#when ive literally tried to send it twice and get like no fucking direction from them

[hecksupremechips]

Literally feeling sooooo horrible and hopeless oh boy 🌝

#theres just a lot of horrible factors rn that have built a perfect storm #canceled the internet to my old apartment months ago and then they decided to charge me for ‘not returning their equipment’ #when ive literally tried to send it twice and get like no fucking direction from them #and i dont have anyyyy money right now #yesterday i was woken up at 10:30 by my dad who had to come home from work #just to move the car cuz these fuckijg. i dunno. gutter guys showed up and couldn’t do anything with my car in the way #i had no way of knowing theyd even be there but i checked my phone and had mean angry missed calls from my dad #all cuz i just couldnt be fucked to wake up earlier #this whole week ive been completely exhausted and i cant do anything as a result i cant focus i cant feel anything its all numb #my mother tells me shes gonna spend money that i guess she does just have ready to throw away on getting me diagnosed with autism #something i tried and tried to tell her for months that i dont need nor want and that its too much hassle #not to mention the price which all my parents do is guilt trip me for costing too much money everything i do that costs money is being cut #necessary meds are being cut off cuz its a waste of money even though insurance covers most of it #but they spend money on this and i just know. i know its gonna be used against me #that if i dont obey them theyre gonna bitch about how i cost them so much money on something i explicitly said i didnt want them to do #its all getting in the way of me just trying to escape now i have to take care of this i just want to cut them off but how can i do that now #i like to lie to myself thinking ill get a job but then i dont my dad yells at me every day for not applying to a job #he gives me big lectures on religion and how im failing and how i shouldnt trust anyone except family #ive gotten an excuse to avoid him last week and this week but its over now so im stuck here again #annnddd to top it off i found a fucking lump in my stomach who even fuuucking knows what it is maybe a hernia or something #so great now i have that to deal with what the actual fuck did i do to get that ughhhhhh #its just another thing forcing me to stay in this shithole it seems i wanna fuckijg bang my head until it explodes #i cant cry though i just want to cry so i can feel the relief but that wont ever happen again cuz im a worthless nothing robot #who feels nothing and does nothing and is nothing

[peter-pan-hoe]

Old Friends Pt 1

Guess Who’s Back Bitches

(Sorry for calling you bitches im just very excited. I love every single of of yall and Im so happy you guys have stuck around during this ridiculous hiatus and i hope to be posting more soon. I just got off my ass today and was like “Alright ya cow its time to write” and i did. Here is the oldest request ive had waiting in my inbox for literal years im so sorry this took so long. Here is part one of what will hopefully be a new series. I’ve taken it in a different direction to start with but i will be swinging it around to meet the request in later parts. So happy to be back. Ive missed you. I love you. Here we go xx)

“So like maybe Peter, y/n, an all the lost boys are having this huge dinner, hanging out and that, and then somehow, for revenge, The Dark One sends one of Peter’s old lovers to the island. That night Peter sneaks off to greet the girl who is STILL in love with him, maybe she puts him under her spell to forget about the reader and then they like almost do da nasty or something and I guess I can leave you to the rest.”

Requested by @bellakae

Warnings: swearing, legit like one f-bomb

I did my best to make Y/N gender neutral but being a cis female I may have missed some gender identifiers when editing and I apologise 

tag list:  @dina3s @just-meh-and-me-dogs @xcastawayherosx @lexymeg

sorry to anyone i forgot. I couldnt find all the asks or my updated tag list. Comment bellow or dm me if you want to be added to the tag list xx

 Every time there’s a new batch of lost boys, or ever just one, to arrive on the island, we have a welcome feast.

The hunter and forager boys gather as much stuff they can find and the cooks put together a huge meal. Given out of the 47 of us that there’s only 6 cooks, we usually have some extra to help out.

When there’s a big group it’s usually because Peter went to the mainland to find boys and bring them here because they weren’t happy at home.

There was that time that 5 or six boys rocked up because they made their way here together.

But if it’s just the one boy, they’re the believers. The ones who wished their way here.

This time around however was because Peter had gone to the mainland.

He usually seemed very happy whenever he came back.

Well no less happy than usual.

He wasn’t sad or angry or quiet like today.

When he returned early this morning with the latest group of boys, he came into our shared hut and stared out the window until morning.

Usually if it’s a late night he would have woken me up to say he was back.

He hadn’t needed to wake me up this time as him simply entering the room had roused me. But he didn’t even look over at me as he walked passed our bed to his little seat on the window sill.

I figured something must be up so I sat up and pretended I hadn’t heard him come home.

  “Oh hey,” I said, faking a yawn. “When did you get back?”

He looked at me with a forced smile.

  “Just a little while ago,” he hopped down from his perch by the window and came to sit beside me. “Did I wake you?”

He gave me a gentle kiss on the head and the leaned down to untie his boots.

  “No I don’t think so,” I lied and shook my head. “I just woke up and you were there,”

He didn’t say anything as he kicked of his boots and put his feet up on our bed.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked. “You seem a little distracted,”

  “yeah I’m alright,” he sighed. “Just ran into an old friend while I was out getting the new boys,”

  “Okay 2 things,” I started. “First is, how are the boys? And how many? And the second thing, was this old friend still a friend or are you not on good terms?”

  “They boys are good,” he replied with a stifled yawn.

I could tell he was very tired, but not his usual physical exhaustion. He seemed tired in his mind.

  “I brought home 14 boys,” he continued. “The youngest 7 and the oldest 17,”

  “That’s a lot,” I said sadly. “All those boys – a 7 year old – lost and lonely,”

  “Mmm,” he nodded in agreement.

  “So what about your friend?” I pressed carefully.

I don’t want to upset him.

  “I’m not really sure,” he sighed. “We didn’t end on good terms but she seemed happy to see me. She even wanted to come back here with us,”

This answer surprised me.

  “She?” I asked nervously.

  “Yeah,” he looked at me apologetically. “Clara. An old… partner of mine,”

  “Partner as in lover?” I asked. “I don’t mind you talking about your ex’s. I’ve got some too y’know,”

I tried to lighten the solemn mood with a giggle.

  “You mean I’m not your first love?” he feigned shock, gasping dramatically and putting his hand over his heart.

  “Oh but you are the truest,” I collapsed into his chest with a laugh.

He held me tight as he lay back on our bed, so I was leaning back onto him.

  “But yes, to answer your question,” he said as he absentmindedly played with a few strands of my hair. “Clara was my old lover. She was someone I met a long time ago,”

I thought about how things would have been with Peter and this Clara.

  “Did she live here like me?” I asked, genuinely curious.

Like I’d told him, I don’t have an issue with him having past lovers. I mean who doesn’t?

  “No,” he said quietly. “We weren’t really bonded like you and I are,”

  “So how did you see her?” I asked as I reached up to brush some of my hair back.

  “Made more trips to the mainland I guess,” he shrugged. “I still only picked up new boys once a month but I went to see her weekly,”

  “But you two weren’t romantically affiliated?” I questioned.

  “Well I wasn’t,” he admitted with a guilty face. “She was very emotionally invested in our… relationship. Whereas I was not,”

  “Oh Peter…” I sighed. “Did you break her heart?”

  “I guess,” he shrugged again. “She started getting really clingy. She didn’t want to come here. I never really found out why but she insisted that our meeting were to take place on the mainland. She began asking me to stay for longer periods of time. Once to the point that Felix came to find me because Neverland’s weather started to turn to a freezing winter. She’d convinced me to stay for weeks at a time more than once,”

  “But she was the only one romantically invested?” I reiterated.

He gave a solemn nod.

  “That’s fucked,” I lay back in the bed and yawned. “How did the encounter go this time?”

  “She seemed the same,” he said carefully. “Like she didn’t even remember that we ended badly,”

  “How so?” I pressed.

  “I came across her in a town market and she ran to me like she was so happy to see me,” he continued.  “She ran to me and wrapped her arms around me like she used to when we hadn’t seen each other for a time. I’m not sure she even realises how long its been,”

He became quiet, thinking.

  “How long has it been?” I could feel my eyelids getting heavy and my voice came out as almost a whisper.

  “Thirty odd years or so,” he brushed some loose hairs from my face, just touching for the sake of touching. “But she left so quickly this time I didn’t even have a chance to ask her why she seems this to be like this. She just said she had errands to run and had to go. That she would see me soon,”

  “That sounds ominous,” I mumbled.

I was processing as much of this as I could in my tired state. I suppose Peter could sense that I was barely awake.

  “Go back to sleep, love,” he kissed my forehead. “We can talk more about it in the morning. Sleep Y/N, we have a big day of celebration to prepare for tomorrow,”

He didn’t have to tell me twice as id already started to drift off from him gently stroking the side of my face.

