#not getting sleep fucks me up SO BAD mental health wise like it's SO BAD it actually scares me how bad it gets if I can't sleep 😔

[fooltofancy]

i'm going to talk to myself morosely in the tags for a bit to see if i can unknot the brain parts, disregard.

#i am. so tired of money dude. #i have insane student debt but i don't have insane OTHER debt and it's still so overwhelming #when i say not insane i mean like <5k #it's still way more than i should because that two fucking months without health insurance really fucked me up #but i can get on top of it with how much im paying for rent and meds and utilities and car payments and car insurance #and having to eat #like im in a much much better place mental health wise than i was but i think maybe ive made a mistake #the ability to cancel my student loans is huge. it's huge and i'm essentially guaranteed that from multiple directions in about three years #but the interim? i knew it was gonna be tight and it's gonna be less tight at some point but the last three months have just been barely #hitting each paycheck not in the hole and having to make car payments late and having to rely on credit for unavoidable overdrafts and #idk what to do lmao #and if the smoke thing w the apartment stays this bad it's gonna continue to negatively impact my health and i literally cant afford to mov #even to somewhere cheaper #i cant afford the initial payments to do that even though it'll be better in the long run #im so stressed and it's negatively impacting my relationships and i cant put my brain into working through my stupid fucking issues because #all in doing is surviving #and it makes me so sad because there's already enough in the world without my adding to it #im just tired dude and it's gonna be another week and a half of just. clenching my jaw and not sleeping #idk what to do dude moving back here WASN'T a mistake but im sure hovering on the line of really really feeling like it was #.... good motivation to do my fucking taxes i guess. like. TOMORROW. #not sure that helped but at least it's not just a weird mass in my chest anymore #and my hand is still fucked up and im never gonna be able to pay to fix it at this rate lmao #at least one of them sort of works.

[imwritesometimes]

my allergies are so bad they negatively impact my mental health and I'm just very tired of everything

#4 hours of sleep ✌️🥴 cause I can't ever actually breathe out of my nose #and if I can't breathe I literally cannot sleep no matter fuckin what #and they just decided while doing surgery for something else years ago that even upon seeing how BAD my deviated septum is #that it wasn't their responsibility to fix to or even refer me to anyone else who could just oh fuck this girl #so idk man. you try functioning on 4 hours of sleep. repeatedly. for months. #see how uhhh mentally stable you are!!!!! l #decongestant medication does fuck all. now I don't have the money to see a dr. like. I'm fuckin tired man. #and this has happened to most of my dad's family! Dr's just go oh yeah that's a bad one hahaha oh well! #my dad deals with this. my brother. my grandma even went through it like. I'm just so fuckin TIRED #not getting sleep fucks me up SO BAD mental health wise like it's SO BAD it actually scares me how bad it gets if I can't sleep 😔 #I'm purely venting here idgaf anymore I'm like a zombie for 3 days now I fuckin hate this #erin explains it all

[emo-batboy]

Things Battinson Totally Did During His First Year of University

Using Unhinged or Odd Things I Also Did as a College Freshman :D

Note: for this list, let’s believe Bruce was living in an (admittedly expensive and swanky) dorm because it is required for first-years, especially those entering at a young age, and Alfred told him he needed to make friends. Also yes I did every single thing on this list. I never claimed to be a role model

Bruce, to his TA: I’m so sorry I’m late to class. I gave blood a few hours ago and almost fainted on the way here, but it won’t happen again.

Signs up for a class called “Age of Dinosaurs” despite it not being required whatsoever and proceeds to work his entire schedule around it

Bruce: Your mental health is super important. If you think you should see the on-campus therapist, go see them. Friend: Fine. I’ll sign up for therapy if you sign up for therapy too. Bruce: Hold on-

Finds a loophole in his housing contract that allows him to get a pet frog, calls him kermit :)

Gets a second frog because Kermit was lonely, names it Constantine after Muppets Most Wanted, then realizes that they’re gay for each other. Wonders if the rainbow-colored rocks he got them triggered anything

Swings dramatically between calling Alfred every single day and ghosting him for weeks, cries when he realizes what he did

“Accidentally” joins the student body council, doesn’t know what he’s doing, gets re-elected anyway

Molds a dragon out of Laffy Taffy instead of doing his work

Bruce: *joins Honors, gets all A’s, takes the max amount of classes, has several minors, overachieves* Also Bruce: I’m a failure.

Breaks into a building after hours to study because NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO SHUT THE FUCK UP AT THE LIBRARY

Bruce: I will not get seasonal depression this year. Bruce: *gets real and seasonal depression that year*

Meticulously schedules his day with a color-coded planner because if he sits down for too long, the thoughts will consume him

Gives a presentation to his rhetoric class on how much he likes Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (it is 20 minutes long)

Successfully allocates funding from the student body council to pay for free feminine products in the dorms OUT OF SPITE because someone said it couldn't be done. fuck you, Andrew

Bruce: It is not an all-nighter if I go to sleep before my first class. Friend: It is 7:30am, the sun is in the sky, and your first class is at 12:30. Bruce: But I am getting sleep.

Refuses to go anywhere without his backpack because what if he needs three notebooks at once

Loses over 20 pounds because ✨stress✨ and scares the shit out of Alfred when he comes home for Thanksgiving

Argues with his TA over the one (1) question he got wrong on his Dinosaur exam

Bruce, calling Alfred: Hello father figure. How do I do taxes? Do I have to do them myself? Also, I think I’m having a panic attack.

Joins in on a charity arts-and-crafts project that gives kids books with matching activities made by volunteers, proceeds to commandeer the project because “it’s not color-blind friendly” and rewrites the instructions for everyone

Makes a murder wall

Goes to one (1) sports game and proceeds to leave in the first ten minutes because it’s way too loud wtf is wrong with people

Professor, addressing the lecture hall: I dare you to write an essay about these two sentences. Bruce: *writes an essay about six words, gets a 100, never even read the book*

Crawls into the ceiling for some alone time

Ghosts someone after a date because he’s too scared to tell them he didn’t know it was a date in the first place and now he feels bad

Classmate: How tf does he walk across campus that fast? I go in the same direction he does on my bike, and he’s always ahead of me. Bruce: *is gay sprinting to Dinosaur class*

Refuses to let others use his Favorite Pen TM

Constantly gets mistaken for a Grad Student because he is “so wise and mature” (bestie, that’s the autism)

Alfred: *casually mentions he got into a car accident through text* Bruce: *replies with a meme while hyperventilating because he doesn’t know what to do with that information??!*

Wears a suit to one of his finals

Regularly eats non-organic food for the first time in his life, proceeds to learn about several allergies Alfred forgot to mention he has

Writes “What is a Hot Pocket?” in calligraphy and proceeds to laugh his ass off alone in his dorm because he is so exhausted he’s reached the point of delusion

Locks himself out of his dorm right before class, frantically asks the floor group chat if someone can help, proceeds to tell the nice gay man on the floor who saved him “I love you” because his social skills have hit rock bottom

Makes a little music album display next to his desk for his favorite band (Nirvana) His friends call it a shrine, and they are technically correct

Has a blacklist of people he refuses to interact with because Reasons

Counselor: What do you want to do when you graduate? Bruce: *gestures vaguely*

Refuses to take the bus because there are people in there and he doesn’t like those

Loses one of his frogs, how tf did he do that, they’re fully aquatic, oh fuck, this is probably why they got rid of that loophole a year later because unbeknownst to Bruce, he accidentally started a frog revolution in the dorms, btw he SWEARS he did not mean to do that

Has two trash cans in his room: one for the Good Garbage, and one for the Bad Garbage. Only Bruce knows which is which

Bruce: *writes a creative piece about a ship’s final thoughts as it sinks, bringing its passengers down with it* TA: Absolutely lovely, Bruce, but are you okay?

Goes on Night Walks, keeps himself safe by maintaining a level 12 resting bitch face at all times

Earns the nickname “8th floor cryptid” after pacing the halls at 3am when it’s too cold for Night Walks (honestly tho how tf didn’t he get the nickname earlier?)

Bruce: Do you think a depressed person could do this? Bruce: *has a manic episode*

Okay that's all love you BYE

#cryptid Bruce Wayne #college au #does this count if op is the au #fully nocturnal unhinged madman Bruce but make him like 17 and full of crippling separation anxiety and autism #bruce would rather die than inconvenience a professor but hE KNOWS HIS DINOSAURS #Dino class was my fav one in uni hands down #yes i am insane thank you for asking #originally this was just going to be a normal list but I kept taking from my own experience then said “fuck it I'm the captain now” #one of these was a lie tho...the murder wall was third year :/ #battinson #bruce wayne #batman #the batman 2022 #batman 2022 #the batman #battinson needs a hug #dc universe #gotham #autistic bruce wayne

[celabi]

I feel like I should put a TW here but I don't know what terms to put specifically so I'll just say I talk a lot about the negative aspects to autistic special interests (specifically really intense ones since I feel like special interests don't get shown in this sort of light much even though it is absolutely an experience that comes with autism?) , mentions of dizzy spells, sleep deprivation, fainting, lack of eating (not intentional/not eating disorder related), overall bad living habits, meltdown mentions, minor mentions of self injurious self-soothing stims, honestly near the end this just becomes a word vomit of me obsessing over Scara with an autistic reader in general near the end because genshin and this man specifically have an absolute chokehold on my poor weak autistic ass and 90% may or may not be my personal experience lmao bye- I probably missed some TWs but like just know there's a lot- I don't know I am going insane lmao

Okay so I know the consensus headcanon wise with scummy Scara is that when it comes to the reader doing things or asking for things his spine is essentially the equivalent of a wet tissue some left on a counter and forgotten about but like- What if he were in a scenario where the reader doing whatever they want was an active detriment to their own health?

Like the main idea in my head since it's an issue I myself suffer with really greatly is like what if he was with an autistic reader who experiences extremely intense special interests and forgets to perform basic tasks like eating, showering or even sleeping as a result of their interest being so intense and unmanaged? Cause it's like on one end bro wants to be supportive towards them and their interest, especially if like they've mentioned that they bring up the thing so much because they're autistic and it's their special interest, no way in hell is bro gonna skip the chance to be seen as an ally to the reader in that sense. Bro would probably yell at the fucking sun like an absolute mad man for making everything so bright and overstimulating if his poor darling ended up being overloaded by it and had a meltdown- But on the other he's watching them develop intense dizzy spells and like seeing them struggle to take two steps to the couch or to a chair while dazed as hell and whenever it's brought up they're just "Oh it's fine, I was just up till 6 in the morning last night because I was doing something related to my interest-". Or like he'll ask them when the last time they ate a proper meal was and they'll just "Oh I forgot I had to do that" or "Well I ate a chocolate bar like a day ago so that should be fine right?" And bro is just internally panicking like "No that is not fine how are you even alive?????"

And it's like he can't just cut the interest out completely since it's basically integral for the reader to have their special interest fix daily otherwise it can be really detrimental to them mentally and he doesn't wanna put them through that distress but like it's not like he would be able to like introduce them to a healthier routine either since like Motherfucker does it look like he knows what a healthy routine is?

Like bro is literally just out here like

"Babe I love you and I'm glad you're passionate about something but please, please go to sleep it's almost 7 in the morning I'm worried" he says knowing full well he was probably playing Valorant or something and would probably end up pulling an all nighter- Don't question how he knows they were up, it's definitely not like he's monitoring them through some cameras he managed to set up in their room

"Sweetie please tell me you ate something yesterday- Wait what do you mean you skipped dinner last night???? No a packet of chips doesn't count, You're lucky I happened to bring some extra leftovers" yes he probably invited himself over to make them a proper meal tailored to their preferences after this 🥰

The reader has an incident where they end up fainting while doing basically nothing cause their body was just done and Scara's immediately invited himself over for the week just to make sure they don't have any other complications or episodes- Probably even offers to bathe with them just in case they end up fainting while in the bath or shower-

Also not related to the health negligence but still on the topic of him with an autistic reader I love the idea of him letting the reader like scratch and claw at his arm (he doesn't care since he already does it himself) whenever they're experiencing a meltdown just so they can like get the "self-soothing" from it without them doing it to themselves- Although he probably struggles with giving them space when they need it- Also bro probably feels so fucking bad in the early days of like learning how to help them out when they're having a meltdown when he finds out him constantly asking questions about what happened made it worse for them since they can't physically speak in that state and asking questions just draws their attention to that and makes them feel even more helpless and overstimmed than before- He had his heart in the right place though :(

And God forbid if anyone makes an offhand comment about the reader acting a little "weird " socially bro has a whole "Uhm actually they're autistic you dick-" essay ready to go even if the person was nice about it- Qnd God forbid they did mean to mock them, bro is immediately on offensive mode even though he'll probably end up getting his own ass beat-

He probably doesn't care if he has to help them cut their own food because they struggle with the actual motor function required to do it properly- He'll happily do it for them- If they're in public and he has to do it he doesn't care, if anyone wants to give him or god forbid his darling weird looks then they can mind their own fucking business- Maybe he'll have to remember that person for later, just to make sure they get the memo-

ALSO assuming he's also autistic (hahaha not me projecting myself on him at all lmao) the dynamic is just the "Me and the autistic bad bitch I pulled by also being autistic-"

I don't even know if this is comprehensible or if I've just gone insane lmao- I nearly fainted at work yesterday because I stupidly stayed up till 4 in the morning playing Genshin because I have yet to manage my intense special interest towards it yet and my brain is scrambled to all hell- No thoughts, head empty, Only Genshin and Scara with his autistic bad bitch reader-

Also tried to make this open for anyone else who has autism too but it's probably really heavily injected with my own personal experience because I don't know how else to like talk about those things so like- I tried to make it open but it's difficult-

👀👀👀👀 wow I loved this so much it’s so interesting <3333 he just he just he just 🥹🥹🥹 trying to help reader while also trying to help himself r ahhhhh “bae go to sleep it’s 3 am” but he’s also awake and can’t sleep ahh in love. He’s always reminding you to do things he knows you would have looked past on, like showering and sleeping , and he’s no cook, but will whip up 5 course meals when he knows you haven’t been eating 🥺🥺

#anon #scummy scara :(

[lightandwinged]

It’s been a hot minute since I said anything about my life on here bc people just... haven’t been around? I guess? Or maybe I haven’t felt the need to, I don’t know. BUT there are important updates, and I can break them down into three categories:

1. I’m sterile, but this time, it’s on purpose.

2. I have an official diagnosis of fibromyalgia.

3. I’m going to fight God in a Wendy’s parking lot.

Sterility-wise: after Roe got undone in June, I decided that even though the odds of me getting accidentally pregnant are very small, I wanted to make those odds zero. My health is Very Not Good (more on that in a minute), and while emotionally, I’d love to have a fourth kid, it’s just not practical right now. And I didn’t want anyone to control whether or not that happens but me.

