#and i guess ive never been able to accept that we had that kind of love until today

[biggaybunny]

Several years ago I came across on my dashboard a little comic that left in me such a deep and intense sense of horror that it's haunted me ever since, though that is partially because of how my brain regularly revisits bad memories against my will for the express purpose of torturing me. Anyway, the point of this preamble is to serve as a content warning for existential horror, I guess.

The comic was simple, and pretty well burned in to my memory, so let me describe it for you first; a time traveler (a young woman) pops into frame and declares their excitement to explore the future. They are immediately greeted by a small feline robot that offers them a key to "their room", and a pill that will make them feel every kind of happiness at once. The time traveler refuses the offer, saying that they don't want simple happiness, and get their thrills from the sense of adventure. The robot explains that yes, no worry, that thrill is one of the things she'll feel once she's taken that pill. The time traveler agrees to try it for "just a minute". The comic cuts to the time traveler sitting on a chair in a small, completely barren room, with an IV hooked up to her. She is drooling and her eyes completely unfocused. We zoom out to see her room is just a small box next to many, each with a similar occupant, and we see rows and rows and rows of such boxes, implying this to be the fate of humanity. The comic ends there.

Just retelling this comic makes me want to puke, so distressing it is to me. I was also distressed by the person reblogging it who in the tags talked about how they felt this was a good fate for humanity; I blocked the post (I have thankfully never seen it again, despite blocking it multiple versions of xkit ago) and unfollowed the person who put it on my dash, and have never spoken to them again.

It's hard to explain exactly why I find this scenario so terrifying. It truly does shake me to my core. It's horrifying because it is a kind of living death, I suppose. A prison that cannot be escaped from. The mind is gone, or effectively gone, while the body remains. And there feels like there would be no saving someone from such a fate. What would happen to a person who experienced such a pure bliss, if you tried to cut them off from it? Do you think they'd find a return to existence anything less than traumatizing? That their minds would even be able to start working again, after what had happened? I don't see how. That's what makes it such a horrifying fate, to me. Once encountered, the person is lost, even as their body continues to function.

I also hate it because I've found it hard to refute as a potential fate for humanity. It gets kind of philosophically thorny. Our brains are just chemical machines; what is the difference between a sensation of pleasure earned versus one that's been chemically induced? What difference does it make if it's "real"? What does "real" mean? Is the person who climbs a mountain in a videogame not entitled to a sense of accomplishment the same as a person who really climbs a mountain? What about a mountain in vr? How far do we have to abstract away from the truth -- that every experience results in the production of a chemical cocktail by one part of our body to be processed by another part of our body -- for a sensation to "mean" something? Isn't pleasure something we all pursue, in some form, anyway? Isn't the goal of every moral framework out there to find a way so all involved can live happily? Why is it okay to imperfectly pursue pleasure of some kind -- satisfaction, ecstasy, triumph, whatever -- but not okay to pursue it optimally? If neither is okay, what are we all living for?

I refuse to accept this, because there's no room for both a world where this ultimate pleasure pill exists and a world where humanity continues. You can't say "this can exist and some people wouldn't take it". It renders all pursuits of humanity pointless. The thrill of discovery? That's just chemicals. The joy of companionship? Chemicals. All things we feel are just chemicals; we are just chemicals. This thought has never scared me before, but that's perhaps because on some level, I always took it for granted that consciousness was somehow... special. Something more important, something you can't just... bypass. But I know that that's not true.

Maybe consciousness is still the answer. Maybe our consciousness is what makes us human, and needs to be protected. I feel unsure if I've explained why I'm so sure that the scenario described in that comic would obliterate consciousness; it feels self-evident to me that the individual must be destroyed in such a scenario, because they are unable to take any action including thinking, because they have been robbed of all reason to act or think, or in other words, the very ability to think.

I do not rely on instinctive reactions to guide my moral philosophy, so my revulsion alone is not a reason to condemn it. Perhaps, however, in this case my revulsion is justified, for the destruction of the mind is truly immoral thing. It does not perfectly answer why the destruction of the mind is a horrible thing, because, again, we are not special. We are an accident of atoms in a mechanical universe, or at least so I believe (unfortunately). I suppose, when you get to the heart of the issue, I'm simply asking what is the point of it all? If it doesn't have a point, doesn't that make all the struggle pointless too? Doesn't it mean we may as well strap ourselves in and have super-heroin drip-fed into our brains for our entire lives? And if so, why do I find that so terrifying? Is my terror just an accident of my evolution-designed brain, that contains in it the same desires to preserve and proliferate my kind as the slime mold?

