero’s journey, past a path that leads to a dazzling waterfall, down a steep hill, across a stream, and through a tunnel of decaying trees. The air starts to cool down and a trained nose can begin to smell the faint notes of mushrooms in the air. Clusters of chanterelles appear like small towns; they are golden trumpets that politely announce their presence with colorful glee. Oyster mushrooms grow shelf-like on the sides of trees, and chicken of the woods, these endlessly useful and tasty orange half-moons, light up your eyes like a gorgeous sunset. That’s the thing about wild mushrooms — once you see them, you can’t unsee them. After an education in foraging, you’ll be forever scanning your surroundings, trying to manifest treasure.

As I carried back my sack of mushrooms that first time, I thought about that man who woke up in Hell’s Hollow in the night. How must he have felt? Aimless, one would assume. Probably searching for a way out of the darkness. Disoriented, without a clue where he might be in relation to the outside world. Maybe that’s what Hell is. Maybe it’s quite simply feeling lost and alone. The pandemic can feel like that, as though you’re traversing an endless dark wilderness hoping to catch a light in the distance that’ll guide you back to society. But is that a new feeling? Hasn’t it always been that way? Maybe all of life has just been wandering in the dark.

Anyway, I’m glad to be walking through the woods with a purpose.

Danny Palumbo is a comedian and writer living in Los Angeles.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2JUbLZq https://ift.tt/3korg8w

Getty Images

While the rest of the country focused on something other than the forest floor, I started foraging for chanterelles

For about 30 seconds, I was reminded that the rest of the world was focused on something other than the forest floor.

daveynin/Flickr

A view from the Hell’s Hollow Trail in McConnells Mill State Park, Pennsylvania

When I’m hunting for mushrooms it feels like I’m achieving something tangible.

Anyway, I’m glad to be walking through the woods with a purpose.

Danny Palumbo is a comedian and writer living in Los Angeles.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2JUbLZq via Blogger https://ift.tt/38Dk0DK

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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pi-cat000 · 5 years

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MSA time travel idea (part 19)

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Vivi POV, 8, 9, 10, Lewis POV, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, Lance POV 18

Part 20: here

Arthur drives continuously until he’s forced to stop for fuel. At a small roadside gas station, he grabs a breakfast bar, loads up on five-hour energy shots and uses a cramped, single-stall restroom in a brief attempt at freshening up. All his clean clothing is in his backpack, which he’s left in the motel room. Luckily, his washed-out apricot shirt and orange shorts double as daywear and aren't too worn.

Back on the road Arthur carefully keeps his mind blank, listening absently to the radio chatter and fixating on the way stretching ahead. He deliberately doesn’t think about Vivi and Lewis and resolutely ignores the occasional buzzing of his phone, which starts seconds after his departure and continues at odd intervals throughout the day.

He wishes he could switch it off, but he needs to receive calls from Darrel, who’s been worryingly silent so far. Thus, he’s stuck feeling guilty every time the screen lights up with an incoming call or text message. If only Vivi and Lewis would give up and decide to enjoy their time together without him. Unfortunately, his friends worry an awful lot, and he suspects that abandoning them in some middle-of-nowhere town wasn't going to help.

Maybe, when he explains a few things, stuff will get better. If Vivi and Lewis still want to be around him. He’s still on the fence about telling them to whole truth but, at this point, it’s either that or invent some entirely new lie. Arthur's so sick of lying. Honestly, he would rather spend eternity alone in his room and not interact with anyone then keep up the charade. But...no use obsessing about the future now. There will be plenty of time to figure out how he’s going to explain everything- and panic about how he’s somehow messed up the timeline - once he’s seen Lance alive and well.

Unlike the trip out, where they had lost multiple hours to rest stops, Arthur makes good time -if you could call eight hours, good time-and approaches his destination both sooner and slower than he would have liked. With one hand strangling the wheel, Arthur finally builds the courage needed to reach for his phone. There’s still been no news from Darrel, which he hopes is a good sign. At the next red light, he dials while scanning road signs for the correct exit. Nervously, he drums his fingers to the soft beat of some unfamiliar song on the radio.

Darrel answers almost immediately so Arthur is saved from waiting too long.

“Yo Arthur, was about to call, where are you man,” the other man says, sounding oddly upbeat, considering the situation.

Arthur ignores the question, quickly asking, “How’s Uncle Lance? Is he okay? What’s happening?” All that stress and anxiety he's been neglecting is now front and centre.

“Whoa,” Darrel cuts him off, “Yeah, I was about to say. He’s in surgery, and so far there’s been no word. Like, the nurses said they were mainly concerned about blood loss. He was hooked up to a needle, like, straight away, but we waited a few hours for the surgery, so I guess that means there was no really serious internal damage.”

Arthur winces, blood loss was something he was intimately familiar with, “Anything else?”

“Both his legs had a few hairline fractures, a broken bone here and there, and the doctors mentioned surface stab wounds,” Darrel adds after a moment of thought. The other man sounds a lot calmer when compared to his almost panic on the phone earlier that morning. Arthur takes the change as a good sign.

“Right…” Arthur exhales a long breath. At least his Uncle isn’t dying. The guilt he has been carrying since leaving Vivi and Lewis still pulls at his chest and stomach, but at least things with his Uncle aren't as dire as they could be. It's still bad, but maybe he'll get out of this not having somehow caused his Uncle’s death.

“So, you said you were driving down, how far off are you?” Darrel asks after his elongated pause.

“Ah, sorry, I’m about twenty minutes out.”

“Jeez, that’s close,” Darrel remarks, surprised, “How about I meet you in the car park near the emergency ward, it’s the first turn off the main…”

“I know where it is,” He reassures, stifling a yawn. Despite multiple energy shots, he’s really feeling the strain of the last twenty-four hours, “and yeah…that sounds good.”

“You want me to get you a coffee or something dude? Cause I guess you haven’t eaten yet,”

“Coffee sounds be pretty good right about now. Thanks….Darrel.” Arthur doesn't know what he would have done had Darrel not found his Uncle when he did.

“No problemo. Not much to do except wait for the doctors to say something. I'll tell you more in person when you get here.”

“Yeah. Okay. Sounds good.”

Darrel hangs up, and Arthur tosses his phone back into the front passenger seat realising a tired sigh. He focuses again on the road and navigating the busy streets leading into the towns moderately sized business district. By now he knows the way to St Peter’s Medical and Emergency Centre off by heart. His stomach is doing small flips, churning in a mixture of nerves, fear and anxiety. If he had never stepped foot in that building again, it would have still been too soon. All his memories of the place are linked with Lewis’s disappearance, a long and painful rebab, multiple surgeries, and Vivi’s inexplicable amnesia.

It’s just as unappealing as he remembers. Dull grey, utilitarian, and accompanied by an impending sense of dread. Arthur ignores his instinctive need to turn and drive in the opposite direction, locating the entrance to the correct car pack. It’s a small underground lot, consisting of visitor and employee parking, situated near the Emergency Centre portion of the building.

