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9tzuyu · 3 years

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children of tragedy (rewrite)

note: heyo, rewriting an old fic of mine. i hope to be able to rewrite all 5 chapters quickly. if you guys don’t like it, i won’t continue because its kinda dark and idk i feel like no ones gonna like it anyways. please leave feedback though, im on my knees begging for validation. also sorry if its ooc, please forgive me.

++ sorry the beginning reveals how rusty my writing is </3

(*** i wrote this as as a fem reader fic because it worked easier with how i wrote things.)

+ please remember that this is purely a way to get out my own feelings/struggles in a healthy way. also i’m sure this works better as a ship fic, but someone asked for this version so yeah :).

** mistakes are mine im too tired and lazy to proofread right now.

warnings: talk of alcohol abuse, slight mention of domestic abuse.

🏷 @peggycarter-steverogers

ch.2 | ch.3

[love, fragility, and the memories that eat us alive.]

meeting wanda changed everything for you. she wasn't like anyone you’d ever known. she was always kind, never quick to lose her temper or scream and yell at you for things you couldn't possibly control. she was warm, tender with everything she did.

your relationship with her was very new to you. it was much different in comparison to your past experiences — and you weren't quite sure what to think of it. there was no doubt that you appreciated her and everything she did for you, but you were still waiting for her to snap. it was almost like a need burning throughout your body. being able to grasp the idea that someone could ever really, truly be gentle with you was out of the question. in turn, you’d push all of her buttons, hoping that she would get mad enough and get it over with.

no one could really fault you for it. the steady stream of abuse was the nearly the entirety of your life, both physical and mental.

lately wanda was having to pick you up from wherever she could find you, most of the time in the alleyways of of bars you’d been kicked from.

once you were drunk enough (anyone really) you weren’t afraid to say the first thing that came to your mind, offensive or not – which meant it was no surprise when you’d been involved in fights. the alcohol numbed a majority of the pain anyway, so didn’t really make much of a difference to you.

with this happening so many times, you figured wanda would be angry with you – perhaps so angry she would find it within her to hit you. but each and every time wanda brought you home, she made sure you were comfortable before tending to your inuries.

what you didn't know was that being so worried for you all the time, every second of everyday, was beginning to take a toll on her. wanda only wanted to fix you, but you were making it more than difficult for her to do that.

she knew very little about your past, simply because you didn't like talking about it and she didn't want to push. but there was no denying the fact that wanda was curious.

sometimes she would ask questions, only between the soft moments the both of you shared. much to her dismay, most of her curiosities were turned down. on the rare occasions you shared brighter memories of your childhood, wanda would bookmark them in the back of her head.

no harm would ever come from her, but you didn’t know that. at least not right now.

too many times had your exes used the trust you’d so politely given against you. to be fair with wanda though, you shared only the brightest parts of your childhood. they were very seldom, but the ones you could remember were the ones you enjoyed talking about the most.

despite her limited knowledge, it wasn’t hard for her to tell that you’d already been hurt plenty of times before. apart from the fact that wanda was overall truly a good person, it made her even more gentle with you than she’d ever been with anyone before.

on top of that, wanda wasn’t stupid. she picked up on every little flinch you tried to hide, or the times you had to ask her if it was okay if you could do something on your own free will, and she definitely didn’t forget about the countless times you berated yourself over small, humanly mistakes. a frown never failed to decorate her face when these things happened.

wanda tried her hardest to make it known how much she loved you, and how she would never intentionally hurt you. she never once lifted a hand on you or raised her voice in the slightest, even when she felt like she’d met a breaking point.

the last few weeks seemed to be putting more stress on her than usual. the gashes on your body seemed to be cutting deeper and the bruises on your jaw and rib cage were beginning to turn a darker shade of indigo as each fight became more aggressive. your knuckles had been swollen, irritated to the point your hands trembled when your palms were held open.

you completely missed how drastically wanda’s mood had changed. she became quiet, seemingly lost in thought most of the time until she needed to take care of you. she grew tired, a purple tint claiming a spot below the lip of her eyes. fifteen pounds of weight had shredded from her body and her head grew dizzy every time she stood up. none of that mattered to wanda though, you were her number one priority.

alcohol was the biggest issue in the way. if wanda could get you to stop drinking for just one night she might be able to reason with you.

the brunette knew that was out of the question though, because she knew no matter how many times she told or expressed her love for you, you wouldn’t stop until you wanted to, not when she wanted you to.

you never allowed yourself to be vulnerable around her, so she never knew how you truly felt about the things going wrong in your life. there was an unbearable amount of pain when it came to confronting what you tried so hard to push away. the idea of allowing yourself to heal, to mourn the things taken away from you caused a lump in the back of your throat. living in denial was the easiest way to cope - that was as long as you could bear the damage it created.

(and whether wanda knew it or not, knowing that you were causing her so much misery was the worst feeling you’d ever faced. all she had ever given you was love and in return she was met with destruction.)

so once again you found yourself walking alone, a slight stagger between steps. it was cold, each breath exhaled from your lips could be seen vaporizing into the air. every movement ripped what balance you thought you’d gained right out from underneath you. the feeling of numbness in your fingertips brought your attention away from the fact that you didn’t know where you were.

the buildings all looked familiar, but everything was hazy. being drunk wasn’t always the fun everyone bragged about. too tired to carry on, you found yourself slumped in the back of an alleyway next to a dirty garbage bin. it reeked of sour, expired food, but you’d given up on caring about anything else other than trying to drink yourself numb.

your mind began to wander. flashes of early mornings with wanda’s hands wrapped around your waist, breath tickling the back of your neck while the sun began to rise started filling your thoughts. the warm feeling wanda gave you outweighed every bad emotion you could possibly think of.

but as you stared at the ground beneath your feet things began to spiral. your throat contracted, the guilt you tried so hard to swallow began clawing its way out of your body.

(and holy fuck you could not deal with this right now.)

you curled your head between your legs in an attempt to shield yourself away from something that was born from the inside.

it was too much.

without a chance to stop what was happening, your stomach began heaving. a mix of bile and alcohol drooled from your mouth as you continued to vomit.

you missed the sound of footsteps coming from behind you. the feeling of a hand on your shoulder caused you to jerk back, slamming your back into the brick wall.

“hey, hey, it’s me. you’re okay. it’s just me, wanda.” she cooed.

through teary eyes, you looked up at the woman in front of you.

she’s your girlfriend.

(but you weren’t sure that you deserved to call her that after everything you’ve put her through.)

“what are you doing here?” your voice wavered as you wiped your mouth free of excess vomit. you sniffled backing away from her.

she tilted her head, desperate to read what your eyes would give away. “i’m here to bring you back home. can you stand up for me?” you shook your head. you were too exhausted and dizzy from the alcohol to even think about standing.

“that’s okay,” she whispered. “here, i’m going to pick you up, okay? wrap your arms around my neck and your legs around my hips.”

“mkay.” your speech was still slurred, but at that point all wanda cared about was getting you home safe.

you didn’t remember the ride home or wanda carrying you out of the car to lay you on the couch. by the time she got the supplies she needed to wrap and tend to your wounds, you were completely passed out.

when you woke up you were greeted with a glass of water and an over the counter pain medication. you swallowed the pills and moved to set the glass on the coffee table, but wanda beat you to it and took it out of your hands. she smiled down at you, taking a seat next to you. she tucked your hair behind your ears, giving your face one last gentle stroke.

thats when you noticed her eyes were red.

you immediately sat up, crossing your legs and moved closer to her. you’d hoped to comfort her somehow, but the shake of her head broke sonething inside you.

you bit your lip, anxiety shooting throughout your body. she sensed your nervousness and took your hands in hers, rubbing circles on the outside of your wrist with her thumbs.

“i love you, you know that. at least i hope you do,” she let out a soft laugh. “but i can’t keep doing this.”

your heart dropped, and you could feel the all too familiar feeling of guilt building its way back up. you tried to speak, but wanda cut you off.

“i need you to hear this.”

when you didn’t respond she took the opportunity to continue saying what she needed to get out.

“i have exhausted myself to a breaking point. i can’t keep worrying about you every single night you’re gone. i can’t be there every time you need saving. i’m losing myself.”

she paused to check and see how you were handling her words. for once you weren’t shutting down. you were genuinely trying to process what she was trying to say.

(and she was so proud of you for that. she almost considered giving you another chance. but she knew for the better, she couldn’t do that. not to you, not to her.)

“i’ve packed your things. you can leave tomorrow morning if you wish, i don’t mind having you for another meal or two.”

she squeezed your hands and got up from the couch, allowing you to take in what she said. it was in that moment when you realized that even when she’d finally drawn the line, had enough, she didn’t yell at you. she wasn’t angry, she was just sad.

you were chasing after something that wasn’t there, and it never would be there.

and now you were able to register just how much you’d fucked up the one good thing in your life.

#wanda maximoff x reader #scarlet witch x reader #wanda maximoff fic #wanda maximoff x you #wanda maximoff imagine #avengers imagine #avengers fanfiction

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sorrowsz · 3 years

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30 Day Thinspo Challenge

I'm just gonna get this over with in one post lmao

Day 1: Your stats

My cw is 120 lbs which I think is the highest it's ever been? I don't get to weigh myself often lol

Day 2: How tall are you, do you like your height?

I'm like 5'5 or 5'6 so pretty average. I'm ok with it but I kinda wish I was taller lol

Day 3: A picture of your thinspo. What features do you like about this person?

Jack is goals tbh I mean just look at those arms. perfect

Day 4: Your greatest fears about weight loss

I'm kinda worried what happens after I get to my gw, like it's not too far away but I'm not just gonna go back to eating regularly when I get to it? Idk

Day 5: Why do you want to lose weight? Are you doing it for you?

I just want skinny legs tbh. I am doing it for myself, but I'd be lying if I said other people's opinions of me/my looks didn't matter to me. I miss the skinny nicknames lmao

Day 6: Do you binge? If so, explain why you think you do.

Yep, after I start restricting for too long I'll just devour everything in the refrigerator even if it makes me feel like absolute shit.

Day 7: Do your parents know you're trying to lose weight? Do they care?

Oh hell no. Idk if they would really care, but it's way too embarrassing bc I've been trying to lose weight for years now and I've only gained since then. I'm a failure lmao

Day 8: Your workout routine

I don't really have a routine, I just have a playlist of some different workouts to choose from. I don't even do it that often tbh I'm lazy (gonna start doing it nightly though!)

Day 9: Did people ever make comments about your weight in a negative way?

Idk about negative but I've been told my legs are getting big by family. Another family member also told me they were fat lmao

Day 10: What was the hardest thing you gave up during this weight loss?

The ability to eat without counting calories lmao

Day 11: Your fav. thinspo blog and why.

I don't really have one rn. I spend so much time scrolling through this shit but I just kinda move on from one to the other

Day 12: What do you normally eat?

I've been living off instant rice noodles recently. 200 cal for a packet and it's so filling when drowned in water. Add a poached egg and you have some gourmet shit

Day 13: Are you losing weight in a healthy or unhealthy way?

Both ig? I used to do it more healthily but this recent dip back into being obsessed with getting skinny has been the worst so far lmao.

Day 14: What's your UGW? When do you expect to reach it?

Rn it's 96 lbs. I certainly could get there by the end of the year but knowing me I probably won't. A bitch can dream. A bitch can also undo a week's worth of progress in one day.

Day 15: Are you vegan or vegetarian? If so, has this helped you to lose weight? If no, do you ever consider turning vegan or vegetarian?

I tried veganism out a few years ago, but I'd never go back to it. I don't need stress dreams of accidentally eating meat or dairy products and binging. Fuck the cows tbh

Day 16: When did you first decide to lose weight?

I actually don't know. I have memories of trying to stop eating altogether and then binging on uncrustables from when I was younger, but I only really got into calorie counting like 2-3 years ago?

Day 17: Do you have an ED?

Nah but I certainly relate to the ed side of tumblr more than the dieting subreddits I used to subscribe to. Idk at what point you're allowed to say you have an eating disorder but I definitely have some disordered eating going on lol

Day 18: What food is your weakness?

Avocados and oil. Oil scares the living shit out of me, jesus. Why does there have to be so many calories in such a small amount??? And I love avocados but I just can't look at them the same anymore lmao

Day 19: When was the last time you ate fast food?

Idk the last time but my family gets it pretty often. I used to use it as an excuse to binge but once you learn the low cal options it isn't rlly scary anymore

Day 20: Fav. diet

I don't really go by any specific diets, I just try to stay under a specific amount of calories

Day 21: What are your clothing sizes?

Idk at this point. It varies too much depending on the brand so I just try shit on and don't pay attention to the size

Day 22: What was your lowest weight? How and why did you gain?

Maybe like 8 lbs? Idk I don't much remember being a baby tbh

Day 23: Did the media play a role in your wanting to lose weight?

Ofc lmao

Day 24: How do you feel about the terms pro-ana/pro-mia?

I definitely don't like them lmao. I may be a bit hypocritical here as I spend so much time reading that shit, but it's different when it comes to other people ya know. I kinda worry just making posts like this is pro-ana? But like I can't talk to anyone else about it and I kinda need a secret vent acc so idk

Day 25: Have you ever purged? If so, describe your first experience.

I've tried, but I just. can't. I rarely ever vomit and honestly I think I'd rather fast it off than go through that. I wish I could just make myself do it but I keep removing my fingers once I gag

Day 26: What excites you most about reaching your UGW?

There's this cute two piece beach set I've had in my Amazon cart for so long that I'll finally be able to wear without hating myself. Hopefully lmao I may still be fat by then

Day 27: How do you deal with being around food?

I fucking love food. It's so hard for me to turn it down which is why I'm in this mess in the first place

Day 28: Do you want that gap between your legs (thigh gap)? Why?

Uh yeah. Idk why aside from that's what I was taught is attractive lmao. We live in a society tbh

Day 29: Your definition of beauty.

This one is difficult for me to answer. I want to be skinny but I don't think everyone does in order to be considered beautiful. Different people are just beautiful in different ways lol

Day 30: 10 facts about you!

