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quaintqueer · 3 years

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I don't know what you think about labels, maybe you are the kind of person who watches shows like Marie Kondo where they organise people's houses and put sticky labels on everything so that you can easily identify the contents. Maybe you're the kind of person who does not like to be labelled or stereotyped. Maybe you prefer to be just yourself.

I have had a very complex relationship with labels and identity. You could say that I started off on the wrong foot. My mother went to a Baptist church on Sunday morning and a Charismatic/Pentecostal hands-in-the-air, shouting and screaming, spiritual warfare kind of church on Sunday night. And my dad had his Holy Communion as a kid and then went to mass on Easter and Christmas. So to begin with my labels were numerous and incongruent which did cause some issues for younger Zoe.

And I want to share with you about where God has led me through the understanding of this topic. I am not entirely sure where to start and I'm not sure how vague to be here but let's just say that at least the draft will be an explicit and partly chronological one.

12 year old Zoe I went to church most Sundays with her family and she was very very lucky to have a wonderful Christian friends in her life and at this point the label attached to her as a daughter was the unproblematic child and at school she was the sweet and friendly member of the God Squad or Singing Christians depending on how you asked. But those were the kind of labels that existed around that time.

What happens though to 12 year old Zoe is that she falls madly and instantaneously in love with her best friend. And almost immediately she thinks ‘am I in love with this girl? that must make me gay.’ And being a part of the circles that I was in a fairly conservative Christian family and a fairly conservative Christian School with Christian friends in that Christian school, I said ‘absolutely not. I don't want to have to deal with that.’ I was never hateful towards gay people in general I just thought I just didn't want to deal with it myself. My mum and I had had conversations about it when the plebiscite happened, and whenever we spoke about it, it was very much about ‘the gay people’ as opposed to anyone we knew or loved, let alone a Christian person, and so this whole gay thing wasn’t really thought about. Ao a few times over the next 2 or 3 years so I would ask, ‘am I in love with this girl’ And I always concluded ‘no no no you can't be in love cos you're not gay’.

By the time I’m about 14, I’ve been awoken to all different kinds of social justice movements, I took sociology, I’m going to save the world. THe labels I proudly wear are things like left wing, passionate, an ally to many different communities, in particular the lgbtq+ community.

Zoe at one point goes ‘frick frack, I'm definitely in love with this girl’. and because of the way that this world really loves labels, this was completely synonymous in my mind with being gay. My first response was probably because I'm bisexual so now that is an importand confusing label Zoë is wearing. I have somewhat fond somewhat mortifying memories of sitting on the Shinkansen, the bullet train, from Tokyo to Kyoto next to my dad doing every single ‘Am I gay’ quiz I could find online. Throughout this trip to Japan, I’m really testing the waters and every single younger woman I saw I was like ‘Is she cute? Am I attracted to her? Would I kiss her?’ and so that experience made me very nervous because I had still grown up with the mindset that if people were gay it was ok but they weren't Christian. And I was a Christian, so I just ignored it really. And this turned into a time of me hypersexualising sll of the boys that I had ever thought I had a crush on. I can quite confidently say that I didn't actually have a crush on many of them, I just thought that that was something that I should do. So there was a lot of ignoring this feeling.

We then reach year 10, 2020, a glorious year. In the first Lockdown, I finally caved and downloaded Tik Tok. The thing about Tik Tok is that it comes with its own world of labels, and I really would enjoy the kinds of conversations about what side of Tik Tok you are on. I loved that your For You Page automatically gave you certain labels to wear as a Tik Tok user, and I loved that those applied to real life. I quite quickly ended up on gay Tik Tok, among other things. I was also very firmly on Black Lives Matter Tik Tok, on disablrf Tik Tok, on Indigenous Tik Tok, so on and so forth. But much of my content was about the lgbtq community and this opened a ahole can of worms. I, at this time, carried a lot of shame for my attraction to women. For a bit of a backstory, I had been so severely heartbroken by this girl - not by her own intentional actions, I think that she was never going to feel about me the way that I felt about her and that was not her fault - but I was so seriously heartbroken that not only did I hold this moral shame but also this like emotional shame of my attraction to women. I felt like it was not a good thing morally and it didn't feel good emotionally because I had to still been really hurt about this girl and I have never really gotten over that. So for the first time on gay Tik Tok, I saw queerness and same-sex attraction as a positive thing not only in terms of ‘hey look these are women loving woman relationships that are working well’ but also ‘whether or not you're dating someone, queer identity is good for you and it's fun to talk about’. And as a type 4 on the enneagram, I love to feel special - not to say that I fabricated these feelings or that any queer person is queer for attention - but I think a big part of me felt validated or special because of my feelings and my queeness. It was like a new club that I could join. And so the labels that 15 year old Zoe wears largely consisted of queer. We had it dropped bisexual a little bit because at this point I was not sure if I like men at all and so we identified as queer or sapphic or bi or lesbian or gay - many of these words along with the left wing, Pro Black-lives-matter, pro-feminism, pro-lgbtq+, anti-colonialist anti-capitalist etc. etc. And I don't want to demonize any of those things - they are not at all negative things, I'm just painting a picture of the different labels that I wore.

Through out starting to come out to my friends and existing for longer periods of time not only on gay Tik Tok but now really searching all through the Internet for more LGBTQ+ identity - as I tried to confirm my traction for women, as I tried to decide about my attraction to men, about what label I should wear, and what it's like being in the LGBTQ+ community different, spaces where we interact, different identities and labels and experiences of queerness. So I really tied myself to this identity and it is I think so much because of the way the world sees labels as I said and so my first response was ‘well if I like girls I must be gay and if I'm gay I must identify that way and that has to be the most important thing about me’ because all the people I was seeing online really loved being gay. They were proud of their identity in their queeness. In the world as much as I think that we like to think we’ve got this ‘your sexuality or your gender identity doesn't matter. Gay and straight and bi and pan and whoever you are, we’re all human’, I think it often the world does like to draw those lines on both sides. Within queer communities there was - obviously ironically and satirically - this heterophobia honestly. (I'm joking!) But there was a real pride in this identity of whichever specific label you wear as well as the wider lgbtq plus label which led me to believe my sexuality was who I was. And that proved really quite awkward because I knew that my church and my family and many of my Christian friends believed that same sex marriage and romance was sinful. Because of the strong connection between my identity and my sexuality, if my sexuality was sinful, that meant that I was inherently and completely sinful and I didn't like that. It wasn't a fun feeling. After all of the years of learning about God’s gift of grace to us, kind of I lost in the crevices of my mind and whenever I thought about God I was met with feelings of shame and fear and dread and resentment sometimes even anger and I grew to be so despairing.

Eventually I tried the various progressive Christianity movements that teach that ‘God doesn't actually say the being gay is a sin, the Bible is pro queerness and don't even worry about it, God made you exactly the way that you are and he loves you the way that you are, go forth and have that lesbian relationship that you so desperately want’. But that never really sat right with me. It brought up other questions of ‘well if the current translation of the Bible says things like marriage is between a man and a woman, God made man and woman, any sex outside of marriage is sinful, or even the parts that say that ‘homosexuality is sinful, or man lying with man in certain translations, is sinful what happened to that part of the Bible?’ And of course I heard the response about how at the Bible was written by man and not by God and that it is fragile and can be manipulated and basically King James ruined the whole Bible when he wrote that translation and you don't have to listen to it. But that really didn't work for me. If that part of the Bible had been mistranslated how could I know that the rest of the Bible hadn't been mistranslated? If words like homosexuality weren't in the original text and they had been added there or mistranslated how could I understand the words like grace and love and hope and patience and kindness and peace and righteousness and holiness and justice? What if they were mistranslated? What if the whole Gospel was not how it was written in the Bible because the Bible was man-made? Pretty immediatelyI decided I couldn’t really understand a Christianity where homosexuality is not a sin because Christianity is written in the Bible and the Bible says that quite clearly. I believe that the Bible is directly the Word of God, that it is perfect, that the way that it is translated - obviously different translations vary - but that it is right from God’s mouth so imediately was like I can't believe in it Christianity where homosexuality is not a sin and so I've got to pick Christian or Gay.

And I didn’t want to choose Christian because I had this point has grown quite fond of being gay and I mean, I was truly just attracted to women, right, like I wanted a girlfriend and so I tried really hard to ignore God. I was still going to church, twice or three times a week and all that, and I could not shake the existence of God. I knew God existed. I knew that He created the world, that He was good and that they was the thing called sin that separated us from him. I knew that sin led to death. I knew that He had sent His Son to bridge the gap between himself and sinners. I knew that Son was Jesus and that He died on the cross and he rose again and I knew that if you believed in him you would spend eternity with God which was a really good thing. I could not shake those feelings, all those beliefs, and I absolutely praise God for that. I'm so beyond grateful that God did not leave me, even when I hated him and resented him and felt so much anger towards him. Praise Jesus!

All this left me thinking, well some people could go to heaven, but God hates me because of my feelings. He does not want me part of His kingdom if I'm gay. I can't ever go to heaven because I'm a sinner, and sinners don’t go to heaven. I truly don't know where all my years of learning about the grace of God had gone. This led me to a really distressed position, probably one of the lowest ever my mental health had been. I was just not coping and I ended up being kind of forced to tell my mum. I don't really want to say too much on this part of the story but by the middle-ish end of year 10 I ended up coming out to my mum and she told my dad, ‘cause I refused to do it myself, and then I got a therapist. Finally, now that my mum knew, I could ask her what I had so desperately wante to ask her - if she could please buy me some books about being gay and Christian. And so she did. And I slowly but surely started to read them, I started to read my Bible more and I started to really search for what it meant to have faith trust in God’s grace and not in your own work, not in your own actions or thoughts or words. The first book I got in particular was really hard to read it was based more on specific Theology and not on personal experience and I needed that foundation in what God really said because I had just had conversations with my mum and she had reminded me ‘God is real and he loves you and he sent his son to die for you and that is an option for you as much as it is for anyone else, your queerness does not separate you from Christ's death and resurrection’. There is a wonderful bible verse that became very important to me at this time. Romans 8, the very end of the chapter, says ‘for I'm convinced that neither death not life neither Angels not Demons need of a present or the future and or any Powers neither height nor depth nor anything else in All Creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our lord.’ So with this in mind, I decided that I could trust God and now I just needed to learn how. so I worked away through different books, through different parts of the Bible, praying really hard, searching online and asking really hard questions to some really awesome Christian women in my life, and asking God to reveal to me exactly what he thought about me and about queerness and so eventually we get to the present moment. I by no means know everything that I wish I knew, but now I can say that I wholly trust God with my next life - I trust that he has the power and the strength and the holiness to overcome even my sin which sometimes feels like the biggest there is. and I trust him with this life - that life with him is so much better than any lesbian affair I could ever experience.

I want to personally apologize to any one who the church or the world has ever made believe that they are somehow exempt from God’s love because of who they are or what they've done or how they’ve felt. That is false. There is no one that does not sin, no one that is not inherently separated from God. And there is no one who is too far from Jesus' power to be saved from that sin. God is bigger than your sin, I promise you.

I want to take this time to mourn for the lives lost and the joy and peace forfeited because of the way people who claim to know God treat queer people. I'm sorry if you have been made to feel less than because of the church. In the process of overcoming of guilt and shame that I have felt over the year, one more verse that I found really important. 1 John 1 says that ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.’

So for me, I don't identify with my sexuality. I don't want to say that I'm straight now, that's not really true. but my sexuality is not what makes me who I am. I am a person fearfully and wonderfully made by God and I am a daughter of God in Christ. I am not ashamed of my feelings. I do think that it is worth mentioning that an attraction or a desire or an impulse is not the same as a sin. The Bible tells us that Jesus himself was tempted in every way and the Bible also tells us that Jesus is blameless and never sinned. And so I think it's worth the clarification that same-sex attraction or anything like that is not sinful itself and also that being gay is never worse than anyone else's sin, and it is never ever bigger than God.

I just want you all to know that there is nothing that you have done that makes you exempt from God’s love for you, to know that he is trustworthy, that the Bible is trustworthy, and I encourage you that your value is inherent as a person made in God’s image and that with Jesus, you can have identity in his son alone. When he sees you, he sees the goodness and perfection of Jesus if you believe in him.

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tortured-swiftie · 4 years

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@revouries sorry it took so long but here is my full list of song recs! Ps - it is loooooong

So I’m still very surprised anyone is even interested in this but its a really cool thing to share! This playlist has taken me close to a decade to create and I’ve been asked to share it with you all! Fair warning - heavy spoilers, and a lot is based on ship angst, don’t come for me. Also I have only read TDA twice and its been maybe a year since I did so I don’t remember everything perfectly. I had a lot more time with TMI because I read them for years and years. TID & TLH don’t really have soundtracks for me, because of the time period these modern songs really feel wrong when I read those series.

TMI :

Battle in Hotel Dumort in CoB -

- I’m So Sorry - Imagine Dragons

The pace of this song, the sinister notes, the danger it invokes just brings this scene alive. But also, this is the first time Clary feels like a Shadowhunter. She fights and its not terrible. She feels powerful instead of like a liability. Shes able to hold her own while talking to a clan of vampires. Its badass and fits the song.

