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wrcns · 3 years

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↪ introduction to wren d’ansembourg.

BASICS

full name: wren marcel d’ansembourg. nickname(s): vtáčik ( ‘little bird’ in slovak, used exclusively by his fiancé tomas ). age: twenty-five. date of birth: 3 june 1995. zodiac sign: gemini. place of birth: luxembourg city, luxembourg. ethnicity: white. nationality: luxembourger. gender: cis male. sexual orientation: homosexual. romantic orientation: homoromantic. religion: roman catholic, though wren isn’t the most diligent catholic ( re: he hasn’t done anything religious of his own volition in years ). occupation: when he isn’t running amok around his home in luxembourg trying and failing to do his royal duties, he’s an artist -- a painter, more specifically. language(s) spoken: luxembourgish, french, german, english ( all fluently ). slovak ( not fluently, at this point the best he can do is string together his favorite swear words to make tomas laugh ). accent: his accent is extremely reminiscent of a german accent, though he’s been told it’s softer than the average german accent -- when he’s speaking english, that is. he’s been told his accents in french and german are negligible and difficult to notice -- especially at the pace he usually speaks ( i.e. - wren has never said anything slowly in his twenty-five years of living and doesn’t plan to START ).

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

face claim: maxence danet-fauvel. hair color: brown. eye color: blue. height: 180.34 cm ( 5′11″ ). weight: 83 kg ( 183 lbs ). build: lanky, athletic. tattoos: he has a tattoo of a wren on his left forearm ( here ) ; to date he doesn’t have any other tattoos but he’s constantly doodling things he’d be perfectly willing to get tattooed on himself - tomas has, so far, urged him to think about it a bit more. piercings: he has three piercings in his right ear -- he wears a ring in the lowest one and studs in the upper pair. distinguishing characteristics: his height, the fact that he always looks like he needs about six months more sleep at any given moment, the way he talks with his hands, the way he dresses.

PERSONALITY

label: the odd duck. positive traits: capable, clever, compassionate, considerate, creative, curious, daring, dedicated, earnest, empathetic, generous, independent, loyal, observant, passionate, protective, reliable, selfless, warm. negative traits: competitive, irreverent, sarcastic, self-conscious. aloof, anxious, crude, haughty, hedonistic, impulsive, timid, weird. goals/desires: wren’s admittedly very excited to get married when the time comes, to continue living his life as happily as possible even within the protection program. fears: genuinely doing anything to disappoint or hurt his family, losing his siblings or tomas. hobbies: painting, driving his siblings absolutely nuts, dreaming up new pranks to pull on his friends and family, doodling ( on clothes, skin, actual paper - wren’s not picky ), chatting with reporters about nonsense things, going on twitter rants about the dumbest things, spending time with his family ( occasionally ), cuddling with tomas, exploring whatever city he happens to be living in as thoroughly as possible, playing soccer, learning how to make films ( god forbid anyone let this man hang onto a camera for a significant length of time ), looking at memes until his eyes hurt. quirks: most of his sense of humor is based on memes, he almost always has paint smudges on his hands no matter what he’s doing, he’ll switch between languages when he’s talking without thinking-- especially if he’s speaking english and forgets phrases he’ll try and figure out what they are in the other languages he knows and go from there, he can come off pretty aloof but he’s a genuinely social person -- he just tends to be too-tired on any given day to be really over-zealous. likes: visiting museums when he has the attention span, painting, planning pranks, learning new skills, playing music ( his guitar skills aren’t all that bad and he genuinely enjoys practicing ), mystery novels, memes -- especially if they’re brand new to him, pestering luca, spending time with tomas, planning dates when he’s in the mood, watching documentaries on super obscure subjects, collecting mismatched socks, hanging out with regular people, collecting art supplies, energy drinks, coffee, good beer, good food, flustering tomas. dislikes: having to be involved in political matters of any kind, most hard liquor, not being taken seriously when he wants to be, people who take themselves too seriously, france, having to be serious for any length of time usually, anyone who fucks with his family.

FAMILY

father: emile albert james d’ansembourg. mother: adélaide marie d’ansembourg. sibling(s): luca phillipe gabriel d’ansembourg, wendy juliette d’ansembourg, lara jeanne d’ansembourg. pet(s): he doesn’t have any pets at the moment. financial status: too rich for his own good.

RELEVANT INFORMATION

PERSONALITY —

Wren is, first and foremost, a genuinely odd person -- or so he’s been told for the length of his life at present; it’s a title he accepts with the utmost pride and he’s the first person to admit that he’d rather be known as odd than known for anything else. He can be loud and abrasive-- opinionated in ways that would likely get him into more trouble were he not royalty but could likely get him into sticky situations he isn’t even vaguely prepared for as time goes by. He isn’t always nice in any traditional sense -- he has no problem telling people what he thinks of them, will rip them to metaphorical shreds with a broad smile on his face and be that much happier for it. He obsesses over miscellaneous things to an inane degree -- he’ll worry about how mismatched he can get his socks to be for over an hour on any given afternoon and turn around to obsess over any given style of art he’s currently fascinated with depending on the day. Wren is also one of the most loyal people in the world -- at least where his family and loved ones are concerned; essentially, when someone takes the time to get to know him and Wren understands that they love and appreciate him in a way that he needs ( whether he’ll admit it or not ) then he would do anything in the world for them the moment they need him and he tries -- on occasion and not always successfully -- to make that clear to those he thinks need to understand it.

RELEVANT BACKGROUND —

Wren has never been what anyone would label ‘a typical prince’ -- he’d likely be the first person to question what a typical prince was supposed to be and why would it be so terrible if he wasn’t fitting a mold that, in his mind, had been outdated for hundreds of years? A prince in title and status but perhaps not at heart — the inner workings of palace life never interested Wren unless he needed to be aware of them to pull off some halfcocked prank or another on a whim. To those who knew him in the palace he was a troublemaker on his best days and that suited him far better than being the dutiful youngest son that he was convinced no one believed he could be even if he’d had the desire to begin with.

In his mind, there was no sense in forcing himself to be a shell of the person he hoped to be and if that meant that he was seen as bizarre or odd or too “other” to be taken seriously, well, that was something Wren - by his teenage years - had come to accept rather happily. He was much more at home tucked away in his room with his face inches away from his laptop screen going down some internet rabbit hole or another -- his obsessions were long lasting, his hyperfixations even more so and it was never quite a surprise to anyone when he would emerge from his room looking as though he hadn’t slept in days but perfectly ready to talk anyone’s ear off about whatever subject had caught his attention for the time being.

As he got older he tried to strike a balance between embracing all of his hobbies and relationships outside of being a prince and making at least half an effort, even if it was a poor one, at being a “proper prince”. It wasn’t something he was gifted at -- politics of most sorts tended to give him a headache on his good days and he could waste breath on arguments for hours simply to have advisors admit that he was right in the long run -- something Wren would enjoy deeply simply for the satisfaction of it all. He wasn’t the sort of prince anyone would look to to guide a country and he was thankful, consistently, that it wasn’t his responsibility in the long run to do so. It was almost an accident -- too good to be true, in his mind -- when he met someone at a political function and bonded with them and when he met his current boyfriend it was exactly the way he felt.

He wasn’t always the sort of man anyone would look twice at or pay attention to for more than a wild story or acerbic quip but things were different from the moment they met and Wren found himself struck by the feeling of being seen in a way he felt so rarely that it was, in essence, a connection he couldn’t ignore. He half-expected their relationship to fizzle out as they got to know one another more deeply -- perpetually concerned that he would ultimately be too weird for anyone to take seriously where a long term relationship was concerned but as time went on and the world seemed to fracture around them one of the few things Wren had to cling to was his relationship with the man he loved. Politics became a subject Wren abhorred that much more as alliances formed and their countries were not overtly friendly or directly allied and Wren’s stress over their relationship ending because of him shifted to a deep concern that their relationship might end whether they wanted that or not. It terrified Wren in a way he’d never felt prior and in a fit of something just short of desperation he proposed in the hopes that nothing in the world would ultimately drive them apart.

HEADCANONS —

— Wren has been out-- to both his family and close friends-- as gay since he was fourteen years old. It’s never been something he stresses about or something he feels the need to hide in any concrete way but he’s certainly not the sort of person to go yelling about his various ex-boyfriends or flings to the world at large. Where extremely personal matters are concerned Wren can be intensely private, though that need for privacy can, on occasion, be cast aside in his mind in favor of pulling off a particularly glorious prank or giving the media some piece of insane half-truth to froth at the mouth over which he’s found nothing short of delightful to play with in his adulthood.

— In the grand scheme of interests he has, art is paramount. It’s one of the only things Wren has ever been interested enough in to study properly and arguing his case to be allowed to attend art school in earnest is something he’s extremely proud of having accomplished. Painting, sketching, sculpting, photography -- art of almost any sort is enough to catch and hold Wren’s attention but painting is usually his go-to form of practicing where his own art is concerned, as the materials are usually far easier to come by when he’s traveling or in this case when he’s going to be essentially in protective custody for the foreseeable future.

— Wren and his boyfriend -- now fiancé -- have been dating for going on three years and Wren is as in love with him now as he feels like he always has been. He feels he can be most earnestly himself around his partner and takes advantage of that at every turn -- occasionally in the form of staging elaborate but ultimately harmless and loving pranks on him simply to give himself something to do and relieve any tension either of them happen to be carrying. Their relationship is an easy one and even with the political tension in the world that brought their engagement to bear -- it’s still perhaps the most settled and at ease with his choices Wren has ever felt in his life.

#hshqintro #( introduction )#The Boy™

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connorspark · 4 years

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BASICS.

Name: Connor Park

Gender / Pronouns: Cis male / he, him

Species: Werewolf

Age: Twenty-six

Occupation: Dishwasher at Buckshot Bar & Grill

PERSONALITY.

Traits: Assertive, loyal, selfish, impulsive, quick-witted, demanding.

Chaotic neutral / ISTP-T / 6, the loyalist.

Values: Loyalty, common sense, self-reliance, acceptance.

Flaws: Reckless, anxious, judgmental, dependent, impatient.

HISTORY.

( tw mild drug mention )

He was born on a warm summer night, one half of a twin. One would imagine that two beautiful baby boys coming into the world would be a blessing for most, but that wasn’t exactly the case for Connor’s parents. Twins - having twins meant twice the money, twice the time, twice the headache. They were loved at some point, he’s sure, but he’s also certain that the love didn’t last for very long, like the fleeting summer nights.

Connor was always running, falling down, getting in trouble. He was the one who was out wrestling the other boys to the ground and coming home with broken bones and scraped knees, dragging Noah behind him. He never put much thought into it back then, but to this day, he wonders if that’s why their mother left them.

They’d been left at the playground, from what he can remember. When the other children had been called back home for dinner, their mother never showed back up to pick them up. Eventually, they were picked up by the police and taken to social services - the rest is history.

There weren’t many homes willing to take in twins, and of their limited options, the truly good homes were few. Connor floated from foster home to foster home from a young age but they never quite found their happy ending. He understands that a part of the reason that they never were adopted is because of how much he acted out when he was under his foster parents’ care - he considers his actions justified because his reaction whenever he feels as though someone isn’t treating them fairly is to fight them, and he’s gotten into too many arguments with his foster parents and siblings along the way.

He became 18 before he could blink, and although Connor liked to say that he could take care of himself - and Noah - the truth was, he didn’t have anything. Washing dishes at McDonalds hardly paid the rent, so Connor became involved with more unsavory jobs - petty theft, selling weed, whatever could make him a little extra cash.

Unsurprisingly, he’s been arrested a few times before - he’s had to ask his twin to bail him out more than once, and he knows he’s lucky that he’s never actually been sent to jail or gotten into serious trouble.

Then again, serious trouble came in the form of a werewolf bite - never in all his years did Connor ever think that he’d become something he’d only heard of in fairytales and bad movies. It was just one of those nights, when he was a little less than sober and a little more prone to picking a fight with a stranger. Only this time, he’d poked the wrong beast. He didn’t know it then, but the fight wasn’t fair to begin with, and it’d left him bleeding out in the back of an alley, yellow eyes fading away in the dark.

Secrets are impossible to hide when you’ve got a twin brother, and the werewolf bite was no exception. The only thing he didn’t expect then is for Noah to follow in his steps.

