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nastasiyanena · 1 month

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Drafting Rivers. How It's Made

It was Monday morning when I took that local train. Quite a long one, around three-hours journey. I will likely be the only foreigner inside when it starts departing. A bunch of high school students filled up the train. I enjoyed watching their keychain hanging on their backpack. A lot of cute characters and my mind was full of wonder, imagining what kind of person are they by the keychains they owned.

This journey started after I confessed to a friend how I felt emotionally exhausted in my current “home”. It was a good hiking day we took when the sun shone brightly and the breeze of the mountain took both of us leaving the town down there, escaping the reality by the humming while Elton John’s Rocket Man played along. Yes, we both are in search of a "home". We felt and know the exact emotion that is caused by our current "home". There is a question that came up, something like, "Are we gonna be someone else, hiding our real feelings, hiding our true wills, collecting all the recognition, even if we don’t feel it’s right, in the hope of better "home"? Looks like I am the stubborn one. I knew what I was gonna choose even in the coming soon days. It’s a sad hard choice—I can’t say what others choose is wrong. I experienced it as well. You know, when you stay because there is no choice. It’s really hard. Before we said goodbye that time, I got some info about the beautiful local train route. It could lead me to the beach in Shizuoka and seems as if my soul had a strong calling to follow this route. The keychains still swinging as before 8 am they all get off at Ichikawahonmachi station. It's their school station likely. The train continues the long journey again. Passing by some station I like the name of. Passing by a big river with a sparkle on it. Passing by a green bamboo forest with an old couple that got in and took a seat close to me. The song in my earphones keeps looping. Sounding the one which I always listen to. Feel relieved after kind of running away from "home". It was nearby Shizuoka when a foreign couple came and seat across mine. I thought they were cool. They also took a local train and chose the long journey as I do.

When it finally reached Shizuoka, the clouds appeared and covered the one that I wanted to see, Fuji-san. I kept my eyes on the side that I was sure it was there. Hoping the clouds will disappear a little bit. For a moment, the train track surprised me with a view of the city from up the hill. It was a beautiful moment. And there, not so long after, I saw Fuji-san! Still shy under the clouds but I knew it greeted me with a huge smile as I also did. After Fuji-san left behind, my train stopped at the last station. There we are to our destination. I already screenshot the way I should take for today's walk. It was around 5 km. I look around and take it slow as usual. Immersing new place as an alien that came from far away. I saw a small veggies farm with a huge soramame that was ready to harvest. The manhole cover also shows a new look with Fuji-san and another one with Princess Kaguya, I believe. It's so nice being in a new place where you know nothing a lot about it and decided to explore it by yourself. The hot sunshine made me swing by to the Seven-Eleven. Went a bit for the toilet and bought yummy sweet coffee milk to celebrate the day while walking. It was quite a hot day as I opened my brown jacket and put on my blue hat.

I walk through the direction until I reach a sign of the place I want to go. Some wild grass covered along the way as the road changed into sand. My face was full with a huge smile when I heard the waves. It's there finally! I arrived at the place where the Fuji River met the Pacific Ocean. The vivid colour of both of them gave me a goosebumps. I sat on the driftwood and enjoyed the breeze over my face. Today's bento is a roast sausage, a simple sandwich and our sweet Seven-Eleven coffee milk. I found some vibrant stones while enjoying my lunch. Putting on the big stones close to me and planning to bring them back as a souvenir. A little dog comes by with a smiley woman. Playing around its feet with the water and running across to the sand. There are some surfer afar, enjoying their sunny day with the waves. I like the place like this, seems quiet yet every corner has its energy.

Finally, it's the time. I put out my drawing and looked around. Feeling the sadness that still and always be there these past couple of months. Or maybe way far long before? I said to myself, yes it is as it is. I hold my Nokia phone after putting in my drawing inside the water. Letting it drown with a plastic bag and stones that holding it on. My tears came, my hands a bit shaken, and my knees got tired. But the sun shines beautifully, the wind blows gently yet steadily gets harder, and the river, there it is already. 5 minutes shoot. One take that I don't even know what it is for.

