#I lowkey wish it was a more widely known quote of hers so I can drop it more often and people would know what I mean

[deathlessathanasia]

It is widely known among Greek mythology enthusiasts that Hera never actually wanted to marry Zeus and that she had to be tricked into marriage or forced via rape. One could be surprised to notice the popularity of this idea, seeing how no major Greek author, from Homer and Hesiod to Nonnos of Panopolis, seems to ever state such a thing. So where does it come from?

"The presence of a cuckoo seated on the sceptre (of Hera's statue in the Argive Heraion) they explain by the story that when Zeus was in love with Hera in her maidenhood he changed himself into this bird, and she caught it to be her pet.”., Pausanias, Description of Greece 2. 17. 4.

Despite this being a very particular, localised myth that is an idiosyncrasy  of Hera's Argive cult, it somehow became the most popular version of how Hera ended up married to Zeus. Though this is by far the most accessible account of the story, what with it being even quoted on theoi.com and all, one can notice that it actually says nothing about marriage, or sex, or basically anything truly informative about what exactly took place there. For this reason, using Pausanias to argue whether or not Hera was raped or tricked or forced into marriage is pretty much useless. Still, on a first glance nothing here seems particularly rapey, or at least it wouldn't seem so if this weren’t Greek mythology and if we didn't know for what kind of purpose Zeus uses such disguises. To my knowledge, we have precisely one instance in surviving Greek literature of Zeus employing metamorphosis into an animal without a sexual purpose: when he changed himself into a serpent and his nurses into bears in order to escape Kronos. In any case, his purpose is already suggested here, but the following account spells it out explicitly.

In explanation to the passage in Theokritos’ Idyll according to which "women knew everything. They know all about Zeus marrying Hera.", a scholiast gives us the following account, based on a treatise on the sacred traditions of the city of Hermione (the author of which, incidentally, is not a woman): "He (Aristocles) reports that Zeus wished to unite/mix/mingle (μιγῆναι) with Hera from the time he saw her alone, apart from the other gods. Wanting to be invisible so that he was not seen by her, he changed himself into a cuckoo and perched on the mountain which then was called Thornax, but now is called Kokkyx, and that very day he caused a terrible storm to break out. Walking by herself, Hera arrived at the mountain and sat down there, where today is located the sanctuary of Hera Teleia. She saw the cuckoo flitting about, and it perched on her lap, trembling and frozen by the storm. Looking at it, Hera pitied it and took it under her mantle. Zeus suddenly changed his form again and grasped Hera. When she refused to copulate with him because of her mother, the god promised to make her his wife. Among the Argives, who honour this goddess more than any others of the Greeks, there is in a temple a statue of Hera seated on a throne, holding in her hand a sceptre on which is perched a cuckoo."

These two accounts seem to differ quite a bit in the way Hera came across the metamorphosed Zeus and what happened afterwards (no pet keeping in this variant, it seems), but they obviously refer to the same Argive tradition. It is evident that deception is involved, and the situation is clearly reminiscent of similar tricks Zeus employs in other stories. I have occasionally seen attempts to interpret what he does in this myth in a less odious manner, mostly by trying to pretend that his intentions towards Hera are not necessarily sexual in nature. That is, of course, absurd and naive (read: deliberately obtuse) in the extreme even in the very lowkey account of Pausanias, but here it is easily refutable by simply looking at the text. The verb μίγνυμι doesn't necessarily refer to sexual intercourse (though this is definitely one of its meanings), but  the context really doesn't leave much to interpretation. It is clear at least that we aren’t dealing here with  an act of rape in animal form, since Zeus does abandon the disguise before taking hold of Hera. What is most significant here is that the text makes it explicit that she refuses to have sex with him, though it’s worth noting that the reason she gives has nothing to do with her wanting to remain a virgin forever as it is commonly claimed (nor with his propensity to sleep around as it is also commonly claimed lol). For some reason her concern is her mother, which is certainly odd because what on earth does Rhea have to do with any of this? Karl Kerényi and Robin Hard interpret the mention of the mother and Hera's reluctance to sleep with Zeus as a reference to the fact that they are full siblings, children of the same mother. That has never stopped Greek deities before, but in lack of anything else I suppose this explanation is as good as any, though Nicole Loraux points out that this passage “may allude only to a young girl's modesty in the presence of her mother.” Now whether the promise of marriage is meant to be a sort of compensation for the rape or a way of reassuring Hera and persuading her to accept Zeus's sexual advances the text doesn't say and is something I can't even begin to guess. I suppose one could be charitable (the way people would doubtlessly be if such a myth was told about Hades and Persephone) and choose to believe that she accepted to sleep with him once she received the guarantee of a socially sanctioned and official union, just as one can choose to read it in a more unpleasant manner.