He’d yelled at Noah when he found out Noah had been turned, too. Being a wolf was - still is - something terrifying to him that he couldn’t understand why Noah’d done what he did. He thinks about it now and knows in his head that his twin didn’t have much of a choice, either, but it doesn’t mean he’ll stop being angry about it.

Even as wolves, the Park brothers were hardly loved - it wasn’t surprising to Connor that they’d eventually ended up searching for a new home, and perhaps they were all right, perhaps this was his fault - he’d quietly apologized to Noah when they found themselves in the woods of Blackrock, lips blue and hands swollen from the cold. Oak finding them was something of a miracle - something that Connor doesn’t take lightly.

But not even Oak could fix the cracks that had already been made in him - nor could they help ease the transformations whenever they happened. He’s useless, he feels - what good is a werewolf who doesn’t want to transform? Connor tells himself over and over again that it won’t be much of a surprise is Oak one day decides to send him away, it’s easier that way, anyway.

His life in Blackrock has fallen into a certain routine, now. He wakes up, goes to work, clocks in and puts on his rubber gloves. The smoke breaks have become something that he cherishes, oddly enough, and for once, there’s a life outside being Noah’s twin. It’s not much, but it’s his, this life - he tries not to put too much of his heart into this place. It’ll be taken away from him eventually.

TL;DR.

Twin - has a brother named Noah (Hickory)

Never knew his father, who left them before they were born, and mother eventually left them as well

Grew up in the foster system, got into lots of trouble

Got into a fight & ended up getting bitten

Never could find anyone who could help him and eventually found himself at Blackrock

Met Oak and is now working as a dishwasher & has managed to find a place in the pack

Somewhat freaked out about the recent incident and is now even more regretful of his state as a werewolf

WANTED CONNECTIONS.

Connor hates being a werewolf - he always feels as though he’s not in control of his body, or that the wolf isn’t something he’ll be able to command. [ LOLA ] is someone who recognizes that in Connor and wants to help him out - whether or not he’ll take their advice is up in the air.

To be completely honest, he’s not exactly nice. Connor can be downright vicious and defensive at times and he’s not had many people in his life who’s told him no. [ ERIC ], however, is someone who isn’t afraid to do that - give him a metaphorical (or literal) slap in the face and call him out on his bullshit.

[ OPEN ] comes around so often to the Bar & Grill that Connor couldn’t help but notice them a little bit. When Diego isn’t around and there isn’t much work to be done, Connor has made it a habit to go lean against the bartop to eavesdrop whatever conversation they may be having. One day, he’ll work up the courage to even strike up a conversation.

Connor’s on the edge about the recent incident and is constantly wondering if he should take Noah and leave Blackrock. To dig deeper, he started going into the library to do some research for himself, only to run into [ OPEN ], who seemed to be doing the same. Though it’s not quite a friendship, the two of you meet at the library every Wednesday night to read through old newspaper clippings together.

There’s not enough words in the world to describe how much [ GREY ] gets on his nerves. It stemmed from something petty - they’d mistakenly called him Noah - yes, by his twin’s name - and it all went downhill from there. It’s hard for Connor to bite his tongue and not make a snide comment whenever they’re around, even though he knows he probably shouldn’t.

He’s never been taught what a healthy relationship is supposed to look like or even what love is supposed to look like, so it’s no surprise that he’s had a string of relationships that ended horribly, and he’s usually in the wrong. [ OPEN ] and Connor dated briefly back in the day, and it went down in flames - and to this day, Connor refuses to say hello even when they run into each other.

Connor has one (1) true love of his life and that’s his cat, Iris. Iris may come and go as she pleases but she seems to know when he’s having a bad night and never fails to come see him. [ OPEN ] and Connor met each other through Iris when he came out to feed her, and although Connor was suspicious of them at first, he’s developed a quiet appreciation for them.

#( & shipper. )#( & about. )

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nightmaretyrantvantas · 5 years

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Sleepless nights and a shift in character developments- A homestuck au strider story

I wrote this during a bout of insomnia(partially caused by excitement) and I couldnt stop thinking about it

@turing-tested This comes from one of the MANY things I babbled about this character, so if you see this you might recognize it.

Im going to post more about this character soon its just alot to compile for one post-at least 5 years worth or development and passion so bear with me please

Note before reading : This is in the best put terms, an au epilogue i made before homestuck even finished, and the only thing accurate to any current epilogues is the canon kids ages.

This is long and gets a bit dark and emotional and angsty but I promise it has a happier ending. It also glosses over some heavier themes like mentions and brief discussions of nonspecified eating disorders, so if that makes you uncomfortable you can skip this

enjoy

whrrz….whrzz…..whrrzz….

The damn clock ticking was endless. The figure tossed and turned restlessly on the bed, kicking and pulling up the cotton sheets as they ceiling fan lazily spun uncaringly from above. After another bout of struggling for comfort there was a glance at the nearby digital clock

2:45 a.m

“Goddammit……”

With a angry groan the girl fell heavily onto her back and dragged her hands down her face, staring up at the ceiling with exhaustion. This just kept happened to her, ever since she and all her friends and people she gave any shits about crashed here in a new world. No matter what she did she could never get a full nights sleep, plagued by either ruthless insomnia or vicious night terrors. Pick your poison a night. It didnt matter what the 19 year old did really, nothing eased it. And so she stared at the bedroom ceiling and the spinning fan hopelessly before she finally dragged herself up into a sitting position, head hung low. Even with moonlight streaming in blue light things felt too dark. So one tired Dian Strider fumbled her hand around the room and turned on tv on the other side of the room, wincing and squinting as its bright changing light filled her room. She glanced back at the clock and grimaced at the two minutes that had passed. Then she shut her eyes and listened, muting the tv. The apartment was quiet….too quiet…

Her eyes snapped back open, a new look of anxiety crossing her face.

“ Hes not back yet….its Wednesday…hes late…” She shook her head and looked at the wall by her bed, at the pinned up pages of scribbles hanging there contently

WEDNESDAY : RETURNS BY 1 AM

Now she as on her feet and pacing around on fragile boned legs, absently gnawing on the scarred knuckle of her index finger. Her thoughts drifted and tumbled through her sleep deprived brain worriedly, though she wouldnt admit it aloud just yet.

Dirk wasnt home yet. He shouldve been home by now. But hes not….is he?

She stopped and looked at her bedroom door, unlocked and fully capable of opening and revealing the knowledge she wanted to know, all outside her little space.

But could she handle opening it?

With a new look of tired firmness she padded barefoot across the carpet and opened her door as silently as she could. If he WAS back she didnt want to wake him up. And there it is illuminated by the light in her room and the gently dim moonlight from the staircase and hallway window : Dirk’s bedroom door, firmly closed. She took a few light steps and Dia was now in front of it, hand grazing the doorknob as doubts made her pause. Sure, she had been living with him for almost 5 months now, and sure he had been more than welcoming and generous in his…weird stoic and socially avoident tendencies and eccentricities. Dia couldn look passed those, who was a shattered and violently anti social and mistrusting girl to judge the man who gave her and her little brother a roof to sleep under and a home to call their own when he had absolutely no obligation to? The answer was she wasnt anyone to judge him.

Not after he let her take on his last name to ease some of the trauma.

But were they really close enough to give her the right to just….turn the knob and open his door as if she was really family?

‘ Yes. we…we are? God i dont really know…But Hal gave me an ok to do so if I needed to talk or got too anxious…he said Dirk doesnt mind me leaning on him a little…so…this should be fine…to just peek in and see if hes in there…even if hes not asleep…I can just make some excuse about…fuck…anything…’ With a metaphorical slap to the face and a small huff of “ Just do it already dia stop being a pansy its just Dirk” she tightened her grip with more false confidence and turned it, slowly pushing it open just enough to poke her head in…

Just to find it empty.

She blinked and her shoulders slumped in disappointment. He wasnt there, which mean he just…probably wasnt home yet.

So she re shut the door without venturing further and walked over to the stairs that led down to the first floor and front of the apartment and ended up slumped across one of the sturdy steps, glaring at the wall upset and exhausted….so exhausted that her eyes fell without her realizing…letting her drift into an uneasy sleep….

And fell straight into a unrelenting nightmare.

She was forced out of it by the sound of something slamming downstairs followed by a thump she didnt register. Because she was sitting straight up shaking violently and tearing up, fingers digging painfully into her arms as she hugged herself, breathing too fast. She looked around like a cornered animal until she was able to calm down a little, her surroundings settling back into her mind. But that slam…

Dia was on her feet gasping for breath a little as she stumbled down the rest of the stairs and out into the living room, tripping on her own two feet in her panic. She felt so small and alone and alone was the one thing she didnt want to be for a little while–

And all the spinning in her head stopped when she saw him.

He was sprawled out not all that gracefully on the beat up grey couch, one of his arms hanging off as his legs dangled over the arm. His blonde hair, much lighter than hers was a damp mess of spikes from being outside in the misty rain of before dawn that plastered against his forehead and into his uncovered, shut eyes. On his hand against his chest were his sharp shades, a dim and fading red glow slowly going out on them, a clear indicating Hal was asleep. She watched his chest rise and fall rhythmically and deeply, indicating he was already fast asleep. She figured it was from the past couple all nighters he’d pulled, between work his own projects and his nightly outings. Dia watched him sleep for a few moments then quietly walked over to his side, noting the familiar bags of insomnia under his eyes even in the dim lighting Silently she sighed and walked over to another chair in the room and grabbed a two blankets off it, a soft knitted one Dave left here from someone she was had met two times now named Rose and a thicker fabric quilt thing Dirk’s had since before she arrived, mentioned by Hal to have been a apartment warming present from friends named Jane and Roxy. She carried them over to him and with a wobbly stance and some struggling to not wake him or Hal up draped the quilt over his body, making sure it wasnt awkwardly on him.

Then Dia wrapped the knitted blanket around herself and plopped down on the floor next to his side, facing him and watched over him for awhile.

It wasnt anything special or life changing to her at first. She just…her brain was in a dark place and right now, The man before her was a very real and very present and constant reminder of the good in her situation. She was out of that hellscape, she was free.

She was safe and in a better place. Next to him the these early hours of the morning on the living room floor nothing bad from her past could hurt her or reach her. And that was all she needed.

So Dia made herself more comfortable and leaned on the couch in the space next to his chest and side and leaned her head against the quilt covered space until it barely, just barely pressed up against said bodily area as her body curled and folded into a comfortable spot doing so and her tired clementine eyes drowsily watched the movement of his breathing and the distant tick of a far off clock until she didnt even notice herself falling fast asleep at his side, nightmareless for the first time in months.

‘ Dirk…dirk wake up already.’

‘Dirk I know you can still hear me, wake up’

It was irritatingly bright with the morning sun when Dirk finally pried his eyes open, squinting up in pain at the ceiling. God was he fucking regretting passing out on the couch right now. So he quietly unfolded his only small salvation from the light and slid the shades over his orange eyes, blinking the exhaustion from them after with a yawn.

‘ nngh….Hal buddy you on already?’ He got an immediate, if not amused answer that made him practically imagine the body motion and expression that shouldve accompanied it. He couldnt help but smile a little and crack his neck in an attempt to ease the stiffness….god he needed a new damn couch.

‘ Dirk…dirk look down.’ He quirked an eyebrow but didnt even get a chance to ask

Because he moved his hanging arm and brushed against another solid mass that made him look down anyway.

He didnt dare move for a few moments when he saw Dia curled up beside him on the floor, his hand having brushed against the slim girl’s too bony arm. But didnt wake up, only shifted slightly as her head burrowed into his side a bit, looking more relaxed than he’d ever really seen her.

‘ When did she…?’

‘ I am not sure. she was already there asleep when I first started up this morning. I can only assume shes been there since we got home.’ He dragged a hand through his hair as he looked over her and carefully moved his arm so he didnt wake her up.

Dirk decided not to sit up or move from the couch yet either.

‘ She almost looks happy…’

“ Yeah… I know. Too bad she doesnt always look like this…’ There was a silence between them and Dirk sighed through his nose.

‘…im going to make breakfast.’ Was the only thing Dirk finally said before carefully getting up and heading to the kitchen. ‘ Oh? Thats a first for you…you normally skip breakfast.’ Dirk didnt respond right away, scavenging the simple, cluttered kitchen for anything to cook and scrunching his nose a little when he wasnt really finding anything.