I'm 16, female, my favorite director is either wes anderson or bergman (ik how this sounds lmao), uhh. Idk that's all you get lmao

#30 day thinspo challenge #30 day thinspo #disordered eating tw #thin inspo

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miniwolfsbane · 3 years

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JWCC Sammy Gutierrez and body positivity

THIS IS VERY LONG! (I just have a lot of feelings!) Also, this is personal and doesn’t talk a lot about Sammy and is just one big rant.

Comment I wrote on the S2 preview “Also, shout out to the creators for making Sammy heavy, but it not effecting or having anything to do with her character. OR have her be obsessed with food. I'm sure other 90s kids remember the fat kid trope. Not doing fat logic, but we've come so far from the old days! As a woman who had that kind of body type growing up (had skinny friends, developed early, etc. it all was uncomfortable for many reasons. Long story.), it's amazing to see this kind of...semi-body positivity that's quiet and unspoken in a show aimed at everyone, including girls. If I had seen this character at 13, my mind would've been blown. Kudos!!”

I’m reeeally tired and getting to that point where I get emotional about stupid stuff. However, this isn’t that stupid...maybe?

We’ve reached a milestone, a kind of apex in American society, where being fat is no longer a running gag and it’s celebrated to be thick and/or a healthy weight. (Not to say skinny isn’t cool and it’s sure as heck better than carry 90+ pounds if it can be helped, but, as I said on Youtube, lots of 90s fat tropes were had, were they not? Every body type has their problems, blessings, and issues.) But, health is also a big issue and losing weight is too. I’m all for losing weight, but I also know what it was like growing up a fat kid, then a fat teenager in the 90s and 2000s when we didn’t have representation and people like Tocorra Jones, Melissa McCarthy, Ashley Graham and Rebel Wilson around to promote different body shapes and/or being a little heavy or curvy while still being healthy. (Melissa and Rebel have lost weight and I applaud them full circle!)

Anyway, It is downright uplifting to see Sammy in JWCC like this! Being “thicker” than her two female friends doesn’t slow her down or hinder her in anyway. She is not obsessed with food. She is not constantly eating. Likewise, she has an actual personality and an interesting secret and backstory. The fans seem to love her. She is not dressed immodestly and she doesn’t seem to have ANY negative opinions of her body type, for now. Likewise, in a fast paced show like this, no one is talking behind her back about her weight or eating habits (again, for now. This could change in upcoming seasons, we don’t know.) Come to that, she’s fairly intelligent and isn’t dumb. Like, how many times have we seen a fat, dumb person in a show. (I’m looking at you Chris Griffin and Cleveland Jr!) This could’ve gone SO SIDEWAYS in her character creation any number of ways and I’m just amazed it didn’t. However, this maybe is attributed to the show being an action show and not a comedy? In any case, I’m so glad girls of this generation can see it. I wish I’d had it at their age. (It’s probably because her VA is heavy, but heavier than how Sammy is portrayed, to my knowledge. I’ve only seen her years ago on Disney channel. Who cares why? It happened and I’m glad.) Please be assured, I’m NOT trying promote fat acceptance, just inclusivity, relatability, and representation.

Like I say all the time, I’m not super heavy. I never was. As I said in the comment, I developed early and had mostly skinny friends growing up. I remember being about 11 and hosting my first sleepover and someone pointing to my arms at my stretch marks, asking what they were. I wasn’t traumatized and they didn’t tease me, but I was a little (a lot?) self-conscious. Like, can we please get the idea out of our head that ONLY pregnant women get stretch marks?? (Cocoa butter companies, hello?!) They can happen to girls that grow tall fast or, like me, you can have them all freaking over because the puberty button in your brain got stuck. (LOL?) And calling them cute things like skin lightning doesn’t really help. My limbs and body still look weird.

I don’t remember seeing many characters shaped like me in shows as a kid or teenager. Unless maybe Simpsons characters with their pudgy bellies who may be some of the most average, realistic bodies in all of fiction, really. We can’t all be supermodels and body builders. Sailor Moon girls were all thin and leggy. None of the Magic School Bus kids were pudgy, all average and healthy (which is probably a good thing in a way. IDK. Representation is great, but so is promoting healthy eating and healthy shapes. Everything has their place.) Disney characters were mostly animals at the time, and I didn’t see Recess until Highschool or something at 3 am, and even then, there was only Mikey. Mikey was progressive, but he wasn’t female. Closest I got was Ariel’s (Little Mermaid) sister, Adella ( https://littlemermaid.fandom.com/wiki/Adella) and even then, she had no belly and never animated the same outside of the series with not much character development or anything.

Cassie from Animorphs might’ve been a close second, but, though she was my favorite female character as a kid (not anymore), it was hard to say “OMG, she’s shaped like me!” as it was a book series with few visual aides outside of covers, posters and some toys.

I remember seeing the singing group Cherish for a few seconds on TV once. A bunch of thick, busty, heavy black girls and I was SO EXCITED because for those few seconds on TV, there were girls that looked like me! Then some years later I found out a few of them lost weight and I was like bleh. (I didn’t follow their music or anything, not even sure how I saw them again.) Not that disapprove, health is essential, and I encourage people to lose weight for themselves, but it was nice having some representation. Except health needs to come first. It’s a two-edged sword if I ever saw one.

Don’t get me started on the sheer amount of girls with small/flat chests on TV. (No offense! See above about body types. Again, it’s about representation and seeing someone that looks like you that was not common in the 90s and early 2000s) I’m picky though. I wanted to see more representation, but the minute I saw it, I was not impressed or annoyed. To my better judgement, I saw a few episodes of something I won’t name with a curvy lead. I found her times dressing up as a man unconvincing and confusing because of her body shape. Other times I was, for lack of a better word, slightly appalled at her own size, even though she somewhat looked like me. I know, it makes no sense. Other times, I was mad at Lizzy Mcguire or another show for having skinny characters with A-cups while I was, er, way past training bras and smaller bras by 14/15 when the show was new.

Swearz, I developed (pun not intended!) this weird conspiracy theory that Disney execs have to look at the Star’s mom and other women in their family before casting a girl to make sure she stays thin/average chested for the shows entire run. Outside of one show, all shows in that era had the same thin girl body type. (And not much representation for different races for Disney back then, but that’s another debate for someone to better handle, not me.)

All that said, my shape was attributed to four things: Diet, genetics, lack of exercise and my mom’s cooking. Not sure how much I subscribe to the “genetics effect body fat theory”, but the “genetics effect body shape” is definitely a thing! And hormones in chicken. My family said all I ever wanted when I was little was McDonald’s chicken nuggets all the time, so I think that had some play in how I turned out. It’s probably too much to get into here, and no one cares about my sob story, so let’s move on.

Sammy is awesome and I hope to see more characters like her from other studios in the future. Every body type needs representation, but every body also deserves to be healthy and nourished.

EDIT: WARNING: THE VIDEO AND THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS TALK ABOUT ED AND CALORIE RESTRICTION!!

OMAHGAWWWD! I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE INDUSTRY, Y’ALL!! (Okay, that’s obvious, but you don’t really give it thought in your day to day life.)

The video gives a summary of Jenette McCurdy’s time on iCarly and the horrors she’d been going through in her younger years, which included an eating disorder and restricting calories to an (alleged) 900. Dear lord, that is sickening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCE1x_chT34

Granted, I would take this with a small grain of salt as it’s from the internet, and undoubtedly, many actresses, probably more than we realize, have ED’s. If they would start encouraging them to be at healthy weights, things like this wouldn’t happen. Frick Nickelodeon and frick the acting industry!!

So, this was what I was trying to convey. Casting and producers need to find that middle ground. Don’t promote fact acceptance, but do not force your actors/actresses to be stick thin either. I could go on a huge tangent, but I don’t have the brain power right now. If you have an ED or know someone that does, I strongly encourage you to get help. I’ve been in tight spots like that (I knew of people or knew people), but getting REAL help from a doctor, professional, or someone with a good head on their shoulders is better than hiding it or keeping it secret. Ten years down the line, you’ll be thankful you did and not have regret. No one is perfect, but sometimes you have to fight harder to find a solution and someone that will actually listen to you and take your concerns to heart.

If I get negative comments, I’ll be deleting this and no one will be able to enjoy it. Think before you type and don’t be a jerk.

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getreadytosmash · 3 years

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][Count Fuckula and Red][

@blind-mutant

Ship meme

General:

How long will they last? - Probably forever tbh?? Both immortal and if they can get along enough, then I see Red and Rhys being together for quite a few years.

How quickly did/will they fall in love? - It takes a few months since Red still has some issues with his repressed biromantic-ness and also the fact that he's got trauma over losing the last person he loved.

How was their first kiss? - Hesitant and gentle, Rhys probably gave a few bites to tease and help settle Red but it was very wholesome surprisingly.

Wedding:

Who proposed? - Red does since it would be a good part in him learning to move onwards and to take chances romantically.

Who is the best man/men? - All the Smasher boys!

Who is the braid’s maid(s)? - Jen and Betty

Who did the most planning? - Red did, to make sure it worked out as best as it can.

Who stressed the most? - Red again, but Rhys also panicked a fair amount since this was a whole "wedding to a man who can't die" and the fear of marriage itself.

How fancy was the ceremony? - Back of a pickup truck | 2 | 3 | 4 | Normal Church Wedding | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Kate and William wish they were this big.

Who was specifically not invited to the wedding? - Probably a villain that really wants to keep fighting Red,,,crying at Dracula fighting Rhys for a lifetime source of food aka Red XD

Sex:

Who is on top? - Red but later on, Rhys takes some turns.

Who is the one to instigate things? - Rhys is unless Red is feeling particularly energetic.

How healthy is their sex life? - Barely touch themselves let alone each other | 2 | 3 | 4 | Once a couple weeks, nothing overboard | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They are humping each other on the couch right now - If Red has nothing else to put energy towards??? He's horny and REARING to go.

How kinky are they? - Straight missionary with the lights off | 2 | 3 | 4 | Might try some butt stuff and toys | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Don’t go into the sex dungeon without a horse’s head - Red,,,Likes Stuff but he's just a bit shy in getting there at first.

How long do they normally last? - Uhh about normal time??? Idk how long sex is done but they have long stamina so I guess it doesn't matter.

Do they make sure each person gets an equal amount of orgasms? - Yeah, both spend a lot of time on each other.

How rough are they in bed? - Softer than a butterfly on the back of a bunny | 2 | 3 | 4 | The bed’s shaking and squeaking every time | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Their dirty talk is so vulgar it’d make Dwayne Johnson blush. Also, the wall’s so weak it could collapse the next time they do it. - Being a hulk and a vampire definitely comes in handy, let's just say that.

How much cuddling/snuggling do they do? - No touching after sex | 2 | 3 | 4 | A little spooning at night, or on the couch, but not in public | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They snuggle and kiss more often than a teen couple on their fifth date to a pillow factory. - Rhys is a clingy boy and Red does like a fair amount of cuddling, especially when he's relaxed in private.

Children:

How many children will they have naturally? - None aha.

How many children will they adopt? - Probably none since Red already has Betty. Team Grandpa tho!!

Who gets stuck with the most diapers? - Red since he has experience and can see what he's doing.

Who is the stricter parent? - Red. Gotta love the 70-80s parenting aha.

Who stops the kid(s) from doing dangerous stunts after school? - Rhys since he worries more about personal safety.

Who remembers to pack the lunch(es)? - Red does since he usually makes lunches anyway and Rhys doesn't really,,,need food.

Who is the more loved parent? - I think Rhys since he's easier to get along with and much more affectionate.

Who is more likely to attend the PTA meetings? - Red is as he sees them as important while Rhys just trusts his kid's word.

Who cried the most at graduation? - Both of them. They're such big saps and it's an important moment!

Who is more likely to bail the child(ren) out of trouble with the law? - Red is since he knows how it works better and has more experience with disciplinary officials.

Cooking:

Who does the most cooking? - Red does.

Who is the most picky in their food choice? - Technically Rhys? Since he can only drink blood mostly.

Who does the grocery shopping? - Red does, but Rhys likes to do it with him.

How often do they bake desserts? - Oh Red usually bakes something every week or they buy something from the cafe in town.

Are they more of a meat lover or a salad eater? - Meat!! Red needs more meat anyway and Rhys drinking blood falls under it too!

Who is more likely to surprise the other(s) with an anniversary dinner? - Rhys since he loves being able to do stuff for Red after so long of not having someone like him and Red is often gone for missions so it's a nice surprise!

Who is more likely to suggest going out? - Rhys is since he likes being in a town full of so many oddballs now.

Who is more likely to burn the house down accidently while cooking? - Rhys is.

Chores:

Who cleans the room? - Red does, he cleans everything up before he goes to bed.

Who is really against chores? - Neither? Rhys would like to help out and pull his weight, especially since the base is quite big and needs a lot of work done.

Who cleans up after the pets? - Red does and he already does so for Devil.

Who is more likely to sweep everything under the rug? - Rhys to be bratty tbh.

Who stresses the most when guests are coming over? - Neither but I guess it depends on who's coming??

Who found a dollar between the couch cushions while cleaning? - Rhys does and everyone fights over it.

Misc:

Who takes the longer showers/baths? - Rhys does, Red's got the Military Shower Time.

Who takes the dog out for a walk? - Red does, since Devil loves him lots and lots UwU

How often do they decorate the room/house for the holidays? - A lot! It's a team thing for every holiday and Rhys fully loves it and gets into it.

What are their goals for the relationship? - Red wants to make Rhys happy, wants to have another chance at doing better for a new partner, and Rhys most likely wants the same things, wants to make Red happy

Who is most likely to sleep till noon? - RHYS. If Red EVER sleeps past noon, it's because he's had to stay up from missions or sick.

Who plays the most pranks? - Rhys does. Best Friends, him and Rick for a reason.

#ask #blind-mutant #one man army (red)#vampire verse #i LOVE EMMM #dorky granpas...

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exceli · 5 years

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Learn how much sleep you really need. There are general guides based on your age group. However, every person is different, so it’s the best to access your sleep needs on your own. 2 ways to do that:

Keep sleep diary. Track your: bed time | wake up time | total hours of sleep | feelings after waking up (exhausted, refreshed, etc) | energy levels throughout the day Alternatively, print one of these a bit more extensive diaries from: NHS | National Sleep Foundation Harvard Medical School | Anxiety Canada After tracking for 1-2 weeks try looking for patterns and determine what works the best for you.