So I called my OB-GYN, the one who took care of me through both of my pregnancies, and on October 3, I officially had a bilateral salpingectomy, meaning that my fallopian tubes no longer exist. Ideally, I would’ve kept them in a jar of ether or something for Maximum Creepiness, but that’s also not practical with three kids (two of whom are four-year-old twins), so instead, they were shipped off to pathology and then discarded as medical waste. Before, I couldn’t get pregnant because my body was just a dick. It was still a possibility, but a remote one. Now, though, this one thing is completely in my hands. If I really do want to be pregnant, if Kyle and I decide at some point that we want one or two or six more kids, we’ve got six embryos in storage.

But for now: my body is mine and mine alone. Nobody gets to decide who lives here but me. And that feels really fucking good.

Fibro-wise: about two years ago, I dealt with a major spine injury. Nothing paralyzing, nothing severe, but it left me with permanent nerve damage in my left leg and sent me to the ER in excruciating pain on Thanksgiving Day (definitely my worst Thanksgiving, 0/10, I want a refund). Calling it traumatic is severely understating the matter; any time I feel the slightest twinge in my back or left side nowadays, I have to talk myself down from panicking that it’s starting all over again.

Worse, I couldn’t get any of it treated because of insurance bullshit. Kyle’s company laid him off around the beginning of the pandemic, and then his new job laid him off exactly a week before I was due to have the surgery that would have solved my issue entirely. I lost my insurance, and the hospital didn’t want to accidentally have me foot the bill for it, so the surgery got put off and put off and canceled. By the time Kyle found his current (and very excellent) job and got on their insurance, the spine issue had technically resolved itself, but not before leaving me with zero feeling in a lot of areas of my left leg and with a foot that likes to cramp up randomly because it’s a little slow to get the nerve signals that it’s time to move a certain way. It’s awesome.

Shortly after the injury itself, I found myself getting really tired, really easily. I was also in a lot more pain than usual, and all the doctors I saw had different thoughts about what was causing it. I saw a sleep therapist and got on a CPAP, but her diagnosis was ultimately “bad at sleep schedule.” I talked to my primary, but her diagnosis was something along the lines of “fat also drinks soda.” BUT to my primary’s credit, she did get me a referral to a rheumatologist (even though she said, “it’s probably your diet. Have you considered cutting out carbs?”).

The rheumatologist did easily one of the more painful examinations of my life. She poked and prodded and pushed and pressed, and when it was all said and done, I’d apparently demonstrated pain in all of the areas necessary for a fibromyalgia diagnosis.

Fibromyalgia, essentially, is a disorder of the nerves. It typically happens after a physical or mental trauma, and it results in the brain misinterpreting every signal sent to it by every nerve as pain.There are a whole bunch of therapies available--some with more evidence behind them than others, some more accessible than others--but there’s no cure. It’s essentially a diagnosis of “you can do things to make things a little easier on yourself, but as of now, you’re going to be in pain the rest of your life.”

Which is neat.

So I’ve been processing that. On practical levels, I feel somewhat like I’ve been given permission to give myself a small break. No, I can’t do the things that I used to do, but I also didn’t used to have this condition that makes my everything hurt all the time and, gloriously, makes it so that NSAIDs and other pain relievers are more sugar pills than anything else. I don’t beat myself up as badly anymore when I look around at my messy house because I’m like... okay, it’s not just having twins and depression and no time. It’s having twins and depression and no time AND EVERYTHING FUCKING HURTS. And in that vein, too, I don’t feel terribly bad about renting a wheelchair for our Disney trip later this year OR about ordering a handicap placard from the state.

There’s also some vindication in that fibromyalgia isn’t caused or worsened by a lot of things that you, personally, can do. It can get easier to bear with exercise (essentially, you’re pointing out to your brain that pain is not the correct sensation here, so we can still walk and function), but it affects people of all walks of life in roughly the same way. It’s annoying as fuck, but I feel vindicated that no, this is not my fault.

BUT the biggest emotion is just... grief, I guess. Something is fucked up about my body, and it’s not a fixable thing at this point in time. I can do a lot by myself, but there’s also a lot I can’t do by myself, and that leaves me more than a little dependent on my family and friends for everything, and I do not like that. I was hoping that when the doctor checked me out, she’d say that I had RA or OA or something that’s inflammatory because at least then, I could look into anti-inflammatory treatments, but no. This is a pain disorder where anything inflammatory-related is completely irrelevant.

And I’m mourning because I hoped that it was something that I could easily reduce the pain about. There are nights I can’t sleep because I’m so uncomfortable and there are days when I can’t write or use my computer because my fingers hurt so much. And I’m moving into a treatment plan (after we get back from Disney because I literally do not have time for anything right now), but it’s still like. Ugh. UGH.

I feel unworthy of anyone. I’ve been flirting a lot more lately, and I’ve been pursuing some things casually, but I also feel like there’s never a real chance for anyone who doesn’t already love me to love me because I’m pretty damaged goods. And YES I know this is not intellectually honest of me and that I wouldn’t even dream of saying those things to someone else I know dealing with this, but it’s not always easy to turn off that spiral when it starts.

Which leads me to...

Fighting God: Ages and ages ago, I wrote a big long treatise here about my religious history, but the tl;dr is that I’m nonreligious/vaguely witchy. I’m a pastor’s kid, grew up all gung-ho about the whole thing, but gradually, it all slipped away. I was content with that, and up until recently, I wasn’t really mad about anything with the church because, hey, not my thing but whatever. At worst, following 2016, I was kind of :| at all the people in my life who weren’t considering how their actions affect others, but I was willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Not anymore.

In late August, I lost someone to cancer. He was someone who meant a lot to me for most of my life, and we met through church theater things. In a way, he was a sort of last tie back to that life--I built an imaginary life around him when I was a teenager, loved him like crazy. They say that you truly become an adult when you realize who “Landslide” is about for you, and for me, it was about him.

Anyway, he died of cancer, which is awful in and of itself. The church that we’d both been part of had this big fucking spectacle planned around his death and were thanking God for his death in the “at least he’s not in pain anymore” sense, which I found kind of sick. Like God put the goddamn tumor there, why would you thank God for literally any of the situation?

But THEN I found out that he had refused conventional treatment in favor of alternative bullshit, like he wanted some sort of miraculous “and then I had my scan and the cancer was just GONE and the doctors couldn’t explain it!” cure or he was anti-science or whatever the fuck. He refused conventional treatment until this past summer, and then he had surgery and it became apparent that, no, God had not chosen to do things bombastically, but by that point, it was too late. He died of a cancer that could have been easily fixed, had it not been for his faith, and that disgusts me.

Add my fibro diagnosis to that--because it’s treatable but not fixable--and I am very put out with God in general. And yes, we can obviously go into volumes of bullshit the church does anyway that I’ve always hated, and I’ve never been happy about any of it, but now I’m fucking pissed. Anti-Christian, anti-god, anti-whatever. And maybe that’s 3edgy5me, but anger is part of the grieving process, and I’m enjoying it far more than I enjoy when the anger fades for a minute and I can’t do anything but sit there and cry.

(yes, I am seeing my therapist about this, and we’re working through it, slowly but surely)

So there we go. My update. I’ll post pictures of the kids later.

#abby’s physical health #or lack thereof #abby's mental health #infertility #family planning #bilateral salpingectomy #abby and religion #and a partridge in a pear tree

[strawberrymeriadoc]

Let me put it this way, people shit on depression on this site for being like "mental health lite" but as someone who has been through it trauma-wise, some of the worst I have ever felt was my depressive episode this past year.

Each day I got up at like 3 pm, had breakfast so I could take my meds (usually just an ensure shake, I didn't have the energy to stand long enough to make cereal) and then lie in bed (not able to sleep) until like 8 pm. Just counting backwards the whole time. It's all I could do. I couldn't go on my phone or laptop. I couldn't read. Besides occasionally having an extremely anxious thought or worrying about what would happen to my body if I died there.

Then I would get up to make dinner, usually microwaved bao buns or reheated pizza, and force that down with an extremely dry mouth. It didn't taste like anything. I remember one time while I was chewing pizza, I desperately wished that I would choke on the next bite and then be done with feeling this way forever. I lived right next to a pool and would fantasize about finding a way to make myself drown.

Then I'd take a shower and feel the worst I've ever felt in my life. Then I'd sit back on the bed and call my queerplatonic partner (by far best part of my day and really what made me get through it). And then I'd journal and go back to bed. At like 1-3 in the morning.

Every time I got up to move was far more excruciating than my top surgery recovery, than any other ailment I've ever had, including ones that put me in the hospital.

Anyway this is mostly just to share my account that depression, or "severe major depression with psychotic symptoms" as I've been diagnosed, is a huge burden on the individual, can make you feel so terrible, be unable to do things, make you feel lazy, have extreme suicidal ideation. etc. etc.

And for me it absolutely was intertwined with my extreme body dysphoria. No question. But yeah. If you are living like this or, like me, recovering from this with the worry over your head that it could get bad again at any time, I see you, you are so strong. So fucking strong.

#actuallydepressed #actually depressed #depression #actually mdd #mdd

[s0ngsandstars]

hiya!! 1, 6, and 8 for the disability ask game, if you haven't already done them :3c

Putting it all under a read more because I do a lot of talking and I forgot how Tumblr deals with long posts. sdkjdfjgkdgn Also I apologize for how negative the last question turned out.

1. What disability/ies do you have? (and are they mental, physical, or both?)

Mental health wise I'm an absolute wreck. The things I consider disabling are DID (mostly the dissociation, I like my headmates), OCD, ADHD, Agoraphobia, Depression, and social anxiety that I heavily suspect is actually AvPD. C-PTSD is also awful, but it's like. Not as bad as the other stuff in terms of how much of my life and time is taken by it. Also like, all the sensory issues that come with being autistic is just awful. Other things too, but like. mostly just more anxiety stuff. sdkjndfgkjngjn I am a very anxious human being.

Physically I have FND (it manifests primarily as movement problems, and sometimes takes away my ability to move some or even all of my limbs entirely, though most usually my legs), arthritis, something related to hypermobility, and I heavily suspect POTS, but my doctors won't test me for it. *makes a peace sign* Also I'm deficient in vitamin D but my doctors won't prescribe me anything for it (idek why, it's been brushed aside like 3 times though even though it's been deficient for multiple tests of it). *makes a second peace sign* I also have glasses because I'm moderately near-sighted, but that's a very common thing.

I also have GERD and don't have a gallbladder, so food hates me sometimes, but that's like. So mild in comparison to other things. The worst part about that is that I have to wait a few hours before going to sleep after eating or I'll get sick. I almost forgot, I have NAFLD and so I'm banned from alcohol, even though I've never gotten drunk in my life, so that's a missed opportunity.

Probably something else I'm forgetting but, eh. sdkjndfgljdgn

6. What’s something good that’s come out of being disabled?

I feel like I'm more understanding of people? Like, it's definitely helped me with being more readily accepting of other people's experiences.

Also can I count synesthesia as a sometimes positive to my senses being fucked? Some sounds smell wonderful. I love the colors I see for people and things. Like, yeah some sounds can smell literally like burning rubber, but other sounds can smell like chocolate or sour candy or mint chocolate-chip ice cream, etc. etc. and it's lovely.

Fun thing too is my cane can double as a weapon if I need it to. So like, that's kind of neat.

8. Does your disability affect how you experience other parts of your identity? (gender, queerness, culture, even hobbies/life goals you’re very passionate about)

Yeah, definitely. DID made gender and attraction rather difficult to figure out, because of the bleed through of others' emotions and like blending etc. I went through quite a journey before deciding on just non-binary for gender. AroAce was also tricky to figure out, but I got there eventually. But I'm really happy with it, and now it's like, one of those questions I can answer if we're really dissociated and trying to figure out who's out. Narrows it down a little if I can answer the gender/sexuality questions. Not a whole lot cause we're polyfragmented, but hey, we'll get there eventually. sdkjndfgkjn

As for gender expression, I can't wear some things that I really want to. Like my movement issues make wearing certain shoes potentially dangerous, and I can't be in long or tight skirts. I don't have the energy to put on makeup any time I want to.

