#on top of having segmented alters that carry so much of it themselves like. man. idk

[isa-ah]

big long bluhhgg under the cut lol <3

idk i woke up in my feeilngs this morning so i figure its worth like. talking about i guess. i havent really gone over this again in a couple years so like. yknow. my life story or whatever

so my mom was a kid when she got pregnant and bc of that my grandma took over raising me & even as my mom grew up and moved out i staid put bc as far as i was concerned, my grandparents were my real parents. my mom went on to marry a guy and have two other kids, who she treats like her only kids lol she has her family unit, i have mine, fine. whatever.

when i was a little tiny thing my grandfather was a truck driver. hed only be home once in a blue moon but hed always bring back the coolest little things for me from his buddies and travels. (he had a LOT of stories, about long haul truck driving, being a shrimper til his boat capsized and he nearly froze to death, being stationed in okinawa, all the way back to being raised by an incredibly abusive drunk who ended up blowing his brains out. he used to get all starry eyed in a way id never see him otherwise when hed talk about how cool his dad was, taking him as a young boy to all the local bars. hm.)

my grandmother had a plethora of stories to the same. her parents were both prisoners of war; my great grandmother would tell me about eating snails off the toilets for nourishment while she was in the concentration camps, and my great grandfather idealized the american soldiers that liberated them so greatly he ripped his family up and moved to america the moment they were freed. they would eat hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner nearly every night "like a real american family." they had two kids together- my grandma, and her little brother.

her father enlisted in the american military when they landed here and so she was an army brat. she never got to set down roots really, and was deeply bullied by her peers and beaten to the point of having scars to show me in her late fifties. shed detail the horrible things he did to her, and how it pushed her to sitting in a bathtub alone one night, trying to slit her wrists when a warmth brushed up her back and asked gently against her ear; who do you think will have to clean this up? and after realizing it would be her little brother, she picked herself up and marched on.

(its funny. at one of my lowest points i had nearly the same experience.)

her father would go on to cheat on her pregnant mother, accusing her of infidelity and abandoning her with the baby, my grandma and her brother, and marrying another woman the moment the divorce finalized. the children he would go on to sire with her would create a wide rift in my family of in-fightng and nastiness, as his children believed without doubt that my grandmothers little sister was a bastard and not one of his own.

(at my grandmothers funeral, her sister would confront their ancient ninety-something father, lost almost entirely to his alzheimers as he clung to his wife and cried, with a DNA test proving she was always his daughter. it was really bad.)

my family is known for that in fighting now. the hedrics vs the brodeurs vs the nothern virginia family vs the florida family vs the- on and on and on. always fighting, bickering, cutting people off at the arm. nastiness. its how i was raised, to be angry and cruel, and its difficult to maintain sometimes.

so on we go- my grandfather developed diabetes too severe to keep trucking, and so he lost his job. he sat down in his recliner in front of the TV when he got home from work for the last time and in that recliner he sat til the day he died. nearly twenty years, and id say he left the house maybe a dozen times. no friends, no trips, only attending holidays that were hosted in our tiny home and only speaking to people who were there to visit my grandmother. he would wake up around 9pm and the sound of his tv would blare through the wall of my bedroom until nearly 4pm when hed toddle off to bed. i still cant sleep in silence.

my grandmothers diagnosis wasnt far behind; breast cancer. likely from some hormones shed taken decades prior before the effects of such things had been seen. she was scared, but she was strong, and her best friend moved down from massy to live a couple minutes up the road and help us on the daily. his name was jimmy blackbar, but we always called him jimmy black bear because he was a huge man with a frothy mane of black hair. from then on, we did everything as a unit; every errand, every outing, he even joined my karate dojo when i was forced to learn self defense following the abduction of a local girl.

and on life went. doctors appointments, whispered conversations, attending every susan g komen for the cure event in a wide radius around where we lived. we volunteered relentlessly; my grandmother wearing the "survivor" shirts, and me, a tiny thing in third or fourth grade, pushing her wheelchair and wearing the "caretaker" shirt. jimmy always in tow.

there came a week where we hadnt heard from jimmy in a few days and so, upon leaving the dojo to head home, as we passed his house i asked if we could check on him. my grandmother placated me, saying a man needs his space, and clearly he did bc he hadnt been at practice. just let him rest.

now, that was fair enough. while we did nearly everything together- even spending the autumn in massy with his mother once, arguably one of the most beautiful memories i have as my grandmother and i fed the koi out back then laid in a hammock for hours staring up at the orange and yellow canopy above- he had an explosive temper and had lost it frequently on the both of us. i loved him, but god he could be scary, and hed whip shit at you if he was particularly hot. maybe that was all he needed then, a little space.

a week later my mom picked me up from elementary school and burst into tears in the parking lot. "its jimmy, baby. his heart stopped."

hed had an aneurism and they found him face down on the floor of his bathroom. hed been laying there like that for days, clinging to life; hed been laying there, even, when we drove past a few days prior. i never forgot that.

life went on. it felt empty without him, and i started living up to that caretaker role more and more. heavy lifting, picking, moving; echoed even in my late twenties with my crippling sciatica. every doctors appointment, medication change, every cup of coffee. i was on call.