Arthur squints when he transitions from daylight to the carpark’s dime fluorescence. The layout is such that he has to drive past the main elevator giving access to the hospital. True to word, he spots Darrel next to the collection of lifts and stairs, casually leaning against a concrete support structure, coffee in hand.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to look far for an empty park, finding one several cars down. He exits his van a bundle of jumpy, nervous energy, fidgeting and smoothing down his wrinkled shirt as he goes. He feels he can probably get away with wearing it into the hospital. It's only seen one night of wear.

“Hey Arthur,” Darrel strolls up, giving a small wave, “How you holding up?”

“Tired from the drive,” Arthur admits, crossing over through deserted carpark towards the other man, “How’s Uncle Lance?”

“Still in surgery last I checked,” Darrel causally shrugs. All his urgency and stress is gone to be replaced with an almost board disposition. Arthur hesitates, slightly thrown by oddly discordant temperament.

“You talked to one of the triage nurses, right?” He shakes off the uncertainty, letting worry for his Uncle occupy his full attention, “What did they say exactly. Come on, you can fill me in on the way up to…”

Arthur doesn’t get more than partway into the sentence when Darrel, who’s in the process of handing him a coffee, stumbles. The coffee spills across his shirt, splattering across his shoulder. Arthur registers the discomfort of hot liquid and Darrel’s half-hearted apology before the other man leans in and grips both sides of his head. Arthur flinches away at the unexpected proximity. Their eyes meet.

Green.

The colour is bright. Familiar. An intangible force seams to wrap about his limbs, tangling itself up in his mind, pulling him down. For a second Arthur is…

...walking down a gloomy stone tunnel. Torchlight flickers, illuminating the figer of Lewis up ahead. Lewis steps out into a spacious cavern, holding the flaming torch aloft. Arthur trips on uneven rock, hand brushing against the cave walls. Pain shoots up his limb, and he stops, staring at the appendage, confused. Had he cut himself?

“Hey, Arthur! Come check out this view!” Lewis’s call distracts him…

Arthur tries to draw a breath, preparing for a panic response, but a wall comes down like a guillotine, separating him from the physical reaction he’s expecting. His chest constricts, and then there is the buzz of adrenalin getting dumped into his system, prepping him for fight or flight. Usually, this was when he’d start breathing hard, maybe hyperventilating, but he’s been cut adrift from his body, so the onslaught comes to an abrupt halt. Of course, he still panics, but it’s a mental, internal panic, accompanied by overwhelming dread and fear.

Darrel, who has let go of Arthur’s head, stumbles back, collapsing to the ground like he’s a puppet and someone’s cut the strings. Arthur raises a hand, wiggling his fingers, rolling his shoulders and inhaling. The breathless, tight sensation immediately evaporates.

“Finally,” He breaths out and Arthur realises with growing horror that it’s not him who's doing the talking. Muscles along his arms and legs spasm experimentally also beyond his control.

No. No. No. This isn’t him! It’s not him! Why is this so familiar?! Memories, long buried, both familiar and foreign, vie for his attention.

…“Hey Arthur! Come check out this view!” Lewis’s call distracts him.

His arm is numb now, but Arthur finds himself unfocussed, mesmerised by the patterns of light which are catching on the green, mossy walls and sharp stalagmites far below. He and Lewis are standing on a ledge overlooking a steep drop…

“Oh god,” Darrel’s voice draws his attention. The other man is scrambling back along the ground, shaking in fear. He’s scared of Arthur.

“Jesus. Oh, God!”

“Nope. No God here,” Arthur’s body comments, fixing its attention on the other man.

Darrel attempts to stand.

“Oh no. I’m not letting you go as well. Not this time,” Arthur growls, sweeping out a leg, knocking Darrel to the ground. Calmly, he walks around, stumbling briefly when one of his thigh muscles twitch suddenly. Despite this falter he still manages to kick Darrel over again, preventing him from escaping.

“Look, dude,” Darrel holds out his hands in a gesture of surrender, twisting around on his back, “I’ll give you anything. I won’t tell anyone. I swear. Just let me go. Please. I have a family, man.”

“No you don’t,” Arthur scoffs, lashing out, and stomping down simultaneously. Darrel’s head connects with the concrete giving a loud thunk. The other man falls silent and still. Disturbingly, Arthur feels his body and eyes scan the empty lot, shivering with obvious pleasure. There is no one around to stop him. Internally, Arthur claws mentally at his surroundings, flailing about, attempting to find a hold where there is none. It’s not him. It wasn’t him!

“That’s more like it,” His body talks. Arthur freezes in his panic, very aware of an increasingly overwhelming pressure focusing in upon him.

“Now, before I go dump poor Darrel somewhere, let’s take a quick look at what we have. It’s been a real run around getting you, so you better hope there’s something worthwhile banging around up here.”

Memories of the last few days unravel like an old film reel, spiralling past without his consent. Like a movie permanently fixed in fast forward they rush by. Arthur feels flashes of emotion as the scenes come and go quicker than he can register.

It all comes to an abrupt halt when it hits the moment he awoke in the past. Where Arthur transitioned between falling off a cliff to waking in his bed.

“Impossible,” The thing that’s not him mutters with his mouth.

“That’s not possible,” It sounds agitated, almost angry. The foreign presence winds its way deeper into his thoughts, pulling them apart. The flashing images start up again.

“Someone’s been breaking The Rules,” Is the last Arthur hears before he’s lost in a sea of panic and memories. This isn’t right.

He’s made a mistake.

Note: And we’ve finally hit the crisis point or whatever this is called. What a ride.

Part 20: here

#MSA #mystery skulls animated #fanfiction #fanfic #arthur kingsmen #the demon #mind control #posession #graphic descriptions of violence #dark #flashback #angst

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gobigorgohome2016 · 5 years

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All the Cliches

When I started writing this post in my head, I was going to title it something like Out of Hibernation, yet make it known that I wasn’t planning to bore you with a 1,300 word soliloquy comparing myself to a Bleeding Heart (which is apparently a Spring perennial and, you know, we’re all about cliches here) blooming through the last remnants of Winter frost.

Then I thought, no, do I really need an intro to tell everyone I’m back on my bullshit after a few steps forward and another step back?

Then I realized...isn’t running really just the epitome of a giant cliche?

TL;DR I had a big accomplishment in the fall and thought the momentum would carry over super easily into the Spring. I ignored some symptoms, realized I was anemic, felt really sad, and now I’m starting to feel like myself again. aka, the simple, common, cliched journey of every.single.runner.