And it definitely effects my hobbies. I don't have the energy to draw most of the time now, and when I do I can only do it for short bits at a time. It's really frustrating, because I want to, I want to so much, but as soon as I get my tablet set up, I'm so exhausted I feel like crying and I have to lie down for a while or I'll feel ill. I have to jump on when I have the energy to do things like draw or cook. I do read a lot though (mostly fanfics). Reading doesn't require much energy, so reading is fantastic.

Life dreams, definitely. I can't go to school right now, I can't get a job, I can't travel.. My life is limited, and I can't do some of the things I dream of doing. I want to be a planetary meteorologist. I want to travel and see places. I want to do so many things. But I can't.

--

Trying to end this on a positive. I'm proud of what I've been able to do, even if it doesn't seem like a lot to someone who's abled. I've missed out on so many things, but that makes the things I've been able to do mean so much more.

#S Answers #Ask #Tesla tag #Disability #Long post #alcohol mention #idk how to tag this #calling this post good enough though I am so tired I need to sleep. sknjdfgjkdfng

[beerecordings]

Werewolf AU - Part 8

By the third time Chase has expressed to him that his place is a mess, sorry, Henrik is braced for a rat's nest of a house held together with water-stained wallpaper and rotting support beams. He's witnessed poverty, bachelor pads, and the line in the middle where the two meet mostly as an outside observer, but he's determined that, no matter how it looks, he won't breathe a word of complaint.

He's happy to have someplace to stay. Walking home with Chase, he really does feel better already. He can do this a couple more weeks before fully having a breakdown, he thinks. Maybe Chase will even let him stay until he finishes rehab. That would be okay. That would be doable.

Still, he can't escape a surprised curse as Chase tells him “this one's mine.”

That's not poverty. This is the house of a man who has wealth – or at least, had it at some point.

“Fancy,” says Henrik.

“It's a little embarrassing,” mumbles Chase.

Henrik glances at him. “Because it's a nice house?”

“I... came into some money through work a couple years ago. I didn't spend it all that wisely. Didn't know how. So the house is paid off and all, and that's great, but now it's just me in this huge fucking house because my partner took the kids. I'm hoping to split custody once I get done with rehab, but until then, I just feel like a broke kid pretending he belongs with the other posh assholes who live around here.”

Posh asshole. That would be Henrik.

“You have a nice place growing up?” asks Chase innocently, heading towards a cherry red door beneath a covered porch.

“Um.” Henrik avoids his gaze. “Yeah... pretty nice.”

Very nice. But he's sick of the rejection he gets from other guys his age when they decide he's a no-fun rich kid who's objectively smarter than all of them. He'd eventually come to the conclusion that he had no need for friends, and no time, either, and he could be perfectly content focusing on his work. Stupid wolf instincts fucked that up for him too, though. He's been wanting a friend so bad since this happened. Maybe just this once?

Chase swings the door open and the mess inside shoves all thoughts aside. He's so astonished he nearly snorts out a laugh, reaching up quickly to cover his mouth.

“Yeah, yeah,” sighs Chase. “It's been a while since I cleaned.”

It's bizarre to see such a nice house so trashed. Henrik... kind of loves it. Forget all the over-polished places he spent his time in as a teenager. There's sure as hell no maid here. Dishes and take-out boxes litter the tables, and then they migrate to the floor too, empty cans and bottles filling in any empty spaces nearby. There's boxes beneath the TV for video games and controllers, but instead of being tucked away, all the cases and disks and wires are lying in heaps against the stained carpet. There's laundry all down the banister of the stairway, and Henrik doesn't know if it's dirty or clean. It stinks a little – but then again, beneath it all, the whole place smells like chocolate.

“I'm sorry, man,” mutters Chase. “Seriously, it's... I've been lazy.”

“Not lazy,” Henrik replies, with more warmth than he realized he'd be able to summon. “You have mental health issues.”

Chase barks out a laugh. “Mental health issues. You're definitely a doctor. You know you can just tell me I'm a slob, right?”

“Don't be so hard on yourself. You've been sober four months, turned into a werewolf, going through custody court, and so on. Who cares if you wrecked the place while handling all that? Besides, it will give me something to do.”

“Oh, no, dude, no way. This is my mess, I'll clean it.”

“No, it will be my thanks for letting me stay. I like to clean. Besides, the couch is a mess. I'll have to get started.”

“Schneep, there's six rooms in this house. You'll sleep in a guest room. Come on.”

“Oh?”

Chase takes him upstairs and leads him into a spare room with a flourish. “Ta-da!”

Okay, that does something weird to his brain.

There's a room here, just for him, with a door he can shut and a bed fully made up with blankets that only smell of laundry detergent and a little of Chase's scent. There's an empty closet. There's an untouched bathroom against the hall. There's... space for him.

There's territory for him.

The thrill is so intense he shivers from it, clapping his hands together, and he knows he must smell happy, because Chase begins to smell happy too. Chocolate and cheerful sugar. Fuck, that's a relief after such a shit day. He's so glad he agreed to come.

“It's late,” Chase tells him, patting him on the back. “Settle in, okay? I mean, I know you've just got the one backpack full of stuff, but... I can at least put you up.”

“Thank you, Chase,” says Henrik, and he means it.

“It's no problem at all, doc. Seriously. This place has been so damn quiet. I had never lived alone before Stacy left, and I don't think I'm cut out for it.”

Henrik hasn't lived with anyone since he was a kid. He doesn't remember what it's like, not being alone when you go home.

“Get some sleep, okay?”

“Okay. Good night, Chase.”

“Good night, Schneep.”

The second Chase leaves him alone, Henrik lets his inhibitions go, just for one moment, and he throws himself into the sheets and comforter of the bed and shoves his face into them, rolling around in his new blankets until they all smell just like him – with a little bit of chocolate mixed in.

Perfect.

.

The morning comes with a feeling of energy and optimism for the first time in a long time, pulling him out of bed without hesitating. There's a nice smell in the air, bloody and raw. Someone's cooking meat.

Henrik treads down the stairs, stepping uncertainly into the kitchen. There's music pouring out of a Bluetooth speaker, American rock vibrating through the room. There's turkey sizzling in the oven, fragrant in the air, and Chase is cooking at the stove – eggs, peppers, tomatoes, spinach, cheddar cheese and feta alike, salt, pepper, oregano, fuck, fresh food smells clear and wonderful. Henrik has a second to be surprised that Chase even has enough clean dishes to cook this, considering all the dirty ones piled in the sink and across the table and counters, but then he sees discarded plastic and zipties. Chase bought new ones just to cook this morning.

“Hi!” calls Chase. “You like omelets, right, man?”

“Uh-huh,” Henrik agrees. “It smells good.”

“Yeah, it really does. I didn't realize. I've been eating so much junk lately, I didn't realize it all has, like, this film of bad smells. A little worried that being a werewolf is going to turn me into one of those all-natural moms at the grocery store. Let me eat my donuts, werewolf nose!”

Henrik grins, stepping up to the sink and starting the water. “You cook, I'll wash dishes.”

“You're determined, huh? I will admit the dishes have been giving me real problems. Sometimes I think that if someone put a gun to my head and told me to clean up all this shit, I wouldn't be able to do it even if I did want to live.”

“Executive dysfunction is a normative symptom of depression.”

“Have you always spoken English, Schneep? I think you're better at it than me.”

Henrik scoffs, trying to locate the dish soap. Rot, old veggies, oil – ah, there's the smell of fake oranges, buried underneath some other dishes. He pulls the oozing bottle out and fills the sink with hot water and bubbles. “I know perfectly well my English is very technical. Yes, I learned English as a boy.” And Hebrew, and Polish, and Latin.

He washes dishes contentedly, watching out of the corner of his eye as Chase makes a ridiculous amount of food for two people. As he waits for the omelets to cook through, he's carving a heavy watermelon into sweet red slices. The tray he pulls out of the oven has both turkey bacon and several oily hashbrowns hissing inside, hot and fragrant.

“Brunch on a Friday morning, what could be better than that?” purrs Chase.

“Brunch?” Henrik glances at the clock. “Oh, no, I slept so late!”

“We got nowhere to be, do we?” asks Chase.

“I mean, I guess not. Nobody from work has called me since I got bit.”

“Is that nice of them or negligent?”

Henrik sighs. “I'm not sure yet. Guess it depends on if they automatically fired me or not.”

“Yikes.”

“What do you do for work?”

“Oh. I'm, um... on a hiatus, I guess you could say. Kind of hard to move on from where I've been, but do I leave it all in the past or start trying to rebuild? Not sure how my people would react to me getting bit either, so I don't know. Maybe I'll just have to find something new. Was thinking about making a change anyway.”

No further details. Henrik's not going to pry. He thinks they've probably both got shit they're not ready to talk about.

They eek out a couple clear spaces at the kitchen island and eat there, Chase chattering at him and asking him questions about everything from being a doctor to his musical preferences. It feels easy, between them. Henrik doesn't remember the last time he talked to anyone about anything other than the weather or the next surgery on the docket.

“Glad you're here. It's been too quiet. We should do something this weekend!”

Oh, boy. “Like what?”

“Get some food, maybe, check out the farmer's market, see a movie. I used to just hit the bars with my friends but can't do that now.”

Henrik picks at the last bits of cheese on his plate. “You have a lot of friends around here?”

Chase's laugh darkens. “Um... not so much, anymore. Between the alcohol problems and the, uh, work problems, I realized I had a lot of friends who weren't so good for me. And then the rest of them realized I wasn't so good for them, either.”

Henrik hums. “Well, I'd definitely be up for the farmer's market. I mean, if you don't think people will... you know, if we're allowed there.”

“Yeah,” sighs Chase. “I don't know what I'll do the first time somebody comes after me for being a werewolf. Like, I didn't even sign up for this. Maybe we could see how we feel about it tomorrow. Oh! Do you like video games?”

“I wasn't allowed them as a kid. Think I missed my period of development in terms of video games.”

Chase gapes. “Weren't allowed? Have you played now, as an adult?”

“Here and there, I guess. Not really.”

“Have you played Assassin's Creed? Bloodborne? PC games? Nintendo? Holy shit, tell me you've played a Mario game.”

Henrik can't help but chuckle. “No, I've just seen them.”

He's getting dragged out of the kitchen before he can say 'Luigi,' Chase clamoring for video games and shoving trash off the couch. Henrik laughs and forces him to actually get out the trash bags, and the promise of fighting turtles together is apparently enough of an incentive for Chase to be able to clean up his living room for the first time in, well, a while. Henrik carefully tucks disks into their cases, neatly lining them up in the cupboards of the TV stand, and they get rid of the stinkiest parts of the mess, cracking a window for good measure.

“Okay, now Mario. What do we start with? Mario Party's probably the easiest for a beginner – oh, but we need more people. How about Mario Kart? Come on, I'll show you!”

There are worse ways to spend a Friday afternoon. He picks a little red guy in a mask to play as, and Chase laughs without mockery as he shows him how to play, interspersing the experience with more conversation, easy and low-stakes between them. It's not too bad. Maybe even a little fun. He feels full, he feels safe... yeah. There are worse things.

“There is one other thing I'm planning to do this weekend,” Chase says, opening a bag of pretzels on the coffee table while the game's paused. “You can come with me if you want, but you don't have to. It's not my business, I know. But I really think someone needs to if Marvin can't, and Sean's got too much on his plate as is.”

Henrik blinks, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “What are you talking about?”

Chase sticks several mini-pretzels in his mouth at one time. “You don't have to come,” he repeats, voice muffled with his mouth full. “But I'm going to go check on Jackie.”

A string of curse words flashes behind Henrik's eyes. Is he joking?

No. Dead serious, actually. His mind's already set on it.

Well. It doesn't sound like the world's smartest idea to him, but maybe he's right. Maybe no one else is going to do it, and someone needs to. Like a surgery for someone who keeps telling you they'd rather take their chances beneath the knife than spend the last few months of their life with no hope.

And anyway – there's no way in hell he is letting Chase go alone.

“I'll go with you,” says Henrik. “Like you said. We have to have each other's backs.”

Chase smiles with his mouth still full of pretzels. “Thanks, man. Now let me see your remote, cause I can't watch you drive off the side of the road one more time in good conscience.”

That's fair.

.

He knows where Jackie lives because Jackie made sure he did, and that, he thinks, was pretty prophetic of him.

“You go down two streets and turn right,” Jackie had directed him with a certain intensity, walking him home the first time they met. “My house is the little one with red-brick stairs and white shutters, number 545. I might not hear you if you knock, because I get distracted by my coding and can't always hear everything else, but you can come in the backdoor anytime!”

“Jackie,” Marvin had said, audibly exasperated, but Chase had just smiled and nodded. Sure, it was pretty clear that Jackie wasn't exactly neurotypical, but it was a nice gesture no matter how your brain's wired. He never got creepy vibes from Jackie. He was genuine as a Stradivarius.

“There are protective orders and that sort of thing,” Chase tells Henrik, leading him down the sidewalk. They decided between the two of them that Jackie probably keeps hours like Marvin's, and the sun's lowering like a priest at the altar as they walk. Chase misses the silver light of the moon. “He doesn't have to deal with his dad if he doesn't want to.”

