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#so here i am tired and unhealthy and stressed
girlgenius1111 · 9 days
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please part 2
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alexia x reader [the cover pic is completely unrelated to the fic except for that fact that she looks so incredibly snuggly here.] short little blurb post please... aftercare + conversation :)
You’d pulled out and shifted the both of you around so that Alexia was settled on top of your, cheek resting on your chest, waiting for her grip on you to slacken, when you felt the first tear drop hit your skin. You’d been lazily running your nails over the blonde’s back, but you lifted your head at the feeling, looking down at her. Her eyes were screwed shut, like she was in pain, and her lip was quivering. 
“Alexia,” you sighed. “Talk to me, please.” 
“Can you get me some water?” She whispered, not opening her eyes. 
“Of course. I’ll be right back.” You slid out from under her, pretending for her sake that you didn’t hear the low whine that involuntarily left her. 
You threw some shorts and a t-shirt on, one that was too large to be yours and headed to the kitchen. You returned with a glass of water, handing it to her, watching carefully as she sat up and drank the whole glass, before slumping back into the bed. 
You then dampened a small towel, and returned to Alexia to clean her up. You were gentle, and the water had been warm, yet the blonde still shuddered at the sensation. Her eyes were open, now, and red rimmed, following you around the room as you got her a sweatshirt and underwear to put on, handing them to her and gently nudging her towards the bathroom. She went easily, although her legs shook slightly, and you took the time to quickly change the sheets. You grabbed her favorite blanket from the living room, and when you returned, she was curled up on the bed, and she looked to be crying again. You were wondering if this whole thing had been a mistake, you’d misunderstood what she’d needed, and let her talk you into an unhealthy coping mechanism, when she sat up and looked at you. 
“Come to bed please?” Alexia asked. You nodded, sending her a small smile you hoped to be reassuring. Once you were on the bed next to her, she tugged you down, tucking both of you under the blanket, and burying her face in your chest. The hood of her sweatshirt was pulled up, and the only sign you had that she was, in fact, crying, was the slight shake of her shoulders, and the tight grip her hand had your shirt in. 
“My love, are you okay? Did we go too far?” You asked finally, scratching lightly at her scalp over her hood. 
“No, mi amor, you were perfect.” Alexia promised, pushing herself closer to you as if to prove her point. All it did was make you more worried; you were normally the clingy one. 
“Then why are you crying?” 
“I think something is wrong with me,” she mumbled, her voice thick with tears. “I do not feel right.” 
You teared up yourself hearing those words leaving her mouth, not quite sure what she meant, but absolutely convinced that it was true. Alexia hadn’t been herself recently. 
“What doesn’t feel right?” You asked, keeping your voice low and soothing, as if you were going to scare her away. 
“I am so stressed. I feel like I am falling apart and I do not know why.” 
“Baby, you don’t know why? You’ve been running yourself ragged the past few months. It was bound to catch up with you; being Barça’s captain and Spain’s captain? Coming back from a second knee surgery? The shitshow surrounding your renewal? That is a lot for anyone, Lex.” 
Alexia nodded somewhat impatiently. “Sí, but it has never felt like this before. I am used to pressure and stress but this feels different. I am so tired, amor. I need a break.” 
“Take a break, then, Alexia. No one would fault you for that.” 
“No, I cannot. I cannot.” Alexia said, sitting up off of you and resting her head in her hands. You sat up too, brushing her hair back out of her face. 
“Why can’t you?” 
“I am Alexia Putellas. I do not take breaks. I do not get anxious or stressed. I am supposed to be able to handle all this, be good enough to handle it all but I am not. I am not good enough anymore.” 
And there it was. The core of the issue; that Alexia, your perfect, sweet, Alexia didn’t feel that she was good enough anymore. If she wasn’t so upset, it would have been comical to you, because she was the closest to perfection you’d ever seen a person get. 
“Ale,” you began, but she cut you off. 
“Do not tell me I am, I know it is not true. I have been so focused on everything but you these last few months, I do not know why you are still with me. I am not good enough for you either,” she cried, though her hand reached blindly for yours, like she needed to feel you next to her. As if she was grasping at what she thought to be the end of your relationship. 
“Alexia, look at me please.” You asked softly, waiting until she turned her head to face you before you spoke. You placed your hand on her cheek, trying to prepare yourself for her inevitable reaction to what you were about to say. “You need help, baby. More help than I can give you. I wish I could say the right thing, and make you believe that you’re good enough, for me, for football, for everyone. Because you are, Alexia. You are the best person I know. And feeling like this isn’t okay. It isn’t normal for you. And I don’t know why it’s happening, if you’re burnt out, or the years of pushing yourself to the brink are finally catching up to you, but I don’t think you can solve this on your own.” 
She looked at you with a more open expression than you expected, which made you feel both better and worse at the same time. If she would agree to get help, that was good, really good. It also meant that she was feeling a lot worse than she would ever admit. The fear in her eyes was clear, and your chest ached at the thought of her feeling so horrible, and saying nothing about it. 
“I think you are right.” She said eventually. “I have been trying to fix it for months, and it has not worked.” 
“I’m really proud of you, Ale. I know this isn’t easy for you. And asking for help isn’t easy, but you did, and I am so proud of you. Estoy tan orgulloso de ti.” 
Alexia blinked back a few more tears, squeezing your hand tightly in hers. “I could not do any of this without you, mi amor,”  she said softly. She looked like she had more to say, opening and closing her mouth a few times before she shook her head. 
“What?” You asked, and she sighed, wishing you weren’t so observant. Or maybe wishing she wasn’t so obvious. 
When she spoke, her voice shook and cracked, like it wasn’t sure it could take your answer. 
“If I never play again like I used to. Would you still love me?” 
You hated how intrinsically Alexia tied her self worth to football. How she felt herself only worthy of love if she was playing well. 
“Alexia, sometimes you don’t use your brain. I would love you if you never played in another match again. If you never scored another goal, or won another trophy. You will, I’m sure of it. But I don’t love you because you’re Alexia Putellas. I love you because you are my sweet Ale. Who loves her mom more than anything, would kill for her sister. Who hates bananas but buys them anyway because I like them. Who cries when she sees videos of cute dogs, and who likes to sleep practically on top of me even when it’s hot. Who makes me feel loved every single day. I love you, Alexia. More than I love your talent and your achievements. You are more than enough for me without all that.” 
The force of the hug Alexia tackled you with knocked you back into the pillows. She held you tightly against her, only murmuring a soft and heavily accented, “thank you” in your ear. You hummed in response, settling into the pillows and pressing a delicate kiss to the side of Alexia’s head. It was quiet in the room for a while, until she abruptly sat up off you a few minutes later, an earnest smile on her face as she traced a finger faintly over your forehead. 
“I am going to marry you someday.” She said, so definitively that for a minute, all you could do was blink at her. 
“What?” You spluttered. You’d never really talked about marriage with Alexia. You were content to have her for as long as you were able. 
“Me voy a casar contigo algún día. I do not have a ring, and I do not have a plan. But I will. Just so you do not make other plans.” She smirked, leaning down to peck your cheek a few times. She was blushing, looking at you with so much love, it left you fighting back tears. 
“I guess I'll have to decline all those offers I have, then.” You joked, but the words were so choked up, Alexia only chuckled slightly, pulling you into another bone crushing hug. 
“Good. Because you are mine.” She murmured. 
You were pretty content with that, honestly. Being hers. 
-----
short but i hope this was what everyone was looking for :)
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dysaren · 4 months
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the best patient ✮ | e.jaeger
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MDNI-> warnings: afab reader, nurse!y/n, erenbrokehiswrist, cheater!eren, stoner!eren, dealer!eren, (pretend hes also a metalhead bc i love metalheads. and toxic eren oh my god its unhealthy), mentions of weed, blowjobs, hairpulling, missionary, cowboy, multiple creampies, dirty talk, eyerolling, tit sucking, hickies, pussy eating, cum swapping/sharing/consuming, squirting (cuz it wouldnt be a dysaren fic without squirting!), erens gf visits.
a/n: sorry im so inactive im actually so busy like all the time :( (save me.) anyway, enjoy this quick fic i wrote instead of doing my assignments!! i am a sucker for toxic,cheater,stoner,dealer,metalhead,has piercings eren. based on a scenario that i created with a character.ai bot ( i am ashamed.. it was a xiao bot.)
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"hello. im nurse y/n and ill be taking care of you for the duration of your stay here." you say, walking into the ER patient room as you scan my clipboard for the details of the person staying here.
Name: Eren Yeager
DOB: March 30 XXXX
Height: 6'0 ft
"weight, ethnicity blah blah... reason of hospitlization: distal radius fracture..." you read to yourself, glancing up from the clipboard to meet eyes with the man in the hospital bed. his long brown hair was up in a messy bun, he had tattos running from his neck all the way down to his arms, and from what you can tell, he was built, rather... nicely. (he was buff asf.)
the man looked miserable. he had swollen undereyes, and his skin looked dry, but still, for some reason you found him incredibly attractive.
"hello nurse." he mutters, clearly tired.
"hello." you repeat again. "im just here just to check up on you." you explain to him, sauntering closer to his bed.
you flip the page on your clipboard to a new, blank sheet. "i will just be running some tests, checking your vital signs and see how you are healing."
eren nods compliantly.
you take that as a sign of consent and start writing some things down on paper. "he seems to be doing fine...even his arms are nice fuck." you get distracted, looking at his arms, the way the veins pop out. mentally youre drooling. his fingers are long and thick, and there are indentations of multiple rings on them which only gets you more excited.
you flip your page back to the information sheet from before, checking the notes: "frequent smoker and sexually active."
"so it says here you are a frequent smoker?" you ask him, just wanting some sort of confirmation from him.
eren nods again. "yes" he whispers. "some nicotine but mostly weed."
"oh i see." you say, writing that information down.
"i can get you some. once im out of here at least." he looks up at you.
"im sorry?" you mustive heard wrong...right?
"ive seen you around before." eren explains. "at parties...you know mostly smoking. like that last one...you were with jean and connie."
oh. you didnt hear wrong.
three days ago, on your day off, you had went to a party with your friends jean and connie. they said it would be a good idea since it would be a chance for you to finally relax from your stressful job, so you relunctantly went. that was your first time smoking weed. it was wonderful and you guess eren saw the whole thing.
"you must have it wrong... i dont typically smoke." you explain to the brown haired man.
"i know, jean and connie told me it was your first. looked like you had a good time though." he smiles tiredly up at you.
you were taken a back a bit. you didnt know that the two of them knew eren. do they know that he's in the hospital right now? are they the reason he broke his wrist? where were they?
"i see..." you ponder a bit. "are they here with you tonight? somewhere in the hospital i mean."
"yeah. theyre here with my girlfriend too since she's the only sober one who can drive at the moment... they just went back to my place to grab some things for me before you came in. they wont be back for a while." eren clarifies.
"goddamnit he has a girlfriend." you sob internally.
"thats good to know." you fake smile, looking back at your clipboard. "it says here youre also sexually active... are you taking any sort of pills perchance?" you continue with your questions, trying to get back to professionalism.
"nope its all just me." he giggles with a coy grin on his face. youd hate to admit that his laugh turned you on a bit.
you finish up your report of eren, rechecking his vitals once more to confirm things. "okay it seems as though youre on the right track... it can take up to 6-12 weeks for your wrist to comepletely heal. otherwise, you might want to lay off the weed consumption till then." you finish up.
before you can leave, he call out. "wait.."
you turn around. "what is it? are you alright?"
"i have a problem with something and i just cant seem to be able to do it myself." eren tries saying shyly, but the look in is eyes seemed to be more sinsiter than you thought. "after all... i did just break my wrist..."
he looks down at his jeans, putting the spotlight on the constrained buldge in his jeans.
youre flushed. "oh..." what were you supposed to do in this situation?? didnt he have a girlfriend?
right he had a girlfriend.
"im sure your girlfriend can help you out with that."
eren's eyebrows crease. he did have a girlfriend and she was amazing. she did basically everything for him. so why now was he so damn attracted to his nurse to want to take a risk and cheat on everything he had???
he presses his lips together before speaking, "i lied. i just didnt want to seem like a pussy to ya." sentences were forming right as he was speaking them. hopefully it was enough to fool you. "please. its so uncomfortable..."
his throbbing cock was being compressed by not only his boxers but also by his black rocker jeans. it was true. it was extremely uncomfortable so why not relieve it with the cute nurse who also happened to be the cute girl who had been sitting with his friends not too long ago, taking a drag from a joint he sold to jean and connie.
you were relunctant, but then again, you could feel your panties getting damper. you walk up to him slowly, keeping your eyes locked with his. you sit down on the bed beside him.
he feels your soft hands on his buldge and from that he lets out a restrained sigh. "fuck." he huffs.
god, there was no way this wasnt turning you on too. eren knew that. he saw the way you bit your lip as you started to unbutton his jeans.
"how long will they be gone?" you ask, hinting at the group of friends eren had mentioned previously. "for a while.. my place is pretty from from the hospital." he watches you slowly pull down his zipper. "fuck baby youre making me go crazy."
you smile, finally releasing his cock from his boxers. he was hung. youre eyes widened and he lauged.
"too much for you baby?" he questions.
"no..." you whisper, slowly kitten licking the tip, tasting his precum before fully sheathing his cock in your mouth.
eren moaned. loudly.
"holy shit!" he huffs. "oh my god..." he leans his head back, grabbing your neat ponytail to guide you while sucking him off.
"ugghhfff!" you choke on his length, tears coming to your eyes. but you like it. it felt too good. at this point, your panties were soaking wet at this point.
"fuck baby you gotta stop or else im gonna cum." eren gasps, pulling you off from his dick. "cmon take it all off... show me."
you look behind you to make sure that the door to the room was closed. you look back at him with a playful look, pulling off your uniform and undershirt to reveal your cleavage.
eren smirked, watching as your skin reacted from the cold air, goosebumps forming. he reaches behind you and releases the hooks of your bra.
he sighed at the sight of your tits. they were beautiful. you were beautiful. he kneads at your chest as you remove the rest of your garments, underwear included.
you were fully exposed to him. internally, eren was freaking out. externally, he was entranced by your body, drooling a bit.
"eren?" you ask, waving your hand infront of him. he snaps out of his trance. "are you ok?" you look at him with a worried look.
"im ok baby. sorry. lets keep going." he says, rubbing his tip on your clit. he can feel your wetness and he smirks once again,
"you are dripping baby..." he whispers in your ear. "i dont even need to prep you..." eren slowly shoves his cock into you.
you were in heaven. both of you were. to him, you felt so fucking tight. he doesnt even know if youre a virgin or not. how couldnt you be? "youre so tight..." he groans, restraining himself from prematurely giving you a creampie.
you have never felt so full in your life. in your life, you've only fucked one guy and the rest had been occupied by your plethora of sex toys. but eren... eren was different. you were filled to the brim. eren could see the buldge of his dick lightly poking through your pudgy tummy. that made him go feral.
he started thrusting into you faster, sucking on your sensitive nipples, licking around the skin as well. he left mulitple hickies in the places where only he could see them. you still were on your shift of course, he wanted to be courteous.
"mmm..." he heard you sigh, smiling as he kissed your body.
eren lifts you up so now youre straddling him. he keeps his pace constant but you wanted to take control. so you start bouncing on his cock. he watches as your tits move with you, again trying not to prematurely cum.
"mmmhf!!!!" you try to conceal your moans, but it was so hard. "fuck daddy please!! i need more!!" you were being greedy, but it felt too good.