Even though this experience is the embodiment of what it means to be an endurance athlete, why do we act surprised every single time? Leading up to Philadelphia, after my year of mystery illness [which, it turns out, had another plot twist. Remember how I was having a massive immune system reaction and pretty terrible quality of life? Well, after we found mold in the house the problem went 90% away. The remaining 10% was still driving me crazy. Long story short, the installation of a whole-home water filter has returned me to a fully functioning human being. Hello, my name is Anna and I’m just your local canary in the coal mine] I vowed I would do a better job about just letting life go with the flow and not try to fight the current every step of the way. I guess I got too big for my britches because - lo and behold - I found myself avoiding what I pretty much knew all along.

After Philadelphia, I took 2 weeks off and really enjoyed my down time. The highlight was a day trip to French Lick, where Dave and I hit the casino (I won $25), ate all the sweets, shopped, split an amazing kobe beef burger, got day drunk, and took the scenic drive home. The next day I started running again and, much to my surprise, felt way better than I normally do after two weeks of zero exercise. This felt like a big win.

December turned out to be extra crazy, then at the end of January I co-hosted a women’s running retreat, BAnna Camp. Any fatigue I was feeling during December and January I just chalked up to stress and the typical things you do when you’re in that awkward in-between period from one race to another: less sleep, less healthy food, less fitness.

^have to make sure this post never dies

The first day I was in Austin, Becki and I did a workout together. It was my first “real” workout back (other than some fartleks and strides), and it wasn’t even supposed to be hard: 3 x 7 min @ 6:00 pace. I STRUGGLED. I couldn’t breathe, my quads were heavy, and the paces felt much more difficult than they seemed like they should. But, there were plenty of excuses: it’s windy, we were running a net uphill, I was dehydrated from travel, I was stressed about the upcoming camp, etc. etc. Midway through that workout I had a very distinct thought of oh shit, this feels very anemic right now. That night I texted my friend who would be joining us later in the week and asked her to bring some iron pills, since I had forgotten my supplement.

The following week my workout didn’t feel great, but again, it was easy to make excuses. I was on a treadmill. I was still catching up on sleep from camp. Maybe I’m more out of shape than I thought.

Longer efforts didn’t feel great, but I was getting them done. My paces felt quick, but, winter training never feels amazing. Plus, it seemed like every workout I did was into a strong wind, so how can you really judge pace and effort?

In early February, I had my first race of the season which was a 5 miler in downtown Indy. I had told Dave I was going to hold 5:30 pace for as long as I could and see what happened. My first mile was 5:54, and Dave said he could hear me breathing before he could see me. I was 3rd that day in just under 30:00. Again, there were plenty of excuses. It was windy. We had celebrated Valentine’s Day the night before, so maybe steak, lobster, buttered mashed potatoes, and wine wasn’t the best pre-race meal?

During my sulking about the race I had an aha moment. In December, prior to realizing we had an issue with our water, I was trying to figure out what was still causing skin rashes and GI issues. The only thing I was taking every day was ferrous sulfate, which is an iron supplement that is gentle on your stomach but has some suspect ingredients (food colorings, sorbate, etc.). I decided to switch my supplement (one that had worked for me for YEARS) to something that seemed “cleaner”: ionic iron. While I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what could be wrong, it occurred to me to check my iron dosage.

I was taking ~10% of my normal ferrous sulfate dosage, and honestly don’t even know how absorbable ionic iron even is. That day I made the switch back to ferrous sulfate, but knew that if my iron/ferritin was low, it would take about 6 weeks before I felt a difference.

If at this point you’re reading along and thinking to yourself, it’s not expensive to just go and get a blood test to find out whether your iron is low - you are absolutely correct. I should have just scheduled an appointment to take a blood test and find out. But, I’m stubborn.

Two weeks after my 5 mile race I flew to Atlanta for the Road to Gold, an 8 mile race on the 2020 Olympic Trials course. This is a whole other post in and of itself, but I will say that the hype is real. That course is going to be hard.

While the experience was great, my time was not. My goal had been to run 5:45 pace through the first 4 miles and then pick up the pace. While I did go through the first 4 miles in 22:50, just under my goal, I went through the next 4 miles in 24:20ish, and again felt as though I couldn’t breathe. I finally conceded it was time for a blood test.

The results were pretty much exactly what I thought they would be: low ferritin, high CO2 in my blood, and borderline-low Vitamin D. After weeks of agonizing over whether I was out of shape I finally had an answer (albeit one I should have just figured out sooner). So, I upped my iron supplement and looked ahead.

Nowhere to go but up, right?

In the following weeks I paid better attention to meal timing (i.e., if I was having a steak for dinner I wasn’t pairing it with red wine or other iron-inhibiting foods). I cut out my second cup of coffee in the afternoon so that my body could have a better chance at iron absorption. I focused more on sleep. I got back on nutrient tracking to make sure I was getting everything I needed from my diet.

and it paid off

6 weeks after my miserable 5 mile race where I could barely run faster than 5:58 pace for 5 miles, I ran 1:16:37 in the Carmel half marathon on a less-than-ideal day with rain and wind.

During race week I cut out all caffeine and red wine to hopefully give my body the extra boost it needed to absorb iron. I meal prepped early in the week so that I had nutrient-rich options readily available. I said no to a couple work-related opportunities that popped up in favor of less stress, and I gave myself my best chance to succeed.

In truth, sometimes setting yourself up for success is scary. What if you do everything possible and you don’t succeed? I have seen so many talented athletes give up because they went all in and it didn’t immediately pay off. But, that’s probably another post for another day, too.

Come race day we had 15 mph winds, pouring rain, and puddles on the course. It will sound sarcastic when I say this, but that truly is my favorite racing weather. Going into the race my A goal (not accounting for weather) was 75 min, B goal 76 min, and C goal 77 min. My plan was to run the first 10 at 5:45 effort, then see how fast I could go the last 5k.

Starting off, I was very pleased to find myself in a pack of men and through the first mile around 5:40. I NEVER trust my GPS, so all splits I give will be those from the course. I went through 4 miles in 22:50 - the exact same time I went through 4 miles in Atlanta, only this time I felt so much better. I went through 6.55 (again, as marked on the course, not my GPS) in 37:26 and felt like I really had a chance at sub 75 still. Through 10 miles I was right at 58 min. I felt strong for the first time in a long time.

Around mile 11 I started to get tired, and just focused on getting through 0.5 miles at a time. T last couple miles were definitely the toughest, as they were mostly uphill/into the wind. 76:38 is my fourth fastest half [74:03, Houston, PERFECT weather; 75:20, ‘17 US championships, goal race full taper, 75:59, Columbus half, 4 weeks out from Philly], and this gives me a lot of encouragement considering some sub-par months of training.

Now that I am feeling the effects of higher ferritin, I’m beginning to wonder if I wasn’t a little bit low during my Philly build up. I have had some of my best long runs and workouts the past couple weeks - ones that would have blown away what I did leading up to Philly. It also makes sense, given how I felt the last half of my Philly race, that my ferritin may have been low. Moving forward, I’m going to schedule blood work much more regularly so that I don’t have preventable problems like this occur. Definitely kicking myself, but, as with all failures in life it was a great opportunity to learn and grow.

