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moonlit-positivity · 3 months

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How to recognize when you need to set a boundary

Physical signs of your body telling you "no":

Bile in your throat

Panic

freeze response aka frozen or paralyzed w fear

Heart paced real fast

Anxiety

Unsettled stomach/gut feeling

Head fuzzy

Head & chest feels tight

Face might scrunch up in disgust/disbelief/pain etc

"ick" or "ew"

fainting or feeling weak as a result

crying

feeling like hurting yourself

cheeks hot, face flushed (embarrassment out of fear or humiliation)

fight/flight/freeze/fawn response gets triggered

body feels "charged" or "activated"

wanting to yell or shout back

wanting to run away

wanting to hide

wanting to stuff yourself with food/substances/alcohol etc to numb the pain

heart feels heavy or pounds at awkward intervals

not being able to eat

head shakes "no"

backing away

asking or screaming for help

feeling scared

feeling "on alert"

not knowing what to say

arms protecting yourself

not being able to move

Emotional signs that you are not safe:

Unsettling environment

Fawning aka "going with what they want" even if you don't feel good about it

Uncomfortable

Knowing the other person doesn't like it when you express things different from their own beliefs

Knowing if you spoke up you would be either mocked or downplayed or told you're being too sensitive

Being told you're "disrespectful" or "not allowed" to talk back or disagree in any way

Being told you're too chicken or being forced to feel dumb or stupid if you don't join in

Being openly mocked or talked about by the whole group

Expressing a concern and they get mad at you for being mad at them

You're always the one in the wrong even when you were the one being hurt

They use grandiose words and phrases to assert dominance

"walking on eggshells"

They continue to do the things you asked them to stop doing even after countless times asking them

They don't care about how you feel

They make no effort to acknowledge your feelings or acknowledge how their behavior is affecting you

They force you to participate in drugs/alcohol

They hold their power and good deeds they have done for you over your head and threaten to stop helping or support you or even take back what they have given you

They are physically aggressive/ violent

Rage

Rage during substance use

Touching you without asking

Downplaying anything you need as not important

What to do:

Take a deep breath

Take your time figuring it out

Remind yourself this isn't your fault

Stay focused on the behavior- because they WILL try to detract from it & turn it around on you

Gather your resources

Consider leaving or cutting contact

Consider therapy or online support groups to help yourself breathe and find safer spaces for yourself

Have an exit plan

Do not engage with the arguments & emotional bait

Cultivate your privacy

Cultivate your security

Cultivate yourself a safe space

Prepare yourself for the backlash

Ask someone safe to go with you

Call someone safe and ask them to stay on the phone with you if you do not feel safe

Self defense tools like pepper spray & brass knuckles

Know you're worth the exit

Take yourself seriously when they dont

Honor the gut feelings

Restore faith in your judgement

Honor your voice

Honor your body

Honor your "no"

Ask for a pause- "I need a break."

Ask for clarity- "Can you clarify that?"

Ask what their intentions are- "Are you being helpful or hurtful?"

Bring attention to the behavior and how it's making you feel- "I'm not comfortable with the way you're ignoring my concerns."

Make direct eye contact & deepen your voice- "You need to stop."

Do not apologize

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Hope this helps!

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

#recovery #ptsd #trauma #boundaries #mental health #healing #bpd #positivity #how to say no #setting boundaries #communication #relationships #toxic relationships #toxic friendships #toxic family #reminders #suggestions #compassionate reminders

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gingericywolf · 2 years

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I fucking hate this place.

No actually. Just my mother.

#deleting later. but god dam that woman makes me want to commit murder #her and the constant 'correcting' aka misgendering me.#my therapist and all the guys at the group therapy are in for a lot of tea today.#I'm done with all of this

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homochadensistm · 3 months

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completely unrelated to anything but. what are some lesbian-related words in hebrew

oh god....theyre horrible but I will share our secrets with you:

First of all - The Swamp (הביצה, HaBitsa): a nickname for the lesbian community, cause everyone ends up sleeping with everyone else, creating A Mess.

Gidi Gov (גידי גוב, a famous Israeli singer. 'Gidim' in Hebrew means 'tendons'): when u get bad hand cramps from too much fingerbanging (like tendonitis).

Gender studies department (or just 'gender studies') (החוג למגדר, HaHug LeMigdar): a nickname for a group of lesbians.

The 1%/The Lesbian Upper Echelon (הלסביון העליון, HaLesbion HaElyon): the lesbian upper class, the popular lesbians, the baddies with all the tea, usually the small group of lesbians who run all the lesbian nightlife stuff.

Conversion Therapy (טיפול המרה, Tipul Hamara): when a lesbian sleeps with a str8 girl, which relates to:

Dropping [someone] (להפיל, Lehapil): when a lesbian sleeps with a str8 girl, aka 'drops' her in her trap/"fools/confuses" her.

Cunt Pause (כוס פוס, Kus Pus): cockblock.

Lesbro (לסברו, Lesbro): a str8 guy friend who is genuine and not creepy/weird.