"youre bossy baby." eren laughs. he thrusts up, faster than before. "fuck im gonna fucking cum." you watched him gasp, bringing your face closer to his, kissing him with so much passion. he kissed back.
sure he had a girlfriend, but maybe now he's finally gonna break it with her. just for you.
"ah ah..." you gasp, feeling his thrusts slow down. you whine.
"shush baby, let me cum inside before i fuck it back into you." he moans into your neck, creampie-ing your cunt. you try not to scream as you feel the heat in your stomach release as you cum as well.
your eyes roll back into your head and oh how he loves the sight. yeah hes all yours now.
eren picks up his pace once again, like he said, fucking his cum deeper into you.
you scream before he slaps a hand over your mouth. "shut it baby... dont want everyone hearing how much of a slut you are."
"mmfgf!" you groan in protest.
eren doesnt stop his pace until he's shooting his thick load into you once again.
he's catching his breath as he pulls out, plugging your pussy with his fingers so the essence wouldnt leak from your cute slit.
youre all fucked out by the way. he watches as your face contorts into pure pleasure, feeling the band in your stomach snap as you twitch on his fingers.
eren shoves his mouth onto your pussy, licking up the mess in between your legs, tasting both him and you. he licks up your slit to your clit, flicking it with his tongue. youre overstimulated and tired. your couldnt take it anymore. you gush once more on his face, the liquid dripping down his chin and onto the sheets of the hospital bed.
"aahh..." you breathe heavily, recovering from your third orgasm.
"that feel good baby?" he says, bring his head up to meet your eyes. he could see hearts in them.
"mm... i think we're going to have to change the sheets." you giggle.
"well it was worth it." he watches as you sit up, making sure youre not in any discomfort. he rubs your back and fixes your hair. "you look beautiful like this."
"do i?" you say, questioning his taste.
he nods before leaning in for a comforting kiss. "let me take you out." he whispers.
you nod-
KNOCK KNOCK!
you glance behind you to look at the door.
"eren! its mikasa!" you both hear from the other side of the door.
you look back at him in confusion. "mikasa?"
he rolls his eyes.
"my girlfriend."
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linawritestwst · 1 year
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rollo x reader who's scared of magic headcanons (gn!reader)
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so. here i am, writing this HJSJDJDSJ. but i actually wanted to write something with rollo for a long time and i thought that i can wait until this event ends.. but i'm too impatient, haha. also yeah, if you haven't read the event story yet, these headcanons are full of spoilers!
okay, so i probably should explain this concept. you see, i know that this fandom usually depicts mc as someone who is 100% against rollo's actions and wants to protect their friends AND THAT'S COMPLETELY UNDERSTANDABLE, but one day i sat there and was like.. "but what if mc wasn't like that". what if mc was so tired of everything and they were so traumatized because of everything that happened that they became scared of magic? what if they even hate it now? you can imagine the reader being someone who loved magic and was interested in it, but eventually became terrified of it because of their trauma or you can imagine them being someone who found this world too scary from the start. also, they don't like nrc students that much (but they don't want to admit it) and pretty much get a corruption arc, so if you don't want to read something like that.. you should probably skip this one.
if you want to read something similar (but more.. uh, comforting), but with other characters, feel free to check out my riddle, leona, azul and jamil x reader who's traumatized from overblots headcanons!
warnings: a mention of a panic/anxiety attack, a possibly unhealthy relationship dynamic, mc's behavior is also very similar to ptsd.
♡ you know that so many people would go "i wish it were me" if you told them about everything that happened with you in this world called twisted wonderland. come on, you have a cute cat sidekick (who acts more like a gremlin), you get to see so many pretty boys every day and this world also has magic! why wouldn't you want to stay here? sure, you miss your family and friends, but also you have to agree that this world is more fun than the one you came from. you agree, right, y/n?.. you wish you could say that you do, but you're not so sure anymore. living in twisted wonderland sounds fun, it really does, but you never felt so stressed and anxious in your entire life. you wanted to help these boys, you wanted to understand them, but you didn't want to become their therapist. you have your own problems, you just want to go back home already, you miss your loved ones! and as you kept trying to help everyone and you saw just how dangerous their magic can be.. you started to get more and more scared of it.
♡ you don't want to go to nbc at all at first. you don't find it as exciting as others do and you agree only because crowley told you that you might find out how to go back to your world there. and you knew well that crowley is most likely lying to you again, but.. what's the point in refusing to go? if you agree to visit the city of flowers, you won't find any hints there, but if you stay here, you also won't find any hints. you're tired of your dorm and this school in general, so maybe going to a new place will make you feel better. also you just want to get a break from seeing crowley's face every day and you sure hope that you won't find another student to take care of there.
♡ when you meet rollo for the first time, he feels like someone who's completely different from nrc students. sure, you can definitely feel that there's something.. off about him at first, but he seems like such a polite and caring person that you stop thinking about it at some point. but rollo officially gains your trust when he says that it must be tiring for you to be surrounded by magic users all the time. you don't think anyone from nrc has ever said such a thing to you, you know that they care about you, but most of the time it felt like you were just being used and people rarely asked you about your own feelings. honestly, you feel like you're about to cry when you hear those words from him but you try to stay calm. it's probably not a good idea to tell him about everything that you had to go through, you literally just met him! and why did he just say that he wants you to forget about your problems while you're here? this.. this doesn't feel right. why is he so nice to you?
♡ you notice that even though rollo is mostly nice to everyone here, he definitely treats you better than other students. you don't know the reason, but you're not sure that you even want to know it. yes, you've been manipulated quite a lot of times in the past, but.. you don't really have any energy to try and "see right through him". even if he just wants to use you, for some reason you just can't bring yourself to care. it's probably because you find people being genuinely nice to you more surprising than people manipulating you. so for now.. you want to believe that he really is just that kind. you have some very nice and interesting conversations with him and you find yourself enjoying spending time with him like this. you don't even want to go back to nrc students, haha.. it was a joke, but for some reason your anxiety comes back when you see their faces again. hm? what did rollo say just now? it sounded a bit like "those magic users.." but why did he say it in such an angry tone?
♡ you really want to have fun at the festival, but you just.. can't. you feel too tired, everyone is so loud and noisy and you can't focus on anything. you want to dance with everyone as well, but for some reason, when you see them having fun together.. you remember all the overblots, you remember all the times you had to do crowley's job, you remember all the tragic backstories that you had to listen to. but before you can stop thinking about all that and join them even though you can't even stand properly.. the fireworks start. you know that malleus just wants to make the townspeople happy and you agree that they deserve to have the best festival ever, but also, everything is even more loud now because everyone decides to join malleus. they even manage to turn this into a competition. haha, nrc students never change, do they? you wish you could laugh about it, but for some reason you can't even smile right now. what is wrong with you? why are you feeling like this? shouldn't you find these fireworks as beautiful as everyone does? these boys are trying so hard, you should compliment them for their efforts! grim and malleus especially want to hear compliments from you, considering that they're the ones who started it, but you can't say anything nice to them right now.
♡ for some reason, it gets harder for you to breathe and your head starts spinning. it's probably because the noise is too overwhelming for you, you could try and go somewhere more quiet but you can't just leave them here! but why.. why is everything so scary right now? you're so mad at yourself for not feeling as happy as everyone else, but after everything that you had seen, it's impossible for you to see magic as something good. you can't focus on anything else right now and your mind is screaming at you, begging you to run away and hide somewhere, but you still sit there and watch everyone. but you didn't know that somebody else has been watching you all this time too.
♡ you find it strange that the only thing that you can hear clearly right now is rollo telling malleus that if he and other students are so powerful, then they should use their magic more carefully. you feel so shocked, you didn't expect someone like him to say such a thing. it would be normal for someone like trein to say it, he's your professor, of course he would be worried and he would tell everyone to be more careful with their magic. and you already had a feeling that rollo is a very responsible person so you weren't surprised when you noticed that he doesn't really like the fireworks, but for him to say something like this.. you can't help but agree with him.
♡ after he's done talking to malleus, he wants to make sure that you're okay and when he looks at you, it becomes obvious to him that you're not okay at all. he sincerely apologizes to you for letting something like this happen and says that he should have noticed that you're not doing so well. rollo helps you find a little more calm and quiet place even though that's pretty hard to do right now because of the festival, but to be honest, you feel more safe already because of him. while you're trying to calm down and you're starting to breathe normally, rollo suddenly asks you, don't you think that magic is too dangerous and people can't just use it as carelessly as those students did? you can easily hurt someone with it and not all magic users can control it, some of them don't even try, they don't care what happens to other people. maybe this world would be better without magic users.. no, it would totally be better without them.
♡ he wants to hear your answer and you don't know what to say. no, actually, you do know what you want to say, but you're not strong enough to do it. saying those words would feel like betraying everyone else, yes, you're terrified of magic, but you don't want all of your friends to disappear! "friends".. you don't know if you actually would call them friends if those magicians weren't your only company in this world. you try to say that magic is not that bad, but something stops you. you try to say those words, but you realize that you can't because that would be a lie. you have thought many, MANY times that everything would be so much better if magic didn't exist. it's not only because of overblots and other terrible things, it's also because you wouldn't come to this world if it wasn't for magic. this is why you still can't go back home.
♡ you still can't find the courage to say that you think rollo is right, so you end up crying and you keep saying how scared you are and how tired you are. you blame yourself for crying in front of him, because you don't want to make him worry about you, but also, finally letting your feelings out like this feels nice. you needed to cry, you needed to admit that you find this whole situation terrifying and that you want all of this to end. you don't notice rollo looking confused for a second, it's almost like he's not sure what he's supposed to do, but when you look up at him, he's already holding you in his arms. and you realize that you needed someone to hug you like this for a long time.
♡ when rollo tells you about his plan, at first you think that it's a bit too much. you agree that this world would be much better without magic, but taking their powers like this.. you ask rollo if they're really gonna be okay after that, especially the fae students. rollo simply says that you're too kind for villains like them and that you don't have to care about them this much, they don't deserve your sympathy. after everything you've done for them, they are the ones who should feel sorry and beg you to spare them. you still don't want to hurt them too badly, but also.. maybe you and rollo really should teach them a lesson. it's fine, they are gonna be fine, you're doing this to save them, it's not your revenge or anything like that.. at least that's what you want to think and rollo assures you that you two really are going to save them and that your intentions are pure. it feels weird to hear just how much rollo wants to change this world and that you two are the only ones who can truly understand each other even though he's still a magic user himself and you are a magicless human. him meeting a human, who hates magic as much as he does and you meeting a magic user, who is willing to make this scary and cruel world a better place for you.. haha, you two are basically soulmates.
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joongwooclub · 10 months
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in our world || j.wy
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synopsis: yn is tired of everything, and one person can make her feel okay. 
nextdoorneighbor!wooyoung x student fem reader [third pov]
contains: childhood friends to strangers to friends to lover, mention of ed, depression, health issues, broken home, unrealistic expectations, just really sad, fluff, comfort for reader. 
[See authors note at the end for notice]
The semester was exhausting; exams after exams, labs after labs. Not to mention the stress for academic success for y/n’s parents. “College will be easier” “you’ll have more freedom!” “You won’t have to stress about classes, you choose them.” all the things people say about college, yet never warn what comes with it. Never choose a 9 am class unless you don’t want to sleep, stress will always be there, you have to have a certain gpa to get into certain majors. Not to mention that if your scholarship doesn’t cover everything, book prices will be the death of you, and student debt..don’t get started on those. Those will follow you until you finish whatever you’re majoring in or if you drop out. 
Y/n was part of the medical field major, choosing it as a way to be helpful around the world and be able to take care of her parents, but here she is, in her dorm room, crying over grades and how life is turning out. “Can’t you take a break?” y/n’s best friend friend, Ningning, asked, a pout on her lips. Y/n shook her head and lift up her head from her desk, “Sorry Ning…I have to finish this essay. It’s the final project for Dr. Han’s class.” “You’re always working!” Ningning cried out, but understood what y/n was going through, “just make sure to eat and drink water. Please?” she practically begged her best friend. Y/n nodded, not wanting to promise something she knew she won’t be able to keep. Ningning sighed and left the dormitory with her other friends. Y/n was determined to finish the essay, and since this was her last assignment of the semester, she sat up and cracked her aching back, starting on the eight page essay that was assigned.
Several hours later
Y/n finally finished her essay, although it wasn’t the best she could have done, but she was tired. Tired wasn’t the right word, it was more burn out, she didn’t have any more motivations to try harder in her classes. But now that she was finished, she could finally eat and pack. Students had three days to pack before the campus shuts down for the summer, so there was much to do. Pushing her chair out of the desk, feeling light headed and semi dizzy, she headed towards her shared kitchen with her roomates. The fridge didn’t have much, some apple juice and slices of cheese, leftover salads and some of Ningning’s leftover burgers from her party. Y/n sighed and took one of the leftover burgers and went to heat it up in the microwave, grabbing a glass to drink some water. The day flew by fast as she was busy writing, and by the time she sat down, Ningning walked through the door with a small smile. “Hey Y’n! Glad to see you out of the room, do you want some?” Ningning asked, bringing a bag of store bought snacks. Y/n stomach growled with hunger seeing it, but she refused. “No thanks Ning. I’m eating one of the leftover hamburgers from your party. I’m on that diet before seeing my family remember?” “Ah..right..sorry.” Ning whispered, sitting down next to her best friend. “Would you be alright by yourself?” Ning asked. “I’ll work through it, don’t worry.” Y/n smiled sadly, Ningning has been her best friend for years, so she knew how Y/n’s family was. The expectations they pushed their daughter on was unhealthy, but what can Ningning do when y/n was raised to be a certain way and not be able to speak her own mind? “Well..you know you can always call me and I’ll drive those god forsaken 5 hours back and forth for you.” She smiled at her best friend. Y/n chuckled at her best friend and hugged her, “thank you.” she simple whispered. Ning just hugged her back and gave her a squeeze. “Let’s get packed then.” 
Ningning helped Y/n pack her things and suddenly it was the morning of the next day to where they needed to separate ways to go back to their families or whatever vacation they had planned for summer. “Thanks for the help Ning~ get back home safe, and enjoy your trip to Thailand!” Y/n cheered happily, Ning gave her a smile and hugged y/n again, “thanks y/n! I’ll send you pictures, text me when you get home ok? And don’t forget to drink water and eat on the drive home!”Y/n nodded her head and giggled. Watching Ningning get into her car and drive off, Y/n did the same. The anxiety once again rising inside her as she was by herself again. 
The drive back home wasn’t horrible. It was more of the fact she had to face her family again and stay with them for the couple months that her parents forced her to stay due to activities they “needed” to do together. An hour (more or less)  was left until she reached her destination, her anxiety rising again, feeling the sweat form on her hands gripping the wheels. “Do I look okay?” “Will they talk about my weight again?” “Are they going to ask for my grades?” “Do I have to do things around the house again?” many thoughts and insecurities coming back, it made her afraid, she never really did like going back home, and yet she went back every year. Something was wrong with her. 