Seelie Court kiss scene in CoA -

- The Violet Hour - The Civil Wars

Its such a beautifully haunting song, its sweet on the one hand but something wrong lies underneath it. It is so so perfect, because Clace is getting what they’ve wanted, but by hurting those around them. They get to give in for once, without the guilt attached, they have someone to blame for all this. But it ends on this very uneasy note, because it isnt right. So much of it is not right and Clace are not satisfied because it wasn’t a real kiss or real declaration of love

Jace and Clary after the meeting with the Seelie Queen in the Institute in CoA -

- Black Flies - Ben Howard

This is a very Jace song for me. Its quiet, peaceful, but the words are hurtful and honest. “No man is an island” fits him so perfectly at this time in his life where he feels abandoned by Valentine, abandoned by Mayrse, abandoned by literally everyone so he wants to make it worse by committing to Clary. She is so unsure of him because of the repercussions it would cause and he wants her in this moment because of the repercussions. He wants to isolate himself so he cant be hurt by those he loves.

Jace meets Valentine on the boat CoA -

- Silence Worth Breaking - Brooke Annibale

This is where Valentine really shows off how manipulative he is, and as a reader you start to believe how easy it would be to get around to his way of thinking. imo this is the best villain CC has written, because you find yourself agreeing with him sometimes and he makes it difficult to argue from a different perspective. The first time I read this scene I was convinced he was going to go with Valentine. The song is foreboding, it is anxious, and makes you think something bad is around the corner, which at this point in the book you feel like something bad is bound to happen

Simon is about to die on the back of Luke’s truck end of CoA-

- Wait - M83

This just perfectly conveys the grief and fear and guilt Clary feels when she thinks Simon is about to die. She brought him into this life, he turned into a vampire because of her, he was tortured by Valentine because of her and just as they saved him he is going to die. Its the loss of innocence and childhood for Clary. Simon is the last piece of it stripped away from her. First her mum, then her belief system in her whole world, then Luke, and now Simon. She is stripped all the way down to the bone of her identity and this scene is quick, but intense for this reason for me.

Clary and Jace meet up for lunch at the end of CoA -

- Distance - Christina Perri

This is such a sad song, and the sweetness of Christina Perri’s voice pairs beautifully in this scene with a feeling of a bittersweet kind of resigned acceptance. Clary had wanted so bad for Jace to let her go, she had convinced herself that her feelings weren’t that strong. And now here she is accepting her true feelings and ready to kind of wrap Jace around herself like a security blanket and he tells her exactly what she wanted to hear earlier. Except now she has to be a big girl and face her life without anyone holding her hand. She has to grow up and thats what makes this scene so sad, this is Clary realising its time to grow up.

Clary and Jace find Ithuriel in CoG -

- Goodbye Godric - Nathan Barr

This song was always ethereal and otherworldly, the notes are awe inspiring and convey this grief that is so abstract and not individualistic, it is beyond the human experience. Clary and Jace’s complete altruism and empathy in this scene matches with the grieving tones, how helpless they feel at this beautiful creatures pain, and how much they want to do something but they don’t know what. Then Ithuriel shows them visions and its even worse than they imagined. The misery that exists in these walls caused by Valentine, the waste of energy and life and soul is amplified by the music. The music soars as Ithuriel is set free, and the manor home crumbles.

Clary and Jace make out session outside the newly ruined Wayland Manor CoG -

- Maybe Tomorrow - Stereophonics

This wild abandon kissing perfectly matches the mood and pace of this song. Its all over the place, its messy, its confusing. Its giving into pure passion. Its abandoning any pretences they have built up and watching reality crash back down on them.

Isabelle wants Simon to distract her after Max dies in CoG -

- Not Everything Was Better In The Past - Fink

This is such a tenderly played song, and is easy on the ears, but there is a rawness there. Isabelle is completely stripped away, raw grief and anger and guilt eating away at her. When she lets Simon in she is ferocious and wants to show him her toughness. But Simon sees through it all to a scared young girl who is lost in this sea of grief. Its a sweet Sizzy moment

Jace telling Clary he loves her for the first time in CoG -

- Leave a Light On (ACOUSTIC) - Tom Walker

Jace shouldering the responsibility of finding Valentine by himself, essentially sacrificing himself to the cause, hes grief stricken, and yet feels barred from that grief. I know we experienced this scene from Clary’s POV but this song works so well from his POV. He wants to tell the girl he loves how he feels, he wants one night with her to feel normal and feel loved, and to pretend just for a little while that there is nothing wrong with that. This very stripped version of the song is much much much more raw, and that’s what Jace feels like in this scene, all the walls are down and he wants to show his real face to this one girl

Clary showing off her rune skills in the council chamber in CoG -

- I Found - Amber Run

This was the first scene I imagined from a filmmaking perspective, how to best present this scene. I imagined this entire scene from Jocelyn’s POV, frame by frame, as she walks into the council room very quietly and watches her baby walk up and address everyone in desperation, voice shaking but standing her ground. Grown, bigoted, adults judging her and are fearful but she is still showing them what she’s worth. I imagined Jocelyn’s entire world view shifting because she is in awe of this powerful girl Clary has become. She watches her daughter no longer as a little girl but as a formidable Shadowhunter that could handle the cards she had been dealt in life. Just a very transformative moment and pivotal in how we see Clary in the TSC universe

Lilith takes over Jace’s mind and disappears with Sebastian at the end of CoFA-

- I’ll Keep Coming - Low Roar

This song starts out so uneasy, it cant settle down, and that’s exactly how I feel when Jace sends Clary downstairs. I want to scream at her to stay, but knowing Lilith would always take over no matter what. Its a very dark moment, because no one wants to lose control of themselves and it must have been pretty scary at first. Its an anxious scene, paired with an anxious song

Magnus takes happy memories away in CoLS -

- Howl - Jake Houlsby

Magnus is looking very sad when he does this, especially what he says to Simon. Its such a knowing look, Magnus is no stranger to this kind of sorrow, but still to be witness to it over and over must take its toll. It just makes me think of the endless road stretching out ahead of him and how lonely and terrifying that must feel for him. Just a beautiful song to go with a sad moment in this scene

Clary at the Faerie club with Jace and Sebastian CoLS -

- Faded - Alan Walker

- Darkside - Alan Walker

At this point in the story you feel a lot like Clary is getting too comfortable and is maybe losing sight of the mission she’s on. These two songs are very club sounding to me, and tonally fits the mood of the chapter. Clary is quite literally lost in that moment with the Faerie drugs and the dancing and the atmosphere

Clary dancing with Sebastian CoLS -

- Daddy Issues - The Neighbourhood

First of all lyrically….it cannot get more perfect. “Go ahead and cry little girl nobody does it like you do, I know that you got daddy issues. And if you were my little girl, Id do whatever I could do…” it just conveys the creepiness of Sebastians interactions with Clary and how weird she felt when he was dancing with her and how wrong it felt. This is a very short moment in this chapter but it really creeped me out. And this song conveys perfectly this feeling of haziness of the Faerie drugs and this uneasiness that surrounds Sebastian

Simon drinks from Isabelle CoLS -

- Harvest Love - Tash Sultana

This is a pretty soulful, sensual song. And when Simon drinks from Isabelle and he describes the euphoria that comes with that, the description of how his nerves react to the fresh blood just remind me of the part in this song where the drums and music soars the highest (start around 3:32, and it reaches its peak around 4:48) its honestly one of the sexiest scenes CC has written, even including all the Jemma scenes

Magnus and Alec break up in CoLS -

- Evergreen - Ben Howard

First time reading this I was so so angry at Alec, and felt the sorrow and anger coming off Magnus. This song is very dark, and very sinister. Magnus completely misunderstood what Alec was trying to do, and applied the most sinister meaning to his actions. It is their perfect breakup song imo full of angst

Clary traps the Heavenly Fire into her sword in CoHF -

- Outro - M83

This is another scene I imagined cinematically. The first half of the song is where Clary slowly makes her way over to Jace and she suddenly has faith in herself that she can do this. Then we watch her take Jace’s hands as the radioactive wind sounds start and the flames are swirling around them but not touching them. Cut to Magnus and Luke seeing the colour on the horizon, and the flash that shows its over. Cut back to Clary drawing the Heavenly Fire into the sword as the music swells around her. The words are so so powerful, and they always felt very ethereal to me “I’m the King of my own land” This is Clary fully embracing her power and fully utilising it. Its no longer something separate from her, but she IS her power.

Clary killing Sebastian, pretty much a lot of the scenes before the time jump CoHF-

- Saturn (both acoustic and original version) - Sleeping At Last

This song is definitely an end of film/book / end of heroes journey material. Simon sacrificing himself so they can get back, Clary killing Sebastian and forgiving him, Clary scattering the ashes of Sebastian and finally grieving the past years trauma (all of the TMI journey), the Faeries being condemned by the Clave and Helen getting exiled. Its beautiful, its sad, its momentous, its not a regular song.

Alec finds Magnus in Edom in CoHF -

- I Of The Storm - Of Monsters and Men

The steady drum beat adds a sense of steadiness and calmness in this song. Its not a joyful getting back together but they’re both glad the other is alive and are both forgiving each other. For me, this is when I truly started shipping Malec. The growth, the strength of character begins from this moment. This is when they become a couple I love because this is when they commit to each other flaws and all

Isabelle introduces herself to Simon at the end of CoHF -

- Golden Dandelions - Barns Courtney

Isabelle has always felt like a full punch character, no half measures and all that. The feeling Simon describes when he first spots this beautiful girl walking directly up to him is how this song starts, for me at least. The drums, the barely contained excitement, the curiosity, and faint recognition. This song is a full punch song right from the get go and it felt like such a remarkable Isabelle moment

After Jocelyn & Luke’s wedding in COHF -

- From Gold - Novo Amor

It is such a bittersweet, and peaceful song. There are so many endings in this scene, and so many new beginnings. They are all grieving, one way or another, and are all allowing themselves to evolve. Their journey is over, and at the end of this book I had this sense of saying goodbye to these characters (retiring them so to speak) because I wasn’t sure how much they would be involved with the future of the TSC world. Im glad they are still a big part of it, but they will never be the main focus again.

TDA:

Julian and Emma dance in LM -

- Give Me Love - Ed Sheeran

The sexual tension, and the dread they both feel because of their feelings just makes this scene so dramatic to me, and this song softens it a little. Especially if you are re-reading the series you feel this tenderness because they so badly wanted to avoid falling in love

Mark and Kieran in the Hunt -

- Dance Me To The End of Love - The Civil Wars

This is a pretty offbeat quirky song, a little sad, a little wistful, a little mournful, sensual, but tones of wildly abandoning all you know and giving into baser desires. Whenever Mark thinks of his time with Kieran in the Hunt, his memories sound like this song. They experienced very high highs, and very low lows. They were degraded, the lowest you could possibly feel as a living creature. Yet they were riding into the night, sleeping under the stars in places only known to Faeries. There was no one watching them, and no one to stop them from being together. There is tenderness in their relationship, but also knowledge that they are only together because they have no one else. Its happiness without truly feeling like you have a choice about it. You have to be happy together because you cant find this happiness elsewhere. They are forced into being in love a little bit, because the alternative is so much worse. This is one of the reasons why I couldn’t ship them at first, because they hadnt really chosen each other. Only when they were presented with other options and they till chose each other did I start seeing their potential.

Julian and Emma on the beach LM -

- Next To You - Of Rust & Bone

This scene completely took me by surprise, and is very unlike CC because love scenes normally take place quite late into any series she has. This one was filled with anxiety, and tension because the characters quite literally fell into their feelings. There was no forethought, no sense of taking stock of what they were doing. And they ended up feeling such different things about it afterwards. So for me this songs darker moods perfectly pairs with this scene

Kieran and Mark argue/break up LM & LoS -

- Fade Away - Tom Walker

This song has such raw power, such dark emotion and anger and a sense of betrayal that it perfectly captures their emotionally charged scenes. Mark can never be the same Mark that belonged to Kieran when he had no one, because now he has his family. And Kieran is still the same man who has no one but Mark. I hated him the first time I read LM and most of LoS but their chemistry is hard to resist. Especially as they evolve as characters as well as a couple. They are wild and unmoored sometimes and there’s something exciting about characters you just cant pin down.

Emma & Jules’ strained relationship LM & LoS -

- 9 Crimes - Damian Rice

When Emma is “with” Mark there is this strange chemistry between her and Julian. Both have hurt each other at different times, but this was really like a stalemate. Neither could really move on, and both were angry at eachother. As more and more people found out/realised about the feelings they had were more than parabatai this tension grew. Because they’re not just falling in love, they are also actively choosing to hurt one another. They are certainly not an example of a healthy relationship but I felt in some way they were the realest. Because sometimes relationships hurt and sometimes you do things you have to do even if that isnt what’s best for your relationship. This song perfectly captures this push and pull they have, and how falling in love wasn’t blissful happiness for them. It was pain and secrets and hurting.