#peter pan #peter pan ouat #peter pan x reader #peter pan x y/n #peter pan x you #ouat #ouat fanfiction

[chopstickchild]

ok i need to rant for a bit (read at your own risk)

also tw for body image issues

for a bit of background, i do ballet, and im pretty damn serious about it. as in its the centre of my life and i plan to make a career of it.

well my mom is rly supportive about this, but sometimes she gets to be a bit too much. as in extremely insensitive about how her « helping me » makes me feel. the subject of obsession tends to be something important, or some milestone, such as a performance, competition, or audition. in this case it’s two audition videos: one for a prestigious international competition (which could change my life if i got in), and the other video is an audition video for my dream school (and again, life changing if i get in).

These two videos are EXTREMELY important, and we wanted everything to be as perfect as possible, but the focus on perfectionism is where the problem lies. i’ve gotten better about not dragging myself down over every single detail, but my mom on the hand has not. she doesn’t obsess over my dancing (i do that enough already) but over details like lighting, camera angle, the line my leotard makes, my shoe color, my bun angle, the amount of makeup, the video quality, etc. she has a really good eye for those sort of things since she used to be an artist (and majored in fine art), and if she was the one filming my videos there would be no problem there.

But evidently there is a problem (which is why i’m writing this all out cause istg if i don’t i WILL lose it). Actually there’s two, one per video, though the second problem has nothing much to do with everything mentioned before.

The first issue is something that’s been haunting me for two weeks, and not in the good halloween haunting way. The video for the competition was filmed over the course of a few weeks by one of my teachers, and she and my mom have an *interesting* relationship. as in ive learned to brush off my mom cussing her out in car rides or at home (which happened today twice lol). My teacher wouldn’t allow my mom to be in the studio to help with lighting, camera angle, etc., saying that the studio wouldn’t allow more than two people in at a time (a lie, cause when we went with my contemporary teacher for one section of the video my mom was able to go in and film that portion). My teacher is a really well intention person by the way, but since my mom is so similar to how her mom was, being in her prescence triggers her which i think may be why she tried to make it so she wouldn’t have to interact with her as much.

So anyways my teacher and i worked on the audition video and we finally completed it, but the way she filmed it was not up to my moms standards. so we filmed it again. and right now it’s STILL not up to my mom’s standards, but at this point there’s literally nothing we can do. the deadline is in a few days and there’s no way we can refilm it then. in terms of my dancing, i feel pretty satisfied, though it’s not perfect, but i feel ok sending it in. but for thé past few weeks i’ve been constantly hearing how the video isn’t good enough, and how it doesn’t present me well enough, and if my mom could just have filmed the barre and centre i would look so much better. and that if i really want to catch the judges eyes then the video quality would need to be better. and i argue back at that point, saying my dancing should be enough to do that, and that i’m not auditoning for a film school but for a DANCE competition. and i know my mom has a point. we are drawn to things well presented, even if the content may not be the best. but after hearing that my video is not up to par for WEEKS it hurts a lot. and if i ask her to stop focusing so much on that because at this point all that is doing is making us feel unsatisfied with something unchangable, i’m ignored and she goes on saying i don’t understand her point. I’m also told that she’s saying all this because she cares so much and wants me to succeed. and that is all true, but i don’t CARE that she’s saying all this because she wants to help me with my goal. there are so many more productive things to do than fixating on unchangable shit, and there’s a voice inside telling me that if she really cared about me, the real actual me and not the dancer side of me, she would take a moment to understand how much certain things she says hurts. no matter the intentions behind, no matter that she always adds that my dancing wasn’t the problem and that it was all my teachers fault (which also pokes me in a different way), i ALWAYS leave that conversation with an extremely tight knot in my chest and a bunch of self doubt. sometimes when the convo evolves into an argument, my mom tells me that it’s cause she’s stressed about this and the video and because she cares so much, but i’ve reached the point where i don’t give a fuck. i’m stressed too, and i care a TON. i sacrificed so fucking much for this (not to say she hasn’t like good lord i worry so much about her sometimes) but being stressed and caring about something does not excuse harping on about something someone has EXPLICITLY told you to please stop going on a bout and try to let go of. multiple times. which is why i really want to scream sometimes, and why i decided to just let it out here. (it’s worked by the way. as of right now the knot inside has loosened and the negative energy about this problem has almost dissolved, which why i’m now moving on to the second issue)

ISSUE NO. 2- thé audition video for my dream school. now this is a different direction than the other video problem because this video hasn’t been filmed yet. so i should start out with saying that as a by product of doing ballet, i have body image issues. it got worse over the course of the past year because i put on a few pounds. and i know that honestly, i shouldn’t worry too much, but doing an art form where your body is constantly critiques in so many ways kinda has a way of making you always wish it was better. now my mom knows about how i feel about my body, and in the past she has completely invalidated my feelings if i try to talk about it (because in her eyes i’m perfect yaddayaddayadda and i’m just manifesting these insecurities out of nowhere cause i have nothing to be worried about). the thing is tho (and i’m pretty thankful for this) is that she will tell me if i’ve gained weight, and she will help me if i want to lose some and stuff. so it’s like she has this weird mix of telling me to not worry about my weight cause i’m perfectly fine, but also telling me that i need to watch what i eat more and that i need to lose a little weight. and i hate it so much. recently i just stopped weighing myself every morning cause i realized i was literally basing how i felt the whole day off the number on the scale. and honestly i’m so much happier now cause i stopped. everything is the same except that one thing, and i have no intention to start obsessively weighing myself again.

And that brings me to issue two. because we were talking about the video for the school, and my mom said “you need to start weighing yourself every morning again”. well i saw every single color of the rainbow when she said that, and i was enraged. because my instinct was to be angry in order to protect one of my biggest insecurities, my body. the implications that came from telling me i needed to start weighing myself more HURT, and thinking about it right now is making me almost cry. and her saying that also pissed me off SO MUCH. because my mom KNOWS how i feel about my body, about my weight, and my eating habits. i have explicitly stated MANY time that i would prefer if she would not make those little comments about those subjects, and i have let her know how much it hurts me. i don’t think she understood that though, despite the amount of times i’ve completely shut down or started crying. but that one comment is hanging over my head right now, acting as a smoke cloud twisting around my heart and making me have some rlly self deprecating thoughts. and so tomorrow morning if she asks me what my weight is i don’t know what i’ll do. i’m considering just saying something above what ik she wants it to be, no matter what i may actually be, but i’ve also considered just tossing the scale in the rubbish bin. actually won’t do that though cause i would get in a ton of trouble lol. but a problem is that as a result of her comment, i’ve also begun considering starving myself, of making myself throw up, and other unhealthy ways to lose weight because right now, i feel like my body is too fat filled, too squishy for ballet. which is bullshit but the negative voice is drowning the positive one out now.

ok i have gotten all the rant energy out now, and no longer feel like punching a wall, cry screaming, cussing out the next person i see, or any assortment of high negative energy release techniques that would hurt others or myself. if you read this far, props to you cause i sure as hell would not have been able to make it thru that 😂.

also i should add that my mom and i are SUPER close and she honestly a great person in every aspect except certain dance related stuff. i really really appreciate everything she has done for me, all her sacrifices and all the effort she has put in to make sure i am where i am now. it’s just sometimes i feel like she forgets that i’m a person with feelings about topics, not just a dancer. thank you for coming to my tedtalk 😌

[rapeculturerealities]

I was 17 years old, married, a mother of beautiful twin girls, and 12 weeks into my second pregnancy when I woke up to a wet sticky feeling between my legs. I got up and there it was: a light pink discharge. I felt a sense of dread and panic and called for my husband. Off we rushed to the local hospital in our small Indiana town—a Catholic hospital—where I was checked into the ER. After a brief internal exam, I was informed I may be having a miscarriage. I was promptly sent home with instructions to rest, put my feet up, and return if I started bleeding.

The next morning, I began bleeding heavily.

When I returned to the ER, I was told that I was having a miscarriage, and that the embryo had stopped growing properly at eight or nine weeks. There was no chance the pregnancy would progress, but the fetus still had a heartbeat. So, despite my worsening condition, I was told to go home and wait.

I did not have a lot of money back then. I worked two low-paying jobs and was struggling as it was to take care of my two young children. I was certain I could not afford a third trip to the ER just to be sent home again. I took my discharge papers and just figured I’d just try to manage at home.

Later that afternoon, after hours in pain, my bleeding became very heavy.

I went into my bathroom hoping the pain would pass. I am pretty sure it was during that time I passed the embryo. After feeling a large amount of tissue pass my bleeding only became heavier, so heavy that I had put on one of my kids’ diapers to collect the blood, just so I could walk next-door to my mom’s and use the phone. I figured the bleeding would eventually slow down, you know like after giving birth or during a heavy period. I remember thinking if they sent me home twice, no reason to go again. I sat down in my mom’s kitchen to make my phone call. While I was on the phone, however, I suddenly fell to the cold, hard kitchen floor. It felt like I was in a dark tunnel, but I could hear my husband yelling in terror, “Laurie, wake up!”

I couldn’t move. I just felt cold. I could sense my family members around me as we waited for the ambulance to arrive—my husband, my toddler daughters, and my grandmother. But I couldn’t move. All I could do was try to hold on to my life while my daughters were crying in their play area, my husband yelled in panic and my grandmother yelling “call 9-1-1!”. All I could do was lay there feeling cold, somehow present, yet far away.