A third version of the myth appears in Pseudo-Plutarch’s “About Rivers and Mountains and Things Found in Them”, and though it makes no mention of marriage, I think this one is most clear about rape taking place: “But the mountain was denominated Coccygium for a reason of this sort. When he had fallen in love with Hera his sister and bedazzled his beloved, Zeus produced from her a male (alternative translation: and having vanquished her by his importunity, begat a male child). Then the very mountain called Lyrceium from the occasion was named Coccygium, as Agathonymus records in Persis.). I am not very happy with the English translations I’ve found, so here is the Greek text describing what Zeus did: "Ζεὺς Ἥρας τῆς ἀδελφῆς ἐρασθεὶς καὶ δυσωπούμενος τὴν ἀγαπωμένην ἐγέννησιν ἐξ αὐτῆς Ἄρη". All possible meanings and connotations of the word δυσωπέω are negative (to put out of countenance, importunate, abash, disturb etc), all the more so in the context we have here, and this variant is unique in mentioning a child (Ares) being conceived, which makes it beyond any doubt that sex did take place. Add to this the fact that virtually all sexual unions used to explain the names of rivers and mountains in this work are rapes, and I’m convinced that this one definitely involves sexual assault.

In short, it is safe to say that, as with most events in Greek mythology, different versions of this particular story existed and that some were more rapey than others, though I must add that just because rape isn’t explicitly and unambiguously described in an ancient Greek text doesn’t mean that the text in question does not involve rape. Also, anyone with common sense and without an agenda can doubtlessly come to the logical conclusion that when a male deceitfully approaches a female for the purpose of sex, her consent is, to say the least, not of primary importance to him.

Next, there is this late and odd story from Ptolemy Hephaestion. Or rather, we have a summary of it related in the Myriobiblon of Photius and, though no one seems to ever use it as a source, I'm putting it here for the sake of thoroughness: "The author (Hephaestion) speaks of the Achilles son of the earth and of all the Achilles who have been celebrated since Trojan times; it is this son of the earth who, when Hera fled from the union with Zeus, received her in his cave and persuaded her to marry Zeus, and it is said that this was the first marriage of Zeus and Hera, and Zeus promised Achilles that he would make famous all who bore his name. It is for that reason that Achilles son of Thetis is famous.".

Not much I can add here. I know of no other source that mentions this Achilles son of Earth (in all probability the author invented him and the entire story), nor of any other source according to which Hera needed to be persuaded to marry Zeus by a third party. That aside, I don't see any allusion to rape or forced marriage here, though Hera's initial unwillingness is not up to debate.

Now my question is this: why should any of these stories take precedence over others that don't include rapey elements? It should be mentioned that half of the  accounts given above are rather questionable; the authority of the writings of both Pseudo-Plutarch and Ptolemy Hephaestion is flimsy at best, since both of them are generally thought to have essentially made up many of the sources they cited in support of their various stories. We still have the Argive tradition attested by Pausanias and in the scholion to Theokritos, but it is certainly interesting that the idea of violence, trickery and unwillingness in the context of this particular relationship is so eagerly emphasised by so many, to the point that different traditions are hardly ever mentioned, considering how the much more blatant violence, trickery and unwillingness in the abduction of Persephone myth are constantly glossed over and rewritten into love and consent. To be clear, I don’t like this kind of revisionistic whitewashing when it is done with that myth and I wouldn’t like it done with this one either. I have absolutely no interest in the erasure of the uncomfortable aspects of this myth or cutesifying a story which, at its least disturbing, is about a man approaching a woman for sex on false pretenses and naturally I have nothing against those who want to explore Zeus and Hera's relationship or Hera's character from this angle (not my thing, I must admit, and personally I find it a bit overdone). What irks me about the almost exclusive focus on the cuckoo myth is twofold: it overshadows all other traditions, making people get the impression that no other narratives exist, and it makes those who don't want to deal with rapey elements in the relationship of Zeus and Hera try to sanitise this particular story which is a personal pet peeve of mine but, more importantly, is a complete waste of time when there ARE other traditions that do not (seem to) involve rape and are in no way less authoritative than those that do.