Annabel rising, killing Malcolm LoS -

- As It Was - Hozier

Since we’re watching this scene from above, a very unnatural and cinematic perspective, the scene feels unreal. Like it was a dream and didn’t happen. I felt genuine fear and uneasiness when Annabel is slowly brought back to life, skin growing over old bones. This song has notes that aren’t usually arranged together, instruments that are usually a bigger part of a quartet, and somehow that arrangement feels just a little wrong. It feels different, sinister, and uneasy. It feels like its missing several instruments, or some notes have been played incorrectly. Hozier’s voice is his best in this song, very strained, but so controlled, bringing forth very intense emotions

Christina and Mark at the revel LoS (I couldn’t remember if this was in LoS or QOAAD) -

- Now You’re Gone - Tom Walker & Zara Larsson

Christina really let herself go during this scene, and we see a completely different side to her. She is adventurous, risky, and she would make anyone say “fuck it lets do this” I always liked Christina but I always felt she was very predictable until this point. We see how intensely she is interested in Faeries, and how personally invested she is in their culture. She allows herself to be swept up, and embraces it rather than fears it. She honestly seems fearless here, and is the definition of temptation. She is quite literally tempting Mark, and its sexy a f

Jules & Emma burn down the church LoS -

- Esmeralda - Ben Howard

This was the first time their relationship excited me, because during this scene I fully expected they would go into full thirst mode but they didn’t. They were still very sensual and sexual and intense, but in a very very different way. There is something attractive about someone who’s willing to burn the world down, who has a little bit of an anarchist side. Its human nature to feel some attraction to these traits, and this scene definitely stirred feelings in me

Emma fights Fal LoS -

- Put It On Me - Matt Maeson

This song both tonally and in its pacing elevates this scene to new levels. Its not a typical battle song, it has a steady pace. But Emma’s description of how the battle is stripped down because of the rain, how she prefers this kind of fight where its her, her weapon and the elements. Its pure, and we get to see Emma in full fighter mode. She is an extension of Cortana, and they belong together. This is without a doubt my favourite fight scene to date. It just brings alive the visuals in such a dynamic way. Very storyboard-able.

Julian holding Livvy as she dies LoS -

- Losing Your Memory - Ryan Star

This song is harrowing, and its just pure pain, raw grief balled into one intense song. The lyrics just pull you into Julian’s mental state “wake up, its time, little girl, wake up” just kills me. As the music intensifies and the singer is practically screaming the lyrics it just feels like that’s what it must have been like inside of Julian’s mind. He wasn’t screaming out loud but his mind must have been very loud

Julian and Emma shower together QOAAD -

- Promise - Ben Howard

Julian dry heaving because he doesnt know how to cry. Fucking heartbreaking in a very quiet way. After the noise of loss, the quiet moments where you have to face grief is devastating. Emma being an anchor, holding him in place and trying to keep the world away from him so he doesnt hurt anymore is just harrowing. They’re just kids but the grief they feel is so adult. And when you lose someone like that, and someone is there for you that solidifies so much in that relationship. They become a part of something you can never let go of. Even if that relationship doesnt last, they will always be apart of that memory. And Emma sticking by him, despite the danger and promises they have made themselves is proof that she is the one for him

Kieran and Christina dance QOAAD -

- Senorita - Shawn Mendes & Camilla Cabello

This song is sensual, its sexual, its got hooks that quite literally sound like orgasms its such a playful song. When I read this scene this song popped in my head right away. When Christina is dancing with Mark its the same kind of feeling I got from her at the revel, except this time there is no supernatural influence, its just her and her feelings. It was a sexy scene, and when Kieran walks in we all expected something very different. What followed is what elevates this scene, Christina has no clue how to react to Kieran, and yet she is mesmerised by him. She dances with him in a way we would never have imagined her doing this in LM. It shows evolution of character, for all three of them. And the fact that Mark is watching, and he’s not angry just makes this scene even sexier. You can practically feel the sexual tension in the air coming off the pages of the book.

Malec wedding QOAAD -

- That Girl Is You - Dave Matthews Band

This song brings me so much peace, the kind of peace that comes with knowing someone for years, and relying on them, knowing they are a permanent fixture in your life. Its exciting, but in a quiet way. Its a very atypical wedding song, because of the unusual style of singing. But I think it represents Malec really well at this point in their journey, they have gotten over many obstacles, often themselves, in this relationship. Their entire world is changing, and they are taking massive steps and making some pretty big sacrifices as people for this cause. Being Consul isnt going to be a smooth life for Alec with Magnus as a husband and a warlock for a child. But this is what he wants, and this is what he wants Shadowhunters to reflect and be going forward. This song is a very peaceful time in the entirety of TSC, and gave me a similar feeling to the end of TMI

#tsc #song recs #tmi #the mortal instruments #tda #the dark artifices #cc #cassie clare #cassandra clare #the shadowhunter chronicles

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oliviacunliffe · 5 years

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Project proposal.

1. Review.

So far this year I have learnt to expand my creative in how I can include art techniques into my project. Therefore, this means that I will have to have to be open minded towards art techniques. Although I do find this hard because I see myself as a photographer and therefore not in touch with my creative art side because I was never good at art or drawing so I decided to channel all my creativity into my photography. when I have an idea on a shoot, I know exactly how I want it to be created and the amount of experiment ideas I can try along the way.

The research focus that I have developed this year is primary research. I have learnt this by being involved with class discussions asking questions and understanding their reasoning. Also, I have learnt that I will need to interview people to gain primary research to progress my further knowledge into my researched topic. Although the technique I am still progressing is giving other people feedback on their work.

The reason I have decided to choose 'structure of a psychopaths mind' is because I want to try something different to what I think most people will be looking too. Although, I have always been interested in all types of psychology and using my photography skills I want to show all the stereotypes and behaviours of a psychopath. Although, I am fully aware that not all psychopaths are mass killers but my side to this project is that I want to show the dark side of them and what dark thoughts they get inside their heads. I want to look into ‘psychopath’ killers around the world on what goes through their heads and behaviour traits that they display. I have always loved psychology trying to understand people’s actions and feelings. When I first came up with the idea of psychopaths I had ideas of photo shoots running through my head and this got me excited which gave me drive to carry on this idea for my project. My angle to this project is that I want to educate people on the meaning on each subject because it’s easy to throw around the words and not fully understand. I also think that dark stuff interests me and many others people because it’s the fear of the unknown and things that we are scared of that makes us more interested in them.

What I am hoping to achieve at the end of this course would to achieve a respectable grade so that I will be able to peruse my dream of working in a photography studio creating endless photoshoots for clients. Also, at the moment I am doing day events for the council and a charity that is based in London where I travel around the South East. This is something that I would really love to carry on after college and looking into creating my own business from this where I doing photoshoots and day events for charities etc.

2. Project Concept.

The inspiration for my project idea came from growing up watching serial killer tv shows with my nan and mum. The inspiration also came from always wanting to understand psychology which is something big for me because I have always wanted to understand what goes through people’s minds and why this happening. I also want to look into how they disguise themselves as ‘normal’ and how they manipulate people around them and how they learn how to express certain feelings even though they cannot feel this they can act it but they will never be able to feel this. Cults manipulate people into joining their organisation by grooming them by making the world is a bad place and everyone is against them but if they belong to this club then there is some be good in the world and they make them feel belonged to the group. After making them feel wanted they then groom them by slowly changing their views on things and slowly change their behaviour and making them do things they normally wouldn’t by saying they can get revenge by doing rituals and releasing demons and spirits into the world to torture and haunt people. The inspiration also came from wanting to do something different and I wanted to follow other artist who risen above others by creating something that stands out and I aspire to be like that. The inspiration came from the amount of ideas of shoots that came to mind and how playful I could be with it. I have also like creating dark stuff or things that maybe a little touchy to talk about but I want to express my ideas with it and the inspiration I get is inspiring others to create things. I will also be looking into cults and how this may influence people to do bad things and look into things such as rituals. As some killers follow Satanism religion and they kill people in rituals or they follow a certain way to kill people to use them as a sacrifice. Although I do feel people are quick to throw around the word and call people psychopaths but not understanding the meaning behind it and this is what I want to do is show people the real meaning of a psychopath. Although in my opinion psychopaths join cults so they can take their urge to hurt people out on animals in rituals by harming them and sacrificing them. Dark matters interest me but it kind of scares me because it’s a higher power that is dangerous to be a part of or be around where some dark rituals have happen. It’s a part of something I have grown up with learning about psychopaths, ghosts and cults so it has always interested me especially the psychology side of it.

The techniques I’m going to use to gain research, will be looking into documentaries on serial killers and structures of cults. I will also be using questionnaires and interviews to gain an insight to what people think about psychopaths and cults. I’m going to use documentaries as research because I will be looking to cases of killers and how they made people around them seem that they were ‘normal’ and not a suspect to any kind of danger from them. Also, this will give me an insight of what goes through people’s mind when they are psychotic. I will also use websites as well as documentaries so that I can research history on Satanism and cults and how they have rituals and how they influence people to be bad and committing crimes because I feel psychopaths are associated with cults as I know that the organisation have an influence on people to commit bad things.

The techniques I will need to use is the photography studio because I will be needing to use the space to create test shoots and experiments of ideas I have gathered throughout my project. Although, I may need to use the art studio to create art-based experiments that will be carried out in the art studio. I will also need the techniques on how to create the correct set up when creating a dark low-key photoshoot that includes lots of shadows as well as light.

I hope that my photography gives the message of what goes through the mind of a psychopath and an insight of the structure of Satanism/cults. I hope my work shows people what the true definition of what a psychopath is and what need to make one and the murder side of it. I want to show the structure of a cult and how it can take over your life and make you into someone that you are not and do things that a ‘normal’ person would never think about doing which links to my psychotic side of this project because it’s about how ‘these people’ act and how they don’t feel anything and they try to fit in by acting way by learning from people and this what a cult makes you do it makes you don’t feel anything but what you’re doing it right and I want to show how the structure of a psychopath and a cult organisation can be influential and how psychopaths blend in with everyone because they are intelligent on how to feel and show what goes through their minds.

The target audience that I have in mind is young people aged between 16-25 because I feel that young people don’t understand what a true psychopath is and that they don’t understand the traits of what one is. Also, a lot of people don’t realise that they might be in a cult and need something to tell them what it is but also I want to show the structure and give people a true understanding of what goes through a psychopaths mind or the structure of what a cult is and how to identify it and have a true understanding what a psychopath is and not so quick to throw the word around and easily accuse someone of something so easily. The reason I have chosen a young age range because I feel that young people may know about these things but they don’t understand them fully and don’t understand the full story of what a psychopath feels or doesn’t feel. Also, I think it might help to realise that they might be in a cult and not realise it but I want to spread the message of what goes through the mind of a psychopath and what a cult really is and how it works. I feel when people are young they don’t understand what words mean and they just call people it but don’t understand what really means and the other side to this. This is for a target audience who doesn’t have much knowledge on this area of subject because it’s all about the structure of a psychopath’s head and the structure and history of cults and Satanism. I want to express how cults manipulate and groom people inside of cults and how people easily fall for this.

3. Evaluation.

The techniques I will use to evaluate my work is by self-reflecting by making weekly reviews on my work and setting targets for myself to complete for the week commencing which I will be making into my journal. Also, I will be gaining feedback from my tutors on latest artist researches and outcomes that I have created throughout the week/project. I will also be giving feedback by my piers where I will be taking notes on how I can improve and add it to future outcomes. Also, I may get feedback from unknown people where my work is being displayed in my blog and people are open to comment what they think of my work and what they don’t like. I feel this is an advantage to me because I may get feedback from the public who can express themselves and I will take this as feedback and try to improve my work.

I will be using my journal as a place where I gather my ideas, list artist and store feedback such. I will also be using it to make a weekly feedback where I’ll be evaluating myself on how I can improve. I will be also using it as place to store quotes and thoughts that I have thought throughout my project which will be put onto my blog at the end of my project to show my progression of thinking. My journal will help me reflect and manage my targets to make sure that I am keeping up with set tasks.

Evaluation and reflection is vital because it helps with time management it helps you asses where you are in your project also it helps you look back at your work and look at areas where you might need improvement. I also think that this is vital because it allows you to get help and feedback from piers which could be helpful towards photoshoot ideas and possible artist research.

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shardclan · 6 years

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Sunbeam Citizen Special Report

Welcome to a very special edition of the news -- the Sunbeam Sentinel and the Aphaster Citizen have been reigned in under one label. Omen's label, in fact. After her amazing show of power against the outsider, she has plagued graced the Sunbeam Sentinel with her experience as both reporter and editor.

Without further ado or any additional snide edits at penalty of a sound slapping around the ears, we are proud bring you the latest news from the Sunbeam Ruins:

Much to the rejoicing of the guest merchants who found themselves on the mainland side, the reconstruction of Hewn Bridge has been completed. Traffic into the Hewn City has been constant, but relatively smooth thanks to Margravine Maka's firm direction. The most kindly merchants have promised to return in the spring, but even among cordial merchants there was significant frustration. Making the journey to the Southern Snowfields via Trader's Walk is a time-consuming effort, and many of the smaller merchants will have missed the chance to secure their wares for the Crystalline Gala.

Local Merchant Guilds have had mixed feelings about the subject of the Morning Queen's actions now that it's become so clear she was acting appropriate to the threat. Apologies were, at least in part, issued almost immediately after the southwestern skies were returned to normal. However it was the punishment served that truly restored Aphaster's standing among them.