My next race is in 6 weeks and I’ll be at the 25k championships in Grand Rapids. I’m looking forward to seeing what another 6 weeks of quality training and (hopefully) warmer weather can do for my fitness!

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theroamerscamp-blog · 5 years

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Prepping for the Summer Holidays

Memorial Day is almost here. It’s one of those holidays that most people don’t pay attention to until the weekend itself is almost here. But when it does hit, you know summer is in full swing.

There’s a multitude of reasons why everyone loves when Memorial Day Weekend does decide to come around, though. The weather is perfect. Grilling season has begun. Having some cold ones with your friends is a priority. And back to back to back weekends of relaxation is in store.

Like most other holidays, however, Memorial Day isn’t quite possible to celebrate with proper planning ahead. And if you don’t have the right food supplies, drinks, equipment, and even shipping supplies, it can be more stressful than it has to be. So, read on to check out the essentials you’ll need in order to have a great Memorial Day Weekend!

Fun activities

This is one of those things that can be extremely simple or very frustrating depending on your planning. You definitely don’t want things to become a chore, as that ruins the whole point of relaxing during these weekends. Just make sure to keep in mind that you don’t want to plan some extravagant boating trip if it’s expensive and will cause people to stress over the cash. Try to see if any friends or family know someone that would let you use someone’s lake house for the weekend. Or use your own place as a spot for a grill out and play cornhole and darts instead of traveling somewhere.

Food prep

Food is one of my favorite things about any holiday or get together. The problem is, someone has to be the one to plan out who’s bringing what so that there’s no overlap, an abundance of choices, and a head chef that’s doing all the grilling or cooking.

So whether you’re doing a big barbecue with a designated grill master or even a tasty crawfish boil with someone on frying duty, you need to make sure someone is in charge, someone is bringing the right meats, and that people are designated for cleanup.

The right supplies

You can’t expect to host a get together for the weekend unless you have all the supplies you need. Paper towels, paper plates, plastic utensils, trash cans set up in the right spots, and some random shipping supplies like packaging tape are perfect for making sure things go smoothly, cleanup is very simple, and everyone doesn’t feel like chaos is abounding.

#summer holidays #food prep

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sprinklesandsugarcubes · 7 years

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Once Upon A Dream (Part One)

Fandom: Riverdale Pairing: Sweet Pea x Reader/OC Rating: NSFW, Mature Warnings: Language/Cursing, Adult Themes/Situations, Emotional Stress/Angst, Gang Activity, Underage Drinking/Drug Useage (Party responsibly!), Rivalry, Smut! Format: Part One of Three

Note: So this is a little something that popped into my head, inspired by the song, Wildest Dreams. Silly, I know, but some of those lines just seem to fit Sweet Pea so well. I couldn’t resist. This has a slight AU!Quality, where there is a strong football rivalry between the Southside High and Riverdale High. Cliche, perhaps, but I lovee it. There’s some Archie!Angst in the beginning, so if any of you are a sucker for that! This will be a three part mini-series, and should wrap up after the third part!

Looking at him, she couldn't help but think he was beautiful.

Even from where she stood across the field; the dual sounds of the cheering crowd and the marching band’s halftime numbers drowning out any attempt she might make at calling out, there in that cluster of blue and gold as her fellow River Vixens stretched and bounced in place, preparing themselves for the next set of cheers they would deliver- she recognized it. His beauty, that is.

But it didn't hide the tiredness about him. The slight shadows under his dark eyes, the way he slouched over in his seat just a bit, like the weight of the world rested upon his shoulders. He looked exhausted, and an air of melancholy hung thick around him. It worried her, made her fidget with the desire to toss the sparkly poms she clung to upon the ground and cross enemy lines, just so that she could ask if he was alright.

Nervously, she fluttered her hands back and forth; the subsequent shake of the sparkly attention-grabbers the only thing she could hear. Because, as she had been looking him over, she had missed the moment he turned his head. She had missed the moment where he began staring right back at her. That deep, soul-searching, nearly fathomless gaze that could leave her mesmerized, even from fifty yards away.

Just like it had that day, so many months before.

June

It was supposed to be the best summer she and experienced, yet at least. Her parents would be out of town for most of it, popping in occasionally on weekends, but otherwise leaving her to her own devices. She'd have their home to herself, free to do as she pleased. Which only sent butterflies to fluttering when she thought of all the alone time she could spend with her redheaded boyfriend.

Archie Andrews was her very first boyfriend, having asked her out about halfway through their freshman year at Riverdale. She had always been enamored with the soft-hearted ginger, ever since she had come to the sweet little town a few years prior. She wasn't the only one, she knew, so it was utterly surprising when Archie had asked her the question one afternoon, did she want to have dinner with him at Pop's? She didn't think she'd ever answered a question so quickly, or easily.

The rest was history.

With her parents gone, they had excitedly talked about the possibilities summer could hold.

Sure, Archie would be plenty busy with working over the summer months, finally being old enough to help out with his father's construction business, and then there was his annual trip with Jughead that she fully supported. But there would be plenty of time for them, and with each being more than ready to take that next step in their relationship, they made their plans and were practically giddy about sticking to them.

Which was why it was odd, she decided, that Archie seemed to be unable to answer his phone.

The previous two days had been nothing but text messages, which was strange in itself. Archie liked texting her, but not as much as he did actually speaking to her. There was just something about her voice, he said. Still, she had understood his hectic schedule and had proposed waiting until Saturday evening for him to come over. With a thrilling anticipation surging through her blood, she had made sure everything was prepped and ready for that evening.

Legs shaved, check. Spotless bedroom, minus the addition of new candles, check. Cute but utterly enticing lingerie that still had the tags on, check.

All that was left was confirming with her boyfriend and double checking that he would enjoy having spaghetti that night since she was cooking.

But she just couldn't get him on the phone.

Shrugging it off, she snatched up her keys and tousled the soft strands of her hair, preparing herself to drive to the grocery store and pick up anything needed for the evening. She had half a mind to buy strawberries, just to see the boy blush. The breeze rippled in through rolled down windows, further mussing her silky strands as she drove, lips mouthing the words of a song.

In a spur of the moment decision, having come to a stoplight that rested at the corner of the street she knew could take her to Andrew's Construction, she paused and made a right. After all, if she couldn't get Archie on the phone, what better way to remind him of their evening than showing up as a surprise? It had been nearly a week since they had last seen each other, she just knew his smile would split his face nearly open upon seeing her pull up.

Only...it was her that was in for the surprise.