‘ Dirk you KNOW there hasnt been any grocery restocking since you started your latest project…’ He groaned and pressed his forehead against the freezer door and stayed quiet for another moment, gears in his head turning and things lining up in his head. Hal didnt try prodding him too much for an answer. He knew the human too well by now, Dirk was working something out in his head. And on top of that he had barely been awake maybe twenty minutes after a total of maybe four or five hours of sleep, doing three all nighters before that. So Hal wasnt quick to call Dirk all to responsive lately.

Maybe he should contact Jane after all to get him into a healthier…well…anything.

“ ….I really didnt want to go outside this early…but if the kid will be asleep for awhile…hmm…”

‘ Hmm what?’ The blonde shook his head a little and rubbing an eye with the palm of his hand as if forcing the drowsiness away.

“ Hey Hal….mind messaging Dave for me and asking when he’s planning to come back home from Karkat’s this week?” ‘…alright Dirk I am, anything else?’ Hal asked, a bit sympathetic at the exhaustion in his voice. He knew Dirk didnt like to bother Dave with too much, especially when the younger strider stayed with them specifically to make sure Dirk took care of himself. He wanted him to live his own damn life without worrying about him, and so didnt ask him when he was coming back or how long he’d stay.

“…yeah. Ask him if its today and if he could possibly grab some groceries on his way home…” There was a silence but Hal told him he would and Dirk’s shoulders slumped when they got the reply that Dave would show up in about a half hour, and asking for a general list or if he should just wing it.

Dirk said to just wing it. He wasnt picky right now.

Dia hadnt woken up by the time Dirk pulled on a decently cleaner shirt and his shoes, though she had shifted somewhat. He was a little relieved, she’d been sleeping worse than him recently and any rest was good rest. Yeah…it was was all he concluded as he slipped outside into the bright sunlight and sat on the stoop step that led into the apartment, absently gazing over the city lost in thought.

“ Yo Dirk.” He glanced down to see Dave coming up the steps in casual clothing, face mostly neutral as he carried up two big bags of food. Dirk saw the slightly furrowed brows and the way his mouth tugged down in concern and heaved a sigh, standing and walking down to take one of the bags.

“ Gotta be quiet when you go in, the kid’s fast asleep in the living room and I kinda want her to stay that way. Where’s Derik?” Dave shrugged as he followed him up.

“ He was video calling Jay when Hal pestered me, so I left him be and came alone.” He got a nod as they walked in, Dave raising an eyebrow seeing Dia on the floor but not voicing the question.

Dirk probably didnt move her so she’d sleep longer. He knew she had issues with being touched.

Though when they entered the kitchen his eyebrows furrowed again.

“ Dirk when was the last time you cleaned the damn apartment? You’ve got shit lying everywhere again it wasnt like this when I was here last.” The older man shrugged as he shoved junky clutter out of the way and replaced it with the bag of food, not exactly wanting to answer. The knight sighed and resisted any urges to smack the other person he considered family. Because goddamn was it hard to resist when he was falling back into bad habits and going back on months of progress being made.

“ You know what? Dont worry about it Dirk. I’ll help you pick up later or something since I’m here. Lets just get all the food put away and make something to eat, because damn am I starved and Im sure she will be too once she actually wakes up.” Dirk mumbled an agreement and started putting things away and setting stuff up to cook…something, anything.

“ So…what is with the sudden desire to make breakfast? Hal and I usually have to force you not to skip it.” Dave wasnt really expecting an answer, To be honest neither was Hal at that point. Dirk was clearly in a more antisocial mood and that was fine really, but the silence was making the shorter blonde…twitchy. Maybe he just wasnt used to it anymore, when he considered half the time he stayed with Karkat further out of the city in a house that was distinctly more…energetic with two teenagers running around living with them. He had thought having Dia here might break him out of that but she could be just as bad as he was honestly, a sometimes too perfect match in their isolation habits.

He was thinking about it so much he almost missed Dirk’s reply, turning towards him blinking.

“ Wait wha–” “ I said I’m not doing it for me…im making food for Dia.” There was a moment of a much more fragile silence and dirk pulled off Hal and set him on the counter, gripping it with both hands as he stared tiredly at the wall and cabinets in front of him, his eyes a bit distant as if he was seeing something else entirely Dave couldnt. He sighed heavily and continued with a low tone that sounded like he was trying to stay neutral, unemotional about it.

“ She doesnt eat enough. Coming from me already is a big deal but, I…Im almost positive she has some sort of eating disorder Dave. One she just wont tell me about. But I see the signs of it all over her. The underweight, the fragility of her whole body, the fatigue, the way she tries to avoid eating as much as possible, the way she hides herself away after meals…but I cant push her either because well fuck. What place do I have to really say anything? I’m not blood related, I’ve only known her about 5 months and ive barely tried to get to know her that much or get close to her but she’s grown on me a little and im worried one of these days her insomnia and her lack of eating are going to do her off right under my nose and there’ll be no one to blame but myself for not looking out for her enough. Like fuck,” His nails scrapped along the counter as his fingers curled in frustration. “ Im a goddamn wreck half the time and she’s almost worse than me and I just…I dont even know. The kid deserves better than that? She probably deserves alot better than staying up at night waiting and worrying when I’m going to get home and falling asleep on the goddamn floor and–maybe…maybe I should’ve had Roxy or Jane take her instead. Or even Jake. Somewhere where’d she’d-she’d get help for her issues, not a place to let them fester.” The air was heavy as he finished, his shoulders slumped in defeat and his head hung as if it had become too much to stay up on its own, eyes screwed close in a frustrated kind of pain. Dave was a little speechless, he knew Dirk felt a little responsible for Dia and part of that mightve been from himself but…He didnt know.

He shouldve known though.

“ Dirk…Jesus Dirk why didnt you mention any of this sooner? If you’ve been so worried you could just tell me and I’d help you.” He moved closer and put a hand on his shoulder, pushing up his shades and leaning over to try to look the older man in the eyes.

“ Dirk cmon dont shut me out now after that damn word vomit of you actually opening up. You are not shutting down on me, hell no. You opened your own floodgates and we’re going to swim through what the fuck you released together and work this out because clearly help is needed right now. If it wasnt you wouldnt have asked me to come back out of nowhere, and we wouldnt be having an emotional brotherly moment in the middle of your shitty kitchen at nine in the goddamn morning with the kid you’re clearly worried about dead asleep on your living room floor. So, lets talk ok?” With another tired sigh Dirk nodded as they kept cooking, neither noticing the thin figure slip away upstairs to shower.

After Dave left things were awkward. The two sat at Dirk’s kinda crappy dining table with a non microwaved meal in front of them both poking at it in silence. By the time they both decided they were done the house apartment felt delicate and tense. But regardless Dia holed up in her room for the rest of the evening to prepare for another fitful night and around ten Dirk pulled on his shoes and headed out.

Dia checked the clocked a couple hours later, noting tiredly that it was only ten past midnight. So she simply rolled over to face the wall and shut her eyes, trying to shut off her brain. It almost worked too…

Click.

Her eyes snapped open and she lifted her head to look towards the door briefly confused, almost assuming she was hearing things. She glanced at the clock again. 12:13 am. She rubbed her eyes and slowly sat up.

“ No way…I heard him leave at ten…and he usually doesnt come back until at least two on thursday…” She listened for a moment to make sure, and sure enough there was the sound of shuffling downstairs, slowly coming up the stairs. When she heard Dirk’s bedroom door open she got up and shuffled over to her own peeking out of her door to see his back. Before she could stop herself she made a noise to announce her presence and Dirk paused, looking back at her. There was a moment where they both stared at each other as she briefly panicked at the fact she started this conversation.

“ y..you’re back pretty early tonight…” She almost visibly cringed at herself as he gave a small shrug.

“ Didnt feel like being out for long tonight…besides, keeps some anxieties down if im not gone too late.” She stood up straighter and looked up at him stunned. He…he came home early…so she wouldnt worry? Her mind flashed to the morning before and something warm filled her chest. She nodded and murmured that she appreciated it and swore she saw a smile on his face before he continued into his room.

“ Hey um…” She saw him pause again and she took a nervous breath. She wasnt used to this, but…

“ I um…im not that picky when it comes to food…but I dont mind spicy foods, as long as its not deathly spicy. I’m also willing to try most things put out for me to eat at least once…so I’ll at least try to eat most meals…” She glanced back up to see him nod, a small smile now clear on his face.

“ Alright kiddo, I’ll keep that in mind. Try to go to bed before sunrise.” She nodded back and slipped back into her room, somehow feeling a little lighter.

The next couple weeks after that were different for them both. At first it was hard to describe, but things were less stiff so to say. They both came out of theyre rooms more for meals together and…just talked. The talks were awkward as hell at first, but the more they did the more she looked forward to meal time, and the less she dreaded eating. Even though she struggled to open up to the older man she could still find things to talk about. At some point she started cooking again, which she hadn’t done since she took care of her little brother, over five months ago. Dia started when she noticed Dirk skipping meals, lost in his work.So…she started making things and leaving them for him with a reminder to eat. And once his portion was gone she ended up eating what was left for herself, the portion being enough to not make her feel too guilty most nights.

But things were on a better track, Hal pointed out as much one night as Dirk slipped back into the apartment as the clock read 1:00 am. Dirk raised an eyebrow and got a bit of a half smile. “ oh yeah? You really think so huh?”

‘ Yes I do actually. You havent noticed? She’s opening up to us both more than she has in months.’ Dirk nodded with a hum as he made his way to the stairs, listening to hear if Dia was moving about and noticed it was quiet. Maybe for once she managed to fall asleep.

‘ You know, you two are alot alike, at least with your issues and and some of your traumas.’ Dirk paused halfway up the stairs and tilted his head as he thought about it, not exactly responding. But Hal continued on.

‘ I think at this point, the best course of action for you both would be for you two to try having a deeper conversation. It would benefit you both greatly to try discussing and sympathizing over your similar issues. At the very least it would help you both open up more, something we both know is very needed in this apartment.’ He…couldnt really argue with that one.

“ Ya know what? fuck it why not. I’m not going to push her too much but…I’ll give it a shot.”

And he did. When he saw her at breakfast he motioned for her to listen and took a deep breath through his nose, preparing for the worst. He vividly remembered how she could lash out when she felt cornered or afraid, and that was the last thing he wanted.

So he tried as gently as he could, following some of Hal’s advice and the advice of Rose who he’d talked about this with much earlier in the morning for ideas to approach the subject…delicately. He even vaguely put some of his smaller issues on the table first, made them vulnerable which made Hal rather proud of him for.

“ Look Dia…I get it ok? I get the not wanting to talk to anyone about it and the need to be strong and unbreakable. But I also know how that can fuck you up even more. It has for me for years…and…I’ve lost trust with close friends because of it. I did things I still dont forgive myself for trying to bottle it up.” She listened and nodded. Then Dia looked down and touched one of her scarred knuckles and took a deep breath. Then she looked up with an expression he hadnt seen before, it was tired and sad and vulnerable. Suddenly she looked like her age, a broken and exhausted 19 year old who’d been suffering on her own for too long, and he watched her shoulders droop as she spoke as if a weight was starting to lift off them.

“ I…I-I have alot wrong with me Dirk…maybe too much to be fixed…so much you may not want to bother with me if you knew everything…I’m…Im beyond screwed up and I cant even eat anymore without trying to loss the nonexistent weight it brings…I…I’ve done too much I dont deserve this I dont…” She trailed off and Dirk reached out and hesitantly, understandingly placed his hand on her wrist, making her look him in the eyes.

“ Why dont we start by just being screwed up together kid? You arent alone in it anymore…and about the eating, we can work on that first and get you started on recovery however you need it. But lets start small and see how we survive it.” She smiled a little and nodded, relaxing.

“ Yeah, ok.”

A few nights later Dia was tossing and turning again after waking up from another nightmareThis time a light rain drummed on the roof from a small passing storm. She looked at the clock and glared at the two am glaring back at her before sitting up and pulling on her hoodie. Maybe…

She got up and walked over to her door and stepped out, looking at Dirk’s door and expecting him to be out. But what she saw instead was a soft light coming from under the door, signifying he was still home and awake. With a deep breath she walked over and raised her hand to knock, only to pause and stare at the wood. She started doubting her right to interrupt him when their last talk flashed to mind. He had opened up to her a little and she had done the same, they had shared a moment and she felt…closer to him. She didnt feel like a burden as much.