Looking away from the road as it was a long stretch of just highways, she looked at her gas meter. It was halfway, but better safe than sorry, she decided to go towards an exit for gas. Luckily where she use to live was a market that had gat on its property, kinda like a costco in some ways. Pulling into a free space, she turned off her car and got out, locking her doors and walking into the market. Browsing for small snacks that won’t make her feel bloat, she ran into a much rather taller build. “Oh I’m so sorry.” she replied, looking up at who she bumped into. “Y/n?” the stranger asked, y/n tilted her head, “yes? Who are you?” she questioned. “Oh my god! I haven’t seen you since I moved, it’s me Wooyoung!” He cheered, happily hugging Y/n. It took her a few seconds to realize why the name sounded so familiar, “Oh my god, Woo..” she said, shocked, but happy. “Are you visiting home?” he questioned, Y/n nodded, not wanting to say much, after all she finally saw one of her childhood friends again after a while. “Same here, just finished my semester at University. What are you majoring?” “Ah..I’m doing medical.” “Smart girl” Wooyoung giggled, making Y/n’s heart skip a beat, “I’m majoring in music, dancing to be specific, but you know my vocals are top notch as well.” This caused y/n to laugh quietly, she forgot how cheery Wooyoung was, it made her feel like a kid again. Oh how she wish she can go back to being a kid, with no worries, a better life.. “Y/n?” Wooyoung asked, waving his hand front of her face, “sorry?” she mumbled. “I was asking if I can visit you later, can I have your number again?” Wooyoung asked, his face turning into a worried look as he never seen his childhood friend space out so much. “Oh..oh yeah of course! Sorry.” Y/n said scrambling to give her number to Wooyoung. Y/n looked at the time and slightly gasped at how late it was getting, her parents were going to kill her. “Sorry Wooyoung, I gotta go. Text me later ok?” She said dropping the snacks she picked up and running to the cashier to ask for gas. Wooyoung didn’t get to say goodbye as she was already out of the store and pulling out of the market parking lot. He looked down at the snacks she had in her basket and frowned. He picked up the basket and took it to the cashier, buying the snacks she didn’t get. 
Y/n was scared, She was late. Her parents always yelled at her when she didn’t do anything correctly. She felt like she was 12 years old again, getting scolded for hurting herself on the pavement instead of being reassured. Y/n eyes getting hazy by the second, tears threatening to come out. When her GPS announced she reached the destination, she wanted to turn around and leave, but she knew she couldn’t. She parked her car and prepared herself for whatever her parents had to say, so as she walked up and shakily knocked on the door, it was quickly opened by her mother. “You’re late.” she simple said, deadpan eyes. “Y-Yes I know, I’m sorry. I was getting gas-” “I don’t want to hear it. Dinner already started, go ahead and put your things away and get whatever is left.” her mother said walking away. Y/n just huffed and carried her suitcase up the stairs, avoiding seeing anyone else until she had to go into the dining room. “Oh you’re here.” Y/n’s brother said, getting up from his seat and leaving the room. “You can clean up my plate, thanks.” Y/n wanted to roll her eyes, “still a brat.” and turned her attention to the table. “Your sister won’t be here, she’s busy.” Her mom said, getting up from her seat. Y/n’s dad grumbled, “there’s a few leftovers. Don’t eat too much, you’re fat as ii is.” he commented before leaving as well. 
Less than 5 minutes and she was already pushed around and degraded, she was so tired of it. Y/n just nodded and cleaned whatever mess they made, having no energy to argue with her own parents. Going to her parents saying she wasn’t hungry anymore (she lied), she told them she’ll be in her room. They gave no attention, just a okay and went back to watching their more important tv shows. As she went into her old room, she collapsed onto her bed, just tired and wished time moved faster. She didn’t want to be here. She sat up, seeing the night sky and stars, the moon was pretty. She decided to get up and open her window, carefully climbing out to walk to the rooftop. As she sat there, she watched the sky and listened to the night life, the moon shining so beautifully. She wondered what it would feel like to become the air, or the stars. To not be on the planet as a human, but as something else. 
A bag being placed next to her startled her, making her jump. She looked and saw Wooyoung holding a goofy grin on his face. “How did you get up here?” She questioned. “We’re neighbors, i know how to climb ladders.’he joked, Y/n gave him a small smile and looked at the bag he brought, “oh you left these.” He smiled, pulling out the snacks she dropped. Her smile faded, “ah you didn’t have to waste your money on me. I’m sorry. How much was it?” Y/n rambled on, “Y/n. It’s okay, I bought it for you, don’t worry.” Wooyoung said, kinda sad as to why his friend was acting like this. She use to love eating the snacks in the bags, he remembers her clearly “begging” him to get her some of the chips she likes. But now as he stares at her, she looked like she was afraid of the food. 
“Is everything okay y/n?” he whispered, sitting closer to her. Y/n bit her lip, on one hand, she wanted to tell someone what she was thinking, feeling, and let it all out, but on the other hand, she didn’t want to be a bother, use someone for her own use. But the look Wooyoung gave her, full of worry, it made her heart ping with hurt. Something about his aura made her feel safe and okay to express what she kept to herself for the past years of her youth. So, she decided to answer truthfully.
“No..” y/n mumbled, before Wooyoung could ask what was wrong, y/n continued what she wanted to say. “Wooyoung, I’m so tired of living. It’s so hard. I keep failing my parents, they make me feel like I’m such a burden all the time, I’m not successful like my sister or brother, university is just so hard. I barely have friends, I mainly have Ningning, but that’s it. Every time I think something positive about myself, I have nothing. I’m ugly, I’m fat. I’m not smart, I can’t even lose weight by dieting, I keep gaining and gaining, even if i eat and throw up, nothing helps, I can’t even make the people around me happy; I just make everyone worry and for what? I just want to be perfect, but I can’t and it’s killing me.” Y/n let out, not everything being mentioned, but enough to make herself feel better. “I’m just so tired of living and not being acknowledge. I mean I’m working so hard, but why can’t anyone else see it?” she cried softly, tears flowing onto her cheeks. She hasn’t vent to someone like this before, not even Ningning, because she didn’t want to be a bother to anyone, and here she is, dumping it onto Wooyoung. 
Wooyoung was silent, and all y/n can think about how bad she messed up everything. What she didn’t expect was Wooyoung to hug her tightly. He didn’t say anything, because he knew sometimes listening was better than saying anything. Y/n cried into his chest, his shirt being sightly damped but he didn’t care. He was worried for his friend, and he felt like he needed to protect her and tell her that she wasn’t ugly, nor fat. That she grew into a beautiful woman and he fell in love with again. “I know what I say won’t stick, but you’re amazing, smart, beautiful and perfect in your own ways. Don’t be someone else because other people demand you to be.” He whispers. The two of them stayed in the moon lit night together until the sun was coming up. 
The cycle repeated each day until it became part of their routine. The two stayed by each others side for the couple months that were there, and now they had one month left. One month left to be with each other, one month left with y/n’s toxic family. Y/n wanted the time to go by, but at the same time, not really. Wooyoung’s company has helped her in so many ways. When her family degraded her and forced her to basically starve, Wooyoung would text and come over in the middle of the night to give her small meals he made, knowing that big amounts still scared her, but she was slowly recovering. She started to find happiness in small things again, like walking around in the park, meeting other dogs and cats on the street and petting them. It was unbelievable to Ningning when she called Y/n to ask her what day and time she would be arriving back to the campus. “You’ve changed so much.” Ningning smiled through the facetime call, “Who do I need to thank for this?” Ning laughed, before y/n could answer, Wooyoung took her phone and smiled, “Me. You need to be thanking me.” he laughed. Ningning laughed and joked around. “Well thank you handsome sir, make sure she gets back to campus safely!” Y/n blushed at Ning’s comment and told her to hand up as a joke. The three talked until Ningning had to go, so it was the two of them again watching the sunset on the rooftop.
“I enjoyed your company. You made it bearable.” Y/n whispered, sad that the time to leave was coming closer. Wooyoung nudged her on the shoulder and smiled at her sadly, “Hey no worries, you’ll still have me by your side.” He grinned. Y/n nodded but she knew the truth, she would be alone again because once she goes back to the campus, she’ll be in a hole of just study , study, study, and work, work, work. Wooyoung pulled Y/n into a hug, his face snuggled into her neck. 
“Spending the last couple months had me thinking..” he whispered. He moved his face in front of Y/n so they had eye-to-eye contact. He used a finger to lift her chin and cupped her cheeks, “Had me thinking about us. About you. My sweet darling, my princess y/n. The last few months with you have been incredible, and I have seen the changes you’ve made on your own. You’re strong and I believe in you. You’re going to succeed in your classes, you’re going to make yourself proud. If your family doesn’t see how intelligent you are, and how much you have been trying, excuse my language, but fuck them. And I know recovering is hard, but keep going, for me, for Ningning, for yourself okay? Your body is perfect the way it is, you’re not fat, and you’re not skinny either, you're you, the perfect weight that you were created for. I love you for who you are, and I’m forever proud of you.” He spoke, his words hitting Y/n’s heart, his words comforting her because no one has spoke to her in some way. 
Y/n teared up and hugged Wooyoung tightly, “Thank you Wooyoung, I truly appreciate it. You mean so much to me, and I know we reconnected for only a few months, but you make me feel so safe. I love you so much.” “And I love you too my princess.” he softly smiled, giving y/n a small kiss on her lips. It was just the two of them in their own world, with the comfort of each other.
authors note - hey everyone, long time no see. it's admin stacy, i haven't written in a long time, and I have not been in a good place mentally, I won't go into details on what I've been going through, but I guess I wrote this for some comfort since I don't receive the words that y/n gets in this story. But I just want to say, thank you for reading, and if you're struggling, just know it's okay. everyone's pace is different, and you're trying your hardest. Me and every idol group you love are so proud of you. Please take care of yourself, I love you
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floralcavern · 4 months
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All right I’m finally doing this.
Name’s Flora. I’m a gray-desinoromantic heteroflexible girl. This is my side blog. I write fanfics on there.
I’m 17 years old. I’m in a ton of fandoms, my main ones being The Song of Achilles, Percy Jackson, The Owl House, Wings of Fire, many different Webtoons, TBHK, and many others. I’m Catholic, so don’t talk shit about my religion to me, I’m so tired of it. From that one country where people eat way too unhealthy and likes freedom 👍 I am the embodiment of stressed and depressed, but well dressed. I really like writing and world building. If you wanna check out some of the stuff I’ve written, sort through the tags on my blog by putting in ‘Writers on Tumblr’ Here’s my Spotify account if you wanna check out my 200+ playlists:
I’m an Israel supporter and pro-Zionism. Sooo.. ya. I don’t give a shit what you think about me. But please know that this does not mean I do not care for the citizens of Palestine. The real threat is Hamas.
My opinion on the IDF (because it’s a lot more complex than you think)
HOLY SHIT PLEASE SEE THIS
Do you really know what it is you’re chanting?
Important
Important 2
Important 3 (extremely fucking important)
Important 4
Important 5
Important 6
Important 7
Important 8
Important 9
You guessed it. Important 10
Important 11
Important 12
Oh wow! Important 13!
Heartbreaking.
News on the hostages
Hamas doesn’t welcome Christians
Your antisemitism does hurt people
Fuck Hamas
ZIONISM. IS. SEXY.
They have security for a reason
Fuck UNRWA
Hamas’s war crimes
Al Jazeera is not credible
LET HER COOK
So much misinformation
Antizionism is antisemitism
Hostages
The side of everything that no one sees online
Your movement is turning into a death cult
Have it make sense
This is no where close to genocide
Israel has tried peace over and over again
But-But Israel hates Muslims!
I fucking swear, if I see one more person say the hostages were treated well, I will scream
I’m afraid ignorance is contagious
“The hostages said they were treated in well!” You are gullible as hell..
Wanna see some of the earliest ‘Anti-Zionists’?
Y’all can support the existence of Palestine without being racist toward Israelis
This is war, not genocide. Also, Hamas are liars
Get your savior complex out of here and learn to hold people accountable
Free the hostages, holy crap.. (t/w for blood)
Confuse them in their own bullshit!
Ignorance.. ignorance everywhere
You’re actually harming your own cause
The casualty numbers are FAKE
It’s the appropriation of Jewish history for me
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Charities:
Free the hostages
Uyghur Muslims in China
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blackjackkent · 5 months
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The Ebbs and Flows of Programming
I got a very nice shoutout from @vexacarnivorous the other day as part of their writeup of resources in the codeblr sphere. It made me smile and I very much appreciated it. <3
It also made me think a lot.
Vexa shouted me out for the fact that I offer free programming tutoring as part of my Twitch livestream - which is very true, and I welcome anyone requesting it. I love helping people, especially those just getting into the industry. If you would like to reach out to me for assistance, learning, or just chatting about code, please, please do; I am always available for it.
Anyone paying attention, though, might have noticed I haven't done my coding stream except when tutoring in a number of weeks or really posted much about coding at all. The truth is, I haven't really done much programming outside of work for several months.
I've been hesitant to term it "burnout" because it hasn't come with the hallmarks we typically associate with that word - I don't feel depressed, I don't feel resentful or stressed really. But really it is a flavor of the same thing, and I think as someone who prides myself on representing what being a developer is Really Like, I think this sort of thing bears its own round of discussion.
Sometimes you just won't want to code, and that's also okay.
I think this is a difficult thing to conceptualize when you are a new developer. In my experience, those early years in the field are full of excitement and promise. You have so many ideas and there is so much to learn and every bit of new technique or technology feels like opening a treasure trove. For years, I was the poster child for this level of enthusiasm - late nights working on side projects and coming into work with dark circles under my eyes.
And I am not for a moment saying that's a bad thing! Ride that enthusiasm train as far as it will go whenever it comes into the station. :) This is an exciting field and I love seeing anyone get excited about an idea, implement it, run with it, feel fulfilled by making it.
What I want to talk about, though, is the days when it doesn't feel like that - because you will have them. Everyone has them. Personally, I'm 34 and tired. XD Sometimes I go through periods where I just want to play video games and not think about anything after work. And just as often, the urge to work on a project eventually comes back - probably quicker when I don't force it - but it's really easy to be too hard on myself for those periods where the enthusiasm isn't there.
The reason I think this is important to discuss is that there is a LOT of stigma, spoken and unspoken, in the industry against people who leave work at work. There's the concept of the 10x engineer - a developer whose productivity and output matches that of 10 "regular" engineers, and who is constantly in the trenches. There's the vocal admiration for people who drive themselves to distraction, working 80 hour weeks to achieve their vision of some killer app, side project, or even their company's product. This is viewed as the apotheosis of developer-hood, but in truth, it's unhealthy - both for those grinding that way and those who don't want to but are stuck with the image all the same.
I struggle with this image myself. The last few months, a recurring throughline in my therapy session has been - what am I bringing to the world if I'm not producing project output All The Time. It's been a little humbling stepping into the spaces of young developers to offer my help, and realizing that they are full of that exuberance and energy when I am in a slump where I am not.
But what I want to say here, ultimately, is this, and most likely it goes for other callings as well - sometimes you will feel the fire burning within you, and sometimes you won't. Don't get caught in the trap of feeling that your worth as a person (or as a developer) comes in passionate, all-consuming output. The important thing, always, is whether you are doing work, or living life, in a way that makes you feel fulfilled. And I, for one, am proud of you (and learning to be proud of myself) no matter what that looks like.
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heartache-otbs · 1 year
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daylight - lrh (songfic)
an: this song is stuck in my head and i figured it'd be an ouchie fic so im sorry
summary: songfic, daylight by maroon 5 (first verse / chorus)
pairing: luke hemmings x reader
warnings: angst maybe? it's sad.
word count: 767
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Here I am waiting, I have to leave soon. Why am I holding on?
Luke lays under the cool silk sheets, your body close to his as he lightly caresses your face under the moonlight. He can't sleep.
He hasn't been able to sleep for weeks. He's been stressing about going off on tour, without you. He loved his job, he loved travelling the world and he loved his fans.
But he also hates his job, because it takes him away from you.
Tomorrow is the day he has to leave, you had fallen asleep pretty early, tired from helping him back and prepare. So Luke had been staring at you for hours, memorizing what your face looked like and touching every square inch of skin he could, trying to hold on to you.