Take a sleep vacation. This might be a little easier than the diary. Basically, for a week or two go to bed at the same time without setting an alarm, allowing your body to wake up naturally.. After a while, you will notice that you’re getting the same amount of sleep.

Decide on your permanent & consistent sleeping times. I.e., when you need to go to bed and wake up in order to get enough sleep.

If you struggle with oversleeping, everyday try to wake up 5-10 min. earlier than the day before. Until you wake up at the time you need.

If you struggle with waking up & snooze button is your bff:

Put your alarm clock as far away from the bed as possible.

Use alarm apps that make you take a photo, solve maths problems, receive a call from a stranger: Alarmy | Wakie | I Can’t Wake Up | More...

Drink a glass of water right after you wake up.

Pour another glass of water on yourself. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (u do what u gotta do)

Prepare cold brew coffee, leave it by your bedside, drink it right after you hit your alarm. Alternatively, buy some caffeine pills and take one with a big glass of water right after wake up.

Have your blinds/curtains open the night before, so that it’s bright after you wake up.

ALTERNATIVE FOR EVERYTHING IF YOU’RE RICH AF: buy one of those wearable fancy health monitors, connect it to some fancy app and SAD lamp that will wake up up feeling refreshed and alive.

If you struggle with going to sleep on time:

Limit your caffeine intake to 6 hours before your bedtime.

Try to limit your screen time at least 1h before bed.

Install blue light filters on your phone/laptop.

Do something relaxing (read, meditate, journal, drink tea, etc)

Try not to eat a lot before going to bed.

Try bed sheet sprays, like lavender.

Basically, establish a nighttime routine with all of these (skin care, reading, change into pajamas, etc), pavlov condition your brain to get sleepy when you do all of those things.

If you still can’t fall asleep, and been lying in bed for hours, get up and do something relaxing, like reading or listening to music. Lying in bed awake can create an unhealthy link between your sleeping environment and wakefulness. Instead, you want your bed to generate sleepy thoughts and feelings only.

Try to keep your sleeping schedule consistent. It is really important to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. Even if it’s weekend. Or even if that means getting less than 7hrs of sleep that day. I’d say waking up at the same time everyday is the most important step, which will help you the most with fixing your sleeping schedule.

IF YOU HAVE BEEN STRUGGLING WITH LONG TERM HEALTH CONDITIONS, OR ARE SEVERELY UNDERWEIGHT/OBESE, PLEASE IGNORE THIS STEP AND RATHER SEEK HELP FROM A DIETITIAN AND/OR YOUR FAMILY DOCTOR.

This step really depends from person to person, but firstly I suggest you take some blood tests to see if you have any deficiencies, etc. Especially, if you struggle with cravings.

Try intermittent fasting, if you struggle with binge eating or overeating. As it will help you to learn to listen to your body better: when it’s hungry, when it’s full, etc. It’s really simple, there are many methods of intermittent fasting, but I’d suggest 16/8 for the beginners. (You can find a short guide here or google for more information)

DRINK ALL THE WATER. Again, if you’re not drinking enough water, try to level up your water game incrementally. Download some water tracking app on your phone to help you. Drinking water will make you more energetic, increase your metabolism, and decrease you appetite (among many other benefits). If you really struggle with meeting your water intake:

Reward yourself when you meet your daily/weekly goals.

Drink through the straw - idk why, but you are going to drink much more if you use a straw. Trust me.

Get a nice water bottle.

Flavour your water with fruits etc.

Check this video for more tips

Track what you eating. I would really suggest tracking your meals for around a month. Because, most of the time people have no idea that what they’re eating is unhealthy. Again, download an app like this one for that.

Make your own meals once in a while. Not only this will save you money, but it’ll help you to see what’s really going into your body. Start by doing that once/week and build it up depending how much time you have.

Eat more veggies/fruits. Go to your local market and buy some veggies/fruits, you have never tried before. I’m sure you’ll find your new favs. LEARN HOW TO COOK THEM. Experiment: boil, stir fry, ~roast~...

Eat/buy less meat. Not only it’s good for the environment, but it is good for you, too. Get a veggie burger instead of the beef one, increase the portions of your veggie sides, try meatless Mondays, etc. (Here’s some more tips)

Cut dairy. Find your new favourite milk substitute. Advice: Oat milk is amazing with the tea and oatmeal/porridge; hazelnut milk is amazing on it’s own; cashew milk goes well with cereals.

Learn more about nutrition in general. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH! It will help you to make better food choices and it will make eating healthy much easier in general, because once you understand all the chemistry behind the food and what it does to your body, you kinda don’t want to make yourself feel terrible. Here are some free resources: -- Human nutrition course from Alison.com -- Crash course Metabolism&Nutrition: Part 1 and Part 2 -- The Health Nerd’s YouTube Playlist about nutrition -- What I’ve Learnt YouTube Playlist -- Free Nutrition courses on edX

Define your goals. Do you want to lose weight, do you want to get stronger, gain weight, be able to climb the stairs without losing your breath, run 5k, punch god in the face?

Remember - you’re already half-way there. Being physically fit has a lot to do with what you put into your body. So, if you fulfilled the previous step of eating healthy - you have done 1/2 of the work!

Make a plan. A Reasonable plan. Be honest with yourself. Alternatively, there are many already-made plans to save your time. E.g., Couch to 5k for running, Beginners 30-day exercise guide, 30 days of yoga...

Start small. Like, 5 min exercise in the morning. Or doing 10 sit ups per day. Don’t do anything overwhelming, like running 5k everyday if you haven’t run for the past 5 years.

Make sure that you kinda like what you’re doing. If you absolutely hate running - don’t do it. Hate doing sit ups in the morning? Try yoga instead.

Explore, until you find what you like. You don’t have to go to gym to get fit, especially if you hate it. Find a type of exercise that you actually like. Maybe it’s dancing or hiking, taking your dog for a walk. Sign up for several trial lessons at various sport clubs. Ditch ‘em, if you have to, until you find something that you love. Stick with that.

Do the small changes in your everyday life. Stairs>Escalator, Walk>Drive, Do some squats while brushing your teeth, switch from regular desk to standing desk, etc… Find ways to incorporate being active into your everyday life as, unfortunately, evolution hasn’t caught up with out sedentary lives yet.

Track your effort instead of your progress. You cannot really control your progress that much (especially if your goal is to lose weight). However, you can always control your effort. So measure it instead. This will leave you more motivated as you will be able to see that you can do more and more everyday. Whereas, if you tracked your progress, you may not always get the result you hoped for, which might demotivate you and make you upset, wanting to quit.

Do the previous 3 steps and you’re 10 miles ahead as mental health depends A LOT on the physical health.

See a therapist/doctor. Depression is an illness requiring medical treatment. So, get it. Remember: there is absolutely no shame in having a mental illness as there would be no shame if you had flu, broken leg, or a headache...

Learn about it. Knowledge is power. Learning to notice unhealthy thinking patterns and dissociate yourself from them can help a lot. Here are some resources on depression: -- Short TED-Ed video “What is depression?” -- Long TED talk about depression -- MIND Understanding Depression Booklet -- “What causes depression?” by Harvard Medical School -- “Understanding Depression in Young People” online course -- “Understanding Depression and Anxiety” Open University course

Get extra support. Talk to your friends or family. Or maybe someone on the internet:

7 Cups free chat services: website | android | iOS

Subreddits: r/mentalhealth, r/depression, r/suicidewatch

Write it down. If you don’t want to talk - write down your thoughts. It can be just as helpful. It’ll help you to understand yourself better, notice errors in your thinking, etc. Buy a cheap notebook (or expensive one, up to you) and start a journal. Try being consistent by writing every morning or evening or both, but DO NOT BLAME YOURSELF if you miss some days. Read through your past entries. Analyse them. Extract the lessons.

Distract yourself from yourself. Get something to take care of, so that for a moment you can stop thinking about yourself. Try volunteering or get a plant, or a dog, a fish... Focus on them. On keeping them alive and well.

Self-care day. Dedicate at least one day per week for self-care. Take yourself out to a museum or some fancy cafe, do some stuff you like, whatever your hobbies are, do some physical self care: bath, face mask, manicure, etc., listen to some nice music, watch a film...

Try self-help options. Sadly, therapy is not always available and your friends/family doesn’t always know what to do or say. Luckily there are TONS of resources online: -- NHS Low Mood and Depression: A Self-Help Guide -- Pacifica (website | android | iOS ): offers psychologist-designed tools to address stress, anxiety, and depression based on CBT, mindfulness meditation, mood/health tracking. -- Moodpath (website | android | iOS): interactive two-week depression, burnout, and stress test that tracks your emotional and physical well-being -- MIND self-care guide for depression

Manage your emotions. The biggest cause of procrastination is an inability to navigate negative emotions associated with doing a thing. You need to learn to recognize your negative feelings and realize that procrastination is primarily about "feeling good now". Studies have shown that mindfulness can help you with that. --Getting started with Mindfulness Guide.

Figure your reasons why. Procrastinators often suffer from lack of identity, don't know what they want to achieve, or why they want to achieve it. It’s hard to work towards a goal, when you don’t have one. Also, people who are 'social perfectionists' and are motivated to work because of other people's/society's expectations rather than their own sense of accomplishment are more likely to procrastinate.

Divide your tasks into concrete smaller goals. Sometimes things seem to be hard because they are very vague. e.g. "working on my thesis" or "studying for my class" often means doing nothing, whereas "reading 4 pages of a textbook to understand a concept I need to summarize in my thesis" is a concrete, broken down goal.

Celebrate your victories instead of mourning over your loses. So the only thing you’ve done today was write one sentence for your 20 page essay? Amazing! Buy yourself some candy for that!! I mean, you could’ve done nothing, but you didn’t - you wrote that one sentence and that’s worth celebrating.

Redefine the success - doing something is a hundred million times better than doing nothing. Also, if something is worth doing, it is worth doing poorly.

Do it for only 2 minutes. If there’s an important thing you’ve been putting off for a while, tell yourself that you will only spend 2 minutes on doing it. If after 2 minutes you don’t want to do it anymore, great, stop it. However, after 2min. you actually might want to do more. No pressure either way.

Track your productivity. Track how much time you’ve been productive that day. Try to increase that time by a little bit every day.

Always forgive yourself. So, it’s been a week and you’ve done nothing? Don’t sweat it. Let it go. Blaming yourself will bring you absolutely nothing. Nothing good will come out of your negativity on yourself. So stop it. Forgive yourself and start again. And again, if you need to. Never stop trying. Always pick yourself after you fall. Beating procrastination and increasing your discipline is a skill. And all skills can be build on. There is nothing in you stopping you from changing. Remember that. More resources here: -- “9 Reasons You Procrastinate (and 9 Ways to Stop)” PsychologyToday -- Solving Procrastination Website -- “Helping Students Who Procrastinate” lecture by Tim Pychyl

Visit your doctor, if nothing works and procrastination is severely impacting your life. Sometimes procrastination can be a symptom of an illness, like Anxiety or ADHD. If you are chronically procrastinating for a long time and nothing seems to help, talk to your doctor and ask for a psychological/psychiatric assessment. You may be referred for therapy or given medication that will help to deal with procrastination.

Go to google.com.

Type in: “How to do taxes *the name of the country you’re living in*”

Read the results.

Alternatively, if you like socialising, ask some adults, whom you know, about it. Trust me, older people love teaching the youth. Learn all the lessons you can from them.

Remember that just as with beating procrastination, making phone calls is a skill. And, again, skills can be learnt.

Get a new SIM card. Top it up.

Call some local business (cafe, restaurant, shop, vet, etc). Ask some random questions, write them down if you fear of forgetting them. Some examples: -- What time do you open tomorrow? -- Are you open this Sunday? -- Do you cater for people with dairy allergies? -- My cat hasn’t eaten for the whole day, what should I do? -- Alternatively, you can pretend that you dialed a wrong person and talk about whatever until they stop you, e.g.: You: “Hey!! You won’t believe what I saw today! You: *start telling a made-up story*” Them: “Uhm.. sorry I think you’ve dialed a wrong number“ You: “Oh, my bad. Thanks, bye“ You: *hang up*

If you’re really struggling, write down and follow this format, rehearse it if you need: You: Hi, is this *the name of the institution”? Them: Yes, how can I help you. You: I was wondering *insert a question from a list* Them: *answer the question* You: Thank you, what about *insert another question* Them: *doesn’t know the answer* You: That’s okay. I will look it up myself / I will call you back later. Thank you for your help. Have a nice day!

If you get uncomfortable or mess up - just drop the call. Use fake names. No consequences whatsoever. Or say “Sorry, wrong number”, “Sorry, I gotta go”, “ I apologise, I need to hang up, I’ll call you back.”

Repeat until you build up your game and your phone-call anxiety starts to diminish. You can also start with calling your friends/family first, if you’re comfortable with that.

Bonus tips for serious calls:

Remember it’s okay to ask a person on the other side to repeat what they said, if you couldn’t understand it. Despite it being a 21st century, phone calls still give a crappy quality sound. Everyone knows that and will understand you. Just say “Oh, sorry didn’t hear that, could you repeat again”, “the signal seems to have gotten weak, couldn’t quite catch that, please say it again”, etc. Once, I had to ask it five times, but then again, the other time I’ve been asked to repeat myself 7 times, too. No one cares. It says nothing about your language, speaking, listening, or whatever abilities.

It’s okay to take a short break if you’re overwhelmed or if you need to look up something. Don’t stress out about having to answer someone immediately. Just say “give me a sec, I’ll look it up”, “could you please hang on for a minute”, “Oh sorry, pizza man’s at my door, I’ll be back shortly”. Lie, come up with your own reason to get away. No one cares. Just let them know that you’ll be back on the phone soon.

Don’t be afraid to ask them what they’re thinking. Phone calls can be intimidating cause you can’t see another person’s face/reactions. But if you do want/need to know them, just ask. “What you thinking?”, “How do you feel about this?”, “Sorry, you went quiet, did I say something wrong?”.

Don’t feel pressured to answer immediately or hate the “awkward silences”. If you need to think in order to give an answer, just say so: “Give me a minute to think about this”, “I’m not sure I can answer this right now, I need time to think it over”, etc...