I was quite shocked when realized no one was on the beach. I likely sat quite long after shooting the video. Quickly packing and going, I saw some young fisherman with their fishing gear, joking around and walking towards me. It helps me feel at ease again. Walking back along the way before, taking another route to the station, found some things that made me stop a bit to enjoy, until I was on the train again, back to another three-hours journey, where the sunset accompanied me. Where the old man across me enjoyed his fruit and wine which was funny because he seemed a little drunk and peeling the apple with a knife as it was his kitchen.

As the train closer to that station. I have decided already. I am leaving. I am stopping it here. I am dropping it all here. I will say it all here as well. It's likely will be the worst in 20 years. It's likely will be muzukashi. But I am happy. I am happy that I am standing up for myself and for other artists who chose to stay. They stayed because they had no choice. It’s not easy to come to this "home". We are all in our process.

As with drafting the rivers, the stones will stop us at some point, yet the flow of the waters remains. Even at its tiny phase. It's still there.

#spacerobot #nenanastasiya #journal

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luke-skywalker · 4 years

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Mike aka captainpoe is talking shit about me so let me get things straight.

He’s gonna do screenshots of what will makes him look like the victim, like he always does so you will have to believe me on my words (since I coun’t found our conversations by pm) but most people who know me or I've been following me for a long time know that I usually stay out of the drama. Big thanks to my friends for telling me what he was doing behind my back like the adult he is.

3 years ago Mike started following me, I was back then a small blog and I thought “wow a big blog is following me!”

He started to talk me and really fast told me to send him my edits by messages and I did! he also reblogged me on his mcu blog (and his sw blog too... I think).

I was really stressed with a big exam around July and I became obsess with EVERYTHING, I was a true pain in the ass to everyone. I’m not gonna lie. So yeah I also became obsess with my Tumblr notes, I did gifs to relax but it was not working very well back then. my behavior was childish and I apologized to him after!

(He accused me of wanting to be reblogged on his sideblogs, it’s true, but it’s natural to me to reblog everything that people send me or tag me in on my sideblogs, I sincerely don’t understand people problem with reblogging on sideblogs things ).

When he got harassed on here, more like called out (it was actually around the same time I was a dick) he asked me to take his defense and to reblog a post he made, he was basically whining about how he was the victim and never harassed anyone, he sent me messaged telling me that he was a married man in florida and never did anything against the once upon a time fandom, wasn’t homophobic and meh meh meh... Back then I believed him because he was the nice guy who was helping me getting notes in the MCU fandom. He used me, after talking to other members I realized that I wasn’t alone.

I WANT TO APOLOGIES TO THE POEPLE I DIDN’T BELIEVED BACK THEN. I KNOW WHO HE IS NOW.

He started being aggressive but nothing worriedly when TLJ came around, it was a real little thing but I wasn't shipping Rey x poe and I felt like it was problem for him that I wasn’t shipping them. I didn't thought too much about it but still, it left a bad taste in my mouth, I wasn’t talking a lot to him after that.

When I had problems and got hate on my blog he didn't do shit to help me.

I was still sending me my edits because... Notes. I can’t lie about that, like every creators here I want my edits to get notes.

I think we haven’t talked for a verrrry long time, I was sending my edits that’s it.

Last year he asked me to join my GOT blog, after all the reblog he did for me I thought It would be really bitchy to me to not add him as a member. But I also noted that it was funny how he joined both the B99 and the GOT fandom once he realized that it was very popular.

He did edits on the blog so no problem at all, until s8 ended. I’m like everybody, I hated that season but when someone join my sideblogs, especially my got one, I am very clear about the no hate rule (I had problems with that on this blog before). But he thought that since he was popular he could do what he wanted, I deleted the two first he reblogged, one of them was calling people to harass D&D and I hate what they did but as someone who has been victim of bullying at school and still suffer from that I was disgusted by what he posted but I haven’t told him anything since he’s really popular and I didn’t want to create any drama... I have a life so I finally forgot about it.

