#ANYWAY posting & logging off . this was hours and hours worth of work holy shit

[drainflyclub]

High Score

By M. M. Sheridan

The blood always smelt the worst. Not the times that they shit themselves, or had sat in their own piss in fear. Not the sour burnt smell of spent ammunition. No, the blood smelt the worst, as it settled in between the grout on the tiles and sprayed onto the painted walls. That rust smell which left a taste in the back of your mouth, coated it in something that wouldn’t wash out with toothpaste or water or whisky. Frank swallowed a few times and the taste got worse. There was a lot of blood. 

A twenty minutes ago a young man, looking agitated, ran into his local elementary school and unloaded several clips worth of bullets into the bodies of the children there, and a few teachers too. And himself, he guessed. A few had been dragged out by responding officers and thrown in ambulances, some would probably not make it. Others walked out in shock, or wailing, or throwing up, running awkwardly toward their tearful parents and the police who had that usual pained look on their faces. A lot more were lying in crumpled heaps around the building, going white and red under the strip lights. The shooter joined them in death, the same as them now, just a husk on the floor with a hole in his head, pumping blood through the lino, soaking into the concrete, into the foundation, then eventually into the dirt. 

“How many?” One of the officers near him asked. 

He stood up, “No idea. This room alone, maybe ten, fifteen, not including that piece of shit.”

“Jesus.” 

“Yeah.”

Frank walked out of the class and down the hall past several more bodies being checked by paramedics, pointlessly. One was balled up between lockers, two were missing parts of their heads or face. He pushed through a side door into the fresh air of the outside, listening to the screaming of sirens and journalists clamouring for quotes. He fell against the side of the building and put his head in his hands. Third one of his career. His clothes smelt like blood. His hands smelt like blood. 

“What the fuck do you mean?” 

“There was an active shooter at Letztelektion Secondary. Maybe still active.”

“Shit, how?”

“Just get there.” 

The radio was barely audible over the siren singing and her own blood pumping in her ears. Detective Sauer was heading toward the school not as an officer, but as a parent. Out on a normal follow up call and then the radio came to life. Fuck fuck fuck. Please, please, please. 

The police cordon was already up, special forces were stood around the building, a few with their rifles guiding kids out, searching them one by one at the entrance. Her mouth dried up. At least if they were calm the shooting was over. She ran over to one of the on scene officers.

“Is the shooter neautralised?” 

“Yes, shot by the special forces while running out the back of the school.”

She wanted to thank God but she couldn’t yet. She eyed up the children, panic rising in her stomach. 

“I need to go in.” 

The officer nodded and waved her through. 

The power had gone out in the school, probably to get the alarms to turn off. It was quiet, most of the children already evacuated. Sauer breathed through her mouth and stopped herself heaving. Mrs. Roth’s classroom. Mrs. Roth’s classroom. Mrs. Roth’s classroom. She jogged down the hallways glancing at all the classroom doors, shoes echoing off the tiles, click click click click click. The door was open, no, splinters of a door frame and a cheap lock on the ground. Broken. Oh fuck, oh God no. Mrs. Roth was lying on the floor at the front of the class, a red puddle behind her back and three red dots on her chest. She felt her breath catch and realised she was already crying. Stepping between the desks, slowly, painfully, torturing herself. Please, please, please. And she was there, her blonde hair wet and dyed crimson. She was on her knees and grabbing her cold hand, limply pressing it into hers, she felt her throat growing tighter and something animal coming out, but she heard no sound. 

Harry pulled his jacket in as he walked up his drive. The wind was bitter as hell this time of year, and he shrugged off the idea of going hunting. All the birds and deer would be daft to go out in this weather, and so would he. 

He sat down for breakfast with the letters he picked up, thumbing through the bills and spam. Not even fleeing to the wild countryside had managed to stop this shit getting through. He left them in a pile and opened the newspaper while he let his toast and tea get cold. 

“Bloody hell.”