Here you are in your peak mental & physical health. Go prove all those haters wrong. Follow your dreams. Do what you wanna do. And when new issues arise, remember that there are tons of resources out there to help you out. The important thing is that you actually implement those resources. Information is out there, but you still gotta do the work. And you can do the work. Remember all the times you already did it. You learnt to walk, to talk, to read, to count, to ride a bike... algebra, a second language?, using a computer, driving... etc... You overcame so many obstacles so far. You learned from them. You can do it. It’s over for everyone and everything that wants you to think otherwise.

(before reblogging, click here to check for the updated version of this post)

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bodypositiviteaandcakes · 4 years

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So, I’m currently rereading one of your fanfics on AO3 (The much better, Dursleys can fuck off, Slytherins are people too AU) and I got distracted looking at your Tumblr. I’ve always been a big girl, but for the last 4 years or so I’ve been working on my self image, and for about a year I’ve been slowly losing weight just by not being so negative/hard on myself all the time. I still have a belly, I’m still chunky, but I’m less likely to beat myself up over it now. Yeah, I still have days where I feel like I’m ugly etc (particularly about a week ago, when I broke up with my then-boyfriend because he’d cheated on me twice and tried to make it a third time), but I’ve spent hours today going through your Tumblr and I’m not ashamed to admit that I actually cried. The world needs more of this content!!!

Also, as a side note: when I was 20, I was at a particularly good time in my life - my mental illnesses weren’t so bad, and I was *happy* with my job etc. And I’ve always thought that at that time was when I was at my slimmest, because I was happy. But I’ve got a picture that proves me wrong: you can tell that I’m happy, but I am bigger than what society says I should be. And you know what? I actually LOVE that picture of myself. Because yes, I’m big. But I am fucking beautiful. And I want to thank you for making my day brighter with the content on here

(I would share the pic but idk how to, considering its only on my phone. If you have tips on how to do it from my mobile/cell phone, that’d be awesome!)

OMG Op, you have no idea how happy getting this ask made me. Like, I orignally posted that link on this blog because I didn’t want people getting spoiled on my main blog, since I was posting a lot about it at the time, but like, the fact that it was that fic that actually got you into Body Positivity makes me smile so big. I got into body positivity by reading Megan Jayne Crabbe’s book on it, and realizing that this was how I wanted to live my life. I was pretty tiny my whole childhood, but I had a bit of a belly, and I was always so ashamed of it. And then when i got older, partly due to adolescence and partly due to my medication at the time, I started gaining a bit of weight when I was sixteen/seventeen. I wasn’t what people would consider ‘big’ per se, but I had weight in all the ‘wrong’ places (belly, love handles, and I had boobs but a flat but). My mom ended up putting me on a 1200 calorie a day diet because she still had issues with her own body and didn’t want me having them later, and so she was sort of deflecting onto me, adn while she later admitted it was wrong of her to do that, it made me really insecure for a while. then I went on a medicine that acutally casued me to LOSE a lot of weight, and everyone was saying how pretty I was now that I’d lost a little weight and my belly was flatter. That medicine ended up not being right for me, and I started going back to my natural body shape, which is around 120-135 (I’m five two), ad I have my mom and my grandma constantly working around the subject of my weight. The thing is, though, while I don’t play any sports, my day-to-day usually involves a fair amount of light exercise (not right now, because quarantine, but in general). I felt like every food choice I made was being scrutinized by society at large, and the people in my life in particular. But for me, food is a huge part of enjoying life, and while I enjoy eating greens and vegetables and such, i also love butter and cream and pasta, and I wnated to be able to enjoy those without guilt. I wanted to not feel like what I ate had an effect on my self-worth, and that’s when I discovered bo-po. So I made a blog, both for myself and whoever might choose to follow it. and sometimes I still have trouble with having a healthy body image, and I have to work hard not to feel like I’m ‘fake’ for preeching body positivity while having trouble practicing it. The most important thing to remember when it comes to body positivity, i guess i’m trying to say, is that it’s hard to keep a healthy body image when the rest of the world is constantly pushing images of how your body ‘should’ look, but don’t give up! because in the end, the best thing for everyone is learnign to love your body the way it is naturally. Also, earning to live a healthy lifestyle both mentally and physically is important, not for the way you look, but for the way you FEEL. Also, your ‘right’ to love yoruself and your body does not hinge on doing the best you can to be healthy, beause sometime that’s just not possible at a certain point in time. Basically, it’s a long, hard journey to learn to love yourself the way you are, and without contingencies, but it’s so worth it, because it’s so much better for you than any alternative.

Sorry to ramble on, but getting this ask made me so happy.

Love,

Des

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doomsday519 · 5 years

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Haven’t really posted on here since what, April?

A lot of stuff went down in the world between now and then.Good, bad, weird, ugly, u name it.

But I wanna get down to what’s been going on with me:

Professionally nothing’s really changed. There was a period where my place of employment was all over the place due to some hacking but we weathered that storm. I did have one outburst at work that could’ve gotten me suspended or fired but I’ll talk about that stuff later.

Monetarily I got a decent amount of credit card debt but nothing I can’t handle and I refuse to open another credit line. Had to shell out $3000 to fix my car some months back that really hurt my pockets but nothing I wasn’t somewhat prepared for.

Personally, my personal life is still trash. Only hung out with one friend over a month ago which was the best outing I had in years but now dude moved to Turkey to live with his girlfriend(good for him). Still single and dating apps/sites are the worst. Full of bots and catfishes and they make it so obvious. But yeah, no prospects in that regard. And tbh I’m still in love with this one girl knowing it’s impossible for us to ever meet...

I bought house house(well a townhouse but it’s still a fucking house, fuck you). Very spacious. Kitchen is dope with plenty of room, dining area is cool, living room coming along, and plenty of space in my bedroom(a stark contrast to my childhood room where I took up like a 4th of the space in it(i’m exaggerating but u get the gist). And I took my brother in, he’s living in the basement(again with plenty of room) and there’s still 2 other empty rooms and a full bathroom unused. I’m paying the mortgage, my brother’s paying utilities(including FiOS). It’s a great set up.

But I did have to set up a security camera because 5 days into moving my stuff in(wouldn’t sleep there for the first time till 5 days after), a package was stolen from my stoop. I was furious. I lost control. I screamed for a long time(the resulted in me losing my voice for over a week). And I punched a glass framed painting that was left behind my the previous owner. I ended up bleeding on the floor as my brother cleaned up my mess...

And here’s where I mention my mental and physical state:

It’s fractured.

More than ever before.

That outburst at work was the result of built up animosity for people not as smart as me, telling me the dumbest shit to do on the regular and being completely useless when you need them to do something right. It was totally my fault for the way I behaved tho and it was a learning experience.

During the process of security my home my anxiety was on the highest levels it’s ever been. I needed some things to help me out. My body felt like shit. Like yeah, I was and am dropping weight but it’s been due to illness. So again, I needed some things to help me out. And a few months back, me being an alcoholic, even though I’ve been 2 and half years sober(today actually marks that milestone), I ended up taking pain killers and anti-depressants to balance me out.

It was great at first. I would pop a pill, drink some body fuel, work out like a maniac, take the anti-depressant, go to sleep, then wake up feeling great. But it’s didn’t take too long before the effects of the pain killers started tapering off so I stopped cold turkey. And that was earlier this week and I’ve been combating withdrawals ever since.

I hoped back on the anti-depressant last night to try and take the edge off and mentally I’m a little better...

But a few days ago I was watching an episode of Law and Order: SVU, one I had never seen before. And at the end of the episode, I broke down and cried. I cried at the bottom of the stairs. I cried because I looked back and remembered what happened to me and how fucking weak I was. I was groped multiple times as an adult male and I did nothing. I was confused, I froze up, and only acted when the man decided he wanted to grab a handful of my dick and squeeze. I brushed his hand away and told him I didn’t like it but I was so timid in doing so. A grown man, 6′2′’ well over 300lbs let a man less than half his size violate him.

And that happened in April 2016 and to this day, I have not told a soul in my family, not my youngest brother, not my sister, not my parents, and not my brother who lives with me. And I put him last on the list because I’m closest to him(after mending our relationship) and he actually came up from the basement and found me crying, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him. I couldn’t do it. I reassured him that everything was fine through tears and a muffled voice and continued to keep it to myself. He’s realized that he needs to let me work things out on my own and not press the issue but it hurts me that I can’t tell him or anyone in my family and I feel like I’m eating myself alive.

I just want peace and happiness in life but I feel like I may never attain either. I’m too broken. And as I’m thinking about this, I’ve never been genuinely happy in my life, even as a kid. I was not a happy child. I had everything I needed but mentally I was never there. And I also have this weird sleep disorder where I moan in my sleep and I can remember all the times my dad would barge in our room as kids(all four of us would sleep in one fucking bed) and yell at me and ask me if I’m “possessed”. And that’s carried over to adulthood. Sometimes I do feel as if something else has taken over whether it be due to pain, anger, or profound sadness. It hurts trying to fight it. It hurts a lot.

idk, I hope things get better. I’m thinking of getting a dog. The only times I’ve been able to mellow myself out besides the pills is when I was with my sister’s dog. Tony(his name) would always come over and try and comfort me when I saw I was upset and I think I need that on the regular.

I don’t think I can have a healthy lasting relationship with people so I think that may be it for me...

I just want peace and happiness.

#personal #long read #thoughts #life #okay now I'm disappearing again

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blackcoffeeandblankpagess · 5 years

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Some vulnerability for your Sunday morning

After a long chat with @runner-vs-theworld yesterday about how I am struggling™ right now I feel like it’s inauthentic not to talk about it more here. Idk part of me knows this is my space and I can post (or not) whatever I want, but I also know that I get a decent amount of messages from people saying they respect my openness or that I inspire them etc. and because of that it’s important to me to feel like I’m being honest. Also, I like to have this stuff for my own purposes to look back on.

Basically, last fall when I had my stress fracture I was in the best mental health mindset I had been in YEARS. I was doing zero in the way of exercise, literally not even walking because I was on crutches. I was going out to brunch every weekend, drinking beer with friends, eating cheese fries! doing things that used to cause so much anxiety and yeah there were times I felt freaked out but on the whole I felt good. I felt happy. I found myself in a relationship and half joked that if I had never gotten hurt that wouldn’t have happened and honestly I believe that is 100% true.

I set out to eat enough and get my period back and I did. I was so proud of myself and couldn’t wait to get back to running and training but doing it in a way that meant I was taking care of myself.

Ever since I’ve been ~healthy~ and allowed to workout again I have basically spiraled further and further down the crazy train. In the fall when I was eating more and moving less my body didn’t change (aside from maybe losing some muscle but I didn’t gain weight). At the time it was mind blowing, the idea that I could chill the fuck out, stop micromanaging, and nothing would change (I realize that it isn’t good to be afraid of that in the first place but let’s save that for another day). I realized that if eating more while doing less didn’t change my body then I DEFINITELY needed to eat a LOT more once I could workout again.

PLUS. I got a DEXA scan when I found out about the fracture and it showed osteopenia in the lumbar spine which is literally entirely a result of inadequate nutrition so I had actual scientific evidence to support me.

When I first got back to school in January and was able to walk around campus and workout a tiny bit I was on top of my shit and making a conscious effort to eat more and somewhere along the way I just..stopped.

Flash forward to this summer and I’ve been eating less than when I was injured, ramping up the running, going on long ass walks because of anxiety, doing 300 other gym things, not sleeping more than 5 hours a night, etc.

To put it simply, I’ve felt like a fucking mess.

When I ran my 10k last week I was so excited to be back out there pushing myself but a bigger part of me was terrified that at any moment my bones could break or something bad could happen because I KNOW I haven’t been taking care of myself. I KNOW something needs to change or I will get hurt again.

I think it’s easy to brush off little actions here and there that aren’t ~good~ with the idea that “I’ll do better tomorrow.” But guess what? It all adds up. You can fix your head and move on from this shit and feel better but the physical damage you’re doing? Eventually you’re going to hit the point of no return and screw yourself over for the future. When I got my stress fracture I was so pissed at my 16 year old self for not eating enough because it was the actions of 6 years ago (and now obviously) that contributed to that. And it is my actions today that are going to fuck me over in the future even if right now the consequences don’t feel “real.”

((this is a long ass post))

So anyway- on Friday, the day after my race, I called my mom freaking the fuck out because I felt anxious about taking an unplanned rest day but all I wanted was to rest, yet at the same time I felt like I might as well just go run so I would stop feeling anxious about it, etc. This has essentially been my approach to exercise for the past month. I have a plan and if I want to deviate from it, to do what ACTUALLY sounds good I end up stressing the fuck out and just going back to the plan because then I’ll “be less anxious” but actually I feel more anxious because shouldn’t I be moving in the way that I want to and the way that feels good???

So long story short (not really) my mom was like you need a break and now I’m taking a week off from formal exercise which if you’ve read this far you’re probably thinking “danielle! you’re a crazy person! that’s not enough!” but something is better than nothing ok.

Also, to go back to food, I have 100% not been eating enough and sometimes that’s intentional in the sense that I feel hungry but choose to ignore it because ~anxiety~ but a lot of the time I just don’t feel compelled to eat that extra snack, etc. etc. because I’ve just trained myself to be that way (not good). Basically what I’m trying to say is that I never set out with a goal to under eat, but as a result of my fucked up brain lately it has just been happening. And I think the under eating coupled with the compulsive exercise has just led my brain to crazy town.

So where are we now? Taking a break. I want to run because I genuinely do love running but right now everything feels forced. I want to run a half in the fall and a full in the spring and not be injured and train because I love it, but right now I am not doing myself any favors.

And eating more. According to the people closest to me I’ve lost weight in the past two months (unintentionally) and I have a gut feeling that even though I totally do not see myself accurately, my body is probably not where it should be. I need to take care of it. And that feels hard and everything feels tricky but I just have to keep pushing forward.

I’ve felt paralyzed with where to begin because there are so many different things to work on and I want to do it perfectly and solve everything and and and. But you reach a point where you just need to fricken start. So here I am, starting.

I know I’ll probably get comments or messages being like are you seeing a therapist/dietician/trying medication/etc. and while I appreciate the concern I have considered all of those things and am doing the things that I think are best rn. (however if you have just general advice or ideas I’ll gladly take it).