My laptop broke and gosh, I really understood who he was at that moment! I sent a messages to all the members of my sideblogs asking them to keep the blogs active while I can’t, normal stuff for an admin. I had my tablet with no photoshop... spidey got “fired” and like a lot of other people I thought about that scene in iw where Tony told him “you’re an avenger now”, lucky me I have already made that gifset before so I took my tablet and just reposted my own gifset, it took me so long because I had to convert it back to gif format because of Tumblr... Anyway, later he sent me a message accusing me of having copied him and I haven’t seen his gifset so told him exactly that. He then accused me of doing that ALL THE TIME with endgame and I told him “listen bro we’re both using the same 30 seconds YouTube clips that marvel gave us”, like 20 other people (they were not a lot of people because that channel was weirdly unknown), it’s true that I was doing them after him but it’s just because I have a life and cannot always do gif, I make them when I have time. He also basically told me that I must be rich for having replaced my laptop that fast, I haven’t, I was using my tablet but even if I did replace my laptop, mêle toi de ton cul ( I have no English expression coming to me ).

I really understood who he was then.

He totally stopped making edits for my got blog, because it stopped trending so it wasn’t interesting him anymore.

a few months past and I think the only thing he told me is that he was scared of clowns... Literally.

And then the BIG ONE, I know he was a douche but omg. Mike asked me to reblog ALL his posts on a sideblog I'm only a member of. He told me that the admin have blocked him because she was shipping reylo and well reylos hate him because he’s posting shit on them , they were a huge misunderstanding then (because i’m French and I may not have explained myself right) , I told him that I wouldn’t reblog him if the admin didn’t want to see his posts on the blog, he was blocked! and I was, at the same time, talking to another member of this blog who is a close friend of the admin and she agreed with me. he was very insisting and I told him that the admin was checking what we add to the queue and would certainly delete his posts, it was the big misunderstanding that could have hurt the admin of the blog, I just meant I know she checks what’s happening because she told me when I don’t tag a post with the right tags, it’s just what a good admin (unlike myself) does. I also told him that it was a new blog with “only” 14k followers, he must have something like 50K followers sooooo, and that his edits were getting 100K notes, more than anybody here. He became... I have no words to describe that. He told me that it was a dictatorship if I couldn’t reblog what I wanted, and that I should leave the blog, I stopped answering pretty fast after that.

In our last conversation I was vulgar. (it’s in the post he sent to my friends), he really need to get over it, I’m French and from Normandie : I am vulgar! wtf. It’s also the last thing he ever posted on my game of thrones blog. It was a Sunday either two days after after the last star wars movie came out or ten days ( I don’t remember if he waited a week or not) but he reblogged a text post from his blog sending hate toward the writers of both got and sw and spoiled the entire Star Wars movie on my game of thrones blog, which was “the drop of water that caused the vase to bleed” like annoy me all you want but when people goes on my got blog they don’t want to be spoiled, it was so rude and mean and that post had nothing to do there and it was at least the third time so I told him to “fucking stop” and since mr thinks he is the king he went all “you can’t talk to me like that” “I'm an adult” meh meh meh. I told him to never go in France ‘cause he wouldn't like us. And it was the last time we spoke. Nothing to do directly with me but I would never do what he does to get notes, that man he’s ready to use any big events such as pride or women’s day to get notes. I do make edits for those events too but I'm actually a bisexual woman and not an heterosexual man and I really don’t think he’s doing those edits to show his support to those movements but just to get notes, this year he did the same thing with blm movement I thought it was disrespectful at best, he even made the famous “I we burn you burn with us” gifset from the movie and no, just stop dude. Making that gifset of Naya before she was even found was awful, a lot of people are doing gifs to feel better about things but I don’t think it would have came to anybody else mind to have it ready in their draft. It actually make me think of myself because after they died I made a gifset of Carrie Fisher and Stan Lee and in my head it was a tribute but now that I think back about it I wouldn’t make gifset when people dies anymore, I said it once again but in my head it was a tribute to those wonderful people life and work. I did to feel people and myself a little better in those situations but it didn’t makes me feel better. I thought about it even more, especially for Carrie, because I couldn’t stop thinking about Billie and losing my mom is the worst thing that could happen to me. You can say that, at the end, Mike makes me realize something.