We knew this day would come, we knew it all along. How did it come so fast?
Luke doesn't know why he's desperately trying to hold onto you when this day was inevitable, how could he be so upset when this day had been coming for months? Shouldn't have he accepted it by now?
He thought it was just yesterday that he came home to you, announcing that he could finally go back on tour after the pandemic. How happy you two were and how proud you were of Luke. There was so much love and happiness in that moment, yet that memory in Luke's mind has faded into a blue hue of hidden regret.
It's too soon. Luke begins having second thoughts. I can't leave.
This is our last night, but it's late. And I'm trying not to sleep. Because I know when I wake, I will have to slip away.
Luke has hit the point of exhaustion, he can barely keep his eyes open but he refuses to go to sleep. The moment he wakes up he has to get in the car and get on the road, you couldn't take him because you had a school priority that you couldn't get out of.
"That's okay," Luke had sighed when you told him that you wouldn't be able to see him off "you need to do what ya need to do YN"
Inside he was torn to shreds, knowing he couldn't kiss you at the gate made him not want to go through it.
So Luke kisses you now, soft kisses all over your face while you sleep, his soft lips lingering on your warm skin every few seconds as he makes sure to kiss every inch.
And when the daylight comes I'll have to go, but tonight I'm gonna hold you so close. Because in daylight we'll be on our own. But tonight I'm gonna hold you so close.
You actually cried so much before bed. Once Luke got in the shower, you lost it. You were in such hysterics that Luke heard you from the bathroom and came out to comfort you, tears escaping his face as well.
As you held each other, Luke kept promising that he was never going to let you go. That he'd never let anything come between the two of you, that he'd hold you forever if he needed to. He made a slight joke that he wouldn't go if it made you stop crying.
Was it really a joke though?
What the big thing was about the next day, was that you two had never necessarily been separated for each other for a long period of time. You two had gotten together right before the pandemic started, so you spent all of your time at each other's houses. Moved in together pretty quickly, he hadn't gone anywhere for work and if he did you went with him, because of the pandemic you had online school.
But now with societal normalities back in place, you and Luke had to be separated from each other. Something that you both would have to learn how to deal with.
You two really didn't know how to exist without the other one on hand, some would say it was an unhealthy codependency but you and Luke were just happy.
What would you even do without Luke? It'd be so quiet. So empty. You'd no longer have his comfort coming back from class. No more making pancakes for him on Saturday mornings. Your routine will be all out of sorts, what will make up for it?
You tried not to think about it once it crossed your mind, instead, you let Luke hold you as you drifted off, sinking into the last night you had him next to you, dreading the daylight.
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Note
Omg I love your writing so much 😭 can I request more mercy x Fem reader (gender neutral if you're not comfortable with it). Maybe smth fluff like reader is so tired from studying or smth 🥺thank youu
Awwww, thanks! Absolutely! Good luck to anyone in school right now! You're doing fantastic!
Rest Matters Too
Pairing: Angela Ziegler x Fem!Reader
Warnings: Unhealthy sleeping habits, feelings of inadequacy
Word Count: 873
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School is hard. Plain and simple. It's a little different for everyone but everyone finds something difficult during their time in school. Your education induced torment just so happens to be studying. Which is fantastic considering you have a big midterm exam coming up.
You had promised yourself that you were going to actually commit to studying this time. Winging it wasn't an option, not this go around. You wanted to- well that doesn't really matter. No. What matters is studying this god forsaken material and here you are distracting yourself. Again.
Alright, alright, alright. Focus.
You can do this. Just focus.
Focus and read.
...
...
...
God, this is impossible!
You rub a hand down your face. Ugh... Might as well check what time it is.
Umm, why can't you read it? The clock shouldn't be blurry. You check the paper in front of you again, finding the text on it also difficult to read.
You groan in frustration, thunking your head against the desk. The test is two days from now, how on Earth were you going to do on the test if you can barely read your notes?
As that train of thought continues to reek havoc in your brain, the door to you and Angela's shared room opens.
You hear her sigh, "I figured this would happen."
"Hi Angel" you say, attempting to fix your position to make it look like you weren't just beating yourself up over your studies.
"Liebling, do you have any idea what time it is?"
"Uhhhh..." You look at the clock again, your tired eyes finally focusing on the numbers displayed on it.
It was nearing one in the morning.
"Oh."
Mercy's voice takes on a pitying quality as she walks over to your desk, making sure to drop her doctor's bag by the door. She takes another chair and sits beside you, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear, a concerned look on her beautiful face.
"This has to do with your exams doesn't it?"
You sigh, no point in trying to lie, the proof is all right there for her brilliant medical mind to find. You wouldn't be surprised if she was diagnosing your problem right now. She was just so smart. Why did she have to make everything look so easy?
"Darling?" she asks, pulling your attention back to her.
"I just- I really want to do well, you know" you respond. Technically not a lie.
Mercy raises an eye brow and it's enough. You know she knows that you didn't tell her everything. She's going to keep looking at you like that unless you tell her. Okay. Okay, fine.
Tears well in your eye, whether they be from stress, anxiety, sleep deprivation, general frustration, you aren't sure, but that doesn't really matter does it?
"I just-" you pause, attempting to keep your voice even but it's hard, "I just wanted you to be proud of me."
Mercy looks at you stunned.
You continue, "You're a medical genius, a miracle worker. You dress up like a literal angel for goodness sake! I just feel- I wanted to prove to you that I-"
Angela shushes you, wiping the tears from your eyes and then takes one of your cheeks in her hand, the other one squeezing one of your hands.
"Darling, I am proud of you all the time."
"What?"
"You work so hard. You are working to make the world a better place and trying to get your degree at the same time. That is a near Herculean task, darling. I am inspired by you everyday."
You sniff, "You're just saying that to make me feel better."
Mercy smiles at you, wrinkling her nose in that same way that flutters your heart every time she does it. "I'm a doctor, that's my job. But seriously, I mean it. You are amazing, schatz. You don't have anything to prove. Not to me, not to anyone."
She kisses your forehead and says, "You are brilliant, kind and capable of so much good. I love you so much."
She smiles, knowing everything is going to be alright once she sees you smile.
"Now," she says, "We are going to get you some water so you can rehydrate and then, you are going to get some rest. We can worry about you studying in the morning."
"But," you protest, "I really do need to study for this."
"Not at 1am you don't. I will quiz you tomorrow, after you have had a good night's rest."
"Angie-"
"Doctor's orders."
You laugh, "Okay."
To her word, Mercy helped you study and stay healthy the next day, making sure you slept properly, ate well and quizzed you periodically throughout the day. You surprised yourself with how much material you remembered! And anything you didn't quite get right, you were close. Mercy quizzed one more time before you both went to sleep, to help you sleep on the information.
The next day, you went in, took the test and came out feeling very confident in yourself. You may not have aced it, but you were pretty confident that you did just fine.
You and Angela enjoyed a nice lunch date out, the doctor once again, incredibly proud of her girlfriend.
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Liebling = Darling
Schatz = Darling
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marnz · 6 months
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some thoughts about life right now;
i've been on a really intense project since late July and let me tell you, i am tired! i'm one of the few people at my job that specialize in this type of work--we are excited to train more--but for now i am just hanging out here preparing to trade one high pressure project for another for the foreseeable future. which ultimately is fine! even though it can be stressful, I would rather be doing this type of work, which is interesting and super fulfilling and matters a lot to me, than other types of work, which do not feel fulfilling and are actually pretty boring.
it's a little confusing to find myself here because last year i went on medical leave for mental health reasons and prior to that i was doing a very different kind of work, and when i came back in january they started me off with this new kind of work (which i do prefer) with basically no training from my supervisor. which is fine, i am comfortable learning on the fly and/or teaching myself, and i have both a lot of experience doing this and a lot of experience in Complex Projects, albeit in a different practice area. then i moved onto this project in late july. so like again very little training in this specific type of work but i assure you, nothing is as stressful as my last job was. and i do love this project! even though it's stressful! i've since learned that this is just going to be my specialty! which like...i am happy with the outcome but i feel like i sort of tripped and fell into it in the least expected way possible.
while thinking about it, i think i thought i'd only make it to this kind of work, this kind of project, by working hard--and i had a specific idea of what working hard looked like, what striving looked like. but i have been working hard for the last year or so, healing, learning, growing, recovering, all of it. and that is hard work. and by taking time to tend to myself, and grow and change and learn and heal, i became ready for this kind of stressful work. and that's not the narrative we have around this. culturally we have a narrative of self sacrifice and unpaid overtime and being really fucking type A and having unhealthy work/life balance, but as soon as I stepped away and said actually, i've had enough, i will not burn my life out for you, i started down a road that led me to doing the type of work i want to do in a healthier and more prepared way. and that's fucking awesome!
for now i am just trying to make it to the end of this project in mid october. which means coping skills, baby! wish i could write but i don't have capacity for it rn, and that's fine. so my priorities are: maintenance days (cleaning/chores). reading. knitting. baking. yoga. hiking. i want to make life as easy and cozy for myself as possible right now.
i haven't knit for several months and I'm thinking of trying my first sweater--this gorgeous sweater called Mountain Mist. however i've never done colorwork before so the pattern suggests doing the same colorwork in a swatch hat (here) to practice. i am SO HYPE!!! this pattern is also admittedly deeply my aesthetic. i showed it to my partner and he laughed bc it's so typically me lol. i also checked out the first book in Tana French's Dublin Murders series on audiobook to listen too while knitting. spooky season means murder mysteries. 🥰
also my work office is being remodeled so i will be working from home for the next 6ish months, and we're preparing to overhaul my little work corner in our house so it is better/more ergonomic/has more storage/is cuter. also i am going to get a standing desk for my poor knees 😵‍💫 recently worked from 8:30 to 9:30 and my knees hurt sooooo bad 😩
it's nice to know that a year ago i wouldn't have been able to handle this project or really know how to slow down and prioritize self care and after a ton of hard work on my mental health i'm now i'm like, well, it is a bit stressful but we got this. progress 😌💖
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meadowofivory · 11 months
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ana rules I've set to keep myself sane while losing weight and why they matter to me (long version)
• eat high volumes of food with as few cals as possible when doing omad - if I can eat so much I feel sick for a few hours but keep it to around 500 cals then I'm less likely to eat again in the day. as an ex-binger feeling this full provides me some kind of comfort so when I'm not starving myself, feeling so full I can't eat anymore prevents me from going over the limit. it takes a while for your stomach to get full from less food but now I'm at that point it's a lot easier to restrict.
• don't cut out any foods entirely or view them as 'bad' - I'm still trying to keep a healthy view on food even if I'm restricting and fasting a lot. life is short and I'm still trying to enjoy and look forward to what I do eat. cutting out certain foods entirely is also more likely to cause me to binge. eating a bit of chocolate here and there, and still enjoying foods like takeaways or sandwiches helps with cravings and stops me binging. it's better to just enjoy them in moderation.
• don't force myself to exercise if I am genuinely tired or feel unwell because of undereating - I suffer from bad asthma so it's already a challenge as it is and I'm not tryna pass out here lol. restricting a lot still works if you're a lazy or unfit ana or suffer from asthma and physically can't do a lot of cardio, and I can still get enough exercise and daily steps from everyday life and my job.
• when doing omad only eat whatever is on one plate - I use a normal sized plate bc I don't wanna feel like I'm undereating. this is my one meal of the day and I want it to feel like a lot and eat as much of it as possible to prevent snacking later on. but sticking to one plate makes it simpler and easy to not go overboard. as I already mentioned, feeling full to the point of feeling sick is the key to sticking to my limit for the day and a full meal is much better than lots of small snacks that never leave me satisfied enough.
• listen to my body - even if I don't feel hungry but my body is telling me I need to eat because my stomach hurts or I feel overly anxious or dizzy after fasting for a long time, it's time to eat. it doesn't mean I go overboard, I still stick to a limit, but it's time for the fast to be over. breaking a fast early by eating a small amount of food won't make me gain weight. I've learnt this the hard way and have other mental health problems and starving, as euphoric as it is, only makes them worse sometimes.
• don't be afraid to trigger myself if I need a reality check - kinda mean but sometimes if I get the urge to overeat I just go back on Tumblr or look at old photos of myself at my HW and it makes me feel guilty enough to keep on going. can't be forgetting why I am doing this. I've only just relapsed and I'm still fat so now is not the time for ed recovery.
• track all calories - even ones I feel guilty about, ones I think 'don't count' and ones that bring me over the limit. there's no use lying to myself if I've gone over, it just gives me more motivation to try harder the next day. if I think something doesn't count, like a small drink that may have only 50 cals, there's no harm in counting it anyway. the small things really do add up and the only way to see this is by accounting for every single thing that passes my lips.
• take multivitamins often - I don't know if it actually makes me feel better but I tell myself it keeps me healthy and keeps my mind at ease and that's enough for me. I don't starve nearly enough to be malnourished but taking a multivitamin can't help. also can't forget the magnesium supplements.
• no more than one 'unhealthy' food per day - eg. anything that doesn't have high nutritional value, like a chocolate bar. no need to waste calories on food that isn't helping my body function, but no use in cutting it out completely. everything can be enjoyed in moderation.
• don't stress if my body doesn't look how I expected it to - I have body dysmorphia and even at my LW I thought I was fat which now seems insane because that's my dream weight now. a few months ago I would've loved to weigh what I do now, and while it's not ideal, weight loss is a journey and it can be hard but there's no use hating my body the whole time. I still want to enjoy life and aiming for some kind of self acceptance is really important to me, even if it seems to go against the whole idea of wanting to be skinny fast. I will never really know how I look to others. I'm doing my best to change what I can but even if I reach my goals, weight loss doesn't guarantee self-love. I will always find things to hate about my body so learning to love it through everything is the most important thing.
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awesomefringey · 2 years
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Am I being too skeptical or Louis is getting too thin since he started his tour? I mean he looks too slim now. Boney even. Had he always been this thin?
I think you’re being too skeptical. Louis is living his best life and he keeps telling us over and over again. So if Louis has lost a few pounds along the way it’s because of months of traveling, doing press, performing, a messed up sleeping schedule which will take a toll on anyone. Yet Louis appears to be very happy.
Louis is skinny by nature, and I believe he’s one to forget about eating when under huge stress, maybe compensating hunger with a cigarette here and there (been there done that), but he’s far from being underweight and looking unhealthy. The vibes are so different to back in 2014 and 2016, when I believe he was skinnier than usual.
By the end of 2014, I think Louis was going through a very stressful phase. Around the time Louis and Harry tried to fight the bullshit a lot (“not that important”, “don’t knock it til you try it”, asked about odd rumors, not mentioning Larry, out of breath coming on late to a live show because of a little bit of banter), Zayn looked scarily unhealthy, so there must have been hell going on BTS and then of course the ‘Apple rainbow logo incident’ which ended in the ominous tweet where Louis told the world once and for all he is ‘in fact straight’. He definitely looked very fragile, his cheeks were hollow, he was very pale (ok it was November but still, this is our Golden boy):
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Louis’ cheekbones become extremely prominent when he’s losing weight. But here he looks mentally drained too.
Another example is the awful time around his mother’s death at the end of 2016:
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Again, hollow cheeks and just in general very low energy understandably so.
Nowadays I don’t see him heading into any health issues at all and if he’s been losing weight it’s due to the “good stress” that he’s experiencing right now. He looks so happy, he’s glowing, he looks tired at times sure but overall well put together.
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Not sure if I was able to take your worries away. But this is how I see it. 💜
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This is a vent, however I welcome ALL suggestions or thoughts. I appreciate different perspectives.