This ones difficult to explain, its a play on words for the Hebrew term Lashon HaRa (libel, defamation, slander). Lashon means 'tongue' and Ra means 'bad' so...bad tongue - when a girl cant give head for shit.

Mezuza - a religious lesbian

Pillow flattener (משטיחת כריות, Mashtikhat Kariyot): a girl who likes oral but wont return the favor, so a DJ khaled if u will.

Lesbiyon (לסביון): an undercut, specifically the one on the side of the head.

Egg Pain (כאב ביציות, Ke'ev Beitsiot): blueballs.

Theres more but these are the ones Im most familiar with lmao

#israel #lgbt #lesbian content

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hello-nichya-here · 4 months

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Did Sia insult topic of autism somehow?

Oh honey, it's sooooooooo much worse than that.

Sia wanted to make a movie about an autistic girl that manages to connect to people/feel safe and confident through music. So far, nothing outrageous, just a simple concept that would obviously put Sia's music front and center while doing something nice and educating people on autism.

There was controversy about her not casting an autistic actress as it would have been nice representation, but she could have totally gotten away with that since, come on, hollywood hasn't even figured out Rain Man isn't exactly true to life, they're not ready to have an autistic person playing an autistic character. Baby steps.

The real problem started when Sia started promoting the "charity/support group" that was helping "educate" her on the topic to make the movie. The "charity" in question was Autism Speaks - which is absolutely HATED by the autistic community for things like:

1 - Spreading the myth that autism is a mental illness that one can develop/catch like the freaking flue and potentially be cured of, instead of a neurotype, aka something starts in the woomb and cannot be "cured" because to do that you'd need to replace someone's entire nervous system, which is impossible.

2 - Using that myth to get outrageous amounts of money from people so they "search for a cure" - that doesn't exist and will never exist because curing autism is biologically impossible, AND despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of autistic people don't even want to be "cured" (plus, since said "cure" would essentially mean giving the person a new brain, it leads to the question of "Would I even be the same person, or would that just kill and replace me?")

3 - Using the myth of "We don't know what causes autism" (we do, it's genetic) to, of course, get MORE money from people so they can "do research to find the missing puzzle piece" (if you ever see autistic people complaining about a puzzle piece being used to represent the condition, that's why, it was started by Autism Speak's massive disinformation campains).

4 - Falsely "confirming" things like soy milk cause autism with one of the world's most ridiculous "research", losing only to "vaccines totally make kids autistic, buy MY vaccine instead, guys, I am totally not an unbelievably biased person, it's ALL the other doctors/scientists lying to you. GIVE ME MONEY!"

5 - Pushing the narrative of "autism is inherently a tragedy" to distract from the fact that all the money they waste on stupid shit could be used to help autistic people and their families. Instead, they focus on creating more and more panic, making parents in particular despair even more - to the point that one of their "awareness videos" includes a mother talking about how she wants to murder her autistic daughter and then kill herself... while sitting right next to said daughter.

6 - Promoting ABA "therapy" - which was created by the same guy responsible for the attrocity that is gay conversion "therapy." Both have led to unbelievably high rates of confirmed PTSD and suicidal ideation in patients (victims), and ABA in particular has been compared to literal dog training. Very fitting since it was created by a guy who famously did not believe autistic people truly counted as thinking, feeling human beings, and said as much several times. Despite that, it is still praised by some utter bastards because "it makes the patients act less autistic when they're not crying in the corner or trying to jump out a window"

So yeah, working with these guys is a genuinely horrible thing to do since they're basically a scam/hate group pretending to be a charity - and people were STILL willing to give Sia the benefit of the doubt, since Autism Speak uses all their resources to make sure they're the first thing people see when looking up how to help autistic people.

Lots of Sia's fans, both autistic and allistic, warned her repeatedly, politely, that she needed to supporting them IMMEDIATELY as their goal was the exact opposite of the one she claimed to have - aka raise awareness through an accurate portrail of autism. People were even kind enough to name organizations like ASAN as replacements to help her fix any damage done to the project.

And instead of being a decent human being, Sia decided to cry on twitter about how the mean retar-I mean, autistics were bullying her even when she was so kindly using them for her vanity project.

Because yes, that's how the movie turned out. An unwatcheable piece of garbage, with the autistic "character" being so fucking bad even the people who actively use "autistic" as insulted being offended on our behalf - and of course, she was used just a prop to show how awesome Sia's character was.

Seriously, it was so bad the actress playing the autistic girl was sobbing in between scenes because she knew how it was horrible and she didn't want to insult anyone, but Sia is literally her godmother and helped her career by putting her in nearly all her music videos so she felt obligated to go along with it.

So yeah, fuck Sia and fuck Autism Speaks.