He has been calling out for his behavior but instead of facing it like an adult he just want to take people down instead of him, I'm one of them and I certainly won’t be the only one. it’s someone who doesn’t know how to face the consequences of his behavior and still think he’s untouchable, me and one of my friend said that he thought he was the king of Tumblr and I sincerely think that in his head he is.

Sorry for the grammar I'm French and it’s almost 4 am so I'm gonna check the grammar tomorrow.

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haila-wetyios · 5 years

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Raiding

Since it became a pretty long post, Imma just throw this under a Read More. It’s not about current tumblr drama fashion. So no popcorn scene for you peeps. Just my experience as a whole and to finally let go of a few feelings that kept weighting on me for a good while until my current team took me in.

The first time I ever advertised on a PF that I was seeking a raid team, was during the final months of ARR. I was a complete scaredy cat, anxious of whether I'd be good enough to work on a team that required more coordination than pugs to get things such as extreme primals or savage raids done. Off I go as a SMN main, panicked as my raid leader of that team joined my party for a brief interview. Afterwards though, during our first joint team efforts for HW content (Ravanna and Bismark extreme at that time) I discovered that I wasn't as bad as I thought. On the contrary, I was too perceptive of everything to the point I would rush to do mechanics assigned to our newbie healer who after several explanations would still not do the thing. Despite my huge insecurities of probably not doing the relevant rotations down to the last skill, my ego started to rise a bit when parsers started to take more and more of conversations between static members. And although I would never ask about my numbers directly, I would celebrate in silence when reading the overall party dps the moment I realized mine had been at the top even with a ninja and a dragoon in the party. That should have been a flag to me now that I look back for being a caster that was doing more damage than the melee. But I didn't know any better, and stayed with my group regardless throughout the entirety of gordias savage. Every week would be the same pummeling against the horrifying Faust dps check, then the first turn's boss, then the second turn until we finally hit the wall of jigglyman and disbanded. I didn't have much complains, despite how tiring it was, I had long since given up on those clears and instead turned each night into 'training to see how long I can last the moment shit hits the fan in any given fight'. And boy did I get a ton of experience down that lane.

The next times I started looking into content once more, I could only play the part of a sub for any group of people I trusted due to life and time issues. But I still took pride in being that one stable sub that could support any group on any extreme primal through HW. I still lament that I was never able to go through Midas and Alexander savage when they were relevant and merely watched from the sidelines.

Then SB came up, and I merely stood aside once more for the first Tier with Exdeath. Except this time, the frustrations of not having been there while I watched all my friends start doing EX's and savage content had finally gotten to me. And lo' and behold, suddenly I was back on square 1, trembling in fear while waiting on my PF announcement that I was looking for a group for Sigma (Kefka times). Nearly died the moment I had two people with interesting names join in my party and just grab me on the spot. I had no idea what I was getting into, they mentioned they just needed a caster slot for the new rag tag group they had built, but at least I had a team! Then the first day of raid came up, and right off the bat I was terrified at the fact that our raid leader was missing, being replaced just for that moment with the FC leader instead. Turns out my entire group save for the ninja, were a raiding FC with multiple groups going in through the week. And what was the first comment of the night pray tell? Well "No one should be here with X ilvl gear." Who was it aimed at? Well, to the only potato that for the first time was slightly outdated in 2 pieces of gear for not being active before the patch dropped. That was the moment that marked my spiraling down a rabbit hole that I wish I could let go of easily but still has a tight grip on me to this day.

I felt like crap, I fought my best and did research on how to be a better caster. Other than the FC leader's comment, no one berated me or spoke about me on a negative light. But it still left a mark in which I kept trying to prove myself and be useful. Suddenly I would find myself cursing at my skills. Hating how no matter how hard I tried with everything, I would never be able to even pass the goddamned Stone, Sky and Sea for savage raids. But we were still getting things done. Two new savage turns down in a single week of release? That felt incredible and also bittersweet. Because any time that my party members celebrated their purples and golds in fflogs, I would be in a corner, self destructing with greys. I kept trying and trying, until my coping mechanism ended up being "I'm just a fill in. But if I'm just this, I'm damn going to do a job stable enough to have a place here." Then things started turning out easier to deal with. I had noticed the goofiness of a lot of the members despite the numbers that dictated their runs, I gave up on my grey numbers and focused on getting their asses up if someone made a mistake. To support the healers as much as possible with mana shift and such. I started putting my experience of keeping the party alive to more use while I slowly tried to recover the confidence I had lost when starting the tier. Granted, they didn't care for the group as much as I did. No amount of hanging out after raid times or helping was enough for the few in charge to announce when we were done raiding after months of being together. They just stopped one day until their FC leader asked me if I was aware of the 'disbanding'.