In spite of being born during the eclipse for the sole purpose of executing a deific grudge against Clan Aphaster, the Lady Judge deemed Ilkilidies' collusion with the Outsider too extreme to be excused. He was banished from all of the Aphaster territories, making him the first exile under the Morning Queen’s reign. Dozen of questions and scores of demands for information have poured in from local clan heads but the Morning Queen remains mum on the subject. What could Aphaster have done to offend the Shadowbinder?

The Outsider in question, known as Hitth, had its wings completely removed. The facets that were the source of its powers were seemingly stored there, and thus, to ensure that it remains unable to regain it by any other means, an even more gruesome punishment followed.

Though the Morning Queen refuses to reveal why or how this will prevent the creature regaining power, she commanded that the skull of the water seer be fused to Hitth. Fletch, the Priestess of Blackened Bones, did the deed. By coating the edges of the wildclaw skull in molten metal, and applying it to the screaming creature's face.

Since then, Katiyana has taken charge of the creature and the Icewarden's chosen has departed the Sunbeam Ruins. Though there was scarcely any need to check given his very vocal preference, sources say he has returned to the Southern Snowfield.

The Summerlands have been quiet since, though curiously the Morning Queen has been quiet. Pleased, but quiet. This has led to some speculation that perhaps going in and fighting the creature herself may have had some manner of side effect.

Local happenings after the defeat of the creature are as follows:

Purpose left the clan as cryptically as she once came, claiming that word of white celestine was something she should take to her homeland.

Augustine, having witnessed such vast and alarming evil, went into the Lightweaver's service. His final words were to his sister, Fletch, and she has requested they remain private.

Camellia's second oldest daughter, Phasmatis, departed gratefully from Promenade medical. Having lived through both the moving of the Seat, and the threat of an Outsider, Phasmatis now seeks a less exciting clan in which to hone her mastery of bone manipulation. It is her hope to turn the power into something she can use to defend rather than for medical purposes.

Qaseem's nerves couldn't withstand the strain of the ordeal. Plague dragon or no, he claimed, all he ever wanted to do was quietly deal in logistics for a well-run clan. Though it was a relatively benign event, being subjected to Hewn City magics by Eos disturbed him--the two never really made up. To have another menace from somewhere even more cryptic that Hewn City was too much for him to bear and he went quietly into exaltation.

Cassis has decided to venture off for similar reasons, though his are a bit more personal. "It's dark enough we've had this happen," he claimed. "But you know it's the knowing that Brightrose would be here singing everyone better that's really taking it's toll. I keep not hearing his voice where I know it would be, and there ain't enough cheer in me to bear that with a positive outlook."

Tungsten finally emerged from her vision hysteria. She is in no condition to actually return to work, but it is the first positive sign for her health in nearly two eons. Because of the coming rising of the Ice element, her mental clarity is expected to make a rapid return. Physical rehabilitation time may vary, but she is expected to be near or finished her recovery by spring.

Techne and the Xanna Guard have recently pulled back from Aphaster--the reason seems to have something to do with Zo (and almost certainly his engagement to Junior--which is so well known it scarcely counts as news). When asked, Zo has insisted it's Xannite business that is very particular to him.

The rift in front of House Betelgeuse has been settled in--by Faded. The infamous and questionably existent denizen of the coven has made the threshold into their personal domain. This has seen the disbanding of the Rift Watch--with Faded so openly protective of the new spirit, they will be all the guarding the rift needs.

In a final bit of news, children have been spotted in the company of the Lady Judge. While it is not uncommon for her to raise orphans, it quickly drew attention--why would there be children in the clan so soon after such a huge disaster? But finding out the truth, no one has been keen to ask too many questions.

They were hatched on the final night of the Time of Silent Moons--which in itself is not unusual. However, the male of the two hatchlings, was born from the Arcane egg discovered during the Exodus. Though no one knows if the female hatchling, Rebis, came from an egg with similarly sentimental background, the effect has extended to her. The questions begged to be asked: Why would such an important egg have been hatched without any fanfare? Why right after such a traumatic event?

The questions remain unasked, and there is a sense of tension about the subject in the clan--particularly with the skull of the water seer having come back into social consciousness. The clan seems to be taking it as portentous--but the children have not proved unusual in any way and the Lady Judge has been open in admitting they will be trained to replace some of the more important openings that have appeared in the clan as a result of Hitth's attack.

Stellaria boldly volunteered to take Qaseem's responsibilities, but her role as Distributions Manager cannot go unfilled and the load of both occupations would be decidedly unfair give the size that Aphaster has grown to. Saber, being already extremely experienced at inventory and vault management duties, is filling the role instead. Apokathisto will be apprenticing under him and if the child proves good at it, he will take the role. The child has shown some interest in the clan’s history, so the Lady Judge has also volunteered that Apokathisto may take lessons from both Dalma and herself and become a barrister.

With the departure of Augustine, House Perihelion lacks a formal Requester. The role might be thought of as easy to dismiss or otherwise unimportant, but the procurement related to Diver's March and the Leyline Gardens and Solar Farms was also handled through Augustine. It's not out of turn to say that Aphaster's western sectors rely on the requester to stay fully operational. Rebis’ personal talents take a shine toward the magical and the Lady Judge again revealed the child would perhaps take on an apprenticeship in magical theory--but not with Ashes.

When asked if this had anything to do with the Tribune of Magic’s recent house arrest, she said “No, but it would be very nice to have an accomplished mage and magical theorist in this clan who isn’t an Arcanite. Politicians get very jumpy and difficult when they believe the combination of their neighbors Archmage and Tribune of Magic are capable of razing the entire territory with minimal effort.”

#Flight Rising #Aphaster Citizen #Aphaster stories #C: Rebis #C: Apokathisto #C: Hitth #C: Tungsten #the sunbeam sentinel

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wildernessuntothemselves · 3 years

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LMAOO BRO U CAN NOT BE FR DID SHE REALLY SLAM THE DOOR IN THE LITTLE GIRL FACE???? Please tell me that’s a joke😭😭😭

Lmao it's for real. She loves her but the girl is completely wrapped around her daddy's finger and he's been poisoning her view of her mother so she mistrusts her a lot and the oc is very angry and upset by it and she knows her daughter will pull away if she tries to reason with her so she pushes her away before she snaps and turns her wrath on felix

#mort talks #IYYM #i have experience in this having grown up with a mum that completely manipulated me to hate my dad #i mean he's a pos #but she was using me

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goldenchocobo · 4 years

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THE DECADE

So here’s a Decade review to get all my thoughts and feelings out there. I suppose this is going to be a bit cathartic in a way. I tend to ramble and go off tangents, so I’m going to out things under a read more so I don’t clog up anyone’s dash, and people who aren’t interested in reading won’t have to scroll too much.

In a Tl;dr: This decade’s been rough, and I’ve gone through a lot of changes. My mental health is at an all time low, as well as my physical health. I hope to improve in the coming years.

I started off this decade in a completely different setting. I was in University learning CGArt and Designs + Animation. I found the whole course too difficult, so I needed to drop out before I had a snap. It was mainly because I was an undiagnosed Dyslexic and the course had way more paperwork than I expected, so much so that I was roughly a month behind everyone else and what I did produce was roughly just above passes. The first module we went through I got a distinction, but the three other modules I was a part of I just scraped by.

This is where the depression starts

All my life from when I was about 12 years old I had been preparing myself for an Artistic career. I chose CGArt/Animation/Concept- not going to lie- because my then uncle brought me a Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith Concept art book and I was so enamoured with it, I was sure that’s what I wanted to do.

So having the rug metaphorically pulled from under me was harsh. I had no idea what to do with my life and no life experience. I couldn’t get a job because my spine was deformed and I couldn’t do labour jobs and I had the beginnings of telephobia- so that ruled out any kind of office job. At the same time my neighbourhood was going down hill, so it was decided that me and mum would move in the near future.

2012- I moved to my current home. Away from any friends or relations. And instantaneously I felt isolated, and still do. My anxiety skyrocketed.

In 2013 I enrolled in another college having the idea of doing ‘something’ with animals since animals is what I loved after doing art. I specifically remember wanting to work in aviaries, rookeries or with birds of prey. The course did not have anything like that apart from one single day where a small amount of students could volunteer to clean out the parakeet and Zebra Finch aviaries. I did so- the tutor taught us how to handle a bird properly and tasked us with cleaning and sprucing up the enrichment. The course lasted 1 year, and I didn’t pursue later courses. I ended up with a Distinction.

I made some friends while there, but we didn’t keep in contact after college. I sometimes still see one of them at the bus station but we don’t acknowledge one another.

2013- I went to Scotland for the first time, to Edinburgh Zoo. I enjoyed it. But that October I suffered with a at the time an unknown illness that left me bed ridden until December and housebound for an entire year. I think it was possibly bacterial gastroenteritis, as my symptoms match up, but I still don’t know why it affected me for so long. It caused me to have IBS which I still suffer with today and make me more sensitive to foods- I can’t have milk or beans.

This illness rocked me. I became gaunt and actually atrophied one of my legs. I needed Hydrotherapy to get back to my strength.

However, my reluctance to go outside (even now sometimes) has caused me to become overweight, something I’m working on.

2016- was the toughest year of my life. Especially mentally. If 2013 was the year of physical illness, then 2016 was that of mental illness. In 2011 I met a great person. I’m leaving them unnamed, as for how much I scorn them now, sending hate their way would only make me stoop lower than they are. We instantly clicked. Best friends. Separated siblings. We got on like a house on fire and met in real life twice and had fun both times. They were older than me by two years, but acted like they were 13.

I ignored warning signs of manipulation from them. Our first argument was over me calling a Kelpie a ‘Scottish Water Horse’ after watching The Water Horse in which in the extras section there’s a story about a kelpie and the narrator equates the titular water horse to a kelpie.

I cried- not going to lie. I thought I was going to lose them and be on my own again. We reconciled. All was right. Until I decided to try and roleplay horses with real horse body language, and they went off on me because they liked horses more and even they didn’t know a lot about horse body language. This time I didn’t cry, I was just kind of mad.

Sometime in 2013-2014 I got a text from my then boyfriend admitting he'd cheated on me. Looking back on this now- it was just a miscommunication. I went crying to my friend and they straight up told me to dump him, because he was a piece of shit. So I did. And they told me not to talk to him again, that he was trying to manipulate me. So I blocked him on everything I could.

Now, my only friend circle was that of this friend and their friends. Dangerous.

Things had been building up for a while, looking back. While I was housebound, I’d bombard them with messages. I was lonely and had not spoken to a soul before then. If they’d told me to tone it down, I’d be upset but understanding, but they said nothing to me.

Eventually we drifted.

And it all culminated in 2016, April 28th (unhealthy to remember the date, but…)

I’m not exactly sure what sparked it, but we got into a huge argument. Me, them and one of their friends.

Then they sent me this:

“I think you’re Toxic”.

And that sparked the downward spiral I’m still recovering from.

I responded with “Okay”.

And decided that my window looked like a lovely place to jump out of.

I didn’t. I was caught by my mum, and had a panic attack and mental break all at once. I screamed and shook and foamed, and was put on watch and sent to a therapist.

The first therapist didn’t help much. She told me to ‘get up early’. Which- at the time, and currently- I’m a night owl.

Just after this incident, chickens that I had brought for therapy- to help me get out of the house, died. Both of them. One from an impacted crop and another from a virus. Which trodd me down more.

My budgie Reno became ill- almost died.

My Aunt was diagnosed with COPD

My dog had her start of downward health

But hey- Pokemon Go came out, so yay…

2017 was just recovering. I found a therapist that worked and he’s helped me a lot with controlling my thoughts. I found a game called the Isle and friends from that game I’m still talking too.

2018, my dog Luna passed away after several seizures and strokes brought on by medication.

I’m one of these people who have their heartbreak but need to move on as quickly as I can, otherwise I risk wallowing in the muck of depression and ‘what ifs’.

So the same year I brought Loki home, he’s still with us, although a bit overweight.

I reconciliatied with my ex-boyfriend and we both apologised to one another. He’s had it rough too. We still talk to one another and post memes and send each other weird birds.

2019, Year of self-reflection.

I’ve grown so much from my 2016 self. I do want to talk to that friend again… kind of. They’re still in my thoughts daily, and THAT’S not good, but they’ve become so ingrained it’s almost normal.

Kingdom Hearts 3 came out this year and going back to that series has been a major help to my mental state and how I think. At least I hope I’ve become better at thinking. I’ve had some slip ups with my current friend group- some arguments, but it’s not as bad as with the other friends group- we actually talk about our grievances about one another and they’ve helped curve my bad ways, so I’m a better person.

Thanks guys

Here’s to the 2020’s, I hope they’re better than the 2010’s

#Personal #Ramble #Decade Reveiw #It's not so personal that you're not allowed to read or whatever #Just getting my thoughts out #A lot of it is that friend because they've had a major impact onme and I could talk about them all day and how much they fucked me up

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iwishihadthecouragetokillmy-blog · 5 years

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a history of control

There is a man that I know who controls and abuses his wife. The pattern over a 12 year period is as follows.

The relationship started in a whirlwind. He told her that she could have the kind of relationship she wanted and she thought she had found the one. She knew he wasn’t perfect but she thought, he is perfectly imperfect. He was interested in the same sorts of things, and their love life was exactly what she had been seeking for a very long time. He promised her things that she wanted. He told her that she would get to live the life she dreamed of.