After EMS brought me back to consciousness, I knew I might be in real trouble because the paramedic I had was a neighbor who had treated me for asthma before. We had always laughed and joked in the past. But he was all business this time. Taking my vitals, asking me questions, keeping me awake—it’s a bit of a blur. Ultimately, there I was right back in that same ER, still cold, still bleeding while hospital workers tried and failed to start a second IV line for a blood transfusion.

One of my clearest memories from that day is when I heard the doctor scream, “Who the fuck sent her home? She could have died.”

I had to have emergency surgery to remove the remaining tissue from my uterus and save my life. The same OB-GYN who gave the order to send me home was still on call when I was brought back in.

I later found out that the doctors at the hospital were not allowed to provide me with the basic care I needed in order to prevent a life-threatening condition because of the facility’s religious affiliation. Someone in my situation should have been offered dilation and curettage—a procedure that removes tissue from the uterus—or another form of miscarriage management.

Instead, I was denied care.

This is because dilation and curettage, also known as D&C, is a method of performing an abortion. At the time, I was staunchly anti-choice, and did not go to the hospital looking for an abortion. I wasn’t interested in ending my pregnancy—to the contrary, my husband and I wanted a healthy pregnancy. But when I found out the pregnancy was ending, I just wanted to get the care I needed. I wanted to be able to return home to my family and work so I could support my children. To this day I’m not sure I would have gotten the D&C I needed even on my third visit had I not passed the embryo in my bathroom alone and with no pain relief.

What if I had returned and there was still a heartbeat?

In the United States, Catholic hospitals are governed by the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. These regulations were written by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, not doctors. These directives prohibit abortions—even during miscarriage and even when necessary to save a woman’s life. This is true even for ectopic pregnancies. When I went to the ER that second time, the doctors could tell that my pregnancy was not viable and that my life was potentially at risk, but that didn’t matter. Because the fetus still had a heartbeat, they were unable to care for me.

I now realize that I’m not alone in this treatment, or lack thereof. It’s estimated that one in six hospital beds in this country are at hospitals and facilities subjected to the Ethical and Religious Directives. For many people—myself included—that facility might be their closest hospital or the only one in their entire community.

What’s worse is that many people don’t realize that religious facilities have these harmful regulations in place. In fact, they might not even realize some facilities are religious at all. This is exactly what happened to me when I was 17: No doctor at my hospital told me that I would have to go to another facility to get the care I needed, and I ended up nearly dead on the table as a result.

This happened to me in Indiana over 20 years ago, but it still really threatens and endangers a lot of people in need of life-saving care all across the country to this day. And things are likely to get even worse: In January, the Trump administration proposed new rules that seek to allow health care institutions or employees to impose their religious beliefs on their patients, regardless of the harm it causes.

The White House proposed a gag rule to restrict family planning funding from clinics and hospitals that conduct or refer for abortion. We have yet to see how far reaching the impact will be.

Women of color are the most at risk as we are more likely to get pregnancy carefrom Catholic hospitals.

Religious freedom is absolutely important in our country. It’s something that should be protected, and people should be allowed to practice their faith, however they choose. But medical care should protect the life and health of the patient—not prioritize the beliefs of religious organizations, providers, or lawmakers with a political agenda.

This is, in the most literal sense, a matter of life and death.

#miscarriage #Ethical and Religious Directives #reproductive rights #Health Care #voices #religion #pregnancy

[castcharmperson]

Speed Trap: Part IV

[Start]

This is by far the longest chapter, coming in at just over 3k. Also the most warning heavy chapter, featuring offscreen violence, kidnapping, arson, and general danger.

It wasn’t his final con, Taako decided, but tonight was his final night. Late nights were always busy, lots of cash to be made, but that was also when real crime tended to happen. He’d been calling Ren so frequently, he was worried she was starting to suspect him. She still took him seriously, always sent back up that he’d watch drive by, but her tone was shifting. He’d hear a pen scratching as he talked, taking notes that he was pretty sure weren’t station protocol. Besides, being around actual criminals was skeeving him out- Taako was may be breaking the law but he wasn’t like them.

He wasn’t like Lup or Kravitz either though, a fact he tried to remind himself of as he took his final bribe for the evening. Whoever this guy was didn’t seem to learn his lesson, speeding off again the second Taako was done with him.

“Asshole.” He should maybe follow him again. He didn’t get a license number to call in- the street lamp was too far away and the sliver of the moon was barely casting a glow. But what would be the point? There wasn’t any more cash to get and the guy had paid a generous donation to the ‘officer spring baseball fund’. No one else was on the empty highway. A little speeding wouldn’t really hurt anyone.

He was already back in his own car, flipping off his flashing light, when he heard tires screech. Turning on his brights along the dark road, he drove ahead only a half mile before seeing the car he’d just pulled over wrecked against the sign of an abandoned Pizza Hut. “What the fuck?”

Taako wasn’t about to jump out of his car and rush in, but something about this whole thing was weird. No one was left at the sight of the crash. Weirder still, light was coming from inside the Pizza Hut. Even if the windows weren’t boarded up, it wouldn’t be open at this hour.

There was a scream, decidedly not belonging to the guy he’d pulled over, and that was too much for Taako to sit around waiting on. He grabbing his flashlight from where he’d tossed it onto the passenger seat, killed the engine on his car, and ran out.

Looking over the wreck showed signs of a struggle. He had to do a double take, but it looked like someone had clawed through the backseat from the trunk. Another scream and he focused on the Pizza Hut. “Fuck, I do not steal enough to deal with this kind of shit,” but Taako crept forward, lowering his center of gravity and keeping out of view from the broken down door.

“Cam, you’ve got to stop screaming or we’re really going to have a problem.”

“Get off me, you sadistic fuck!“ There was the sound of a slap, then of duct tape ripping. Taako peered up, seeing the man he’d pulled over tying up someone apparently named Cam.

“Now now, we had a deal. And then you went and crashed my car.” The man stalked around Cam, circling, as though this was his own personal stage instead of an empty fast food joint. As he turned, for a split second, Taako was terrified they had locked eyes. He dropped down, panting as he scrambled for his cell phone and dialed for Ren.

There were footsteps and Taako ended the call before it could connect. He dodged away from the building, rolling along the gravel as he switched off his flashlight.

“Fuck, I don’t have time for this,” the man sounded put upon, like someone brought rain to his barbecue rather than interrupted his kidnapping. “Lydia’s only a few blocks down, we can walk.”

There was some pretty intense scuffling sounds, but Taako didn’t let curiosity get the better of him. The door to the Pizza Hut was kicked open, and the man was leading Cam out with his hands tied behind his back.

“Listen, Edward, Eddie, come on. Our deal is still good. You don’t have to do this. I can get you anything you want. I’ve got connections, you know that, keeping me alive will bring you so many more-“

“If you don’t shut up,” this Edward guy was so terrifyingly calm. There was a quick movement and Taako caught the glint of a knife. “I will shut you up. Understood, dear?”

Cam nodded and the pair started walking through the grass away from the abandoned lot.

Taako was shaking, sitting behind the corner of the crumbling building, gravel digging into the pants of his stolen uniform. He should get in his car and go home. Get in his car and maybe call Ren. Tell her about suspicious activity by the neighborhood he knew was a few blocks in the direction Edward and Cam were walking. He should turn around and pretend he was never here.

That Cam guy was probably scum, talking about connections, probably worked with this Edward and Lydia duo before they got sick of him. Taako owed him nothing. Taako didn’t owe anyone anything! He should go home.

Instead, he stood, following the pair through the tall grass, hiding in the shadows cast around street lamps while they walked through a set of cookie cutter houses, stopping at one. Cam and Edward walked up the porch, and Taako ducked behind a bush to get out his phone. With one last glance back, he froze. Edward definitely saw him this time. He paused in the doorway after pushing Cam inside. His eyes narrowed, then gave Taako a smile that made his skin crawl. Edward placed a single finger to his lips, winked at him, then turned to go inside.

“I’m going to die,” Taako concluded as he sank back down. He didn’t hang up on Ren for the second time, but he got no signal while hiding in this shrub. “I’m literally going to die.”

There was shouting in the house, nothing Taako could understand, but there was the sound of a car starting. “Fuck,” he didn’t have much time. Scrambling away from the bush, he ran to the door. He didn’t even need to pick the lock, Edward had left it open. “Ohmygod, ohmygod I’m going to die,” he whispered even as he pushed the door open, grateful there weren’t any squeaky hinges, and made his way into the house. It was empty, a lone couch stood with a sheet over it, but there was nothing else.

Lup had taken him to a party in this neighborhood, only a few months ago. Something her boss was hosting or whatever. When they left the party, he and Lup walked around the block to her car and laughed at how every single house they passed was the same. That night had been been full of people and different furniture, but the bones were the same as this house. Taako traced along the wall next to the stairs until he found the breaker box. At the party, it had been covered by the ugliest painting he’d ever seen. The host tried to justify that it was covering the equally ugly metal door to the fuses. “It’d be less ugly if I was looking at the door, ma’am.” He’d said and Lup had to choke down a laugh before she slapped him on the arm and apologized to her boss.