Then it was time to switch gears, for the first time I thought my work had bore fruit when I was recruited into the FC leader's group instead, and all was well.... Until it wasn't, we kept having to replace members left and right, specially healers and tanks. Progress was slow, sometimes we’d clear Chaos and Midgarsormr, and others it would be a mess depending on the random team comp we had for the week. Things should have been better by the time we made it to Omega, half the party had cleared with their mains after all. Except that it was the point where everything went south in the background.

We had gained a good White Mage, who would complain about random jibber jabber every now and then, but that was fine, no biggie. Then they brought in their former co-healer from their previous static, a Scholar, and all was supposed to be fine. But then something happened that slowly started to wear us all out. For some reason, we suddenly were struggling some more with Midgarsormr, and then Omega.... Boy, even if we had previously cleared, suddenly the three days with 3 hours of raid time each went on on that goddamned turn, and then the final 15 min would go for Omega Male and Female and the reason was hard to tell at first, we were doing the same old after all. It wasn’t until nearly a month of wiping that probably the group had started to realize what was wrong. Our Scholar wasn’t exactly pulling his full weight.

This is what caused probably something that I should have seen coming and that stuck with me for a long while until now that I found this draft I worked on when the wound became fresh again from just thinking about it. It’s just frustrating, sad to a degree and I brought part of it on myself for trying so hard to be useful to no one. What happened? Well, the leader didn’t want to get involved into any drama by only kicking the Scholar because they were friends with the White Mage, so a disbanding was supposed to be the better way to end things. Except the leader decided to do it in a different and up to date still a very shitty fashion.

Right after we’d finished the last raiding night for the week, he posted an announcement about how people, aka his FC members were tired of constantly bashing their heads against Omega with little success and so they were gonna reform. By kicking the only outsiders of the static team. The White Mage, the Scholar, and me. There was no further explanation, no messages to me, nothing. I was just tossed like that after +6 months of knowing this FC and having raided and hung out with a good chunk of their members. I’d sacrificed so much for them. My time, my confidence to a degree, I had been a slave to their parsers more than a few occasions each time I heard them celebrating or complaining about their numbers. All because I wanted to feel like I could stand on the same levels as them. And I did to a good degree. I reached a point where I knew that my abilities weren’t as bad as the greys on my numbers showed me. But it meant nothing to any of them in the end. No message from the leader that up to that point had kept communication with me for raid times and other stuff. No reaction from the peeps I’d raided the most with.

The most ironic part that I still respect? The only person to apologize, the only one that actually took the time to send me a message after the whole group ‘disbanded’ was the dragoon that I had only ever heard speak about their golden parses and nothing else on discord. We hadn’t even talked up until then. But he still cared more than the people that had known me for longer in that group. Granted, I did get to throw at least a cent in the raid channel about what I thought before getting kicked, so he probably wanted to come out clean on that.

I am glad to no avail that I will never have to see them again, because the server splits sent them to a different data center. But it still left a deep mark on me when it came to XIV. I stopped logging in to do any content for a while, focused more on screenshots, on shady flower lady times until I could learn to love the game again. It probably took longer than I would have liked because all of this happened at the exact time that my friends from my crew had dived into raiding at a deeper level. I got to see them celebrate clearing the final omega. Then server transferring to be with their static before the great split or quitting. And then with Shadowbringers hearing “We’re not looking for a dps caster slot.” Each time anyone needed a fill in for their group.