As a first example there is Homer, who has little occasion to say anything about how Hera and Zeus got married, but who does instead allude to "that time they first went to bed together and lay in love, and their dear parents knew nothing of it". In all fairness there is no way to know with any certainty that the sexual union invoked here was consensual, but there is also no indication that it wasn’t... and I mean, if someone wants to read rape in such an innocent-sounding description, there really isn’t much to say other than I hope they are equally exigent when analysing situations involving those mythological characters they do like. Anyway what Homer describes here  could have been a pre-existing tradition or it might be an Homeric innovation, no way to tell and ultimately it matters little, since the idea of a secret premarital tryst between Hera and Zeus is attested in several local traditions as well which means that if it was an ad hoc invention of the poet of the Iliad, it sure became influential for such a small reference.

back to local traditions then, there is this Boeotian one related by Plutarch and quoted by the Christian Eusebios of Caesarea: "they relate that Hera, being brought up in Euboea. was stolen away while yet a virgin by Zeus, and was carried across and hidden in this region, where Cithaeron afforded them a shady recess, nature's own bridal-chamber. And when Macris----she was Hera's nurse----came to seek her, and wished to make a search, Cithaeron would not let her pry about, or approach  the spot, on pretence that Zeus was there resting and passing the time in company with Leto. And as Macris went away, Hera thus escaped discovery on that occasion, and afterwards calling to mind her debt of gratitude to Leto she adopted her as partner in a common altar and common temple, so that sacrifices are first offered to Leto Μυχία, that is, 'of the inner shrine'; but some call her Νυχία, 'goddess of night.' In each of the names, however, there is the signification of secrecy and escape. Some say that Hera had secret intercourse there with Zeus, and, being undiscovered, was thus herself denominated Leto of the night: but when her marriage became openly known, and their intercourse first here in the neighbourhood of Citliaeron and of Plataea had been revealed, she was called Hera Τελεία and Γαμήλιος, goddess of the perfect life, and of marriage."

In this instance we have abduction followed by sexual intercourse, which I would normally find a HIGHLY dubious situation, to put it mildly. However, seeing how Hera is described as grateful for not being discovered by her nurse, it doesn't look like she was an unwilling participant here.

Samos was one of Hera's main centres of worship, so naturally The Samians just like the Argives had their own traditions concerning the goddess. As well as claiming Samos to be the place where Hera was born and brought up, "She is also said to have been deflowered by Zeus on Samos, as reported by certain scholia to Book 14 of the Iliad, which comment on the premarital union of the two and connect it with a local ritual which took this form: for the sake of Hera, it was said, the Samians assembled all their marriageable daughters in secret, but then the nuptial sacrifices were carried out in public view before all the world." - Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge and Gabriella Pironti, The Hera of Zeus: Intimate Enemy, Ultimate Spouse. The Iliad scholia (to which I don't have access so I must resort to the writings of modern scholars) also relates that "after Kronos had been sent down to Tartaros, Hera was betrothed (as a presumed virgin) to Zeus by Okeanos and Tethys but promptly gave birth to Hephaistos, having anticipated her marriage by lying with Zeus in secret on the island of Samos; to cover the deed, she claimed that the birth was without benefit of intercourse" - Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (compare and contrast with the story of Ares' conception from De fluviis of Pseudo-Plutarch above). It also seems that Zeus and Hera were said, again in the Iliad scholia, to have slept together in secret on Samos for three hundred years: "Most of the local legends and rites that are recorded in connection with the divine union refer to the first prenuptial intercourse between Zeus and Hera rather than to their wedding. It was claimed, indeed, on Samos that the pair had first slept together on that island in utter secrecy for three hundred years." - Robin Hard, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology.

This premarital intercourse of Hera and Zeus might also be alluded to by Kallimachos in the following fragment (this is how, as far as I know, most scholars interpret the text, though differing opinions do exist) regarding a Naxian prenuptial custom: "And already the maid had been bedded with the boy, even as ritual ordered that the bride should sleep her prenuptial sleep with a male child both whose parents were alive. Yea, for they say that once on a time Hera - thou dog, thou dog, refrain, my shameless soul! thou would sing of that which it is not lawful to tell".

Nonnos has Aphrodite claim that she had "joined Zeus in wedlock with Hera his sister, after he had felt the pangs of long-lasting desire and desired her for three hundred years". This tells us nothing about how Hera felt about it all, but, well, she did keep the robe she wore "when she came to her brother a virgin in that secret union.". She seems so weirdly nostalgic about it, too: "the embroidered robe she wore was her oldest, still bearing the blood marks of maidenhead left from her bridal" (wtf Hera?) and when preparing to sleep with Zeus she decides to wear it in order to "remind her bedfellow of their first love". I don't know what to make of this (other than Nonnos being a weirdo as usual) but it doesn't seem like her first sexual experience was traumatic or unhappy, since she keeps such an... unusual memento of it.