“Maybe he just needs a reminder of that. What do we do if his dad is there?”

“Well, somebody at least needs to figure it out for sure and check on Jackie. If I find out he's getting hit again, I swear I'll be letting the wolf instincts take the lead. These teeth haven't to be good for something, right?”

Henrik nods, humming, and Chase turns to grin at him. As soon as you stop talking about werewolves and all the werewolf-related bullshit they're going through, this doc is the most unflappable person he's ever met.

“There's 525,” he points out.

Chase bounds up the red-brick stairs on the side of a white house that can't be made for more than two people. The outside is weathered with faint cracks in the paint the same way an old man gets wrinkles, and the brick is chalky from old age. The plants pressing in a little too closely around the door circle the whole of the house in a fervent hug, blooming around a building that tilts slightly to the side. Chase sucks in a breath of flowering weeds and bug-chomped leaves against red brick. Jackie's scent is so faint he can't discern it from the actual summer smell around them, cigarette smoke undercutting the pleasantry of the tiny path that leads to the door.

That cigarettes give him his first moment of real doubt since the moment he helped Marvin into bed last night and decided he'd have to do something about this. Neither Jackie or Marvin have ever smelled like cigarettes to Chase.

“You going to knock?” asks Henrik. “Do people knock in the UK?”

Right, he should do that. Yeah. It's okay. He knocks on the door and steps back to stand beside Henrik, pressing their shoulders together for a second. Someone's got to do this, and just because they're new wolves doesn't mean they can't help.

If Chase has any doubt Jackie's dad was staying with him, it's gone the moment that door opens. The wolf who steps out onto the steps above them couldn't be anyone but Jackie's dad. Knowing what Marvin told him about Graham, it gives him a genuine, cold-handed shiver up his back to see how much this man looks like his son.

“Hi, there, boys,” says Graham, the same wide white smile Jackie has lighting up his whiskered face. “You must be friends with my Jack, is that right?”

Henrik and Chase exchange wild glances. Chase hopes their scent isn't alarmed.

“Um, yes,” he says, trying to smile back. “Is he home?”

“No, pup, sorry. He's always running off somewhere. Probably at the park or prowling downtown. Not very territorial of this place, I suppose. Doesn't really have the instinct. Glad to see he knows some kids his own age, even if you're so new. He's a special boy.”

“Ah,” says Chase, shifting on his feet. He still doesn't really get how every other wolf seems to know he and Henrik are freshly-turned. Do they smell different than long-time wolves? “Yeah, we've just met a couple times, but he's great. Well, maybe we'll go see if he's – ”

“You two must be in the same boat as him! Needing a good strong pack, that's what you are. I always feel bad for you new wolves. Who bit you then, pups? Didn't they have a pack ready for you? Irresponsible, that's what that is.”

“It's a long story, but no, no pack. Henrik's probably going back to Germany, though, so he might have to look there.”

Graham tsks his tongue against his teeth, blue eyes fixing on Henrik. “Having to go all the way back to Germany without a pack, that's a damn shame. You oughta have someone looking after you. I used to run a full-fledged pack in these parts, you know. Took care of a couple young families. Bit a couple young people myself when they asked. That's how you grow.”

Henrik steps back from Graham. Chase stands in front of him, trying to ignore Henrik's scent changing, filling up with something like mold, and Chase can't tell if it's anger or fear or something in between.

“Nervous around Alphas?” asks Graham unabashedly, still looking right at him. “That's a damn shame, too.”

Graham has a powerful smell, his smoking habit coating a natural smell of fall leaves and steak in nicotine and foul smoke. But he doesn't smell like an Alpha, wrapped in that loving conglomeration of packmate scents, and he isn't alluring the way the others they've encountered have been.

“It's too bad,” Chase says levelly. “We better head out. Sorry to bother you.”

Graham takes a step down the stairs that lead up to the door. As he comes to stand on the pavement with the pair of them, Chase sees that while Jackie got his looks from his father, he must have gotten his size from his mom. Graham's huge.

He reaches out and claps a hand down on Chase's shoulder, squeezing for a second, and Chase feels himself go stiff, his scent unstoppably nervous now, shot through with cayenne stress. Graham's wide hand is so close to his neck. Henrik's frigid beside him, both of them shocked silent by an influx of instinctual knowledge – the knowledge that this wolf is much, much bigger than them, and could absolutely hurt them both no matter what they did to stop him. Chase tries not to squirm, and then he tries not to whine, and his mouth falls open as he hears himself start to pant a little, tongue pressed up against his bottom row of teeth.

“Don't have to be nervous around a real Alpha,” chuckles Graham, reaching suddenly up to cluck his chin, making Chase wince, his eyes flinching shut. “That's the whole point of it. You trade obedience for protection, for care. A real Alpha looks after what's his.”

“Dad.”

Hot summer grass and melting gold butter have never smelled so good. Jackie stalks up the pavement towards them, bringing the smell of the park, wolf scents and plant life impressed in the air around him. He's wearing the same red coat he was the first and only time Chase met him, the hood drawn over his eyes. In the lowering sun and the rising moon, his blue eyes are cold and very clear.

“There's my Jack,” purrs Graham, hand pulling away from Chase's shoulder. Chase stumbles back, gripping Henrik's arm. “Your friends came to say hi.”

“Hi, guys!” Jackie's cheeriness is fake as styrofoam. “Did you come to share a run? It's good to see you.”

He throws his arms around both of their shoulders the second he's close enough, turning them around and pulling them away from his home. “I forgot you were coming! Let's go back to the park.”

“You've just come from the park,” laughs Graham.

“Bye, Dad.”

“Jackie,” calls Graham, voice hardening. “Come in and get some food first. Your friends can come too.”

“I'll be home late, Dad,” Jackie calls, stronger, and he doesn't look back as he leads Chase and Henrik down the street. Chase tries to turn and see if Graham is still watching them from the steps, but Jackie tightens his grip around his shoulders, pulling him close against his body. Chase is still panting, feeling shaky now that the adrenaline is coming back down, and on the other side of Jackie's body, he sees Henrik clinging to Jackie's hoodie with both hands. Chase looks up at Jackie's face. He's staring straight ahead, mouth pulled into a taut grimace, nostrils flaring as he works to breathe steady. This close, Chase can see that he's tanner than he was before, dark enough to reveal paint-flicks of pale vitiligo up his cheek and right eye.

As soon as they reach the corner, Jackie turns them onto the other street and pushes Chase up against somebody's chain link fence, grabbing his face in both hands. Chase stares at him, blinking, recovering his air.

Graham's hand so close to his neck felt like danger. Jackie's hands don't. Henrik is still clinging to his hoodie beside them, eyes huge.

Jackie lets out a slow breath. His hands fall away from Chase's face.

“You okay?” he asks thinly.

Chase puffs out a breath of air and nods halfway.

Jackie's eyes flutter closed and then open again. He turns to Henrik and does the same thing to him as he did to Chase, reaching out to cup his face for a moment, fingers dragging across Henrik's beard. Henrik shivers under his hands, the fear in his scent quieting.

“Why did you come?” Jackie asks, eyes darting between the two of them as he lets Henrik go and steps back. “What were you thinking?”

Chase swallows, stepping over to stand beside Schneep again. “Jackie, you stopped coming to class. And Marvin – ”

“Guys, I don't have to come to class, okay? I... had some other stuff come up.”

“Ja, clearly.” Henrik's shaking his head at Jackie, glasses slightly askew. “That's your father? He's nothing like you.”

Jackie groans, reaching up to tug at his hair for a second, his hood falling back. He's rocking on his heels, constantly in motion as he looks at them both with a sigh. “He's just staying with me while he finds an apartment. Won't be more than a couple weeks. What was I supposed to do? You can't kick your own dad out when he's homeless.”

“Um, you absolutely can,” Chase interjects. “Especially if he's an asshole.”

Jackie looks up at the both of them darkly, and for a second Chase thinks he'll snap at them. But a moment later, the tension seems to melt off him, leaving exhaustion in its place.

Jackie steps forward and hugs them both close, his arms wrapping around their ribs. Chase hugs him securely back around his stomach, his head finding its place on Jackie's shoulder. For just a second, he can't smell anything at except Henrik and Jackie and the places where their scents mingle, soothing as the smell of his own home. He squeezes Jackie closer, closing his eyes.

Fuck, he barely knows this guy. But there's something instinctual that came awake the second Jackie pulled them away from the big wolf with a hand at his throat, primed to hurt them, and he doesn't actually want Jackie to let go at all.

“Dude,” he mumbles. “Marvin told us about your dad, okay? We're worried about you.”

Jackie's scent spikes with something that Chase thinks he's smelled already. Actually, it's a lot like the smell Sean gave off as Marvin told Henrik he'd tried to get rid of him, something coppery and almost alcoholic. Jackie doesn't say anything, and when Chase pulls back a little to look at him he finds him with his eyes closed and his head low. Henrik lets out a soft whining sound Chase has never heard him make before and presses his face against Jackie's neck, rubbing his scent there for a moment.

Jackie's eyes snap open in surprise, and Chase waits to see what will happen, but Jackie just lets Henrik share his smell with him, hand still cupping his spine. A moment passes and Jackie tilts his head to the side, making space for Schneep against his throat.

Chase didn't know Henrik could let his guard down enough to do that, to scent like that. Maybe Jackie recognizes the significance too, because he's looking at Chase like he's trying to share a conversation with him, eyes sad.

“Come on,” Jackie says, clapping Henrik's shoulder. “Let's get you two home.”

“Marvin's stressed about something in the news,” Chase blurts out. “There was something with a vigilante attack. He's really upset.”

Jackie's breath flutters out of him again, in that same bone-deep weary sigh, leading them down the street. “Marv keeps up with all sorts of werewolf news. He's always stressing about the latest article.”

“Why haven't you called him or anything?” Chase demands. “You haven't answered Sean either.”

“I'm okay, Chase,” murmurs Jackie. “Really. It's just some family stuff.”

“Marvin is your family.”

“Marv and my dad don't get along. It's better to leave him out of this.”

“You protect him from your dad, but not yourself. That's not fair to you.”

“Chase.” There's still no anger there, no irritation. “You don't know my dad.”

“No, I don't but – but I know my dad, Jackie. And I know – I – I know what it's like to not want to get them in trouble. Even if they hurt you, you don't want them to get in trouble. You just want your dad. Maybe because you think you're the only one who still believes in him. So maybe he needs you more than you need him, and that means it's okay if he hurts you sometimes. He needs you. You can't say no.”

Jackie's scent doesn't change, and neither does his pace, but his breath does, picking up in speed. Chase walks beside him, staring up at his face, wishing for some hint of Jackie's real feelings about this whole damn mess, but Jackie doesn't let anything out, or maybe just doesn't emote the way Chase thought he might. He stares right ahead, leading them patiently down the street.

“Jackie?” asks Henrik.

“I'm fine,” Jackie tells both of them. “Let's get you home.”

And he does. He walks them all the way back home without another word, keeping Henrik tucked firmly beneath his arm. Chase doesn't bother to ask how Jackie seems to know he and Henrik are staying together without asking, or how he memorized the way to Chase's house after walking him home just once before. He deposits them on the porch of Chase's home, giving them this weird smile, fake and earnest at the same time, pained. Practiced. Masking.

“That was nice of you two to check on me,” he says gently. “But please don't come by my place again. I need some time. Okay?”

Henrik's the one who catches his arm as he tries to turn to go, and Chase calls, “Jackie, come on, please. You're so – so numb, dude. Please give us something.”

Jackie's head hangs. He doesn't look at them.

“You don't have to, like, pretend you're okay,” Chase pleads. “But at least promise us your dad isn't hurting you, you know?”

“I'm grown now,” Jackie says, though he doesn't meet their eyes. “He can't push me around anymore. He knows I'd push him back.”

“But why put yourself in that situation?” Henrik presses. “How many hours a day are you spending outside of your home, Jackie, avoiding your own territory? Your father says you avoid the place, but you are avoiding him, right? It's your home.”

“He'll be gone soon.”

“You really believe that? Could you kick him out if he told you he was staying?”

Jackie hovers in place, a hint of uncertainty cutting through his facade. “I need to go.”

“What if your father becomes an Alpha again? Doesn't that change things? Can you get yourself free of him then? The man who was your Alpha before, your father whom you still love, can you tell him no?”

Jackie's won't look up. “I want to go home.”

“But will you? Your father is there. You'll wander tonight instead, won't you? He told us you're not being territorial of your own house, and your skin is dark with sun.”

Chase had guessed that Henrik was probably smart because he was a doctor and all, but now he's thinking Henrik might be, like... smart, smart.

“Jackie,” Henrik murmurs, stepping towards the born wolf who keeps trying to slink away from Chase's porch. “Call your cousin. Go stay with him, listen to him. You're right, and so is Chase – he's your dad, and that makes things hard. But you must get some perspective, yes? He's been cruel to you before.”

“Would you talk to Marvin?” asks Chase. “Please?”

Jackie makes a noise somewhere between a hum and a moan. “I have to leave Marvin out of this.”

“But he wants to support you!” Chase insists.

“No. He's mad at me. I've let him down too many times. I never know how to take care of him, all I ever do is make him yell. Marvin's always angry.”