Then he started having problems at work. He would come home very upset. He said it was because he was working in the city in a book shop. He thought it was all the fumes of traffic and the business of the place and the menial nature of the job. She was happy living in their inner suburban apartment. She had wanted to live in that part of the world her whole life, but she felt so bad for him that she suggested that if he wanted, they could move to the country town where she had grown up. It would be a break from the city and a fresh start for him.

They went out there and looked at places to rent. He was really difficult about it. She thought maybe it is just because he doesn’t know the place very well. They decided to take the place that he liked the best. It wan’t the one she wanted but she thought, it’s OK, she was sure that things would come around her way in the course of things.

The first night, even before they had completely moved in, the house got burgled. It made the experience really difficult. He was on edge a lot. She was worried too, but she also felt like she had to be extra careful and that he needed to be comforted. He didn’t like the neighbours and felt really weirded out by one in particular. Things were not easy. She had started to feel like the relationship was not really working. One night, when things were difficult he made her make a choice, either they were going to make it work and stick together or they should break up and end it. She didn’t want to have to make such a big decision, it wasn’t perfect but he was a nice guy and they did have all those things in common, and he had promised all those things that she wanted in life, and even though he hadn’t delivered on any of them, she made a decision. If he really thought it had to be one way or the other she would choose. That night she made a commitment and to her that was an important thing. She didn’t like to go back on a commitment.

Towards the end of the lease his friend was really sick. His friend had cancer and Chemo had failed. She tried to get him to understand that his friend was dying but he just wouldn’t allow it to be acknowledged.

As soon as the lease was up they moved to the coast. They were both planning to study for a year to qualify as teachers. He had already started studying some foundational studies so he could be a history and english teacher, and that was why he couldn’t find the time to work more often. When they got to the coast they decided that she would study full time and he would keep going part time doing the foundational stuff. Neither of them worked and it was tough. Towards the end of her course, his friend died. He was so upset that he hadn’t known it was coming. She tried to tell him that it had been coming but he was in denial.

When she graduated she went to work. She took on more work than she wanted to because they needed the money. He started studying full time to qualify as a teacher. She was OK about providing for him, after all, he would be a teacher in another 12 months too, then she would be able to get back to making art the way she had wanted to, and had been doing since before they were together. That first year of teaching was really hard. It nearly broke her. She was feeling suicidal, but she just kept holding on. Soon he would be working too.

When he graduated, he felt really insecure about teaching. He had a bad interview and now his confidence was rocked. He decided to focus on his creative practice. She knew he would get it together and start teaching soon so she kept supporting him. She had enrolled in a visual art diploma and was loving it. She was working part time and she was loving it. But money was tight. He kept at her to work more often. He was just so busy with his creative enterprise, and even though he was only breaking even he was so busy. He kept at her to work more and to quit the art course, and eventually she did. And then she got a job in a cafe too, because hey, they needed the money and he was just so busy. She would drive him to the city every weekend and help him with his market stall. She enjoyed those days but she really wished she had the time to do something like that. She figured that sooner or later though, she would get her turn.

Then he wanted to have kids. She wasn’t ready but he just wouldn’t let up.

She gave in. Then he expected her to be a stay at home Mum. She was miserable and because she wasn’t working there wasn’t enough money. But he insisted it had to be that way. That was what was best for the child. Don’t you want what is best for the child. When the child was born he would chastise her for singing to the baby. It will over excite her he said. She did as she was told. This became how parenting was in a lot of different contexts.

Then they moved. He got a job permanently. He chose the house. He decided they way everything in the house should be. She was miserable.

Then he wanted another child. In retrospect it was timed perfectly to extend the stay at home period. It ended up being 6 years of full time at home. The finances where going backwards and she really wanted to get an income. But he insisted. Don’t you want what is best for the kids?

They had massive credit card debts. They were going backwards in a big way. Still she wasn’t allowed to work. She didn’t have any say over the finances by now and she didn’t really know just how quickly they were going backwards. But it was all about what was good for the kids.

Then something amazing happened. She inherited $50 000. It was enough to pay off the debts and then some.

He wanted a car. She said OK. He wanted a big car. She said no, let’s just get a little one. He said it has to be a big one. He won. He always won. So now he had a car that was worth 10 times what hers was worth. And this was her inheritance. Then he wasn’t happy with the place they lived in. He never was. So they had to move. It cost them every time they moved. But he just had to have what he had to have.

They kept going backwards. More debt.

Now her car broke down. They couldn’t afford to fix it. It sat on the lawn for 3 months then her parents payed to fix it. Then he wouldn’t let her drive it out of the local area in case anything happened.

By this time she was used to not having a say or a choice. He told her what music she couldn’t listen to. They only watched what he wanted on TV. He wouldn’t let her set up the second TV in their bedroom, he just didn’t want it that way. He would ridicule her. He would always talk about how he was just a bit better than her. If she wanted to buy something she needed to run it past her. He didn’t forbid her from going out and having friends but it just always seemed to be so difficult with the questions and the rules and the having to report back and the text messages, she just felt like it was easier not to go.

She often thought about killing herself

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Of course she is not she in real life. She is a he. and the He in the story is a she. And it is not that I was forced to be a stay at home Dad, but she flat out refused to even consider any work for six years and then part time for two.

I am sure if it were as in the story everyone would agree, this was not equality, and that this was not all her fault. But when it is a man who is the one being controlled no one seems to give the same response.

I am slowly trying to claw back some control over the finances, but she is so abusive if I try to get things quickly. She tells me how I made her take control. She tells me how I wanted everything this way.

She is so skilled at manipulating me.

I still think about killing myself everyday

0 notes

codysstruggleforgeorgia-blog · 6 years

Text

The start of the story.

My name is Cody. I am a 23 year old male, currently living at home with my parents. Her name is Georgia, a 22 year old female in the same situation. We have known each other for going on ten years, and in that time we have hated each other, we have liked each other and we have loved each other. I know almost everything about her. I know how she reacts to things, I know when she is happy, when she is sad, when she is distant, when she is hurting, when she is scared, when she doesn’t care.. I can read her like a book. While I can not speak for her, I imagine for her it’s much the same with me. Very rarely do either of us surprise each other in regards to what we are thinking - unless a surprise is intended, of course, because we are not entirely dull and transparent. Nevertheless, it’s very rare for us to surprise each other.

Here’s the story of our history, and how a surprise has both formed and broken our relationship. I write this to give context to the daily issues I intend to post so that my every day thoughts and moments of depression can be recorded. Georgia and I met on a video game, online, with no knowledge of what human being was behind the other monitor. We were just complete strangers - both of us young, not even fifteen yet. In my eyes, she was this over the top ball of energy, she tried to be friends with everybody, and I found her annoying and eventually hated her.

The reason that I found her annoying was because I couldn’t believe in my young heart that she wasn’t a manipulative girl. I had the typical rough childhood, but as cliche and ‘other’s have had worse’ as it is, mine still affected me.

My father left when I was seven or eight and would never return to the every day family life. I knew that he had been violent and unfaithful towards my mother because kids see and hear things even when their parents try to hide it. This departure from the family was kind of the icing on the cake for me, because even as a young boy, he was never really there. He always worked long shifts into the night doing manual labour work - although it turns out he used to come home so late mainly because of his post work activities, drinking and women. I didn’t know this as a kid though, so I used to stay up as long as my young mind would allow me to hoping to catch him as he returned home so he could fulfill his promise of playing Mortal Kombat with me on the Playstation. Even though I actually managed to stay awake long enough some times, it never did happen. So in reality I didn’t actually know my Dad very well to begin with, only the things I saw, the disappointments, and finally him leaving.

So I told myself that I hated him. I would not treat women the way he did. I would never cheat. I wouldn’t be a martial arts freak or be obsessive about fitness, as he was anal about health fitness and fighting and that was the violence I saw towards my mother and my family. I shut my young mind off from him and threw the idea of my dad being my dad from my life and taught myself to hate.

With him gone, we couldn’t afford to stay in Sydney with just Mum, myself and my sister - 1, and brother, a newborn. We didn’t have the money - well really, my mother didn’t have the money. I was in grade 2. So we moved back to a small town out in the middle of nowhere.

The first thing I did was move from one grade to a grade higher because of the interstate educational changes that came with the move. I went from grade two to grade three and studied at a catholic school. It was a very small school. It had one two story building a shed, a small sand playground and the toilet facilities. I was never christian, I never believed, so the catholic side of things didn’t really appeal to me, and on top of that I never really made any friends.

The friends I did try to make tended to be older than me by a few or many years, as they were the ones that would always play in the handball court, and all I ever wanted to do was be included, but they didn’t play regular handball, they played it with small plastic rackets, sort of like tennis rackets, and every time I tried to participate someone would pelt the ball at me as hard as they could, rather than play the game. So I never really had friends here. I played up here and there, but for the most part my school life there was much the same and only lasted two years.

Come time for grade 5, I was given the option to swap to the State School across the road, as it went until grade 12 and my current school did not. I guess my mother saw I was unhappy, or somebody convinced her - I wouldn’t know. I said yes though, wanting a change and swapped to that school. My first day of school there I got asked if I liked our country’s most popular sport and I said no. I got picked up by the throat and choked by one of the kids from the cool club and thrown back to the ground. Then later in the week the same group of kids decided to bully me again and dared me to ring the firebell, saying I was scared and wouldn’t do it. I didn’t know what it was, but I rang it anyway, just to get back at them in my own way, to show them I wasn’t scared and they were wrong.

I got my first in-school suspension because of that, which was essentially suspension from the classroom itself - so my bullying became everyone walking out of the classroom at the two separate lunch times laughing at me and throwing shit at me while I spent the entire day seated in the one corner of the school, unable to even join the kids for lunch because of my punishment. Much of my schooling for the rest of that year is a blur as far as specifics go but it was much the same as before, never really changing. The in school suspensions kept coming and eventually I had grown so sick of the students, and then in turn the staff because of the suspensions and the way everybody looked at me, that I didn’t want to be at the school anymore. It was no fun being suspended inside of the school just to be chased by kids on bikes throwing knives and other things at you.

Back then we had dial up internet. I used to attempt to play Pokemon Crater, an old flash pokemon game on the internet. I would sit there for an age waiting for one frame to change just to see if I had encountered an imaginary pokemon. I had been given a gameboy and pokemon silver as a kid and played it to completion so this was my new fix.

Eventually I would stop going to school during the time of my in school suspensions and as I had hoped they changed my suspensions to proper, removed from the school suspensions. By this stage I was in grade six, and I started playing a new online game. I leave the name out in case people stumble upon this because my girlfriend is paranoid - and sometimes, rightly so, so even though I believe nobody from our lives will read this, I leave out the specifics out of love for her.

As I was saying, I began to play a new game. It allowed me to interact with all kinds of kids my age from all over the country and it was phenomenal. There were groups for everything everywhere and one of the first ones I participated in was a wrestling roleplay, where we would type words at each other and imitate wrestling moves and try to outsmart, or outsell the opponent to show we were uh.. knowledgeable about wrestling, I suppose. This specific ‘roleplay’ didn’t operate quite the same as others, it was more about selling the fight, making it believable, giving the other person their chance to do their stuff, whereas others were more about speed, tactics, outsmarting the other person by being the faster typer and better strategist.

I didn’t spend very long, maybe just a year in this wrestling group - we were the first group of the server to do it and we ended up as ‘hall of fame’ members for years to come, much like they induct real wrestlers into the hall of fame. It was a cool little thing for us and some of us still talked when it ended - in fact, one in particular will be mentioned later on in this story. His name was Chris, and I met him here.

The focus of the story now swaps to the game, with my life as the background details, the inbetween information, because to me that was much the reality I lived - my actual life took a backseat to my pretend life.

There was a brief period of time inbetween my time with the wrestling roleplayers and my next roleplaying group where I lied about my age, and tried to e-date girls for fun because I was lonely and I enjoyed the company. There’s really not much to talk about here, it’s pretty much as I’ve just summarized it.

It was around this time that, in real life during the school holidays I would go to Brisbane to visit my father. They were not phenomenal life experiences. He would take us to his latest girlfriends place and leave us watching movies beyond our years while he had sex and did drugs, he would drink, he would sit us in a room without food while he did his martial art training, he would make me personally go without food because as a result of the bullying and staying home all of the time I had grown chubby. I developed an incorrect understanding of my own body - I was just a chubby little kid, but I thought I was disgustingly obese or something. Him treating me like this just made me want to embrace the fat life more though - and I did.

That was essentially my school holidays over the course of the next few years - and the only moments of importance besides meeting my best friend, Tyson. However my story with Georgia continued despite the meeting of my now best friend and everything else is irrelevant, so I mention it now and only briefly so the rest can go uninterrupted.

Picking up where we left off in the game, I eventually moved out of my ‘social’ phase (lol) and joined a new roleplay group, this time for Naruto, a universe based around what was basically magic ninjas. This was the first time in my life I had been passionate about something. I studied the universe inside and out. I took notes - I recited them, I passed fake exams to move up ranks, I outsmarted everybody that I fought and I beat them, and eventually I became friends with the top dog, the leader of the whole roleplay who had made the rooms using his own stuff and built the system that governed all ranks and power. I got him banned by reporting him jokingly and we became friends by me apologizing and having a laugh about it. Through him I met Mitch, who would be another good friend in time but not yet. Eventually I made it to the top of the rank ladder - I was leader of my own village in the roleplay. I was the best in that village and one of the top 3 roleplayers in the entire scene. I had sincerely worked so hard for this and for one of the first times in my life I had felt incredibly happy. I had built this thing for myself through my own effort and dedication. The other people around me liked and respected me for it. I had my home away from home. I had my escape from reality.