This is the part where I'm supposed to come up with an answer. Something that irrefutably denies the idea that some kind of super-pleasure-cocktail could replace the enormity of life. But I don't know. In order to deny it, we have to decide on a meaning to our lives that categorically excludes it as a valid option. And there's no such universally agreed upon meaning to life. But maybe that's the answer, itself. We contain within ourselves the ability to decide for ourselves what it all means. We have free will; even if the universe turns out to be perfectly deterministic on the scale we're on, we won't ever know our decisions until we make them. It is this free will that the scenario I've gone on about destroys, because as I've said, there is no way for this to exist alongside other choices to live. Maybe you don't believe that. Or maybe you're one of the sorry kinds that think we should all be living in tiny boxes, our brains turned into nothing but organic chemical processing machines that take in chemicals and produce other chemicals. If that's the case, I think I hate you. But that's the best I can do to stop being haunted by a stupid comic I saw five or six years ago now. That's really all this is about.

Sorry for subjecting you all to this, it's really just for my own sake. I just needed to write my thoughts down. I've tried writing this post a couple times over the years, and always scrapped it. It just upsets me that much. I'm a neurotic little freak and I wish I wasn't being constantly tortured by my own mind. Maybe you got something out of this, maybe I disturbed you, in which case I'm sorry. Hopefully you can find a better way to cope than I did.

Maybe in the future I'll post the other thoughts that my brain uses to torture me, like the short story I read about that taught me what autocannibalism is, or the time in the 4th grade I touched a girl's thigh by accident. It's not much fun being me, most the time. Anyway, I'll stop procrastinating and post this. Sorry again.

#long post #personal I guess? #trauma too I guess

[zero-braincells-left]

not a vent post but idk if anyone actually wants to listen to me talk about romance and my gf and. my confidence in my romantic attraction shattering right in front of me lmao. anywho

tldr: hmmmmmmmmmm hey i might be lithromantic. but first let’s go on several unrelated tangents that only barely go together to prove whatever point i was trying to make??

ive kind of felt like i feel romance. wrong ? like i know there isn’t a wrong way like this and whatnot but it’s still just. idk. first of all like,,,, i just don’t get the concept of falling in love (romantic). what being in love would even feel like. but most definitely not in an aromantic way, no, i 100% do have crushes. i am. extremely sure about that part. but that’s just liking people. i feel like im too young to be in love, but everyone else announces such. last time i used the word love romantically was fucking forever ago when i was in 4th grade with my very first crush. that, in fact, was not love. love is just a strong word.

(after writing everything else im unsure where to put this where it fits, but also, I haven’t really been able to imagine myself in any sort of long term, romantic relationship. i don’t want to get married, and i can’t see myself dating someone for, like, life.)

but i love my friends. because that’s platonic. love is a perfectly acceptable word to use for platonic or familial things in my mind. just not romance, at least not for myself? like i get the thing of having a partner and being able to say “i love you” and i mean. cmon. with all the ships i have I’ve imagined that with characters plenty of times. but like

i love my best(?) friend so, sosososo much more than i “love” my girlfriend. because, with dating, i just like her. romantic . and she knows that and the feelings mutual because love is just too strong a word for a relationship both of us know isn’t forever. but. do i even like her (romantic.)? i think so? i had a crush on her for like. half a year. and i know that was a crush, for sure. and that day on Halloween when we started dating i was happy, i was excited. but something about calling her my “girlfriend” felt so. weird. ive never dated anyone before, not even a shitty 3 day long elementary school “dating” kinda thing, so i just kinda chalked it up to that. i still can’t pinpoint what it is but right now. yeah, okay, we’re dating. whenever i think about that fact—I like the thought of it but i don’t like that it’s real. that it’s happening. the thought of being ‘romantic’ or holding hands or anything feels genuinely uncomfortable if i think about it now, even when it used to be a nice idea. and in practice, before either of us knew the other liked them, and we had all sorts of “fake” flirting bullshit, i was also perfectly fine and even happy (and flustered) by the closeness because. i liked her. and now with a relationship, even if the idea makes me really uncomfy, in practice I don’t really mind. it’s just, kind of, neutral.