A few blocks from the main trailer offices, she took notice of a light blue car, the paint peeling in just a few places. It was terribly parked, as if the person inside had been thoroughly distracted upon doing so. Her nose wrinkled and she huffed in annoyance when she realized it was still even partially in the lane, idling a bit shakily as little puffs of smoke took to the air, pouring from the exhaust.

She could just make out two silhouettes in the car, each one leaned closely toward the other, bodies flush from the chest up and mouths interlocked in what appeared to be a heated session of kissing. Her lips curved into a smirk as she shook her head, completely understanding the urge but still annoyed that she couldn't simply drive on. Checking the opposite lane of traffic, she signaled to move over and eased the passenger side window down, fully prepared to call out to the couple and advise them to make use of the turn off into the trees a mile back down the road.

Her words died tragically in her throat as she peered into the little car, as did her amused expression.

That shock of red hair was easily recognizable, and so were the large hands buried into honey brown strands of hair. The newly muscled build was also familiar, she had spent hours just last week tracing over it with her curious fingers.

Her mouth ran dry as she watched, seemingly unable to look away, while the couple crouched over in the cramped little car remained oblivious. Her ears were ringing slightly, the sound of both that and the blood pulsing through her veins in panicked agitation making it impossible to hear the music pouring from her speakers. A knot had grown in her throat, constricting the passage until she felt as if she couldn't even swallow, much less speak or breathe. Her eyes stung horribly, a film of heartbreaking moisture clouding them, and finally spilling over as she watched the female of the duo toss her leg over the redhead's lap, straddling him.

It was only when she actually recognized the woman that she finally managed to react, quickly stomping on the accelerator and thanking more than one deity that she had chosen to drive her father's vehicle instead of her own. The tires threw dirt and rock onto the tiny car as the truck rocketed down the lane, no doubt startling the occupants.

She didn't care to look backward, to see what the secret couple had done as she sped away.

Dashing away the tears that had spilt over with quick fingers, she simply accelerated more, hoping that maybe the faster she drove, the easier it would be to leave it all, and Archie Asshole Andrews, behind.

She ran.

With little thought really, to where she was going.

She had abandoned the truck in the driveway and had rushed inside, ignoring every picture of the red headed heartbreaker on her walls as she tore the dress from her body and shimmied into a pair of running shorts and a lightweight shirt instead. With her key tucked into the band that circled her wrist, she had left her phone and everything else behind.

Including any sense of direction, apparently, as she had long ago crossed over the railroad tracks and found herself running through the heart of the Southside.

She should have felt uncomfortable, perhaps even the slightest inking of fear.

After all, despite her genuine distaste for it, she was not naive to the tension that simmered between those of the North and South sides of the tracks. She had never understood it, how people could judge each other over something as simple as geography. To her, each person was a human being, deserving of respect and happiness.

So perhaps she was naive in such a sense after all.

Finally, as conscious thought seemed to return and her mind suppressed the horrifying images of sighting her once-boyfriend (because they were SO over now) and their music teacher getting all hot and steamy in her car; her feet slowed from a run to a walk, and she raised her head, her eyes widening slightly as she took in her surroundings.

She had managed to run all the way to the southern end of thirty-second street, far enough that she could see the glow of bar lights and the faint shapes of trailer homes further beyond. Currently, she stood in front of a tiny bakery that had already closed up for the evening, as the sun was steadily sinking along the horizon, splashing the skyline with hues of purple and pink that were swallowed by the thunderheads that were rolling in from the west.

Her chest heaved slightly, her lungs seeming to catch on to the fact that she was no longer running like her life depended on it, and they could recoup the oxygen they so desperately needed. She bent over at the waist a little, pressing her palms to her knees as she greedily swallowed air, fighting against the need to plant her ass upon the pavement and just sit for a while. After all, she had a decent trip to make back home.

But it wasn’t meant to be.

Like the chaotic mass of emotion that sat churning in her gut, squeezing her heart in a way that she could equate to near physical pain, and tightened her throat until it ached; the storm that had been brewing in the night sky finally unleashed itself, opening the heavens so that torrents of rain could pour down to the mortal souls scurrying below.

She was drenched within the first five minutes, her already fitted-workout gear becoming indecently skintight as it stretched across both ass and chest. Her hair hung in limp, sodden strands, clumping together in some places as more than one lock of it stuck together. The massive droplets made teasing trails down the bare skin of her arms, legs, and stomach; the cool temperature clashing with the heat from her run, causing her skin to prickle and shiver. Her head dropped back on her shoulders, eyes fluttering closed as inky lashes dusted the tops of her cheeks, and her lips parted in what anyone would assume to be a frustrated scream.

Instead, she laughed.

She laughed until her chest twinged and her stomach ached, until her jaw was almost sore from remaining in the amused expression. She laughed until the sound transformed, losing its carefree amusement and turning to one that bordered the line of hysteria. The sound was haunting, losing all traces of goodness, replaced instead by the echo of emotion untouched. She laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks, mixing with the rain in a way that made it almost unnoticeable. She laughed until the tears were real, until she was no longer laughing at all, until the sound choked off into a desperate sob as she backed into the bakery’s stable, brick walls and sunk down.

There she buried her face into her legs after tucking them into her chest, propping her folded arms atop her knees.

It could have been minutes, possibly even hours, that she sat there on that lonely, quiet street with no other company, save the rain and booming thunder. Her tears had long ago ceased, her eyes running dry, no longer able to spare her heart any moisture. The downpour had shifted, changing from sheets of rain that one could hardly see through, to a gentle rain that pitter-pattered across the sheet metal awning she had managed to huddle beneath. She watched, blank eyes peering out through soaked strands of hair, as a single car plundered its way down the road, narrowly missing a pothole that had grown in the center of the street. She could have sat there for minutes, possibly even hours, more…had it not been for him.

She heard them before she saw them; a group of leather-clad teenagers that had only just exited a diner down the street, the paint faded and more than one light in the sign that displayed its name burnt out.

They were a group of five or six, perhaps, each one a little more rambunctious than the last as they turned toward her, plodding down the sidewalk across from hers, their destination more than likely the neon lights that sat a hundred or so yards further down the street, given the emblem she managed to catch a peek of as one girl, her hair an alluring mixture of pinks, turned to a stocky-statured boy.

Biting her lip, she curled tighter around her knees, hoping to make herself seem even smaller than she actually was. Perhaps, if she was lucky, she could even sink into the shadows and go unspotted; they seemed to be enjoying themselves, their laughter echoing off the worn buildings, so there was little reason for them to look in her direction. The last thing she wanted was to find herself caught up in some sort of confrontation, despite the fact that she had little issue with them and wasn’t looking to make any new ones.

Gazing out stealthily from the gaps between dripping locks once more, she felt the tension drain from her limbs as she watched them pass her general area, continuing on toward their endpoint without even catching a glimpse of her. She breathed out a sigh, squeezing her eyes closed as she shuddered in place, a mixture of adrenaline and the chill in the air from the storm leaving her nearly shivering.