I feel like this makes it sound like I’m in a real bad spot and let me tell ya it’s not great but I’m okay. I’m really self aware and I know what I need to do and I’m working on it. There’s a lot of good in my life right now and a lot of reasons to be happy and I’m so grateful. But I wanted to acknowledge the struggles as well. So here they are.

If you read this whole thing damn you rock

#personalposts #recovery

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delicateheartstranger · 4 years

Text

March 16, 2020

Dear world,

This has been started actually on the 15th, but since it will take awhile to write out everything I will mark it the 16th.

So here begins my crappy 2000s movie start of a blog. Unlike the movies where at some point my blog will blow up and my life will take either a turn for the worse or better I have nothing to fear because that was barely realistic even back then. Since I wanna make sure though just in case any chance someone who knows me finds this I will not state my name. I’ll tell ya’ll this, I’m 19 years old and will be 20 in October, I like fandom shit, I’m trans, I’m pan, I wish I could go back and kill baby Hitler so I would never be born and no ww2, I’m in love with one my best friends, I have feelings for a guy I met online that lives in Norway while I’m stuck in the U.S., I suffer from ptsd/depression/anxiety/a fuck ton of just not being mentally stable, live at home with my parents right now, have no job, most of my close friends are toxic, and I have no privacy.

I was at college for a few month, but then a bunch of things happened and I had to drop out. When I came back home my parents I feel resented me a bit for not being stable enough to stay at that college (they loved it and want to send me back) so now my home life became a lot worse. I’m in a php program currently so even if it weren’t for the fact that my parents would rather roll over dead than have me work (earn money to get the fuck out) I can’t get one since most conflict with time. I’m 19 and only ever held one real job because my parents claim the house needs to be clean before I can work. I’m not the only one who lives here, but okay. Also I would make less messes if I wasn’t home. Top it off it’s like “we don’t want you working for other people before you do the work you owe us at home.” They have this whole family first idea, but the thing is I don’t feel a part of the family. They decided I had no say when I was younger when moving far from home, I wasn’t a part of it enough to get attention while my brother was sick, I wasn’t a part of it enough for them not to judge me to the point where I quit lots of things I loved just so they’d stop hurting me, I wasn’t enough a part of it that they would do things for me that would be what “family” does.

So yes I will put myself aka my mental health first because you guys never will. Because of the Corona outbreak my area has been quarantined. It means 2 weeks no school (wasn’t enrolls), no physical php, less people in public, and that good old shit. Thing is now my parents are trying to force my brother who’s off in college to come back home AND not let me see my friends physically while locking me up in our home. The most I can do if I wanna leave is go for a walk for like 30 minutes near our house. I hate walking as it just riles me up ever more and brings back bad memories of my parents forcing me to. They tried super hard when I was younger to walk the fat off me. Worked like a charm, said no one. If anything the many years of fat shaming made me gain weight as they didn’t get me a therapist, didn’t think I was depressed, didn’t let me take meds, and all I had was eating to comfort me. So yeah I’m basically trapped in my own house. I think I may fuck up. I’ve been around a month or two clean of self harm, but I know that will change in these coming weeks if I am forced to stay here alone with my folks and brother.

I usually have passive SI and SH thoughts, but within this weekend I’ve had so many that I was close to acting on them. They’ve gotten to the level of overwhelming that it’s like I’m back in 11th grade again. Which by the way, found out one my few friends from that time tried to MURDER my other friend (who is a bit newer, but still) is living in a house for people with murderous tendencies. So that’s just peachy. Oh another friend from high school has a brain tumor which probably will kill him and it makes me super sad even though we haven’t talked in years. I am currently upset about my life choices of who I made friends with.

My three best friends would be LM, DW, and LL.

LL is a friend I made in my third high school. He’s kinda going through lots of shit right now. He used to realize that he couldn’t drink and that he could only smoke in small amounts. Now he’s back on his bs. He’s also having unsafe sex with strangers he met on tinder. Now it’s find to fuck around. Go live your best life. But if you are having unsafe sex that’s a problem. He is constantly having pregnancy scares (he’s trans). All of this while on the fact that when he’s not too fucked up he’s like kinda self center. I told him like the other night when he was doing better that I was feeling really down given some shit I got for being fat, but I was fine talking. This man goes ahead and spends the whole time talking about all these stories about himself and doesn’t let me speak for like the whole time. And he was like on this thing about how I need to do something, but he never got there. Don’t tell me how to self improve when you’re in a worse state than me.

Then there is DW. I’ve been in love with him since middle school. We met at this outside of school after school activity. I fell hard. When I first confessed to him he didn’t really speak to me and avoided me for about a year. Then we became friends again due to weird grouping things at that after school activity. Irony was I was trying to get into the group he wasn’t in so I would lose my feelings. Then after we got close again I confessed my feelings, again. Some how that made us best friends? I mean I’m glad he didn’t cut me off again don’t get me wrong, but it just wasn’t what I was expecting. Now here’s some hard shit. About almost a year ago over the summer (2019) we were talking about my weird love life. You see I still tried to date outside of him. Can’t keep going after something that won’t happen. Then I asked about his love life as it’d been like months since I brought it up directly with him. Turns out he’d been dating a girl for almost a YEAR. He just “forgot” to tell me. I understand he could’ve been worried about my feelings, but I’m more hurt that he hid something that big away from me and lied about it too. We’re supposed to be best friends. Course I don’t wanna hear about how he fucks her or whatever. I just wanna be there for him. And so now I’m getting a taste of my own medicine. He is talking about her. How they go on dates, how they had a dear valentines day date, how he cares about her, how she even was in the same php program as me. I wanna fucking strangle her. She used to be my friend, but we grew apart. Then of course I find out that she’s dating the love of my life. Cool. Worst is when me and him are texting and she has the NERVE to try and talk to me. I don’t ever wanna speak to her again. I will if it makes DW happy, but for my sanity and her life I will avoid that. She’s a fine person, props forgot about me and my feelings for him, and doesn’t deserve the utter rage I hold for her. That don’t change it though. All of this on top the fact we’ve been distantly lately. I noticed about like 5 months ago how I was always the one texting DW and that started our convos. How I was the one putting in effort. So I started to text less. He only about 5 times started the conversations. It was over memes and reply to my general instagram stories. I’ve given up and realized if I want him in my life have to do the texting. I won’t let him go anymore. I’ve tried in the past, it don’t help anything. No matter what I try I need him and even if it’s bad for me it’s no worse than not having him.

Now we are on my closest and most toxic best friend. LM. LM I also met in my third high school. She was kind and charismatic. Thing is she is unstable, manipulative, controlling, hurtful, and just really toxic to me. She’s the alpha of the friend group I’m in with her. She can hurt me so much. I’ve tried taking breaks from her in the past, but when that happens she gets angry. She tried in these times to ruin my reputation. She has so much dirt on me. Top it off she lies like crazy and people just like, believe her? The only ones who have been able to see through her shit would be: Me, LL, and MA. That’s it. Not even her own sister can, least she doesn’t show it. It’s shit like, let’s say I was embarrassed by something and felt bad. LM would say I sobbed over it and yeah. Or she also just full on lies about me doing or saying something. It’s too the point where she’s said things about me that could get me in legal trouble if she told some authority figure and they believed her. Like she claims one time that I was about to drug one my crushes if she wasn’t there to stop me and that I masturbated with his jacket when he left the room in his closet. Yes I’m not proud of it, but when I was in a bad head space I thought about the idea/fantasy of having him take horny pills that SHE showed me and offered me. I did also once smell up my crush’s jacket in the closet. Not proud of it at all. I wasn’t stable and wasn’t thinking in my right mind. Doesn’t make what I did okay, but I did not do anything that would be as fucked as she claimed. Sometimes with that old crush she’ll bring it up saying straight up lies like I went to his house. Never did. Did find my crush on white pages (again not okay, but I wasn’t healthy), but never went anywhere near him outside of our setting. So yeah if I cut her off or just take a break she could realllly ruin my life given everyone believes ever word she says. All of that and I’m still a bit bitter over her manipulating a situation where me, her, and a few friends had a crush on the same guy. She lied saying she didn’t have feelings for him. She told us to confess and when we were like ‘idk not to ready for that’ she went ahead and did it for us. He didn’t like us back which is valid. But then she got really handsy and did things that basically helped him fall for her. Now I don’t have feelings for him anymore. If I do imma just push em away given he wouldn’t be good for me. But they constantly do things now as a couple that feel like an invasion on my being. THEY HAD SEX WITH THE DOOR SLIGHTLY OPEN IN THE ROOM NEXT TO ME ONLY TO LIE STRAIGHT TO MY FACE. So they couldn’t see I’d woken up. I was facing the door and they were full on sex. Like I heard the moans. I heard it all. I knew they were fucking. So when they finished and went to wake me up I pretended to be asleep. Then later that day I brought it up to my friend CS (her boyfriend/ex crush) I thought they were having sex cause I could heard them in my dream, he lied to my face saying I was crazy. Straight up gas lighting tactics LM would use. This isn’t the first time they tried that. Even when I was with someone and we both were like yeah we heard ya’ll having sex they denied it and said we were crazy. Like please just don’t fuck when there are others around or at least have the decency to do it where we can’t hear/wake up from it.

All of this said about each one I love them all dearly. And it’s hard the idea of losing them. It’s just so shitty dealing with all their shit on top of my own.

Now the worse thing happening right now that I can’t even talk to a friend about it that I got my new name outed. So my parents are transphobic, but diet transphobic. Like they “support” trans rights yet do really transphobic things.I came out to them a few months ago and not a SINGLE time have they used the right pronouns. Then when bringing up trans things they have shot me down claiming xyz. I just wanna be me, but the same time I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment. At my php program I go by my chosen name. I told all the staff my situation at home yet the nurse managed to fuck up when emailing and wrote in an email that was attached to my parents my chosen name. So great my parents probably know something is up. I’m gonna fucking cry if they hurt me more. They already invalidate me on so many things I can’t stand the idea of them doing so on something so close and core to my identity. They do it with everything else and most things core to who I am. I had one safe space and the nurse had to fuck it up for me. I just can’t fucking deal with all this.

Top it off the one good person in my life, ESK hasn’t spoken to me in about 3 days now. ESK is someone I met online who lives in Europe. He’s genuinely the only good thing in my life. The only non toxic source of happiness. He brings me so much joy. I’m pretty sure he also has feelings for me or had them at one point. He’s 2 years younger than me and is turning 18 soon. I wanna get him a gift, but not only would that be weird, but he also hates celebrating his birthday. So I’ll just wish him a happy birthday when it comes around. Regardless I might not even be able to since he hasn’t responded in awhile. He has some serious health problems so I am worried he could be really sick. That or he’s angry at me/hates me/doesn’t wanna talk anymore. It could be just my anxiety, but the same time it could be true. I hate that I can’t tell. I can’t even talk to any of my bffs about it since they’ll all be super judgmental. Maybe DW, but even then it’d be hard. I just wanna make sure ESK is okay. He means the world to me. I don’t want to lose him. This is all happening after we both showed full face selfies of ourselves in our last convos. I hope he doesn’t think I’m ugly. It’d break my heart into toooooo many pieces if my looks scared him away or made him lose his romantic feelings for me. It’s not like we could date rn as not only are we an ocean away, but I’m far to emotionally unstable to. But hey that won’t matter if he drops off the face of the earth.

Lastly before I go I wanna talk about this girl in my php program who is legit making me crazy. We will call her LLL. She looks and acts just like my first crush, but if she’d grown up. The only difference is her eye color, age, and where she’s from. She isn’t her, but boy that doesn’t stop my lizard brain. I feel like a piece of trash whenever my eyes wander over her more revealing parts. It’s bad to objectify women and bad that I’m placing this role on her. Plus I’m like 90% sure she’s straight and like 60% she has a thing for a guy in our php group (who is much hotter than me). It’s just so hard since I lost my crush via my abusive grandma. It was her fault I didn’t wake up in time (I was 9) which meant I never got her number. I remember my heart sinking seeing her wave good bye to me from her car window as she drove off. I never really got over her as I just repressed any sense of being not cis het. I only really realized what I had for her was more than “wanting to be bffs” like a year or two ago. Still haven’t had the proper therapy to undo all my baggage. I really hope she hasn’t realized that my eyes linger on her just a little too long or that my feet are always pointing towards her. I want it to be a safe space for her.

SO yeah. That’s like 2% of my life rn plus 1% back story. You guys can tell I say like, so, and ya’ll a tad too much. I don’t know what to do and I have to wake up at 7. If anyone sees this I hope you can give me advice before it’s too late.

Yours cordially,

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purple-martin111 · 5 years

Text

Idk what this thing is called...

Tagged by @marvilus73 like 10 years ago 😆

» NAME: Jacqueline “Jackie” Dixon

» AGE: Born January 29, 2046

» SPECIES: human

» GENDER: female

» ORIENTATION: Heterosexual

» TITLE: It’s complicated.

PHYSICAL ASPECTS

» HAIR: Dirty blond

» EYES: Blue and brown. Jackie was born with blue eyes but she has an eye condition that caused a lose of pigmentation in her right eye.

» SKIN: Light with a rosy hue and freckles on her face and shoulders.

» HEIGHT: 5′4″

» WEIGHT: Kinda thick, maybe 170 when she left the vault. Jackie didn't take care of herself for awhile and she lost a significant amount of weight. She's healthy and well taken care of now though.

FAMILY

» SIBLINGS: a younger brother but he died when she was 15. She blames herself.

» PARENTS: Jackie's father was a washed up vet who wasted his life tethered to the couch with a bottle in his hand. Her mother worked long hours to make ends meet as a home health aide. She learned real quick that the only person she could depend on was herself.

» GRANDPARENTS: she spent a brief period of time with her maternal grandmother after her brother died. Her grandfather died when she was really young and she never met her paternal grandparents.

» OTHER RELATIVES: She had several extended family members but wasn't really close with any of them.

» ANY PETS?: Dogmeat of course, but he's not really hers. She loves dogs and if she could, she would take in all the dogs in the wasteland.