"jo-bear." "lucy." "goose." "trouble." "brat."

like clockwork, eternally being called up. can you do the dishes? laundry? sweep, mop? can you get this for me? can you help me? can you get my meds? and the less enjoyable; my shingles are flaring, can you put this on there? my drainage tubes are clogged, can you help me flush them? my port needs to be accessed, can you administer this?

why, you ask, would a 13 year old be well versed in clearing, accessing, and administering to a port in their grandmothers chest? well, easy. the nurses we paid to drive well out into the boonies to do it for us said it was too far. it fucked up their schedules. it was a waste of gas. and so they looked around at our home, tiny, with only a woodstove for heating, nicotine dripping down the walls and bare cabinets and pantry, and then they looked at me and asked; do you want to know how to do this instead? and dutiful, because i was a caregiver, because thats what everyone told me, i learned.

being poor is hard. being poor and sick is impossible. the cost of chemo, radiation, insulin, the gas to drive back and forth nearly five hours round trip to visit the hospitals, the doctors- we would only go grocery shopping once a month. my grandmother got social security and my grandfather got disability. wed bundle up what money we could and drive out to the nearest city to buy staples in bulk and pray. it meant i spent most of my childhood eating cereal for meals, or scraping together mayo on bread, or just outright nursing ketchup. i honestly can only remember maybe three instances of my grandmother cooking for me, cooking her special mac n cheese, and my mother told me years later that she always wondered how i got enough to eat.

the local food bank helped, i guess. a small church in town would gather the things the stores were about to throw away, like expired or moldy produce and bread, and then lay it out on the tables and have us all stand around them with our hands at the ready. theyd count down, then call "go!" and we would scramble to gather up anything we could reach to take home. it only happened once a month, so we tried to make the best of it.

after years of battling, my grandmother finally got the formal title of "remission." shed done it! it wasnt easy; there was mishap after mishap, infections, complications, her chest was a mutilated plane of ridges and folds that had at one point burst open and sprayed blood across the bathroom mirror as she screamed my name and sobbed for my grandfather. but finally, she was in remission.

for a few months, anyway. she began to grow uneasy, asking doctors for advice, for scans, because she could feel it encroaching. they all told her she had no insurance and was just paranoid from her battle. it took her months to finally find a doctor that took her seriously enough to humor a scan, and by then the cancer was everywhere. her ribs, her spine, her skull; it was everywhere.

the only person who took the news harder than her was my grandfather. he didnt want to watch her die, so he decided to do everything in his power short of killing himself to make sure he died first. his insulin shots were regular, but his sugar intake was not. he refused physical therapy, stopped going to his doctors appointments, and left our house to smell like the decomposition of human flesh as his feet began to rot.

"rot" sounds like a strong word. the decay was really happening; dry and wet gangreen, his toe coming off in my grandmothers hand at the lightest tug, and an extended hospital stay in which he was deeply deeply lucky not to succumb to sepsis. it was bad. but he was alive.

my mental health had at this point deteriorated to such a point i wasnt sleeping anymore. my grandmother was put on ambien, and as such began sundowning; wandering the house like a brittle confused ghost of a woman. she had dropped weight as she went back on chemo, rapidly dipping from 300lbs down to nearly scraping the bottom of 100lbs. she was shaped like a paper doll by then, wide from the front but she would turn to the side and disappear. i could hold my elbows around her. her head was bald and her feet were cold. she had a soft spot on the top of her skull that malformed her head where the radiation had eaten away the bone alongside the cancer. the knot on her forehead persisted.

she would never recall what she did at night, and while at the time i was indignant- i wasnt sleeping because she would call in a slurred haze to cancel taxis that werent due for several more hours but she thought had never shown up at all for doctors appointments she needed; she would fumble with the locks trying to wander out into the snow in the middle of the night, confused; she would yell my aunts name at me and berate me for trying to coax her back to bed; she would pull down what meager things we had in the kitchen and slurry them, ruin them, then blame me come morning; or, worst of all, she would simply find a place to stand. at the oven, by the small yellow light of its hood, staring into space for hours unresponsive- how dare she not remember how hard i had to work, how tired i was trying to keep her safe, and blame me for it too? it wasnt until reflection years later that i realized her denial was probably born of fear.

the ambien was my own waking nightmare, but it wasnt the worst of it. with my grandfathers rotten feet and my grandmothers mindless stumbling, falls were frequent. i had to be alert. i had to be ready. i never know when one of them would fall wrong and crack their head open on a corner. the mental image is as potent to me now as it was as a child, terrified in the half second of bone chilling silence that would come between the staggering of someones steps and the thundering peels of a body clattering sprawled across the floor. id be up and out of my room in a heartbeat to help, lifting people bigger than myself on pure adrenaline alone back to their seats so i could assess them.

the emergency squad, as you can imagine, was well acquainted with us. most falls had to be documented at least, hospitalized at worst, and so they would begin to come out every few months- then weeks- then days. they knew all of our pets by name. they regarded me with warm sadness. i think they must have said something to my grandfather, as in the thick of it hed tried to pack me up and throw me out. "this isnt a place for children," but if i left theyd have no one left. who would pick them up? check their medication? call the doctors, the emergency line, the taxis? who would make their coffee?

and so stubbornly i staid. i was a caregiver, after all, i was trained by the nurses and professionals who couldnt be bothered. i had to stay. i had to stay. i had to stay.

i stopped spending time with any of my friends beyond taylor. i stopped sleeping over with family. i stopped making day trips. eventually, around 13, i dropped out of school entirely.

i was falling asleep at my desk every day, horrified every bus ride home that id walk in to blood and gore and death. i was too distracted to learn anything and too afraid to really enjoy myself anyway. school wasnt an escape anymore when i was needed so desperately at home.

and so i stopped leaving the house really altogether, unless it was to go somewhere with them or to visit taylor (my rock). id thought at the time that her mother was my saving grace, the only adult in the world who understood me, who would drop everything to help me. i found out later that she hated me, and only did it to martyr herself to her peers and daughter.