speaking of which, I’ve made several “if you say that again im breaking up with you” or when she does something dumb/silly and goes ‘oh yeah? what you gonna do? break up with me?’ “yes” jokes. and like. she’s fine with that and we both think it’s funny but. i genuinely don’t not mean it, like, the idea of breaking up with her doesn’t bother me (well, it does a bit.) and the idea of staying with her, still dating, also doesn’t bother me (well, it does a bit). again im just completely neutral on it, and she knows this. but i feel like im only here because she likes dating me more than i enjoy it. i cant tell if I like this or not.

it’s like, knowing my feelings were reciprocated and being able to date her like I wanted to, made my feelings go away or at least. lessen (cause i still, I guess, do like her? sort of?)

anyways i guess I might be lithromantic then ? i already know of that label AND I’d considered it before.

for long as I can remember now, I guess, whenever I have crushes I can get over them really quickly. it’s just having that closure that’s fine. hell, earlier this year I liked one of my friends so i told him, got confirmation he didn’t like me back, and then got over it the next day. that was just a few months of crushing though—a couple years ago, i had a crush on one of my main friends at the time for one whole year. December to February of the following year. my feelings didn’t weaken over that time, either. then i got peer pressured into confessing, got confirmation it was a no, and the VERY. NEXT . DAY. i was over him. i knew it was a no so I didn’t dwell on it.

it’s just always been like that, I guess. i can get over anyone if I have the closure.

but nobody’s ever liked me back before. what happens if that ‘closure’ is a yes? i thought about it one time maybe a year or so ago and thought that, yeah, maybe I’d stop liking someone if that was the case. and now it… sort of is. i don’t know how I feel about my gf or what to do about it and I don’t know how to talk to her about it. i know she’s understanding of that so it’s not that im scared she’ll think im weird or wrong for it, just. idk. i dont even know what I’d say, but I might try tomorrow.

im fine dating her, i honestly don’t mind it, i just feel like being able to. express how i do feel about it at least haha. and i feel really guilty that this might be mostly one-sided on her end.

i have another thing to say actually but I’ll rb and add it on cause I want to end this specific thought here

#zero’s irrelevant thoughts #gf.. #uhhh hh #idk man

[fairycosmos]

my ex and i broke up 2 months ago bc he couldnt go back to being in a monogamous relationship with me (he thinks hes poly), and he wants to stay friends, im not sure i can do that though. i still love him and im so so angry at him for breaking yet another promise. we had been together off and on for almost 7 years since i was 15 and he was 18. he promised me it would actually work this time and i like a big idiot actually believed his bullshit. i dont know whether i want to stay friends with him, i know my feelings arent going anywhere as easy as his do and ive never felt rage this hard. i hope he feels like shit for fucking me over for the rest of his life and i hope a day comes when he wants me back and i can hurt him by saying no and he won't ever be able to get over me. i dont know whether i hate him or love him anymore im just so angry and hurt.

hey, i'm so sorry to hear this. i think everything you're feeling is completely justified - like it is literally an incredibly understandable reaction in every single way. i think your ex is asking a lot of you by just assuming that it'd be easy for you to stay friends. of course, that would be convenient for him, but the reality of the situation is that you are hurt and the dynamic has changed massively, and that is the result of his own missteps in the relationship. what he's dealing with now is the consequences of letting you down, and you don't have to feel bad about that. it's alright not to know if you're going to be able to remain friends with him yet, you don't have to know. it should become clearer with time, and whatever the answer is, is acceptable. there's no wrong one. it's natural to need both time and distance to sort your head out and process what has happened at this stage.

i think it's possible to love someone and be incredibly angry and disappointed in them at the same time, i also think it's possible to love someone and get over them with time. neither of those positions are easy or straightforward to be in, obviously, in fact they're infinitely frustrating - and i can't imagine the sort of emotional hell you must be dealing with right now - but i just want to kind of stress that there is a way forward, even if it's not necessarily the one you want. since you both want different things from love anyway, he's probably not able to give you the future you're dreaming of with him anyway. i guess what i really want to say that it's fine to put yourself, and your own needs first. if you don't think you can handle being around him at this point, you don't have to. take all the time and distance you want, and then check in with yourself in a few weeks/months/whatever to see if anythings changed. also just a sidebar - do you have anyone you trust to talk to about this like friends, a close family member etc? it's easy to feel overwhelmed by all of these negative emotions at the best of times, but especially if you don't have anyone to verbalise your pain too, to seek comfort from. i'd really recommend opening up to those around you about what you're going through, if you're looking for a way to make it feel a little more bearable. it's a very difficult thing to do in the moment, but i doubt you'll regret it. sending a lot of love your way. you deserve the world. x