So with more confidence than she had she grabbed the handle and turned it, letting the light wash over her warmly as she gazed at his back, sitting at his desk across the room making something. She only hesitated for a moment before her body relaxed and she smiled a little, taking a step in.

“ H-hey Dirk…I cant sleep…do you mind if I hang in here for awhile?”

She shut the door behind her when she saw him smile while declaring she can have his bed since he’ll be up awhile longer.

She fell into a peaceful sleep that night, feeling safe and at home.

End

Tadaaaa, this took a long while to write but I hope it was worth the wait! And I hope you guys like it!

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@phantommoonpeople @turing-tested

#My writing #homestuck #Homestuck AU #homestuck oc #dirk strider #dave strider #dirk fanfiction #homestuck fanfic #long fic #hal strider #karkat mention

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tumblunni · 6 years

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MORE UPDATES ON THINGS WHAT HAPPEN

The half week milestone of the hospital house thingie time! I think the term they use for it is "a residential stay"? Cos like its not a hospital its a shared housing block thats just full of doctors. I get to sleep in a real bed and there's a nice community room and board game nights and stuff. But its still really scary how intense the supervision can be! Like they have a window to look into your room once per hour every hour constantly. And they have to go through your undies and catalog them as part of the possessions check. I was not warned about that and it was mega embarassing trying to explain a binder to a bunch of old lady doctors! Oh and i had yo do a urine test today which was possibly the most fuckin embarassing thing in the actual universe. And you're not even allowed to take your own pills! They keep them locked in a big ominous wall of lockers and you have to come into the office and swallow the pill while theyre watching. I guess maybe because some people might be faking their illness and selling their pills on the black market or whatever? But that literally doesnt happen with antidepressants, they have no 'high' or even any effect at all on non-sick people. So it just makes no sense to me and its real embarassing cos like i said i suck at taking pills with plain water and without a straw. The ones i take are real damn chunky things the size of my thumbnail! I think i'l get better at not (literally) choking under pressure over time, tho. Hopefully.

Anyway that's all the bad out of the way! Now the good and the neutral and the just miscellaneous!

Its still nervewracking having to shower in a shared house but they have a cool walk-in shower and ive never tried one of those so it was vaguely interesting. And im allowed to take my showers early at 6am to minimize the chance of anyone else trying to use the door, lol. My biggest fear is having some staff member walk in on me when im naked like back in that homeless hostel. Oh or that time in the homeless hostel where the teenage boys filled the entire bathroom with inflated condoms wall to wall. Like wow so much damn effort to prank the stupid nervous bunni who probably would have been embarassed by literally anything else. Man this place is bringing so many memories of that homeless hostel but at least this time its a place specifically for sick people and they know i'm anxious doing shared cooking and board games and whatever so they dont make fun of me for it. But in a lot of ways that hostel had more freedoms too.. *shrug*

Anyway! A good! I get to have cooking lesson!! I know literally nothing about cooking and now i get to know several thing!! This nice doctor called Josie taught me how to make an omelette and i tasted ham for the first time! That is just how limited my life experiences are, lol. Oh and they want me to say that she's a 'mental health worker' not a doctor, but its all real confusing?? Like they have the staff that look after you and then the only ones we're supposed to call doctors are the ones who actually have the authority to prescribe pills and diagnosies. But like if youre in a hospital you'd call them all doctors, not just the actual surgeon? Or i guess theyre kinda like nursing home staff?? But they cant be support workers cos support workers are specific government assigned inspector type guys like Richard who only meet with you once a week.and i have to remember to not call him a social worker either cos social workers only work with family and custody related stuff. I dunno?? Basically the medical industry has a lot of names that dont really describe what the actual thing is, lol. Anyway the ham omelette was great and now im gonna try and remember so i can try and make it myself next time! HAM ACCOMPLISHED

Also i played bingo with a few other patients and it was fun but funny that i lost 6 times in a row when there were only 3 of us. I got a consolation prize of a pack of neon highlighter pens so hell yeah!!

I'm getting booked in to try some additional classes starting next week on monday and tuesday morning. The computer programming one was sadly unavailable, but i managed tp snag a place in "confidence building group therapy" and "basic how to use power tools". I wasnt really all that interested in that one but i thought it would be a useful skill even if its less fun. And maybe you get to actyally make something to take home at the end? A lil shelf to help organize this awkward lil room better, maybe?

And an unexpected bonus of being semi-hospitalized is that i get a free bus pass! And cos im here cos of my social anxiety theyre gonna help me get outside more and actually use this thing to the fullest! The first thing we did was the trip to actually get the bus pass itself. It was like "bus, take my money to take me to the place where i can never give you money again!" XD Ive been really stupidly nervous about going on tne bus in my old neighbourhood cos MAN it was really isolated there and everything just amplified my mental illness. An almost two hour bus ride to get to ANY SHOPS AT ALL, with only one bus for the whole town so it was always crowded and full of screaming kids and gossipy everyones. Social anxiety: maximum level proud mode!

So yeah i feel BIG ACCONPLISHED! I was able to take this bus for the first time with a doctor coming with me. Power Grandpa The Strong. His actual name is Paul and he has awesome sleeve tattoos of like anchors and dragons and sports teams and stuff! And he likes thrift stores and wearing silly hats too! Its like he's powerful enough to wrestle away everyone's anxieties! I was able to be a bit reckless too and i went out wearing my fave shirt thats like trans pride coloured plaid. A POWERFUL SHIRT IS REQUIRED FOR THIS QUEST! so we went to the office to register this bus pass and i panicked a bit cos apparantky we brought the wrong form and i wrote my name in the wrong box and then my passport photo looked terrible and aaa! But it all worked out and i was kinda freaking out for nothing. And he took me for a lil tour of the place and showed me this cool shop that does spray paint tye dye t shirts with spiderman on them?? Why does this incredibly specific shop exist and how have i never heard of it before?? There was also a new harry potter shop next to the disney shop, and the old used book store i used to visit as a kid was still there, complete with rickety spiral staircase and ominous basement trap door. I'm still not brave enough to go down there, but apparantly its just the history books section so meh. Then we actually went to a fancy coffee shop and i had this brain freeze mango ice frappucchino thing! Im trying all the new foods!!

And i was TOO HIGH ON DECADENCE and made a RECKLESS CHOICE! i blame power gramp's amazing tattoos, they were totally whispering to me that i shoukd screw the rules and ride off into the sunset on a metaphorical harley davidsen of mental health

So i was like Hey Paul I Am Totally Fine Getting Home On My Own, and it was like i was floating off in the distance somewhere begging my body to not speaketh these words. But it ended up working out okay! The excitement of it all and the sense of accomplishmebt from getting there all okay allowed me to mostly not freak out as i spent the day in town and looked at some shops and stuff. Basic Living Skills: Completed! I chilled out in the library (tho i dont have a card yet, alas!) and visited like five comic and anime stores, and got lost but found a Pizza Hut and that was SO NOSTALGIC FOR MY CHILDHOOD and it didnt taste quite as good as i remembered but the waiter guy was super nice and had a similar shirt and it was All Good! Oh and i gave all my money to a homeless person and that's why i'm broke now. And i bought a plastic slug! I just saw it from across the room and was like OH NO I AM BEING MAGNETISED TOWARDS IT OH NO IT HAS ALREADY BEEN BOUGHT. I need to think of a name for this new friend!!

So yeh i got home okay and i felt really acconplished and that was the furthest trip away that i've taken in ages! Man my mental illness makes me feel pathetic, but it also brings ridiculously big joys from the smallest of silly acconplishys!

Oh and thank you so much to the people who sent me emails! It really helped so much to keep me from giving up during the first few days before i made a bit of progress and felt like i could really do this, yknow? Especially big thanks tp the friend who sent me that mysterious super happy song that they found on a mystery disc in a german market?? Im still not sure whether its in greek or hasidic jewish but it sounds AMAZING and i hope someday i can figure out the band so i can hear their other singles!

Ok this is bunni out! BIG HUGS FOR THE EVERYONE AAAA

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fraughtwithpossibilities · 6 years

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what do you want to do now?

I was cliff jumping on the coast of France in May when I cut myself in the side of the nose with my thumbnail. I was holding it tightly to keep from inhaling the Mediterranean Sea, and the force of hitting the water made me break my own skin.

I was hurtling my body through the air between sharp rocks, but I hurt myself with my own nail.

It was a metaphor for the weeks leading up to that moment; weeks spent traveling in Europe that were trying to be bohemian. Trying, because I don’t do bohemian. I do train schedules. I do deadlines. I do plans. Before I can fall asleep every night, I schedule out the next day, everything that has to happen and when I’m going to do it. I clench my fists so hard around the parts of my world I can control that sometimes I hurt myself.

The first time we took the train on this trip, I didn’t fill out the eurail pass right. It was confusing and I wasn’t really sure how it worked and I figured as long as I had the piece of paper it was probably fine. The man checking the tickets woke me up from a doze and spent five minutes scolding me for not using it correctly, standing over me while I fumbled a pen out of my bag and scribbled dates and train stations on the ticket, lecturing me about how it was invalid if I didn’t fill it out. He walked away and I leaned my forehead against the window and cried. I planned so hard. I tried to anticipate everything. But all it took was a stranger in a bad mood to make me feel like a lazy idiot. I cared so much about following the rules that learning I had broken one was crushing.

I’ve also been known to walk away from cafes and restaurants if I didn’t know how to read the menu or what to order. The idea of looking stupid, being seen as a stupid tourist, enduring the mild contempt of someone more adept than me, is too much. I feel too exposed. (I don’t know if I will ever be the sort of person who eagerly seeks honest criticism from friends because I can’t seem to take it even from people I will never see again.)

I’m afraid to order food, to blunder through a conversation with a non-English speaker. But when people at the hostels where we stayed asked what I do for a living, I said “I just finished law school” and they said “oh, you’re a lawyer?” and I didn’t feel like explaining what an articling student is so I just said yes. Yes, basically. I am a grown-ass professional who’s scared to order food in case she looks stupid.

My sister asked me when the anxiety got so bad. I told her that the best guess I have is that it got bad when I told myself fear was irrational and it turned out not to be. When the bad things I was scared of came true. I told her it got bad when I lost the ability to tell between healthy fear and pointless paranoia. When the pillars that held up my life—faith, family, friendship, romance—all shifted or cracked or collapsed in ways I’d told myself they never would. All in the same 12 months, each loss like another punch to the gut as I tried to write papers about the criteria for refugee status or research the number of human rights complaints based on race discrimination. The anxiety got bad when the world warped so that every passing blip of far-fetched, ugly possibility, every remote danger, started to seem likely and probable. It got bad because I lost the conviction that good things are more likely to happen than bad ones. It got bad when I started to worry that every scowl disguised rage, every neutral expression barely concealed contempt, and I had no reason to think I was wrong. After all, I was doubting whether the people who’d said they cared about me the most ever had or now did, so why would I have assumed that strangers harboured goodwill toward me?

During the worst times, moments of unexpected fortune or kindness took me out at the knees. During the worst times, I answered a phone call and it was a dream job offer and I collapsed in tears on the kitchen floor. Once it was so bad that the four walls of a bare new apartment bedroom felt suffocating and I stumbled out the door and clung by my fingernails to a bar counter and ate sweet potato fries and drank beer until my thoughts were just muddled enough that they had fewer sharp edges. Once I sat on the grass outside the law school and heaved, shaking with fear and confusion. During those episodes, the kindness of people who talked me through it made me tear up. Who? Why? What have I ever done that anyone would bother telling me patiently to breathe, would say to me earnestly to call if I ever need to talk? It seemed absurd—why would anything be there to catch me if I fell?

We spent our last day in France on the beach in Nice. I waded out into the ocean, cautiously, up to my shoulders, just past where I could touch, then rolled onto my back and floated. I’m not a strong swimmer; usually I would rather dip a toe in and retreat. But my ears were under the surface and the only sound was tiny rocks hitting against each other on the ocean floor as the waves crashed in and rolled out. I paddled a little, and then less, and then let my limbs go limp, cradled in the swell of the Mediterranean and floating, held up by salt water. Held up, surprisingly, instead of falling; a leaf on the surface, not a rock. I wondered, then, if I could still recalibrate myself: if it was still possible to go back to waking up in the morning expecting good things.