I have cptsd following an unhealthy family and a long and abusive marriage. I'm in therapy, I'm steadily working on myself and on building my new life as a single parent. My current partner is diagnosed with avoidant personality disorder. They also display MANY characteristics of BPD. (The two disorders do have overlapping symptoms, so do knows)
It is very hard to stay. Much of the bad times are very similar to the mental abuse in my marriage. It's hard to trust my own judgment and memory, and it's also hard to believe the kindness that I experience in the good times. When things are good, it's great! When things start getting difficult, I try to show care and love. They don't make it easy to do though. I'll do 5 caring type things, and it's the 6th thing I should have done that gets all the attention and anger. When things are bad, I am treated like the problem, I am snapped at, I walk on eggshells to keep things calm and then I'm snapped at for walking on eggshells. Help, but don't over help. Give attention, but also don't give any. Engage in conversation, but don't overwhelm and also don't take anything personal when the entire conversation is sharp, critical, occasionally explosive, and dismissive.
The weaknesses I'm working on are mocked or criticized, and then excused away as me making assumptions. And then I get depressed, I feel cloudy headed, I think the bad thoughts I have worked through in therapy. The bad times provoke me and then I regress.
Good times are great. We do things people do *together* rather than isolated and ignored as I was before. Displays is affection. Help when I need it and don't know how to ask. Compliments. Support for my personal goals. Support when I'm feeling defeated or stuck. Laughing, playing games, watching movies. The stuff people do with their partners that I never got to do in my whole life. So much good.
It feels like the effects of my partner's mental illness is reliving my past abuses. My ex did this negative stuff to maintain coercive control and ego. I was essentially a servant at home and a trophy at career events. My current partner does this with cyclic moods or following stressful events and when I'm needed for shielding. Their individual motivations may be different, but the effects on me seem to be the same.
I don't want to end an important relationship with a truly loving, carrying, devoted person. I also don't want to continue living my life on someone else's emotional rollercoaster. Loving someone with mental illness is hard, and I don't want to let the bad stuff ruin the good stuff. I want to better handle the bad times but I haven't figured that out yet. Being logical and predictable with a person in an illogical state is so hard, especially when I'm being blamed and nit-picked. I'm worried I won't figure it out and I'll go right back to the way I was before I left my ex. I want to work with this rather than let it break me, or break us. It's just so hard to see the difference between illness vs abuse when they are so similar.
I'm sad and tired and angry and fed up and sad again.
-D
Thank you for providing a space to vent. I don't know who to talk to right now but I need to talk to someone, or at least let it out. I appreciate that this is a space to do so.
I think that the relationship you're describing here sounds very toxic and unhealthy, and that even if your current partner is a genuinely well-intentioned person who is only acting out because of their mental health issues, that still doesn't mean you should put up with being mistreated like this. Because facts are that for these toxic patterns to actually get resolved, your partner needs to fully realize and take responsibility for changing their behavior - and if they aren't capable of and/or willing to lift that task, nothing you can say or do will make the relationship healthy and safe. So you gotta ask yourself whether your partner is ready to really, truly face their issues and actively work on themselves or whether it's time to walk away. Because there's no shame in walking away from someone who can't treat you right. No, not even if they aren't hurting you on purpose.
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feralwifey · 1 year
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damn those people were being so rude about the over weight person, like I am not one to promote unhealthy body positivity for either extreme body types; but there's still illnesses out there that exist that make it harder than others to be healthy. I also think a lot of those judging are younger than 30 and just haven't experienced the major changes with our natural metabolism. I am going through a little bit of a weight crisis myself, 31, always been average if anything smaller than average and the stress a child plus TTC more children, add that with sleeping issues and my metabolism is not the same as it was 10+ years ago! I am not even fat but damn I feel the fear and also I understand more now how it feels to be too down and tired to move some days.
Unless someone is posting about obesity being healthy or anorexia being good it's really not anyone's business. All those obese models for example they deserve backlash because they're using their dying unhealthy body to earn an income with. But some girl on tumblr.com talking about her weight loss journey is what triggers you so much yoy need to be disguting about it? Idk seems like a cry for help to me. Weight loss is hard and a lot of people struggle with their weight in one way or another so what's important is to make healthy choices on a consistent basis. If you eat well 80% of the time and you have a few treats or lazy days here and there, who cares? We need to be healthy for ourselves and our family and as long as we focus on that we will eventually make the right choices!
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smileymoth · 11 months
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ed / nutritionists/ sh whatever
I am so easily triggered by food talk its ridiculous. i hear anyone mention food plans diet plans calories nutrionists healthy eating clean eating intermediate fastign etc etc etc etc any food related topics and i just instantly shrivel up and want to end it right then and there. I told my mom can we not talk about food at newyears when i had a panic attack over grocery shopping and she still does it i hate it. I dont want to talk about food please let me be a trainwreck in peace i dont want a random healthnut nutritionist to tell me what to and what to not eat im already so miserable on a day to day basis let me have food i actually enjoy eating please i know i get mad triggered over food in general for fuck sakes i had a panic attack over a bowl of rice while my friend looked at me weird i dont need more anxiety over food since im already so picky and not capable of making food for myself most of the times. I knwo im a bastard who is unhealthy i know it probably affects psoriasis but have you considered that maybe being severely depressed also influences that. It only flared up again after my dad died it was gone for a few years already and now its back better than ever and now my mom is on my back about healthy eating and movement like mom im trying please leave me alone i already have anxiety over food i dont need more of it i really dont i really dont i really dont i really dont i need a psychologist not a nutritionist but i cant fuciifn have that i cant even have a psychiatrist i want to go back to collegetown already and ive only been home for an hour and 30 minutes i want to go back i hate being here i wish it was like back in highschool i dont cqre that dad was mad at me if i went to sleep 5 minutes too late or that i ****** myself out of fear of food bc i cant stand people seeing me eat i still cant i still freak out when i eat "too much" becqyse i eont kbow what a normal portion is i cant have a fuckinf nutritionist tell me what to do id actually harm myself over it bc id just seevmyself as an obeast lazy bastard who cant stick to plansbecause theyre probably all fucjign annoying white women who weigh 1 cigarette and a single grape bx theyre so healthy and fit and never eat sugar ever am i overrreactign absolurely do i care absolutely not because i am fucked up in the brain and i dotn want people to help me wirh this because i am slowly getting better with healthier eating and if someone tried to monitor it id harm myself i want to go back to my apartment i dont wanr to be here i hate how it happens every time i go home i dont want to talk about food i dont want ro ralk about health i just want to come home and feel happy but i cant because my dad will never be here again and my mom is stressed and tired from work and my grandma is chronically ill forever and my aunt is somehow even more paranoid than i am and is slowly losing her mind because she worries so much. I want my fucking therapist back i hate everything so much iwish i wasnt a mentally ill cunt with issues that make my mom worry for me. Dont worry about me just leave me alone leave me the fuck alone . I want to leeaaaaaaavveeeeeeeeee
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chaotic-tired-cat · 1 year
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Heads up i have posted!!! a new fic!!! but AO3 seems to have eaten it, which is unfortunate. If the link ever works it's Day By Day We Stumble On - Chapter 1 - Sandtalon - 呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Manga) [Archive of Our Own] Alas. It does not. I am dealing with the results of my own misplaced trust in technology by cross-posting the first chapter here so there will be a copy of it SOMEWHERE (deleted my copy after posting whoops.)
So, for whoever wants it, here is a tumblr-formatted copy of my terrible comedy jjk & naruto crossover where Shoko does exactly what you may expect given the title.
Summary: Every sorcerer has their own way to cope with the stress tremors quaking the jujutsu world. Satoru stomps his way through paper lines in shifting sand. Mei Mei-senpai draws new ones. Utahime cares for who she can, where she can, to keep from being buried. Nanami makes his peace. None of these methods are wrong, but they don't fit Shoko. She is tired, overworked, and so used to a life judged by the service she provides that she can't imagine functioning without it. Satoru's brother is familiar with the concept.
Friendship can look like two people sitting in a tub of misery, side by side. It works for them.
(Reincarnation AU but it's not about reincarnation or dimension travel. No, that's not on anyone's radar except for the guy it happened to. Shoko is in charge of this story, and she has decided this narrative will focus on the local coffee-addict finally catching a break.)
(This fic includes medical issues, chronic illness, and canon-typical child soldier nonsense, as well as topics like overwork, medical malpractice, smoking & alcohol use, and unhealthy work-life balance. It also includes mention of patricide, child abuse, and strangulation.)
Gojo Satoru has the eyes of a Furby and the soul of a slightly drunk hyena. 
This isn't a facet of her friend that Shoko needs to be paid to confront, necessarily, right up until it really, really is. Those cursed - and sometimes Cursed - occasions are reserved for the worst possible time, like Satoru's all-seeing luck peered directly through Shoko's life to hand-pick her unluckiest days. It's a talent. The worst talent in the world, and sometimes Shoko understands how Utahime wonders why they get along so well. Then again, that's coming from someone who barely considers herself to be reluctant acquaintances, let alone tentative friends with "the local nuisance."
Utahime would have opinions about a lot of Shoko's life decisions. Most of them would be correct, because it's Utahime. Unfortunately, she’s an unreliable source of wisdom due to losing about half her common sense to Satoru’s baiting on the regular. Shoko can understand it sometimes.
Such as now. Three in the ungodly morning is not a good time to test if Shoko's medical license is just for show.
It's just not.
Satoru knows this.
Just as he knows that the only thing that can get Shoko livid enough to act on her anger is functioning on less than two hours of sleep.
He could probably see that she was awake anyway and contemplating just how many shots of espresso puts her on the ungovernable side of a caffeine addiction, but she's refusing to acknowledge that. It's too early for comprehensive thought processing. Too late. Too far on one end of the sun's presence in the sky, but just tired enough to forget if the rise or setting is closer. Time has lost all meaning. Satoru can probably see her brain trying desperately to fire neurotransmitters to wake her up properly. On top of that, he knows she's frustrated at the higher-ups for pushing her working hours into barely manageable configurations when she complains. It shows in the way his voice stays under the headache threshold of volume. She is so damn tired.
Stop.
Drink the damn coffee.
Breathe.
She won't make his life more difficult than it already is. He didn't intend to test her patience and skill by spontaneously threatening the puppet masters of the jujutsu world, taking on a special grade in Hokkaido, and somehow returning with a mysterious brother. Lost sleep isn't personal. Shoko knows this.
Friends don't press each other into this lukewarm hell of overwork unless the situation is dire, which makes her current conundrum just that extra bit of a headache.
She crosses her arms at the cot.
Did-
Did Satoru spawn via mitosis?
She can never tell with him. This is a legitimate question.
Shoko has had the tentatively arguable displeasure of being his friend for years and is firmly of the belief that things like Conservation of Matter apply to Satoru only because they amuse him. It's her leading theory. Generations have passed since the last holder of the Six Eyes, and every moldy text on the abilities they hold is wrapped up in musty ancient language that relies on metaphors more than actual instruction. There is no recipe card for the Gojo clan's sacred technique. Just confusion and a hyperactive teenager who somehow grew weirder with time. He ages like cheese.
"You've cloned yourself," Shoko diagnoses even as her technique rules out that possibility.
Satoru preens. "The world couldn't handle two of me."
He's not wrong.
She listens to his chatter while she checks over the sibling he has managed to pull from thin air. Honestly. Of all the things to make a man who is harder to pin down than the raccoon in her apartment garage – that kind of person – ask for help… well. She wasn't expecting a brother. 
It's impossible to tell if the unconscious brother even looks like Satoru. Satoru covers only his eyes, while this guy covers everything but one of his eyes. A dark mask stretches down from the bridge of his nose, and there's a wide band of fabric pulled over the other eye. Apparently that one got gouged out for some reason Satoru cheerfully seethes over when she notices the old injury. The elder Gojo's got slightly darker grey hair than Satoru’s white, though. A bit more gravity-defying, and thank goodness for that. Identical twins would have snapped her last brain cell clean in half.
Shoko chooses to believe in mitosis. It's easier that way.
Satoru goes quiet when she asks for details as to why his spontaneously new brother is unconscious and needing a doctor. A quiet Satoru is about as good a sign as a harbinger of doom.
"I just need to know what took him out," she assures him. It's Satoru's business what secrets he wants to keep. “That’s it.”
"No." Satoru braces his elbows on his knees and bends over in the uncomfortable chair. He's smiling. Like a kitsune, yeah, but that anger is not her problem. "I'm tired of hiding, and Kakashi has never cared either way."
"Alright."
The story clarifies little.
Gojo Kakashi is three years Satori's elder. Kicked out of the Gojo line of succession due to a weak constitution and being physically incapable of wielding cursed energy, Kakashi should have died from his illness years ago. He did not. As far as Shoko can tell, spite created willpower and that, more than anything, fueled his survival-based cursed technique. It’s very odd. Lupine, lightning-based cursed energy sparks in a blaze of white energy that stitches his health back together like a calamity that is self-sustaining out of luck and little else. It gets tripped up around the eye he keeps covered as if expecting the Six Eyes to spontaneously manifest, but all that's done is fry his optic nerves from the inside out.
In short, Kakashi's body tried so hard to activate a technique it does not have that it blinded him in one eye. He was lucky not to lose both. It probably drained him half to death.
Ouch.
Satoru says in cheerful, acidic words that Kakashi’s worth has always been in his use to the Gojo clan elders. Both brothers have that in common. The crucial difference is that while Satoru got fucked-up eyes, Kakashi got fucked-up cursed energy due to the circle of a family tree the Gojo clan insists on to keep their technique from fading. It puts Satoru's sharp distaste of his own clan's politics in perspective.
Bluntly speaking, the elder brother is considered ‘better off dead’ by those old bastards. 
He's bought survival in unnatural talent for every single weapon put into his hands, but even that is shaky ground. He is chronically ill. Satoru’s pretty sure they’re bleeding his older brother dry, because apparently the second Kakashi was able to perform light exercise, marching orders rolled out. There was no regard for the fact that his health was tentative at best. Pricy medical assistance could not make up for self-destructive cursed energy, though patience was bought in the map of scar tissue and poorly-healed old injuries Shoko notices. It seems this has never mattered. Kakashi has apparently spent his entire life quietly training as a good little bodyguard for the Gojo elders to order around.
A little bit of treason in the form of one child soldier, as a treat to themselves.
It explains so much about Satoru. All the gift shopping and refusal to explain who made the dango he sometimes brought to school suddenly makes so much sense. His cute little bento boxes were always a touch too neat to be made by someone so impatient. Yes, Satoru is the kind of person to cut out nori in a ‘you can do it!’ message across bento onigiri for himself, but he wouldn’t be that protective of it. Wouldn’t have cared when Suguru filched one.
Satoru’s hidden temper boils as he tells a story from the impersonal plastic chairs Shoko uses to make unwanted visitors leave faster. His voice is syrup-happy.
Bitter.
He softens when he talks about his brother, though.
Plain as day.
Kakashi has spent the majority of his life wandering through his little section the Gojo compound, safe under a fairly high-powered barrier. It’s like a lethal hermit lifestyle. They apparently instituted it because Kakashi’s cursed energy and trouble attraction abilities had every medical professional saying, "welp. That's weird," before doing absolutely nothing. This led the Gojo clan to further seal away their eldest heir for twenty or so years, except for when they toss him like a pipe bomb at people they dislike.
You know.
As one does.
A weird assassination tactic, but it apparently works. Kakashi seems very talented at surviving despite the concentrated efforts of nearly everyone he's ever met. Shoko reads his vitals and thinks he's good at surviving despite himself as well. This man has not respected his mortal limits if he has that kind of muscle mass while suffering an untreated illness. 