as my grandmothers health declined over my teenage years, my grandfather became more erratic. he would throw fits, thundering around the house, slamming shit and crying, yelling at me because, "i'm dying too! im dying and nobody CARES! im dying and no one will even MISS ME!" as i sobbed and tried to reassure him. "my WIFE is DYING and theres NOTHING I CAN DO!"

and at the other end of things, my grandmother; wailing behind locked doors that my grandfather didnt love her anymore, that she was hideous, mutilated, she wasnt a woman anymore nevermind a human at all. i would lay against the door and beg her to unlock it so i could hug her, hold her, promise her that wasnt true. she never did let me in.

and so on life went. winters were always the hardest; we only had a woodstove, so my room was nearly perpetually the outdoor temperature. id sleep bundled in layers, wearing three pairs of socks to try to keep the frigid ache out of my feet, bundled up right up to a hat and hood over my head buried under three blankets to try to keep in some of the heat. it only worked so well when i was up and down all night anyway, looking after them. my grandmother was so withered she hardly produced her own heat anymore, and my grandfather had lost all feeling in his feet; often, hed find, they were resting against the broad side of the fireplace and burning, or the dogs were chewing on them. it was bleak.

now, throughout all of this i had tried my best to stay positive. id been raised in a southern baptist church that i had, at the height of my faith, been visiting four or five times a week. if anyone was going to help me save my grandparents, to be a good caregiver, it would be god right? even if no one else on the planet gave a shit, at least he would, right? at least, so long as i was good, and pure, and holy. no drugs, no alcohol, no self exploration, no expressions of sexuality- nothing. i did absolutely nothing, but try to focus on being a good christian and taking care of my grandparents.

at least, until the tension between my desperate dysphoria and my faith hit a breaking point when a gay couple joined our church and the pastor threw his sermon out the window to preach hellfire and death to faggots. they left in tears in the middle of the sermon and i was spun out and listless thereafter.

i dont honestly remember much from the time i dropped out until nearly 18. i was accused often and loudly of being a drug addicted whore, a liar, a slut, of being inappropriate with my grandfather, with my brothers, entirely baselessly, all thrown at me as a confused and hurt child by my family. it was my first real point of contention with my identity. while id gotten away with looking entirely ambiguous and using male names, male haircuts, male clothes, male interests and male friends to soothe my permeating wrongness at being called a girl, puberty was not kind to me. and with the unease over my gender and sexuality with seemingly no out (as who in a small christian town would have informed me of trans mens existence?), and with the deeply seeded feeling of utter failure as a caregiver whos patients were dying in front of them, and with the loss of my faith that had taught me near lethal levels of self hatred, i had no idea who i was anymore. no name felt right. no role. no place. i was nothing and no one.

and then my grandma died.

it wasnt a surprise. shed been declared "dying" twice before, and had survived. and while shed finally been moved to live with her son as he was right up the road from the hospital a good two and a half hours from us, and had been formally enrolled in hospice, and had withered into the skeletal apparition of a woman, i dont know how serious any of us could take the finality of her, once more, being declared "dying." she wouldnt live to see sunday. it was wednesday.

we went to visit her that day. she lay near motionless in bed, her voice soft and airy. id felt sick, nauseous, unsure of what to even do with myself. i laid with her. i held her. i told her how much i loved her. but the reality of it just kept bouncing off of me. i said my goodbyes, temporarily, until we visited again on saturday- i told her wed be back soon. and i walked out to the living room.

my mom and uncle talked a while longer, and so a good fifteen minutes had elapsed before we turned to actually leave. from her room down the hall i heard her calling. "i love you." and i was so exhausted, so callous in that moment, that from the living room i called back, "i love you too!" rather than taking that opportunity to see her one last time. we were coming back after all.

well. we didnt make it in time.

my grandfather had been hospitalized for the last week or so nearby, and his visit the night before ours hed told her gently, kindly, that she didnt have to keep holding on. it was okay to let go. wed be okay. and so she had, only a few hours after he left. i never got to see her again- she was cremated too soon after.

i have never, never forgiven myself for that. for not going back to see her when she called to me. i had no idea then what it would mean for her to truly die. to never see her, hear her, speak to her, hold her again. never. i didnt know any better.

my grandfather didnt find out until twelve hours later. my grandmother died november fourth, 2014, at around 4am. we visited him in the hospital as a family that same day, around 4pm, after wed all figured out what to say. when he saw us walk in the door, grim and pale and together, hed started hitching as if to vomit or sob or both before anyone had said a word.

after they told him he screamed at us, berated us, why would we wait so long to tell him? why wasnt he there for her? why didnt we call? and as he screamed his kids left one by one until it was only me at his bedside as he broke down. i held him in my arms as he wracked sobs and spit and sweat into the crook of my neck and clutched my shirt like he was a dying man himself.

i spent hours in bed with him, and every nurse, and every doctor who came through to check on us thereafter, and every aid at the nursing home he was sent to recover in received the same monotone greeting; "my name is roland brodeur, and my wife is dead."

i was alone for the week after. i didnt know what to think, or feel. relief, more than anything, at the time. it hd been so hard for so long to try to keep her together, keep myself together, keep our family together; no longer did i need to be up every night to make sure she wasnt hurt. no more wailing and vommitting in the bathroom. no more port flushes, or bandages, or wigs, or hair chunks in the food, or laughter, or her smokers cough, or the way shed say my name, or,

my grandfather successfully broke himself out of that nursing home three times in the week thereafter. only once did he reach the street without falling, and while he had no idea how to get home, he began walking anyway. they caught him, of course, but he was discharged soon after.

and so it was the two of us. wed never been exceedingly close, but without my grandmothers boisterous personality to fill the quiet crevices we began to spend more time together. it was slow; her memorial service was very very hard on us as i, 17, had tried to play host to people twice or thrice my age, and hed refused to come then changed his mind too late and missed it entirely; but we began to spend nearly all of our time together in the living room.