I expected to arrive back home and meet the world with fists clenched even tighter. But instead, I watched myself shrug it all off and get lighter. I had turned off notifications on my phone while we were in Europe, ad I kept them off. The lack of homework stress, something I hadn’t felt for three years, was like shedding a fifty-pound backpack. I started a new job, the kind of job that makes you look forward to waking up in the morning. I got to relearn what it was like to have enough time to spend some of it empty--to spend some of it wandering along the river with a coffee, to listen to podcasts and color, to read.

I spend some sunny Sunday mornings doing nothing in particular but drinking tea and eating toast, slowly. I say more nice things to myself. It’s like somewhere in Europe I picked up a kind shadow who lingers a step behind my frantic thoughts and occasionally says oh, honey, you don’t need to worry about that. It’s like somewhere along the line, I leveled up, and my access to reality came back. My ability to know my own mind returned. Now, when I’m frantically putting on and wiping off seven kinds of lipstick, I know it’s mostly my desire to be loved freaking out, and I put the makeup down and tell myself no one is going to change their mind about me based on magenta vs pumpkin. Now when I feel my heart rate increase and my breaths get shallow, I know the version of reality that’s swimming in front of me isn’t the right one, and I look for somewhere to sit down instead of speeding up to match the frantic pace of my thoughts.

I learned that the best way to dampen the panic inside my own head is to say, you feel very anxious right now, do you need a minute? so that the rest of me can breathe a long sigh and do the mental version of lie back into the Mediterranean. I know that the world isn’t actually falling apart. It’s just that I’m hungry or thirsty or my feet hurt or something someone said hurt a little or I saw myself in the mirror at the wrong angle or I just need to make a quick list. Lists will save us all.

I remembered how to answer the question what do you want to do now? not by thinking--how can I be most productive, what sector of my own life can I invest in, what needs to be done first, what will I regret not doing later, help it’s been an hour and I’m paralyzed--but by reminding myself that there is no wrong answer, and that I am okay.

Last summer I was not okay. Last summer was a rusty, jerky, stomach-turning roller coaster, and I clenched my teeth and my fists the whole time. I got speeding tickets--I got fixated on being skinny--I began to slowly realize that my home didn’t feel like home and that my addiction to anonymity in coffee shops was more a fear of opening my own front door than a love for hot beverages. Last summer I couldn’t read or play the piano or watch Netflix because the seconds ticked by audibly in my head and the neon panic signs were always reminding me I was flawed, I wasn’t enough, I was too far behind. I was bad--a bad friend, a bad student, a bad employee, a bad example. I was always working to fix small problems that I perceived as life-threatening. Always crying that I forgot to buy lemon juice or I lost an earring back. Flinching when someone else glanced my direction.

It was worst when I was briefly couch-surfing in October, between apartments, losing a friendship and a social circle and yet another sad silver-glass vision of what I thought I wanted life to look like. Even the silence was terrible, and I was so afraid that the rest of my life would hurt as much as each passing moment did.

But now there are two IKEA chairs in my living room, and an exposed brick wall, and two big windows. I sit there with coffee in the mornings and marvel that improbably, surprisingly, life slowly got better. It helps to be loved. It helped when my sister wisely walked around in silence with me in a residential Venetian neighborhood for an hour and a half because she knew the anxiety wasn’t about her. It helped when a friend texted me on Christmas to tell me how glad she was to know me. The words “I’m sorry” and “I love you” and “I’m proud of you” helped too.

But the thing I’m most grateful for is that now when my instinct tells me “you’re a failure”, the nice summer sun shadow, the wiser version of me, wrinkles her nose and says “well, probably not.”

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moretalk · 4 years

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“Of Cocks and Men

(Bali, mainly because it is Bali, is a well-studied place. Its mythology, art, ritual, social organization, patterns of child rearing, forms of law, even styles of trance, have all been microscopically examined for traces of that elusive substance Jane Belo called "The Balinese Temper."2But, aside from a few passing remarks, the cockfight has barely been noticed, although as a popular obsession of consuming power it is at least as important a revelation of what being a Balinese "is really like" as these more celebrated phenomena.3) As much of America surfaces in a ball park, on a golf links, at a race track, or around a poker table, much of Bali surfaces in a cock ring. For it is only apparently cocks that are fighting there. Actually, it is men.

To anyone who has been in Bali any length of time, the deep psychological identification of Balinese men with their cocks is unmistakable. The double entendre here is deliberate. It works in exactly the same way in Balinese as it does in English, even to producing the same tired jokes, strained puns, and uninventive obscenities. Bateson and Mead have even suggested that, in line with the Balinese conception of the body as a set of separately animated parts, cocks are viewed as detachable, self-operating penises, ambulant genitals with a life of their own.4 And while I do not have the kind of unconscious material either to confirm or disconfirm this intriguing notion, the fact that they are masculine symbols par excellence is about as indubitable, and to the Balinese about as evident, as the fact that water runs downhill.

The language of everyday moralism is shot through, on the male side of it, with roosterish imagery. Sabung, the word for cock (and one which appears in inscriptions as early as A.D. 922 ), is used metaphorically to mean "hero," "warrior," "champion," "man of parts," "political candidate," "bachelor," "dandy," "lady-killer," or "tough guy." A pompous man whose behavior presumes above his station is compared to a tailless cock who struts about as though he had a large, spectacular one. A desperate man who makes a last, irrational effort to extricate himself from an impossible situation is likened to a dying cock who makes one final lunge at his tormentor to drag him along to a common destruction. A stingy man, who promises much, gives little, and begrudges that is compared to a cock which, held by the tail, leaps at another without in fact engaging him. A marriageable young man still shy with the opposite sex or someone in a new job anxious to make a good impression is called "a fighting cock caged for the first time."5 Court trials, wars, political contests, inheritance disputes, and street arguments are all compared to cockfights.6 Even the very island itself is perceived from its shape as a small, proud cock, poised, neck extended, back taut, tail raised, in eternal challenge to large, feckless, shapeless Java.7

But the intimacy of men with their cocks is more than metaphorical. Balinese men, or anyway a large majority of Balinese men, spend an enormous amount of time with their favorites, grooming them, feeding them, discussing them, trying them out against one another, or just gazing at them with a mixture of rapt admiration and dreamy self-absorption. Whenever you see a group of Balinese men squatting idly in the council shed or along the road in their hips down, shoulders forward, knees up fashion, half or more of them will have a rooster in his hands, holding it between his thighs, bouncing it gently up and down to strengthen its legs, ruffling its feathers with abstract sensuality, pushing it out against a neighbor's rooster to rouse its spirit, withdrawing it toward his loins to calm it again Now and then, to get a feel for another bird, a man will fiddle this way with someone else's cock for a while, but usually by moving around to squat in place behind it, rather than just having it passed across to him as though it were merely an animal.

In the houseyard, the high-walled enclosures where the people live, fighting cocks are kept in wicker cages, moved frequently about so as to maintain the optimum balance of sun and shade. They are fed a special diet, which varies somewhat according to individual theories but which is mostly maize, sifted for impurities with far more care than it is when mere humans are going to eat it and offered to the animal kernel by kernel. Red pepper is stuffed down their beaks and up their anuses to give them spirit. They are bathed in the same ceremonial preparation of tepid water, medicinal herbs, flowers, and onions in which infants are bathed, and for a prize cock just about as often. Their combs are cropped, their plumage dressed, their spurs trimmed, their legs massaged, and they are inspected for flaws with the squinted concentration of a diamond merchant. A man who has a passion for cocks, an enthusiast in the literal sense of the term, can spend most of his life with them, and even those, the overwhelming majority, whose passion though intense has not entirely run away with them, can and do spend what seems not only to an outsider, but also to themselves an inordinate amount of time with them. "I am cock crazy," my landlord, a quite ordinary afficionado by Balinese standards, used to moan as he went to move another cage, give another bath, or conduct another feeding. "We're all cock crazy."

The madness has some less visible dimensions, however, because although it is true that cocks are symbolic expressions or magnifications of their owner's self, the narcissistic male ego writ out in Aesopian terms, they are also expressions--and rather more immediate ones--of what the Balinese regard as the direct inversion, aesthetically, morally, and metaphysically, of human status: animality.

The Balinese revulsion against any behavior as animal-like can hardly be overstressed. Babies are not allowed to crawl for that reason. Incest, though hardly approved, is a much less horrifying crime than bestiality. (The appropriate punishment for the second is death by drowning, for the first being forced to live like an animal.)8 Most demons are represented--in sculpture, dance, ritual, myth--in some real or fantastic animal form. The main puberty rite consists in filing the child's teeth so they will not look like animal fangs. Not only defecation but eating is regarded as a disgusting, almost obscene activity, to be conducted hurriedly and privately, because of its association with animality. Even falling down or any form of clumsiness is considered to be bad for these reasons. Aside from cocks and a few domestic animals--oxen, ducks--of no emotional significance, the Balinese are aversive to animals and treat their large number of dogs not merely callously but with a phobic cruelty. In identifying with his cock, the Balinese man is identifying not just with his ideal self, or even his penis, but also, and at the same time, with what he most fears, hates, and ambivalence being what it is, is fascinated by--The Powers of Darkness.

The connection of cocks and cockfighting with such Powers, with the animalistic demons that threaten constantly to invade the small, cleared off space in which the Balinese have so carefully built their lives and devour its inhabitants, is quite explicit. A cockfight, any cockfight, is in the first instance a blood sacrifice offered, with the appropriate chants and oblations, to the demons in order to pacify their ravenous, cannibal hunger. No temple festival should be conducted until one is made. (If it is omitted someone will inevitably fall into a trance and command with the voice of an angered spirit that the oversight be immediately corrected.) Collective responses to natural evils--illness, crop failure, volcanic eruptions--almost always involve them. And that famous holiday in Bali, The Day of Silence (Njepi), when everyone sits silent and immobile all day long in order to avoid contact with a sudden influx of demons chased momentarily out of hell, is preceded the previous day by large-scale cockfights (in this case legal) in almost every village on the island.

In the cockfight, man and beast, good and evil, ego and id, the creative power of aroused masculinity and the destructive power of loosened animality fuse in a bloody drama of hatred, cruelty, violence, and death. It is little wonder that when, as is the invariable rule, the owner of the winning cock takes the carcass of the loser--often torn limb from limb by its enraged owner--home to eat, he does so with a mixture of social embarrassment, moral satisfaction, aesthetic disgust, and cannibal joy.” - http://hypergeertz.jku.at/GeertzTexts/Deep_Play.htm

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rcsonant-blog · 5 years

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if i make a metaphor of my body, it’s a desert. one part longing, one part need, the rest withstanding. of course I would prefer to be thirsty for nothing . . .

alone. the word has always shown him more comfort than his own family did. rowan was born to duho and quinn oh, two rather indifferent people, alongside a brother much older than him. a thirteen year age gap separated him and hudson oh, and it was at the ripe age of seven that his nineteen year old brother broke the news to him. “im running away.”

it was a confusing thing to understand, but hudson explained nonetheless. hudson left out the gritty details; the details of years of neglect and the lack of opportunity that their parents had offered him, followed by subtle tears of sorrow that traced his cheeks as he apologized to a clueless rowan for not being able to take him with him. he promised he’d come back once he was financially stable for rowan, but how much weight can a ninenteen year old boys words hold? enough to crush the younger ones heart once he was old enough to understand that his brother wasn’t coming back.

so that was it. with rowans best friend gone, he proceeded to color on the page filled with blues and greens until his parents got home. with the lack of attention served towards him and his brother, his parents failed to realize that hudson was gone until the next day. yet, there were no tears shed, no search parties sent out. sure, they yelled at rowan for a few hours, blamed him for letting hudson leave, but they didn’t care. it was one less mouth to feed, after all.

now here’s the thing. duho and quinn were not suited for parenthood. perhaps duho was before he met quinn, a beautiful girl with a charismatic personality who fell victim to alcohol abuse, and everything rolled downhill from that point. they were unmotivated to hold stable jobs and uninterested in their children. hudson was a young, dumb mistake and thirteen years later rowan was an even bigger one.