Chase's heart deflates like a souffle. He doesn't know what to say. Based on the silence beside him, neither does Henrik.

“Thank you for checking on me,” Jackie repeats one more time, soft, that facade of calm coming back over his voice, his face, his smell. “I appreciate it. I'm glad you're together. Look after each other, okay? You seem like great guys. You'll be great wolves, too. I hope you fall in love with this part of yourself. I hope you learn to love to run. You deserve that.”

“No... Jackie, don't go,” Henrik protests, and Chase hears him whine again, a low sound pulled from the back of his throat. “Don't go. I don't want you to get hurt.”

It connects in Chase's brain, then, a realization he thinks he should have had the first time Jackie helped him and Henrik defer to each other and walked Chase home, that very first day they met. The protection. The guidance. It comes so easy to him, so instinctual. He's darting forward before Jackie can leave, grabbing his sleeve without thinking, demanding his attention.

“Jackie,” he says. “You – you've been an Alpha before. Haven't you?”

Jackie stares at him. An ache in his scent. Tired. He looks down at the pavement without a reply.

“Your pack left,” Chase says, and oh, he didn't realize – he didn't realize that that word could mean family until the second Jackie's grief smell rolled over him. “And you blame yourself, right?”

“It was my fault,” whispers Jackie.

Anger rocks against Chase in waves. “It doesn't matter what happened,” he says, not realizing he's almost shouting til the words come out. “I've only met you twice and I already know you'd be a good Alpha. That's what Marvin wants too, right? And you still have the instincts for it, I can tell! You have that pull, even now, enough to make Henrik and I trust you, and you always try to protect us. Why don't you become an Alpha again, for Marvin?”

“Marvin doesn't want me,” whispers Jackie. “He wants an idea of me, a version of me that's not real. He's always seen the best of me, no matter how many times I betray him. No matter how many times I fail him. All I do is make him scream, and then he still turns around and tells me he wants me, but he doesn't!”

Chase steps back with a flinch. “Jackie, that's not – ”

“I can't protect him, can't look after him. I'm a fucking coward. Now I've let Dad back into my life, and Marvin will finally realize I'm fucking hopeless, just like everyone else did, just like my pack did before they left, that I'm weird and broken and damaged and I'm never getting any better. It's an imagined version of me that he loves, and when he wakes up, he's going to look at me with the same disgust everyone else eventually does, the same way you would both look at me if I tried to take care of you, because I'd fail. And then you'd go too.”

The worst part is, Jackie doesn't seem to realize that he's saying something truly horrible about himself as he says it. His scent is heavy with misty grief, but his words come out with all the weight of facts. He really believes it.

It reminds Chase of the day after Stacy left. The house was so silent. The inevitability of his own loneliness tore him in half. That was the day he decided to kill himself.

He's pretty sure Henrik tries to keep talking to Jackie after that – your cousin loves you, he hears for a moment, but he can't really register it, can't take anything else in. Jackie's gone when he gets any awareness back at all, and Henrik is holding his shoulders, calling for him, but Chase feels far away from him. He wants his Alpha, wants his fabric scrap with that stormy smell. He tries to go get it, but Henrik's with him, trying to get him to respond, and he won't let Chase go.

“Hey,” he says. “Let's go lie down, okay? I texted Sean. We did what we could. We can't do anything else for Jackie right now. Let's get some rest.”

Henrik leads him up to his room, getting him into bed and taking his shoes off. Chase manages to grab at his shirt, trying to thank him or reassure him or something, but all Henrik does is shush him and rub his shoulder before leaving the room.

Chase lies down. He's overwhelmed, but the emotion isn't really sadness so much as self-hatred, cold and aching. He hates remembering the feeling of those days. The certainty – the horrible peace the night he decided it was time to go...

The door creaks open. Chase turns his head and his red eyes find Schneep in the doorway again, wearing his own pajamas now, and holding the blankets he's been sleeping in since he came to stay with him.

Henrik comes towards him, ocean salt and lemon washing over him. The doctor leans down and wipes at Chase's tear-dotted face, and this wonderful noise comes out of him, a low rumble like a purr. Chase closes his eyes.

“Alles wird gut,” rumbles Henrik, and Chase doesn't need to know what it means. Henrik smells so warm, so comforting. “Ich bin hier, maus.”

“Scoot,” he adds in English, grinning faintly. Chase blinks. He scoots moves on his bed, making room. Henrik climbs in with him.

And when he draws that blanket over him and settles down beside him, warm, with that familiar scent washing over them, mingling in the sheets – yeah. Okay. Pack instincts.

Chase has them too. So he doesn't question it when his body tells him to turn over, tuck his head against Henrik's shoulder, and let himself sink into the smell of his packmate, washing the rest of the world away.

.

He's barely out of sight of Chase's house when the smell of an unfamiliar wolf catches his attention.

"Hey!" Jackie barks at the bushes. "Why are you hiding back there?"

A pause. No one answers.

"I know there's someone back there." Jackie stalks towards the wolf. "You better not be watching those two. They're not up for grabs. Back off."

Something shuffles in the leaves. Jackie's hackles raise, baring his teeth.

Then a little black wolf jumps out of the bushes and snuffles in his direction, a fluffy tail wagging. His scent is sweet with caramel and a bookish, slightly dusty smell that reminds Jackie of a library.

"Oh," he laughs. "Sorry. They've had some problems with aggressive wolves. Hi, there."

The guy's totally under-sized, and not much more than an adolescent. Jackie steps towards him, reaching out open palms. The stranger sniffs warmly at his hands. Jackie pats his head, scratching behind the big black ears. "You got a pack, huh? I can smell your Alpha on you. Well, go on, then, you ought not be hanging around in this neighborhood so late at night. Fancy places like this, the humans will call the police on you just for being in your wolf form at night. Get home, then, and you tell your Alpha they're not allowed near the pups in that house either. Go on."

The wolf barks at him, wagging his tail warmly at him before turning and bounding away. Jackie grins after him, pleased to meet a young kid exploring.

There's an odd smell that he leaves behind, though, one that's not his. Spring water and chemicals alike, and a waft of electricity like a storm on the air.

#tw mentions of child abuse #tw suicidality mention #hopefully this isn't too rushed #i am going to see my friends this weekend so i am scheduling this to post! i will be back soon! #bee writes #werewolf au

[icanonlybe-human]

I think the worst thing about getting better is still seeing old friends being bad, or getting worse.

AB called cause she’s had a shit show of a week. She might get cut off from the one thing that makes her happy and takes her mind off things because of her mental health problems. She needed to vent and I let her. All I could really say is “that really sucks” and the like, because there was nothing more helpful to be said. She’s not in the frame of mind for me to be suggesting things to her.

The worst thing of all? She asked me about my TMS treatment. How much it cost me. The thing about AB and her family is that they aren’t well off money wise. They had wooden poles holding up the roof of their dining room for like 6 months because they couldn’t repair it. AB is sleeping on a couch because she’s better off on that than on her crappy mattress. She and her parents can’d afford a new bed, let alone gold standard private health care. I’m lucky in that, even though my family wasn’t well off, my parents insisted on the best health care cover since Dad’s incident which would have cost a fortune if it weren’t for private health care. And I’m really fucking lucky that I got to get TMS in a private psych ward without paying a dime. AB doesn’t have that luxury. And she wouldn’t be able to afford 20 sessions over 3 and a half weeks paying out of pocket. And that’s the bare minimum - what if it didn’t work as well for her and she had to have 30 sessions?

To know that there’s possible help for your childhood best friend only to know that there’s a pay wall that she can’t get through to get the treatment she desperately needs… to see myself improve drastically while she gets worse. It’s torture.

Fuck you australian health care system. Fuck you australian mental health care system. Fuck you for letting the poor get poorer and suffer while the rich get richer and get the care they need. Why can’t you just treat everyone as a fucking human worthy of treatment in order to be able to survive a chronic mental illness. A mental illness that is killing my best friend. I’m watching her die before my eyes. Worse than physical death, in the soul. I get it now why mum got so upset when I let my mental health stuff slip in front of her. She was experiencing what I am right now with AB. She was watching her little girl (soul) wither and die in front of her with nothing to do to help.

If society weren’t so fucked we wouldn’t have to deal with this shit.

#diary #journal #mental illness #thoughts

[mallowstep]

1/3 hi! um this is like a whole story but basically I was a huge fan of ur work for abt half a yr before I checked out ur tumblr and after like 2 months of that I came across ur proship posts. My first reaction was like not great. But then I sat with it for a while and I really thought about it for like a few months and I was like huh wow yk I actually really like this point of view. Anyways, after that, I tried to explore what proship actually was more starting with the reblogs and your posts

2/3 on here and then going from there. And it just made me feel so good. Like, there was no more tireless searching for every single possibly problematic thing in the media I consumed or making sure it wasn’t cringe, I kind of just did what I wanted. And I kind of ended up adopting that mentality in my everyday life and my depression has gotten so much better. Like in the end, is it really worth it if some random person on the internet thinks I’m problematic for reading warrior cats. Anyways

3/3 I just wanted to thank you because I never would have changed my mindset and fixed my mental health if it wasn’t for your blog and your clear explanations.

normally i would wait until the morning for this, but...i really wanted to get to it tonight. sigh. this as nothing to do with my inability to sleep at normal hours, no.

i appreciate you sticking around to find out what i'm about! (fwiw, i don't consider myself proship. i tend not to agree with self-described antis, but i've also met plenty an anti who doesn't...conflict with any of my viewpoints? they're...just someone who agrees with me? so.) seriously, i appreciate that a lot.

i think my blog is more a snapshot of what fandom was like back when i started on the internet, which was...well, fandom-wise, was around 2012? oh, the math i struggle thru for y'all. anyway. back then, my opinions were normal, if not leaning conservative. so it's...just really goddamn weird for me to find out my opinion is actually super controversial and heavily debated. i know i tell this story every time, but there was that post about asking if ships were okay and what you ship is between you and god.

but...yeah, that's what i'm all about. i'm about having fun. like...i legitimately worry about most self-described antis. it legitimately reminds me of the way i behaved when i was a bundle of anxiety and trauma responses. it's...not good. there are times when i have had to close a tumblr tab not because someone said something aggressive or anything, but just because...seeing someone question themselves like that was incredibly upsetting.

so i'm really happy you got out of that mindset, because i just...i don't know, it's not healthy behavior. i worked so hard to overcome it, i still work hard to overcome it, and it is fucking...terrifying to me that a community exists that validates people and encourages them to stay in that mindset and get worse. i've said i'm not here to change minds, and i'm not. i think that would destroy me. i've worked so hard to understand that i am not responsible for what other people do with my words. that i am not responsible for any harm that could happen. i don't think letting myself get into discourse beyond the level i'm currently at would be good for me.

but still, that doesn't mean i can't get happy when i did help someone.

so yeah, yeah i'm really happy for you. i hope...god. i don't do this to change minds and i don't think telling people directly that they should change or bad mental health is good. but. i hope people find peace. and i don't think that's...

urgh, okay. i have...learned that there are unanswerable questions. i used to think that all questions had answers. but. your anxiety is insatiable. there will always be something problematic to worry about. the only way to escape is to decide you aren't going to try. (that's some loosely repeated OCD therapy things. there's way more to this but it's late.)

so i'm really, truly glad i helped you. as someone with serious mental health problems that are reflected in how i engage with media...i get it. i get it fully. and i'm really happy things got better for you.

y'know i'm not here to change anyone's mind. i'm just a guy. i'm just a dude, who posts about warrior cats and sometimes rages at the world. but.

idk, i don't go out and expect to change anyone, but if anyone is changed by me, that feels good? and i do...i want people to find peace. i want people to not be wound up tight with insatiable anxiety. i want people to get to have fun and enjoy things.

(ending note:

"cringe" and "problematic" really stop mattering when you have a Cringe and Problematic Disorder. like. idk i have experienced a lot of harm. that's not a secret. i have experienced a lot of different kinds of pain. if you want to tell me that warrior cats is problematic, that i shouldn't engage with something that lets me understand my own goddamn life, or that sharing the way i do that and having people support me, when saying it directly is either something i can't do or something that leaves people speechless, fuck, go for it.

but i'm not going to listen. i have bigger problems. if i was gonna cringe about something, it'd probably be about a younger part talking to people, only i'm not even going to cringe about that. if i was concerned about something problematic about me, it'd probably be the fact that i got in a fist fight with myself, only that's...well okay, it's something i'm working on. but it's not something the internet gets to judge me for.

so like. yeah. idk. the past...six months? have really reframed a lot of things for me. i have really, really, really just stopped fucking caring.)

<3

#ask #anon #mine #shipcourse #ask hall of fame

[penname-artist]

“So, I went beyond...pluuuuuuuus ULTRA” (And other updates)

(Warning: unintentionally long)

Okay, but in all seriousness, I finally feel that I’ve progressed just far enough in the show to state that I got into My Hero Academia. Technically, I’d watched season one and like the first 2-3 episodes of two before, but I didn’t finish it, and now I’m trying to. At the moment I’m about halfway through season 2 and making steady progress. Side note: You SPOIL shit near me and you’re a DEAD MAN! Let me watttttch >:(

Honestly I am fucking loving the series right now, I think aside from Deku, my favorites are definitely Tsu (Froooooggie) and, well, Shoto. You saw that coming, I can understand why he’s an overrated favorite. Feel bad for the kid though, like damn, boi you got some serious daddy issues, would you like a popsicle?