#asks #sia #ableism #autism speaks #actually autistic #aba therapy

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unbizzarre · 8 months

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One-Esk and Murderbot meet in the waiting lobby for Robo-Therapy

(…specifically rage counseling )

Probably two of my favorite robot/ai/construct protagonists in literature! Though I have a lot. (What’s up Culture shipminds…)

Creation notes:

A pattern I’ve been noticing is that a lot of these robots are very traumatized, very angry, and don’t like talking about their feelings. I was gonna originally make this short comic about One-Esk (aka Breq) and Murderbot on the first day of group therapy for rage counseling and it would just be a bunch of shots of them sitting in silence cuz neither of them like talking about their feelings but, uh…. the shots were just a lot and the series of events wasn’t really flowing right so I scrapped that idea in favor of not having to draw a zillion backgrounds. Still wound up taking a stupidly long time to create a product that feels… underwhelming. I really like how Breq turned out but I just couldn’t get the hair or costume design on MB to really fit the corpo-futuristic spacer asthetic I was going for, while still capturing that social-anxiety-comfort-hoodie energy. (Was originally contemplating having a shot of MB pulling hoodie strings closed over their face in one shot but wound up scrapping that idea as well.) Cannonicallly, MB should probably be in all dark blues and blacks, but the colors just weren’t working so I went with yellow instead. Idk. Maybe it’s a loaner hoodie from one of MB’s humans.

Here’s a shot I never wound up using:

Anyways! I hope this made you smile if you like one or both of these series! 😊

Post script: if you like Martha Wells Murderbot Diaries, you should definitely check out Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice trilogy, or vice versa. More angry traumatized non-binary human-ai constructs for all! Mega-latestage-capitolist dystopia, or xenophobic -imperialist-socialist empire? Sentient space ships? C’mon. Just read both series u know you’ll love it.

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dromaeocore · 10 months

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For those of you who like the idea of peer respites, I just want to say these are not the only alternatives to the mainstream psych system :] Here's a big ol' list, and many/most of them are peer-run. I live in America, so a lot of this is US-based, but I've tried to make it as internationally accessible as possible!

I'll start with the live-in options. So ya'll already know about peer respites, if you read my latest post about it. There's a few more similar things out there.

Soteria Houses - More long-term (months+) community homes for folks with lived experience of psychosis/similar extreme states, with peer support, that focus on a humane and person-centered approach. Much more freedom & agency than your traditional group home.

Hurdalsjøen Recovery Center - a "medication-free" (aka medication-optional) psychiatric hospital in Norway. Allows patients to choose whether to stay on or taper/remain off psychiatric drugs. Focused on healthy eating, exercise, and recreational therapy options.

Bethel House - Similar to Soteria Houses, a homelike environment in Japan for people with schizophrenia, etc. that focuses on social reintegration.

Organizations, clubs, groups, etc:

Students With Psychosis - A peer support community with programming for students with psychosis

International Map of Hearing Voices/Intervoice networks - Non=pathological support groups for people who hear voices, see visions, etc. US directory, UK directory.

Clubhouse International - Gives people with mental illness opportunities for friendship, employment, housing, educational, and medical services all in one place. Founded by a group of friends who survived a psychiatric hospital together.

Project LETS - A radical approach to peer support and healing that has a disability justice centered approach, giving people with lived experience a voice and focusing on mutual aid. They provide peer mental health advocates, self-harm prevention, and more.

The Mad Society of Canada: A grassroots community of practice that brings together folks who want to provide non-coercive, ethical, survivor-informed mental health services/policy.

Power to the Plurals: Resources and events for people who identify as plural/multiple/systems.

The Wildflower Alliance: Grassroots peer support, training, and advocacy community based in Massachusetts.

Alternatives To Suicide (Alt2Su): Peer support groups that allow people to talk about suicidal thoughts without fear of being committed to the hospital, etc

Trainings:

Intentional Peer Support = Trauma-informed peer support training

Emotional CPR - Trauma-informed mental health support training program for the layperson

Hearing Voices Curriculum: Targeted towards mental health professionals to better understand the experience of hearing voices. Warning: It's expensive!

Cities that have a particularly awesome way of dealing with folks in crisis/with mental illness/etc:

Geel - a farming community where residents welcome people suffering with severe mental illness/distress into their homes and live with them, share work, etc (Edit: apparently Geel is a small city with like 40,000 people and not a farming community lol, I was misinformed. Thanks to @roxbot for the correction!)

Trieste - a city with a community centered system of care that integrates housing and peer support

Warmlines (generally run by peers) and Crisis Lines that don't call the cops: (Most of these are taken from this post by trans-axolotl on Crisis Lines)

Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860, 24/7

BlackLine: 1 (800) 604-5841, has texting options

The Plural Warmline (No number, check the site)

THRIVE: text message line at 313-662-8209, 24/7

Promise Resource Network: (833) 390-7728, 24/7

Project Return Peer Support Network: (888) 448-9777 English or (888) 448-4055 Spanish, hours are Monday through Friday 2:30 PM to 10:00 PM PST and Saturday and Sunday 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM PST

Wildflower Alliance Peer Support Line: 888-407-4515, hours are 7pm to 9pm EST Monday through Thursday and 7pm-10pm EST Friday through Sunday

Key Consumer Organization: 800-933-5397, hours are 8am - 4:30pm EST, Monday - Friday.