It had been a fun night. He wondered if he and Kravitz had only just missed running into each other.

Taako forced himself to focus, flipping down the switch labelled ‘garage’ just as the telltale sound of a mechanical door started to rise. It stopped, then slammed against concrete. “Old house, old power. Next time we’re breaking and entering for real,” someone who sounded almost like Edward shouted. A door slammed and there were footsteps come towards him again.

“I thought I was pretty clear. Keep quiet about this and we wont have any trouble. This looks like trouble.” Edward still sounded so calm. Taako didn’t think twice before slamming all the fuses, plunging the house into darkness. “Now that wasn’t very nice.”

Taako sprinted for the front door and slammed it behind him. Phone in hand, he tried calling the station again as he ran along the side of the house, ducking below the windows. When the line went through, he could have sobbed. “Ren, oh thank god, get Lup to Mirkwood Court in-“

“Who is this! You think I didn’t see you try to get a call in tonight? Think I haven’t listen to you fake an accent every other week? We do not encourage vigilantism in this city!”

“Ren, listen-“

“You think you’re so clever, don’t you?”

“Ren please! I need Lup-“

“I am going to track your number and-“ Whatever rant she was gearing up for stopped. “Sir, are you okay?”

“No! Ren, there is a hostage situation at 51 Mirkwood Court in Winter county. Please get Lup down here now!”

She sucked in a breath, sound crackling through the phone, drawing whatever dreadful conclusion as to how a civilian could know of a kidnapping. “Sir, please stay on the line, we’re sending someone to you right now.”

“It better be fucking Lup,” he hissed, scrambling around the back of the house as he heard the footsteps crunching on the dewy grass.

“She’s out of the office right now, but-“

“Then whoever you’re sending should pray they’re half as good as she is!”

“Sir, stay on the li-“ But Taako had already hung up. Any more sound and he was going to get caught. He looked back, expecting Edward to be towering over him. Instead, nothing. Then all the lights in the house turned on at the same time.

“We might as well close up here,” Edward said. Fuck, he sounded bored. Was chasing a potential witness not important enough to him? What was wrong with this guy? Taako crouched under one of the windows, watching as a woman of Edward’s height dragged Cam into the living room.

“You wanna do it?” She must be Lydia, Taako concluded, as she brought out a much larger knife.

“Oh no, I got to grab him, you can have this part.” They grinned at each other and there was something sickening about their joy right now. Footsteps clacked closer to the window and Taako dropped down again. “But make it quick, we’re going to have company soon.”

Taako’s hand was over his mouth, trying not to breathe too hard, trying not to sob, not to throw up. What the hell did he care what happened to this Cam guy? He called the cops, did all he could do. Why was he still here?

There was a swish, a slick sound, and a muffled scream that felt like it went on forever. Taako was definitely going to puke if he didn’t move right. now.

He should have ran around the back, ran to his car by the Pizza Hut, and gone home. Instead, he was at the front door again and he kicked it open. “This is the Neverwinter Police! Put your hands up!” He dropped his voice, brandishing his flashlight in a strobe, trying to give the illusion of having a weapon ready.

“Ruining all our fun,” Edward sighed, voice carrying through the house. “Lyd, go, I’ve got this.”

“What about Cam?”

“Oh, well, you know how old houses are. So easy to get lost in.”

There was shuffling, doors slamming, and Taako tried to make himself move forward into the house. Lights flashed behind him, red and blue, and he pushed in further. If he could get through the kitchen, maybe find this Cam guy on the way, and avoid Edward, there was a back door he could-

Car tires screeched and something crashed. Taako jumped, whipping around in a frenzy before realizing the bang was only something that fell over further into the house. Lydia was driving away, it sounded like one of the cop cars was following her, but Taako needed to focus on finding whatever made that noise.

“You know,” Edward started and Taako whipped around again. Fuck, where was he? “These old houses, just the worst electricity. Cheap wiring, so prone to…” A match sizzled and struck. “Bad luck.”

Whatever Edward had been hoping for, this blaze wasn’t it. Taako saw the flames start up from the breaker box, but there was no grand explosion, no dangerous wildfire. The sparks were enough though, the flames were spreading to the floor and smoke filling the room.

“Help!” Another bang, from a closet down the hall to Taako’s right, the opposite way of the kitchen.

“You’ve got to make a choice,” Edward said, and god, he sounded so close, but this time Taako refused to turn around. Fear or foolish bravery, he wasn’t sure which kept him in place, but as the fire crackled louder, he tried to listen for footsteps. “Save yourself, or save Cam. I’ve dumped enough gasoline to burn him alive in ten minutes. However, you wont get out before the real police come in if you don’t forsake him.”

There was a bullhorn outside, one of the officers demanding that hostages be released, that folks come out with their hands up and “We’ll talk about all this, calmly, like rational people!”

Nothing about this guy was ration, Taako knew that. Then again, it wasn’t like he was coming out the front of this house any time soon either. “And you think you’re getting out in time?” If Taako could just hear those stupid footsteps…

“So witty. So brave. Honestly, I’m impressed. If you ever want to quit this fake cop thing, definitely give us a call.”

“How did you-“

“Oh dear, you’re dreadfully unconvincing. Now tick-tock.” A single snap of heel on tile and Taako whipped around, smashing the side of his flashlight against something he really hoped was Edward.

“How convincing was that, dear.” Taako sneered, only enjoying his victory for a moment before more footsteps echoed in over the smoke.

“This is the Neverwinter Police! We gave you a warning, now I need everyone to put their hands- Oh shit, is that a fire?” There was a crackling of a radio as Kravitz called for backup.

Wait, Kravitz was here? Taako could recognize that voice in his sleep, but he would give anything to have misheard.

“Fuck,” Taako whispered. He scrambled back, down the hall, throwing open a closet door as Cam tumbled onto him. “Get the hell out of here and if I ever catch you with those assholes again, I am not rescuing you.”

“Yes officer! Thank you officer!” Cam was practically tripping over his feet, pushing past Taako to run for the back door. He was clutching his hand, blood staining the front of his shirt, and Taako felt sick all over again.

“Officer?” Kravitz turned down the hall and even through the smoke, they could see each other clearly. “T-Taako?”

“Uh, nope. I’m a smoke induced hallucination. You really should get out here, my man. Old houses like this don’t last long under this kind of heat.”

“You’re- you’re not a police officer. You’re a pastry chef and a retail manager.”

“Okay, I specialize in pastries, but I cook other stuff too. Really, Krav, hun, not the time for semantics.” Taako tried to walk past him, tried to get Kravitz to move out of this house. He could hear the beams on the second floor start to creak as they caught fire. “Come on.”

“Why are you wearing a police uniform?”

“Kravitz, this isn’t the- fuck!”

The smart thing to do would have been letting Edward attack. He was behind Kravitz, Kravitz wasn’t paying attention, it would have been an easy escape for Taako. No matter how handsome the officer was, a pretty face wasn’t worth going to jail for, or getting caught in a house fire during a botched kidnapping. Maybe it was more than the pretty face, but Taako was not about to let Kravitz get stabbed. So, like an idiot, he barrelled forward, tackling Edward to the ground.

Kravitz joined the scuffle, but that only succeeded in getting the knife away from Edward. The smoke was thick above them, all the lights of the house flickering in a strange strobe. Taako thought he had the upper hand for a moment. Then he was shoved onto his back. Looking up, he expected death, but it was Kravitz holding him down.

“Tell me you are not working with the Wendor twins!” He shouted, eyes wide like Taako had betrayed him. They’d only just met, what was there to betray?

“The who twins? Look, I’m all for you being strong on top, but he’s getting away!” Taako barely started to struggle when Kravitz released him.

“You’re not working with him.”

“No! I stopped him from killing that other guy. Fuck, who you didn’t see but there was another guy that they took and- whatever! We’ll deal with the details later.” Taako ran down the hall, back into the main living room. He was wheezing, air unbreathable, but Edward was just as affected, swaying as he tried to move to the door, before realizing that’s where the police were and circling back, only to be faced with Taako and Kravitz again. Well, if the blow to the head didn’t knock him out, a concussion was just as good.

Without turning away from their target, Taako moved his hand towards Kravitz. “Gimme your handcuffs.”

“What? No.”

“Krav, trust me,” Taako was already moving forward, keeping Edward’s attention as they circled around the single couch.

“You have done literally nothing to earn my trust.” And yet, the handcuffs flew through the air for Taako to catch.

He lunged at Edward, taking him over the back of the couch. He was hardly successful in keeping him down, but the struggle was enough to get one handcuff on. Edward grabbed Taako’s leg as he scrambled to stand, to get some sort of leverage, and the pain felt impossibly sharp. Another knife? Or was this guy part time Wolverine? Either way, Taako fell back to the ground and Edward rose.