#anon

[acrookedvulture]

you said you want to tell the trans women in your life that you love them but you don't know how and they have walls and stuff.

i think the best thing is to meet people where they are.

if they're uncomfortable with the word love, use words like care, and if they're uncomfortable with words like that, then love them with actions, like being there for them when they need someone, show them love in the ways they're comfortable.

i think asking for peoples' boundaries when it comes to stuff like that is also rlly important. like i think being asked my boundaries with regards to being asked what is okay to say with me is best, but also like, at least for me, someone saying something to me then apologising and backing off when i say im uncomfortable with that, and apologising is like. almost as good.

it can be a little hard to love people bc we all have different needs, and it takes a lot of practice and i'm still not amazing at it but like. another part of it is just being okay with making a mistake, if that's a barrier.

i have the barrier a lot where i'm afraid to make people uncomfortable so i just would never do anything, but accepting that to be around people is to accidentally make people uncomfortable, but recognising that making someone uncomfortable is okay, as long as you are able to respect their comfort if they make their boundaries clear to you, yk?

respecting ppl's boundaries after they set them is another great way to show someone love. getting ur boundaries crossed and not even receiving an apology, and instead like. a sarcastic response or something is rlly common, so like making it clear you're willing to respect ppl's needs is a Great Way to make ppl feel safe around you. :)

i hope you're able to do what you want! and know that it's okay if it's hard, it's hard for everyone, and also i love u. you don't know me and i don't know u, but your desire to show ppl love like this is like. relatable and desirable and i think you deserve a little more love in ur life.

☺️ have a good day!

this ask has been the coolest ask ive gotten in like years, so anon , thank you for your time in sending this to me! it encourages me to show how i love people in more nuanced and patient ways. i always feel more inclined to say literally nothing at all, or think space is the best response to well. just about anything! ive had alot of people irl and online take my meaningful attempts of connection as an offense and while im totally okay with apologizing and trying again in a way that they want, i think thats ALOT easier to do in real life for me than over the web. i guess thats kind of the main issue of it all. i dont get many chances to express myself in person(im always 200% better at that shit in person) with the homies due to distance + university, but i mean i could always just try to pester them more on discord to make up for the inability to visit. I love you too, my good anon, and your ask was a delightful thing to get a notification for.

especially since its been so long since i opened up my askbox again XD

anyways yeah have a totally fucking tubular day, my dude!

#ask #ask response #cool af i am going to look at this everytime i psych myself out of messaging peeps

[indigo474]

31:00~~2/10/24~~

I ran my 2nd 5 k today and managed to run 3 minutes and 26 seconds faster than last time.. l'm not even sure how that is possible.. it must be the hills. i am so proud of myself and again amazed. a tiny tiny voice tells me i could have done better.. maybe... Madison came wiht me for support. I saw people there alone so next time I wont bother her to come with me, unless she wants to of course. I wish i had someone to celebrate with. i'm thankful for Maddy.. I'm thankful for a lot but still wish i had someone. i thought a lot today about how my divorce was/is the single best thing that has ever happened to me. I thought about how i hate hate hate how people say ohh sorry for your divorce. I thought about how it would have been a shame for me to not be the person i am today and how much i have learned and grown and healed. i thought about how i wish i had left sooner .. i dont let myself go too fr down that trail. I left and thats all that matters.. all these great things. Me- i dont know if i will ever be use to this life and these feelings of happiness.. when i laugh, i laugh.. joy. i did not have that or feel that for a lot of years and the last thing i wanted was to really feel anything because none of it was any good and now.. now.. peace. Peace.. and love. Madison is sweet to me. she knows i eat an apple a day and when she shops she has been making sure to buy apples. when we lived in our apartment she would always make sure to leave the outside light on for me.. i hate walking up to a dark house.. ptsd from Chatham. If he turned the automatic light off i knew i was in trouble. sooo.. i guess i'll keep running..