MBRLC Peer Support Line: 877-733-7563, hours are 4 pm-7:45 pm EST every day.

US Warmline Directory (unlikely to call cops, but check with the individual line first)

Misc:

CommonGround software - A software developed by Dr. Pat Deegan (an individual who was diagnosed with schizophrenia) that allows clients to communicate their needs to their doctors more efficiently to support shared-decision making with medication.

Open Dialogue- An psychosocial approach to psychiatric services that focuses shared decision-making and dialogue between client, providers, and family (if the client wants family involved), and often more minimal use of medication.

Integrative Psychiatry - A holistic form of psychiatry that focuses on nutrition, exercise, therapy, and psychosocial factors, where medication is just an aspect of treatment. US database of integrative psychiatrists here.

I will also give a somewhat honorable mention to Mobile Crisis Teams. They are a fairly new alternative to the usual "call the cops on your local mentally ill person". They are composed of nurses, therapists, social workers, occasionally peer support workers, etc. They hook the individual up with support/resources - which can often mean forced hospitalization/forced treatment FYI - but it is a step up from being killed by cops. Look up "[city] Mobile Crisis Team" to find out if there is one in your city.

A note: Something being on this list =/= it is perfect, just that it is an alternative to what we've got. So don't come at me, lmao. Feel free to add on if you know of anything else!

#long post #VERY long post lol #mental health #psychiatry #psych critical #psychiatry critical #psych wards #mental illness #neurodivergency #police brutality #antipsych #antipsychiatry #anti psychiatry #peer support #oh i'm gonna write a book on all this stuff btw uwu #WHAT ELSE CAN I TAG THIS WITH SO IT SHOWS UP FOR PPL???

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unbidden-yidden · 1 year

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There's this dynamic I've seen replicated across numerous different identities, where people from the same identity group who have suffered greatly over that identity end up in conflict with those who have suffered less and also talk freely about the joy that identity has given them.

The people who have suffered a lot tend to find the joy expressed by the latter group extremely grating at best and offensive at worst. This often then leads to identity policing and the creation of artificial barriers that are unsupported by reality. If you have not suffered THIS much, then you aren't really [X]. Or, perhaps, the latter group is told that while they might technically be [X], they need to stop talking and 'prioritize' (aka stop talking, but nicer) the former group. This is also often categorized as 'privilege,' which actually makes 0 sense.

Meanwhile, the latter group frequently has complete failures of empathy or perspective, and often do not make space for the former group to talk about how [X] identity has hurt them, how they have suffered due to it, and how they don't necessarily emphasize it or particularly want to 'find joy' in it. There is often a complete lack of recognition of trauma the former group has experienced, and this lack of recognition can be especially painful coming from people who are ostensibly in the same group.

We have GOT to start acknowledging that both experiences are legitimate and finding ways to talk about our various experiences without hurting each other.

Some suggestions I might make are:

If you're in the former category, please try to access therapy or support groups to address your (completely legitimate) trauma. As someone who has *been* that person, life is so much better when you are happy for people finding joy, even in something that hurt you, rather than, what, exactly? Wishing they experienced the same pain? If it was really that bad, why would you wish that on anyone? Especially someone like you?

Stop categorizing intra-group dynamics as privilege, as if that marginalized identity could be a privilege. Instead, consider using other terms to discuss the spectrum of experience that don't erase other people's trauma.

Stop denying the trauma of others. Try to get some perspective on things, and look at the facts objectively. This is what is intended by the original "prioritize [X] with [Y] experience" framing, even if it has been twisted in shitty ways. Bad discourse doesn't change what happened.

And as someone who has also been in the latter group - look. There's a time and a place. For example, I love being Jewish. My life has gotten way better since becoming Jewish, even in spite of everything else that's going on. But Yom HaShoah isn't the day for me to express that. That would be tactless, tasteless, and insensitive. That's instead a great day for me to be quiet and supportive of Jews who lost family. There are plenty of other days for me celebrate my love of Judaism and for the Jewish people (like Shavuot!)

Anyway, nuance is good, infighting is bad, and valuing and respecting people's varied experiences can only help us. Exclusion and disrespect only hurts us and helps the people who want us silenced, hidden, erased, bullied into conformity and/or killed.

#'is this about --"#most likely yes #I have seen this in all of my major identities and watched similar discourse float by in other identities

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obsessingoverthisandthat · 3 days

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Fic idea:

Annabell Lee got stuck in one of those remote traumatic Academies for troubled teens because of her panic attacks. At first deciding that she's gonna be on her best behavior and ace the "therapy" to get out of there as quietly and fast as possible, she soon grows to resent that her usual tactics for rising in the social ladder barely work and how painfully boring and soulsucking the environment is. While she stays there she slowly gets to know her merry group of bootlicker elite (I don't remember the name of Annabels Clique or if they even have one. But like. Prospero, Montresor, Ada, Will) who are also trapped in the same institution and the Outcasts, a rowdy friendgroup that frequents a Thriftshop the Academy forces their students to volunteer for. As thus, the Outcasts way of Life actually becomes desirable for the Bootlicker Elite and over the course of the fic the Bootlicker Elite decide to Team up and escape with the help of them, growing friendships and finding New coping mechanisms and eventually running away, successfully.