…He probably didn't have much choice.
Shoko gets why Satoru has been hiding his brother. The inner workings of his clan must be a nightmare.
Ooh, those politics.
So much backstabbing and old-people gossip exists there. The toxic vibes must boost their cursed energy and explain why the six eyes manifested at all. Disgusting. Never shall she ask for details. It makes a bit of Satoru's squirreliness understandable. Just the littlest bit.
She doesn't know if it justifies keeping a secret this big. They may be antagonistic, and Satoru may be stuck in a shitty situation, but there's no way he'd hide an entire brother without someone manipulating the game. Shoko has been the one member of their weird little trio to see her friend in nearly all the best and worst moments of his life. He’s done the same for her. Even when she crashed into his weird little abode with rattling bottles and insults for every single professor to gift her the workload of a pre-med disaster, Satoru had decency to commiserate together. They’ve always been more alike than anyone wanted to acknowledge. It makes the secrecy a little less surprising, but still. 
Satoru, a younger brother. 
What?
Who initiated the process of pulling his strings to keep that hidden?
It gets pretty clear as Satoru explains.
Damn.
His father sucks.
Kakashi apparently wasn't meant to survive to adulthood, to ensure Satoru could become the next Gojo head without any opposing factions. It would be logical in a horrible sort of way, if Satoru didn't have the skillset of a mildly over-caffeinated god. There's also the helpful fact that Kakashi is willing and able to kill for his brother.
And he has, though Satoru leaves out what happened. Shoko hears it in the silence anyway. There was a time, when Satoru became clan successor, that Suguru quietly admitted to her that something was wrong. Facts didn't add up. The old Gojo head was decently strong, enough so to win against the curse that supposedly killed him. Satoru was at school when it happened, but… Shoko can guess what Kakashi did.
Patricide.
Lovely.
Kakashi is apparently just as unhinged as Satoru. It must be hereditary.
In response to that cute little murder, the Gojo elders apparently took away medical assistance to help get rid of their former heir faster. This was probably the beginning of the end.
Kakashi's hermit lifestyle lasted a few more years through ailing health out of sheer spite until Satoru had enough and outright threatened his clan elders a week ago. Shoko decides not to ask what caused the escalation, because Kakashi's lungs are ruined from an infection created by his own cursed energy. She already has her answers. It's a marvel he's still alive.
The elders did what they thought was sensible and sent a few special grade curses after Satoru as a slap on the wrist. It had the opposite effect. He met fire with the fire that stunt deserved, and dropped one of the special grades directly into their meeting room.
Right onto the table.
As a gift.
The 'old farts' disliked their brand new centerpiece. They disliked it enough to make sure Satoru was very aware of their big feelings and continued to dislike it while they delt with it. Loudly. Violently. There was allegedly lots of shouting. Satoru gets a little hazy with the details, but apparently his elders came to a quicker decision than he thinks they’d ever managed before in their lives.
They proceeded to take inspiration from Satoru's spite and decided to bait a new curse into Kakashi's cute little hermit abode.
Just for fun.
Kakashi, who is lethal in all ways except for the fact that he cannot handle cursed energy, responded by exorcizing the curse with his bare hands and promptly passing out. He charged reverse-cursed energy into his palms and apparently gave it a mild static shock while he strangled it in his kitchen. Satoru came home from a day out to find his brother dying and a curse already dead, after elders warned him at the gates that he’d find things the other way around.
Shoko wants to dissect that curse so badly. Curiosity itches under her skin.
That leads them to now, after Satoru has followed through on his threat. His clan is short a few elders and one house-arrest heir as of this evening.
Cool.
Shoko's compliant in a revolution now. She is perfectly fine with that.
"Kakashi's cursed energy and reverse-curse are generated at the same time," Satoru says, like he didn't just terraform a feared jujutsu clan's politics in a week. "Normally that should cancel out most of it, but his just kind of doesn't. Like ice cream, you know?"
Shoko does not know. "Ice cream."
"Yeah, like how chocolate and vanilla ice cream swirl!"
"I see," Shoko says, and takes a second to admire the fact that she's not even lying.
Satoru shrugs and hums a nonsensical tune like he isn't willing to burn down the world for those he cares about.
He never really changes in that way.
Shoko runs through the usual procedure and documents it all in the looping scrawl of medical professionals. Satoru is right – cursed energy and reverse-curse energy should cancel itself out slightly. It's why Shoko's technique is so rare: she's able to separate them before that process starts.
Kakashi's does not cancel out or separate.
It combines. The whole process and resulting mixture is, in Shoko's professional opinion, weird as fuck. Curses can probably sense it from across the prefecture. That's outrageous. It’s honestly no wonder he got put under house arrest instead of being exiled when Satoru pissed off the elders. The fallout from Kakashi wandering around outside a barrier would be immense. The Gojo compound would survive his stepping outside their wards, but their family’s reputation would not. 
He could probably annihilate a city just by walking through it.
"Well?" Satoru leans over so his chin is propped on her shoulder. 
"Congratulations," Shoko says flatly as she taps her clipboard with the pen. "He'll live. I might even be able to make him less of a curse-bait, but he'll need to be awake for that."
She's so tired.
Satoru flutters around her like a gangly, unhinged butterfly who refuses to take his hands out of his pockets. "You can fix it?"
Fix it.
Ha.
Shoko’s pen drums a faster rhythm on the paperwork. She can't even comprehend much beyond that this Cursed Energy nonsense is not killing Kakashi any faster than the blood loss. Satoru takes her clipboard and she barely notices.
"He'll survive the night," Shoko says as she finishes the basic first aid to keep her patient stable. "We'll worry about the rest in the morning."
"Not now?"
Shoko holds up a hand and notes the exact moment Satoru realizes how badly she's shaking. "Tomorrow. Doing anything right now lowers chances of success, and I'm not risking your brother."
He's lost enough.
"There's a line of emergency numbers on the desk," she starts. Satoru lets Shoko run through all the things to do if his brother wakes up, what not to touch in the office, who to call if she is too deep in REM sleep to hear her phone ringing-
She is so tired.
Shoko blinks and finds herself in her apartment, already half-forgetting how she got there. It's possible Satoru dropped her off. That was nice of him.
What a fucking day, she thinks as she flops onto her couch.
The next morning, she barely makes it onto Jujutsu High’s main campus before things get complicated. It happens before she can even get inside - an unexpected and unwanted visitor finds her in the foggy predawn chill between parking lot and building. Shoko stands with her coffee, bag, and exhaustion as a wizened old man tries to manipulate her. It is not an auspicious start to the day.
“I trust you know he is of better use resting than healed,” says the council elder with grey hair and Cursed Energy that eats at the morning silence like acid. Unspoken is a threat: you are of use to us. Do not change this.
Shoko looks down at her coffee, then back at the elder.
She raises an eyebrow.
“Are you telling me to ignore my oath?” Not that she cares about it, but still. If she gives ground now, they’ll never stop asking for more.
“I am telling you to listen to your funding.” A grim smile twists up. “It wouldn’t do to lose that.”
Well. Yeah, she can’t lose the only way she's able to keep sorcerers with the self-preservation instincts of lemmings alive. Shoko’s overworked and understaffed. She’s doing the job of four people all alone. School nurse, mortician, autopsy specialist, and on-call Cursed Energy healer. That’s not even counting her research on far too many projects.
“I am very tired,” Shoko says flatly. “So you’re going to have to spell this out for me. Please use small words.”
“Gojo Satoru needs to be controlled,” the old man says, which shows astronomically bad social awareness on his part. That’s her former classmate they’re talking about blackmailing. Her friend. If Satoru finds out about this he’s going to bait the bastards into a homicidal rage, which is not fun, thrifty, or enjoyable in any way. Then Utahime will have to spend a day watching Shoko lie on the floor contemplating her place in the universe. Nobody will have a halfway decent time, except Meimei-senpai, who may actually enjoy it so long as she gets paid time off while the jujutsu world burns and Satoru dances in the ashes. 
This is a terrible marketing pitch. Shoko stares at her coffee and scrambles for any reaction that is not going to make her life harder. She finds nothing in her brain but the most basic rule of surviving a toxic workplace.
“Can you give that to me in writing?” Shoko asks. “In the meantime, I have patients to see. So. Thank you for stopping by.”
She all but forces them to run through the social dance of goodbyes, and walks past him into the building. She has until that email arrives to make her last free move. Better start now.
Shoko climbs the school stairs and texts her med school group chat about the unfairness of the world. One of her friends who went on to be a paramedic immediately sends emoji hearts and commiserating tears in equal measure. It helps.
Those emoji hearts continue helping her all through the paperwork. Help looks like Satoru's hand on her elbow that stops her just shy of walking into a wall. It looks like a filled mug passed into willing hands.
Like unexpected patience.
Shoko wouldn't ask for that last one, so she prioritizes accordingly and shuffles her newest patient to the top of the list. Financial threats and demands of old farts would have her swamped for the week, so Shoko pretends she simply forgot to check her email that morning and gets to work. Her friend has waited long enough.
Besides, Satoru is not a worried person. He stews and giggles like a child attempting to scream defiance. Satoru usually burns the attempts of a world powerless to set him into a nondescript beige box like the rest of them. It is vicious. Spiteful. Petty. Worry on Satoru is a near-imperceptible thing that turns poison into a halberd swung wildly through tightening tripwires. He is uncontrollable, except-
Except.
"You should tell people you care for them," Shoko says lowly as she tugs on blue gloves. Satoru smiles wide and guileless. It is a devastatingly untrustworthy look on him.
"Aw, are you concerned about little old me, Shoko-chan?"
Yes.
Somebody's got to be, but he'll be insufferable if she says that.
Shoko settles for tossing him an unimpressed look, and knows her point is received when his smile grows the tiniest bit more honest. Worry is still settled in the teeth of it. It's almost funny, how there's once again two people Shoko knows of who Satoru can worry like that for. She thought he lost that ability along with Suguru. Turns out, he just learned to hide the lengths to which he can be pushed. It's not her business what alerted Satoru to that danger.
Threats come in many shapes and sizes.
As if to prove that point, Gojo Kakashi's first instinct upon awakening is to try stabbing her with a knife he should not have. 
Luckily, Satoru's first instinct upon seeing his brother wake up is to tackle-hug him right off the hospital bed, so the knife goes wide and Shoko remains uninjured to ignore them and return to her paperwork. Those idiots can figure out they're mortal and breakable without her spelling it out for them. Their terrible choices seem to cancel each other out. It makes a humorous kind of sense.
"You brought me to your school," Kakashi notes once he and Satoru have reached a limpet-shaped stalemate on Shoko's thoroughly sanitized tile floors. He pats his brother on the shoulder and executes a bendy maneuver to extract himself from the hug. It is strangely effective. Unfortunately, now Shoko refuses to believe this weirdo possesses bones.
"Aw, are you intimidated?" Satoru reaches out to pinch his older brother's cheeks and nearly gets stabbed. “All these kiddos to corrupt, and so little time! Don’t worry, nii-san. I believe in you.”
"This is an entire school-"
"Such marvelous powers of observation-"
"-Full of very mortal people-"
"-You can tell we're related, it's all in the eyes-
"-And I'm a curse-magnet," Kakashi stresses, inching suspiciously closer to the window. "This is a terrible idea."
"It kind of is," Shoko agrees, pressing her cheek further into her desk and wishing for a vacation. All she gets is paper stuck to her face.
Kakashi shoots her a thankful look. He is now her favorite of the two.
"Maybe. But then I thought, hey, showing up with a clone would be just the thing to throw those old farts into hysterics." Satoru beams. "Do you think the shock will finally take them out?"
"It won't," Shoko tells them before Satoru can make fools of them all or get his hopes up.
“Aww, where’s your ganbaru spirit? Your gaman-suru? You know, the I can do it!” Satoru says with a little hand gesture that practically sounds like a background chorus of children saying ‘yay!’ in some kind of weekend educational television program. The whole thing shows both terrible grammar and energy that’s not remotely as cutesy as he’s trying to make it.
“Killed it,” Shoko says automatically, just as Kakashi says, “Lost it on the road of life.”
“Besides,” Kakashi adds, “I thought the goal was not to make them stab me. That’s going to take some work, because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I am prime knife real estate.”
“It’s the scarecrow energy,” Satoru says. “Come on, nii-san. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
Kakashi goes quiet, and as one, their attention turns to the edge of a lurid orange book, half-hidden in the pile of fabric abandoned on a nearby chair. Shoko hadn't bothered looking at the visibly bulletproof armor Satoru brought his brother in with. It wasn't her business.
Satoru and Kakashi meet eyes - as much as they can with only one of four eyes visible - and Shoko can physically see the clown-to-clown communication transpire in real time. 
Oh, no. 
There's two of them.
"You're technically an assassin," Satoru notes. Shoko really hates that she's not surprised this is where the conversation is going already.
The lone eye crinkles up as if Kakashi is smiling.
"How many dishes would I have to clean for-"
"Out," Shoko interrupts. When Satoru opens his mouth to confirm something she doesn't want to know about, she adds, "plausible deniability is all I'm asking for. I don't care what's going on so long as it happens outside. Go on."
Kakashi has the utter gall to coyly wave at her while Satoru lifts him up in a princess carry. He is no longer her favorite. She is exhausted by them both equally.
Shoko presses her forehead to the desk and takes a steadying breath.
She wants to sink into the earth. Who invented bones? That was a terrible idea. Actually, who decided they should grow legs and leave the ocean at all? Look at where that’s gotten all of humanity. They have paperwork.
Wait.
The door nearly splinters when she slams it open to point an accusing finger at the brothers. They're only halfway down the hallway. Small mercies.
"Don't walk, don't run, don't do anything more strenuous than eat and breathe, got it?!"
Satoru beams, and Kakashi projects lazy indifference through the mask.
Whatever, they heard her.
Good enough.
It takes three hours for the gossip to reach Shoko that Gojo Kakashi has been instituted as a sorcerer. The movers and shakers of the jujutsu world have found the second Gojo to be steeped in similar potential as his brother. An exhibition match is being planned.
Four hours to know who came up with that bright idea.
Six hours to know they want to test his combat abilities.
Shoko stares through the ink staining her papers and realizes she needs to make a choice.
Shoko's heels click down the hallway's wooden floors like a war anthem. She likes the sound - it's a bit of a reminder to herself that she's allowed to make noise, that her words have worth. After growing up alongside two legends, she carries that with her.
They all used to command attention in different ways.
Satoru and his personality, a noxiously potent force he's crafted as if desperate to be defined by more than the weight of unbeatable power.
Suguru had a kind of danger about him like a riptide current. Hidden and waiting. It dragged him under eventually.
Shoko pushes her limits until they snap, and is very aware this makes her peers view her as terrifyingly impossible to rattle. It's her own brand of danger. A time limit.
Kakashi blinks at her from behind his nearly-neon book, unperturbed despite having been relegated to waiting outside the meeting room like a scolded child. Shoko pauses just long enough to warn him not to stand up from that chair before entering.
"He's not cleared for combat," Shoko announces as she pulls open the door. Yoshinobu-sensei glares up at her from his seat, one eye visible behind drooping white eyebrows. A gnarled hand pauses from stroking his beard, and Shoko knows to the depths of her soul that he's judging her choice of caffeine.
"Shoko-san," Yoshinobu-sensei greets. 
Fuck you, old man.
There's a doctorate that goes with that name and owes her at least the sensei suffix. Yeah, she cheated her way through, but it still fucking counts, doesn’t it? If he has a problem, he can give her another raise that will allow actual retirement to maybe happen soon in her lifetime. Then they’ll all be rid of her. Everybody wins.