What she had failed to notice however, was the lone figure that had broken off from the group, ambling toward her side of the road in a lazy, unhurried pace.

“You look lost,” Someone spoke lowly, their distaste apparent in their tone. “Princess.”

His voice was mocking, tainted with his derision and the sneer that twisted his lips; it didn’t make it any less attractive.

It sounded like sin and sex, wrapped up with a red velvet ribbon, and it only grew more potent as it rumbled softly when the pet name rolled off his tongue, accompanied by the low growl in his chest. It made her want to squirm, heat blooming to life in the pit of her stomach, a tingle racing toward her thighs. She froze in place there on the wet concrete, not because she was frightened but because the reaction she experienced to his voice alone was, in its own way, frightening.

She had never reacted like that to Archie’s voice.

When she tipped her head up, finally daring to look at the boy whose voice set her blood on fire, she couldn’t stop the small gasp from escaping her parted lips.

He was, to put it simply, gorgeous.

His hair was damp from the gentle rain, the raven colored strands tousled haphazardly, like all he did in the morning was run his fingers through it a few times. His eyebrows were just as dark, arching expressively, and his eyelashes were every bit as inky. They framed dark eyes, their color more than likely a deep, sinfully rich brown; though it was hard to tell in the darkness, they looked instead like shadow pits, endless and beckoning. His nose was sloped smoothly, his jawline chiseled from the hands of above, and his cheeks were filled just the slightest bit, rounding out the apple of them. His teeth gleamed in the night, and his lips…his lips made her want to do things.

As she lifted her gaze, meeting his eyes once more, she caught the way they softened at the edges, the change just barely noticeable as they swept back and forth across her face rapidly. The sneer fell from his lips, pressing itself into a firm line that reminded her of cautious concern rather than his earlier contempt. He took a single step closer, one that was slow and deliberate, almost as if he believed her to be a startled animal that might bolt at any second. His eyes trailed her face again, centering on her cheeks, and it was then that she understood.

She must look a mess!

Between the running and the rain, not to mention her outright ugly sobbing only a handful of minutes before; her mascara had bled into the corners of her eyes, trekking down in smudged trails over the outer edge of her cheeks. Her eyes had to be irritated and red, quite possibly even swollen, just enough to make it entirely obvious that she had been bawling to her heart’s content.

Quickly, she lifted her hands, swiping beneath her eyes in a futile attempt to look at least halfway put together as she broke their gaze, needing to escape the heat the was only building with every passing, silent moment.

“I-I’m not,” She croaked out, wincing at the sound of her voice, before sucking in a deep breath. “Lost, I mean. I just…I just needed-“

Thunder rumbled across the sky once more, the wind picking up as a new wave to the storm threatened all below it.

She shuddered hard then, gripping her arms so tightly around herself, her nails bit into the soft skin. She needed to get home, but the thought of walking through the rain made her shake even harder, the reaction made worse as a cooler breeze blew through the empty street.

Suddenly, a hand appeared in front of her face, nearly making her squeak in surprise. It was large, bigger than she had expected, and she could faintly judge the array of callouses that had no doubt roughened it from hours of labor and tinkering with mechanical parts. He had just a little grease smudged over his knuckles, and a tattoo wrapped around his thumb that begged to be examined much closer. She followed the outstretched hand with her eyes, her gaze caressing up and over the strong arm encased in shining leather, to the face peering down at her; a picture of forced nonchalance that guarded the slight hint of vulnerability he felt over offering it to her.

It was only after she had placed her much smaller hand into his, allowing him to tug her up from her seated position, catching her with his free arm around the waist when her muscles cramped and protested; that she realized something very important.

She didn’t even hesitate.

SweetPeasPodSquad Taglist: @half-and-halfxx @tofarawaytobreathe @serpent-princess @mi-ghostaa @sweetpeas-serpant @adventuresofchlocaine @bellamysgirl @obsessedqueenie @batmanslittlelover @becca-in-the-tardis @the-fifth-season @dramionelove190 @southsidepea @cinn-rawr @randomnesss-of-fandomness @kneesheee @bby-simone @im-not-perfect-im-proud @king-sweetpea @southsidenoodle @jxhn-mxrphy @kytty27 @itsashleydallas @podsquads-sinns @sweet-peas-serpents @riverdale-writer-sins @sweetpeasnecktattoo @poolpartyingwithjaws

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aggresivelyfriendly · 6 years

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~Meet Me In The Hallway~

Chapter 37-Initial Descent

Unfailing thanks to the groups chat, the music recs and @nocontrolforlouis who edited from the beach like a rockstar! I messed with it more, so mistakes are mine. as is the story.

My heart is pounding like a thoroughbred dosed standing in the gate waiting for the bullet. I'm staring at the piece of lace that Maria Luisa had shown me months ago through a pixelated screen and it is all that I can see. That and the phone with my wing and a prayer text screen open. The scrap lays over my knee in stark color contrast to the bright ivory of my dress in its yellowing age. The tip of my thumb is also white where I clutch it and I'm sure my knuckles are too, but the edges outside my direct line of vision are blurry.

I'm sure it was meant to be a sweet gesture. Giving me the lace from her wedding dress. It's for luck. A first time lucky marriage, one that lasts, is supposed to be guaranteed by something old and borrowed, blue and new. Yet, this lace may mean the wedding never happens.

The color is off. The dress on my body looks like when someone turns on a light when you are at the edge of sleep in contrast. The lace patterns are different too. And though it took me much less time to find the dress I wear, not the day Harry and I really set our pasts and future aflame in the blinding light of my parents sunroom because I was too devastated by my betrayal to even get out of bed until days later. I found one though, my last day in Australia when I was determined, and finally able, it was the first dress I put on. It felt right.

Today it once again feels like the wrong choice. Or maybe this is the right dress but I'm the wrong bride. The teardrops of Maria Luisa's yellowing lace mock me. Surprisingly, there is no water leaking from my eyes at the moment. I think I am too distressed even to cry. I'd like to call for somebody to get me a paper bag to breath into, but my dress is so tight it's hindering my breath. I want to stand up, and see the reflection, the finished product that my small bridal party, consisting of my mother, Milo's mum, cousin Tricia and of course Kara, had cooed over. But I can't.

I'm sure I look stunning. I look better than I ever have. My hair is longer, but not quite the three promised inches, my waist is slimmer and tight from the spin gym I've exercised my demons at, and I've been very careful with my skin routine. It's much easier to catch Milo sleeping if I take forever to come out of the bathroom, and wedding prep is an excuse the brings smiles to his face and allays questions. In the last three months I have discovered something about myself. The more put together I look on the outside, the more mess I am covering up on the inside.

Makes me wonder about the days I threw on Harry's t shirts and jeans that hadn't seen the inside of a washer in months. I hadn't done much damage then, not even to myself. Less to hide.