Then the devil came.

Georgia, if you are reading this - you’re going to have to excuse my language, you know how I felt about you at the time.

This little cuntball of energy rolled into my escape from reality uninvited, unannounced, with an internet boyfriend at her side, 20 guys lined up waiting to lick the pixelated dust trail behind her footsteps, a parade of attention and affection and affirmation, and almost the entire roleplay being ready to bend their rules and change the ways we had to work and invest ourselves to get where we wanted to be - because of the power of the pussy. I fucking hated this creature more than anything else and to top it off, she spoke like you would expect an energetic teenage girl to talk when pretending to be a ninja: hehe LOL XD SHURIKEN JUTSU She drove me up the fucking wall. I genuinely hated this person. She had done nothing but pull apart the escape from reality I knew. The environment I had enjoyed began to turn to shit and eventually she got everything she wanted in one tenth the effort I had invested. Then to make things worse, a new founder of a new variation of the roleplay - so one removed from ours, joined and took her under his wing, automatically drawing like 50 cucks who must have believed if they sniffed hard enough they would smell the pussy through the net.

The devil was Georgia.

Although she did not personally destroy everything that made my escape from reality what it was, she set everything in motion and I hated her for it. So I left, I joined a new roleplay for Star Wars, and I repeated the same investment of my self for a year and I used that as my new escape from reality. In the mean time, Brandon, the previous founder, and Mitch, had become friends with Georgia. I had no connection with anybody but them from NRP so I didn’t really care. I remembered nothing but hate for her.

Here’s where my real life finally began to interfere again. I met a girl named Maddie. She was dating Nikita, an old friend, who had tried out for the band Tyson, Tyler [another friend] and I had formed. I was the singer, Tyson and Tyler the guitarists, and she was meant to be the drummer. She brought Maddie, her girlfriend along and the two became regulars at our music sessions. Eventually Nikita gave up on drumming as she wasn’t very good at it but Maddie seemed to hang around, or want to, too often. She had mental health issues and was dating an abusive girlfriend who cut herself and threatened her and blamed her for so many different things and I felt bad for her. And she fell for Tyson, my best friend. I told her to do right by Nikita despite their differences and break up with her properly before doing anything with Tyson. She didn’t listen. We lost Nikita as a friend as a result and Maddie dated Tyson for a few months, living with him, before her family eventually arranged for her to move to the coast with them. However, in the time where she lived with Tyson - his house being my #1 spot outside of on my game, I grew way too close with her and fell in baby love with her. One night after she was gone she was talking to me and asked me why I seemed so sad and In my sad moment of weakness I confessed that I had feelings for her and I was sad that she was gone. However rather than crucify me she confessed she had developed feelings for me too. At first it was nothing but given time it turned to something real. I told her to break everything off with Tyson properly before we took it any further - she promised. I moved to live close, in a new town 4 hours away and went to school there. On the school holidays, she came to visit me and I saw the girl I thought I loved for the first time since she had left town and it seemed perfect. That night I lost my virginity to her - and then right after our 2 hour session (I state the number proudly but it was more of an anxiousness and fear of not performing that kept me going so well), the first thing she says to me is that she just cheated on Tyson - that she had not broken up with him properly - and that the month before, when she visited him halfway between her new house and my old town, instead of get the clothes and belongings she had left behind and tell him it was over, she got it all and kissed him. She hadn’t even ended it with my best friend. So now I’ve lost my virginity to what I realize is a habitual cheater / generally unfaithful person and betrayed the trust of my best friend much worse than I thought I already had all in one night. And my life got flipped. However, I did make a new friend shortly after. Chris, from wrestling on my game, spoke to me on msn one day and I found out he actually lived where Maddie now lived - and went to the same school, so I asked him to take her into their friend group and look after her and he said yes. Eventually I would meet Chris when visiting Maddie, and many other friends I will mention through this.

I broke up with her a month later because she joined the slutty emo group at her new school, got into drugs and talked about one guy too much - and I just knew the type of person she was. I knew she had cheated. So I left her. I went back to my original town and eventually for Christmas I visited my dad on the coast. I had stopped playing my escape from reality game for the most part and rarely logged on at this stage - I was in the final two years of my schooling life after all. I visited my father for Christmas this year, and his new accountant happened to live on the coast that Maddie lived on. I thought nothing of it - then, by chance, she messaged me while I was there, completely unaware that I was and three hours later we were in her apartment blocks local pool having sex. And then relationship 2.0 started, I met some of the guys she had slept with in our time apart, she promised to change, I said I would work harder. I did, she didn’t. She didn’t make an effort to remove the other guys from her life - she flirted and let them flirt, and just generally made me uncomfortable. Then I met Sarah, new best friend, and Rhiannon, her other best friend [and also the chick thats like ay i heard u got a nice cok l0l but says it like one of the boys so u dont feel threatened like she’s gonna try to fuck u anyway random tangent back to the story]. Sarah was beautiful, she was funny, she was super nerdy, she was super nice and humble and was just kind of a follower at this stage of her life. She kind of just followed the other two. I pretty much connected with her instantly and we became awesome friends. It was as innocent as that to begin with. Then the unfaithfulness from Maddie continued, the abuse got worse, the lies got worse, and eventually on one of my school holiday visits to Maddie I found myself spending my very last night there at Sarah’s house, in her lounge room talking about how sad I was, talking about video games, just talking. I had told her that I was coming over to play games because I couldn’t sleep and she said no don’t do it you’ll get stabbed this late at night or something so to make her feel comfortable I literally ran the entire way there, nearly died having an asthma attack when I arrived and the cutie wrapped me in a blanket and gave me a warm drink like some sort of spiritual grandmother. Once we had played games and chatted shit about Maddie for long enough I said I had to go back, and she offered to walk with me part of the way back. We did nothing but talk and I explained to her that she was beautiful inside and out and that she should be stronger and not let people push her around and that she’s awesome and a rare breed of human being and she should be happy and proud of herself and only let herself get treated right and it was basically that same night I realized I had fallen out of love with Maddie and into love with Sarah. So I broke up with Maddie, I told Sarah how I felt (Maddie started shit talking Sarah and it made the decision to dump her easier) but Sarah took Maddie’s side thinking she was doing the right thing by her friend because she didn’t know or believe the nasty things Maddie said about her behind her back when I told her. So I dropped a toxic relationship and lost an amazing girl in one hit. But was that the last time I dated Maddie? Nope, ya boy’s fucking autistic. I ended up back on the coast at some stage and Sarah and I had began talking again as friends - we never moved past being friends after all, but I still had feelings for her and the spiteful hateful part of me wanted to show her how shit Maddie was. Sarah wanted to make it up to Maddie by getting me back with her. because Sarah was a knob and didn’t believe Maddie was a cunt. I went to the party as Sarah’s invite, Maddie brought her ex/my friend to this day [guy is cool and also got used] Jackson. Jackson wanted in with Maddie. I was the man to make it happen. Maddie wanted in with me. Sarah was the girl to make it happen. Maddie wanted me however and I wanted Sarah. It was fucked up. Long story short, after ignoring Maddie’s emotional breakdown in attempts to manipulate me into feeling bad and being with her, Sarah flipped at me, I realized there was no winning situation. I told Maddie to be with Jackson. She didn’t listen. I got shit faced then smoked a bunch of weed, got far too fucked up and ended up banging Maddie in the public toilets while of my face. Apparently banging in the toilets while off our faces means we’re dating again so yeah, enter relationship attempt #3. This one didn’t last long, I had graduated Grade 12 by now, I moved to the coast, attempted to work and do uni, had struggles where family members intentionally sabotaged my ability to get real payments, worked 9 hour shifts with 30 minute breaks with no music or food I could keep on location and 10 mins to and from home as a trolley pusher every day. I couldn’t keep up with my studies. My mother was helping me by paying my rent - but my food money and personal money got sucked up by the succubus herself Maddie and my entire life ended up being shaped to how she wanted me to be - and given that she was unfaithful she anted me to be a lot of different types of guys so my life was miserable as fuck. Eventually Tyson and Tyler visited, I got high, crashed Tyler’s car, had to move home because it literally ran me broke and I had to rely on my mother to help me pay off the rest of the fixes, repaired his car, drove home with a big bag of weed and just Tyler and myself (Tyson flew home, he lived elsewhere now), and we smoked up for the full 1500km drive. I had apologized and I thought him and I would remain friends, but we didn’t, he got involved with people who did harder drugs and I had no interest. So I had lost my girlfriend [good riddance], lost my home and the only place I had made real life friends who loved me as I loved them, lost my uni attempt, my job. Everything I had worked for was gone. I was the most miserable 18 year old you will ever see. That’s when I became close with Brandon and Mitch again, and through extension Georgia.

Brandon would tell me that the nudes her ex claimed to have leaked were real - that he had them, and wouldn’t show me, because he had to keep it secret since he believed she would ‘fuck him in a heartbeat’ and he wanted to cheat on his girlfriend by getting her to fly to visit him and putting moves on her. There was a lot of talk like this in the past and I only mention it now because as I grew to know this girl I realized how disgusting he had been all those years and it played a part later on.

So this was the first time Georgia really became a part of my life. I mean she had rolled in like a wrecking ball before, but I knew only hatred for her. Even at the beginning I simply tolerated her being there in our chats and I saw her as the little slut Brandon would manipulate and get his own ego rise by having around, like a trophy side chick or something. I didn’t care for her.

Then I got really drunk one night and out of sheer boredom, not interest, as I had nobody else to talk to - I sent Georgia a message. She was in another country with a boyfriend at the time, living there, so timezones allowed my drunk ass to be awake at 3am and be talking to her at primetime for her.

At first we talked about very little. I had decided she wasn’t horrible enough to ignore and decided to talk to her as a friend on the regular because it was so convenient for the way I handled myself at the time - drunk as fuck at 3am in the morning.

Now at this point in my life I had nothing going for me. I was miserable, I stayed at home all day.. I played video games, I watched anime, I was fat. You know the drill. But I began to change who I was as a person through talking to this girl. You see, she was in another country, young like me, a year younger in fact, scared and sad because her boyfriend had been unfaithful to her and she was living in a foreign land with him having to see him and his family every day. She too had a less than amazing, in fact horrible experience in her younger years that had left some trauma with her and I resonated with this girl so much. I remembered all of the years hating her and I suddenly felt so silly. This girl was me but with a vagina, basically.

But I didn’t love her yet - I just found purpose through her. I wanted to be there for her. So I was. Even when I wasn’t drunk I maintained my awful sleeping pattern intentionally so she would never have to feel too alone - I would sleep through the busiest parts of her days when I needed rest - and I would wake when the day became lonely, so she didn’t have to be too alone with her thoughts. My life slowly began to revolve around this girl.

Eventually I started to change things about myself in more extreme ways. I had begun to understand that I had feelings for this girl, that she would need time (if she ever wanted to be with me), and I would need to be better for her. I changed my diet, I walked every night, losing anywhere from 5-10kg a month for months on end, I worked and saved up some money. I got in shape to impress her, I got healthy to impress her, I quit smoking and drinking for a while to impress her [I’d cave on them both eventually for various reasons that in hindsight were never worth the damage I could have done to myself].

And eventually the time came. By this stage she knew how I felt about her. And when she knew, she became more involved with me than before, more supportive, happier at times.. and then she finally came back from across the ocean, back to the same country as me and all I could think was when the time is right I can finally meet this girl.

It was around Christmas time when this happened, because it was this same Christmas that I had decided to spend with Brandon and Mitch. For the week leading up to the trip, she had dropped out of my life almost completely. She told me she felt jet lagged and had so many people to catch up with. All she talked about was McDonalds coworkers who flirted with her on her facebook or in messages. It was a part of her life she had never revealed and I felt pretty second place to every guy she spoke about because she spoke so passionately about them. I felt sad for the first time in a long time but I also remembered all of the amazing things i’d achieved personally in pursuit of this girl that I had never driven myself to do before and I put the negative thoughts away. I loved her. That’s what I realized that Christmas. That I loved Georgia.

So I accepted that she’s settling back into normal life - it was reasonable and at the end of the day we were still officially just friends. It wasn’t my place, although I wanted it. So I went to Brandon’s for Christmas and met Mitch there. She talked to me more while I was there, and things started to seem normal again, she even said ‘no don’t worry about me, you go spend christmas with your friends’ on christmas - you know those moments where you stop and you think, did she just do a girlfriend thing? is there something there between us? like it just sounded so heartfelt and compassionate and sincere and I just thought wow I love this girl

And then she disappeared, for the better part of a month.

I can’t put into words how gut wrenching this was. This was the first time in my life I ever had a true breakdown due to my depression. Well, it was the first time that burned itself into my memory. I had done so much - changed, so much about myself just to maybe impress this girl - knowing we might not end up as more than friends, but loving her nontheless and having what I thought was the most amazing beautiful friendship with her.. and then she was just gone.

And when I finally heard back from her the girl I had fallen in love with was dead.