There are quite a few other texts that mention the marriage of Zeus and Hera, though they give little to no detail about it and, as one comes to expect from Greek mythology, don't provide any insight into how she felt about it and whether she was willing or not. For example, we learn from Hesiod that "Last of all he (Zeus) made Hera his fertile wife, and she bore Hebe and Ares and Eileithyia, sharing intimacy with the king of gods and men.", and from Pseudo-Apollodoros that "Zeus married Hera and fathered Hebe, Eileithuia, and Ares". The very simplistic and unfanciful nature of these accounts may or may not be significant, but contrast them with how even Hesiod mentions the abduction of Persephone by Hades, and Apollodoros does not shy away from mentioning instances of rape: he does specify, for example, that Porphyrion tried to rape Hera, that Asteria and Metis did not want to have sex with Zeus, and that Hades kidnapped Persephone. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but if Hera's forced marriage were as common a fact as people make it out to be, it is at least a bit surprising that not even the Bibliotheke says anything about it. Diodoros of Sicily relates that "Men say that the marriage of Zeus and Hera was held in the territory of the Knossians at a place near the river Theren, where now a temple stands in which the natives of the place annually offer holy sacrifices and imitate the ceremony of the marriage, in the manner in which tradition tells it was originally performed.", but again this doesn’t tell us much, nor does the story according to which Gaia brought golden apples at the time of their wedding. In Aristophanes' Birds it is said that "the Moirai formerly united Olympian Hera to the King who governs the gods from the summit of his inaccessible throne." and that "Rosy Eros with the golden wings held the reins and guided the chariot; 'twas he, who presided over the union of Zeus and the fortunate Hera.” which, if nothing else, is a nice (if conventional) image.

In any case, Hera's behaviour in the myths hardly looks like that of a woman who hates her marriage and wants nothing to do with her husband, so those who argue that, actually, Hera persecutes Zeus’s mistresses and children not because she is angry about him sleeping with other women but because she is upset about having been “blackmailed” into marriage (I’ve actually seen this claim) or the like are objectively wrong. Even when she is so angry with Zeus that she leaves Olympos and refuses to return, she still can't stand the idea that he might take another wife. As Pausanias relates it: "Hera, they say, was for some reason or other angry with Zeus, and had retreated to Euboia. Zeus, failing to make her change her mind, visited Kithaeron, at that time despot in Plataia who surpassed all men for his cleverness. So he ordered Zeus to make an image of wood, and to carry it, wrapped up, in a bullock wagon, and to say that he was celebrating his marriage with Plataia, the daughter of Asopos. So Zeus followed the advice of Kithairon. Hera heard the news at once, and at once appeared on the scene. But when she came near the wagon and tore away the dress from the image, she was pleased at the deceit, on finding it a wooden image and not a bride, and was reconciled to Zeus. ", to which Plutarch adds the detail that "with joy and laughter (Hera) herself led the bridal procession, and gave additional honour to the statue, and called the festival Daedala, and nevertheless from jealousy burnt the thing, lifeless though it was.". More relevant is the fact that Argive Hera can regain the status of parthenos and does so annually through her bath in the Kanathos spring, which can easily be interpreted as her willingly choosing to renew her marriage over and over again.

#ok this is the final iteration of this post #at least until I inevitably come across other relevant sources that will need to be added #hera #zeus #greek mythology #rape #ramblings

[infinites-chaser]

Librarian! PH. 52 MLQC MC / Victor :)

HELLO ANON U WERE ONE OF THE FIRST PEOPLE TO RESPOND TO MY LIBRARIAN ASK GAME I’M SO SORRY IT’S TAKEN SO LONG,,, victor is just. hard to write. aLSO I'm doubly sorry since i’ll be combining this with the Victor ask from @truth-be-told-im-lying ​ hope neither of you mind T-T i don’t think my mind could do two victor ficlets akwlfjsdkls

ANyway I love you both LOTS AND LOTS hopefully this attempt at Victor isn’t extremely out of character;;; it’s a lowkey soulmates AU if that counts for anything :> aND this fic gets the special treatment of an actual Title bc True was wonderful enough to help me by typing Victor as an Enneagram Type One

okaaay and without further ado, 

49, 52 + Victor/MC

‘[He] wakes up in [his] bed, determined to begin again.’- These Ghosts Are Family, Maisy Card. (pg. 49)

‘As [he] pushes through the onlookers to meet [her], he is certain he is the only person moving.’- These Ghosts Are Family, Maisy Card. (pg. 52)

((pronoun changes in both quotes to better fit the ficlet))

spoilers for Victor/MC’s childhood!

spend my whole life searching

Victor doesn’t believe in soulmates. (After half a lifetime of searching turning up nothing, he doesn’t believe in much.)

Once upon a time, he might’ve. (He wanted to). His heart rate doubled and sped up to match hers— a carefree little girl skipping across the road, too far away to hear his nerves cry danger, too caught up in dreams and fantasies to hear his warning shout. Time slowed down so he could save her, and on that afternoon on the crosswalk, drops of rain suspended in the air, he did.

At that age, he hadn’t had the sense to wonder why a young girl like her had been crossing the street without supervision. Why her smiles had come freely, but had always looked a little sad, a little wistful. Why she’d been so eager to accept his baked treats. Why she’d been at the playground without a parent. Why she’d always been alone.