It was distraction enough, and Kravitz secured the remaining cuff. That only slowed Edward. He kept advancing as Taako scrambled backwards until his back hit the wall. A beam above them creaked, a suspended moment in which everyone in the house looked up. Edward stumbled backwards into Kravitz’s grip as the beam fell, bringing a firestorm with it.

“You got him?” Taako asked, forcing himself to his feet. His leg burned, and the stray embers landing on his pants were not helping.

“I got him. Are you okay?”

“Yeah I-” He coughed, bracing a hand against the wall before jerking it back. The heat was unbelievable. This house was not going to stand much longer. “Get out of here! I’ll go out the back.”

Kravitz frowned, but started dragging Edward to the front. Then he paused, and Taako was ready to scream. Why wouldn’t this idiot save himself? “You can’t wear an officer’s uniform. We need to handle this situation.”

“For the love of,” Taako stopped his staggering towards the kitchen. Lit by the eerie orange strobe, Kravitz looked divine. Not the time to appreciate the view, though. “You can handle me all out want later! How about we get out of the burning building first, huh?”

If Kravitz said something more to him, Taako didn’t hear. He turned and limped faster, as more of the second floor collapsed into the living room. Once he was out the back, his leg felt slightly less terrible and he pushed himself to a run. Kravitz would tell the other officers on the scene that there was another criminal escaping and Taako was not about to get caught.

He made it to his car, collapsing into the seat and locking the door. No officers chasing him, no kidnappers to chase. His leg still burned, but he could deal with that once he caught his breath. Taako waited another hour, dressing his leg with the rudimentary first aid kit he kept in the glovebox. No squad cars came his way. However, Edward’s wrecked car sat in front him the entire time. It was just a hunk of scrap metal now, but it felt like it was mocking him.

[Part Three] [Part Five]

Thanks for reading! The hardest part of this chapter was trying to make up a last name for the wonderland twins...

#taz #The Adventure Zone #taakitz #taz taako #taz kravitz #taz wonderland #au #speed trap au #so like. when i was rereading this taako almost feels ooc. cuz this is not a 'good out here' kind of chapter #but i think he's also the kind of guy to say 'fuck it im already dealing with this shit might as well deal with it right' #should i give a warning for cursing? cuz there are soo many f-bombs in this chapter #charmedwords

[derekmsheen]

The Death Of Michael Sheen PT.1

"Hi Derek, it's your Uncle Bob. I'm at the hospital and I wanted to let you know that your father finally passed away about twenty minutes ago. I'm so sorry. We're all here now, do you think you can meet us in the next hour?"

I closed my voicemail and hit "redial". The phone only made it past half of the first ring before he answered.

I told him I was just leaving a club and would rush over immediately. My stomach began to ache and my throat went dry as I thought about having to share this moment with my family. How was I supposed to react? I was suddenly overcome with a wave of confusion and mixed emotion as I tried quickly to reconcile the absolute finality of it all. This was the end.

I remember listening to "Crazy", by Gnarls Barkley, on repeat all the way to the hospital as the numbness washed over me.

I pulled up to the ticket machine at the entrance of the underground parking garage and immediately started to panic at the thought of having to take two separate elevators up to ICU. I took a deep breath, took my ticket and drove down two ramps until I found an empty spot. I walked to the first elevator, made sure I had my phone to keep me focused on something other than the thought of the doors never opening again and trapping me between floors.

The main floor lift was in much better shape than the one that went from the garage to the lobby: the doors were bigger and opened from both directions. There was room to move around and I even spotted a visible ceiling hatch, in case my nightmares came true. "Always know your exits" is a constantly playing mantra in my head, in any situation where I have little control over the space.

As the elevator doors opened to reveal the cream walls of the ICU floor, I could already see the cluster of family huddled near the end of the longish hallways. I took a breath and stepped out of the kill-box.

My Uncle saw me first and broke from the group, which included my Grandmother, my older sister, younger sister, my aunt and my cousin Lisa (who would pass away, unexpectedly two years later. I loved her so much. Very funny).

His face was pale and exhausted. He'd been at the hospital most of his free time, while my father lay in a coma.

I feel like I should explain the events leading up to my father’s fall down the rabbit hole: it's a real doozy.

The week of our wedding (August 12th, 2005) my dad called and wanted to get together beforehand. He said he had our wedding gifts and wanted to catch up: we hadn't really talked or seen much of each other since, what we both came to term as, "the thing that happened".

THE THING THAT HAPPENED:

Sometime around 1998 I was living in a small two bedroom house, close to the airport. I was working at a tiny percussion shop and teaching music in my spare time. It was about this time that my sister called to tell me that she had been diagnosed with the AIDS virus.

She cried into the phone as she told me that dad and grandpa had hung up on her after calling it a "fag disease".

I angrily called my father and I'll never forget the fight we had. I screamed at my grandfather and dad over the phone: how could they be so cruel? How could they leave her out in the cold at a time like this?

“She was your CHILD!”

I broke the handset of my phone, slamming it against a wall and the last contact I had with any of them, for a while anyway, was when my father pulled into my driveway with a pickup truck full of refrigerator sized cardboard boxes.

"You wanna be her friend? Here, you can take care of all of the shit she left behind!" as he unloaded the contents in my driveway and drove away, out of my life again. We wouldn't speak again for almost two years.

As I dragged the giant boxes into the back of my house, I realized it was mostly clothes. So many clothes.

She was a working model and had a lot of designer labels and runway pieces. I spent days trying to organize it. My sister would call me from Florida, twice a week, and tell me how her treatments were progressing. I'd started sending her money to help pay for some experimental treatments and eventually took on some extra students to help out with rent and food. I was wiring her around $300 or more a week and I was happy to get the calls where she had good news on her T-Cell count. Sometimes I got the opposite calls, where her energy was so low she could barely muster words.

Those were the nights I would weep into my hands after hanging up the phone.

After a few months, her roommate would start calling me with updates as my sister was too weak to talk. I wanted to fly out and spend some time with her, but she insisted I stay in Seattle because she didn't want me to see her at her most vulnerable. I understood and continued helping take care of the bills. She eventually wanted me to send her some of her clothes and I was able to send a few small boxes, but with Summer coming, my student load was getting cut in half and I was on a much tighter budget. A 30lb box of clothes to Florida was roughly $140 and I easily had eight monolithic boxes filled with heavy cotton, boiled wool, silk and rayon. Between the money for treatment and shipping I was starting to feel the squeeze, so I took on another job to help ease the burden.

Then I got the call.

She had passed away from complications due to the AIDS virus.

Her roommate spent an hour on the phone with me, while I cried and shared some stories. She let me know they had already planned for a small service but still could use some money for burial costs and arrangements.

I made a couple calls to my grandparents and other family to let them know what happened and to ask if they could help with the funeral costs. It was a resounding no. By this time I wasn't surprised.

The next day I cleaned out my savings and sent her a check for $2500.

I received a call the day of services, from my sister's roommate, that it was a small but lovely wake and several of her friends made it by and there were beautiful things said about her and we both cried. She thanked me for all of my help and wondered if I could send the rest of her belongings to Florida? She would need help with the rent, now that my sister was gone and she could sell a lot of the designer stuff to help cover costs. I wasn't sure how to tell her that I literally had no money left? I couldn't buy a stamp or an envelope to stick it on.

I could hear the disappointment in her voice as I calmly tried to explain just how strapped I was, but she eventually let me go and said she'd check back in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, I got a call from my cousin Lisa who wondered if she and my older sister, Tammy, could come over and look through some of the clothes. Since my sister had officially passed between worlds, it made sense to start getting rid of the five refrigerator boxes full of clothes. I told them to ABSOLUTELY come over, take whatever fit and I began the process of separating the higher end designer labels into a pile to send to Florida.

When they came over it was a relief: the last few days had been a real downer and I was so angry that no one else in my family seemed to even give a shit.

When Lisa and Tammy arrived, the dark clouds instantly lifted and laughter filled my little house for the first time in weeks. We shared stories as they went through the boxes, holding things up to see if they fit or just making fun of some of the crazy stuff she had in her collection. They eventually helped clear a quarter of the room and the cigarette I enjoyed, when they left, was an almost religious experience.

The shock had the same effect as deep heating rub: at first it covered my whole body in an icy chill that felt almost pleasant before a stinging, inescapable hotness blistered every nerve in searing pain. I set the phone back into the cradle, calmly walked into my bedroom and punched through two sheets of drywall.

Directly preceding my drywall attack , my grandmother had called out of the blue (since the embargo, we hadn't talked in months) to let me know, calmly and with a touch of mean-spirited glee, that they were just so glad that my sister was back from Florida, safe and sound. In fact, they were so happy she was alive that they were going to help her get on her feet and co-sign a home loan for her and wasn't that just marvelous that she wasn't dead and isn't it funny that you thought she was dead and we all had a feeling she was faking it?

I managed to barely squeak out a weak protest "...but I helped pay for her funeral?" before I heard my grandfather laughing about it in the background. Then she told me that my sister was very angry at me for giving her clothes away and she thought I should reimburse her for whatever was missing.

They were almost proud of how wounded I was.

What.

The.

Fuck.

...was wrong with these people?