» SKILLS: Sewing. Jackie didn't have a lot of money growing up and couldn't just buy new clothes when they became worn and torn. Her mother taught her how to mend her clothes and make new clothes for a fraction of the cost. The skills comes in very handy in the wasteland. She's also good at listening, compassionate and tactful.

» PHYSICAL BUILD: Tends to carry most of her weight in her legs and hips. She is strong but not thin or muscular.

» ABILITIES: Close quarter combat, she's intuitive and tends to be able to read situations really well, resilient, quick thinker/problem-solver.

» SPECIAL:

from

S - 4

P - 5

E - 5

C - 6

I - 6

A - 4

L - 4

to (as of right now)

S - 6

P - 8

E - 6

C - 8

I - 10

A - 5

L - 5

» HOBBIES: She used to enjoy outdoors activities. Her options are limited these days. She enjoys gardening and helping with the crops. Also taking care of the livestock. At the Castle, she can be found watching the sunset almost every evening.

TRAITS

—— POSITIVE ——

Compassionate

Resilient

Honest

Kind

——- NEGATIVE ——-

Anxious

Impulsive

Stubborn

Blunt

» COLORS: midnight blue, plum, gold

» SMELLS: the ocean, vanilla, clean linen

» FOOD: She's a meat and potatoes kinda girl.

» DRINKS: Purified water and tea.

» ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES: she does drink often but when she does, dark beer and she used to drink vodka sodas, now she just drinks it straight.

#fallout #fallout 4 #sole survivor #fallout oc #screenshots #jackie #jacqueline dixon #my oc #tagged

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welllpthisishappening · 5 years

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Idk if you're taking prompts, but if you ever feel compelled: the Blue Line cast reacting to Gritty.

Ok, ok, so you are either a genius or a mind-reader or possibly both because several months ago when Gritty was introduced to the world, I texted @optomisticgirl and I was like...I’m going to write about Gritty. And because she is lovely, she encouraged said writing. Only I am woefully bad at posting things in a timely fashion, so it’s just kind of languished in my docs. Until now!

So here is approximately 6K worth of very tired new-mom Emma, supportive friends, a road trip in Philadelphia and this very specific goal. Also, if you guys have not encountered Gritty yet, let me introduce you:

LOOK AT HIS EYES! WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE. Also on Ao3 if that’s your jam.

“Ok, so, according to your list, we’ve only got the jerseys and the sticks left. Are they all game-worn though? That’s not...that’s not on the list.”Emma made a noise, not sure if it was an agreement or a disagreement or just the general sound of complete and utter exhaustion. She was having a difficult time keeping her head up. And her eyes open. Her eyes actually felt like they were falling down her face.

She was, at least, seventy-seven percent positive that wasn’t supposed to happen.

And, really, in the grand scheme of parenthood and the actual action of parenting in the middle of a season and a second-straight Cup defense, Emma knew a distinct lack of sleep was, more or less, part of the deal.

She also didn’t care.

Because her eyes seemed to have a distinct weight to them and Matt kept crying at regular twenty-minute intervals that appeared to be getting worse the longer they were stuck in Emma’s office. They were still stuck in Emma’s office.

“Em,” Mary Margaret muttered, voice quiet and cautious and that was probably because Emma hadn’t ever stopped making that noise.

She was just kind of grunting at this point.

She had no idea what to do to get her kid to stop crying. It had gotten worse since the game started.

“Are we losing?” Emma asked suddenly, and Mary Margaret’s eyes widened slightly. That was probably because they weren’t weighed down. Metaphorically, or whatever. Emma was far too tired to worry about the metaphors of it.

“No, no, I mean...not winning either, but I don’t think Arthur’s broken that many white boards. So, you know, grand scheme.”Emma made a different noise. She hoped it sounded more like a laugh than it felt. It kind of hurt, like it was lingering in the back of her throat or trying to scratch its way out and none of these things seemed particularly healthy.

“Grand scheme,” she echoed, eyes flitting towards the TV screen in the corner of her office.

They’d done road trips throughout the season – and none of them were particularly easy, but Emma was fairly certain she was still holding on to the majority of her sanity. She was at least confident her eyes weren’t actively trying to fall out of her face.

And she had help, a small army of people and in-laws who were more than happy to pick Matt up or bring Matt somewhere and Emma was fairly sure Merida was still reporting on her eating habits to Killian. It wasn’t easy, but it was ok, and Matt’s eyes seemed to actually light up every single time Killian came home which, in turn, did something incredibly specific to Emma’s entire soul.

This road trip, however, seemed intent on slowly, but surely killing her.

There were teething issues and sleeping issues and the kid seemed determined to to pull himself everywhere – knocking over everything in sight like some kind of six-month-old masquerading as Godzilla. He was still working on sitting up, but Emma had to admit even the attempt was impressive and Killian was convinced their son’s diction meant he was some kind of inevitable genius.

That genius kept him up and babbling for hours at a time.

Emma had no idea if the pile of jerseys behind her was game worn.

“If I fall asleep right here, right now, in front of you, is that going to super weird you out?” Emma asked, gaze flashing towards Mary Margaret. She shook her head.

“I’ve definitely seen you sleep in weirder places.”“Ah, yeah, that’s probably true.”

“That one time, senior year, when David had four finals in one day and you had that ridiculous...what was it...French?”Emma nodded. “French II. Because I needed a language requirement and they wouldn’t take my sports management electives instead.” “God, your dean was the worst.” “That’s an incredibly scathing insult, Reese’s.” “There are children present.” Emma’s laugh was weak at best and drifting dangerously close to depressing, eyelashes fluttering despite the sounds coming from her kid and the hockey game. “I think we’re starting to deal with some object permanence actually. He’s like...aware that I’m not going to disappear if I move away.” “He’s a genius, obviously.” “You and Killian should start some kind of campaign.” “Don’t actually suggest that around him,” Mary Margaret grinned, and she was already starting a new list. “He’d go on the record or shout it from center ice or something.” Emma hummed, not quite able to make any other noise when her heart was so busy doing whatever in her chest, but Mary Margaret was absolutely right and Killian would probably call Dorothy and get some kind of special edition of Sports Illustrated printed. And, honestly, she didn’t mean for the sigh to just fall out of her the way it did, but she’d apparently lost complete control of everything and she needed to find Kristoff.

He had to know about the jerseys.

“Hey, hey,” Mary Margaret said quickly, reaching out and tugging the pen Emma forgot she was holding out of her hand. “What’s going on with you? You know you look kind of pale.”“That’s not really the best way to start this.” “How much sleep would you say you’ve gotten on average in the last week?” “I don’t want to tell you that.” “Why?” Emma lifted her head, slowly and a little repentantly, which didn’t really make any sense because Mary Margaret was not her mother. She was the mother and she was, approximately, eighty-two percent positive she was messing it up.

Matt wouldn’t stop babbling and crying and Emma’s arms felt like they were going to fall off. It was because she kept having to pick him up. So he didn’t knock over merch for whatever Garden of Dreams event they were planning for.

She genuinely could not remember the name of the event.

“You could come back home with us,” Mary Margaret suggested. She’d never let go of Emma’s hand. “We’ve got that pop-up thing and--”“--David’s got to work tomorrow, Reese’s. You’ve got to work tomorrow. The kid wakes up, like, several times a night to scream at the moon or something.” “Did you just suggest your own kid was a werewolf?” “At this point I really don’t know.”

Mary Margaret scoffed and her smile felt a little placating, but Emma was so tired and so sure she was ruining everything that she almost didn’t care. She wanted to be placated. She wanted this road trip to be over.

She desperately wanted to find a children’s medicine that made sure her kid didn’t suffer in agony so he could, eventually, eat solid foods.

“You also have to work tomorrow,” Mary Margaret pointed out. “Just, you know...if we’re covering all our bases.”“You’re mixing up sports references.” “Playing a good shift? Does that even make sense?” Emma shrugged. “That question is way too in-depth for the amount of consistent sleep I’ve been getting. How important do you think it is to get to REM?”

“Incredibly.”“Yeah?” “Yeah,” Mary Margaret nodded. “So, uh, I’m going to say something, ok? And I want you to bite your actual tongue if you have to so you don’t interrupt me because I know you’re going to try and interrupt me.” “That’s actually kind of scathing, Reese’s.” “That’s an interruption.”

Emma mimed zipping her mouth shut, staring at Mary Margaret with something she hoped was as much sarcasm as one expression could contain, but she figured she kind of missed her mark when she had to lean back and move Matt in the swing they’d put him in once the game started.

He would have tried to walk into the TV otherwise, Emma was certain. Object permanence or something. And possibly how much he wanted to see his dad.

She absolutely hated road trips now.

“Alright,” Mary Margaret starts, nodding again like she’s psyching herself up for this particular brand of hope speech. “I know you were off after Matt was born and that was good and, you know, medically necessary, but have you considered...maybe using some of your personal days for stuff like this?”The silence in the room wasn’t really silent – Matt was still babbling and Emma could make out the dim sounds of the puck hitting the boards in Philadelphia and the commentary in the background. She blinked, licking her lips and she wasn’t exactly comfortable, one of her hands still twisted with Mary Margaret’s, while the other tried to move Matt in some kind of consistent rhythm. The babbling was quickly turning to something that sounded like the tell-tale sounds of a complete and utter meltdown.

Emma briefly considered joining him.

“Thoughts?” Mary Margaret asked.

Emma tilted her head. “That doesn’t count as an interruption?”“I actually expected the sarcasm completely, so I’m not even turned off by that at all.” “What are you then?” “Worried about you and your distinct lack of REM sleep. And whatever horrible, no good, very bad things your mind is making you think because of that lack of REM.” Eventually, Emma was sure, Mary Margaret would stop being so impossibly good at reading her or knowing her or, possibly, just sharing a few of the same brain wavelengths. She hoped not.

Because those wavelengths made sure Mary Margaret stayed in the office that night – not bothering to ask, just sitting on the ground and tugging Emma’s list out of her hand with a practiced familiarity that defied decades.

“You should take this show on the road,” Emma muttered, working a quiet laugh and knowing smile out of Mary Margaret. “I bet you could make millions.”“Who would you get to babysit all the time, then?” “You don’t have to do that.” Mary Margaret squeezed her hand. “I want to. A whole line of people want to. Several professional hockey players are beating down metaphorical doors to want to.” “I’m not sure that last sentence made much sense,” Emma laughed, and it was still a little shaky and questionably watery, vision swimming a bit in front of her, but she took a deep breath and that felt like a step in the right direction.

“And I’m not sure you’re qualified to discuss sentence structure.” Emma rolled her eyes. “Honestly though,” Mary Margaret continued. “You don’t have to be some kind of superhero. I know you could be and usually are because, well--”“--You going to get sappy on me, Reese’s?” “Yes, don’t interrupt. I know you were worried about all of this and it happened suddenly and without much planning, and that’s not really your game, but…” She took a deep breath, shoulders heaving with the force of it and Emma didn’t think she imagined the slightly glossy look to her eyes. “You are doing an incredible job, Emma,” Mary Margaret said, no hint of anything except absolute and complete honesty in her voice. “I don’t know how you’re doing it.” “Was that last part a compliment?” “Of the highest order. Because you’re doing it all. That’s kind of where I'm going with this. I know you’re worried. But the crying is normal and the lack of sleep is normal and you could probably call the pediatrician about the teething thing if it’s freaking you out.” Emma let out a breath she didn’t realize she was hoarding, only slightly stunned by the mind reading going on in her office. Matt threw something. The game on TV got louder.

“I just…” Emma muttered, twisting her lips when the words got caught in the back of her throat. With the emotion. There was too much emotion. She was a mess.

“I know you do,” Mary Margaret promised. At some point she’d laced her fingers through Emma’s, thumb tapping just above the relatively-new laces sitting on her left wrist again. “Everyone does. And you are. The crying jags aside, that is the happiest and most loved kid in the entire National Hockey League.”“That’s definitely the marker we were going for.” Mary Margaret scoffed, shifting closer to Emma so she could wipe away a tear she hadn’t noticed either. “Don’t lie to my face like that, it’s not cool.”

Emma nodded, tugging her lips behind her teeth and trying to remember what any semblance of confidence looked like. Matt quieted for a moment, the sounds turning a bit closer to whimpers and that was, somehow, even worse. It made Emma’s body tense and her spine seemed to audibly snap back into place when she jerked around, eyebrows pulled low as her lungs desperately tried to get oxygen back to her brain.

“I know we’re not really doing that whole pronunciation thing yet, kid,” Emma said, pulling out of Mary Margaret’s and tugging Matt against her chest before she could remember all the reasons the websites told her she shouldn't. “But it’d be really great if we could fine tune what, exactly, has got you freaking out so much. Dad’s going to be home tonight.”

It didn’t work.

The sounds were still there – sinking into Emma’s skin and that same soul that never quite knew what to do with the idea that this was her life. She bobbed on her feet, rocking back and forth and trying to find a comfortable way to hold Matt and work her phone out of her back pocket at the same time.

That didn’t work either.

She was going to scream.

Or cry.

Or fall on the floor and sleep for several days.

Matt squirmed against her, tiny hands gripping her shirt and for a kid who seemed particularly interested with the National Hockey League he had a pretty good right kick, a move he appeared intent on perfecting by landing it in Emma’s liver.

“What if we just walked to Philadelphia?” she asked, directing the question more to Mary Margaret than Matt.

Mary Margaret smiled. “I don’t know if that entirely efficient. They’re already at the second intermission anyway and--”She didn’t finish the sentence, footsteps coming down the hall and a noise that might have been genuine laughter and not just exhaustion-induced insanity and Matt nearly flew out of Emma’s arms as soon as Ruby rounded the corner of the open doorway.

She was holding takeout bags. So was Henry. She’d brought Henry with her.

“Hey mini-Jones,” Ruby said, hardly breaking stride as she walked towards him. “You causing problems up here? We could hear you as soon as we got off the elevator.”“Not as soon as we got off the elevator,” Henry objected. “It took us at least a few steps before we heard him. Impressive lungs though.” Emma groaned. “You guys are all throwing out really horrible compliments.” “Aw, c’mon,” Mary Margaret sighed. She hadn’t gotten off the ground. “My compliment was good! And genuine!”