Aka, Nevermore Academy irl but with a happy ending and no death (potentially death. I know Wilderness Camps have people die, but im not sure about the schools? Probably, tho. They all are nectful af)

Does that make sense? Who knows. I'll probs never write this. At most I will make an AU and scribble some Art for it.

#nevermore #webcomic nevermore #lenore nevermore #annabel lee nevermore #lenore x annabel #annabel lee x lenore #whiteraven #nevermore webtoon

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birdofmay · 6 months

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I briefly want to talk about why "proving your diagnosis" to strangers online is absolutely useless, and especially if you want to prove it to a stranger.

I'll use two documents I was allowed to upload.

What does this photo say or prove to you? Well, first of all, absolutely nothing if you don't understand German. And all my documents are in German. This is it in English:

"Diagnosis: Motor coordination disorder with dynamic equinus"

I don't even know how to translate this properly. It's not developmental coordination disorder, aka dyspraxia. It doesn't even have an ICD code. Doctors love not to use ICD codes when it comes to the development of disabled people where I live, they rather describe the symptoms. All it means is that I struggle with motor coordination, either due to brain damage or specifically because of my cerebral palsy. And that I limp (equinus).

But does it really prove that? No, all you know is that somebody took a picture of this document and uploaded it. It has no date and no name and you can't even see the name of the institution. Because you always censor that, that's basic internet safety.

Another one:

In English:

"You are applying for coverage of the costs of early intervention at the early intervention centre [redacted] for your above-mentioned child.

According to the medical opinion I have received, your child requires early intervention because of an imminent or significant disability."

If you know German law, you'll realise that this is an older document because they don't say "wesentliche Behinderung" anymore now. Alright. But does it tell you that I'm disabled and was in early intervention? Does it tell you that there are medical documents that prove that I have a significant disability?

No, it tells you that somebody uploaded a medical document. And that sensitive information is redacted. And you always redact sensitive information, that's basic internet safety.

I could be someone who has access to these documents, maybe because a family member is disabled. Or because it's my job and the document belongs to one of my patients.

It would be even easier for autistics who really were in early intervention and group therapies or special education, and therefore know many peers who "have it worse", so to speak. Maybe I'm friends with someone who's severely developmentally delayed, and they once sent me something that proves their significant disability. I could censor and upload that, and I could start roleplaying because 1. I absolutely know what their life is like and 2. I have the "proof" to back it up.

So what would really prove it?

I'd have to take a picture of an identity card or maybe even my disability ID card, and then I'd need to start a video call to show them my face and, again, my ID. That would prove that I am me, and that the documents belong to me.

And you don't do that with strangers, especially not internet strangers.

So you see, there's absolutely no way to reliably prove your disability to internet strangers.

Therefore, whenever somebody asks you to prove your diagnosis, just ignore them. You can't prove it. You just can't.

#long post #tay don't look #tay dont look

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palfriendpatine66 · 1 month

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Your Pal’s Hayden Review: Higher Ground

What? Yes. I’m going to take a second away from my 24/7 Ewan obsession to throw a little love Hayden’s way and talk about Higher Ground. I had heard a lot about the series before I decided to check out the series and I’m so glad I did. It can be really difficult to track down but right now it’s streaming for free for a limited time on the CW website (and app) as well as tubi.

TLDR: I highly recommend a watch for a great Hayden performance in an angst ridden, emotional teen drama about kids working through their trauma in a therapeutic wilderness school. Many many content warnings for difficult topics and content warnings after my general review below the cut.

This was seriously the role Hayden was born to play. He plays a broken, sulky teen who lashes out in flashes of anger before he breaks down and cries AKA he is modern AU Anakin. It’s no wonder he was cast as Anakin after his work on this. His performance is emotional and vulnerable and shattered my heart multiple times.

The show is never quite able to make the viewer forget that they’re watching a teen drama with a cast of actual teens playing the teenage characters filmed in the year 2000, but I was able to forgive it for it’s occasionally overacted and/or not quite realistic dialogue and key moments accompanied by in your face soundtrack choices to pump up the drama and I think you will too. A very diverse collection of issues that impact real teens but are rarely talked about were depicted surprisingly realistically and sensitively. I was really impressed that the show consistently emphasized - over and over again - that the traumas the kids went through that were behind the problematic behaviors that landed them in their one stop shop rehab/intensive therapy/social and life skills group/high school program were not their fault, but only they could be responsible for how they coped and chose to go forward with the rest of their lives. The councilors on the show had healthy, caring, supportive relationships with the kids in their program, and the advice they gave was (generally) actually helpful and real life strategies. What I liked the most about this show was that it was realistic in there is no magic cure or happily ever after, but there is hope and there is healing and there are opportunities for a positive future even when everything is awful.