You see, during my christmas trip, I had spoken to Brandon about things that we regretted, sensitive topics we wanted to get off our chest - and understandably, one of mine was Sarah. I had no love for the girl, but she had confused me by coming back into my life and talking to me not long before the christmas trip. She just wanted her friend back. We had never been more, or attempted to. And we never have since.. so it wasn’t anything I thought weirdly of, but it did bring back the memories, and I thought I was confiding in a close friend when I vented my regrets about that period of time in my life - I did regret some moments. Why wouldn’t I? But that didn’t mean I had desire for the girl anymore. They had been long dead. All I knew in my heart was Georgia but Brandon knew that and he was jealous because Georgia had been his little pocket bitch for so long and he didn’t want anybody from his group of friends to be closer to her - especially not me, because he knew how I respected and cared for her, and he knew I knew the nasty things he had said about her in private to me. Things I had almost completely forgotten and would have never mentioned.

Instead of being a good friend, he acted on his own sadness and jealousy and pitifulness and lied to Georgia and told him I had Sarah as my back up girl.

And this was the first time what I believe was Georgia’s anxiety and fear tore us apart and damaged her. Because rather than confront me about it, me, the guy who had done nothing but work on himself in hopes that one day he might do well enough to simply impress her in the slightest, she believed Brandon, her ‘big brother figure’, and rather than address the issue with me, cast me out of her life.

And somehow in the month that I was gone she had forgotten all about our friendship and any feelings and came back a cold hearted, mean woman who wanted to only tell me how shit I was, that she had relationship interests and that Brandon had told her everything.

Naturally, I defended myself. Very passionately. I have never been angrier in my life bar the time my uncle tried to fight me and take his sadness out on me the night of my Grandfather’s passing. I blasted her for not having the stones to talk to me about it, for blindly believing everything he said, then laughed at her while telling her all of the cruel nasty things he had said about her and done behind her back all those years and told her I hoped she was happy with the shit decision she made. And that was the end of us. Not for good, but for that moment in my life the girl I knew and had began to fall for had died and your average, mean and hateful girl who would rather you know she’s getting new dick than let you try to be happy. Not that she ever specifically acted like that, I guess I just felt so hard done by that when she told me she had love interests that’s all I heard her say.

Anyway, the month leading up to this talk with her - the talk where I finally found out what went wrong, I had messaged her almost daily, basically begging her to tell me what was wrong, and she had the nerve to actually treat me like I’m stupid enough to believe the 180 in her behaviour and attitude towards me meant nothing was wrong and that she was ‘just so busy’. Georgia is good at many things but lying to me has never been one of them though she never ceases to try, always assuming I’m stupid enough to believe her. Nevertheless, I was relatively fine in this month, although sad and somewhat desperate. After the talk finally happened however I was broken. Everything I had done and in the end I walked away with no girl I love, nor the friends I originally had, who by chance happened to be all I had left in my life to begin with. I drank myself into the gutter, I used my last bit of money to pack my bags and catch a bus to the coast, where all of my friends I had met through my ex were, and I lived there, homeless, for the longest time.

I lived on park benches, in public toilets, broke, always hungry, always thirsty, always sore, always tired. I put myself through all of this because it meant more to me to be in the company of those friends than it did to be stuck in that miserable little town. I would occasionally crash at a friends place on the floor or on their couch, but I tried to do this as little as possible. A month or so in my friend Adam spoke to his mother about me and after some convincing [see, when I previously lived on the coast, I was also homeless for a short duration, then lived with Jackson and his family while trolley pushing before getting my own place, and during this time Jackson’s mother had innocently enough mistaken something on her credit card and assumed I had taken it and used her money - mind you I had never used one to pay for something before, I wouldn’t have known how for the life of me - but that gave me a bad rep as the families knew each other.] she had worked it out with her friend who needed somebody paying rent to help her cover costs that I could live there since I had just got a new job at McDonalds. She demanded I help her cover her phone bill, internet, and all matter of personal costs that no person renting a room should ever have to pay for, but I cared so little for myself short of wanting a room that I agreed. A week or so in, I sat in the loungeroom talking to her - she told me that she used to smoke weed with Adam’s older brothers, Hayden and Nathan, and I said oh yeah I’ve smoked with Adam, sometimes when our dealer doesn’t work out we call Nathan and he gets some for us through his dealer, and she went and told Adam’s mother that I had called Nathan my ‘dealer’ and the family just happened to have an uncle going to prison over dealing drugs at the time and it was an awful time for that fucked cunt to spin my words to try to get me in trouble [for god knows what reason, the help I offered would have saved her from her situation lol], the cunt was just fucked in the head I guess.

Anyway, that put me out of a home again pretty quickly. Then shortly after, while I was with my friend Josiah visiting his house [he occasionally gave me lifts to and from work], his mother found out I was homeless. It wasn’t an intentional thing, she asked me where I lived and I kind of just nonchalantly replied nowhere and then she said what do you mean nowhere and then I was just stuck in one of those odd situations where it was like ah man I shouldn’t have said shit, and I explained how I was technically homeless but it was ok that I had a job and I was sure I would manage to fix everything soon enough and there was no need to worry, but as it turns out Josiah’s mother is a beautiful soul and her response was pretty much ‘Is this true son?” - “Yes mum” - “Well no friend of my son is homeless if I can help it!” and bam I had a place to live. A normal place to live, with a normal family, that asked me for fucking nothing - $50 a week, it was crazy. I told them I could do more and they said nope don’t worry about it. So I had a place and a job and was living with a friend that became like a brother to me. Life suddenly wasn’t so bad. Josiah wanted to go to the Navy and was struggling with the motivation to get fit and pursue his goals so in my respect and appreciation for all he had done for me I pushed him and I helped him and I even resolved to go myself. I was genuinely going to go to the Navy because I had reached the conclusion that everything in my life so far was over and maybe I would find myself there.

And then Georgia came back. Now I don’t mean back in the full sense of the word. Georgia has been back once - briefly - at the start of our relationship for two months, in the entire time since then. I mean back in the true sense of what her and I were, and can be. But regardless of just how there she really was, she was there.

This time was different. She told me that she had realized that I was right about Brandon. She tried to laugh it off like it hadn’t hurt me so bad. I could tell she just wanted to talk again and despite how much I wanted to hate her all I saw was the chance that maybe that beautiful girl I fell in love with would come back. She asked me what I had been doing and I told her, although not in specifics, or why my life had turned out like this, because I didn’t want her to know I had gone downhill since she took Brandon’s side over mine, because the actions were still my own, as influenced by my sadness as I was. And that wasn’t ultimately her fault. I told her that I was planning to go to the Navy.

This is where she gave me one of the biggest slaps in the face she’s ever given me. She told me no, don’t go. Now we were both young and stupid in our own ways but as a woman with history with a man, you don’t beg him not to leave for the navy unless it means something. I felt that tug on my heart strings right away. That spark of belief that maybe there’s something here that her and I both want to bring back to life. I said I’d think about it. She pleaded with me not to go, that she wanted me here, that she wanted to meet me. I did the only reasonable thing a guy in my situation would do. I met the girl I had loved so badly. We only knew each other online, so we both had to bring a +1. Well, I didn’t, she did to feel safe. I could have taken both u bitches don’t forget that if you’re reading this Georgia. I’m just messing around of course. Uh.. yeah. anyway. I met her. I met the girl that had turned my life in so many directions. And I wasn’t wildly blown away by how perfectly beautiful she was or anything. Not that she isn’t beautiful - she is, incredibly so, but it wasn’t 100% this beautiful cliche meeting. I couldn’t stare the girl in the eyes. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do, what to say, I didn’t eat the city food she ate, I made a fool of myself, I wasn’t even sure who I was eating with, if she still thought about me the same way, and it didn’t feel like she was all that interested if I’m perfectly honest. But I was so happy to have finally met this amazing beautiful woman that I actually didn’t hang onto those negative thoughts for once. I was so happy. I told her I wouldn’t go to the navy. I missed my appointment, which black listed my name and made me unavailable to attend again for a big period of time because I was ‘unreliable’. I gave up what I was working towards. She seemed happy. Then I asked her when I could see her again. When I could do our date over and not be so weird this time. It never happened. And she disappeared again. Just like before. The girl I loved had never really come back and after destroying my life when she left, to fixing it again.. I had ruined my chance at a career based off her desire that was never real to begin with and she was gone again. So again I was broken. But this time I was.. almost hateful. I didn’t know who the girl was anymore. I let it go. I hated her. She never cared about me, I told myself. She just wanted to fuck around with my life. She probably only met me to see if I was worth sleeping with. I told myself all kinds of things. And then I did something I’d never done in my life. I quit my job, I told my Dad to come and pick me up and for the first time since I was a young child I lived with the father I had hated all of my life and I tried to become as much like him as I could to forget the memory of her. You see, my dad was a womanizer and a man whore but he had a natural talent for it. He was such a manipulative person that he had developed like a subconscious art for getting laid. I wanted that. I trained with him, I worked the same job as him, I lived through the abuse of his own depression and sex addiction, having my head pinned to the floor while he choked me and told me I was weak, being insulted every day of my life because he saw my mother in me and he resented it, I lived through it all just so I could forget about Georgia, and everything else in my life. All I wanted was women and money. And before I had the chance to get either, months, maybe half a year into living with Dad, after I had quit smoking and been training and studied for the job he set up for me, Georgia comes back again.

This time I throw my money at her. I tell her to come visit me. I don’t want the fake bullshit game with her anymore. If she’s interested she needs to be interested. I’ll treat her like a princess if she treats me like a human being. I tried to mix all the things my dad did with my own self, and my new found positivity and energetic outlook on life being so much healthier and fit than I was before. I thought maybe if I can be so appealing that we don’t have to play the same games as before, if she just comes and spends time with me, real time, not like the time in the city, maybe then this girl will love me.

And I spent stupid amounts of money on her. She even said to me “You’ve spent more on me than any real boyfriend ever has” and all I could think was cool well do I get to be your boyfriend. She stayed the night on one of her two visits to me during this time. She took my bed, and messaged me to come close the blinds for her. Every part of me told me that she wanted sex and to go for it, but I told myself no, you have loved this girl so many times, for so long. All of those years were not spent just so you can get a pitiful one night stand. Ask her out. So I went in to close the blinds, and when I looked at her.. she seemed so genuinely disinterested. I realized in that moment that to her I was literally a slave closing the blinds. I wrote her a letter, on the bench outside of my room for her to read in the morning, asking her to go out with me. She said no. Well, she said maybe, but anything short of yes with Georgia had always meant no. There was no real maybe in her heart, not to me. My dad asked me if I got any. I got mad, because that’s not what I wanted, but also mad because in my head I thought no I didn’t, not that I wanted it to happen that way, but now I’m certain it never will anyway. All he did was make me feel shit. He must have noticed and in his own jaded way tried to make me feel better by saying she was probably a gold digger since I said she comes from a well off family and her dad spoils her. I never told him these things in an attempt to paint her a certain way. It was more my innocent ramblings as I thought about her and I, and our history and all I knew about her. I told him she wasn’t like that. I told her what she said, and she basically disappeared. Then my grandfather, the closest man I had ever had to a real father figure and my favourite family member passed away and her and I lost contact all together.

I wouldn’t talk to Georgia for most of the next year and a half. Right after she disappeared this time, I quit my job, packed up my bags and asked my father for the money I had earned and put into a joint savings account with him. Enraged that I wasn’t following his every order and doing everything the way he thought I should, he told me I had no savings, and so I was homeless again. This time I lived at an internet cafe, paying $50 a week for access with my job as a marketer in a small business on the second floor above a series of restaurants - a little, quiet job tucked away out of existence. I mattered to nobody. I wanted no help. I wanted to die. I did drugs and I drank a lot. I met Jack, Steven and Corey during this part of my life, friends I still have now, my stoner buddies. Eventually it became too much and I had to go back to home.