finally, for the first time in my life, he began to take his health seriously. she was dead, and he was alive, and i was still here. so our diets shifted, and he began attending his doctors appointments and bringing home small items for his physical therapy. we were going to be okay.

i turned 18 that december. the holidays were solemn; i was driven out to my aunts where my grandfather had promised to soon follow, but he never showed up. i spent christmas crying to myself, surrounded by family, and he spent it alone in our tiny rotting house.

come new years eve, he, taylor and i sat around trying to enjoy ourselves. this would be a fresh start. this would be a clean late. a month out from her death, maybe we could recover. taylor went to bed, he staid at his post in front of the tv, and i found things to occupy myself until i got tired enough to sleep. (it was hard, sleeping).

come 4am, i crossed the hall to get ready for bed and to say my goodnights to my grandfather. even at a distance though, i could tell something was wrong. he was pallid, sweaty, head hung and eyes glazed. i rushed to his side, turning on nearly every light in the house in the process, trying to get his attention.

he replied in garbled quiet syllables. i called my mom. she told me she was coming. he had a seizure. i called the emergency squad.

and so i staid there, kneeling in front of him and holding his hand, promising over and over again that i was here, im here, im here, im here, theyre coming and im here, its okay, im here.

they arrived nearly simultaneously; bursting through the front door to see what was wrong. over the course of their visit they realized his sugars were off the charts and pumped some insulin into him. as the levels came down he came back to himself, his vision and speech clearing until he was shrugging off their concerns and even cracking a joke. the tension began to ease. hes okay.

and then he had another seizure.

there was a beat of absolute silence before he sucked in a breath and the medic in front of him dropped to his knees to check on him. he was okay. a little out of it, but responsive. thank god.

and then he had another seizure.

and this time, the breath didnt follow. the medics voice pitched up as he repeated his name over and over again, calling him, checking his pulse, his pupils, and as a flurry of yelling began my mom started screaming at me to go to my room. i was gutted, breathless, silent, staring at my grandfathers limp body as the medics swarmed back through the front door and began using the paddles to try to bring him back.

i did relent to my mothers keening, stumbling numb back to my bedroom to where taylor somehow slept peacefully. heavy with grief already weighing in my chest, i crawled up her body and fell face down and sobbing into her stomach. i didnt know what else to do.

the ambulance took him to be air lifted. they did everything they could. he was dead before he ever left our property, though.

the image that still stands out to me was of my mother. it had been with my grandmother too- id been sleeping on her couch as she paced through the living room, crying quietly into the phone, and as i woke up, i knew. and here to, she was on her knees on the living room floor, sobbing and begging god not to take both of her parents so soon. i held her while she cried and told her it would be okay, even if i didnt believe it myself.

its a long drive from so far out in the sticks to reach the hospital. the wait seemed even longer once we were there. they stuck us in a quiet side room, isolated, seemingly endlessly. my mother and i had been crying on and off but taylor had remained stony faced and strong for me. it was only when i looked to her, feeling nothing but coldness in my soul and whispered, "i dont want to be an orphan." that a single tear rolled down her cheek and nothing else.

i think in all the time this happened, taylor was the only person who ever held me.

when the doctor finally arrived, it was with the news we all expected. "im sorry," as he handed my mom a box of tissues, "we did everything we could. he was dead long before he arrived here."

he lead us to see my grandfathers body. it was surreal, to see him laying there, tinted purple and bruised all over. his eyelids were ruddy, and the hand id been clutching hours previous was like ice. his skin still somehow pliant, while his joints had begun to stiffen. i just stood there and held it for what felt like hours. my mother told me later he looked like he was smiling, but i never saw it.

and so. on life goes. my mom drove taylor and i back to my empty terrible little home and dropped us off. we milled around, exhausted, but sleepless. she helped me rearrange the furniture to put less of an emphasis on my grandparents favorite places to sit, as they were plainly visible from my bedroom doorway and the torment was endless as my head turned to smile at them every time i left to use the bathroom. it was awful. when taylor had to leave, i was just left there, alone.

i had failed as a caregiver. i had failed as a grandchild. i had failed as their youngest. i had no one in the world in that moment. that winter was bitter, and i couldnt bring myself to be present enough to keep the woodstove lit. the animals and i all froze for it, but i could barely climb out of bed. no heat, no cable, nothing to comfort me left beyond my own meager devices. i had the first two hobbit movies on dvd and so i stuck them into my xbox and they played nonstop on loop for months. it was the only way to fill the silence. the only voices i could listen to. i dont remember eating a single thing. my family just left me there. i was no ones responsibility, and so i would be no ones burden. as an adult i learned they all felt so guilty over what id been put through they didnt want to face what i would have become after that.

it was in this time the nightmares really began. there was one, one specific nightmare, in which i was in my house in the dead of night with nothing but pitch black outside, and i would run door to door trying to keep them locked and the horrible cruel things outside at bay. i never did see them, whatever i was desperately trying to hide from, but it was omnipresent and i was terrified of it.

at every turn the doors would again be unlocked and open. the latches would give at the lightest tug. the darkness would seep through the cracks. the only variables were my grandparents, like props- sometimes they were there in the living room, unresponsive to me as they stared into the television. sometimes only one of them. sometimes i was alone. but over and over again i had this nightmare, every single time i fell asleep. regardless of the time of day, of if i was sleeping or napping or just resting my eyes, i had this nightmare. and i had it for nearly three and a half years thereafter. sleep deprivation was my only solace from it, driven to such an extent that i began having prolonged hallucinations and severe paranoia.