Now, seventeen years later, he wishes he did. Wishes he’d known something as simple as her last name.

He dreams of her. Of finding her again: the girl whose heartbeat matched his. The girl whose smile had slowed down time itself for him, as if short moments with her could’ve each stretched into a gentle eternity. He’d wanted them to. He’d wanted to capture every moment spent with her, to make them last, to savor them, so they’d pass slow and sweet like honey on the tongue.

Time had passed slow when he’d wanted it to. Those sunlit afternoons had been sweet, they’d been happy.

Only, time is a fickle thing. When he takes his eye off it, it races away, too fast for him to keep up.

The kidnapping. The experiments. The torture.

The escape.

She saves him. He’s too slow to save her.

And even if he can stop time, here’s the thing: he can never turn the clock back.

Still, he wakes up. Every morning, he gets out of bed. Gets dressed and goes to work. The world around him moves on, and demands he does, too, even if his heart’s still eleven years old and clutching her motionless body, eleven years old, the only sound in his ears his pounding pulse, the absence of the accompaniment of hers an accusation more painful than any hateful words.

It’s a recurring theme in his life, time. It’s ironic, really, when he thinks about it. That he can stop time without lifting a finger, and yet, when it comes to things he cares about, people he loves most, he’s always eleven years old again, always too late.

(His Evol’s time control, but perhaps, all this time, he hasn’t been controlling time, it’s been controlling him. He’s imprisoned by a single moment, a memory, a regret. A past that can never be undone.)

Whenever he has spare time, he devotes himself to searching. Resigns himself to the fact he’ll probably never find her, if all he has to go off of is a child’s face, once preserved in his memory, now fading. Hair color. Eye color. Age. A name. Nothing more.

The searches turn up nothing. 

He spends late nights in the office to distract himself, builds up a capitalist kingdom of a company, if only to put off for a few hours more the prospect of returning home to face his nightmares alone.

His father praises him for LFG’s growth over dinners filled with awkward silences. The name Victor Li appears more and more often in business newspapers. Investors approach him. He gets interviews. Gets offers for TV appearances, for sponsorships.

He takes them, these material successes. Wonders if any amount of them could ever make up for the failure from his childhood. If they could bring her back. He tells himself if he finds her, when he finds her, when he brings her back, it’ll be to a more perfect world. One in which he’ll never fail her again. It’s a foolish thought, but it keeps him going. With it in mind, he proceeds to work twice as hard.

Souvenir is what saves him. A small allowance, a self-indulgence, a seed of hope planted in what he thinks is his darkest time.

It’s for her, more than any of his frantic searching ever was. A dream, a foolish one, that one day she’ll step through his memories and through the restaurant’s door, that one day they’ll share a pudding together again, their hearts beating as one.

He doesn’t get to open Souvenir often; his job doesn't let him. He made sure of that, long ago. But when he does, after the last customer’s left, and he’s put up the closed sign, he cooks for two.

(The first time, Mr. Mills had taken a single look at his silent, still face, and his expression must've spoken volumes. The older man hadn't said a word, only helped clean the kitchen after, the normally gentle lines around his mouth pulled taut in a worried frown.)

He sets the second place at the table himself: carefully places fork, knife and spoon beside lukewarm appetizers, tucks a napkin under soup bowls going cold. Watches the empty seat and the untouched meal for an eternity before finally eating his own. His technique's impeccable. It has been ever since he'd aced his culinary lessons, since he'd bought out the school. He'd used the finest ingredients. He always does.

The food still crumbles like ash in his mouth. (It always does.)

Mr. Mills will find him there, nursing a glass of wine long into the night. He knows better not to question it, but sometimes he'll pull up a chair, drink a glass, too. talk of everything and nothing, talk of his parents, his sister's family, of times gone by.

Victor will never admit it, but the older man's presence makes those nights less hard. his stories, his memories — they keep the ice in his heart from spreading any further when it feels like nothing else will.

Ten years stretch into thirteen, into fourteen, into fifteen, into a broken clock, time stopped because does the passage of time mean anything if he measures it, measured it in time with her? If she's gone?

The meals shrink. First appetizers vanish, then entrees too, until all that's left are desserts, puddings that he stares at all evening, puddings a girl had loved once, that he can almost imagine her sitting there eating, her noticing him watching her and her answering blush and smile. His smile back.

Almost, because after all these years without her, he can’t quite imagine her face. Not as she would look now. Not even as she was, seventeen years back.

(He dreams and finds he doesn’t remember what her smile looked like, exactly. Doesn’t remember the sound of her heartbeat mingling with the sound of his.

Memory is cruel. Memory is imperfect. No matter if you can stop time, no matter how hard you try to memorize a moment, when you revisit it, it’ll never be the same as when you lived it the first time.)