There are chinks in the armor of course, if you are looking. They are easy to spackle over, like the toothpaste you shove into the tack holes you make on your walls when leaving a shared residence. But any closer look would reveal that my weight is down because food is less interesting, and my long time in the bathroom is born of not just skin care, but occasional choked breakdowns on the pink woven rug I love so much. Sometimes, the look on Harry's face when he caught the shape of my huge engagement ring keeps me in the cubicle until the wee hours. There isn't really a hallway in our Singapore sized apartment to torture myself in, though that would be more perfect.

Milo had caught the far off look in my eyes. Couldn't avoid it really. As he did from the beginning of the end, when I saw Harry in China 7 months ago. I think he wants to buy my excuses, the way I want to put a mortgage on them. Wedding planning is stressful, I'm traveling a lot, I'm fitting in workouts too now, and I'm constantly on the phone with a well meaning loved one. Usually Kara. My mother is strangely silent.

I think she is mad at me. She told me that morning to go after Harry, when he blazed outta my house like a bushfire. "Melody, that boy has come for you three times now. He's made the gestures. Make one back." Shed lifted the most imperious arm I'd ever seen out of her and pointed it to the car that was idling at the curb. "Go after him, or you are a fool."

"Milo—"

"Milo deserves a wife not in love with another man!" She'd stamped her damn foot.

And I'd listened- some childhood impulse put away at 14 asserted itself and my feet moved. When I got the heavy wooden door open, the black Range Rover he always seemed to be driving was idling and his head was on the top of the steering wheel. He looked up at me. His face was red and his eyes and mouth were swollen. I couldn't see his tears but I could feel them. It stopped me dead. I had no right to cause him any more pain. My mom was right, he had come for me. And I'd devastated him again.

I had no right.

I saw hope cross his features then a scowl to match his megawatt smile, the dark to its light and my head and heart dropped in response.

The sun hid himself behind a cloud and I couldn't see Harry's expression at all as he pulled away. My mom handed me her car keys, but I just stared at them and handed them back.

I caught her disappointment. "Melly, you'll regret this!" She said it like she had some hidden knowledge. I wasn't sure I could face another rejection, another horrible conversation where it looks like you are going to get everything you want, then have it ripped away. My heart is not safe with Harry. I feel too much and control too little. If only the control I lost was over the number of words, not a freezing of my damn vocal chords.

Milo may be no choice, because I've decided that I have to tell him. Lord knows how you bring up having seen an old flame and trying to be friends. Only to realize you still love them. Just like that I guess. In any case, it had to be easier than the last twenty minutes in that sunroom.

I'd grabbed my cuppa and made him his deep brown brew from memory. It was a stalling tactic to be sure, but I also was unable to walk into that room with empty hands. I wasn't sure what I'd do with them, how the devil would play with them. Would Rosie and her five sisters seek inappropriate contact with Harry's face in a smack or would I pull him into me and connect our mouths like last time we had privacy and there was any hope in the air around us?

I can't hear my footsteps padding on the bare floorboards down the hallway, though I can see them, I'm watching them carry me forward as they are drowned out by the hummingbird heartbeat in my chest. What's going to happen? Will we find a way forward? In what capacity? As friends? As more? Again?

I'm distracted and I watch a plop of coffee fall and blend into the floor when I stop suddenly because I have run into the black and white vans that Harry has been favoring in his casual time.

He's waiting for me in the Hallway.

"Oh!" I react to the spill and see his hand encircle the cup I intended for him.

I follow him into the room and catch that he has sat it down just as he takes the next cup from my hand and places them right next to each other. My cup right next to his-in yellow cloudy light-like so many mornings before.

I look up at him just in time to see his orangutan arms reach for me and I go, before I can question the impulse and melt like a creamsicle in the sun onto his shoulder.

"Melody." He breathes into my hair. My responding hiccup doesn't have any of the relief I would have expected. It's a overfilled balloon, it bursts and the pop is my breath. "I'm sorry, Angel, I'm sorry. That shouldn't....that shouldn't have happened. Knew I had to explain--"

"It's ok, I know you," I gasp, "You didn't know that she was coming." The unasked question, unfair as it is, is why she was there at all? Was he going to see me, then have her come in to see him just after? Was this a game we were playing? Getting back at me? Or did he see me as just a friend?

His grasp on me and the length of this hug doesn't feel friendly.

"No, I didn't know and Jeff didn't know you were going to be there. I hadn't--" he runs his lips across my hair and cinches his arms a little tighter around me. "I wanted to see how the night went, with you, before I told Jeffrey...." He kept hesitating in his words and I wasn't' quite able to understand why. So I pulled back to look at him.

Harry scrambled a bit, but gave me the inches to see his eyes. "Why, um? Why would you need to tell Jeffrey?"

"Teegan and me. We have been out in public together, and like, I've never confirmed the relationship, everyone knows." He draws a breath and I'm sure I'd be able to track his thoughts if I could hear anything but Teegan over and over in my inner monologue.

Harry's talking, slowly, and tripping a bit on his ums, but I've still missed something "Huh?"

"I was saying that, um, Jeff would want to know beforehand if I was gonna break-like break up with her--"

"Why would you break it off with her?" I hear come out of my mouth and I'm in turns terrified of his answer and thrilled by the prospect.

It's quiet for too long save for the chirping of the birds that love my mother's flowers and swim in her bird bath.

"Melody, would you please look at me!" I see his jaw square as I look out the windows into my mother's garden to see a bird ruffle it's wet feathers and take off. His hands clutch my shoulders to emphasize his request and I look at his eyes. Because of us. "Melody, you tell me why I'd break it off with her?"

"Because," I take a big breath. "Because of me? Because of us?" I ask and immediately feel guilty and cast red-handed eyes down.

"Yeah," he breathes and it's light with hope instead of leaden with guilt. "For you, for us. Don't you feel like we aren't over, Angel?"

"I um, I'm not sure, Harry." I flap my hands at my side. It's not over. But the people we will fly away from stick in my mind's eye.

"You're not sure?" I see his perfect brow tick up and think he will have frown lines early and I wish to see them. "Isn't that why we've been talking all the time, like every day. I've been. Well, I've been trying to show you that I can do it. Make you, an um, a priority." He waits. "Melody, please, I'm ruining my relationship-well, like, I already did, when I ran out after you and chastised her for kissing me in front of you." he sighs when he sees my stricken expression. "Melody, she already could tell. I've spent more time chasin you than on her for months now. It was over when I saw you in Shanghai and you touched me. Wasn't it?"

I've lost my words and his sighs match my bitten lip in frustrated body language.

"Am I?" He gulps like a bullfrog. "Am I a fool, Angel? Do you, um do you not want me? Not," he looks at the ceiling. "Not still love me?"