“Also,” Ruby added, moving some of the bags so she had a free hand to tug on the back of Matt’s onesie. “She managed to surreptitiously text me when it was becoming more and more obvious you guys were never getting out of here, so not only do I come with a plethora of promises that you’re the best mom this side of the Mississippi, but I’ve also got just a questionable amount of fried food to back up those claims.”“Do those go hand in hand?” Henry asked. He had to move a few piles of paper on Emma’s desk to find any open space, but there really was a ton of food and he kept smiling and maybe the Rangers would score in the third period.

That was almost optimistic.

Ruby shrugged. “I don’t know and I don't care. Emma’s too tired to be worried about my sentence structure anyway.”

“These are not the compliments I was promised,” Emma said, but she was tired and practically overflowing with sentimental thoughts and deep-rooted parental desires and maybe she’d take tomorrow off.

Merida probably knew what the event was called anyway.

“The compliment is that you’re some kind of super mom who’s really worried about totally normal teething schedules. Also you and Cap need to coordinate your worry a little better because Scarlet said--”“I’m sorry, are you gossiping about mine and Killian’s parenting with Scarlet?” Ruby didn’t quite glare, but it was almost like a scowl and Henry did try to turn his laugh into some other kind of noise. Mary Margaret was never going to get off the floor. “Give me a little credit, Em,” Ruby sighed. “Did you see the way Cap skated in Carolina?” “I watch the games, Ruby.” “Exactly. So we all know that no one in the Jones household is sleeping and you’re both absurd parents--”

“--In a way that is actually a compliment,” Henry added, flashing a smile when Emma’s eyes darted his direction.

“Again, exactly,” Ruby muttered. “But Cap could barely stay on the ice for more than thirty seconds and then they had the off day and now Arthur's breaking whiteboards in Philly and you have no idea what your event is called.”Emma blinked. “How do you know that?” “About the shifts or...because that’s kind of just basic math.” “That’s not really Emma’s strong suit either,” Mary Margaret muttered, shrugging when Emma gaped at her. “French II and that intro to stats we took sophomore year. Your academic downfall.”

“I passed both of those classes,” Emma said, and Henry wasn’t even trying to mask his laugh anymore.

“Ehh…”Emma rolled her eyes, but she didn’t really have a leg to stand on and she needed both of them if she was going to make sure the kid her in arms stayed there. “Is Scarlet worried about Killian’s sleeping habits? Is that what’s happening?” “Robin too,” Henry said, answering a question that wasn’t entirely directed at him. “He said Killian’s trying to murder mattresses.” “That’s impressive,” Ruby muttered. Emma didn’t object when she pulled Matt out of her hands, thankful for the lack of weight on her forearms and the no-longer present threat to a variety of internal organs. “The road trips are going to be garbage from here on out, Em,” she continued. “But we’re all still here and Cap’s destroying hotel furniture because he wants to be home that much and you’re way more organized than you honestly have any right to be and Mer said the jerseys were game-worn. Obviously.” “She didn’t say that second part,” Henry added.

Ruby waved a dismissive hand through the air. “That’s neither here nor there. So, we’ve brought the food, the third period’s about to start. Direct us, o fearless community relations leader. What has to be organized?”They weren’t quite a well-oiled machine – Matt was far too loud and squirmy for that and Emma’s legs didn’t entirely appreciate when she leapt up with five minutes left in the game, but she had some kind of sixth sense, or so Ruby proclaimed, and she might have actually fist pumped when Killian pulled his stick back.

It wasn’t the best shot in the world. It wasn’t even the best shot he’d taken all season. But it was a shot and there was a bit of power on it and her soul did something absurd again.

Mary Margaret’s breath caught. Loudly.

The Philadelphia defense hadn’t stood a chance, not really, and Killian hadn’t been sleeping much either, even when he was home, not really, but he still moved up the ice with a speed that was as ridiculous as attractive and Emma had clearly lost her mind. She wasn’t supposed to be attracted to an attribute of her husband’s game.

Her mind, however, did not care.

Her mind was moving as quickly as he was, a streak of blue up the ice and it was actually some kind of miracle the Philadelphia defender didn’t trip over his own skates. Robin’s pass slide between a pair of orange jerseys and around a stick that wasn’t entirely on the ice, the puck landing in front of Killian and he didn’t slow down when he pulled back. His hips barely moved, like he wasn’t even trying, and Henry mumbled something that sounded a hell of a lot like did that even go in behind Emma.

She nodded.

And the light went off.

She wasn’t sure what noise she made, but Killian spun around, back colliding with the nearest board in the Wells Fargo Center as his arm wrapped around Robin’s shoulders. They did something stupid, a shake of their heads and smiles obvious as the camera zoomed in and--

“Oh, they planned that,” Emma muttered, Ruby’s quiet hum of confusion barely audible when Matt started to make noise again. “They planned that,” she repeated. “The whole play. Did you see that? Robin didn’t even look up. He knew Killian was going to be there.”Emma turned back towards Henry, the smile on his face turning a little smug and a little knowing. “What do you know?” “That Robin was annoyed Killian was trying to pummel hotel mattresses into submission and demanded they discuss some kind of breakout on the power play if they were both going to get negative amounts of sleep.” “That last one verbatim?” He nodded. “It wasn’t a power play though.” “Guess Killian’s just that fast.” “Maybe he could walk back here,” Mary Margaret mumbled, and Matt was logging some pretty good mileage as he moved from person to person in an office filled with now-organized merch.

“I wouldn’t put it past him, actually.”Emma hummed or laughed or dissolved into those emotions that had been tugging at the back of her mind for the majority of the night, and she was almost confident they’d be able to get out of the Garden without anymore issues or concerns regarding her ability to parent, but that lasted less than a full second and the scream that came a few feet away echoed in between her ears.

That wasn’t biologically possible either.

“Oh my God,” she sighed, visibly deflating at Mary Margaret’s wide eyes and Ruby’s not-so-quiet gasp. Emma was going to comp the car she called. She was going to call out the next day. “What is happening here?”

She reached forward, pulling Matt back and wincing at several well-placed kicks. “What are we doing, kid? Did you not just see Dad score? That was a good goal! We’re probably going to win now. Aren’t we cool with winning?”“Ma ma ma ma ma maaaaaaaaa.”

The word got less and less pronounced the more Matt kept repeating it, twisting and turning and yanking on the ends of Emma’s hair and the front of her shirt. His legs flailed and his head dropped back and she was absolutely going to have the most impressive forearm muscles of anyone on the entire island of Manhattan.

“You know, I thought we were almost drifting close to actually falling asleep,” Ruby mused, trying without much success to rest her hand on Matt’s back. “Wishful thinking, I guess.”“Welcome to my world,” Emma mumbled. She shifted her weight between her feet, trying to work back towards the swing and the teething ring that was probably just lukewarm plastic at this point and they’d been doing so well. The road trip was going to end on a high note and she was going to be some kind of mother of the year with a husband whose speed on ice should probably get studied at some point.

That was such a weird sentence.

She was so goddamn tired.

And she didn’t know what to do next.

Emma muttered a string of increasingly absurd nonsense, trying to smile and not burst into tears, but that was proving more and more difficult and she was dimly aware of laughter coming from the TV.

“Oh shit,” Henry whispered, clicking his teeth when Mary Margaret made some kind of reproachful noise. “No, no, no, just...ok, don’t tell Gina I said that, but, listen, Emma, turn around. Don’t let Mattie look at the TV.”That was not the string of words she expected. At all.

“What?”“Where’s your remote?” “What?” Henry growled, his whole head rolling in frustration, and that wasn’t right either. There were takeout containers everywhere. One of them crunched under his feet when he moved, darting towards the TV with his hand already out and Emma was worried he was going to punch through the actual screen.

And that was when she saw it.

“What the hell is that thing?” Emma demanded, gesturing wildly towards the ice in Philadelphia and the furry, orange monstrosity shooting t-shirts out of an air-powered gun. “Oh my God, why are his eyes moving like that?”She expected Ruby to laugh even less than she expected Henry to swear. Maybe she’d just walk home. Screw the car. “Gritty?” Ruby asked, and Emma could not come up with a single word to respond to that.

The stupid thing was trying to dance on the ice. Matt cried louder.

“What is a Gritty?” Emma shouted, Henry still making ridiculous noises because her TV was state of the art or something and there were no buttons on the actual thing. “Ok, ok, Mattie, Mattie, we’ve got to breathe kid, the absolutely terrifying monster is not going to come out of the TV and attack us.”

“Should we be referring to him as a monster?” Mary Margaret asked. She grabbed the jersey on top of the closest pile, throwing it over the TV screen and it didn’t really cover everything, but it was at least a start and Emma was kind of terrified of Gritty.

Whatever that actually was.

“He’s a mascot,” Ruby reasoned. “I mean...we’ve all seen mascots before, right?”Emma shook her head, disbelief in her gaze. “We don’t have a mascot. Oh my God, Reese’s, do you think he was crying about this asshole the whole game?”

“I think that seems entirely possible,” Mary Margaret said, a hint of a smile tugging at her mouth.

“This is not funny!”

“I mean…”“It’s not!”

“It’s a little funny,” Henry admitted. He was still trying to find the remote, but the game was almost over and Emma figured even terrifying, demon mascots had to get off the ice when there was a faceoff to take. “How have you never seen Gritty before, he was like...a cultural phenomenon.”“Can we please stop referring to him by his name? That is a man in a suit. An absolutely terrifying, shouldn’t exist suit.” “He’s been around for months, Em,” Ruby said. “All season. Oh.” “Oh. Oh, what?” “And you were worried you weren’t super Mom.” Emma didn’t respond immediately, but she tilted her head and tried not to covet that title too much. She wondered how quickly the entire New York Rangers could get out of Philadelphia. “Where are you going with this?” “They announced the mascot right before the start of the regular season,” Ruby grinned. “Henry’s right. He was all over the news and late night and social media because, you know--” “--He’s terrifying?”

“It’s the eyes, I think. If he didn’t have googly eyes, it wouldn’t be an issue.”“What does this have to do with my parenting skills?” “More like you becoming a parent,” Mary Margaret corrected. “I think you were a little preoccupied with, you know, giving birth to be worried about Philadelphia mascots that never should have existed.” “Wow, that’s harsh, M’s,” Henry muttered, still kind of laughing and he grinned when Emma’s head snapped his direction. “But also true.” “See,” Ruby crowed. “You haven’t done anything wrong, Em. If anything, you’re saving mini-Jones’ mental stability from the get because you made sure he wasn’t aware of a world where Gritty existed. And you totally went into complete Mom mode as soon as Henry said.” Emma wasn’t sure she was actually capable of blushing at this point – her capillaries or whatever were probably too exhausted, but she had never been very good at science either and Matt had finally stopped crying.

Mary Margaret’s eyes were distinctly glossy again.

“It’s ok,” Emma whispered, tightening her hold on Matt slightly and he didn’t squirm at all. He might have burrowed further into her chest. “You’re ok, I promise.”

And she didn’t walk back uptown, both Mary Margaret and Ruby scandalized at even the notion. She sat in the back of a town car instead, a sleeping baby next to her, a quiet that, somehow, made it easier to breathe. Mary Margaret helped her carry everything upstairs.

Emma didn’t plan on falling asleep, but her eyes had other ideas and she didn’t hear the lock click back in place, startling on the couch when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

He grinned at her.

“Hey,” Killian muttered, crouching in front of her and brushing the hair away from her eyes. “You can’t possibly be comfortable.”“I don’t know that I could actually move, honestly.” “I’m not sure that’s much better.” “Nice shot.” “It was an experiment.” “Yeah, I figured,” Emma said, and she appreciated whatever his eyebrows did at that. “Please, Locksley didn’t even lift his head up. Did you have to come up with some kind of signal, or how did it work, exactly?” “Do the years of experience not count?” Emma made a contrary noise, twisting despite the protests from several dozen muscles and Killian, tugging lightly on the loose tie still around his neck. His grin got bigger. “We counted. Scarlet was supposed to pass out of the zone and I had six seconds to get up the ice. Locksley had four to get to the other faceoff circle.” “I wasn’t aware Scarlet was part of the plan.”

Killian hummed, a quick brush of lips over her forehead and it was an impressive exercise in balance. “We had some time to kill.”“So I heard.” “Henry?” “Maybe you’re the genius.” “Ah, that just means it’s genetic,” Killian said. His fingers clearly had minds of their own, drifting over Emma’s neck and her shoulder and the bit of skin where her shirt had twisted underneath her. “You didn’t have to try and wait up for me, love.” “Try being the operative word.” “I appreciate the effort.” “You’ve got to sleep more on the road.”

“You’ve got to sleep more all the time.”She clicked her tongue, scrunching her nose and Killian’s capillaries clearly weren’t too exhausted to blush – particularly on the tips of his ears. “Ruby or Reese’s?” “Both. And David. They’re worried about you.”

“It was just a shitty road trip,” Emma whispered, not trusting herself to do anymore. Plus the sleeping kid a few feet away. Especially the sleeping kid a few feet away. “Did you hear about the mascot incident?”Killian blinked. And blinked again. “What?” “There is apparently some kind of actual monster masquerading as a mascot in Philadelphia and our kid is fundamentally terrified. Screamed every single time they showed him on the broadcast. Apparently.” “Apparently?” “I didn’t realize until the third period.” Emma’s nose was going to get stuck that way. Her sigh sounded impossibly pathetic when it fell out of her, throat tightening against the wad of everything stuck in the back of it and Killian really could not have been comfortable. He didn’t move. “We can’t fix everything, Swan,” he said softly, fingers still tracing absent minded patterns on any bit of skin he could find. “I don’t think there’s a clause for mascots anywhere.” “And you’ve read enough websites. You’d totally have found it.” “So would you, love.” “I’m so tired.” It wasn’t an admission, not really. Everyone knew. Strangers on the street knew. Gritty probably knew. God, she hoped Gritty didn’t know. But it kind of felt like one anyway, and she really could not cope with the realization that it only took Killian six seconds to get up an entire NHL-size hockey rink.

And she hadn’t really considered the fact that he hadn’t kissed her yet, but the move still caught Emma by surprise, quick and somewhere dangerously close to bruising and they were both slightly codependant disasters who just wanted to give their kid the world – particularly one without horrifying and badly named mascots.