the unintentional neglect was left to rest on rowan’s shoulders. he took care of himself; found his own way to school, made his own lunches, bathed and put himself to bed. he grew to be independent on his own and learn quickly what it meant to be an adult before he was even a teenager. some days his parents would forget to grocery shop and he’d be left starving until they did. teachers commented on his fluctuating weight and sunk in eyes, questioning how his at home life was. rowan shrugged, said it was okay. he spared details with lies and indifference.

rowan was a quiet kid. he thought that there was no point in getting close to other people if his brother was going to come back for him anyways. however, his brother never did and rowan hated him for that. he couldn’t understand the logic behind the dishonesty and he felt betrayed by the one person he trusted the most. so he forced himself to move on, concluded that putting too much trust in people was a pointless.

he felt that something was always missing in his life ( cough cough ) but could never pin point what exactly it was. he tried to find it in other people, went through girlfriends and friends like nothing. it was because of his cold personality and indifference towards things that people usually left – they always left. so once he was nineteen, he did the same thing that everyone always did to him.

he left sydney to study in melbourne, completing college there in an attempt to find himself in an unfamiliar place. he wasn’t sure what he wanted to dothough, what interested him and what didn’t. so he aimlessly wondered around campus, taking basic courses with a generalized major until a year later when his now 32 year old brother showed up at his doorstep, clad in a suit with pleading eyes. with excuses littering the space between them, rowan was filled with bitter resentment. he wanted nothing to do with the stranger in front of him. that was, until hudson told him to become a business major; practically begged him right then and there.

hudson went on to explain that he was the director of his own company in sydney and that he wished for rowan to join him ( with the proper schooling, of course ). rowan took a month to settle on the idea, finishing his first year of college before ultimately deciding that it was worth a try. he wasn’t interested in getting to know his brother again, but instead interested in the opportunity that his brother was offering him.

so he did it. he switched to a business major, completed his years of schooling in melbourne before returning to sydney, and was slowly integrated into the company as the ceo. he has no contact with his parents, and even years later has a hard time feeling any connection between his brother. his brother tries to reach out and get to know him, but with rowan’s indifferent and rather cold personality leaving a barrier between the two it always feels out of reach. all rowan is looking for is himself and someone that understands him.

⸻ THE BASICS

name: rowan oh

age: 28

birthday: january 15, 1990

race: korean

gender: cismale

sexuality: heterosexual

relationship status: single

⸻ PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

hair: black

eyes: brown

height: 180 (5′11)

build: fit

distinguishing marks: a birthmark on his left shoulder

common accessories: none

⸻ PERSONAL

profession: ceo

languages: english, very minimal korean

residence: sydney, australia

birthplace: sydney, australia

religion: christian

fears: none

disabilities: none

good traits: patient, disciplined, capable, independent, logical, eager, virtuous, candid, dynamic, attentive, intuitive

bad traits: blase, cold-hearted, critical, detached, stubborn, mysterious, lonely, mischievous, facetious

⸻ TRAITS

extroverted / introverted / in between.

disorganized / organized / in between.

close minded / open-minded / in between.

calm / anxious / in between.

disagreeable / agreeable / in between.

cautious / reckless / in between.

patient / impatient / in between.

outspoken / reserved / in between.

leader / follower / in between.

empathetic / unemphatic / in between.

optimistic / pessimistic / in between.

traditional / modern / in between.

hard-working / lazy / in between.

cultured / un-cultured / in between.

loyal / disloyal / unknown / in between.

faithful / unfaithful / unknown / in between.

⸻ PLACE IN SOCIETY

financial: wealthy / moderate / poor / in poverty

class or caste: upper / middle / working / unsure

education: high school / college / dropped out

criminal record: yes, for major crimes / yes, for minor crimes / no

⸻ BELIEFS

monotheist / polytheist / atheist / agnostic

belief in ghosts or spirits: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

belief in an afterlife: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

belief in reincarnation: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

belief in aliens: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

philosophical: yes / no

⸻ CAPABILITIES

combat skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

literacy skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

artistic skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

technical skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

social skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

⸻ HABITS

drinking alcohol: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

smoking: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

other narcotics: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

medicinal drugs: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

indulgent foods: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

splurge spending: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

gambling: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

⸻ HABITS

nail biting / throat clearing / lying / interrupting / chewing the ends of pens / smoking / swearing / knuckle cracking / thumb sucking / muttering under their breath / talking to themselves / nose picking / binge drinking / oversleeping / snacking between meals / skipping meals / picking at skin / impulse buying / talking with their mouth full / humming or singing to themselves / chewing gum / leg jiggling / foot tapping / sighing / hair twirling / whistling / eye rolling / licking lips / sniffing / squinting / rubbing hands together / jaw clenching / gesturing while talking / putting feet up on tables / tucking hair behind ears / chewing lips / crossing arms over chest / putting hands on hips / rubbing the back or their neck / being late / procrastinating / doodling / shredding paper / peeling off bottle labels / forgetfulness / running hands through hair / overreacting / teeth grinding / nostril flaring / slouching / pacing / drumming fingers / fist clenching / pinching bridge of nose / rubbing temples / rolling shoulders

#intro › characters.#about › rowan.

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hsews · 6 years

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When Mike Shooter was in medical school, he suffered the first of what he calls “thunderous depressions.” More followed. Shooter’s efforts to come to grips with these experiences has made him acutely aware of what young people with mental-health problems endure and forged his career as a preeminent child psychiatrist in England. He was the first such specialist to be elected president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a position he held from 2002 to 2005. Recently he published “Growing Pains,” which is based on 40 years of working with young people. The book explains why it’s imperative to differentiate between depression and the ordinary but often intense difficulties some children face. He recently spoke with The Washington Post on these issues. This transcript was edited for clarity and length.

Q: Do you think young people are more vulnerable to mental illness now?

A: Research suggests that the United Kingdom is the least happy place for a child to be brought up in the Western world; America cannot be far behind. Some of this could be attributed to the grinding effect of poverty. But not all: The frenetic competition, in school, in the scramble for jobs, in peer-group relationships, means many children fall off the bottom of the ladder of competition and feel as if they’ve failed. Or are so unsure of their own worth that they sit up all night searching for “likes” on social media in lieu of proper friendships.

But it’s not all bad news. There is currently much research into resilience: what enables some children to cope while others do not. I know from experience that there is one thing that can make all the difference: a relationship with an adult close enough to them, that supports them, listens to their distress and treats them as worthwhile. That person could be a relative, a family friend, a teacher or, dare I say it, a child psychiatrist.

Q: What’s the difference between depression and sadness?

A: Depression is a formal psychiatric diagnosis with recognizable symptoms, well-researched treatments and a predictable outcome. Sadness is a normal reaction to sad circumstances, or a free-floating mood typical of adolescents.

The danger is that the sort of distress I describe, if it ever reaches the clinic, will either be squashed into a psychiatric category that it does not warrant or will be dismissed as a problem for which the psychiatrist has no answer. The children in “Growing Pains” have been unable to get help because they haven’t met the formal criteria, reinforcing their sense of failure. These children need help, whatever we call them — sad or depressed.

Q: Is there a danger in labeling a disorder?

A: Labeling can be very dangerous. At best, it can fossilize a child’s image and the way they are seen and handled by those around them. At worst, it can wreck their lives.

I was once contacted about two young girls, both 14, both labeled. The first was given a diagnosis of depression by her general practitioner and put on a course of antidepressants. When I saw her, she told me she felt unloved in her family, her only friend had been killed in a road accident and her grandmother, her sole confidant, had died. Despairing of finding an outlet for her grief, she had resolved to join them by committing suicide — swallowing the tablets she had been prescribed. What she needed was the opportunity to talk about her unhappiness.

The second girl was labeled as a personality disorder — anxious about everything, always blaming herself, sleeping poorly, unable to make friends. That’s just the way she is, the adults said, nothing to be done about it. In reality, she had almost certainly slipped into a clinical depression that might have responded to treatment, but it went unrecognized. Following an argument with girls at school, she went missing and was found dead two days later. I was asked to do grief works with those left behind: vital for them, but too late to save the daughter.

Q: How best, then, to support a vulnerable child?

A: Most helpful is a relationship that can hold the child in trust while we work together on trying to change things.

The trust must be earned. Some children feel safer talking in the privacy of a clinic. Some are so young and so frightened that they are beyond words and need special techniques to uncover the cause of their distress. Many will need to be seen on their own patch — at home, school, wherever they feel most comfortable. It may require negotiation with adults to secure the necessary space, and unless the child needs immediate rescue from harm, it will take time.

Once trust is established, we must work together to build the child’s self-confidence so they can explore new ways of thinking about themselves and the world. In other words, it must be an empowering relationship that searches out the strengths that all children have and builds upon them. We cannot guarantee them a trouble-free future, but we can help them discover ways of coping better. When that is done, we need to say goodbye to the therapeutic relationship in a way that does not repeat and compound the anxieties with which the child presented.

This takes time, it involves risk, it means getting so close to distress that it may stir up our own unfinished emotional business, and it treats our children and young people as partners in the work rather than passive recipients of formal diagnosis and medication. And at the center of it all, it is not a textbook or a set of guidelines, but the child’s individual experience. Their story.

Q: Do we overmedicate?

A: I try not to blame people: the children and young people who have so often been blamed for their own distress and have felt so guilty that they have blamed themselves; parents and carers who are unable to understand what children are going through and are often just as needy of help; fellow professionals, who are desperate to help but are clinically trained and emotionally more comfortable with traditional ways of doing things.

So, yes, we are in danger of overdiagnosing distressed children and reaching too quickly for a prescription more appropriate for adult illness. But I understand why. Showing how a young person might fulfill — or not — a set of criteria and dishing out a course of pills is very obviously “doing” something, and the pressure to do something is huge.

Q: What do you think about the new American Association of Pediatrics guidelines that say children over age 12 should be screened annually for depression during routine pediatrician checkups?

A: Clinical depression has been underrecognized in the past.

As a sufferer myself, I know how it crippled much of my adult life before I got help. Without that help, I might still be drifting through life from one short-term job to another, metaphorically kicking my father in the crotch. So I can understand the wish of the association to make sure that such a lack of recognition never happens on their watch.

I do worry, though. I’m sure that clinicians will err on the side of safety, so regular checkups will run the risk of dragging adolescent unhappiness into the diagnostic net.

These checkups seem designed to capture established depression that would otherwise escape recognition. Our resources should be used to prevent such disorders being established in the first place. There is ample evidence that late adolescent and adult mental illnesses have their roots in childhood and that there are many opportunities in those children’s lives to intervene. It requires a switch of attitude — by professionals and carers — to prevent unhappiness crystallizing into formal disorders.

Money spent on early intervention will save many times as much in the later development of mental illness and social upheaval.

Q: How has your own experience with depression influenced your work?

A: I have a recurrent depressive disorder. The help I have received made sense of the terrifying feelings inside me, uncovered their origins in my childhood and enabled me to behave differently with my own family. Talking about it in the media has encouraged more professionals to come forward with their own stories, and the public to seek help.

Though my illness has made me more sympathetic to the young people in my care, it does not give me the right to trespass on the uniqueness of their experience. Everyone’s depression feels different; we must help young people to explain what it feels like to them. The worst thing you can say is “ I know exactly how you feel!”

[email protected]

Regular screening can find teen depression, but getting treatment isn’t easy

Can a book serve as a portable therapist for teens at risk of depression? Maybe.

Nasal spray of party drug shows promise as fast-acting antidepressant, researchers say

Nothing worked for my depression — until I tried meditation

The post A leading psychiatrist’s history of depression helps shape his treatment of young people appeared first on HS NEWS.

#Breaking News

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albertcaldwellne · 6 years

Text

The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant

I am a digital immigrant.

When I was child, we had a phone attached to the wall, and couldn’t even see who was calling until we answered. We played outside, and occupied ourselves with imaginative games of make-believe and exploration. We had “quiet time” when my mom needed a break, and there was nothing in our rooms other than books and legos to distract us.

By the time I was in high school we had dial-up, so I could AIM chat with my friends, and download songs on Napster.

Never mind that dad needed us to get off RIGHT NOW because he was expecting a call, or that one song could literally take 6 hours to download– it was the beginning of digital connectivity. I could have secret chats with my friends without even making a phone call! I didn’t have to wait until the next day to find out the latest gossip! It was glorious.