Front page, shooting at a German school. Twelve dead including the shooter. He shook his head and wondered why someone would do such a thing. He kept reading, no details of the gunman, except he was as student. What a waste, what a huge waste. So soon after the two shootings in the US earlier this year. Stories like this made him feel particularly wretched since he’d had children, but he couldn’t stop reading. Eventually the text ended and he moved onto another story, something about social media, so he skipped it, and read a particularly boring article about economic problems in Europe. 

His son came downstairs, and Harry looked at the time. 10:30. Hell, when would he start acting like an adult? 

“Morning Sam.” 

He didn't say anything back, just grunted. A perpetual teenager, nearly twenty and still jobless, educationaless. Give him time, give him time, his ex-wife had always told him. Well, she didn’t have to live with him. 

“Going to do some job hunting today?”

Harry knew he hated that question, not quite sure why he asked it again but feeling some parental duty to do so. Sam responded with a glare and took a bottle of orange juice upstairs. Yes, that was par for the course, standard procedure. Why hadn’t he had these problems with Jen, she’d grown up alright, moved to the city, managed to grab a solid job doing something techy. He didn’t much fancy spending his retirement babysitting, but it seemed more like that every day. Oh well, maybe we just needed to give him time. Yeah, sure thing, that was what the lazy shit needed. Time. 

“Close the fucking door mom!” 

That goddamn bitch, didn’t she respect his privacy at all? That was the third time she’d just burst in this week. Didn’t she understand knocking? Dumb bitch. 

He shook his computer mouse and woke up the screen, jumping straight online. He stuck on some music and cracked open a warm beer sitting next to his bed. He perched on the end and started clicking around. Holy shit, a new shooting - US, wow, 36 dead and nearly a hundred injured. Hell. 

Time to get to work, then. He clicked the link in his bookmark bar and logged in. His inbox was already full so he took a few minutes clicking mindlessly through the endless abuse and praise, news alerts, spam. He clicked off it and went to create a new post. Few things to update today, the tables needed another bump and a new stickied post needed to be put up. What a hassle, he’d only started this as a joke, something to do to kill time. Oh well, he supposed he needed something to do, the trailer was cramped and the site barely generated enough money for beer and pizza. Better this than being bored. 

This didn’t feel as good as Jaewon had hoped. If anything he felt a little bit ill. He looked down at his hand and pulled off his gloves. They were shaking, hard. He reached up and pushed his fringe out of his eyes. When he pulled them back he saw they were smeared with red. It made him heave a little bit. No, this wasn’t fear, it couldn’t be, I’m brave, I’m brave. This is adrenaline, surely. 

He looked down at the ground, a flower of blood sprayed out onto the floor and wall in front of him. That cunt wasn’t looking so pretty now. Still, he didn’t like how brutal it all looked. He pulled a plastic bag from under the teacher’s desk and draped it gently over her mutilated face. He nearly got up but realised her short dress had come down. He started sweating. Why not? He reached out to feel her breast, pulling it a little out the fabric to see it better. Still warm. His cock stirred a little bit. Ah, the good times we could have had. 

He shook his head and stood up, now was not the time. Heading out to the door, he stretched his neck from side. Gotta warm up. He checked his gun, nearly out of bullets. Should have dumped less into her he guessed. Too late now, he supposed, it was time for his big show anyway. 

Jaewon kicked through the front doors of the university and held his gun high, firing it into the air. 

“Nop-eun jeomsu! Nop-eun jeomsu! Nop-eun jeomsu!”

He screamed until the police’s bullets tore through his lungs and brain, dropping him dead on the steps. 

Frank sat at bar. It wasn’t even four in the afternoon yet and he was already buzzed. It had been a hard day, but maybe the easiest decision he’d ever made. 

“You can’t do it, Frankie.” 

“Sorry Don.” 