She offers the slightest of acceptable bows and pulls the door closed.
Satoru tips his head back on his seat to grin at her, upside down and unrepentant. "Oh?"
"Gojo Kakashi can barely stand, let alone fight." Shoko chews over her words before gritting out, "I'm barring him from using cursed techniques and anything more than bedrest. Estimated two weeks 'till walking or light stretching. If he's gotta go up stairs within the month, there damn well better be a railing."
It's something she does less than she should. Usually she just doesn't give a shit, so Shoko can count on being taken seriously.
Satoru whistles lowly, because he must aggravate every situation he is forced into.
The look Yoshinobu-sense gives her makes it clear that Shoko's next words should be offering to speed up the healing timetable, like that's something she can do easily. "He will be required to undergo a performance review to assess his skill level."
“If you’re putting a sorcerer out there,” Shoko says with all the energy of a commuting salaryman who just got rainwater in his crocs, “then I am healing them. That is my oath.”
Yoshinobu-sensei hunches over his cane. "Unfortunate."
For him?
Maybe.
Shoko, however, could not care less. She has paperwork to fill out and an autopsy to do, unless it's Tuesday. Is it Tuesday? She's planning on spilling hot asphalt over her keyboard as an excuse for missing a conference call then.
Shoko drains the last of her cup and tosses it in the trash. "I can't stay long, but that's my say."
"We will take it under advisement."
Sure.
Shoko turns around and leaves. She needs a smoke.
"You heard the doctor," Satoru says with vicious glee as she slides the door closed. "Hey, hey, did you know that-"
Wood clacks shut; sound oddly muted beyond.
Shoko takes a moment to mourn her lack of beverage, then glances to her right at the eldest troublemaker. The reluctance in his shoulders hints that she is rather lucky to find him where he was left. Kakashi meets her apathetic look with steady resignment and raises his book in a silent toast to mutual suffering. It's the first of many similar moments.
In the end, common sense prevails. Kakashi is not required to partake in an exhibition match, which is fun, fantastic, and fortunate. Shoko loves being listened to. Respect is hard to come by. The politics that accompany both Gojo brothers are horrible and best not thought of, so she switches tasks every time her mind wanders too far and tries to keep this problem in the pocket of her lab coat amongst ink stains and soft lint. It’s the wisest choice.
Shoko submerges herself in work. Days pass, crawling by with email after email until Utahime appears to drag her out of the school.
"They're terrible," Utahime says when they find a precious moment of silence at a bus stop. Aching hands curl over coffee, as if Shoko can leach the warmth into her bones. Decaf, for once.
"Pretty sure mine are worse," Shoko grumbles. "There’s a little international shop just outside the school grounds, and for some hellish reason every last student adores their food violations. They put green food coloring in the guacamole. It’s an insult to the meal."
Utahime frowns. "What?"
"Food coloring."
"Why?"
"To hide that it expired."
Shoko's eyes close.
There's an empty sort of quiet in her head, like the seaside ponds undisturbed by crashing waves a little step away. Her jaw is amber, eyes opal, and there is a crystallized stillness that drifts like swamp water through her chest. It will break under this stress. Cracks and impurities lace structural weakness through her cartilage in the form of weight on her shoulders. Exhaustion is familiar. Waking up after a full night's sleep is not.
Caffeine withdrawal, or she just isn't used to having free time not spent desperately clawing back lost hours of sleep.
Or both.
Both is good.
"Alright," Utahime says. "You've got me there."
Shoko smiles into her cup.
Exhaustion is easy, but life is still so, so good. Days like these are nectar and ambrosia, water in the desert or pulled from the tap in her kitchen sink past 3am and all the sweeter for that late hour.
They go back to Utahime's flat, and Shoko manages to claim cooking duty. She starts the rice cooker and starts rustling through the fridge, only to learn that Utahime has placed her firmly in checkmate.
"Bath's ready," is all the warning Shoko has before Utahime all but marches her down the hallway.
Sweatpants and a shirt Utahime has never worn in her life despite buying them new are dumped into her hands. The lights are all shut off but for a soft nightlight Utahime swears isn't because Shoko lives most of her life with a headache. The large rubber duckie in the corner glows like a nightlight with dim ambient color that’s just soft enough to be comfortable. On her way out, Utahime blows a kiss at Shoko like she’d throw a fastball.
The bathroom door is shut.
Mochi promptly raises a racket.
The door is opened, cat let in, and shut again.
Shoko watches Mochi curl up next to the tub and wonders what kind of hubris that must be. Someday that cat is going to slip into bathwater and emerge a tan-white ball of soaking wrath. There will be claws. Complaints. Maybe even some yelling from multiple species, if it's a particularly fancy occasion.
Everyone gets humbled eventually.
The bath is nice. Tension drains as steam rises. Just for a moment, the strain she carries with her eases, though the weight dragging her down stays. Water to marinate in up past her shoulders can only fix so much. Pain is always a dull ache and constant drag, but her burdens seem to float in the bath, at least.
Pressure becomes manageable.
She used to think everyone felt like this: like there were chains reaching from the center of the earth to wrap around her shoulders, her head, her hips. They anchor in her cheekbones and pull her down with exhaustion. Not everyone struggles so much to stand, to walk, to work. Schedules and medication heal only so much. The rest needs careful attention. Care. Effort and discipline.
Shoko closes aching eyes and wishes she were born a fish.
Fish don't have curses.
Actually, that's not true. Some fish are curses, which kind of sucks for them. Shoko pulled the guts out of one a couple months ago and learned quite a bit about how cursed energy can interact with aquatic species. That one used it to replace oxygen. The whole thing is bizarre. Theoretically she could launch one into space and it’d survive just fine beyond issues like a lack of atmospheric pressure.
…Shoko still wishes she were born a fish.
Tomorrow she will go back to work. She isn't even being called in to do her actual job - no, tomorrow is all for office politics.
What a fucking farce.
Ceramic presses into her cheek as Shoko props her face up beside the cat. One brilliant green eye opens, pupil contracting and expanding as it adjusts to warm yellow lamplight. The cat's nose twitches.
"You don't even have a salary," Shoko whispers. Her voice catches and scrapes like thick paint under a palette knife.
One white paw reaches out, toe pads pressing against Shoko's nose. Mochi rolls, one triangle ear nearly brushing the water. Another paw lands on Shoko's chin. Back feet stick straight up, claws extended and toes wiggling with the stretch.
Yeah.
Mochi's too cute to work.
Would that they all be so lucky.
Shoko exits the bathroom in worn sleepwear to the smell of cooking garlic and onion.
After evening has fallen, she flops onto the empty futon by Utahime's occupied one. It's warm, proof Utahime plugged in her hair dryer and swept it under the blankets like a cheap heating pad. The mellow lamp between their beds stays on for a few minutes of precious silence. Mochi arrives to purr and make biscuits on Utahime's blankets.
These are the good moments.
Almost nothing hurts.
Utahime reaches out of her pile of blankets, hand offered across the floor. Shoko stretches out her own arm, braving cold in the apartment air from where her shirt sleeve ends with its promise of warmth. Their fingers lace together like the stitches holding Shoko's heart in one piece.
"Good night, ‘Hime."
Utahime's free hand blindly slaps at the light until it turns off. She has to twist at an awkward angle to do it, all elbows and the soft clumsiness that only appears with this apartment's safety.
"'Night."
The new sorcerer settles in well enough.
He's a terrible patient and a headache to deal with, but Kakashi seems aware she's regularly pulling overtime to get him functional. He never goes too far out of his way to antagonize her, and Shoko repays it by watching her cruel streak. With a little communication they strike a comfortable balance. From the rumors, she is one of the very few people he's not actively trying to tempt into homicide.
That's a misconception she's never quite understood.
Suffering does not breed wisdom. It does not cultivate patience or serenity. Gojo Kakashi is chronically ill and raging against the world. He sulks and thrashes recklessly against his limits, baiting every sorcerer he meets into a fight with poisonous cheer that mirrors his little brother's habit of smiling though anger. Shoko understands from the depths of her soul. She, too, knows what it is to be defined by too-confining limits, to wake up in the night because everything hurts too much to sleep. People like them are screaming inside, but have only headache and heartache to show for the effort. The only difference is that Kakashi turns to trolling and bad literature while Shoko marinates in apathetic smoke-drunk sorrows.
They are mutually poor role models for this kind of thing.
Kakashi sends off several Valentine's Day glitter bombs. Shoko lets him put down her flat as the return address, if only so she can witness the fallout. It goes as expected. Sheer lethality seems to be keeping the remaining Gojo elders from sniping Kakashi at long range.
Utahime watches it all from Kyoto warily. She and the new guy get along disconcertingly well for all that they logically shouldn’t.
Shoko puts it out of her mind and turns to more important matters. The students are sparring with no regard for their health, and the new first year incoming batch has only two potential recruits. Keeping them alive to adulthood is a fool's errand. Still worth a try, though.
At least it seems all the students are enjoying their summer break.
Something Shoko has never really talked about to anyone but her two closest friends in high school is that there’s an empathy component to her technique.
Cursed energy is created out of emotions. It’s a funny thing, how the nature of those components are mixed and compressed into a tangible form that can interact with the spiritual layer of the world. For an introspective technique like hers, Shoko is very aware of what negative and positive emotions are bleeding into that energy. It’s an awareness that can’t be turned off.
And the survival instinct that’s keeping Kakashi together only shuts off when he gets gleeful enough about annoying the higher-ups. It even halts the grief that follows him like a cloud of mold spores, though that’s not surprising for someone who lost the first twenty or so years of their life to an illness that may never be completely cured.
She really could not care less about who he’s tempting into murder, so long as the fallout does not reach her.
So Shoko shoos Kakashi away and stitches him back together through a series of appointments.
They might be something like friends.
Maybe.
He’s less malevolent than Satoru, more willing to let her pass out on the sofa of his ramshackle house in the woods, when leaving campus would go against her contract but staying awake would lead to injury. In return, she drops the formality and occasionally heals him outside the clinic. The big nerd hates the smell of cleaning chemicals. She bullies him into caring for himself, he adjusts his life to allow her a few seconds of sleep, and they keep each other alive. 
One night he shows up at her window, Utahime behind him and Nanami hauled over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and demands they roast a wild boar he somehow hunted and killed for fun. Utahime claimed there was no ethical problem with game animals the government is literally advertising to minimize farm damage, but Shoko is already both not sure enough to ask and too tired of the hereditary Gojo nonsense to question it. Nanami later informs them that boar-hunting alone is ill advised. How he sounds regretfully familiar with the process is a mystery Shoko is content to ignore until she forgets it. Besides, if Kakashi can take out an adult wild boar while alone, he can hunt however he wants.
So.
Friends.
He’s like a feral cat.
But when Kakashi wanders through the door to her infirmary with a book practically glued to his face and a little brother skipping at his heels, Shoko isn't expecting thanks. That's not something doctors get in the jujutsu world when they bar sorcerers from fighting. Theirs is the duty of resupplying soldiers in this never-ending war against curses, and any spare time can be spent in more productive ways than loitering around and recovering.
They get complaints from impatient brats. Pleas for help with fallen teammates and friends. Resentment for failure to fix the world. Demands from their superiors.
Not thanks.
"You didn't have to buy us time back then," Kakashi says vaguely, and it's honest and cheeky like the lethal menace Shoko just knows he'll end up becoming once fully healed. "Thanks."
Sounds fake, but okay. Sure. "Is this because I'm about to operate on you?"
Satoru faux-gasps at her cruelty, but Kakashi just crinkles his visible eye. 
"Maa, didn't you know? It's good to be on decent terms with your doctor."
Shoko rolls her eyes and checks her own reserves of reverse-cursed energy as she drones, "shut up and lie down. Satoru, you can sit in the chair if Kakashi is fine with that, but one step closer and I'll ruin your life."
Satoru parks himself on the chair, elbows on his knees and grin a bit too wide. "That was almost a decent threat."
"I have blackmail and your brother's phone number."
Satoru makes a sound like she just hit him with a rubber chicken, and Kakashi wheezes a laugh until Shoko shoves a clipboard in his face to fill out.
She's nearly finished coaxing his cursed energy into something a little less noxious, and by all accounts he's capable of entering the field physically. He's got enough of a clean bill of health. At the very least, she's not going to limit his exercise anymore.
The problem is that he's still functionally curse-bait. Stepping outside the barrier will make his presence light up like a beacon.
Last night she scraped together just enough sleep for steady hands. It’s not enough to deal with everything, but… enough to let him go without fighting for his life every second he's outside a barrier. She can grant him subtlety. Mostly. Particularly sensitive curses will still notice that something's wrong, though.
It takes three hours of ridiculously delicate focus on Kakashi's cursed and reverse-cursed energy.
Three hours of mind-numbing details, miniscule adjustments, and use of old techniques that are all but crumbled to dust.
But she does it, tells Satoru to keep an eye on his brother while she passes out for five minutes, and tosses her gloves in the trash. He'll notice if anything is wrong. That's pretty much what his technique was made for, after all. Whether he has to climb onto the cot and wrap his spindly brother in a hug is another matter entirely.
Kakashi endures the obnoxious mother-henning with a resigned grace Shoko is very familiar with. Satoru tends to inspire that reaction in his close friends.
It's fine.
It's done.
She can sleep for a few damn minutes.
Shoko's eyes slip closed the second she collapses at her desk. She wonders, as she notes the heavy pull of drowsiness, how this will come back to bite her.
Technically she shouldn't nod off at work.
Technically.
Satoru has the basic decency to keep his voice at a manageable level as she dozes. It's not behavior anyone expects from a man who does his best to embody a lethal court jester to the utmost degree, but people forget that Satoru knows weakness. He knows how easy bones crack and shatter; how fragile lives are when contrasted with Infinity. Untouchability throws the world into stark comparison. He can probably see the buildup of stress in her mind, the blood flow and developing bags under her eyes, and the red tracing over her sclera as capillaries burst from lack of sleep.
So, no.
Satoru's not going to piss off a doctor. Much less his friend, who he saw go from a grungy kid with an attitude problem to the chain-smoking wine aunt she is now.
It is, Shoko thinks as she accidentally drops into a deeper sleep, his most redeeming quality.
She wakes up eighteen hours later with a killer headache on Satoru’s ridiculously expensive couch. Some merciful deity has encouraged Satoru to keep the lights off and leave a paper napkin on the table next to her in their usual signal. Shoko remembers high school. She remembers collapsing in the back of black cars, both her boys beside her after a mission accomplished. They’d all nod off in the wake of an adrenaline high. She can picture it now - Suguru sitting up straight like some kind of monster, Shoko leaning on his left shoulder, and Satoru drooling on his right.
Good times.
Then one died, one lost his anchor, and one lost her way.
Now she's waking up and her mouth feels like something died in it, her eyes are crusted over, and the blanket tossed over her has slipped away to leave her cold as a frozen hell. At least the lights are off.
Small mercies.
Shoko grabs the napkin and finds her way to the fridge, cracking it open to pour holy light across kitchen tiles and countertops. Squinting past illuminated sweets, Shoko fishes out the takeout.
Yakisoba.
Nice.
Dim streetlights pour illumination in from open windows, helping Shoko stumble towards Satoru’s bedroom door. Luck and little else keep her from tripping on the carpet before finding it nearly closed. He even put a nameplate on it. Cute. She does him the favor of opening it past the carpet to preserve the expensive repairs from this exact scenario, which repeats at least biannually. Habit makes her check there’s no weird knives tucked on top of the door frame before stepping back and kicking the door open with little ceremony. Noodles are shoved into her mouth as she peers in.