Content warnings below - feel free to dm if you want more details if you’re considering a watch. Also if you have watched please let me know if I missed any. For the most part these weren’t graphic depictions (they were rated TVPG in 2000) but the emotional impacts and aftermath are focused on in detail and can be very heavy.

- depictions of depression, anxiety, and panic attacks with flashbacks - drug addiction - drug use - overdose death - alcoholism - teen runaway - rape - sexual abuse of a minor - sexual abuse of a minor by a parent - sexual abuse of a minor by a step parent - emotional abuse - gaslighting - abuse allegations being dismissed, not believed - eating disorders - discussions of self harm - graphic depiction of cutting - scenes and discussions of suicide and death - death of a parent - gang involvement - domestic violence - physical abuse - infertility - drowning death - teen prostitution -

#would you like to be sad? if so this is a show for you #your pals Hayden reviews #higher ground #hayden christensen #scott barringer

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humanityinahandbag · 1 year

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Steddie Accidental Marriage

AKA: Eddie and Steve have been together for twenty plus years and married for one.

No one told Eddie.

A brief one shot about Eddie being in love and also an idiot.

Eddie quickly becomes an expert at nodding.

More specifically, he becomes an expert at nodding to whatever Steve Harrington is saying, and as long as Steve Harrington's eyes stay fixed on his, he knows he'll probably keep nodding until his head tips off his neck and rolls away.

See, 1986 hadn't gone the way anyone could have predicted. The monsters, the portals, the child who could probably summon a giant marshmallow man if she tried hard enough. But the most startling development (besides coming out on the other side, scarred and shaken and very much alive) was Steve Harrington.

Steve Harrington, who was kind, sweet, and all too thoughtful. Who protected people with everything he had and pressed his heart into other people's hands without asking for it back.

And that sucks, honestly. Because he could still remember being invited to parties for drug deals and sneered at in the hallways, shoved into lockers by the group of hair-sprayed goons while Steve had watched like some all-seeing vassal.

It didn't help that Eddie had been in love with the guy since before popularity graced him with its unwelcome presence.

And now that he's kind, sweet, generous, thoughtful?

Well. He was doomed when he held that bottle to Steve's throat.

So yeah. Eddie is deliriously in love. He's not sure when it will end, but he knows it will end eventually. He'll slip up and Steve will realize he's gay and punch his lights out, or he'll find better, less frustrating friends and leave Eddie and the rest of them in the dust. But until then? He needs to take every moment he has.

And so he nods.

He nods when Steve Harrington asks if he'd like to attend pool parties with the kids. He nods when Steve Harrington asks if he wants to hang out alone and see a movie. He nods when Steve Harrington picks him up from physical therapy.

He even nods when Steve Harrington leans over and asks I'm not imagining things, right? You're, like... into me?

Steve beams. "Awesome," he says, and leans forward to press warm, full lips against his.

It will end soon, Eddie tells himself as Steve's hand presses into his hair and lips leave little dappling pocks along his jaw. So he'll take what he can.

A year passes, and Eddie is still waiting for everything to quietly shatter.

Which makes it all the more frustrating when it doesn't.

Steve is over at their new (government hush-moneyed) apartment almost every day. It's not unusual to see him puttering about, folding blankets or hovering above the stove. Their little home smells less and less like microwaved meals and more like whatever Steve has tried to cook up that day.

Wayne is delighted. "Finally got someone to talk about important stuff with," he crows one night after dinner, sitting in the recliner with a beer while Steve takes the couch besides Eddie. Their fingers link, bodies pressed tight alongside the other. If Wayne notices, he doesn't say anything.

"My stuff's important," Eddie mutters.

Steve just laughs, stealing the beer from his hand to take a swig before pressing a fond kiss to his cheek. "Sports trump everything, Eds," he says, and then goes back to discussing the game playing on the little TV with Wayne.

His thumb rubs back and forth against Eddie's hand the whole time.

Eddie holds tight.

Steve Harrington's phase to figure out himself lasts longer than Eddie would have expected. Long enough for Steve to drag him into bed, confident and shy all at once before taking Eddie apart slowly before putting him back together one little piece at a time.

When Eddie lets the I love you slip out, he waits for everything to crash around him.

Instead, Steve whispers something that sounds suspiciously like I love you into the seam of his shoulder.

Eddie holds even tighter and wills the moment to last forever.

Another year passes. Steve applies for community college and celebrates with Eddie and Wayne and Robin when he's accepted to the social work track. There's talk about moving closer to Indiana so the commute isn't as long. Robin already has an apartment with Nancy there while they work out plans for Boston that Steve has become more and more invested in.

Housing becomes more difficult to come by as prices rocket upwards. Which is absolutely, definitely, positively, one-thousand-percent why Steve turns to Eddie and says, "We'll find something that works for the both of us," and then proceeds to show up at Eddie's work in the little garage on Maple Street with a clipped advertisement for an apartment.