He felt a little lighter for the first time in years. He hate to let down the guys but he had to look after himself, the sleepless nights were getting too much, and his work was suffering. Best to quit, do something else. Maybe private investigation work. Or he could train at the academy. Not right now though, right now he wanted to drink. 

The last shooting set him over the edge. Couple of high school kids, boyfriend and girlfriend. Wasn’t even in his jurisdiction but the guys came to him for help after hearing about his work at the elementary school. Shitty stuff, fucked up. They’d been laughing the whole time, got it on the security tapes, which he sat through and watched the whole damned thing. Boyfriend had lived, girlfriend had shot herself first, and he chickened out. Cowards, both of them. They wanted his advice on questioning them. 

It was too painful for him though, he wrote a small report on his advice, emailed it over, and spent the next two weeks unable to sleep for more than an hour or two a night. He still remembered some of the kids’ names, and they went through his head as he pictured the bodies. At the start of the third week, he walked into his bosses office and slapped his resignation on the desk. It was an easy choice. Harvey. Ellie. Leo. Bobby. Harper. Gracie. Miles. Hm, he was remembering less now. He ordered another drink hoping to forget the rest. 

Obsessed wasn’t a word Harry liked to use, but he was probably obsessed. It started with that article on the German school shooting. Eventually curiosity got the better of him and he needed to know the name of the shooter. Then he needed to know what his family was like. Then his home life. School life. Love life. 

First it started as professional insight. His psychiatry degree was now hanging uselessly on the wall, so why not put it to good use and try to find out what made this man, no, this child, work? Then he found himself gathering news articles online, putting them together in a spreadsheet. He had dreams of coming up with some great breakthrough, maybe a way to spot shooters before they did what they did. Pipe dreams of course, the last pipe dreams of an old man, so he let himself fantisize. Then why not help other people? Soon he’d bought a domain and set up a website, looking at shooting cases, gathering information on motives, details of the event - old ones, new ones. He started getting a little bit of traffic, people wanted more, old policemen, students researching, sometimes just morbidly curious people. So he did more. He even contacted police involved in the case to see if he could get some additional details, but he never made it very far. One call to an old US based detective seemed promising as he did consultancy work, but Harry was told he’d retired and couldn’t get any further. Oh well, no harm. 

Hunting season had been a bust and he had crawled back to his office to work on the site like most mornings. Maybe look at re-formatting the layout to make it easier to search for information. He also had to start work on that Korean shooting, heavy stuff. It was still fresh but maybe he could scour social media to get some leads. He checked his email to see if any complaints or comments had come in, and to his surprise there was one new one, sent from someone calling themselves hanna66. The email’s subject was two words, “High Score”. 

Detective Sauer was no longer human. Her daughter was dead. Her husband had left. She had no other children, no family she wanted to speak to, no pets. What she did have was rage, burning blinding rage somewhere deep inside her, wrapped in apathy. The rest of the world seemed pointless now, everyone walking around doing mundane bullshit like heading to work, or shopping, or going to eat out, or walking through the park. What was the point? None of this appealed to her now. She only had a single thing on her mind and that single thing was Elise. Elise at two years old, laughing at the crunchiness of the leaves in Autumn. Elise at six years old, screaming as her foot touched seaweed for the first time. Elise at ten years old sitting with her on a ferris wheel, cheering as she stuffed her face with candy. Elise at twelve years old crying because she’d gotten in trouble for kissing a boy. Elise at fourteen years old lying dead with a hole in her head, her pretty hair stained.

She let the image sit in her head and turn her stomach. Trying to ignore it, sleep it away, shake it off, nothing worked. It was burnt there forever. She instead had a little blog where she wrote about Elise’s life, what she dreamed she would do, what she wished she could tell her, what she hoped she would be like today, how much she dearly, dearly, dearly missed her. 