my only solace was after the pipes froze and burst in our little cement basement. they couldnt justify leaving me there much longer, so my aunt told me- just another two weeks. if i staid in the house she would come to get me to move in with her. at that point i was so happy just to have an out that i begged my neighbor to periodically stop in on the remaining animals in the house so i could go stay with taylor until it was time to move.

my aunt called me LIVID when she found out. she berated me at the top of her lungs for disobeying her. maybe that should have been a red flag, but i was so consumed in my own self blame for my grandparents death that i assumed she was right to feel that way.

i got little say in what was kept when we went back to clean the house out after. in fact, i got almost nothing of my grandparents. to this day, all i have is my grandmothers favorite hoodie. somewhere in the process, the cleaning solutions we had been using must have gotten in my eye because the pain was bad, and the effects would be lasting.

living with my aunt was a nightmare. she was unyeilding; scolding and punishing me for not getting out of bed because the infection in my eyes was so bad i couldnt see and it hurt to have any light hit them. insisting it was my fault i was left nearly half blind, and that my lack of recovery was because i wasnt trying hard enough. (i was told later i had had severe chemical burns and infection that have left my corneas riddled in holes and craters, and severely light sensitive. all of it could have been fixed with a single doctors visit in the worst of it.)

and on it went; i had no time to grieve, as she forced me out the door and into terrible fulltime jobs. they became my only reprieve from her, as any time i was home i had a chore list of no less than four hours worth of cleaning that she would accuse me up and down of lying about on the daily. shed gaslight me, set traps, pull gotchas, until i began to believe her. i genuinely thought i was making up the hours id spend working on cleaning, that i was a lazy liar, and that i deserved the slow recession of any right to food in the house she imposed.

my most beloathed of chores was dishes. every night after dinner, of which i was allowed to eat less and less until not at all, i would have to come down to clean up after the families meals. her pampered chef knives were her prized possessions, and her rules for cleaning them were strenuous. the closest ive ever come to killing myself was standing in that kitchen, over her sink, with one of her favorite knives pressed into my wrist as the depths of sorrow and grief id had to pave over to maintain what she wanted me to do began to crumble.

the only thing that stopped me was the gentle realization that if i killed myself here, the first person to see it would be one of my younger cousins. that that would be something he would never be able to forget or move on from. its the only thing that stopped me.

i would go on to climb the railing of an overpass at around 1am in the dead of a december night. i was bitterly cold, having no winter jacket, a two hour walk from home, being punished by my aunt because the job shed hoisted upon me had kept me later than she felt like coming to get me. so i had no choice but to walk on broken feet after nearly twelve hours of standing, with no winter clothes to deal with the whipping icy winds, and no street lights or sidewalks to follow. i couldnt do it anymore. i was so tired, in so much pain, with only blame and alienation from my family. i just wanted to die and be done with it.

two rungs from flipping my legs over the railing, movement caught my eye. at the far end of the dark overpass was the vaguely visible outline of a golden retriever whos owner was walking it down the long road i had to walk to get home. and i thought, maybe, if i could pet that dog, maybe i could keep going. maybe id be okay. the road was across a wide flat area, prepared for development that had yet to start, so the visibility was a near quarter mile in the moonlight. and so.. slowly.. i stepped down and began to trudge on.

yet, when i reached the end of the overpass, they were nowhere to be seen. there was nowhere to go, mind you, but forward; there were cliffs to either side of the overpass that went down into the highway, and then this single stretch of road forward with no trees or houses for the duration. they had simply vanished. i still dont really know what happened.

and on i trudged. nothing else to do but survive day to day under my aunts open hostility. i wasnt allowed to eat family meals, no, but then rules came about keeping my own food in the house. it would be doled out to my cousins and uncle if i dared to, and food in my bedroom was prohibited. the best i could do was hide a few cereal bars between my mattress and the wall for the days i couldnt eat at work. it was miserable.

"just get over it. youre bumming everyone else out." told to me, six months after the death of both of my parents. no one had asked me if i was okay in that time. no one had held me. no one had told me it wasnt my fault. taylor was the only silver lining i had. she was always there for me at a moments notice, she kept me sane, and god i love her so much. i dont think i would have survived it without her.

i managed to scrape by until i met Lo, the man im due to marry next month. this was nearly seven years ago now, but i still remember the nervous jitters the first time i packed a bag and bought a train ticket to make my first solo journey from virginia all the way down to florida to meet in person. id go on to make the 20 hour trip frequently, falling into his arms and having the brightest points of my life, only to be left sobbing and wracked with fear the morning of my return to my aunts home. it was hell. but i was starting to find reasons to pull through.

even if my aunt had outed me as trans and gay while i was visiting him, effectively burning my bridges with most of my family behind my back and then lying to my face about it for weeks after. my mother wouldnt look me in the eye. my extended family has never once spoken to me since. my own brothers wont come to my wedding because im a faggot, rooted in the reaction my mom had to this and how its grown nasty and dehumanizing since.