Through AIM chat, I began to develop my very first digital identity, with creatively arranged song lyrics and quotes in my away message. It was my first clumsy attempt to digitally signal (through poorly veiled metaphors) what I wanted people to know about me.

“The shoes on my feet, I bought it. The clothes I’m wearing, I bought it. The rock I’m rockin’, I bought it. Cause I depend on me.”

Back then we could choose when to connect and when to disconnect; when to develop our digital identities, and when to develop our real-life identities. Only one of these happened at a time. When I spent time with my friends or family, we were the only people in the room.

Nowadays our digital and real life selves are blurred, and occur simultaneously, because every single moment of every single day, we are connected to everything and everyone.

Nowadays we have a hundred paused conversations happening at once, from text to email to facebook to twitter, with people all over the world, ready to be unpaused by just glancing at our phones. And our phones are with us at all times, which means that now when we spend time with friends or family, it’s never just us in the room.

The digital era has changed our lives. Now when we wonder something, we just look it up. If we think of someone, we text them. If we’re bored, we entertain ourselves. If we’re feeling bad about ourselves, we do something to feel “productive.” If we feel lonely, we turn to social media to feel connected.

We used to have to make plans and then either follow through or stand someone up. Now we can cancel or change plans at any and every moment, and have an entire culture built around instantaneous last minute plan changing.

Now we are constantly consuming– articles, tweets, posts, emails, texts, feelings, thoughts, opinions, brands, images, videos, and more. We are never alone. We are never unplugged. We are are constantly aware that the whole big world, with all of it’s pain and suffering and brilliance and knowledge and support and humor and community, is RIGHT THERE. We know this, even when we turn our phones off, or leave them home.

It’s a different world now, and we live differently in it. But none of this is news.

You’re most likely a digital immigrant, too. The upcoming generations won’t remember another way of being. The digital natives won’t know what it felt like to ever be truly alone or disconnected or unplugged. They won’t know how it feels to be stood up, or to get really lost, or to figure out how to do something complicated without directions. I’m not saying any of this a bad thing. I am progressive at heart, and I see no benefit to resisting progress or clinging to the past.

Perhaps the digital natives will change the world for the better, because they will have been brought up on new ideas and ways of being. Perhaps they will naturally strike a peaceful balance with technology, and they won’t suffer as we do.

Because the thing is, us digital immigrants… we are suffering.

Our emigration to the digital era happened slowly enough that we didn’t realize what a big transition we were all going through, though it was fast enough to change every single aspect of our lives. I believe that many of us are still trying to catch up, and that there has been an extraordinary cost to our transition.

I’m not hating on the internet, mind you.

I talk to people all over the world every single day. I coach people on nearly every continent, and my social media community lives in every corner of the earth. I love the work I do, I love writing, I love being fully free and mobile… and yet.

And yet I experience an intense yearning to be in a room with other people and not feel the presence of our phones. I yearn for eye contact, and undistracted conversation, and the peace and simplicity that comes from knowing that nothing else is planned or available– this moment is the only option, so we may as well be fully present.

I also have a deep aching to be truly alone.

I turn my phone off sometimes, but I’m still never disconnected, because I know I’m only about 34 seconds away from it booting up. It’s like filling your cupboards with chocolate and then pretending it’s not there, so it doesn’t tempt you– the sensation is not the same as if it really wasn’t there.

I yearn to not know how to do something, or to not know what my friends are up to, or to not know that my peers have just launched a new product. I yearn to wonder, and guess, and daydream. I yearn to be bored and understimulated.

And I’m not alone.

When I speak of these feelings to other digital immigrants, there is an air of agreement.

“Yes,” they whisper. They share how compulsively they check their phones, how they can’t leave the office at the office, and how they “relax” with social media only to find themselves more anxious than when they started. They share how knowing the endless options of what they could be doing right now makes them feel constantly stressed and insecure and unsatisfied.

We are suffering for a lack of simplicity and true connection. We are suffering from an over-saturation of digital consumption and stimulation. We are suffering.

I believe we immigrants still need to learn how to thrive in this new world, likely with better boundaries, a stronger awareness of how things affect us, and a shift in priorities.

I have no idea what that will look like, but I suspect it begins with conversations like this one.

Thoughts?

Love, Jessi

The post The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2HmkFJP

#The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant

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joshuabradleyn · 6 years

Text

The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant

I am a digital immigrant.

By the time I was in high school we had dial-up, so I could AIM chat with my friends, and download songs on Napster.

“The shoes on my feet, I bought it. The clothes I’m wearing, I bought it. The rock I’m rockin’, I bought it. Cause I depend on me.”

Nowadays our digital and real life selves are blurred, and occur simultaneously, because every single moment of every single day, we are connected to everything and everyone.

It’s a different world now, and we live differently in it. But none of this is news.

Because the thing is, us digital immigrants… we are suffering.

I’m not hating on the internet, mind you.

I also have a deep aching to be truly alone.

And I’m not alone.

When I speak of these feelings to other digital immigrants, there is an air of agreement.

We are suffering for a lack of simplicity and true connection. We are suffering from an over-saturation of digital consumption and stimulation. We are suffering.

I believe we immigrants still need to learn how to thrive in this new world, likely with better boundaries, a stronger awareness of how things affect us, and a shift in priorities.

I have no idea what that will look like, but I suspect it begins with conversations like this one.

Thoughts?

Love, Jessi

The post The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2HmkFJP

#The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant

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almajonesnjna · 6 years

Text

The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant

I am a digital immigrant.

By the time I was in high school we had dial-up, so I could AIM chat with my friends, and download songs on Napster.

“The shoes on my feet, I bought it. The clothes I’m wearing, I bought it. The rock I’m rockin’, I bought it. Cause I depend on me.”

Nowadays our digital and real life selves are blurred, and occur simultaneously, because every single moment of every single day, we are connected to everything and everyone.

It’s a different world now, and we live differently in it. But none of this is news.

Because the thing is, us digital immigrants… we are suffering.

I’m not hating on the internet, mind you.

I also have a deep aching to be truly alone.

And I’m not alone.

When I speak of these feelings to other digital immigrants, there is an air of agreement.

We are suffering for a lack of simplicity and true connection. We are suffering from an over-saturation of digital consumption and stimulation. We are suffering.

I believe we immigrants still need to learn how to thrive in this new world, likely with better boundaries, a stronger awareness of how things affect us, and a shift in priorities.

I have no idea what that will look like, but I suspect it begins with conversations like this one.

Thoughts?

Love, Jessi

The post The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2HmkFJP

#The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant

0 notes

ruthellisneda · 6 years

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The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant

I am a digital immigrant.

By the time I was in high school we had dial-up, so I could AIM chat with my friends, and download songs on Napster.

“The shoes on my feet, I bought it. The clothes I’m wearing, I bought it. The rock I’m rockin’, I bought it. Cause I depend on me.”

Nowadays our digital and real life selves are blurred, and occur simultaneously, because every single moment of every single day, we are connected to everything and everyone.

It’s a different world now, and we live differently in it. But none of this is news.

Because the thing is, us digital immigrants… we are suffering.

I’m not hating on the internet, mind you.

I also have a deep aching to be truly alone.

And I’m not alone.

When I speak of these feelings to other digital immigrants, there is an air of agreement.

We are suffering for a lack of simplicity and true connection. We are suffering from an over-saturation of digital consumption and stimulation. We are suffering.

I believe we immigrants still need to learn how to thrive in this new world, likely with better boundaries, a stronger awareness of how things affect us, and a shift in priorities.

I have no idea what that will look like, but I suspect it begins with conversations like this one.

Thoughts?

Love, Jessi

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#The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant

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tumblunni · 6 years

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Digimon frontier ocs?

Randomly started rewatching CactusCasual's great Digimon Frontier critique series. He's leaving youtube soon and making the weird decision to delete his whole account and everything he's ever done. But he's uploaded a bunch of his best stuff to google drive so if people wanna keep.it they can. Still i think its a lil dumb to not just leave the account open even if you're not using it? I dont know anything about why he's quitting the site though so maybe he has his reasons.

ANYWAY this got me thinking again about how Frontier is so goddamn boring and weirdly cliche and badly paced, and like everyone just focuses on "but they changed how digivolution works" and ignores all the actual reasons its bad. Like, kids have fused with digimon in previous seasons too! And haven't we all wished we could be the awesome characters like angemon and etc? A digimonny power rangers henshin thing isnt an inherantly bad idea, it was just executed badly. I dislike it cos it meant we completely lost any sort of digimon and human bonding experience plotline. They gave us two recurring digimon characters but they were just basically a pokedex and the world's least funny comic relief. Gimme a version of the show where the kids actually talk to their "spirit evolutions"! Like maybe they have a digimon partner but its forever stuck in baby form or spirit egg form and cant fight without fusing with a human host? Or just give us a better non-combat digimon pal like bokomon and neemon but like.. Fully developed with their own character arc and relationships with everyone else. Maybe ophanimon could have been around the whole time and been a mentor and parental figure? And we could actually explore her moral ambiguity, cos seriously the show makes her kind of a "ends justify the means" asshole and just NEVER AKNOWLEDGES IT. Wtf was up with that scene where she illusions Cherubimon with a fake dream of him being purified and getting to just go back home and be friends? And then she just backstabs him and we never mention it again. Like seriously even if she couldnt actually cure him that scene at least revealed that he WANTED to be cured and it made him so much more sympathetic! If he can be reasoned with, maybe they could have talked him down and then gone on an adventure together to find an actual cure for him? Also seriously what is up with his entire plot! Cos he just gets 'infected with darkness' cos he 'had darkness in his soul' but its just cos he thought the humanoid digimon were being racist against the beast digimon? And like.. The council was 2/3rds humanoid with him as the only beast representative and since he got infected by evilness they never remotely tried to recruit a new one or listen to what beast digimon have to say. So he was kinda right, yo! Also wtf with the reveal that actually no everything we just said is pointless because his REAL motivation was just blindly obeying ANOTHER humanoid digimon that comes out of nowhere to be the final boss. Also what is up with all the increased sexism in this series!! Its so weirdly worse than even adventure which had the excuse of being "a product of the times" yet still had way better variety of female characters and less bigoted stuff! And frontier came right after tamers which was one of the best series for gender equality and even used the medium of the setting as an opportunity to talk about the subject. Shame they censored that in the dub tho, Renamon talking about how digimon have no biological sex and how she only came to think of herself as a girl when she came to the human world. And rika's family accepting her and inviting her to family girls's night and stuff! Like as a metaphor for transgender issues it really worked to try and explain it to a younger audience in a natural way. And then one season later in frontier we have ONLY ONE GIRL IN THE CAST and wah wah whining about fashion and oh no she cant ever win a fight and her goddamn spirit form is in skimpy lingerie despite her being 12, and the show is always perving on her! And then she loses her powers halfway through the first season without winning a single fight, and has to be the damsel in distress to motivate the dudes in a stupid love triangle. And even when she does get to fight she's only allowed to fight the ONE SINGLE GIRL ON THE VILLAIN TEAM and they have stupid slap fights and "who's the most pretty" and BEACH EPISODE and GAHHHHH

...anyway as you can see i have a lot of reasons why i didnt really like the series. But what i meant to make this post about (BEFORE I GOT DISTRACTED) is that the fundemental concept itself isnt bad, they just wasted all its potential. And its a really good concept for ocs! Make your own digi superhero person and explore the fragmented world doing stuff offscreen during the series! Like they left so much open?? We know that other kids also got on other trains to the digiworld and they all just failed or gave up or got captured by the bad guys. And we know there's a bunch of spirits that the heroes never use because the villains got them again, so its cool to imagine an alt universe where the roles were swapped. What if different kids became the chosen heroes? What if different spirits were corrupted by the villains? What would a good guy Grumblemon be like? What would the kid be like who got that spirit? Would their evolution form be wildly different from grumblemon? Do the villain forms and purified forms look as different as Duskmon and Lowemon did?

SO MUCH POTENTIAL!!!

So yeah i wasted so much space here blabbering, so i'll probably make a separate post about my oc ideas lol. But i'd love to see other people's ideas for ocs/reinterpretations/other ways to fix that wasted potential!

So! Digimon frontier oc ideas!