“So we should probably get you off the couch,” Killian said, standing back up and Emma didn’t take his hand so much as she threw her palm against his. He laughed under his breath. “Move the kid? Don’t move the kid?”“Move the kid,” she groaned. “He’s bound to wake up soon anyway, I think he’s preprogrammed to know when you get home.” Killian’s ears got redder. And that was worse than recorded speed on the ice.

He brushed his lips over her cheek, moving across the living room and Matt didn’t wake up immediately, but he twisted and made a few pointed noises, Killian only wincing slightly when he bobbed on his feet to try and quiet him. “The workout after the workout,” Emma muttered, a hand on his shoulder and body against his back, and she swore she heard him smile.

“Ah, this is better.”“A line.” “A first line, actually. That’s got a very impressive plus-minus rating in the last few games.” “Are we acknowledging that stat?” “When it benefits me.” Emma laughed, pressing her face into the fabric underneath her cheek and if she was going to keep making sweeping assumptions regarding Killian, then she was positive she felt some of his muscles loosen underneath her. “Parents of the year,” she mumbled.

“I bet we could organize some charity event to practice slapshots at Gritty’s face.”“That’s violent.” “In defense of a kid, Swan.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Emma agreed, and there were feeding schedules and equipment to move, but sleep was almost there and it was always easier when she and Killian were in the same bed. “C’mon, if we don’t move, I’m going to fall on top of you.” “Not the worst thing in the world.” “That was another line.” “Yeah, it was,” Killian said, an easy nod and smile and they both slept through their alarms the next morning.

And Gritty never really went away, a lesson Emma wasn’t entirely sure she appreciated, but was sure the world thought was important – something about confronting fears and our own childhood worries and the ability to overcome both. The mascot was still there, orange with far too much fur and those goddamn googly eyes, terrifying Matthew Jones for the majority of his childhood and road trips he and his, eventual, younger sister got to go on.

The mascot was still there, shooting t-shirts into a screaming crowd at Wells Fargo, nearly two decades later and Emma hadn’t considered the implications of that when she put on a different jersey with the same name and number as it always was. At least she hadn’t until Henry chuckled lightly next to her, elbowing something that might have been her spleen to get her attention.

“Did you tell Rol?” she asked, glancing towards the grown man with his own kids who was doing a pretty good job of being super dad too. “Mattie’ll be mad if Rol’s got something else to trash talk tonight.” Henry shook his head. “Who do you think I am, Emma?” “Someone who knows about a professional hockey player’s deep-rooted mascot fears.” “You’re making assumptions. And, no, I never told Rol. It’s Matt’s first game in Philadelphia. I’m excited for him. I’m not a jerk.” “But?” “How do you know there was a but?”

Emma pulled her eyes away from the ice, nerves churning and pulse beating loudly in her veins and she’d been far too concerned about Matt playing in Philadelphia for the first time and playing against Roland, but Henry just smiled at her. The kid standing at his feet tugged on his jersey. A Locksley jersey. Always now.

“But,” Henry echoed. “We did discuss some quick exit options out of the arena if he’s suddenly attacked by Gritty.”

Her laugh jumped out of her, entirely impossible and far too loud to be acceptable and Emma didn’t think before flinging her arms around Henry and hugging him as tightly as she could. He hugged her back.

“I doubt the mascot will attack,” Henry muttered. “But now, at least, we’re prepared.”“Exactly.” The mascot didn’t come back onto the ice in the first period, but Matthew Jones, making his Philadelphia debut against the guy who helped him practice the wristshot he was quickly becoming known for, made it up the ice in seven seconds flat, the puck on his stick and the light going off almost as soon as he pulled back to shoot.

Emma jumped and Henry jumped and Killian might have hit the window of the suite, pride practically radiating off him. “We’ll get that time down, Swan,” he promised. “Five by the end of the regular season.”

“Parents of the year,” Mary Margaret said, a twenty painted on both of her cheeks that were quickly getting smuged by the tears in her eyes. “With some headlines to prove it.”

Emma didn’t answer – absolutely could not answer while her kid was still celebrating – but she nodded and Killian tugged her against his side, a kiss to her temple and the belief that they’d done something good.

#cs ff #captain swan #captain swan ff #captain swan fic #cs fic #blue line one shots #please look up gritty's packing list for the all-star game #it's gold #justanotherwannabeclassic #laura rambles

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rivernursed · 5 years

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I’ve lost like...40 pounds since my heighest weight ever (when I was 18 god) and like 20 of that since April and so everyone around me is talking to me about my weight and my body all the time now and it’s just like. I’m disturbed by how many people feel so positively about me losing weight. Their enthusiasm is weird and I have a hard time matching it, my happiness back at them is out of politeness, I feel vaguely neutral about my body changing outside of wanting to feel more agile and graceful. I was fairly happy and comfortable where I was before. I didn’t think I was that unattractive and my weight had sort of been slowly downtrending on its own. A little part of it has to do with my breakup, I chose this as what I was going to do to take my mind off of that. And I’m turning 25 in October of this year, it’s like...it feels like this is the last problem left of this quarter of my life. Everything else I wanted to do for this part of my life I did, I left my suburb to go away for school even if it was in a small catholic school in a small little city. How many brown girls do you know go away to college?? Not very many. But my parents and I, they let me go. And I got my degree and I came back and now I have a job that I’m very serious about, I’m so consumed by it in a very exciting way. I moved back and am independent in the city I grew up in, which is the only thing I ever really dreamed of doing at 16-18. I think that whole process: moving, studying, graduating, moving, working gave me a lot of self worth. My job too. I know in my core that I have so much to learn but that I am also good at what I do, that knowledge is filling a gap that has been in me a long time. I almost never leave working feeling like I didn’t try my absolute best to help people, and that’s all I ever really wanted from my work. And also now too I’ve fallen in and out of love enough times to not settle for something that is not right, I have enough self worth to have expectations of others. It’s funny because I always thought losing weight would make me feel like I had more worth, but it was always the opposite. I had to feel good and stable and like I was a person worth being alive to then be able to not use food as a quick dopamine rush to not want to actively die....I guess. And it took me until 24 to basically feel like I had some amount of rights in this world, that I had control over my life, people can no longer mistreat me and do whatever they want to me because I’m on my own now and I’m not allowing it. That I was deserving of good things, like a love that gives what it takes, or feeling healthy. But I can’t tell people that when they ask me what I’m doing. Whatever. Point is weight is the last problem I guess, it’s been a problem since I was like 6-7, I don’t think I really have memories of when my weight wasn’t a problem to someone, first my mom, then the people I was around or just like idk just how the world is. It’s easier to adapt. What I really want for the next part of my life is to just experiment with what life is like at a normal “healthy” weight or whatever, if I’ll be happier, if things will be easier, if people will be nicer. What’s life like when you can fit into any store you’d like? Or not being the largest person in the room? Or when you can do any activity you want, when you can keep up with other people your age, when you don’t feel like your body limits you? Is life better? I don’t know. So anyway. I’ll update you

#tw weight #tw weight loss

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annarosewriting · 6 years

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Let Me Live My Life Plz

I went for a run last week. Most runs are the same. They start off with me thinking I could run for 100 miles, then halfway through wildly wishing for death and afterward congratulating myself for being the PINNACLE of human athleticism.

But I think I’ll always remember this particular run.

It was hot, not the dry heat where the air feels stiff. The air felt damp, like with every pump of my arms I was trying to move through gelatin.

The vocal riffs of Christina Aguilera in the VASTLY underrated musical Burlesque were helping me to run faster than I normally do.

The sun was high above, the only witness to the blue pickup truck that pulled up to the intersection I was getting ready to run across.

I hate running in front of cars, and not just because the movie Cars has given me a healthy fear of Larry the Cable Guy’s voice coming from one. I just hate doing that awkward “are you going to go? Should I go?” half jog while we both dilly dick around until someone makes a Decision and goes.

To avoid this, I turned the corner instead of going straight, so I wouldn’t have to run in front of their truck.

I should have run in front of them.

As I turned the corner, I was met with two rat-faced, Mountain Dew drinking Youths holding up their phones, tracking my movements as I ran past them. Fingers pointing, their mouths wide open in what looked like silent screams of terror at seeing a fat woman taking care of her body but were really shaping their laughter as they recorded me.

Like I was a vaguely amusing trained animal doing a trick.

Luckily, I was sweating so much that my tears were able to mix seamlessly into the sweat that was dripping down my face.

It’s taken me a long time to feel comfortable running in public. It’s taken me even longer to like working out.

When I was younger I operated under the assumption that exercise wasn’t accessible for a fat woman like me.

When I started working out I knew EXACTLY what I should do because after hearing the same advice from medical professionals for, hmm, 17 years, two times a year?, it eventually stuck with me!!!!!

Get my heart rate up for 30 minutes a day. Strength training is good. Eat less. I had it down to a science.

But my initial relationship with working out and losing weight wasn’t heathy (I cried about eating at Wendy’s idk what else I have to tell you) but if I missed a workout it was the end of the world.

I would push myself even harder the next day to make up for the extra calories I didn’t burn the previous day. Doing moves I hated because they made every muscle ache. My whole body would shake and I would come dangerously close to vomiting but all of that was worth it, right?

As I’ve grown, my need to workout stems from the need to move my body. To make sure I’m healthy and the whole laundry list of possible healthcare scares that firmly roots my family tree will be abated or avoided entirely.

That’s the “deeper” reason I workout. The shallow reason? I want to be as ripped as the Amazon warriors from Wonder Woman.

So I started doing yoga. I figured it would help me be more gentle with my body. It would provide me with the tools to listen to what my body needed and help me not be such a goddamn anxious mess (still waiting for the verdict on that last part). But my plank is impeccable, my vinyasa flows are TOIGHT and not to brag but my Lion’s Breathe is alarming in its intensity.

I added walking to the mix because I work a desk job and if I didn’t move more I was going to lose my fucking mind. I started off walking, then I wanted to see if I could run in 30 second increments for ten minutes. Then I just, kept running. I can run a full four miles without stopping now.

I do HIIT workouts. I strength train different body parts. I have abs, a clearly visible outline of abs (they’re on my soft belly so they’re more like the stuffed animal version). My legs are muscular as FUCK and I’m getting more arm muscle definition. I workout four days a week if not more. I run. I switch up my workouts. I rarely drink alcohol. I don’t smoke or do drugs. I drink a moderate amount of coffee. I take my vitamins. I eat fruits and veggies every day.

But if I’m so healthy, why did those fucks record me running? Why were they laughing at me? Why were they using me as their own perverse sense of entertainment?

Because I’m fat.

Which is some goddamn horse shit.

I have met several people in my life (all lovely!) who look like what society deems as Healthy. They’re smaller than I am and they look like they only consume quinoa wrapped in kale and snort kombucha through a reusable straw.

Then I start talking to them and find out that they eat junk food for every single meal, do a cocktail of drugs that would take down a bull elephant and drink so much that it gives me a contact hangover just listening to them talk about the amount they consume.

But, if I’m standing next to them, 99% of individuals would assume they’re healthier than I am.

Because I’m fat.

Being fat, I have constantly felt the need to justify my existence in this world. I am hyperconscious of everything I do. This has manifested itself into odd...I’ll call them personality quirks.

I get cagey when presented with eating food in public so I’ll either eat nothing or eat a normal amount very quickly so no one has to see me eating. I hate working out in gyms or in front of others. I talk about working out more than I have to, just so others know I’m working on breaking the curse that is my fat body. I have panic attacks when people suggest trying something athletic that I’ve never tried before because I know DAMN well what all of the skinny people will think of me.

I went to a gym once to try a physical activity I had never tried before and some of the individuals there looked at me with such thinly veiled hostility and disbelief at the audacity I had to show up to their gym in my fat body that I never want to go back, much less try, that activity again.

I feel the pressure to justify my body, my very existence, every time I go outside, to everyone I meet, even to my own goddamn family and it exhausts me.

And those monsters in the pickup truck (and don’t most awful things happen in a pickup truck?) helped to add a NEW anxiety to the ever growing pile.

How many other people have taken pictures or video of me to spread to their friends, to even post on their social channels?

How many times have I been at a bar, out shopping, eating food, doing normal activities and individuals have discreetly taken videos or pictures of me to disparage the fact that a fat woman is living her life?

How many people have I pissed off? How many people have I incited so much horror into with my existence that they felt the need to record it for posterity’s sake, then SHARE IT, so everyone else can be appropriately appalled that someone like me could live a normal, full, life?

Do I have to start carrying a sign with me everywhere, listing my workout routine and a catalog of everything I’ve eaten that day, so strangers will leave me the fuck alone?

I don’t know if I’ve made this clear but this event had me all sorts of fucked up for a while.

Sometimes it still keeps me awake. I wonde how many people have laughed at me. A fat woman desperately wanting to live her life but not being able to.

Fatphobia is real and it has to stop. I’m tired of walking into a new environment, heart racing, breathing shallow, and feeling trapped because I’m scared of how people will react to my unwieldy body encroaching on them.

We, as a society, have to treat fat people as human beings. Which is a wild fucking sentence for me to type.

Here’s the thing, next time someone makes a fat joke or wants to laugh at something a fat person is doing, or, god forbid, take pictures or video of that person moving through this world, please, think of me. Think of me as your Token Fat Friend.

Think of me, just trying to live my life, but having that stripped away because a low life thought the idea of someone who looked like me running was the HEIGHT of comedy.

Which it’s not, John Mulaney’s Salt and Pepper Diner bit is the height of comedy, OBVIOUSLY.

But after some time to think, I realized I don’t have to justify SHIT to anyone.

No one should be making assumptions about my body or anyone else’s bodies.

Being healthy comes in many different forms, shapes and sizes. The idea of being healthy looks different for, and on, every person.

I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to bounce back from this and I realized the best, and bravest, thing I can do right now is to keep living my life.

The best thing I can do is to not give in to diet culture. To keep working out in public. To keep showing up to prove that fat bodies deserve to be exactly where skinny bodies are. To fill my life with exercise, food, laughter and love. To love my body wholeheartedly.

To be one of the many voices for the body positivity movement that will not be silenced. That will continue screaming, clawing, punching and fighting to make bodies that look like mine, be part of the norm.

So normal that no one will want to film it whenever it’s out in the world.

#anna writes #anna rose writing #fatphobia #body posititivity #running

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