Satoru’s not there. Kakashi is passed out like a starfish, but Shoko could care less about that one. She’s looking for her honorary brother. The sweet-tooth dumbass.
Oh, that fucking idiot.
She retreats to the room she was in and yep, there he is, passed out while sitting in the window like the world’s most dandelion-shaped target. Some people make the worst decisions. Worse still, they have the skills to half-way justify it, which only makes the dumbass ideas hit slightly different. This feels like a rosemary-flavored mistake. Satoru has herbs growing in a line of pots by his bedroom, though it's only recently that she discovered he isn't at fault for the little garden at all.
She thinks the rosemary is named Bisuke.
Or Pakkun.
Whatever.
Someday Satoru is going to get sniped.
Shoko considers kicking her former teammate for old time’s sake.
Upsides: he’s near indestructible and wouldn’t be hurt by the fall. He also wouldn't be offended - if anything, it'd be nostalgic given what he and Suguru used to pull when they devolved into wrestling.
Downsides: he’d be loud about it.
She kicks him.
Gently.
Really, it's his own surprise and need for drama that tips him out the window. They both know this, but his squirrel brain loves it for some reason.
Once Satoru has been defenestrated, re-fenestrated, and subsequently complained about the entire process, Shoko is feeling a little better.
She spends the next day at Satoru's apartment, sheltering from her responsibilities like she's sixteen years old again. Sixteen and bright. Sixteen and proud. Sixteen and able to shirk these duties without counting the lives her days off cost on tackily painted nails.
But everyone needs a break.
Overwork is a medical condition.
Shoko lies on the scraggly rug in Satoru's apartment, head on a pillow from the couch and blanket on her lap. She watches the wind blow thin curtains into the room like tidal waves. It is the way of things; this push and pull. Sunlight paints the fabric brilliant white, like it's washed the cotton with water, time, and thyme.
Ceramic clinks.
"A medic's first duty is to heal and keep healing until the job is done," Kakashi says as he sets a cup of tea on the floor somewhere by her elbow. "A medic's second duty is to let their comrades hold the fighting far away from them."
Shoko sighs from the depths of her soul.
"A medic's third duty," he says, "is to die last."
"Which old journal did you pull that from?"
Kakashi smiles behind the mask.
It's such a non-answer.
Shoko looks at him with a doctor's mind and notes how the shadow under his visible eye is already lesser. The other is hidden under fabric, because despite whatever injury cost him it, Kakashi scorns real eye patches. He's so weird. Shoko loves that for him. She also fully supports the healthy color he's already regaining.
"Alright, then," she says, too exhausted and aching to really push this or any other matter. "Keep your secrets."
"Headache?"
"Fading." Shoko eyes him, noting the tension he always holds. It's lesser, yes, but not gone. "You?"
Kakashi tips his head to the side. "Better."
Alright.
Shoko debates hauling herself upright and decides against it. "So, how's Satoru treating your new read?"
Kakashi hacks out an oddly lupine laugh and plops down to sprawl just out of reach. They sit on the ground, forsaking the couch entirely, as he tells her exactly how scandalized his little brother is at his newest choice in smutty romance novels.
-
Satoru drags Megumi off on a field trip and comes back with a vessel of Sukuna. 
Shoko hears about it and mourns all the time she'll have to spend patching up a teenager with that kind of risk assessment skills. The kid looked at a shriveled-up finger that radiated pure evil, and said: wouldn't it be wild if someone ate that? Hey. Hey, is anyone gonna…? Let me just… just put this in my mouth like a toddler. 
Then he didn't wait for an answer.
Disgusting.
Who even does that?
Kakashi and Nanami have started a running bet on what kind of monsters Satoru's students will turn into. One of them's already apparently unhinged, and Megumi goes completely wild if he's pushed far enough in a fight. Shinigami users resemble their spirits over time due to the leaking energy of their techniques, and it shows. Kugisaki – the new student Shoko doesn’t know past paperwork – has pride to spare and brutality to match. She's got a technique the higher-ups can market as merciful. Elegant. It hides the blood. 
They're going to be world-shakers.
Do we get paid overtime for this, Nanami types into their group chat. Kakashi sends him a reply made only of assorted emoji hearts.
No💖, he adds like an afterthought.
Ugh.
Shoko would bet on Satoru snapping and killing the elders before Itadori Yuuji consumes all ten fingers, but Kakashi is right there. Waiting. Lurking in the rafters like an evil little patch of mold. Her workload is heavy enough without this all boiling over, because if there's no fatalities due to internal squabbling, Shoko will be honestly surprised. Stress bubbles under her skin.
She needs to do her taxes.
Shoko goes home, flops face-first onto her couch, and screams into the cushions.
An email notification pops up, one solitary light in the dark apartment. Shoko glares at her phone from the corner of her eye and wonders who will die if she calls in sick tomorrow.
She won't.
Some days, Shoko's mind and body calls it quits. She saves her sick days for when she physically can't get out the door. It's not worth wasting time off that will be needed unexpectedly later. Burnout is hard to fight when her cursed technique is holding up half the jujutsu world. Doctors don't sleep enough, but sorcerers push their medical teams to the edge daily. Shoko thinks it's part of the exorcist culture.
There are so many people who are irreplaceable and running on fumes all at once.
Mei Mei-senpai would make the list if she weren't expensive enough to make the elders wary. Self-employed and a prodigious sensory technique, combined with perfect awareness of her value. She answers to nobody but her bank account. It's not a fair comparison when the rest of them trudge along through political quagmire.
Rats in a maze.
Mei Mei-senpai made a place for herself. Suguru cracked under the pressure. Satoru kicks the whole maze around until it rearranges to his liking, damn the consequences and everyone else. Shoko wonders who will be next to shift this house of cards.
It's trembling.
Do the elders see?
She passes out on that couch, too tired to heat dinner in the microwave. It takes most of her energy to plug in her phone and snag a blanket from the floor.
Morning sun drifts through the windows.
Screeching music drills into her ears.
Five, Shoko tells herself. Four. Three, two, one- She pushes herself off the couch and smacks into the floor. A bruised hip and elbow chivvy her upright, then through her morning routine.
Email notifications follow her out the door.
She is halfway awake by the train station.
Three-quarters awake and covering a yawn by the time she reaches the school entrance.
A man in a business suit is waiting at her office door. Shoko scans him for injuries out of habit, notes the regulation white dress shirt, black jacket, black slacks, and wonders who she pissed off this time.
He introduces himself but Shoko's coffee burns her hands, and she misses his name. It feels rude to ask again, so she gets a business card. She finds she does not need it when he steps aside, and a wizened old man appears from behind him in the world’s shittiest magic trick.
An esteemed elder.
Not one she's ever spoken to, though.
He has questions about her two least favorite patients.
About what happened to the last Gojo head.
About how strong Kakashi is. Does she know he beat a special grade with his bare hands and no formal training? How did he do it? Did she detect anomalies while healing him?
Confidentiality is something they seem rather intent on ignoring, no matter how often she cites the law. Not like that could hold anyone back in the jujutsu world, but Shoko is still beholden to her oaths.
In all honesty she really doesn't pay them much notice, but they’re useful. Sometimes.
Like now.
"I am delighted to inform you that the Gojo brothers are none of my business," Shoko says flatly as she flicks on the overhead lights. "It's my new favorite motto. The world is weird, and I'm tired, so I've decided that unless given a good reason, I am minding my own business."
"He is nearly a curse-user," the elder notes, which is a captivatingly bold lie. Kakashi is unhinged as a half-rabid wolf, but he hides it right up until someone threatens his brother.
Besides, what’s the definition of curse-user? Someone who has a technique and uses it in a way that’s not perfectly what the old busybodies want? Big fuckin’ whoop. They can call her when she makes the list. Until then, Shoko is going to sit in her lab sharing a smoke with her wine and her misery.
"Oh?" Shoko says, as if distracted by finding gloves. They're in the same place as always, but she rustles through a cabinet to show proper disdain for the authorities. Ignoring him feels delightfully petty. "Is that all?"
"If he refuses to submit his techniques for testing again, we will take measures."
Satoru would have a field day with that.
She kind of wants them to take those cute little ‘measures’ just so everyone getting comfy with their unquestioned power remembers a bit of humility. There's no need for the jujutsu world to resemble a dictatorship quite so closely.
"I simply do not care about that." The curse she needs to inspect makes a heavy splat sound as she drops it on the dissection table.
The old man pointedly lifts a sleeve over his nose.
He is ignored.
If she cycles her technique internally, Shoko can cleanse her lungs of chemical fumes with every inhale. This ability is not replicable. Sooner rather than later, she will be left alone. Shoko pries cartilage loose from a femur and cracks it open to sniff at cursed bone marrow. 
Apparently he has no clue how to deal with her apathy, because he rambles on as if she didn't say anything. It's annoying. Shoko guts another curse and spills bleach across the floor until he gets the hint and leaves. Good riddance.
Windows are thrown open, fans turned on, the floor cleaned, and Shoko contentedly settles elbow-deep in her research.
She stays there until her lunch break, which Shoko uses to march into the forest towards a tiny little cottage-like residence Satoru recently pushed, prodded, and bullied his way into securing. The idea of giving a former curse-magnet access to a barrier space that can contain that issue should it resurface was just logical enough for the elders. They chose a little scrap of land in the forest, had the beefiest barriers they could think of built up, and seemed content to forget about it entirely. Whether the building appeared within these barriers before or after barrier creation is unclear. It has a coffee machine, a couch, and an owner that doesn't mind her crashing at his place for five blessed minutes.
Kakashi is good like that, even if he's a menace.
Luckily, her friend is sitting outside like usual these days. He's sharpening blades the old-fashioned way with a whetstone, though Shoko ignores this.
"Is anyone listening in?"
Kakashi turns towards her just enough to watch, likely caught off guard by the bluntness. They tend to poke at each other and complain about whatever inconvenience caught their fraying attention. It’s a habit built out of long hours dragging his health into something manageable. They know each other's boundaries; Shoko complains, Kakashi trolls, and they mutually go easy on each other. 
Kakashi leans back until he's leaning on one of the paper ofuda plastered around his little building. "No."
"When this all goes up in flames," Shoko says, "do me a favor? Kill your targets."
Kakashi's hands pause on the blade. "That's treason."
Treason.
What an archaic term for the mercy she's asking. 
"I am so tired," Shoko says quietly. "Please. Don't let them push my technique past its limits in the aftermath."
Stone and steel scrape together one last time before Kakashi chooses another blade.
"Some things never change," he says, so quietly Shoko wonders if she's supposed to hear. Then, louder, "alright."
Thank goodness and good riddance.
Shoko could refuse to heal whoever shows up for emergency treatment in the aftermath of that inevitable conflict. She could pick and choose. Doing so would break many rules, though.
Shoko isn't Kakashi or Satoru. Her worth and use fail if she refuses to offer them up for consumption. It is an exhausting way of life that leaves her feeling hollow and beaten, but she is still standing. Despite it all, Shoko is still here. That matters.
"Thanks," is all she says.
-
A/N: Regarding how/why Kakashi reincarnated: thats really up to you as a reader. I, personally, think the Sage was skipping stones across the tanabata star river and accidentally beaned a ninja in the head with one. A second chance at life is his apology gift. Kakashi remembers none of this. He is living off the goal to someday figure out how to summon his doggos, completely unaware that the ninja world he left is dealing with the fact that several dozen witnesses saw an elite assassin get struck down from the sky. Divine judgement to the extreme. They then saw an old due with horns and unmistakable resemblance to many folktales to show up, scratch his head at the whole aftermath, and go "whoops" before dipping. My basis for this theory is that I think it's funny
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Weaksauce.
Weak this morning and tired even when I woke up. I did too much yesterday, even though I feel as if I didn't do anything at all. My stamina is for shit. I did note that the rehab doc is ordering PT 3 times per week at home once I am out of the hospital.
Better late than never.
It's reconditioning, meaning that since my surgery I have been deconditioning without proper care. What I could have done during recuperation, I have no idea since I had so many abdominal incisions and a new ostomy that I could barely get on or off the toilet or in/out of bed. Those incisions went through muscle. Hell, I couldn't shower standing up until six weeks later.
So. Legs. I'm trying for two 30 minute sessions on the bike, plus two 90 minute sessions with the TENS unit. I'm not dealing with this emotionally too well. I've always been someone who would rather walk than ride and now I can't.
Let's Talk About Trauma
Understand that I am not a professional, but a someone with trauma from childhood forward - for most of my life my experiences were not considered trauma. One of the most eyeopening events of my life was someone asking me, very gently, "Was this normal for you as a child?"
The basic explanation of trauma is an emotional response to situation that inflicts harm to your feeling of safety, your sense of identity, and even your sense of reality. It also hampers your emotional health and responses and makes it hard to have healthy relationships. The precipitation of trauma can come from a single incident, ongoing situations, or a complex timeline of multiple traumatic events. The resulting after-effect is known as PTSD or CPTSD.
I am not using the DSM-V definition because it is actual shit. I take psychiatric meds, they do have a place in treatment. These are twpo thoughts that can coexist.
The Three E's of Trauma
Event: Psychological abuse, physical abuse or violence, physical trauma including medical trauma, observing an event without being directly affected (witnessing a car accident as an example), neglect, or any event that puts one in fear of life or safety.
Experience: Relating to how someone responds to Event. What might traumatize one person might not traumatize someone else. How an individual perceives the event, labels it, and how they experience disruption is how it becomes trauma. Almost all trauma extends from a difference in agency, where the person experiencing the event has little or no ability to stop or alter the event whether it's inflicted by a person, group of people, force of nature, and so on. When the person experiencing the event feels powerless, they experience feelings of humiliation, shame, guilt, self-blame or self-doubt, and can even (personal experience only) gaslight themselves into believing that the event never happened.
Effect: So, the sneaky thing about trauma is that there may be a lag between cause and effect; meaning that you might not connect the effects you feel with the trauma and believe that you were not traumatized. Some issues arising from PTSD include memory and attention (brain fog, forgetfulness, obsessive thinking, intrusive thoughts, unable to focus as examples), unable to handle stress (don't get me started), unable to control or appropriately express emotions (includes being emotionally numb, being a rageball, internalizing emotions, self-harming and so on), being unable to trust, fatigue/exhaustion, and the maladaptions of avoidance and hypervigilance.
Fuck, that's a lot. Whoo boy. My main effect is maladaption - unhealthy coping mechanisms. I am QUEEN.
Crying It Out
For a long time, I was unable to cry. No matter how angry, or hurt, no matter how much grief I felt, I had no tears. Since roughly New Year's, I tear up very easily, and here is why that helps from Harvard Med.
"Researchers have established that crying releases oxytocin and endogenous opioids, also known as endorphins. These feel-good chemicals help ease both physical and emotional pain. "
"Thinkers and physicians of ancient Greece and Rome posited that tears work like a purgative, draining off and purifying us. Today’s psychological thought largely concurs, emphasizing the role of crying as a mechanism that allows us to release stress and emotional pain."
Crying has been made taboo and taken as a sign of weakness and excessive emotion - you know, femininity or childishness. Men are taught (or traumatized) not to cry, and women taught to emulate male behaviors to earn the right to ascend the economic ladder. Even little kids are derided as 'crybabies.' So, methinks, if being unable to cry is a sign of trauma, maybe my tears are a sign of acknowledging trauma and being able to deal with it in a healthy way.
"Why is it incumbent on me to suck it up, be a bigger person, and not to cry instead of being incumbent on other people to not be assholes?"
Something to think about.
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