Then:

The day starts like any other. He wakes up, gets out of bed, gets ready for another day of work, another night of searching. He scrolls emails while waiting for his espresso machine to heat, then puts his tablet aside when the coffee's done. He eats in silence. As always, he's done five minutes before he needs to leave for the company, the perfect amount of time for him to do a last-minute check in the mirror— his tie's straight, his shirt unwrinkled, not a hair on his head out of place. The reflection that stares back at him is unchanging; these days it barely shows even the passage of time.

He sighs. Shakes the thought off like the piece of lint it is on his otherwise immaculate state of being, and heads for the door, the lock automatically clicking behind him at eight o'clock am, exactly on schedule, exactly as planned.

He's about to take a seat in his car when an inexplicable urge to walk to work takes hold of him. He pauses. Calculates and re-calculates the time it would take (fifteen minutes, not accounting for rush hour traffic making crosswalks slow), and he's about to decide it's not worth it, it's a silly thought, but the urge intensifies.

Do it, the eleven-year-old in his heart seems to be telling him. You won't regret it.

He frowns and rubs his forehead— for a moment, he wonders if all his searching, all his foolish hopes are finally getting to his brain.

He decides to take the walk, anyway.

He regrets it, not nine minutes later, when despite the sun's light shining strong through the clouds, a light rain begins to fall.

Worse still, the traffic lights haven't changed once in the past ninety seconds. He won't be late, he'd accounted for this, but he's stuck in a crowd of pedestrians, and their chatter's beginning to grate on his nerves. He's considering calling the mayor about it after exactly one hundred seconds have passed— clearly, the light's broken, this is far too long for commuters to wait— but then, finally the walk sign flicks on.

He's already across the street when it happens:

First, a phone rings.

Then, the loud honking of a car.

Tires screech.

Time slows. Time stops.

He's back on the crosswalk in a matter of heartbeats, the inattentive idiot in his arms (it's a girl, it's always a girl, hair dark, eyes wide, expression shocked).

"You..." She says, blinking up at him with those wide, almost-familiar eyes. Distantly, he registers the echo of a heartbeat overlapping with his.

"Who are you?"

Who are you? His mind asks, but deep in his heart, he already knows the answer. It can't be.

"Evolver?" He says instead, shoving down memories that threaten to surface: another rainy day, another crosswalk, another heart that had seemed matched to his. He tells himself he's being delusional, that he thinks he can hear her heartbeat because she's in his arms, wide-eyed and fragile, her heartrate skittering back and forth like a fool— this isn't like his careful, methodical searching, this is a fluke beyond flukes, it means nothing, it'll lead to nothing in the end.

But she's in his arms, warm and soft against his protective embrace, she's in his arms and it feels so right it's almost painful, his pulse pulled into a panicked pace to match hers.

He sets her down abruptly, as if burned, and turns to go.

"Someone can't come to your rescue every time."

Around them, suspended raindrops begin to fall. The world, resumed. The world, once again predictable and mundane. Except for her.

He knows, without looking back, she's staring after him, her heart, his heart, still racing.

He allows himself a smile.

He allows himself some small sliver of hope.

(His frozen time starts moving again.)

#mlqc #mlqc victor #mlqc fanfic #val writes #hNnghghg this took so Long and writing vic gives me so much stress BUT HOPE Y'ALL ENJOY #u didnt hear it from me but it was actually really interesting to explore his character like this and. i've definitely developed more of an #appreciation :> of sorts #victor is an enneagram one and rly that's all that matters thats all u need to learn from this fic #also sOULmate AUs i love them that's it does this mean i think vic is MC's soulmate;;; maybe in this universe but not generally ailsjkfd #JUST FOR THE RECORD. i am not a vic stan so it must be said #TIL that mr mills does not have a wife/family and that makes me rly sad

[pisati]

this came up on timehop almost a week ago. 

I’ve known for years that I have depression. I had my suspicions when I was 17, but thinking back, I was showing signs at 12-13. possibly even earlier. I recall an old social media post from that age, maybe an email or a blog post, clarifying to a friend that I didn’t want to die, I just wanted to sleep and not wake up for a long time. I can’t remember much farther back than that. I was always an emotionally volatile person-- I felt things so deeply even at a young age. my first guinea pig died when I was 8 or 9 and it took me years to get over. I wish someone would’ve noticed sooner. dad had his suspicions too, but he also tried to tell my mom she was depressed and medicate her without her knowledge, so. nobody really took him seriously. he wasn’t wrong, but he definitely went about that the wrong way.

there’s no point regretting, though, I guess. I couldn’t have known what to look for, I was a child. my mom only recently realized that her mother has had schizophrenia her whole life, after my brother did acid and it snapped something in his brain. some of the things he did and said reminded her eerily of her mother. she couldn’t recognize depression in herself, how was she ever going to recognize it in me?

from where I’m at now... I can’t believe I got through feeling the way I did. kind of like when I look back on those few years of my life when my anxiety got so bad-- I had no idea how I survived it. I wasn’t sure if I ever could again. 