"I visited it today," he says, giddily drumming on the wheel as they drive through the main slot of road and past Loch Nora. "Just wait. It's got great lighting. And the landlord says that she'll let us get a pet if we want one!"

"That's... that's great," says Eddie.

It is a great apartment. Large windows. High ceilings.

"Which bedroom would you want?" he asks Steve, who's busy opening and closing every door to see how it latches.

"Whichever one you choose," says Steve, like that sentence alone hasn't rocked Eddie to his very core and shaken his heart loose.

Eddie nods mutely which seems to at least get a positive reaction out of Steve. "Oh! And I had this great idea. We could totally turn the other bedroom into a studio for you. How cool would that be!" He went on to describe the pullout couch they could put in the center of the living room. How they could host the kids, his Uncle, Robin, whoever else wanted to drop by.

Eddie could only nod along.

And he'd keep nodding as the furniture was moved in, and Jonathan and Wayne and Steve argued over the little bolts and screws while they put together the bed frame in the master bedroom. He'd keep nodding as the walls in that room were painted a lovely, dusted blue and two bedside tables were added to either end.

They didn't argue over sides. They didn't have to. Eddie naturally fell to the right, Steve to the left. Shared books filled the shelves along with sports trophies and twenty sided dice.

He didn't stop nodding when it was their first night there and Steve climbed into bed alongside him, exhausted and clingy, and pressed himself to Eddie's back whispering fantasies about how their life would play out.

And play out their life does.

They move to Boston. Eddie finds a new band. Steve begins working for Boston General Hospital in their pediatric wing where he holds kids hands and talks them through what scares them before surgeries. Sometimes, he brings Eddie along. The kids always shriek and laugh and ask to touch his guitar, and Steve watches Eddie with a kind of Love that could spin the world off its course when he plucks the first notes of a favorite Tears for Fears song.

Robin and Nancy live just next door, because Steve and Robin have separation anxiety and Nancy declared herself and Eddie to be best friends that couldn't live without the other.

There are great moments. And terrible ones. Sometimes there are fights and slammed doors and Eddie always waits for the other shoe to come crashing down, and yet it never does. He and Steve always find one another again.

Which is... odd.

Mostly because he's never heard of any other friends-with-benefits case working quite like theirs.

He brings it up once with Gareth on a weekly phone call.

"I don't get it," he says. "I mean... you'd think the guy could find himself someone to spend his life with. He's just... he's so great. He's just perfect."

There was silence on the other end. And then;

"Eddie?"

"Yeah?"

"You're an idiot."

Eddie spluttered and hung up. He didn't bring it up again after their next call.

The 1990's come and go. The year 2000 is celebrated with a kind of raucous glee followed by '01, '02, '03. Steve becomes head of the social work department. Eddie has stopped touring and is instead teaching music in an elementary school, where he plays music to children who hang off his knees and scream about wheels on school busses. They're happy in ways he couldn't have dreamed they'd ever be.

2004 arrives with the purchase of their first house, an occasion marked with Steve dragging Eddie from room to room, christening each one with an attention that borders on religious.

Eddie blames it on homeowner stamina and has to wonder why buying a house with your "booty call" (as the teens are now calling it) is something worth celebrating.

Though he supposes it makes said booty call more accessible, and makes it a little easier to struggle through the intense love and adoration that fill his chest at all times.

He's never believed in a God, but if he did, he'd probably ask what he did in a former life to deserve this. Even if he can't have Steve, he can still have him in any way that Steve is willing to give.

Which is why, ten years later and still somehow living out his dream, Eddie is left so completely and totally confused when all of his friends and family plan to swarm Boston to celebrate... something.

He's not really sure what they're celebrating.

But they're definitely celebrating something.

It's when he finds paperwork during an attic cleanout that he finally realizes it.

They bought their house ten years ago.

That must have been it!

Ten years of being homeowners come and gone.

This is made even clearer when Steve looks over his shoulder, curses, and says, "I forgot all about that."

"Me too."

"We should probably think of remortgaging soon." Steve tousled his hair with a sigh. "Not like it'll be any fun, but..."

"Look at you," says Eddie, hating how sour Steve's pretty face had become. He leaned over and pressed a kiss by Steve's ear, pleased to see him perk up. "Being an adult and everything."

"I can say the same for you."

"Don't you dare," says Eddie with a laugh.

And yeah, sure, maybe that didn't seem like much of an achievement, but Eddie was happy to give what he could. And so when Wayne arrived at the airport and practically broke down in tears, tugging Eddie into a hug to let him know how proud and happy he was for his boy, Eddie could only just smile and nod.

If his Uncle wanted to cry about Eddie repainting some plaster and tending to a garden and making consistent mortgage payments, who was he to stop him?

"Can you even believe it?" his Uncle asked in the car ride back to their home.

Eddie laughed. "I mean, I don't think it's that big of a deal."