And, having started back up on MHA, I’m getting *cough cough* ideas *cough* for potential AUs and such.

Which actually segues this into another thing, just general life updates.

We had a pretty bad freeze lately, but thank God we didn’t lose our entire state power grid this time around, so it was smooth sailing. Unless you count the fact that we had to go out because I needed to be at work while the roads were slippery as snot. Which, was only one day. So we’re fine.

I also had a fix on the house which has FINALLY deterred the Mystery Creature from showing up at night and disturbing my sleep. After months of restlessness, we found out that it was coming in through a vent outside under my bedroom, and we had it covered. That seemed to do the job, thank goodness.

For mental health and productivity, I can’t really say much on the case; things have been about as steady as they can be, but in that it hasn’t really gone anywhere up, and I’m afraid I might be teetering on top of another depressive slump. Which, at the very least I’m prepared for. I honestly thought it would have been sooner, I had a REALLY bad attack a couple weeks ago and I felt sure it was going to be lasting, but by some miracle, though the attack itself was horrendous, I managed to recover in a record time. The only big downside is that my trauma response seems to have “manifested” (for lack of a better word) into very severe body tremors and shaking. I can control it...somewhat...but it drains a lot out of me. Still, I suppose it’s become more manageable, in a tangible sense. I’m a little less worried about how I react mentally to triggers and more worried about how I react physically. That’s a much easier hurdle to take on, overall.

Though, mental barriers are just as much an issue, if for a slightly different reason, at the moment. I’m honestly really stuck, writing-wise. I have so much I want to work on and so much I try to work on, but just a few paragraphs in I get skeptical because the piece will become jarring and choppy, and hard to maintain. I’ve re-started the same baseline to a Clutch and Tyker fic about four times now.

I’m actually considering doing a deep-clean, throwing out concepts too old and too untouched to really go any further with. I will, of course, keep the important ones, and the pieces that are ongoing, but a lot of the stuff I have in the wings that hasn’t been released is just so fucking dead in the water, I either need to put it in the waiting room or drop it completely. So, not sure where that’s going yet.

Actually, come to think of it, the semi-annual is also coming up.

Been doing this for a few years now but as a re-reminder, I try to take social media times down significantly or else entirely 1-2 times a year, one in the spring and one in the autumn. April and September-October have been my best time frames for these, as they’re not only good distances apart, but they’re in relatively trauma-ey time periods that I need to focus on getting through rather than pushing past. Plus, it’s a great excuse to work on large scale projects and not feel any sort of production-line pressure I put on myself to get them out, because they’re all gonna get stacked in a corner to wait until my return.

So! In recap: I’m probably gonna stick around until April 10th (I wanna at LEAST get to have my 21st birthday in the company of my people) and then probably do a week or two heavily away from things, and then extended time kinda by the seat of my pants as needed. That’s still a ways out, but better prepared sooner than later!

That’s all the updates that I can think of for the time being, for now I’m kinda just trying to Vibe where I can. I want to work on things but my body is giving me a very big “no”, so. Sidelines week it is!

Hopefully you all have a relaxing and/or fun-filled weekend, and until the morrow!

#personal post #Personal Update

[cookinguptales]

Please forgive me the rant but I haven’t slept for more than like four hours at a time in over a month so I am On The Edge and like

If it seems like I talk about mistakes and how it’s okay to make them a lot, it’s probably because it’s something that I have tried to teach myself as an adult and it’s something that’s really important to mental health!

(cut for a long rambling and sleep-deprived thing)

When I was younger, I wasn’t... really given that kind of freedom to fuck up. I went to a tiny combination middle/high school (which means that pretty much all my teen years were in the same place with the same small group of people), which was made worse by the fact that both of my parents eventually came to teach there. My RSD was really, really bad when I was younger (I mean, it still is but at least I know what it is now) and I think my parents could tell that I was already dangerously high-strung, so they weren’t that bad about my mistakes, but... how to put this without sounding like an asshole..

Kids had to interview to stay at our school between middle and high school, and not every kid got to. (Public charter school, it was weird in many ways.) Some kids stayed because they were artistically talented, some kids stayed because they were really nice and tried hard. But it was made very, very clear to me that I stayed for my test scores. lmao. I was in the 99th percentile on every standardized test. My PSAT score was a few hundred points higher than everyone else’s. I was the first kid in my school to ever get accepted to an Ivy. What I’m trying to say here is that I had... a reputation.

And I don’t think that most of my classmates meant me ill? But they had me mentally registered as “the smart one”, and it can be easy to reduce kids to a specific stereotype at that age. It was a really small group of kids and I was always expected to be the best, testing-wise. I literally had kids come up to me after we got every test, quiz, and assignment back to see what I got in order to gauge their own scores. Kids who were in higher grades than me. 

I think I can count the number of times I didn’t get an A on something on one hand, and my classmates never let me forget those times. If I answered a question wrong in class, literally everyone would know it by the end of the day, and I’d get ribbed endlessly about it. If I didn’t do an assignment on time, everyone would whisper.

Add to that my parents being right there so people also ran and told them... Let’s just say I was under a lot of pressure to be right about all things at all times. lmao. And of course I wasn’t! I was a teenager! A really, really sick teenager, at that. (I spent pretty much all my free time with doctors, on heavy medication, or sleeping as a teen.) But every time I made a mistake, I suffered for it. I think that combined with the RSD made me feel like an absolute fucking failure if I so much as mispronounced one word in class. I would spiral over the least little mistake. I vividly remember emailing a friend once because I realized I’d made a mistake about a trivia point when talking to them the week before and I felt like I had to confess. It was pretty bad.

Things were a little easier in college. I actually went to a school known for being very academically rigorous, but everyone there was smart! I met some of the most stunningly impressive people you’ll ever meet in your life there. So if I wasn’t always the smartest person in the class, that was fine. And god, that was actually such a relief??? People always used to tell me I was a big fish in a small pond at my high school and I needed to be prepared to get Cs in college and be outclassed (awful thing to tell a teenage girl, btw) but I was actually looking forward to being normal for once in my life so much. And I mean, I did actually get As and high Bs on almost everything when I was there, so I did excel and most of my professors really liked me and my work. But there was much less pressure to be perfect, and that was a breath of fresh air.

So that... helped. But it’s still very difficult for me whenever I make a mistake about something, even if it’s just some dumb fandom thing on tumblr. I think it’s ingrained at this point... It’s one reason that I don’t like playing games with other people; I’m not always good at them, and the idea of failing at something in front of others makes me feel kind of nauseated. But at a certain point, I realized that I’m really kind of depriving myself of the joys of learning and experiencing things without a safety net if I’m just terrified about being wrong all the time. You can’t throw yourself into new things freely and with your whole self without making mistakes. And holding a piece of yourself back because you’re always afraid of messing up is frankly kind of exhausting.

So I’ve made a really conscious effort the past few years to do things I’m not good at and be kind about the mistakes I make. (Side note, the only thing I was allowed to be “bad” at in school was art because I was one of the only ones there for my brain instead of my artistic skills and that was another common joke, so now it’s almost the opposite with my creative endeavors...? I have a hard time accepting praise when I’m good at something artistic now lmao. I’m so hypercritical of myself. What a mess! So I’m trying to get better at internalizing praise, too.) 

And part of that has been realizing that I never judge other people for making mistakes around me, unless they are uh... egregious and/or mean-spirited. In fact, I usually like the opportunity to teach someone something if they’re laboring under a misconception. But I never afford myself that same judgement-free learning opportunity, which is sad! So I’m trying to make a conscious decision to treat myself the way I treat others, which is with a kindness that I am unaccustomed to. lmao

It’s kind of funny because now when people start to treat my opinions with respect in fandom I’m just like “oh no, don’t do that, I’m an idiot like everyone else here! I have zero insider knowledge!” But I’m doing my best and I’m not stupid and if it turns out that I’m wrong about stuff, we’re just gonna have to learn to live with that. lmao

(Look, you can be smart and a dumbass at the same time. I am certainly at the intersection of those two traits and I choose to find that endearing.)

This was a long rant. I am extremely sleep deprived, haha. But yes, please don’t ever feel stupid if we’re talking and I make a correction or something. I don’t want to ever make someone feel like I do all the time. I want us both to learn and grow without fear of judgement, and I want us to learn to take up space and be awkward and fuck up a lil sometimes while still being loved. By ourselves and by others. I’m trying really hard not to make a tortured plant metaphor here, so instead I’ll just end this now.

I mostly just had to get this off my chest, but if you actually read all this, thanks for listening. haha.

#just me #tbh I've had to learn to love the way I take up space in a lot of ways over the years #and I'm trying to stop apologizing for how much I ramble on my own damn blog #I talk......... a lot #that's the adhd baby it's not quiet inside my head either

[kdipshit]

Trying ;

A different part of me shows up depending on who I’m speaking to, strangers don’t even get the same version of me, yanno that version on you when you meet someone new? I change my personality based on the initial energy I feel. I’m shy sometimes, I’m out the gate other times. It really just DEPENDS. who am I? Well I’m not one thing, I’m a combination of hundreds of thousands of little things, I’m not uniform, I actually don’t have a clue how to start explaining myself, this is the shit I do, I just wrote a cover letter for a job, like a specific job, because I guess I really want it, having a job gives me anxiety issues, but I haven’t had any anxiety issues since not being at work, hmmmmmm, like duh work gives me anxiety, but I have been working on my anxiety, and taking this god damn pills every damn day, I am happy to take them, by the way. I do truely feel like I can take on this job, casually, not crazy hours, super close to home still, I can walk, I’m happy to walk, I’m in my walking girl phase anyways, like its still good to get something off my daily to do list, I slacked off today, I think I got discouraged because I woke up super late even though I set an alarm, It wa like instant failure and bad day, I’ve already missed the morning so why do my Me+ yang, and I said no, I should still do my morning routine even though I woke up late, and I did, and I’m so grateful that I did because I didn’t fall into the trap, I did what I said I was going to do every morning, because it helps my mental health status.

Being fit genuinely makes you pretty, it evens out your skin tone, tightens your skin and like you just look sooooo pretty, I need to be more fit, I don’t have any excuses not to, I’m trying to learn how to do the things I don’t want to do even when I don’t want to do it, prepping me for bigger things in life like going to work when I don’t want to lmao, it’s all connected, and I’m still learning. Until I can accept to have to do the things I don’t want to, I’ll continue to do them, no matter how I feel. Well that’s what I hope I do, but I don’t think I’ll be able to do it without constantly writing about it, other wise it just get tangled up in all the other mess…. My main focus remains to slowly unravel, and just all round slow the fuck down, mentally, my thinking needs management and direction, it’s a mess. But I’m doing the messy work, and I’m okay with that, because it just is, and I have to be. I shouldn’t tourture myself though, with doing things I don’t want to do all day long, but just recognising, that things need to be done, no matter how I feel about it. How I feel about it, is irrelevant to the bigger picture, its only when I focus on what the problem should be, is there ever an issue. i am not my feelings and they come and go just as thoughts do.

I caught a glimpse and I’m going after it, no matter how I feel, I’m so grateful for the version of myself I am today, thanks to the many yesterdays, i swear I change faster than one of those skin changer lizards lol, I feel on cloud 9, I’m happy despite all the crazy noise below me, I can breath despite all the chatter, I can sleep no matter how crazy the city traffic is. The moment I say no to doing something that is benefiting me, it turns on the switch to spiral me back down to old ways of thinking, and that’s exactly where we’re trying to a avoid, and may I just say how fucking proud I am of myself, I’ve kept up with my morning routine for like a solid couple weeks, I’ve kept my room clean, I’ve made my bed every morning which is something I’ve never done, I’ve just never cared for making my bed coz I was always in it lmao, and my mum made my bed when I was a kid, I’ve eaten every day, I’ve taken my pills at the same time, I’ve gotten my sleep schedule on lock, I’m literally out like a light by 10pm WHO AM I ???? I’m up by 8-9 which is okay but I’d like to get up at 7am, don’t ask me why, I don’t know, I just love the number 7, plus I’m the luckiest girl in the universe and all that cute jazz. I write every single day like this is a HUGE streak for me, I’m very very proud of myself, I think seeing the streak of my non drinking (7months 29days btw) really motivated me in a way that made me feel capable to streak other good things in my life. Like seeing a meter of my success lmao, not that I need it, it’s just good to have a quick look and be grateful to be able to stand here today. It has not been an easy road, in fact it’s the hardest road I’ve ever had to go down, but I don’t care how hard it is, I can do this. I don’t know what it is I’m doing, but I’m fucking doing it and I’m doing it to the best of my ability, I’m achieving my own trust by consistently standing beside myself, no matter what, by showing up for myself, for putting the thoughts and feelings aside and pushing thru. healthy coping mechanisms have slowly implemented themselves into my life due to my constant effort. I’m not perfect, I’m a rough cut, but I’m getting there, and that’s by doing this shit every single day. Alone. Most importantly.

#blogging #new blog #mental health #actually bipolar #actually borderline #mental instability #actually bpd #original post #original writing #original words

[acharlescoleman]

I’m really, really thinking about finally getting rid of my magazine collection, whether it’s like attempt to sell them on eBay or the more likely scenario, just chuck em all in the recycling bin. Nothing says hoarder with issues like “my magazine collection.”