When she wasn’t writing, she read a lot about school shootings. She’d found a few websites and forums dedicated to them. Some she liked more than others. Some were crass and seemed to treat the events like pornography, making jokes or commenting gleefully how terrible it was. Some were professional, like a little site which analysed the shootings after they happened. She often read the entry on Hans Richter. The little bastard who’d taken her beautiful little girl away from her. She would read it until she was shaking and crying from the anger. Bullied at home. Alcoholic father. Nothing that gave him the right to do what he did, not that anything could justify it. She would stare at the screen and wonder why why why. 

“You’ve got to stop torturing yourself like this.” Her husband would say.

“You don’t understand! I have to know why!” She would cry back.

“Why do you have to know?” “I have to. I have to do it for Elise. You don’t get it. You don’t care” 

“Hey, she was my fucking daughter too!” 

“Then fucking act like it!”

Sauer was feeling particularly down. It was one of those grey days that dragged on endlessly, so she booted up her computer to do a little blogging, get out her thoughts and feelings. Oh, what’s this? The blog was gone. Damn internet, oh no, oh fuck. She wasn’t good with computers. Where was it? She clicked around a bit. Nothing. Damn, damn, damn this machine. She looked through her drawers, the address was written down somewhere. She pulled them out one by one, digging through them fast, scattering papers everywhere. She clicked around more on the screen but still couldn’t find it. Fuck fuck fuck. Not like this, I can’t lose my Elise again. No, no, calm now. She figured she could search for it. She searched for Elise. 25 million results. Okay, okay. Hans Richter. Still millions of results, mostly news articles. Elise Sauer. Fewer news articles now, and then her blog halfway down the page. Thank God, she sighed and went to click on it. Just under the link was another one, HIGH SCORE - HANS RICHTER - VICTIMS. What was this? She hadn’t seen that before, and she clicked, almost by impulse. 

A list, a list of names. Eleven names. Eleven names with pictures next to them. There, near the top of the list, her little girl, Elise, name and photo, and a comment by the side.

This tasty little blonde bitch thought she could outrun ‘LITTLE DICH’ RICHTER but he managed to gun the cunt down. She’ll be sucking cock in the afterlife now.

No, no, no no no. Sauer was wailing, pushing her chair back as if to put as much physical distance between her and the screen as she could. Why? Who would do this? Who would say that? She turned her face away, tears rolling down her face, mercifully blurring her eyes. 

She was in the kitchen for hours, pacing, sometimes crying, sometimes cursing. She could see the website was still open on her computer in the living room, but didn’t dare look further. What could she do? Send a message to the website to get it taken down? Call the police? Smash her PC? All of the above? After several drinks she was calm enough to consider going back and closing the website, but first she had to let them know how disgusting they were. They had to know how she felt. 

She tried to ignore what it said about Elise, and tried to find an email address so she could send them a plea to take it down. She couldn’t find one. The more time she spent on here the worse she felt, angrier and angrier. Her teeth were grinding, now more in frustration at this damned website. She hit return at the top of the page. It was a full page on Hans Richter. She hadn’t seen it before, odd. She scrolled down a little bit, a full picture of Richter sat alongside a Bio section. She read it before she even realised she was doing it. 

HANS ‘LITTLE DICH’ RICHTER tried out for the high score at his secondary school in Germany. DEAREST HANSY had a perfect opportunity to take the top spot, low security, packed classrooms, and his daddy’s illegal rifle. But ‘HANS ON DICH’ fucked it up like the virgin faggot his was, killing himself after only taking the lives of eleven cunts and sluts, not even touching the top twenty scoreboard. DICKTER blew his load early like the pussy he was, and even in death he disappoints. 

She couldn’t look any longer. Who was saying this? Who would be so cruel and heartless? She copied down the url on a little piece of paper and then wrote it out in an email to some of her former police colleagues. “Investigate this. This is sick.” She wrote. She went to turn off the computer, but stoppeed just before pressing the button. She needed to tell her husband, surely? If not him, then who? She needed to tell someone, she needed someone to tell her how fucked this was, someone had to make sense of it. She sucked on her thumbnail. Well, maybe someone could? She had no idea why the name came to mind but it made sense. She went back onto her browser and found that psychiatrist’s website. She took down the email and sent a link to him as well. 