(i have a very strong feeling that the majority of the years i spent this way are locked up tight in an alter who hasnt fronted in years. i frequently broke down over depersonalization and being convinced i truly wasnt myself then, in a way i have not felt since. i really cant remember most specifics, but the cadence alone would give it away, i think. at the time i was too afraid to face it head on and define what was happening to me, but in retrospect im nearly positive.)

and so on i trudged. my aunts aggressions would gradually grow over time, until a night where id let my guard down around my brothers visiting us and shed gotten me by the nick of my hoodie and dragged me down my the throat to hiss and growl and snarl nasty things to me over an argument wed had days prior. shed blocked me from the internet and ignored my very existence in the elapsing days. it all came to a head with this interaction, a nasty game of parroting that i was lucky to have her, that i love her, that im grateful she forgives me for the things i do, and punctuated with a hug i was forced to initiate. when i told my coworkers the next morning, in tears, i was told if she put her hands on me once shed do it again. i told my mom the next day i needed her to come get me right now.

the day we went back to get my possessions was the last day i ever spoke to my aunt. she was purple in the face, veins stood out against her forehead and screaming wrathful nasty things at my sobbing mother about me as i tried to gather my things- thrown into a haphazard corner of the garage after id pleaded with her to just leave my room untouched and let me organize and gather my belongings.

my mother hyperventilated on the drive home, and told me through gritted teeth that shes worried my aunt may have been abusing me. i told her exactly what she had done to me, and she had to pull over to stomach it. a week later she told me my aunt was trying to get in touch and i should go ahead and give her a call. (the betrayal and fear i felt in that moment was rivaled only by my mom freely inviting her over to visit without warning me first.)

my mother would ask often when i was planning on moving out. she didnt want me there, that was plainly clear, and the raw edges of my recent outing didnt help. i was given a mattress on the floor in the kitchen, in plain view of everyone at all times, covered in ants with the cat box beside my pillow. my only reprieves were times i spent with taylor or lo, anywhere i could find to be that wasnt her home.

lo was already planning a move with his mother to phoenix by this time, as neither of them could afford a place of their own, and so i was invited along. i dont think ive ever said yes to something so quickly in my life.

phoenix ill elapse; i spent two years making a three hour commute to a job that did horrific things to my mental and physical health. my sciatica was so aggressively hurt by the ways in which i begged my managers for accessibility that they refused that i would often collapse off of numb lightning struck legs, scattering anything i was carrying. my longest shift worked there began at 4am and ended at 12:30am. twenty and a half hours. i got two thirty minute breaks, a single compensated meal, and had to work the next day.

tensions with los mother, a deeply traumatized neuro divergent woman who wasnt aware of any of the above, finally hit a fever pitch and over the course of a week we were rendered homeless, sleeping on taylors floor. while her mother welcomed us in with open arms, her nastiness was prevalent and constant. bitter and put upon by our very existence under her roof. we were kicked out later so her transphobic boyfriend would be more comfortable coming over to visit.

from there we landed a disgusting single room in a frat house in maryland that hadnt been properly cleaned in the years preceding our arrival. it was so bad we left within a month to move in with who would later turn out to be an absolute psychopath of a woman in a slightly nicer house. after a year of trying my best to be friends with her she turned on us, blew up our living arrangement, called the cops on us, got the wifi cut for a week, took all the locks off our front door so we couldnt lock her out & eventually got us evicted entirely. why? because i asked her to buy some food for her cats because in the weeks she hadnt been home and id been taking care of all of her animals (not that shed asked me to) theyd run out of kibble.

and that rounds us out to now. los mom drove up to get us, two years out from phoenix and a lot of self discovery later, were now out here in the sticks of alabama. lo and i have been together nearly seven years now and were slotted to get married next month, so life really has begun to look up for me, but man. sometimes its all just so fuckin much. i went through so fuckin much and for what? yknow? my family is still shit. i dont speak to my aunt, my mother and brothers refused to come to my wedding, my grandparents and jimmy are still dead, and so my entire world has been condensed down to a handful of friends- taylor, elliot, ofc my fiance- and really nothing else. i dont really feel like i have any family anymore. its a grieving process still, to accept that, loss after loss like that, but it gets a little easier every day.

& anyway if youve ever wondered why i have a system, i think it oughtta make a little more sense now. lol.

#in which isaiah spends 3 hours writing out the most boring story youve ever read in your life #if you have any triggers theyre probably in there somewhere! watch out lol! #fuck knows if this is even accurate my memories and perceptions of my life are absolutely fucked #did you know cptsd eats holes in your brain and ruin things like memory and comprehension #on top of having segmented alters that carry so much of it themselves like. man. idk #thats rough buddy! lol

[fugitive-96]

Business Secrets ( A TG/TF Robotization story)

"I'm in." Agent C thought as she entered the office of the TALSAR corporation's CEO.

"I know the target is in here." She said to herself as she searched through the drawers in the desk, before coming across a file entitled 'Product Rundown'.

Flipping through the file Agent C was finally presented with what she'd been looking for but was so shocked by what she saw that she missed a vital detail that would seal her fate.

"And I thought after being turned into a woman this mission couldn't get any weirder." That was the last thing she thought before everything went black.

1 month earlier.

Agent C entered his superior's office where he was assigned a deep cover mission to investigate the operations of the TALSAR corporation, who had recently announced their intent to unveil a new form of cybernetic technology next month that would 'change the world'. This wasn't the company's usual MO, they were more known for their various beauty products and cosmetics, so whilst there was nothing inherently sinister about this it was still suspicious.

Agent C was very dedicated to his work for the agency, he knew the risks and would do anything to prove himself, despite having not done much fieldwork. He was physically fit but by no means a big guy, then again, a muscled-up agent would stick out like a saw thumb on covert missions, little did Agent C know that it was for that reason he was selected for this mission.

He was instructed to go undercover as one of the models for TALSAR, who was set to attend a number of parties in buildup to the release of TALSAR's new line of products, however Agent C's agency had intercepted her flight but she was unconscious when they found her and none-responsive, leading the agency to believe that she'd taken some form of drug to induce a coma so they couldn't question her.

"In order to better infiltrate TALSAR, command felt that we should use our latest technology to disguise a male agent in her role, instead of using a female lookalike as they'd be easier to identify, so you will undergo a complete physical transformation into the model from TALSAR, do you accept this mission?" Agent C's superior asked.