Same with my cd collection. Like either keep 100 or less, put the keepers in a binder then get rid of the cd cases. I have like two long bins full of CDs, that’s what 20+ years of collecting will do.

Same with some of my DVDs and books, although I kind of think the Hollywood library would accept the film books that are just rotting on my shelf.

I just want like a more tighter and smaller collection of all these things.

I’ve been doing a little better at trying to have a smaller (and smarter) collection of video games as I’ve continued my rekindled return to gaming. Like my movie collection, I’ve also made some wiffs where after a few minutes of trying a game out I’m like ugh this was a mistake, I gotta get this game outta here! Like the Nickelodeon ninja turtles game on Wii, ugh so bad. And there’s a neat Super Mario Bros Wii game that’s kind of like the old Nintendo style ones but to do a special spin move you have to shake the Wii controller and nunchuck which reminded me of why I put the Wii in the closet years ago lol. The Goldeneye remake is ok though. And I learned like earlier this year that the Wii I have can also play GameCube games! I didn’t know this a decade ago, ugh. But it’s neat that it does, I’m also impressed that my Wii still works. Mostly works. I do think I might have a laser issue because a different ninja turtles and a Carmen San Diego game, both GameCube games, didn’t work despite the disc looking pretty clean. X men legends 1 and nfl blitz 2003 did work so it might be a disc which would suck.

Like a few weeks ago I had to stop watching the fancy Guns of Navarone 4K disc on my ps5 because it was starting to act glitchy for some reason an hour into the movie, they’d just got on the hill! Ugh! Again the disc looked good and I played it on the Xbox Series X and it worked fine, finished the movie there. Physical media is driving me batty!

That said, I’ll probably snag a few things at both the Kino sale and the Barnes and Noble criterion one. I have issues, I know but also I really want Pink Flamingos!! (And I kinda, possibly want Hot Saturday, the Dr. phibes dual pack, maybe My Little chickadee.) oh well!!

Lastly, I turned 39 (my god, it’s weird as fuck typing that out) on Wednesday and I intentionally skipped my high school reunion last weekend (it was the 20th and1 which is cute but I was like idk that’s too soon from the 15th and they wanted people to dress up in 1920’s style and I just didn’t wanna dress up plus I don’t think I’ve changed too much from six years ago so I was like I’m good. I’ll probably do the 25th, though, barring another pandemic because I’ll be over 40 by then and I’m confident that I’ll be at a different head space to where I am now. Plus I don’t completely hate or dislike everyone from my class so it’ll be nice to see the ones who aren’t on social media in a few years.

One of my FB friends who wished me happy bday was like you’re gonna feel the aches more! I wanted to snark reply back but it’s true! I have a lot of ups and downs with that stuff. I might have to like start doing more treatment stuff like massages or even those deep baths things (maybe just sit in a hot tub I guess, isn’t that supposed to be healthy? Or helpful for body recovery? idk). I have to sleep a bit better too as he types at 1 in the morning. I think overall though the mostly hardcore water drinking is helpful to me. Plus being a total square like not smoking or being prissy about alcohol has kept me feeling mostly good health wise. Mentally I’m somewhat okay, I try to check social media as quick dips in and out. Gaming is helpful too for me, like trying to figure stuff out, getting sucked in. It’s good times. With movies, I get a bit too nitpicky at times to enjoy em, like that line from Singin’ in the Rain “you’ve seen one, you’ve seen em all” has really hit me. Although I did want to see Crimes of the Future last month but it left theaters pretty quick. I’m supposed to see Marcel the Shell tonight with a friend, hopefully that’s good. I’ll rent Sonic 2. I didn’t like the trailers for either Malcolm’s First List or the Black Phone. I’m semi interested in Everything everywhere all at once, there has to be something to that movie since it’s still playing in theaters. Wasn’t crazy about that trailer either though. I’ll prolly hate myself later for seeing Thor next week. I haven’t seen any of the new Jurassic Park movies. Buzz light year seems like a ten minute watch on Disney Plus then don’t finish. I haven’t seen Top Gun 1 and I don’t think I could see 2 without seeing 1, although I’m now recalling that I wasn’t impressed with the planes flying around preview. Nope looks alright. Easter Sunday is a must see as a half Filipino. I probably won’t watch the Elvis movie, not crazy about Baz’s style but maybe I’ll see it on a whim. Maybe. Louis CK’s new movie is playing at the Laemmle theater in Santa Monica. That’s a no from me.

I’m going to two (!) comedy shows on Sunday, family is coming for lunch on Monday. I’m working later today and Saturday. anyways so that’s where I’m at. I haven’t done a stream or record a podcast yet but then on the to do list if you’ve made it this far. I did pitch my fake zoom dating show idea last weekend to my writing group and they liked it. The meeting got sidetracked like hell though so I have to do a better job letting tangents go, have fun and then pulling everyone back to working on the thing we want to make next. Now I have to write the script and send it em for feedback. I was surprised they liked the name Sting Ray, that’s the name of the host of the show. And that’s all I have for now lol byeeee.

#so much catch-up

[authornina]

Dalonte “DALY” Dennis: (TEK)

***THIS HAS NOT BEEN THROUGH A TYPICAL EDITING PROCESS; ALL SHORTS ARE ROUGH DRAFTS***

Daly shook his head listening to his sisters go back and forth about dumb shit. It seemed like they always waited until he came around to bring up niggas. He never intruded on their personal lives because he’d instilled enough in them to know what to do and what not to do. He had been on his own with them since he could remember. Daly was only ten years old roaming the streets looking for food to feed them. Life didn’t give him much of a choice to live another way. His mother left everything up to him, so he had to do anything to survive. At first it was just he and TJ, then two more girls came, and his mother literally dropped them off home to him. Daly cared for infants alone being just a baby himself.

They were on their way to the airport to pick up the baby of the three, Erie. She went away to college four years ago and this would be her first time back in Philly since graduating. They visited her a lot, but they were all happy to have her in the same state as them again. He was so proud of Erie for sticking it out and finishing college. At first, she would beg to come home. She even threatened to drop out several times. Daly spoiled Erie the most so during each one of her breakdowns he flew to Atlanta where she attended Spelman to talk her down.

All three of his sisters even being raised by him like straight niggas turned out to be great women despite their foul ass mouths and no-nonsense ass attitudes. People always said how pretty they were until witnessing one of them in action. Daly was a cool brother to have but he sometimes was too hard on himself thinking he could’ve done better with them and their emotions. He didn’t know how to raise children let alone girls but over the years he learned so much about women, more than he actually wanted to know. 

TJ was the oldest and she owned a popular hair salon. She was the wildest and most outspoken. Daly had to bail her out of jail several times, primarily for domestic disputes with her lovers. She was openly bisexual and came out to him when she was sixteen, saying if Daly didn’t accept her for who she was, he could kiss her ass. Of course, no matter what he loved his sister. TJ was five-eight, with tan skin covered by tattoos. She had them everywhere. None of them knew their fathers and Daly assumed she was biracial off her features and TJ didn’t like that. So, the long curly black hair she once had as a girl which made her ambiguity more apparent was shaved off and she chose to wear all types of colorful wigs. She was beautiful either way with her natural hunter green eyes and freckled rosy cheeks. Despite her lifestyle and appearance, TJ went to church a lot. She’d been that way since she was just a child. Always telling Daly she had them all covered on the prayer tip, so they were good. She believed the Lord protected her big brother the many nights he had to go out and do what needed to be done for them. TJ had a huge and loving heart she just didn’t have the patience for bullshit.

Ta’Kia, whom everyone simply called Kia was the calmest when considering the three of them. She didn’t bother anyone unless they bothered her. It was a different story if she knew you though, you wouldn’t be able to shut her ass up. She went to college in state at West Chester where she met her white boyfriend that she stressed out regularly. Kia was also fair skin and four-eleven of feistiness. Daly knew whoever her father was had to be black. She had 4C hair and to him that meant straight nigga. He learned all about the different types of hair black women had over the years. He didn’t assume they couldn’t have loose coils in general, but his sister came from nigga nuts with the shit that sat on top of her head. Kia kept it in all types of natural styles. She was the earthy vegan type. No man-made chemicals could touch her person and she only ate what she grew. She wore very little clothing often, even when it was cold with beads around her waist, lots of rings on her fingers and she had two nose rings and a septum. Daly didn’t know where the hell that aesthetic came from but again, he supported his sisters through whatever.  

Then there was Erieon, Erie for short, Daly’s baby. TJ and Kia didn’t give into her spoiled ass the way he did. If you asked them, their little sister was selfish, stubborn and plain old evil. Erie had a bad attitude, worse than all of three put together and never liked to admit when she was wrong. The only person she didn’t get out the way with was Daly. Erie was the surprise baby and the most beautiful little dark doll he’d ever seen when his mother first dropped her off. He fell in love with her the moment he had to take her on. By then he’d become an expert at caring for infants. Erie stood out because amongst her sisters she shined like chocolate satin. While her sisters rocked baldies and bushes, Erie loved box braids, and any other type of style that hung pass her butt in individuals. Everything about her was gorgeous. She was the most regular physically but personality wise, Daly had a time with that one. Sometimes he thought she had some mental health issues but seeing Lake go through so much and learning what he could, he swore his sister wasn’t that damaged. Couldn’t be. He simply gave her whatever she wanted and hoped it never went further than having temper tantrums.

When Daly was just a child, if it weren’t for Hassan, he and his sisters would be separated and spread out through the system. It was one of the reasons Daly was so loyal to Lake. Hassan made sure they never had to worry about being taken from one another. The house they lived in, he bought it and fixed it up. They had food and clean clothes every day. When his mother would try to come and interrupt the peace they finally had, Hassan made sure she didn’t any longer. Whatever bad shit people had to say about the late Hassan Porter, he and his sisters were blinded by the fact that he was the only adult to give a fuck about them. Even his mother’s sister didn’t offer a helping hand when she knew how they were living. Hassan didn’t ask any questions or want any answers. He saw a problem and fixed it. Never made Daly feel ashamed or embarrassed either.  

Once at the busy airport, they didn’t even have to park to meet Erie inside. She was sitting outside on her luggage with an obvious attitude.

“Here her ass go with the bullshit,” Kia said getting out the car. She hugged her resistant baby sister while Daly kissed her cheek before getting her stuff. TJ didn’t even get out the car because she was the least interested in what had her mean ass mad already. 

“What’s wrong, Erieon?” Daly asked once they were all back in the car. 

“Nothing.” 

“Erie! Stop bein’ a fuckin’ brat!” TJ turned around to her sister who was in the back seat now with her arms crossed and face balled up. “You always do that like somebody supposed to know what you thinkin’.” 

“Leave me alone.” 

“Erie, what’s wrong?” Daly asked her in a gentle tone making TJ and Kia roll their eyes.

“The flight was just annoying. I don’t like being around people.” 

“I’m sure people don’t like being around your evil ass either,” TJ said. “I’ma pray for you on Sunday demon.” She held the cross around her neck then pulled out a little bottle and splashed Erie. 

“Don’t put that saltwater on me!” 

“You need Jesus!” 

“TJ, stop,” Kia laughed. “Stay sprinkling people with your lil holy water.” 

“She think cause she got baptized that she still not going to hell,” Erie said, wiping her face. “Newsflash, you eat pussy, that’s a sin!” 

“Yo!” Daly yelled. “I don’t wanna hear that shit. All y’all shut the fuck up!” 

Why did he say that? All hell broke loose. They started shouting obscenities his way and he blew his breath wishing he went alone to begin with. Daly loved his sisters to absolute death, but they were a damn handful. How anybody dated one was beyond him. Man or woman. 

“Wit your big head ass!” TJ mushed him. “Don’t be talkin’ to us like that!” 

“I’m stayin’ with you TJ,” Erie said. They were the two who got along the least, but her sister was the most freeing to be around and let her do anything. Even though she was going on twenty-three, Kia and Daly treated her like a baby.

“Then you better act like you know, I ain’t for the walkin’ around my shit with no attitude! And I don’t clean up after grown muhfuckas.” 

“Why you don’t want your own shit?” Daly asked.

“Because I don’t wanna be alone,” Erie said low. “TJ lays with me when I need her.” 

“I can lay with you,” Daly said.

“You never be home.”

Erie saying that made Daly feel bad. If he wasn’t there often it’s because he couldn’t be and when he wasn’t, they had to take care of each other. They didn’t intentionally make him feel bad about it, they simply were dealt a shitty hand. No mother and their brother couldn’t be around due to the fact that he was the provider. It all affected each of them in different ways. 

“I lay with you too.” 

“Kia, your bed bout as big as this back seat. Then you like to sleep on the floor,” Erie said, and they all started laughing. 

Daly gave his sisters the range to live much more extravagant, but Kia didn’t want to. She liked her open space loft, mattress on the floor, no curtains, plants from wall to windows, three pairs of shoes and garden full of natural foods. TJ wanted to work for her own money, so she started a business. Erie was the only one who happily ran through his pockets like no tomorrow. He was okay with him being their backup plan if they ever needed or wanted it.

“Says the homeless one,” Kia rolled her eyes.

“By choice,” Erie retorted. 

After Daly took his sisters out then dropped them all off, he stopped at his old apartment. His phone was ringing off the hook and the only calls he returned were Lake, Wreck and Roddy. Mansion called him about fifty times. When those went unanswered, the texts started. 