I got a job at the BP with my friend Peter who I had met in the small town near the coast when dating Maddie, who I had then hooked up with my older cousin who he now had a kid with. A lot to take in. I became friends Nik again (previously nikita from my childhood/maddies ex, now sex changed). and his girlfriend of like four years Leah. Soon after Peter hung himself and I drove past his house to see the ambulance there as I went to cover his shift, just to find out what had happened mid shift. Work there was never really the same. Not for me. I hated everybody. A new guy named Kevin started working there, him and I moved into a new place together so we both had our own place and we smoked weed in all of our spare time. Nik and Leah broke up and I let Leah manipulate me like an idiot. She told me Nik had always been paranoid that I’d take her like I took Maddie (literally not what happened) and that behind my back he hated me and he only used our friendship as a way to keep tabs on me and look like he didn’t care anymore and when I tried to talk to him about it, since she had been doing nothing but hanging around my house (hanging around kevin more than me, pretty sure she fucked him at some stage), he didn’t talk to me. And that was it. I believed her shit. I told her I would help her sort her life. She quit her job that was giving her like 8 hours a week so she could find a new one. I covered her expenses - her fuel, her food, her smokes, her bills, her new tyres on the car - then she began flirting and I honestly didn’t are about Nik by this stage because I had been convinced she was not lying about it by his actions and I fell for the trap and kept catering to her, talking to her about how she wanted to move and stuff and how I was gonna help her do it- just to find out she had been planning on leaving town literally the moment her car was fixed [which I was paying for] and cutting me from her life. So I got a tattoo on my right shoulder, a lilypad with ‘Upendi’ written on it. I got the tattoo for my sister, because Leah her and I watched the movie The Lion King 2 together and in the love scene they ride lilypads and sing the Upendi song [which means love]. But Leah’s nickname was also lily. See she didn’t know that I knew about her bullshit yet. So I told her I got it because ‘she liked the movie’ and because ‘I wouldn’t love again’ to make her feel bad and I told my sister it was just because she told me it was her favourite movie and I have love for my siblings. Although the ‘I don’t want to love again’ part did resonate with me, I literally inked my skin to spite that bitch. And I don’t regret it because the real meaning of the tattoo is beautiful and now I’m inspired to get one for all family members. Anyway, that was the end of that. I called my Dad [going back for round 3, or 4, or some shit] and said hey I want to come live with you, organized it, quit my job, and left. I spent a few months with him working odd jobs I could find, swapping here and there trying to find something better, getting high all of the time with my mates Jack, Corey and Steven and attempting to study a diploma in website development which by the way was fucking boring as shit I hated it lol. And enter Georgia, again. This time was different. The moment I saw her name pop up in my inbox, I didn’t open the message. I went to a brothel. I fucked some girl. I literally tried to push her out of my mind by being with another woman paid or not. But eventually I replied and we started talking again. But this time there was no spark. There was no life to it. She just messaged me because she was in a toxic relationship and I guess all males she had in her life were gone in one way or the other - or maybe she genuinely thought of me when she needed help, maybe because of when she was overseas and I supported her then.. I don’t know, she’s never told me, all I have is my own speculation as to why she chose to message me. But she did. And for the better part of the first month, I actually managed to crush feelings for her. They didn’t exist. I got high every day, I worked my job, I did my own thing, and I occasionally messaged my damaged female friend who needed relationship advice. And I didn’t really care about it that much, I just told her my honest take and left it at that.

I can’t remember what the trigger was, but one night she snapped. Maybe she hated how in control of myself I was being. Maybe she had been playing games with me all along and she hated not being the game master now. But she snapped and said ‘You know you love me. Admit it. Say you love me. Tell me you love me.’

And even though in my head I thought I’ll bet my life she’s playing some sick twisted game on me right now, after like two hours of her flirting with me and asking me to admit it, I caved, all the memories of the good times where she had made me happy, not miserable, came back, and I said I love you to her. In the end I had helped her get out of her toxic relationship with that guy, which I spent the next month doing, even after I found out she had cheated, something which almost made me delete her from my life on the spot, on a guy since I had been out of her life, because I had been so badly burned by crazy and unfaithful women, I still couldn’t make myself fall out of love with her. I wanted her. She hated my life with my dad. She knew he mistreated me again and that I was never happy. So for her sake, not for mine, I moved back home. But I hadn’t finished being caught up in my terrible memories from home yet. She gave up on me for a little while yet again.

Then she came back and I told her, I would move to a new place, where Tyson my best friend was. There I would get back in shape, be happy, work. She seemed happy about this - involved again but then basically the moment I made the move, she wasn’t there again, when I needed her. And I didn’t hate her for it. I was numb. I worked one day at the job I got, realized I was too physically unfit to work the ten hour shifts at a meat factory, that I should have taken the dominos job, was forced to leave my friends house because without that job I had no more time to use up living there freely. So I left without saying a word to them, early in the morning, I drove until I ran out of fuel and I cried myself to sleep. I didn’t answer calls from my mother for most of the following day, eventually answering to tell her that I didn’t care, that I wanted to sit in my car and I wanted to starve to death, that I had no more fuel, not to send me money, that I was over it all. And I meant every word of it. But she sent me the money anyway. And as much as I wanted to fill the car up and drive off a bridge, I was raised by this mother all on her own, and I love her too much to do that to her, or to my friend, who I had left without a word to, or my siblings who I loved.

So I made the drive home across state. At first I pretended to try, I signed up for uni, I failed my semesters, and wasted most of my year doing that. Fighting with my step dad. Letting my mother down. Setting a bad example for my brother. I stopped caring. I contemplated suicide again. I googled how to do it in the ways my scaredy cat ass could find painless. Overdose, easy for me because I like to indulge. Bullet, easy for me because we have guns in the house. Those were basically the two options I found and I contemplated them every day.

My lack of action - complete stillness in my bed, over indulging in food, feeling like I had given up on life, not having any goals, or desires left in my heart.. it turned me into a fat sad guy who sat at home doing nothing but playing games.. using memes and the friends I’ve made on voice comms as my new escape from reality. Doing the dishes made my legs ache from standing still. Not because I was morbidly obese, but because my body had grown so weak as well as getting bigger.

Then, one day, once again.. Georgia returned. And this was the first time Georgia ever surprised me. You see, when she returned this time, I said the most selfish, yet honest thing I have ever said to her. I said Georgia, I do not care about myself, I do not care about anything, I am a shell of the person I used to be, and I do not care. I do not want a fake friendship with you, I do not want the same thing we have had over and over again through these long painful years, I do not want it. The only thing that I have ever known I have truly wanted - and the only thing I can still tell you honestly that I want, is you, but not the you that you’ve given me for so long, the real Georgia, the girl I know and love. I want to love you and be loved. I will not be in your life any longer, short of being your partner. I said this because I sincerely believed she would leave as a result, but also because it was sincerely how I felt in my heart. I’m sure if she had said no that day I could have easily killed myself and finally got it over with because it would have been the most succinct ending to our story and I would have been ok with that.

But Georgia said yes to me. She said yes. She said let’s try. She said let’s be together. It sent me into shock. I didn’t believe her for at least a week. I was sure she was going to destroy my life any moment and break my heart into a thousand pieces but she didn’t. Even though I kept my defenses up for the entire first week. And to make things better, it was the girl I knew and loved again. She was back. She spoke to me, she communicated with me, she was excited to have me in her daily life, to let me know what was happening, to spend time playing games with me.

And for the first time in years I felt love and happiness more real than ever before. All along I had wanted this girl back, now she was back - and she was mine. She was my partner, my love, and she was beautiful, and energetic, and happy, and intimate, and compassionate, and understanding. It was like we had gone back in time and undone Brandon’s lies before they could take effect. Like everything was back to normal after all this time.

I played games with her every day. I spoke to her every day. I encouraged and supported her. Financially when she had no work, and even when she first got new work so she could spoil herself without setting herself immediately behind. I tried to understand her anxiety, what set her off, what made her happy and unhappy - it was a learning experience for me, she even threatened to leave a few times and I quickly learned what to do and what not to do. However I did not yet work. I still do not as I write this. I did not stick to a healthy routine. I did not exercise routinely. I made her promises and I wasn’t yet sticking to them. Although this was born out of laziness it was also born from pure happiness. I lived every day in a daze of love, catching up on love and happiness I felt I had been missing my entire adult life. I’m sure she noticed I wasn’t hitting my goals but she didn’t mention it. I was still me, and I was so supportive and helpful and just there for her to love her and never let her hurt. And she knew that.

But then I had a bad fight with my step father. He threatened to kick me out, said I was going to have to leave, and I was convinced. Georgia was stressed out and angry about how they treated me, but also angry at me, however she would not tell me that, instead she would internalize it and let it ruin us slowly, because that is what her anxiety does to her and she is as scared and as damaged as I am. I sent her the last of my money, and I asked her to buy my an internet dongle - so we would not lose the ability to communication, I promised to turn my car into a home and use my payment to get to a new town, keep data on the dongle, charge my phone through my car and never lose touch with her, so she would never have to worry. I had it all planned out. The only thing I did not account for in my costs was my antidepressants. The medication I had begun taking at her request so I could make bigger strides in getting back on my feet and out of my rut. They did help, I just failed to consider them in the big picture, as without a home, without my prescription from this town, without the stability, how would I afford life plus the medication weekly? I didn’t see how I could so I didn’t think to factor it in.

A week passed since the threat, I had gone a week without my medication. Georgia had grown somewhat distant at the beginning of the week, before my mood had begun to turn. She spoke to me less. She didn’t want to play our game with me anymore. She had found somebody else to play with. She needed the friend to help her because she felt she could not confide in me because of my situation. So she left me in the dark again when I needed her the most. But this time I lashed out in jealousy and anger. I accused her of not loving me. I told her she was running away from me again. That she was giving him my place. That she wanted nothing to do with me, that she was getting rid of me. I felt it in my heart too because I know exactly how she acts when she begins to, or has already left me. And I was in the wrong for lashing out the way I did, and it made me feel terrible. But she had started to go when I needed her the most - and after that, she was gone again, the way she usually was.

She assured me that we were still together. But she never spoke to me. And I saw her online, with him, and with other friends every day. I saw her see my messages, but never read or reply to them. I saw her gone. I messaged her frantically daily. She asked for space. I tried, and could last no longer than 2 days at a time without messaging her. She scoffed at this as if it was a weak effort. As if it was normal for her to want me to be able to not talk to her for so long. As if I wasn’t meant to miss and love her. As if I wasn’t meant to feel like she has abandoned me when I needed her and when I had trusted her. I had hurt her by lashing out but she had hurt me back in return and while my cruelty and rage was brief, her neglect and vagueness was never ending and it hurt me more than I had hurt in years because in my heart I believed she knew my situation, that she would not be like this solely because I had hit a low point because I had a rough few days without my medication, that surely she had always thought more of me during all of this and that it was less likely she would leave so easily and more likely that she no longer loved me..

So after a month of waiting, of begging, of staying distant, of caving and trying to connect, I made the decision to go. I removed her from my online contacts, on social media, on my phone, on the game we played.. I deleted her number, the photos, the conversations.. I blocked her on everything and I told her goodbye for good. Moments after I had finished doing this, my friend, Hayden, also friends with her on the game told me that her in game message was ‘Happy Girl’ and I cried because all I could wonder was how someone who claimed to be my partner, who claimed to love me, could be a happy girl in the company of this other man for a month while I suffer and cry out for her every day. And that’s when I decided I was going to hurt myself, bit by bit until I was ready to end it all. So that night I lined up as many of my antidepressants as my mind would let me take and I downed them all, quickly fell sick and passed out. I woke up the next day, more miserable than ever. I sat there. The day flew by me. At the end of the day, I lined up two weeks worth of anti depressants and a drink. And I sat there and began to google how much of it you needed to take before it became lethal. Because I wanted it to be lethal. Georgia and I were over. She had run away and disappeared like she always had and acted as if I was dumb enough to not see it. Especially when she had so easily given my spot to another person, when she had made me stare at her spending all hours of her day with him, every day, for a month when she knew how hard it was for me to trust, when she knew how depressed I was without her. The girl I loved knew me too well to do that and think it was innocent in my eyes. The girl I loved knew that I knew her too. So the only reasonable answer was: She doesn’t love me, she hasn’t this entire month, and her anxiety and fear of me killing myself is the only thing stopping her from leaving and being happy. So if I leave and kill myself where she will never see or know, then everything will be fine and she won’t get hurt.

And then Hayden, the same guy who broke my heart by telling me her league message was ‘Happy Girl’ after all my suffering, told me it had changed to ‘girl’ after the final message I sent. It shattered me. It broke my resolve. It gave me some faint hope that maybe she loved me. So I undid it all and I messaged her. And I told her the thing about the message. How it had given me hope. How I was so incredibly sad and desperate. How I needed her to tell me what she felt. That I needed her to come back if she loved me. That I was sorry. So much was said. Most of it my rambling, because I over think and I ramble when I’m depressed and she ignores it and hides when she’s anxious and depressed.

But she said she was here. That she would come back. Like she was admitting she had been gone after all this time, without actually saying ‘sorry for telling you that I wasn’t.’. But that didn’t matter and I just wanted her back.

That is the story so far.

Georgia has said she loves me, and she knows I love her. She said that she will come back. I don’t understand why it is so hard for her. Why she still leaves me in the dark, why she spends no time with me, why it feels like she’s hardly back at all. I try to be strong but every day I spend without the loving relationship we had breaks me down again and again. I do not know what to do anymore. I do not know how to get her to come back. To understand my pain. To understand her worth to me. To understand why I keep begging, even when it seems selfish. She is still not back. Not truly. I know it in my heart and she knows I do. And I need her back so desperately. I cannot fight my snappiness and disappointment and sadness when I am so painfully aware of how little she is trying to come back nor can I understand why she does not try like she did. It hurts me so much.

So I write this now. This explanation of the story of Georgia and Cody, intended only for my eyes and hers, unless some strange soul stumbles upon this post and invests the time to read. I keep most important details short of our names hidden for obvious reasons. I intend to use the rest of this page for daily entries. I want to record my depression. I want to record every emotional reaction I have to her, to what she says, to what she does, and I want to write it here. I no longer want to be vocal about it to her over the course of the day. I just want to tell her I love her. I cannot fight her on it anymore. So instead I record my pain here on the daily, so that I can show her, at the end of the day, or the end of the week.. whenever it may be, I want her to be able to come here and read the raw emotion poured onto this page. I want her to know I love her and I am trying to process this. I want her back. I just want her back so fucking badly. If there is a god I pray you guide my girls heart back to me. So yeah.. this was the story so far.. daily entries come next..

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