High Score was a goldmine. Seriously fucked up, but Christ did it ever provide an insight. Harry had spent several hours already going through the threads. It was pretty simple, there was a top ten board on the front page that showed the most kills by shooter. The site seemed to make fun of everyone, shooters, police, victims, in a grotesque way. Everyone was a target and deserved it. Slurs all over the place. Each shooter had a profile, filled with information. Harry searched for the Korean shooter's name.

GUK JEAWON.

He clicked. 

GUK ‘THE GOOK’ JAEWON only saw one thing with his slanty little eyes - revenge. ‘GUK THE CUCK’ was tired of his big dicked classmates getting all the primo-puss around his university so…

Harry stopped reading. What the fuck was wrong with these people? He scrolled down a little, there were sections on the victims, all thirty of them, all still as crude. A little lower was a video of him screaming and being shot by the police. Harry hadn’t seen that before and reminded himself to look a little later to see what insight it might give him. 

A little further down was a section called ‘POSTS’. It was a screenshot of a comment posted on the forum side of the site. Whoever posted it said it was Jaewon’s post, claiming he was going for the high score and posting details of time and location. Below it were comments spurring him on or calling him out as a fake. The details did line up, Harry thought, but maybe that was a coincidence, or maybe to give the site some sort of fucked-up credibility. 

He saved the page in his bookmarks, making a note to come back for his research, and decided to check out the forum side of site, see if it really could give a better insight into the minds of these twisted people. Clicking around, all the posts were similar to the ones Jaewon put up. 

I’m going to do it - stay away from Ringfield High tomorrow. Check the news

With replies telling the guy to kill himself, or urging him to do it and take as many “cunts” or “sluts” with him as possible. Harry looked up the post date, but it didn’t correspond with any shooting in any high school, nor any school with the name Ringfield. Hmm, maybe it was just all bravado. He clicked through a few more postings, more of the same, warnings of an imminent mass shooting, cries to do it now and kill as many as possible, fantasists writing out mastabatory material on how they would kill their parents and bullies and religious figures and classmates. Maybe this was all just some sort of sick roleplay on a shock site? Why anybody would spend their time making fun of murder victims was beyond Harry, but he supposed there were darker corners of the internet with even darker people populating them. 

A post caught his eye while scrolling. 

watch the news, scotland cairnraggen primary. Going for the high score Got a rifle and ready to kill cunts before they grow up to be bigger cunts lol

Cairnraggen? 

No, but that was... Odd. He looked at the post time.

An hour ago. 

A fear came over Harry, something primal screeching from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, almost a seizure, a pure shot of adrenaline and cortisol hammering its way through his arteries, veins chilled to a stop by ice. A premonition, a psychic force, a raw spike of information into the mind that something is wrong and that you are missing that something. A slow burning fear, the sharp spike of embers. The view of disaster from afar, neck leaning like rubber sideways to see the car accident, the what if, the why them, the fear that something terrible is happening and you’re somehow connected. A single turn of the cog. 

Click.

He looked up at the clock. 11:36. 

Click.

He hadn’t seen Sam yet this morning, he wondered...

Click.

Harry was on his feet and dizzy. 

“Sam! Sam!” He shouted, stumbling through the hallway to the stairs. 

“Sam!” He shouted again up the stairs,

 “You up? Sam?” 

Nothing, absolute silence. 

Something in his mind was blocking the full picture from being seen, a sort of daze in front of his vision as he took each step as fast as he could, which under his weak knees felt like hours. He burst through Sam’s bedroom door into darkness. The bed was crumpled up and the curtains were still drawn. Nobody inside. Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

Harry grabbed at his hair and nervously chewed his lip. His head was clouded with pure adrenaline, fear, the urge to run away, to do something, anything, but he froze. 