I felt so bad before I graduated high school. there are pictures of my graduating class sitting on the bleachers outside, me sitting on the far left edge, by myself. either Charlotte wasn’t there that day or she’d wanted to be with other friends. I didn’t really know anyone around me. someone from yearbook pulled me out of class for an interview and told me they were talking to everyone who’d pulled some stunt or done something silly during the pictures (we had one kid who liked to dress up as Where’s Waldo, they interviewed him too). they asked me why, in every picture, I wasn’t looking at the camera. I told them I’d just been having a bad day, but I remember deliberately looking away during every one of those shots. I didn’t want a part of any of it. they made us sit for that picture, but I just wanted to be graduated already. gone. away from everyone there. I was so tired of being made to feel alone. barely opening my mouth all day, because Charlotte would leave me for other friends, and the few other people I knew did the same. I didn’t go in bitter; I probably tried a little too hard to make friends when I moved there. it took so many years of being forgotten and passed over to make me that tired. 

that was also the time when I would forego lunch on A-days to go straight to my AP lit classroom. sometimes I’d eat there, sometimes I wouldn’t. I was tired of sitting with my friend who wanted to sit with these popular girls who were lowkey super rude to me for literally no reason- I didn’t even know them. I felt like I knew the pattern on every floor tile in that school, but especially the tiles in front of my desk in AP lit. I couldn’t even look up from the floor. and nobody fucking noticed. I mean, my AP lit teacher did. I’ll always, always be grateful for her. I’m just sad that I couldn’t be there for myself. I wish people were more educated about mental illness back then, that someone would’ve intervened. maybe it wouldn’t have gotten so bad. 

when my anxiety got so bad I prayed that I’d *only* have depression again. it was so much easier to deal with. I don’t remember my depression being so bad my first two years of college; either it was drowned out by the anxiety or it actually did help to have good friends. but once I transferred and the anxiety dissipated, it came back full-force. 

when I was in high school, I remember being afraid to look at electrical cords. I’d picture them wrapped around my neck. once during a bad episode I got up and wrapped the cord from my blinds around my neck and pulled, hard. it scared me so bad I fell onto my bed and cried harder. I didn’t want to die, I just wanted the hurt to stop. when I got into my car accident senior year... it was midterms week. I’d joked that maybe since I almost died in a car wreck that I’d be excused from my physics midterm. but I remember that night, after I got home from the hospital, curling up in the shower and sobbing. for months I thought I wanted to disappear, but when I brushed that close to death it was absolutely terrifying. I’d never felt so grateful to feel water pouring down on my back. I felt so horribly alive. I walked to my physics class the next day and joked with a kid outside, to maybe a few concerned looks, about just being in the hospital. I took the exam. a boy I rarely talked to came up to me, wide-eyed, outside my locker, and asked if I was okay. he’d heard from my brother. 

sometimes, alone in my apartment in college, I’d picture the tau sigma and golden key honor cords I had tucked away in a drawer-- I wasn’t sure why they gave them to me so soon, but I needed a safe place to keep them til graduation. I pictured them wrapped around a door handle-- wondered how long it’d take for someone to notice I hadn’t been around. what a metaphor, too; strangled by achievement. grim, maybe a little too poetic. I tossed the idea, but the feeling didn’t quite leave.

the summer after I graduated college, I’d lost maybe 15lbs. I was too sad to get out of bed or even eat. A had given me his facebook password and told me to change it so he couldn’t log back in-- he was so tired of social media at the time and I understood. but later when I had my suspicions about a girl, I did something very uncharacteristic. I glanced through his messages with a mutual friend. he’d used the word “girlfriend”. he was red and she was blue and they were just purpling. I cried so hard I nearly had a panic attack and almost passed out on my floor. what was I ever? how can you be that close to someone and still be so easily cast aside? it took me a while to be able to eat Uncle Ben’s microwave rice again. it already tastes unnatural from all the preservatives, but the papery taste reminded me how much I wanted to die; how much food tasted like nothing and nothing felt good. I’d lie on my floor and cry, just trying to get the bad feelings out; I have vivid memories of Warpaint’s Today Dear paired with the blankness of my ceiling, the smoke detector and ceiling fan hardware cover breaking the emptiness. the feeling of damp carpet pressed into the side of my face, City & Colour’s Blood pouring into my ears.