Needless to say, we didn't speak much after that. Until my dad reached out to me, a few days before my wedding, my contact with all of them had been limited to uncomfortable holiday visits or brief birthday calls, but my trust in them had been destroyed.

He walked up to the front door of my work with great effort and once inside he fought to catch his breath leaning on his cane. It was almost surreal to see him like this: his once hulking and powerful body had been reduced to a weakened, skeletal frame and his face was a sallow mask that appeared to be sliding from his skull. His hands were covered in inky bruises, from multiple IV lines and there was a dark purple sore under his right eye.

I hadn't realized just how much time had passed since we'd seen each other, or just how sick he really was.

"Hi son".

His voice was a gravelly, hoarse cough.

"Hey Michael" I returned. I'd started calling him by his name around this time. I knew it hurt him, but seeing him in this state, it didn't bring me that same private joy. His face registered a slight wince and he asked if I was ready to get lunch. I told my boss I'd be back in a couple of hours and I walked him out to the parking lot.

"Hey, before we go, I have something for you and Alanya. It's in the trunk. Can you help me get it out?"

"Yeah...dad" I replied with some confusion.

He pushed a button on the key fob and the Cadillac’s trunk popped open. He painfully lurched towards the car and I could see two paper bags in the otherwise empty trunk.

"I thought I'd bring your wedding presents now, because...well, I don't think I'm going to make it on Saturday?"

"Dad, if this is about Mom, she's fine. Don't let that stop you from coming" I countered. I'd had a feeling he was going to back out, if for no other reason than having to face my mother, who was still full of bitter, outright rage towards him. That thirty four year old grudge hadn't weakened one single bit, if anything, it had become more firmament, like when lava cools and hardens into rock.

He swallowed hard and spoke slowly.

"No, son, that's not it. Look, I'm going in for this surgery tomorrow and I really don't think I'm going to be out by the weekend. My doctor said I'd be ready, but I have a real bad feeling about this and I wanted to make sure I got you guys your presents in case I'm right."

Suddenly and for the first time, I saw something in my father's face that I'd never seen before: regret.

He attempted a weak smile and said “it’s towels and a coffee maker. I know it’s not exciting, but I thought it was stuff you could use.”

(Footnote: as of this writing I still have one of the towels left. I cried the day we threw the other towels away and insisted on holding onto one, just for the memory of it. The coffee maker didn’t make it.)

“Thanks dad, it’s actually exactly what we needed. Grandma must have told you what was on the registry.”

“She did. I just couldn’t afford some of the other stuff, but I wanted to make sure I got you guys something” he countered.

I took the two bags and moved them to the trunk of my car, while he backed the Caddy out and then I jumped into the front seat.

He could barely turn his head, “You wanna go to the burger place up the street?”, he asked.

“Yeah, dad. That sounds great.”

We didn’t speak much, but it was a pleasant lunch.

It was the last time I would ever see him walk again.

The day before my wedding my Uncle called to tell me my dad had complications after his surgery, which I’d just discovered was a routine angioplasty. The complications in question didn’t occur during the surgery, but after when he was being wheeled to ICU. Apparently the nurse decided to take a shortcut through an area under construction. As my father groggily protested, demanding he be secured in the chair, she accidentally hit an obstacle and sent him

Headfirst down two very long flights of stairs. He suffered spinal injuries and required microsurgery to repair the intense fracture of his skull. The prognosis at the time was not good: paralysis from the neck down, speech and vision problems, memory loss. The works.

This would only be the beginning of a nearly unbelievable series of events.

Mere days after my wife and I returned from our honeymoon, I received a call from my Uncle (by this point he would be the only one to call me anymore if there was an emergency. Of which there would be several more) informing me that there had been another accident that had sent my dad back into emergency surgery. Apparently one of the orderlies neglected to secure the side rails and he rolled directly out of bed and his head hit the corner of a side table, before landing on his back. His neck snapped when he hit the table, with the added bonus of re-fracturing his skull, not to mention undoing the delicate spinal fusion surgery when he hit the floor.

In other words: he was officially a fucking mess.

Alanya and I immediately raced down to the hospital, where the rest of the family was. She could visibly see just how agitated I suddenly became when the prospect of having to share space with them was presented. She kept reminding me to focus on my uncle and my dad.

“Remember, it’s not about them. It’s about him” she would keep chanting, over and over like a mantra. Somehow the universe heard her and decided it would be super cool if we all showed up at the exact same time so we could cram into the same series of elevators together.

She secretly grabbed my hand and let me squeeze most of the blood out of her’s. My neck and back were soaked with perspiration by the time the final elevator door opened and I nearly, cartoonishly lunged past my family in order to kiss the floor.

Have I mentioned that I don’t do well in hospitals? Hospitals and elevators.

The entire clan made their way, loudly, down the otherwise serene hallways. Past the rooms of the sleeping, the dying, the infirm, and the attending physician stopped to give us a heads up. Michael had massive spinal and neck injuries and his speech was going to be slow, but he was already making a faster recovery than any of them expected. There were sure to be long term effects as a result of this last round of injuries.

One of those was that he would most certainly be a quadriplegic.

When we made our way to his room I thought I was prepared, but nothing could be further from the truth. His head was covered with stitches and rested inside a metal halo, to keep his spine straight and his head from moving. He looked even thinner than the last time I’d seen him, especially his arms and legs. Christ, it hadn’t even been that long since I’d seen him and he looked like a completely different person and to see him so helpless was hard for me reconcile. He had survived so many times and with an unmitigated streak of luck usually only reserved for fictional movie characters, whose salvation is only written as a plot device to make the hero seem invulnerable. Yet, here he was, broken and handicapped by a flight of stairs and a lapse of judgement.

I suddenly realized the depth of what true comedy really meant:

Life is a series of random circumstances delegated by nothing and with no design, and although there seems to be a pattern, it’s really just our mind’s way of protecting us from the fabric of pure chaos.

Or something like that.

He tried to smile and shared a few platitudes about how the Lord has a plan for him and no matter what the outcome was, he’d just trust in him no matter what his will was. Then, when everyone left the room, he asked me to take him outside and sneak him a cigarette. I had an orderly help him into a wheelchair and Alanya and I wheeled him down the hall, into an elevator and out to the smoking terrace. I had to hold the cigarette in his mouth for him and it seemed so surreal to again help my father break the rules, simply because he asked me and I still desperately seeked that approval from him. When I wheeled him back, his nurse could smell the smoke on him. She took me into the hall to dress me down: his lung capacity was weak, his immune system was lowered and he’d just had minor heart surgery. I tried to appear sincere and apologetic, but underneath, I felt like it was one of the last cigarettes we would smoke together.

I quit a month later, a week before they found him in a coma.

At some point during his convalescence, the hospital administrators (I’m assuming this) felt he was becoming a liability and decided a sound course of action was to move him to a full time nursing facility. His condition had been slowly deteriorating during his stay in ICU and so it was decided, without contacting the family, to move him to a state run home.

This predates Yelp, however. Had they had that handy application to research the quality of the place they’d decided to ship him to, they may have reconsidered. Especially since the Attorney General was already investigating the staff for patient abuse and insurance fraud.

Once they started questioning the why and where of what they had done with my father, the hospital decided to obfuscate Instead of volunteer, which caused a weeks long delay in tracking him down.

Here’s where it all goes off the rails...

Eventually, my grandmother finally succeeded in finding his location and with a sheriff’s deputy present, they found his room bolted shut with a padlock from the outside. Once removed, they opened the door and the smell of rot immediately washed through the hallway in waves of sickness and nausea, followed by flies. Lots of flies.

The curtains were drawn and daylight struggled to punch through the holes in the ratted fabric, as they made their way to the hospital bed where Michael lay on his back on a hospital sheet, now yellowed with sweat and blackened with dried human waste. He was unresponsive and when the ambulance arrived, the paramedics noted that his diaper appeared to have been last changed a couple of weeks prior. The decay was so bad that parts of the sheet and diaper had fused to his skin and the flies had been feeding and laying eggs on and in him. The final prognosis, once he was returned to ICU, was that the necrosis caused by the lack of care had created a staph infection that was now in his bone marrow.

It was very unlikely that he would recover, but they kept him on life support for a few weeks in the hopes that his condition might improve.

I only visited him once during this period. I read a copy of Time magazine to him, as suggested by his attending nurse. She told me that coma patients were sometimes very aware of their surroundings and that any positive stimulus might help them recover.

About ten minutes into an article about Guantanamo, my dad opened his eyes and looked at me. He swallowed and licked his lips, trying to bring moisture back to his mouth in an attempt to communicate. I just sat, stunned, as he struggled to speak.

[lenixsocial]

Touched A Nerve...

Trump To Propose Medicare Cuts

Well, I haven't posted a long-form rant in awhile. But this hits far too close to home to ignore.

Let me say this: Beginning in 2007-08, I began experiencing a set of symptoms that felt like simple muscle fatigue, except that I was utterly depleted some days. I'd work 40-50 hours a week, sometimes more, selling electronics and later mattresses. I loved my job. Even after all those years, and all that crap I dealt with, I loved my job. They were always fair to me, and I gained the respect and admiration of everyone who worked there. I became known as a bit of a problem solver, a troubleshooter.