"Yes ma'am." Agent C replied without hesitation, he was willing to sacrifice anything to help the world.

He was then led to a room with a conversion chamber in it. He shaved off his body hair before then putting on an elastic grey suit that was designed to compensate for the changes, with holes in the crotch, rear and two on the chest of the suit. He also received an injection that would make the process feel less painful, seeing as he was about to have his bones crushed and his organs rearranged.

Stepping into the chamber Agent C watched as a device resembling the shape of a man lowered from the ceiling and clamped around him, before it began to emit a humming sound as it started pushing against his body. The device was made out of a pliable material so it wasn't hugely uncomfortable at first.

It then began to start changing his body, beginning at his legs which started to slenderize as the material pushed against them, whilst also forcing any fat up to his thighs which thickened along with his hips leaving his legs long and slender. He then felt the material jab and tighten his waist as if he was wearing a corset, crushing his ribs into a smaller frame, along with curving his spine whilst also causing his waist to be sucked inward giving his lower half an hourglass form as well as a toned stomach and a generally slimmer torso.

The material then tightened at his hands and feet which shrank into daintier forms with longer nails, along with squeezing his arms into a thinner shape and forcing his shoulders to shrink inwards, leaving him with very thin arms and a generally smaller frame.

Several clasps then lowered from the top of the chamber and attached themselves to the outside of the device, aligning themselves with Agent C's crotch, rear and chest, each segment resembling the female body parts associated with those areas. The material that had been pushing and squeezing against Agent C's body was now slowly being sucked outwards filling out the clasps, making the silhouette now appear distinctly feminine. As it did so each of Agent C's features began to alter with them, his rear inflated as his ass ballooned out slightly, whilst at his chest he could feel his skin being pulled out as fat filled his chest until a pair of perky breasts had formed, his enlarged nipples feeling quite sensitive against the material. He could also feel the clasp around his penis massaging it rapidly, before he heard an audible pop and he could feel a certain lack of mass in that area.

Lastly a device resembling the outline of a woman's face clasped around Agent C's head with a hiss. He could feel the material beginning to crush his head into a smaller form, with his chin shrinking drastically into a smaller but very defined form as his ears also shrank. His entire face then began to feel numb as his lips puffed out along with his eyes enlarging, his eyelashes and eyebrows thinned and lengthened into a more attractive form whilst his nose also shrank. He then felt a tingling sensation on the top of his head whilst the material tightened around his neck making it thinner and crushing his Adam's apple, causing Agent C to release a feminine moan from under the feminine mask, signaling the completion of his transformation into an exact copy of the TALSAR model.

The clasps and mask released themselves revealing the device that formerly resembled the outline of a man now resembled a young woman, before that then released and Agent C's new form was presented, with the exposed areas of her suit now showing her various feminine features sticking through them. She took a step before she then fell onto her hands and knees having not yet adjusted to her new center of gravity. She knelt there panting from exhaustion and brushing the long brown hair out of her face before a pair of scientists helped her up and lead her out of the room.

Agent C spent the next 2 weeks adjusting to her new body whilst also undergoing a rigorous training program, far different from the one she'd gone through when she was a man. She learned not only new methods of infiltration and combat training, but also how to act the part of the model, how to dress, talk, walk and show off her body like the TALSAR model normally would, on top of learning new forms of seduction and interrogation. Before long she was more than ready for her mission and headed off to her flight to meet with the TALSAR representatives that would hopefully lead her to her answers.

Agent C spent the next few days attending parties for TALSAR, looking pretty and acting the part, whilst also discretely gaining as much information as she could on their upcoming product. She quickly learned that the model she was impersonating hadn't been told much about the inner workings of the corporation, all she knew was that she was to be the sole model used in the upcoming advertising for the new product.

After a week it was finally time for the party at TALSAR headquarters on the eve of their product reveal, and Agent C knew that this would be her last chance to find out any vital information. She got herself looking pretty in the special dress code that the corporation had requested her to wear for the evening: tied back hair, earrings, black dress and heels, all of which bared the words 'Product of TALSAR' on them. Agent C initially thought it was strange that they'd given her a dress code for the evening unlike the other parties, but seeing as this was the night before the product release and there'd be a lot of press Agent C figured that the corporation would want her wearing their best products to show them off.

After several hours of socializing and posing for press she managed to slip away from the party, not hard seeing as there were literally hundreds of people attending so it'd be hard to keep track of her. Having found out that the CEO's office was on the twelfth floor she figured there'd have to be some information hidden there, so she made her way up to the tenth floor before finding an empty room where she then climbed out the window and using her newly acquired training, scaled the building up to the twelfth floor in order to avoid detection.

"I'm in." Agent C thought as she entered the office of the TALSAR corporation's CEO.

"I know the target is in here." She said to herself as she searched through the drawers in the desk, before coming across a file entitled 'Product Rundown'.

Flipping through the file Agent C was finally presented with what she'd been looking for, but was so shocked by what she saw that she'd missed a vital detail that would seal her fate.

Inside the file was sections of a planned introduction speech for the new products, explaining them as being 'the latest in cybernetic service and pleasure' with outlines of a robotic endoskeleton being present.

"And I thought after being turned into a woman this mission couldn't get any weirder." That was the last thing she thought before everything went black.

As she was flipping through the pages searching for information, she'd failed to notice that upon entering through the window she'd triggered a silent alarm, but the file's pages were laced with a paralyzing agent that activated after several seconds of making contact with human skin.

As she lay there unconscious a group of security men walked in followed by the corporation's CEO.

"Nice to see she stuck to the dress code, set her up in the vault." He said lighting a cigarette before the security men picked up Agent C and carried her out of the room.