Harry noticed the blinking light on Sam’s computer, and was drawn to it like an insect, letting the electricity pull him in. He shook the mouse and the screen lit up. The website was still up, and the words on the screen were damning.

Posted by YOU

Harry nearly threw himself down the stairs grabbing his phone and coat, tripping out the front door as he pulled it over his shoulder. Three steps out he had already called 999. Before a voice picked up he froze. Someone was speaking on the other side of the phone, but he wasn’t listening. Coming up through the valley, through the woods and the icy fog, echoing up the road, was the sound of a million sirens crying, and the faint smell of rust. 

END

#true crime crime fiction serial killer school shooting shooting columbine fiction crime murder writing writer short story

[myaekingheart]

I've honestly been in such a shit mood today, I swear. Like I was alright when I woke up, I guess, except every limb on my body ached. My legs have been really sore these days and so have my arms/hands and for absolutely no good goddamn reason. It's not like I exercise. Maybe that's why I'm sore, because of what I don't do versus what I actually do. I just...I don't know, all day I've just been feeling like I'm not a functional human being, that I can't do anything right. My boyfriend was getting on my case because there were all these wires on the floor and he kept telling me not to step on them yet there was hardly anywhere else to step, and then we were playing TERA all day, a game I had never played before, and turns out I accidentally chose the most complex class possible which was making literally everything impossible. I was getting so stressed out because everything was coming at me at once, I was like a magnet for enemies and they just kept slamming me and every time I leveled up, a million pop-ups would come up and I never had time to read them all or even read the dialogue with other characters important to the storyline because people kept coming up and attacking me. And of course my boyfriend inadvertently chooses the easiest and most powerful class to play as so all of this is just a piece of cake for him meanwhile I'm over here getting pounded. It also doesn't help that the camera would move every time I moved my mouse, which I am not used to at all, and it was stressing me out, I hate it. We played for nearly seven hours and I levelled up and everything but by the end of it I was so fucking overwhelmed, I had such sensory overload from everything coming at me at once. That's why I never play video games in the first place, because they just stress me out way too fucking much. I can only handle casual games like The Sims (that pause button is a godsend, I can't even tell you how many times I pause the game every time I play) or Solitaire (not that that's a video game so much as it's something old people play on the computer. I guess I am an old person). Single player, low stress shit. I was hoping to get a break after I signed off but instead, I got an email from my college that made me want to check my school account but when I tried to log in, it kept telling me the username and password I was entering was wrong even though I was positive it was right. I ended up calling my dad, who was the last one to log in to my school account, thinking it was his fault and that he had locked me out of my own account by being logged into it on his own computer or something but then he was getting locked out, the website suggested calling IT but it was after 6pm and IT was closed for the night so there went that idea, I was frustrated which was getting my dad frustrated and we were shouting at each other, it was just lovely. I ended up finally getting it fixed-- turns out the password I was so certain was right was actually wrong-- but things just didn't seem to end there. We've let the dishes pile up considerably over the last week or so, so as my boyfriend was cooking dinner he asked me to take care of the dishes. It should've been done days ago, honestly, but he works and goes to school and when he's not doing that, he's playing video games. I have no job and am out of school so I really have no excuse but if we're going to make one, I just never have the will to care. It's like that post I reblogged earlier today: I know I need to do this and my quality of life will decrease the more I let it sit there but I don't have the will to care, to get up and take care of it. That's pretty much me. I just don't have to motivation or will to do it. I know it needs to be done and that I should do it because my boyfriend has more to deal with than I do, I am literally a housewife, but I just...I wake up every morning and the only thing that gets me out of bed is my growling stomach and knowing that if i don't eat something, I'm going to make myself sick. But anyways, so he asked me to take care of the dishes while he cooked dinner which I obliged to because I mean, I should take care of it anyways. Apparently I am completely incapable of being a functional human being with the