All this left me at an odd spot, being the veteran that keeps up groups or dungeons on normal modes, but having a hard time trying to get back into my niches in the game. My way of getting through raid had been to think of myself as being replaceable or worthless, but still trying to keep my hope that I’m actually valuable. Getting through all of it alone is not the solution now that I can let go of that bitterness of not being appreciated even as a person. I just happened to get a random chance to try out filling in for a group for a friend. But it wasn’t that what helped me the most both to be back on raids and to have finally built back my confidence. They probably didn’t think that I would check, but I’m the curious kind. Specially when you join a discord that has brief mentions of you on the recent chat. And seeing them mention me, and then vouching over my skills as a player, and how I was their first friend in the server? Well, despite having trouble expressing any feelings myself most of the time, when I get to think of it, you have no idea how much it meant to me.

I managed to get back on what I like and enjoy most of what I do after deciding to take another leap of faith and join this group despite my stigma. Granted, mentions of parses and all will always be there. But not letting them define you, and believing in what you can and can’t do in content, I think is the best choice you can make to have a healthy experience and enjoy yourself as much as possible.

#personal #FFXIV #Raiding can be fun or leave a bad mark on you depending on how you go about it #long post #When I first wrote this it looked more like a rant so off it went to drafts #But its really just my experience overall now that I re read it and added two more cents in it

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buffalowingsfortwo · 5 years

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9/20/19 4:00 am

ash to faith

im drafting this in the notes of my phone because my wifi’s being really shitty. i know it’s better to not just do it in the app anyways, but i hate this. i like tumblr’s formatting and the knowledge that all of my work could be wiped out in a second if the app doesn’t feel like working properly.

today was lot. not like how yesterday was a lot, but for real a lot. i could’ve gone to sleep a long time ago but i’ve been processing.

i got up around 1 today and just stayed in bed until like 3. i had plans to go out with kris for a couple hours, so after a while, i had to get up and get ready. i did my makeup and drove to his house and tried to think about anything other than what happened last night. he got in the car, and started talking about last night immediately, and i tried to ignore him and focus on the sounds of fall out boy’s greatest hits. it kind of just made me feel worse.

after some debate, we (i) decided we’d go to vons to buy a fruit bowl, and then find something to do in the middle of nowhere. it took 15 or 20 minutes to find an old broken down shed that i’ve been wanting to explore for a while. we ate honeydew and watermelon and walked onto the property and hoped there weren’t dead bodies or someone waiting to shoot us. unfortunately, there were neither. it would’ve actually been really exciting if we did run into a problem like that.

the shed thing wasn’t that exciting, so we looked around every corner, and took a few pictures, and i carved “A+K 9/19” into what was once a couch. he took my knife and carved a heart above it. i tried not to think about what that would look like to anyone else. we ran around and took more pictures and i got lots of stickers and splinters in my shoes. he kept trying to grab me, and maintain any kind of physical contact with me. i kept trying to run to different locations and keep the distance between us. i didn’t want to be mean, but i came there specifically to explore. around 5:30, i announced that we had to leave so i could take him home. we walked back to the car, and before i could start driving away, he grabbed my hand and started talking about his feelings. i was trying to focus on fall out boy’s greatest hits. most of what he said blurred together. i make him feel like nothing else. i make him really happy. he really likes to spend time with me. im really unique. i looked pretty in the sunlight. he talked about me a lot to his friends and family. and while he said all these things, i looked everywhere but at him, and thought about everything but him. and i felt bad. like, really bad. but he wouldn’t stop talking. and i know from past experience that he has a habit of going speechless when i do something bold or unexpected. so i kissed him. and then as quickly as i went in, i pulled back, and i started driving us back into the city.

he talked more after that. he was really flustered, and it would’ve been cute, if the full situation wasn’t so awful. i didn’t say much. i dropped him off at a restaurant where he was meeting his family for dinner, and when he got out of the car, he kissed me again. and that’s when it really set in that im a fucking idiot and i should never be trusted to handle my own problems. i kept driving and tried really hard to focus on fall out boy’s greatest hits.