I’ve given you more than I’m worth I want to dig my fingers into the earth I know there’s beauty buried beneath...

we were walking around DC that december, trying to keep warm while waiting for my mom to pick us up after a show that ended after metro hours. he told me everything that happened. she was a head case. so was the next one, I later learned. but by then it just felt like something broke. I just didn’t have the capacity to hurt anymore. I was at my last job, I was miserable, I was emotionally beat up. that was when it started to feel like being dragged facedown through gravel. even the little things I did-- volunteering, trying to work on crafts, playing with my rats-- didn’t seem to make anything any better.

I have a lot of memories from floors. I reblogged a quote yesterday about crying and noticing the paint on the wall trim; once you’ve been on the floor so many times it just gets old. the absurdity of it all. kind of like that time I was lying in bed, crying over my dad having passed (maybe a few months before at that point), and I suddenly heard my brother ripping a loud, forced fart in the other room. I couldn’t help laughing. what even is anything?

it was so hard to see any kind of light at the end of the tunnel. if there even was a tunnel, or if that just was how things were. I remember myself curling into the back cushions of the couch in my apartment in college, both wishing it were another person and feeling repulsed at the thought. trying to avoid becoming acutely aware of the quiet. I think even then I had some vague knowledge, maybe more of a rote script, that eventually it would be okay. one day, something would give. but I didn’t feel it. people could tell me all they wanted, I could tell myself til I ran out of breath, but I wouldn’t believe it til I felt it.

some days do still feel like I’m dragging myself through them. but looking back... it’s nowhere near as bad. sometimes I still get hit with the melancholy-- I’m not expecting not to, for the record. nobody can feel 100% all the time, it’s impossible. but I wish I could go back and somehow place this feeling in my brain all those times I needed it. I don’t even know if I can say I’m “back to where I used to be”, because I don’t even think I know myself without depression. it’ll probably always be a part of me. but sometimes I think about where I’m at and where I have the potential to go from here, and I just want to cry. but not in the bad way. it’s relief. so much relief. 

there’s no one thing that did it. there’s nothing that magically whisked the dragged-face-down-through-gravel feeling away. I didn’t get out of bed one day feeling better. it’s been a process and it continues to be a process. but I think this was what I wanted to feel back then. just the ability to be hopeful. to feel like things might work out. 

I did really have a rough go of it last year. I was already depressed as hell from being emotionally beat up by stupid boys, having to be stuck far away from friends, and having that miserable job. then I lost two pets, my grandpa, and my dad. lost my job. I can’t even hardly remember the last two and a half years of my life, if I’m honest. 

maybe it’s my job and the demands it has of me, but I feel like my memory has been improving the tiniest bit. just a little. I still have a piss-poor sense of time, and my insomnia has been ruining my functioning. I don’t know why odd-numbered years have been slightly better for me than even-numbered years, but it’s definitely a pattern. 2013 was good, 2014 was good for the first half, then came the worst summer of my life and the roughest christmas/new years I’ve ever had, 2015 was pretty good, 2016 was rough, 2017 was good for the first half and shitty for the second, 2018 was straight garbage, and 2019 has... honestly been pretty good. I got over half the year off work. I got to travel. I lost some pets, but I got lovely new ones too. I had the time for crafts, the time to write. I met some really wonderful people. I got to volunteer, and I got a new job that’s showing me what work should feel like. it’s opening doors for me for the future; I’m even beginning to see a possible future for myself in animal care. I’m taking better care of myself, I’m determined to get to the root of my autoimmune weirdness, and I’m finally going to move out again. I’m going to end this year on a good note, even if I end up staying home by myself for the holidays. 

I keep talking about it, but I think it’s worth talking about. I’m excited to see how much better this can get. I won’t get my hopes up, but I’m grateful for every little bit of improvement I make with myself. I want to be a mental illness success story. maybe it’ll be with me forever, but I’m learning to let the little things work. got myself colorful gel pens for work. I’ll draw smiley faces on notes. I wear animal-print socks almost every day. picked out patterns for scrub shirts that I like, that I can wear every day, that make me happy. bought little things for myself at the store, just because I like them. it doesn’t feel like going through the motions anymore. not all the time, anyway. 

it took me somewhere around 5 years to see the light at the end of the trauma tunnel, and I wasn’t sure I would. I’ve had depression likely for well over 12 years-- I never would have dreamed that one day I’d be fighting it and very slowly winning. I’m proud of myself now, for sure, but I’m even prouder of my past selves. for all the times I found myself on the floor, I always got up. for all the times I was too sad to eat, I made sure I ate something anyway. for all the times I wanted to wrap a cord around my neck or claw at my own forearms or veer into oncoming traffic... I put on music. I turned on a show. I scrolled tumblr. I cuddled a rat. I cried it out if I had to. I didn’t turn to drugs or alcohol or self-harm (well. physical anyway). I’m strong as hell and I always have been. I’m grateful for that too. 

#blah blah #thoughts #reflections #timehop has me feeling weird lately #weird as in. it's weird to look back and feel so different