To start off,have an undeveloped idea of someone on the team having Angemon as their spirit evolution. Cos it would have made the transition to such a new series a lot easier if they had some sort of "hey this is for you" to the fans of the previous ones. And angemon is the Adventure digimon that already looks the most like a regular human in a weird mask.

SPEAKING OF WHICH! less regular humans in weird masks! Whats the point of "you turn into a digimon" if you dont turn into a digimon? Like i know the whole gimmick is "humanoid mode and beast mode" but even the beast modes often look like humans in a costume! And there's been so many humanoid digimon before who actually looked like HUMANOID MONSTERS rather than just normal dudes cosplaying! There's literally nothing "monster" about agunimon, he's just a guy in some knight armour. Like the most you can do is charitably assume maybe the horns are his own and not just attatched to the helmet. And its annoying cos the villains have way cooler evolutions! And also double annoying that they always bend the humanoid/beast rule in such transparently self serving ways. Tommy gets two beast forms cos he's meant to be the cute mascot-looking character. Zoey gets two human forms cos she's meant to be grossly sexualized all the time. When kouichi turns from bad to good he loses his interesting looking actually monsterous evolutions and just becomes another dude in an armour. A friggin palette swap of his brother!

Anyway anyway LOL IM RAMBLING AGAIN yo...

Ideas for ocs!

I was thinking of a main girl character who's basically just a "fuk u" to all the stereotypes they did with Zoey. Actually gets a monster lookin beast form and a warrior lookin human form and actually gets to goddamn fight! Maybe her name is Hilda or Hildegarde? And i'm imagining her as a chubby nerdy kid with glasses and curly hair and a super cute oversized sweater kind of fashion sense. And her main spirit form would be this super badass lady knight giant orc thing who can Protec All The Peoples! Maybe earth element or the irony of being light element but she's this big ol monster goblin with just a tiny pair of angel wings on the back, lol! And then her personality is normally super shy and socially anxious, but she actually finds the digimon world kind of freeing? She's a total badass in battle and acts like a big ol powerful protector of all her friends! And she's always super excited aboyt adventuring and gets carried away comparing stuff to her favourite books. And now we must learn everything about this new place!! TO THE DIGI LIBRARY!!! So she's able to be confident and bubbly when it comes to actual adventure stuff, but she's still shy about regular life and anything social. Maybe its her weakness? Like she's scared about going home because she thinks she'll be "just a nobody" again, and lose all the great friends she made here. And also maybe a backstory of her heroic side still existing even before she got magic powers, but in the most tragic way? She managed to fend off a burglar once all on her own, she just snapped and did everything possible to defend her family, even though this was a man three times her size! But instead of being seen as a hero it just made all the neighbours and kids at school spread rumours about her being dangerous. Oh she must be in *a gang* if she knew how to fight like that! Oh its so *dangerous* for a kid that age to have such anger inside! Maybe she's a *scary mentally ill person*! So the whole situation ruined her social status even more and made her retreat even more inside her shell. And this is why the circumstances of the digital world are such a wish fullfillment for her and she's so scared of just waking up and it all being a dream. I think the villains could manipulate her fears, and it could maybe lead to her Skullgreymon Moment?

And then another idea i had was for a trans boy? I just thought this would be a good framework to explore LGBT stuff. He'd maybe be the wind element? And his personality would be very "classic shonen hero" but without the "dumbass" part, instead he's the cynical planner type dude while Hilda is the "i didnt even think, i just wanted to save everyone" type. But he's still super peppy and tries to be the class clown all the time so people will like him, and loves to climb trees and stuff. I think maybe his fighting style would be all about trickery and random chance? If there was such a thing as an element of surprise then he'd have that one! And then his story is that he doesn't have anyone supporting him for who he truly is at home, and he's afraid that his new friends will call him a freak too if they find out. He took the opportunity and cut his hair short as soon as this adventure started, and just introduced himself to everyone as a boy. But he's scared that people will find out he "lied" even though he didnt, he's just been so beaten down with the idea that he's not allowed to be himself and he has to pretend to be everyone else's idea of an ideal cis man or else they'll reject him. So maybe he starts off a bit obsessed with cliche masculinity and has low confidence about himself? And this could reflect in his digivolutions actually changing! He starts off with a really over the top buff warrior dude form, even though his fighting style is entirely about speed and trickery. So he tends to get into trouble with this fake form getting in the way of his ability to fight. And then when everyone accepts him he gets all powered up and changes into a new form! A way less "cliche macho" dude who looks like a stage magician instead and actually synchronizes with his element to become super powerful! And he's all like "oh no i became less manly" but everyone is like "wtf dont let yourself believe you're any less of a man because of dumb stereotypes!" And Also Big Friendship Hugs.

And then maybe this provides a resolution to both him and Hilda's plots? Like when the story is over they still stay friends in the real world, and having a friend who supports them gives them enough power to withstand all the haters and stay confident in themselves. But itd be kind of a coincidence for all the digidestined to live in the same city lol! So maybe in real life they live at least a few towns away, and they become long distance pals who send letters/emails. Because I LOVE ALL MY LONG DISTANCE PALS!! Also itd make sense to have a Internet Good message in a digimon show, lol.

And then i dunno about the rest of the team yet but i thought itd be good to have a sort of moral divide? Like these are the two who have a shitty home life and dont want to leave the digital world. But then the other half of the group has big reasons to wanna go home. So the villains could play on this difference in goals and make them fight amoungst each other. Just generally make the villains more actually competant, yknow? Oh also if there's a Dark Agunimon on the villains he needs to be EVEN MORE of a boring human in a costume! Cos it sucks that all the villains have better character designs and the show seems to think theyre worse ones. Give me one case of more boring not meaning more heroic!

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yourstraycat · 7 years

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Accepting tings: Initial Attempt

I was already having a bad day that day, because I was told I couldn’t get what I wanted. It may seem trivial and selfish to others, but it was something I was hoping for a long long while. I was slowly trying to accept things and calmer after a while, so i went out to a nearby store to get some snacks to comfort myself.

Got onto my bike, and of course in this dramatic world of mine, it had to rain. Keeping in mind that I don’t receive allowance anymore, I took a while to choose my snack and grabbed a bag of doughnuts. I went to the counter and took out the 5 pound note - only to be returned back my money because they don’t accept old notes. I didnt have any more cash in my wallet, nor did i bring my credit card because i didnt want to end up spending more than 5 pounds. ‘Oh’ I went and took back the £1.39 chocolate doughnuts.

So, i went out of the store. The rain calmed down, thankfully, but tears started coming instead. I cried really hard. In the midst of my overwhelming feelings, I asked myself, why do I have to cry? It’s just a fucking doughnut.

It’s not the doughnut that made me cry. I wasn’t hungry. It’s not the cashier man who rejected my money, it’s not his fault. Is it my fault for being so childish and weak? Yes. I’ll get over the doughnut eventually, right? Just like whatever else is happening to me.

Well, yes and no. Accepting things are not as simple as that, at least in my brain.

Yes, it’s just a fucking doughnut. But I have been facing a great deal of difficulties recently, which made something so trivial like the weather and not getting the doughnut can trigger me to tremendous sadness. My brain just somehow decide to relate this ‘trivial things’ with other things that has been happening to me. “Your life is not going to be how you want it to be!” “You have a sad and unlucky life boohoo!”

I calmed down at the end, of course. Got the doughnut, too, after returning home to grab my credit card. Yay to happy endings.

But how could I avoid these situations again? Why do I have to suffer this tremendous feelings over something so trivial? Why did I have to relate things unnecessarily which will only make me suffer?

I have been feeling low for too long and realised that the root cause of this has to be because I haven’t been feeling happy with my current situation and have not at all ‘accepted things’. My childish response by crying because of a difficult situation has to somehow change, however hard it will be. ‘Accepting things’ is more than just saying to yourself that it will be okay, i just need to move on, things are better now, bla bla bla. Suppressing or repressing feelings by forcing to ‘forget about it’, doesn’t work, at least to me. I probably have tried to cope difficult situations by repressing things before, and trying to be ‘optimistic’. You see, you can forget things. And if it is forgotten or can be ignored forever that is good. It can be easy for people who always have a positive mental attitude, but with this intelligent brain of mine which is very good at making things overly complex, it somehow manages to make faults and flaws in my perception of situations. And at some point inevitably, we will face a similar difficult situation again as well and end up in the same dark hole. So for each time I face this difficult situation, should I just let myself suffer for that period of time because I will move on anyways after? How does one practice a constant positive mental attitude towards any predicaments that he/she may face?

For those who know me through social media, I always post about positive events and how much I appreciate the things I have in my life, always being surrounded by friends and families, I have a big house, a big family and quite a relaxed life without any conflicts ------ And it’s true. I’m blessed.

But I failed to acknowledge, that I am actually quite bothered and unsatisfied with who I was... or am. Despite having people around, I still have this feeling of solitude and unhappiness. I don’t receive the typical parental love that people in social media or TV shows talk about (although don’t get me wrong, they do care and love me, we’re just a bunch of awkward people), I am always worried about how I am not doing enough for my boyfriend to love me, and I always compare and envy people who (seems to) have a better life than me, especially people who can talk and make conversations with anyone so easily, which to an anxious person like me, is a horribly difficult task. So, you get the picture. I’m pessimistic as fuck.

I was determined to change. I did change. From someone who stood in front of my sisters door because I wanted to hangout but never brave enough to enter, to a bubbly little sister that my family loves. From someone who can’t even stay in the library alone during PS (Personal Studies) period during high school and had to inconveniently asked my dad to drive 30 mins to pick me up during the 1 hour period and then drop me off again when it’s time for class, to someone who managed to get into a competitive physio course and successfully managed some patients myself.

But things happen, I failed again, fell again, same dark hole again. And each time, you fall deeper into the hole and it gets harder to get out. I gave up on staying positive, or moving on. So here I am. Always victimizing myself, always hating myself, always unhappy with myself.

Okay. This was my story and this shouldn’t be where I stop. This shouldn’t be where you should stop either. We all know that difficult situations happen, and not everything always have a happy ending, and not everything can be forgotten so easily. So, here’s my conclusion:

Sometimes, forcing that positive mental attitude is not going to work as well as you thought it would be with just being determined to be one. Changes are not going to be successful by just doing things. You can cry, things can be overwhelming, and it can be out of your control. Do not get yourself stuck at trying to fix things that are out of your control. Whatever you go through, big or small, the best way of accepting things is to... reflect on it --- Sincerely and honestly, and add that positive mental attitude in your reflection, but acknowledging the negative side of the situation as well. For each negative factors, find an action plan to tackle it, but remember don’t get to worked up trying to find ways to fix it. Patience. Understand the situation more thoroughly but calmly, understand yourself better and look back at what part did you play in the situation, how can you do better next time? How did other people or other factors get involved? Train the mind to stop victimizing yourself, stop assuming what other people may think. Accept other people into your situation, tell other people about it, don’t hide it, find inspiration and help from others too, not everything can be done by yourself. Always bring it forwards wherever you go and whatever you do- It is part of you, and you can’t move on if you leave your past behind.

You can probably see from how I write, I am still pessimistic and depressive af. I am not completely settled with accepting things, but this is a start and I have been much, much better than before. Everyone has their own ways of coping things, and blogging here is one way of me trying to explore myself, for my future better self. And you should have your own ways too, it can be completely different from what I have written here- you may find more ease by doing the activity that you love weather it’s sports or reading a book, or you may find more ease spiritually by spending more time committing to your religion. Whatever it is, do it.

So here’s my metaphor tings again and a positive message: things do get better. It is a long and difficult ride. You may still feel lost and the world seems like it is crashing really bad on you, but you can always grab a fresh canvas to recreate a new, better world, bringing your past experience with you as well. It might just be because you didn’t have the necessary art supplies to create the world that you wanted before, but your past experience is your art supplies here, and you gain more experience along your journey. The rougher the journey, the more rare and valuable the art supply is. So now that you’ve got the art supply, why stop your art now?

Peach out gaise. Dis me, Rai 3:50am Brunei time!! Im finally back, alhamdulillah ^_^

DISCLAIMER: my english sucks so I think i might’ve used some words wrong lol and everything here is all personal and views of my own. Take what you feel may be beneficial, ignore what you feel may be wrong.

**All feedbacks/suggestions are welcome and are very much appreciated! You can do so anonymously through tumblr or https://curiouscat.me/raiisins

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