ability to do simple tasks because even doing dishes was a hardcore chore. Let the records show that I really hate doing dishes anyways (we don't have a dishwasher at our place and holy mother of fuck do I wish we did, doing the dishes is disgusting and just makes me not want to eat even more because who would keep their appetite scraping rotten, waterlogged food off of plates? Disgusting. I have to fight a gag reflex every time I'm subjected to it) but today things just went through the roof. Last time my boyfriend's mother was up, she did us a favor and bought us a new bottle of dish detergent which was great because we had ran out. She bought the jumbo size bottle which I mean, I get it, it's worth it because there's more and that's great. We won't have to buy detergent as frequently. The only issue is that I can't pick up the damn thing. It's too heavy and I can't fit my hand around it and when my hands are wet, say goodbye to every ounce of grip possible. This was the exact problem I was having tonight: I could not for the life of me pick up the damn bottle. I tried but I was not successful. I could lift it for a few seconds to try and squirt some detergent out but I had such a poor grip on the bottle that my aim was off and I was making a mess and the thing was slipping out of my hands all over the place and our sink is so tiny (and our kitchen for that matter) that water always drips over the side of the counter and onto the floor so I have to wipe that up or else it'll just be a nuisance and it's just so absolutely frustrating, I hate that something so motherfucking mundane aggravates me so fucking much. I was so stressed about it today, though, that I nearly broke down in tears. My boyfriend had to take an empty soap bottle from the bathroom and pour the detergent into there just to try and make things easier for myself. I never did finish. Half the dirty dishes are still just sitting there in the sink or on the counter probably collecting ants as they wait to be cleaned. I was going to do it after dinner but here we are almost four hours later and I never got around to it. Not like my boyfriend hounded me about it or anything, nor did he take care of it. Which is fine, whatever, I'll probably do it tomorrow or something. If I care enough. On top of all of this, we found out the cat has fleas so we had to order a flea collar and as we were talking about it briefly, trying to figure out how he got them (considering he's an indoor cat and is the only one in the house), I mentioned that maybe he picked them up at that hotel we all had to stay at for the hurricane. I started elaborating on it saying because that was the only time the cat had been outside since he and my boyfriend moved into the apartment and that the place is a pet friendly hotel anyways and even though the cat didn't interact with any other animals, that doesn't mean that the fleas couldn't have crossed over from another pet that was staying in the room before us or something. Before I got the chance to explain everything, however, my boyfriend stopped me not unkindly and said I didn't need to list everything off, that he already knew what I meant. Which was fine, I don't even know why I did it in the first place, but it just kind of bugged me that he stepped in and kind of cut me off. It probably would've bugged me regardless but it didn't help that I was already in a pretty iffy mood and feeling lowkey vulnerable from the rest of the day, so it only made matters worse. Since then, I've kind of just been sitting here quietly doing whatever in a sulky mood because why the fuck not? I feel sulky so I have the right to be sulky. It's only human anyways. He knows something is up but I never went into detail when he asked if I was okay, I just told him I was in a mood and felt like all day I've been doing everything wrong and like I'm not a functional human being and he just said something about "Well, I don't think you're useless and I love you" or whatever and got back to his video games. Not that he's been ignoring me or anything, like every so often he'll look over at me and make sure I'm doing alright, ask me what I'm up to (to which I reply "stupid bullshit"), and just a few minutes ago during a load screen he basically stared at me and rubbed my leg for a solid three minutes so there's that. To be completely honest, though, I don't even know why all of this is bugging me so much in the first place. I mean, I'm already a moody bitch as it is but I just feel like all of this is completely unwarranted, escalated bullshit. I feel like I freak out or get stressed at the most insignificant little things (like the other day I lost it because we bought two boxes of donuts at the store and my boyfriend left them on top of the microwave and when I opened the one the other morning, despite it having been sealed, there were still ants crawling all inside of it) and it pisses me off. I don't want to be this touchy yet here I am, the moody little bitch that I am. I don't know, maybe it's just the stress of living on my own that's really starting