---

Agent C gradually began to regain consciousness, noticing that she was now fastened to a chair in what looked like the lower levels of the building given the shier size of the room resembling that of a large storage warehouse, with posters for the TALSAR corporation being plastered over the walls. There was also a large number of shipping containers in the room, too many to count along with a number of security men surrounding Agent C and the corporation's CEO sitting on a backwards chair in front of Agent C looking fairly bored, as if this was routine to him.

"I'll grant you the freedom to willingly tell me who you work for, even though I have a pretty good guess." He said taking a drag from his cigarette

"You really think I'd be stupid enough to tell you?" Agent C replied glaring at him.

"Well that's a surprise!" The CEO said rising from his chair as he set it aside whilst he continued to talk.

"Usually I get an 'I don't know what you're talking about' or 'I'm sure this is all a big misunderstanding', I appreciate the lack of that bullshit from you, but you were still stupid enough to get caught." He said with a smirk causing Agent C to turn red with embarrassment.

"So you're definitely not our model, that's obvious seeing as she wasn't even supposed to attend any of these parties, we just set that up to see who would take the bait, but I'll admit you made for some nice eye candy, and it was fun seeing how far you got, especially that whole scaling the building thing. I imagine your agency used some form of advanced surgery to make you look like our model, we tinkered with making that tech but decided it wasn't

where the real money was."

Agent C was confused by what the CEO was saying.

"Let me guess, you captured her, but she's been in a coma ever since?"

The look on Agent C's face was enough to answer his question.

"Of course she is, she was programmed to shut down if she was ever captured." The CEO said.

Agent C finally put the pieces together, the cybernetic products, the reason why they were only using one model in their future advertising, she wasn't going to advertise the products, she was the product!

"Shame really, her realistic synthetic skin was hard to develop, well at least in losing one drone we gain another." The CEO says whilst taking another drag from his cigarette.

Agent C then felt small needles retract from her restraints, jabbing her in the wrists and ankles, causing an immense amount of pain to irradiate through her body.

"These nanites work a treat, usually it's a bit of a longer process with the other spies who've gone through it, but you already look the part!"

The nanites released by the needles then began to travel through Agent C's body, altering her from the inside out, turning her veins into wires and fusing with her bones as they turned into the metal endoskeleton that Agent C had been reading about minutes earlier. Her organs too were being dissolved and replaced with various circuitry and mechanical parts. Agent C screamed in pain as the blood in her body vanished, causing her skin to drain of color and her body to turn cold as ice.

She threw her head back screaming as the nanites had made their way to her brain, where they began collecting any relevant information on her agency and then began converting the rest of her brain into a cybernetic mainframe. Through the excruciating pain she could hear a robotic voice echoing in her head.

"All relevant data collected. Preparing for full personality recycling and drone program installation in 5... 4... 3..."

Agent C's eyes widened as her look of pain turned to a look of terror as she screamed desperately trying to free herself, but only a brief robotic sound came out as she no longer had any vocal cords to scream from, only a sound box which had just muted.

"2… 1... 0"

Within a split-second Agent C's face lost all emotion as her head suddenly faced straight, her panicked look replaced by a stiff, emotionless expression with her mouth hanging slightly open. Her body had also stiffened into a more formal position from her previously squealing state. As it repositioned itself there was a slight robotic sound on top of her robotic movements, which was heard again when her head twitched and her eyes started glowing blue indicating complete mental conversion.

"Drone program uploaded. Commencing cover installation." The voice in what used to be Agent C's head announced.

Starting from where she'd been injected her skin began to take on a grey synthetic material that spread all over her body smoothing out any distinctly human details; moles, blemishes, even the faintest wrinkles were all erased. As it reached her face her makeup suddenly looked as though it had been factory printed on along with her eyebrows, the same with her hair which formed into one solid mass with printed details and slight grooves to make it appear as though it was actual hair, giving her an almost doll like appearance. Even the inside of her mouth was coated in the material, her tongue, gums and teeth were all the same hard material as the rest of her skin, with any remaining saliva evaporating. Eventually she was left with a dull, slightly reflective grey skin that was no longer skin at all, but a metal alloy designed to protect her from damages. A noise that sounded like a small blowtorch emanated from the back of her neck as a small section of it glowed orange, before fading to reveal the words 'Product of TALSAR' engraved in small letters.

All changes having completed the restraints removed themselves and with the sound of mechanical joints the new drone quickly stood to attention.

"Conversion complete. Drone 247 fully operational." It said in an emotionless robotic version of Agent C's voice.

The CEO's phone pinged as he saw that he'd been sent the digital files of Agent C's knowledge of her organization.

"I'll get this to my researchers. We're done here, make sure it joins the others." The CEO said stamping out his cigarette and walking away, not even bothering to look at the new drone.

Drone 247 rotated on the spot and walked over to the nearby container that one of the guards had just opened, the faint sound of robotic joints still audible through the drone's clicking heels. The opened container doors revealed it to be filled with drones identical to that of 247; same clothing, same hairstyle, same glowing blue eyes and emotionless expression with grey synthetic skin. Drone 247 entered the container and rotated once inside so it was facing the same direction as the other drones, before the doors closed leaving only the light from the drone's eyes visible in the darkness of the container, where they all stood waiting for their orders to reveal themselves to the world as TALSAR's latest products. The agency would never know what she uncovered or what happened to her, just like all of the other agencies that sent agents in to uncover information on TALSAR, and even if the agency did figure out what happened to Agent C, how would they ever be able to tell which one was her?

#tg #tf #tgtf #robot #robot girl #robotization #mind alteration #identity death #dronification #drone #dronetf #maid #fembot #genderbent #tgtfstory #fembotized