"You just can't see it for what it is cause you've been doin' it for so long."

Which was a fair point. He had been a homeowner for a while now.

"I guess," he agreed, and Wayne smiled and pat his shoulder and asked him all about his job. He tells Wayne all about a group of six year olds who've all learned about becoming tea pots (short and stout).

Two days later (much to Eddie's consistent shock and confusion), Steve dresses in his best suit and helps Eddie knot a tie covered in tiny skulls and drags them both to town hall. They wait in a line on the third floor, Eddie looking around a little dazed and unsure, until they're finally let into an office and Steve (through tears) signs his name on a line before turning to Eddie and clasping their hands tight together.

"Eds," Steve says. "You gotta sign it too."

And Eddie, who has been nodding since 1986, can only nod again and reach for the pen.

He's not entirely sure why everyone arrived to celebrate them renewing their mortgage. He didn't even know City Hall made a huge fuss over the financial gains of two middle aged men in middle America. But his friends and family are waiting in the lobby. They're all crying, even though he's not really sure why, but that just triggers him into crying. Even more when the kids (though they're not so much kids any more) clump around them with hugs and tears and shouts about how excited and proud they are.

"It's about time," Dustin sobs.

"I mean, I guess," says Eddie, wondering why Steve hasn't let go of his hand yet.

But he's not going to let go.

He doesn't find out until one year later when Steve surprises him with a trip to Hawkins. They meet Uncle Wayne first thing before going off to explore their old haunts, flipping their middle fingers out the window at the high school, stopping off at one of their favorite old diners that still served what Steve considered to be the most okay chocolate milkshakes in the entire world.

Their waitress was a lovely older woman named Dotty who looked moments away from pinching Steve's cheeks when she collected their menus.

"What are you folks here for?" she asked. "Haven't seen you around here!"

"We used to live here," said Eddie. "We moved away."

"And we're celebrating," countered Steve.

Eddie blinked, considering the date before he remembered. "Yeah," he agreed with a nod.

"Oh, how lovely!" Dotty clasped her hands around the sticky diner menus. "What's the occasion."

And before Steve could get in a word, Eddie apparently decided to leap headfirst off idiocy mountain and say, "we refinanced our mortgage."

There was silence.

"Oh..." said Dotty, finally. "Well. That's... nice?"

Across the table, Steve stared at him.

Eddie couldn't shake the feeling that he'd said something wrong. "Um." He reached for a napkin, tearing and twisting it between his hands. "Yeah. Totally. It was a, uh. A big deal."

"Was it...?"

"Mmmhm," he squeaked, trying hard not to look at the way Steve was gaping at him. "We've, uh... we've been roommates for a while, so."

Steve looked moments away from sliding off the booth and into the earth's core.

It wasn't until Dotty left (a little confused and befuddled) that Steve sprung up, grabbing Eddie by the arm, marching them both into the parking lot.

"Refinancing our mortgage!" Steve stomped little circles around the concrete. A family walking by crossed to the other side of the street. "We're refinancing our mortgage!"

"Steve, you're uh. You're scaring people..."

"You're scaring me!" Steve tossed his hands into the air.

"Right. Uh... I got that? But... why? Am I scaring you?"

"Because you said we're roommates!"

"But. We are roommates?"

"We-!" Steve froze, mid panic.

Eddie, taking a chance, snuck forward and gave him a little poke. "Uh. Steve? You rebooting?"

Steve blinked. He reached up and scrubbed his face. He looked back up at Eddie before squeezing his eyes shut and counting back from ten. When he opened them again, Eddie was amazed to find there wasn't a blue screen behind Steve's eyes.

"Eddie," Steve said. "You honestly think I took you to city call to refinance our mortgage?"

"They're important documents," Eddie said.

"And that we've been roommates for over twenty years?"

"We're very good roommates," said Eddie, weakly.

Steve's eye twitched. "Roommates don't have sex, Eddie! They don't tell each other they love each other! They don't get married!"

"I never said we were traditional roommates! I just said-" And then Eddie stopped, Steve's words finally striking ground. "Wait..."

"Yeah."

"Wait."

"Mmmhm."

"Wait!"

Steve waved his hands. "Now he gets i- mph!"

Whatever he was going to say was cut off by Eddie dragging him quick into a kiss.

Dottie arrived back at their table just as Steve and Eddie slipped back into the booth, looking a little mussed and tossed about, lips red and eyes shining.

"Still celebrating that mortgage?"

"Actually," said Eddie, "it turns out, we're married!"

"Isn't that nice."

"It is," agreed Eddie, accepting his hamburger and shake. "Did you know I've been in love with him since high school?"

"How sweet! And how long have you been married?"

"A year!" Eddie preened.

Steve accepted his own burger. "He just found out," he said.

Dotty wasn't sure what that meant, but the two of them looked happy enough. Who was she to question a good marriage?

Published, edited, and slightly longer story found here!

#steddie #eddie munson #steve harrington #stranger things #steddie fanfiction #steddie oneshot

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