i went home and ate a few snacks and then shelby said she needed someone to go to target with, knowing that i am the world’s biggest fan of target. we went, and she got some stuff for her dorm, and i made out with chapstick for both of us, and two new lip glosses. while we were there, i ran into sydney and her best friend alyssa, but managed to play it off like i didn’t actually see them. i don’t know if they saw me. if they did, they didn’t say anything. im grateful for that.

i took shelby home and had to go straight back out, because kris and our whole group of friends was going bowling to celebrate kris’s departure from the valley. we met at dominic’s house, where everyone smoked and we all made dumb jokes, and i was introduced to dominic’s younger brother kenny, and a group of his friends, all of whom are really weird and really loud. i think they’re cool though. an hour and a half or so later, we left for the bowling alley.

kris offered to pay for my bowling because i had $3.30 in my bank account. i felt bad but i let him. it was me, kris, connor, dom, damonte, andrew, julya, paige, and madi, and everyone was super high except for me. i didn’t mind, because it’s been a while since i’ve had a fun night, and i was just happy to see everyone. we played through our game and it was messy. we split up the boys and girls and found out our skill levels were pretty evenly split. julya fuckin killed it and got the second highest score, right after damonte, who i guess invented bowling. i got the second to lowest score, barely above connor, who on probably half his turns, just threw the ball directly into the gutter. it was humiliating for both of us and i’ll probably never stop making fun of him for it.

when the game finished, everyone went outside to smoke, because madi had a wax pen, and half the people in that group will apparently die if they don’t have a cigarette every 30 seconds. while they went around in a circle, i sat on the back of dominic’s car and looked at the stars and thought about it all. this and everything beyond it. the city we were in. the street we were on. and the moon to my right. and for a moment, i understood the weight of my whole life, and i watched it swim under me, and i was at peace with that moment and everything that had led up to it. and i was so happily above it all.

it was getting close to midnight, and i had already pushed my curfew far past the breaking point (with my mom’s half permission) so i let everyone know i had to go. they all started talking about where they were gonna go for food, and i went around hugging everyone. it was fine until i got to kris and everyone ran to their cars, as if the moment wasn’t tense enough already. so i went and hugged him for a bit, and then told him i had to go, and when i pulled back, he kissed me. and because i felt bad, and because i was having a good night, and because i knew it wouldn’t last, and because it had just been so long since anyone had looked at me like that, i let him. and it felt awful. he tasted like cigarettes and cold water. he isn’t a bad kisser, and i do like the taste of cigarettes, but the feeling of it all just broke me. in dominic’s car behind us, were dom, andrew, connor, and damonte, all very obnoxiously cheering. and i laughed with them. and kris kissed me again. and i thought about how it was such a nice night. and i thought about how it was such a nice place to be. but it wasn’t home. and no amount of loneliness could make it so. so i stopped him, and said i had to go, and i told him he’d find a nice girl at college to fuck. and he said he really liked me. and i laughed, because there weren’t any words to cover the guilt and adrenaline and chaos i was feeling. so i pushed him over to dominic’s car, and all the guys started yelling out praise for me. i told them to fuck off and suck dicks, and they just turned up the music, and started yelling and bouncing around as if seeing someone make out with their best friend was the most exciting thing they could fathom. and i laughed as they drove away. and when they were gone, i looked down sierra highway, and i knew i wasn’t above anything at all.

i went home and ate the chicken pot pie my mom had made for dinner and left in the fridge, and then some watermelon, and spent a couple hours on shelby’s bedroom floor while she packed for school. and i filled her in and we both felt bad. so i played jerome by lizzo on a loop, and tried not to think about any of it. which became really hard when i started getting screenshots from ari who was getting texts from dominic about how me and kris had just made out and how kris was in love with me and they were all horribly depressed that he was about to leave for school and that this timing was so bad. i still wonder how none of them realized the timing was bad because i made it so. i can’t tell if what i did makes me heartless or not. probably. but im too tired to consider anything right now. i still have stickers in my socks and i just want to sleep forever. this would be a really good time for you to still live reasonably close to me. but it is what it is, i guess.

“i don’t blame you for being you, but you can’t blame me for hating it”

- a little less sixteen candles, a little more touch me by fall out boy

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