to weigh on me. Realizing that I have all of these adult responsibilities to deal with now like taking care of my own place and paying bills and eventually actually learning to drive and finding a job. Like okay, yeah, that should probably all be taken care of. It should've been taken care of years ago but look who procrastinates on literally every fucking thing? This bitch right here. I still have a hard time reminding myself that this isn't some little long distance visit like my boyfriend and I used to do, either. For a little over a year we were long distance and I'd travel back and forth about once a month to spend at least the weekend with him. I'd get a couple days to a week of no parental supervision, happy fun times worked around his work or school schedule, and it was all fine and dandy, you know, whatever. Then at the end of it all, my parents would pick me back up and take me home and I'd go back to mom's homecooked meals and sitting outside with the dog and watching Jeopardy during dinner, the whole family experience. Nearly two months later and I still don't think it's sunk in that all of that is gone now. There are little things that set off these default thoughts about going back home, like if my boyfriend and I are watching a show together on Hulu or something, I'll think to myself "Oh, we better binge on as much as possible because I won't be able to watch this when I get home!" or something. The thought of potentially going back home, like to visit or whatever, makes my stomach churn, too. I don't know when I'll get back down there next but I'm so conflicted. I want to go back to see my parents and my dog and my old house again and everything but then on the other hand, I want to keep my distance just because I know that's not mine anymore. I almost had to make plans to go back for a doctor's appointment in order to get some papers signed off for registering with the university I'm going to but [un]fortunately we found a way to make that not happen. I think my biggest thing is staying in my old bedroom and what's going to come of it. That bedroom was my sanctuary. I had spent so much time there, it had become so overrun with my things and my personality. It felt like crawling into a cozy little space in my mind at the end of every day where I'd sit up on my laptop til 4am relaxing and playing Friends or Fresh Prince reruns on mute in the background. It was cozy and warm and it looked like me and smelled like me and felt like me. It was my space. Now that I've moved out, 1) I don't have a "my space" anymore. Every space is an "our space" now. 2) That space in my parent's house has pretty much been gutted and generalized into just another room in a building I once occupied. It's not mine anymore. It's a free space open to any and all guests who come to that house. I hope they know that when they lay their head down at night, they're falling asleep in a room full of tears and memories. I don't know how I'm going to handle being that guest when I eventually go back, sleeping in a room that once belonged to me but isn't mine anymore. It haunts me. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to think about how weird going back to that house in general will be. None of those things in that place are mine anymore. It's not my home anymore to come back to. It's just a place where I used to live. I realize now that this has practically nothing to do with my crappy day but then again, if I'm talking about it, maybe it does? Every time I vent, that always seems to be what everything comes back to these days, my struggle to adjust to this new way of life. Maybe that's the foundation of everything after all. I know I was a being never meant for change, a plant who takes root in one space and refuses to leave without a lot of tugging and struggle. Hell, even going to that goddamn hotel for the hurricane was a struggle because I had to pack up and leave. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I am a plant and I was meant to be stationary. I used to think astrology and zodiac signs indicating hallmark aspects of people's personalities was just a bunch of bullshit but now I'm beginning to think maybe it's not such bogus after all. I don't know, seems like things are telling pretty accurately to me so far (I'm a Taurus, which means I'm an Earth sign, which I'm pretty sure correlates with the earth element which has to do with plants which is what I am pretty sure I am at this point because oh my god). Or maybe that's just stupid, I don't fucking know. Sometimes I feel like I don't know anything anymore and I don't really know how to feel about that. I don't like not knowing things. I don't like feeling stupid and uneducated, and yet somehow I always seem to label myself as such in an act of belittlement and low self esteem. I think very little of myself all the time always. I wish I could say I was humble but instead, I'm just cynical and probably a little depressed or whatever. I don't know, man. I don't know anymore. I just really don't know.

#ramblings #delete later #probably