I'm stuck, because, no he is anything but a fool. I want him and want him and want him. I love him and I love him and I love him. But I'm terrified. Another ford into this water and I might drown. I can't control my feelings with him, it would be as silly as trying to sway the moon. And I'm guilty. The names Milo and Teegan added to the list of hearts broken under Harry and Melly.

I look up to see him biting his lip and he slips his hand down over mine to reach up and pinch it, I'm sure. That would have been his next move years ago with how anxious he seems. It's radiating off of him now like sparks over an orb I saw at a science museum once. The affectation is so ingrained in my memory I lose my train of thought when it doesn't happen. I'm confused when he goes cold and still, until I realize he has gripped my left hand and his thumb is on my ring.

The ring I put on last night when I thought we, as in Harry and me, were over.

He pulls my hand up and stares at it.

Harry's eyes shine like emeralds when he is truly angry. It would be beautiful if it wasn't a little terrifying. When he turns the heat of them on me, I wince.

"Melody! Are you? Are you fucking engaged?" He seethes.

"I...I..." I cough up but make no sense at all.

"Should I answer my own question?" He pushes my hand towards my eyes and I feel that my cheeks are wet. "Because this giant thing," he emphasizes this with a jerk upward of both of our arms. "Looks like it can't be anything else!"

I'm still sputtering and I can see the undertow of hurt below the wave of anger coming towards me.

"How long?" His temples flex. And he waits impatiently, like a ticking clock in the background.

"What?" I finally gasp out.

"How long have you been engaged?" He grits his teeth on the last word.

"November," I pluck from the air and am amazed I know the months of the year still.

"Before or after Shanghai?"

"Before?" I say and I phrase it like a question. Though I'm the only one here with answers.

"You weren't wearing it." He says like it makes a difference.

"I don't." I say.

"How's Milo feel about that?" He gives me a cruel smile and it's incongruent with his face. Before I can answer he continues. "Just around me?" He's snide and I don't like it. I want to slap it off his face. It suits him as well as those purple trainers he used to wear. "You gonna wear it after you say I do?"

"No, it's bulky." I say pointlessly and it's the wrong thing.

"Yeah, tacky too, doesn't look like you. I woulda went for something like your mom wears." And my heart stops and my tears flow. That was my dream. A little antique style ring. Problem is I can't get that out. That his ring would be the right one.

"When?" He demands and I see the tears welling in his eyes pushing up through the anger like a geyser.

"I..I.." I'm still trying to answer other questions. Like why. But I've been trying to answer that since I said yes, since I saw Harry, since I ran.

"When Melody? When's the wedding?" his temples pulse and I'm compelled to answer.

"July!" I yell it.

And I watch him connect dots. "That why you are home? Planning." He stops tapping his toe and his arms fall off his hips to his sides, lank. "You get a dress?" He whispers that question and walks to the window.

"No, I can't, I can't pick!" I'm desperate for him to understand what I'm not saying. I found a dress to marry you. I can't find one to marry him.

Why can't I say that?

Harry points to the backyard. "Here? I always thought here."

"I always thought at your mum's." I am able to whisper.

He looks at me fiercely. "No, no! You don't talk like that when you're wearing his ring!" He's pointing at me and speaking fast. Breakneck speed for him. "I came here to apologize to you, tell you what I want! I was so worried about how Teegan may have hurt you. And you are marrying him!! What the fuck, Melody," he's yelling and my parents can no doubt hear. "You said yes to another man! Melody, how? How....how could you?" He's red faced and I'm crying and it's a mess. "And you've been planning your wedding while you were stringing me along." I'm shaking my head and he is pointing at me. He's faced me and I want his back. I hate to see him look at me like this. "Can you ever be honest? With anybody?"

"I ... I wanted to tell you , Harry!" I sob.

"You're lying. You're a liar!" He's so sure and I know he is right. "Worst part is you lie to yourself! I can't! I can't with you."

"You can't what?" I chase him to the door. And down the hall. I grab him and he turns back to me.

"I can't. I can't fight for you. I can't chase you. Dammit! I can't love you anymore! You are tearing me apart." He cries. "I can't, you changed me for years, first I couldn't stay away from girls who looked just like you, everybody saw it. I did it, like, so I could call them your name. Then I ran from every shade in your goddamn hair. No brilliant strands of gold in the sunlight for years! And now, I finally liked somebody, and the way they looked, even if it was a little bit like you. Fuck's sake Melody! I was finally functioning, and you had to come put that last nail in my coffin."

"I didn't, I didn't mean to! I want...I want..." what do I want? How do I tell him? It's to big! I want him, all of him, and me, and our mess. I'm a mess.

"What, Melody! What do you want?"

But I couldn't say it-still-the words are elephantine on my tongue. They will not fall off of it. I want them to, but I know they shouldn't. Because I couldn't ask him for more. Not if I'm tearing him apart. I don't want to tear him apart. I want him to have joy, not just function. I'm poison. I stay silent.

"Yeah, never could open up, me and you." And his shoulders sagged and I watched all the fight go out of him. They say that energy is never destroyed or created, just transferred. Looking at him, that's a lie. He's destroyed.

I wish I had picked it up then, the battle, the energy sinking into the ground. Had I fought for him, taken my mother's keys, I wouldn't be here, with a seizing chest, shaking knees, and frozen feet on my wedding day that sped towards me like a runaway train while my foot was caught in the track.

When I'd told Milo, about Harry. I'd confessed a lot, not everything, but I'd called a spade a spade and admitted I was cheating. I'd been dry eyed throughout and prepared to take whatever wrath he gave me. I wanted to wear it as a mantle. I deserved it. His response had shocked me and brought me to this place.

He'd said, "I love you unconditionally and I forgive you."

All I could think was how could I not marry him?

Now, I'm sitting in this church, gasping-I can't marry him.

The door opens and Kara comes in and tells me-"Melly, it's time."

And I'm so terrified of giving up both of the great men I've been blessed with, that I'm selfish and scared enough to get up, but not without one last check of my phone.

I just need a reason, a little bit from Harry to give me strength to go out there and disappoint everybody.

It hasn't buzzed. No light up notification. So my prayer of a text to Harry goes unanswered. 'Do you still love me?'

God, how could he? I don't even love me. Who could love a selfish liar like me.

I find myself on my dad's arm somehow. He knows, but when I start to walk, he death marches next to me rather than embarrass me further.

Each step is measured, like I'm going to a gallow, not an altar. I'm kept upright by my dad despite my knocking knees.

At the end, Dad kisses me, and whispers-"you don't have to do this." Before he pulls away. I can't make eye contact, because I'm trying not to cry. It will ruin my face. My mask. Everyone will see me then.

The trance that got me down the aisle breaks when I look at Milo. His awestruck wonder is too much. I'm all wrong. My tears are wrong. He's wrong.

This is wrong.

#harry styles #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles imagine #chapter 37 #mmith #meet me in the hallway #one direction fanfiction #one direction #scared to post #three more to go

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