Everything seemed to be going well, then I started falling asleep on the sales floor, while speaking to customers. This happened ten, perhaps fifteen times, and then I also began to fall over, randomly. It was about this time that during sleep one night, I awoke unable to breathe. Thinking this was temporary, I tried propping myself up and all sorts of things. I finally just sat in a chair and slept. In fact, that was the only position I could breathe in (aside from standing).

Freaking out, my primary care doctor sent me to a specialist who ran two sleep studies and determined that I had obstructive sleep apnea. But that's not all... The apnea was the first diagnosis in a tree of diagnoses. Shortly after this, the specialist took X-rays of my chest and determined I had bilateral diaphragm paralysis (or for those who need a refresher: the muscle that stimulates your lungs to inhale and exhale) does not work on me, anymore. This means I have the appearance outwardly of "seething" or "in discomfort" as I use my pectoral and back muscles to compensate and force out deeper breaths (my normal resting ones are very shallow).

I continued to work. I'm a liberal, but I was brought up in a very conservative family, and in a very conservative area. My father taught me that you don't take welfare unless you need it. I felt I could still work, and didn't need it. Plus, I also figured that it'd take months to be approved, and my wife and I and our financial situation wasn't going to take any kind of hit like that. One person working is not easy to live off of. I continued going to doctors to treat these strange maladies that seemed to creep up overnight.

My specialist decided to send me to a neurologist who in turn sent me to two more, as they all had more experience than the one previous. Finally ending with who I see now. He took blood tests, ran them twice to make sure, sent them to two different labs, and came up with a conclusion. "You have Pompe Disease" he said to me. I had no idea what that was. Some vague inkling only from reading it on WebMD. I came home and did research. It's a form of muscular dystrophy, autosomal and recessive. My parents both gave me the mutated and deleted alleles that combined to give me this.

The disease (or rather the late onset variant I have) has a whole host of things that can occur such as: tongue enlargement, hearing loss, muscle wasting, limb-girdle muscle loss, paralyzed diaphragm, sleep apnea... you get the picture. Less than 60,000 people have it, and it's considered rare and an orphan disease.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. When I first got diagnosed, I was still working 40+ hours a week, selling beds. By this point my fellow associates were plainly aware of my disability (as was management), and I was given a chair to rest on, and assistance putting stock away, and almost every other task. I felt I could still work. Then came July 31st 2016. A day I will always recall. On that day, like any other I stood at the cash register and my right leg burned like fire, then went numb. Not asleep. Numb. I couldn't feel it at all. It was in the middle of a sales rush and I couldn't move to help people. I managed to grab onto chairs, walls, doorframes -- whatever was around -- and pull myself on one good leg back to the office. I called management and had my direct manager and another one hoist me up and basically carry me out to the car, as my wife had come to get me.

Several weeks of therapy, and a EMP test (shoving needles into your body and shocking you ...yeah it's as fun as it sounds) and applying for short term disability through my employer yielded the recommendation that I be put on Lumizyme, the genetic replacement therapy that is used to treat Pompe. I felt lousy. Pretty much daily. Bored, alone, scared.

I applied for Social Security and got approved and quit my job of 14 years so I could fight this thing. There's no cure for it. It slowly turns every skeletal muscle in your body to sludge. It makes it so you lose the ability to move without aid of a wheelchair, and in a final act of terribleness, it suffocates you or drowns you in your own fluids. It's not pretty.

After three failed tests to get myself into a study (everything would've been free), I was told I needed to begin therapy ASAP. I did this. Lumizyme costs close to $220,000 a year without insurance. You also have to take the therapy for the rest of your life. Bi-Weekly. With my wife's plan it's taken down to $6,400. That's still out of my ability to pay off, so we're getting help for assistance programs. I can only imagine what this would be like for someone WITHOUT insurance.

Anyhow, the treatments are fine. 8 hour sessions sitting around making sure the genetic therapy (dispensed into the arm through an IV) doesn't randomly kill me. Then comes a week of ups and downs. The day after I feel exhausted and depleted, and don't want to exert myself much. The day after that I typically have a lot more energy, then the next four are a steady downturn. All sorts of weird pains and burning flushes, heat flashes, night sweats, cold chills, dizziness, nausea, weakness, migraines. So debilitating that I can't do anything and end up napping in my chair because it's literally all I can do.

Now, I have massive digestion issues. They thought they saw a gallstone but it disappeared and now, after seeing a GI doctor, he determined that a endoscopy would be best to see why my GERD is so bad. Nothing seems to control it despite me being on a fairly rigorous battery of control meds.

Yes, I have so much medical debt I can't keep on top of it. I'll likely have to file bankruptcy to clear all of it. My wife and I manage (if but barely) to live month to month off of SS and her checks from being a cashier 40+ hours a week. If I could go to work; trust me I would. I loved helping people. I loved fixing problems, I loved learning and selling. I loved my coworkers and customers. I miss the daily contact more than anything...but I'm wobbly on my legs, my center of balance is all off, I depend on the cane, but I can't stand without an object to lean into because I can't breathe adequately. I have strings of days where I get disgustingly sick, and some days I spend more time in the bathroom than I do in the living room. I'm a liability. I'm a fall risk, I get random sweats, my shoulders and back muscles ache so bad after washing dishes for ten minutes, there's no way I could stand up for an eight hour shift. It's piercing, gnashing, burning pain. It's muscles dying.

Ask yourself this, GOP: if you lump everyone in as "cheats", that the system is being taken advantage of, then what of us who depend on this? Who have cancer? Who are on death's doorstep? Take a step back and ask yourself: Do I have a right to take away access to affordable healthcare do I have the right to take away money that these people need to survive...to pay their massive debt they've incurred? Not everyone is a real estate magnate and owns eight golf courses and a fucking private island or a yacht.

And I'm not worthless because I'm not in that sect. You need to stop playing games with programs that don't cost you a damn thing in order to find pet projects like a xenophobic border wall or a multi million dollar arms deal. These programs are essential. Not everybody is faking, not everyone is taking advantage of it. And not every disability is the same, or is readily visible.

As for me? I will continue getting the treatments I need to continue living, despite all the side effects they're causing me and hope to all hell that I don't lose the income I'm getting that's keeping me afloat.

#Pompe Disease #politics #medicare

[horror-sc0pe]

People are the way they are for a reason. I'm paranoid, anxious, insecure, and lonely. There hasnt been a lot of times that anyone made me feel secure and safe with myself or them.

It wasnt fun spending 2nd - 6th grade hearing how big my teeth were and how weird I was for liking anime, and that wouldn't have been too bad if it didn't adapt into something worse.

It wasnt fun spending 7th - 12th grade upgrading the teasing to harassment. " You look like a horse" "You're fake and your boyfriend is using you" "Whats wrong with your face" "You look like a holocaust victim"

Its not fun when your first boyfriend is cheating on you, multiple times with multiple people, but you're hearing it from his brothers friends who are being dicks just to fuck things up, or hearing it on formspring where everyone else was  already spewing negative things. Its not fun when someone finally steps up and sends you screenshots of proof and you just wasted a year thinking it was his brothers friends, when you find out after things are true. And it wasnt fun having his mom call me and my mom sluts or rude bc we treated him better than she did and she was jealous. It wasnt fun when she only allowed him to see me outside of school, once or twice a month and in that time all he did was try to touch me and force things on me after I said no and wasnt ready.

Its not fun when the week you and your second boyfriend get together, hes kicked out of his house to go live in maryland and in that month 1/2 time, you only see him for a week before he changes his tumblr name to the name of another girl and breaks up with you after.

Its not fun when your 3rd boyfriend doesnt let you break up with them because you were ambushed by him right after you got rejected and made you feel wanted when you previously didnt, then realize the mistake and try to be truthful, but he wont let you. Then starts taking his anger out on you by saying everything you like is dumb and treats you like a dog. Literally. And when he finally lets the break up happen, stalks you for the next year, contacting your friends, or have strangers message you, shows up in public places, and letters begging for you back, and that theres nothing left to live for. It definitely didnt make you feel guilty and anxious because you did make a mistake, but you also tried to end it in the beginning.

Its not fun when your 4th boyfriend actually gets contacted the second your relationship status goes up with a threat from the 3rd boyfriend saying that he's gonna get you back. Its not fun when your 4th boyfriend tells you he has cancer, he's adopted, and he's been sexually abused. Will text you in the middle of the night saying he took a bunch of pills because he was trying to kill himself. Sexually abuse you. Tell his friends that you tell him to starve himself (when it never happened), attacked you online, and lets his friends do the same. Its not fun when he says hes going to the hospital for surgery the exact day you asked him to hang out and a half assed aplogy months later.