Mansion: I know you with another bitch, since you wanna ignore me for her. Stay there, and don’t call me ever again with your hoe ass! 

Mansion: Bitch ass nigga! You really wanna cheat on me? And I bet she don’t look like shit! 

Mansion: I was fuckin’ somebody else anyway!

Mansion: I’m gettin’ a abortion!

Daly ignored each one. Mansion would say anything to get him to argue with her. At first it was funny, but now, he was a little tired of the constant back and forth. It was childish but that’s what he got for messing with a twenty-one-year-old. 

“What?” he asked, finally answering for her.

“Put your bitch on the phone.” 

“I ain’t wit no bitch.” 

“Right, you a hoe ass liar! Come get me right now.” 

“Fuck no! Go tell the nigga you was fuckin’ to get your crazy ass.” 

“I was just sayin’ that,” Mansion whined. “I love you.”

“Obviously,” Daly responded sarcastically and they both started laughing. “You gotta chill bro.” 

“My anger just get the best of me, you know I would never step out on you.” 

“I’m not comin’ tonight, I got shit to do.” 

“Like what?” 

“Shit.” 

“You lyin’.” 

“When the fuck do I ever have to lie? If I’ma be with another bitch, I would tell you.” 

“See that’s what I’m talkin’ bout, the disrespect! I’m not about to let you play in my face with no ugly ass hoe!” 

“Who ugly, Mansion?” 

“SHADIA!” she screamed, and Daly hollered. His on again off again girlfriend for years grinded Mansion’s gears. “You need to tell that dog face bitch you love me and it’s over.” 

“I told her that.” 

“Then why she still feel comfortable to go around talkin’ about my nigga? Why THE FUCK is she postin’ you on her Instagram?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“You know because you keep givin’ that hoe hope!” 

“Ion give nobody shit,” Daly looked at his phone beeping. “Hold on, I’ma call you right back.” He didn’t wait for a response to click over for his sister. “Yea TJ?” 

“Come get Erie before I fuck her up!” 

“What she do that damn fast?” 

“I comes the fuck in my room and her ass changin’ shit around in MY HOUSE!”

“You got it ugly in here!” he heard Erie yell in the back. “Everything don’t gotta be green!” 

“DALONTE!” TJ shouted. “Come get your sister! NOW! Jesus be a high ass fence for Erieon…” she started her prayer for forgiveness then Daly heard a bunch of ruckus. He hung up on everybody tired of dealing with women for one day. It wasn’t even five o’clock yet. He got all the bags out of his trunk and went inside the apartment building. 

When he put his key in the door Tracy was standing right there with an attitude. Out of all the bitch fits, he was least interested in hers. He didn’t tell his sisters about their mother staying there and that’s why he moved because it would upset them. TJ mostly. She hated Tracy to no ending. 

“The fuck you standing there for waitin’ like you caught me cheatin’ or something?” 

“Because you leave me in this place, alone! I ain’t got no phone, no communication to the outside world—” 

“Man, fuck outta here,” Daly said, closing the door. “You lucky you got this.”

“I want to see my children, Dalonte!” 

“They don’t wanna see you.” 

Daly’s mother was a rehabilitated crackhead and ex-prostitute. He wouldn’t have offered her a place to stay but she was currently pregnant and had the nerve to tell him she wanted to do right for her baby. 

“Well it ain’t they choice, y’all is muthafuckin’ kids to me! I don’t care what we been through! I am your mother!” 

“You ain’t shit, Tracy.” Daly took all the bags in the kitchen. “Here, all the shit you wanted. Fuckin’ prenatal vitamins,” he threw them at her. “I know your ass ain’t do none of this shit with us! You want my sisters to see this shit?” He started pouring all the stuff out. “You got it in you to finally care about one of your kids.” 

“He is y’all little brother,” Tracy said, palming her stomach with tears in her eyes. Her oldest child hated her so she knew it couldn’t have been any better with the other three but not seeing them for so long hurt her heart. When she came to him, he didn’t even care at first. They owed her nothing and as a mother Tracy wished she could take every ounce of pain she caused them back. 

“I almost said fuck him too,” Daly laughed, and Tracy smiled. Her son loved her; she knew this because he could be really cold when he wanted to be. There had been times she’d been on the other end of it. 

“I’m sorry for putting all of this on you, if I had another option, I would’ve chosen it. I know it’s not easy seeing me like this,” Tracy expressed to her son sincerely. 

“Whatever, I’m out, I gotta go break up a fight between your kids.” 

“Can you at least tell them I miss them?” 

“I’ll think about it.” Daly closed the door in her face. He stood with his back against the door feeling the way he did when he was younger. So many times, she would even watch him struggle with his sisters. Tracy would be home while he was trying to figure out a way to provide for them. Here she was pregnant again with another baby and needed her son all over again. Déjà vu.

#OnUs #authornina #Nina

[crimeronan]

Ok so I’m into the dreamer trilogy and haven’t read the Raven cycle...what is Declan’s characterisation/journey there?

THIS MIGHT BE THE BEST ASK I’VE EVER RECEIVED. IMAGINE I’M STANDING WITH MY ARMS SPREAD USING DIFFERENT VOICES AND HAND GESTURES TO REENACT THIS STORY FOR A RESENTFUL CAPTIVE AUDIENCE

also declan’s TRC storyline is like. equal parts horribly fucking sad and unbelievably fucking hilarious so. i will try to strike a Balance

FIRST OFF.  there is exactly one (1) declan POV chapter in the entire series. it happens toward the end of the last book. up until then, everything we know about him comes from the observations and narration of others.

he is also a very minor character.  his importance grows throughout the series, but almost all of his actions happen offscreen.  it’s not until the last book that we know exactly how much he’s been dealing with the whole time.

when he’s introduced in the first book, he appears as a plot device.  here is a two-dimensional horrible controlling hardass who doesn’t give a shit about anything but his future political career.  look at his fake, smug fucking grin.  how did someone like ronan end up with a brother like him??  doesn’t matter.  it’s a convenient excuse for ronan to live with his best friend in a drafty warehouse, which means more room for YA hijinks!

declan’s introduction scene is Embroiled in Capital-D Douchebaggery. according to the narration (from gansey and adam), he loves to fuck women and then never call them back, cozy up to powerful people, and bitch about how ronan’s ruining his life by being sad about their dead parents.  SOME people can just get over their dead parents, ronan!

this intro scene is also Extremely Funny i 100% recommend reading it even if u don’t read the actual series.  ronan makes a nasty comment, declan goes “why are you the way that you are” and tries to salvage his date, gansey utters the phrase “man whore”

then later that night things go like. actually bad.

declan shows up at the same pizza place where ronan is with his friends.  this scene is gansey pov.  gansey runs out to the parking lot to find the two of them Very Literally Trying To Kill Each Other.  you don’t see that violence in cdth - there’s only the TINIEST shadow of it when declan confronts ronan over matthew - so i Cannot Express Enough that someone is going to end up hospitalized at BEST. ronan’s already slammed declan’s head on the car, declan’s already grabbed ronan and beaten the shit out of his face, like.

you do not get good old-fashioned Declan Lynch At His Actual Worst in cdth. u might be thinking, THAT guy???? doing THIS????

oh yeah. things are real bad between declan and ronan.

after gansey breaks up the fight (and gets punched in the face for his trouble, albeit accidentally), declan tells ronan that their dad would be fucking ashamed to see him now & that he’s washing his hands of it & basically if ronan wants to go off and fucking die, he can.

this is like. just a couple months after the magical suicide attempt referenced in cdth

in the aftermath of that scene it becomes clear that ronan absolutely unequivocally 100% will kill himself if he has to live with declan. hence. why he’s living with gansey instead.  gansey spends that whole night petrified that the declan altercation will lead to another attempt, and for Good Reason

so like, that’s how we first meet declan. he’s an uncaring wannabe corporate asshole who does not give a fuck and who only exists to exacerbate ronan’s mental health issues.

but then the opening of book 2 gets real interesting.

book 2 is where we start learning more about the lynch family.  we learn that ronan’s father was a dreamer who sold his creations on the black market, we learn that that’s why he was murdered. we learn that ronan’s a dreamer too. we learn that there are very powerful people looking for the greywaren, an artifact that takes objects from dreams. those powerful people just don’t realize it’s a person, yet.

so here’s the assassin who killed niall lynch.

he goes to declan’s dorm.

with everything we know about declan, the kid should be completely unprepared.  he can box, but the assassin knows that, so there’s no real advantage.  he’s alone, and he doesn’t have an escape route.

declan pulls out a gun.

this is an unexpected turn of events.

unfortunately he ends up getting beaten half to death with the butt of said gun, because he loses the ensuing physical struggle for the weapon.  the assassin is like, i need the greywaren.  declan is like, i know it exists but i don’t know what it is.  i’ll find it for you.  i’ll get it to you.  then you’ll leave me the fuck alone

now with everything we know of declan at this point - his attitude toward ronan, his general demeanor, and this new knowledge that he knew about the black market - there’s one obvious question.

will declan sell ronan out if he finds out about the dreaming.

and like, okay. their relationship is antagonistic in cdth but it is NOT what it is in trc. believe me when i tell you that at that point, when you’re reading, you can pretty reasonably go, “oh, god.  oh god.  oh god please no one ever tell declan what the greywaren is.  oh god.”

declan has some other interactions with ronan and the gang throughout the book, mostly where he’s just a hardass who tells ronan to stop causing trouble.  adam’s the only one who notices that declan is scared.  like bone-deep shaking to the core petrified.  about Something.

probably getting beaten to within an inch of his life by the man who murdered his father.  that’s the reasonable reader conclusion.

so imagine how everything changes when you find out that declan already knows.  that declan’s known about ronan’s dreaming for longer than ronan has.  that declan knew exactly what and who the greywaren was, and he lied to a man who was ready to torture him for information, and he got away with it.

suddenly a lot of things recontextualize.

“keep your head down and stop making trouble”? people are gonna NOTICE your magic bullshit, ronan, we do not have time for this!

“stop hanging with that loser druggie friend of yours”? you mean the loser druggie friend who sells on the magic black market and doesn’t care about protecting himself or anyone else?

“i got super weird for no reason about ronan sleeping close to adam”? i don’t have fucking TIME to be homophobic i’m busy with your POTENTIAL TO MANIFEST NIGHT TERRORS IN FRONT OF WITNESSES IN BROAD DAYLIGHT

“i’ll find out what the greywaren is and bring it to you”? i’ll die. i’m making a bargain to die. i’m never giving you the greywaren and i know you’re going to kill me about it and that’s fine as long as my brothers are safe

ronan doesn’t know that he dreamed matthew.  declan knows.  he’s known the whole time.  declan tells ronan in book 3.  and then things recontextualize even further, because ronan’s death is also matthew’s, and matthew IS close to declan in trc.

but declan never tells the goddamn truth unless it’s his last option.  he doesn’t tell ronan that he knows about the dreaming and he doesn’t tell ronan what specifically wants to hurt him and the lack of communication fucking destroys both of them.

in the last book, ronan realizes declan loves him.

more than that, he realizes declan’s loved him the whole time.

this is when declan finally tells the truth.  things are getting bad, plot-wise, and declan is scared, so he comes clean.  he tells ronan that niall specifically tasked declan with protecting ronan from the market.  he begs ronan to run from the danger.  “let’s pour gasoline on everything dad left and start over.”

this is also when ronan realizes that declan’s childhood was very different from ronan’s own.  and that niall and aurora lynch were not the same people to declan that they were to ronan.  and that their father’s decisions are what’s driven the wedge between him and declan all this time

(he’s still struggling with the cognitive dissonance of this in cdth. i don’t think he knows how to adjust his perception of declan to fit this new information.)

aaaaand the final scene with declan makes me cry every time i read it so instead of summarizing, here’s the important part:

Ronan delivered a sharp tap to the object, and a small cloud of fiery orbs sprayed up with a sparkling hiss.

“Jesus, Ronan!” Declan jerked his chin away.

“Please. Did you think I’d blow your face off?”

He demonstrated it again, that quick tap, that burst of brilliant orbs. He tipped it into Declan’s hand, and before Declan could say anything, jabbed it to activate it once more.

Orbs gasped up into the air. For a moment, he saw how his brother was caught inside them, watching them soar furiously around his face, each gold sun firing gold and white, and when he saw the spacious longing in Declan’s face, he realized how much Declan had missed by growing up neither dreamer nor dreamt. This had never been his home. The Lynches had never tried to make it Declan’s home.

“Declan?” Ronan asked.

Declan’s face cleared. “This is the most useful thing you’ve ever dreamt. You should name it.”

“I have. ORBMASTER. All caps.”

“Technically you’re the orbmaster though, right? And that’s just an orb.”

“Anyone who holds it becomes an ORBMASTER. You’re an ORBMASTER right now. There, keep it, put it in your pocket. D.C. ORBMASTER.”

Declan reached out and scuffed Ronan’s shaved head. “You’re such a little asshole.”

The last time they’d stood on this roof together, their parents had both been alive, and the cattle in these fields had been slowly grazing, and the world had been a smaller place. That time was gone, but for once, it was all right.

The brothers both looked back over the place that had made them, and then they climbed down from the roof together.

#long post #REALLY long post #i haven't reread this so excuse any incoherence #trc #trc meta #not really but?? #suicide / #declan lynch #i love my idiot son #replies #Anonymous