Its not fun when your 5th boyfriend is actually the best you've had, but his (ex) best friend spends a year giving him ultimatums, writing on twitter that you're in love with someone else, you killed his cat, you're only with him for money, calling your store asking for you, you can overdose on all the pills you're taking for your "fake" anxiety, you're  a cunt and she knows where you live. Its not fun when you feel like you're the reason he's having a hard time bc he's put in the situation too and neither of you can do anything about it. When all you did was exist and its hard to enjoy a relationship when its being ripped apart (even though lies) online, constantly.

Its not fun losing all your friends in a couple of months. Getting your face put on a horses. Told that you're gonna be recorded running with retarded horse music in the background. Having someone you care about attempt suicide. Being 'neighed' at in the mall or at school. Even saying you have anxiety and others telling you "yeah well I deal with this, this and this and have anxiety but I can do it, you're being immature" doesn't make anything feel good. Ive already written so much and its amazing how much more is left that I didnt say. Yikes.

I repeat this so many times. I keep saying it over and over. Ive told a lot of people. But it's never satisfying. I never feel heard enough. That's just another me problem. Im on medications now, I have friends now, I'm older now, and yet I have such a hard time moving forward. When I take a step in the right direction, I have a panic attack and feel even worse about myself. I tried going to school for cosmetology, 2 months in and I found myself in the bathroom crying, holding my knees and texting my mom to get me out of there. Same with a job. And every time I break down, I just stay there bc whenever I take a step, its gonna go backwards again. I'm not an adult. I'm barely a person. Why do I constantly feel like my experiences need to be heard. No one gives a fuck they all have their own problems. Its not anything new, this already happened, people have it worse and raise so much higher than I can. Even hanging out with friends my nervous system feels overwhelmed after a couple of hours. OH WAIT I KNOW IVE SAID THAT IN OTHER POSTS TOO. Well aren't I just a special snowflake. Best part is I don't even know how to build a wall around myself to keep my emotions protected till someone breaks it down. I really dont know how to do it. Life's a mess. Idk how people get places successfully. 

#rant

[scarlett-carson]

Its funny, but not in a HA HA HA kind of way

things have been...all over the godsdamn place of late ive been busy ive been broken ive been, a bit under construction of late. there was a bit of a phoenixing going on behind the scenes and maybe not everyone knew it. or maybe they did and i am not as lowkey as i fancy myself to be sometimes. there was a bit of a semi-public accidental crash recently, so... it doesnt matter. no, i mean it totally matters but thats...not the point of this recently, i went on vacation. there was a road trip with my sister and it was all kinds of things. it was, above all....FUCKING NECESSARY but. to the point of this post:: we were driving back from a week in daytona and it was the middle of the night and we were talking about things and stuff and nonsense and serious stuff and bullshit and like...everything...because that is kind of this thing that we do sometimes and shes had kind of a rough go in her own way and i think we both sort of needed a quality 3am talk about what one wants to do when they realize they dont have to camp out at rock bottom anymore and that there are options beyond "idk, just not die i guess" and in all of the talk about all of the things, she asked me why i stopped writing. (because she is a cunt and kind of a sadist) i dont have an answer for that i have a list of like...bullshit excuses for why i dont write depression lack of focus nothing to say impostor syndrome "i cant i have rehearsal" etc etc etc but i didnt have an ANSWER in that moment but i did tell her that recently, id been thinking a whole lot about how i miss doing slam and spoken word. that even if i dont have the stamina to write longform anything, doesnt mean i dont have things to say and that maybe it would be a way to get my legs back under me but i dont know because its been a really REALLY long time and what if i dont know how anymore and the rules have changed and like nothing i have to say is interesting to anyone else or like what if there is something i feel deep all the way into my marrow, but like someone else can say it better? this bitch has the audacity to pull over to the side of the road. like in the middle of fucking NOWHERE mountainsville, kentucky or wherever the fuck we were...and goes "so, its funny you should mention THAT. its funny, but not in a HA HA HA kind of way. i have to show you this thing. but its going to kick you in the face. long dramatic pause, because she knows just a little bit too much about my life possibly twice" ...and then shows me the following spoken word piece on her spotify playlist: ~~~~~~~ **We never promised each other much, we were always just kind of touch and go. as if we knew we'd know that somehow we'd grow differently. so we did and we do and none of this is to say that it wasn't worth going through or that i care any less about you. shoulders to lean on are hard to come by. I know because there were times I would have broken my own neck just so that I'd have one of my own to cry on. And I remember when each finger was a pawn moving slowly across the chessboard of your body and we made each game last. Passed up each avenue of attack because neither one of us were trying to win So how do we begin again when that feels like now and this feels like then? When all I can do is tell you "if you've got something that needs saying, tonight I'm paying dues." I've got a pocket full of blues and two pennies to rub together Which means I'm wealthy enough that I can finally afford to pay attention. I'm listening. And I know right now I'm somehow like that kid sitting in math class, terribly aware of his first boner. It's hard. But difficulty has never been a good enough reason to describe the effort it takes to make the good times and the memories worth having. And they were and they are and I wouldn't have come this far if you weren't worth the sleepless nights where abandoned appetites of a heart, now rail-thin, because of the constant hunger strikes. In your absence, I'm finding value, because what starves you carves you, and I'm chipping away the rough edges of a statue built to memorialize everything we've been through. And when I'm done, I'm gonna set it against the backdrop of the sun and stare just no matter where I go, it'll always be etched into the back of my mind, stenciled in behind whatever future I have left to find. Maybe we were never meant to last. Maybe we're only meant to reflect fondly upon a past where we cast ourselves in the lead role of a one-year sitcom. One that had the critics standing, while putting hand to palm, in an ovation we're still getting curtain calls for. And the stage floor was a graveyard for the freshly cut roses that we waded through to take our bows and say thank you. It was beautiful. And it was and it is and none of it was ever show-biz. But we were waiting for lights to dim on a stage where we set ourselves to music. As if the swelling violins could ever mimic the hidden moments found in the theatre where we kept audiences stapled to their seats. And they watched us, looking for vacancies they could occupy in the spaces between our heartbeats, as if silence was a room for rent, and we both went "shh." But the beats themselves: they were loud enough to drown out the applause. And we laughed at the ushers left looking in the aisles for the dropped jaws of patrons who still can't believe we took time to find beauty in the flaws we possess. That there's only something better to be found in allowing our collective damage to coalesce. And all we confess of ourselves forever is that we will make it through this. We're gonna make it through this, like a big-ass jug of kool-aid with legs and arms busting through a brick wall to quench the thirst of our loneliness and say "fuck yeah." Yes, I miss you. When I'm not looking, the softest parts of me will issue restraining orders. Not the kind that define borders or boundaries; these are the kind that will keep me in place when I ask "please, call me when you get there." Because every somewhere I go to, is just another place that reminds me I miss you. And my broken heart is where I keep the scar-tissue that I used to dry my eyes when a tear tries to make a break for it. I've built my eyelids into an Alcatraz, where every prisoner has a parole board meeting scheduled for yesterday. And they played dominoes until time comes full circle, like a sunrise, and today tries to set them free because they'll be locked up here until I let them go, until it's safe to let you know you're my best friend. And that some things end so that other things can begin. Sometimes an ending can be an origin. That history is a resin that can keep two people stuck together, that change can be a tether if you let it. I'll always want to kiss you. Or touch you. Or do that thing that drives you crazy. And by that, I mean you literally go crazy when I call you "cranky pants." Sorry, but it makes me laugh. And that's important to someone who's given more than half of their life to tragedy. I keep your side of the bed empty with a just-in-case mentality of that hope's middle name is maybe and maybe you miss me too. One day, you and I are going to make it through this. And we'll look back and we'll realize that we have, and we did, promise. PROMISE--shane koyczan** ~~~~~ go ahead and take a minute take all the time you need because i needed fucking 20 minutes and i am pretty sure i stopped breathing we sat there in dead silence at almost 4 am on a dark as mountain road and she just held my hand while silent tears fell out of my stupid fucking face. because, like she knew she would be... she was not wrong. she was so very very not wrong. i got back to chicago on monday i have spent the last few days (still not writing) debating like...what to do with this. do i post it on Other Social Media? do i text a youtube link? do i tag everyone who crossed my mind as i listened to it the first time? (for the record, it is probably exactly who you expect, AND...other people you wouldnt so, there's been some unpacking too like "why them, though") do i sit in the corner of my shower and just cry about it for a while until it shifts from "pathetic" to "cathardic" and do i even remember where that line IS anymore? and like...sure i could direct send it but would they even read it? would they get it? would they understand? ...does it fucking matter what they think? and in all of the debating and unpacking i realized one thing: not really, no. things that resonate with ME, wont always register with Person X--certainly not always in the same way--and like...that is kind of okay, actually they dont have to get it its not for them its my thing other people will think its pretty cool, though and i can show them and those people will get excited...it only becomes problematic when Person X disregards that it resonates at all that is a dick move and like...if i, as a person. as a fucking force with which to be reckoned...resonate with so many people WHY should i keep trying to share that resonance with people who just kind of "meh" about it when i could just show it to the other people who think its pretty cool. so fuck it i will put it here and people can see it and they can think that its pretty cool or "meh" and thats ok but i should probably stop being my own Problematic Person X...