I am not a game player. Its just not my natural state. Pam has issue. Deep seeded trauma from her childhood.. its so obvious to me. the way she talks and her need to be liked and seen as cool and the way she tries to manipulate the people around her. She's smart but not intelligent. So, whatever.. i'm not friends with any of them.. there's one supervisor i kind of like, she was my first supervisor when i started.. and she is weird. None of it matters. I'm working from home tomorrow. I didnt get nearly enough sleep last night. I didnt want to get out of bed this morning. i tried to be nice to my Mom this week, i was being kind and supportive and she can not accept love because she does not love herself . she hates herself and doesnt think she deserves kindness or love and that is not my problem. do i love myself enough to be able to receive love?

I spoke to my manager in regards to the very important meeting she missed. She claims to have wanted to be there but it was thrown together last minute and she was not made aware of the time. Drew was in charge of the timing. Drew is always in charge of the meeting times and he sucks at it. I pretty much said that to her but in a professional way. its taken a year but his scheduling skills infuriate me. people pretty much do what benefits them. Drew has a attitude about people leaving work at 5.. he feels we should all stay later. He is late to work everyday and it benefits him to stay later so misses the rush hour traffic. ive stayed late in the past to accommodate him. I'm not doing that anymore. I get to work early almost every day. I am not staying later than i have to. I feel like he doesnt value other peoples time. he's called me 2 x in 2 days while i wasn't work.. he called me today while i was in walmart talking nonsense.. i got a new rep who is a total idiot. he never should have made it out of training and Drew is acting like he's been on team for a long time and what am i going to do about him. He's been on my team for less than 20 hrs- he was on Drew's team for 90+ days- how and why did this guy become my problem when he has been a problem all along.

I'm going to read the Bhagavad Gita- maybe finish it. I have been sleeping a little too good.. through the night good. the funny thing about work is none of it matters.. we can all be replaced tomorrow and that place would still go on. I shouldn't let it stress me out. i woke up with my period today. silence is beautiful. You're doing a great job April.. keep going! Good night

.

[regulatedchaos]

Keep trying, self.

pama has access to this, blog. Well, the only person who has access to this and pretty much my entire life since hs. Grateful for Pama. Always trying to look after me kahit magkalayo kami and for some reason we feel each others sadness without checking in.

So every now and then she reads it and sends me a message sa FB Sabi nya I need rest daw. Like let go and let God. I told her na I never knew what rest meant since I took responsibility of a lot of things since I started working and nung sinabi nya na mag rest ako. I didn't know how. She's been a great reminder of the things that I have to do for myself cos I tend to forget. Grateful for her, I miss her 😭 I love her forever🥹

Her recommendation(rest) has left me questioning when was the last time I did rest and how did I do it? I can't remember if I ever did or I knew how. And then I remember how at peace I am whenever I'm with Cassie and I just realized that sya yung pahinga ko. He is my home and I haven't been able to rest but I try to rest padin as much as I can. It's different lang cos it's not with him. Idk if it's my hormones but I've never been this attached to anyone in my life and I don't know this feeling of longing and yearning for him na I've never felt before.

I give up easily. I barely try being with people I'm easily disappointed and I bail out at the slightest inconvenience. But with Cassie, I kept holding on.

I have felt different kinds of love before, selfish, selfless. One way, some were low-key manipulating, convenient-kind-of-love, even toxic ones. Different people good and bad ones, but I am the always one to give up on them.

If I were to describe our love (Cassie's and I) the first thing that I could think of is "nurturing". I can't tell if he feels the same way. I don't wanna assume lol but.. He just loves me even if he's seen the bad side of me I think I have a worse and worst side not sure if I've let it out but. The love that I felt from him lets me grow, it's a learning and loving experience at the same time he tolerates me and corrects me din. And Ive felt like I have become a better person because of him and I don't think he's even aware of that.

I can't even begin to think to be with someone else. I tried cos he gave me the idea na baka maghanap ako ng iba, but wala eh di ko din alam. I've never felt like this before. It's a roller coaster ride. I don't think I've ever loved and cared for someone like this, too. It's definitely new to me and tbh I didn't know that I had it in me, to love and accept someone like this. I have quite low tolerance with people in general. I guess he is "my greatest love" idk what you call it I'm not really good with describing what I feel

I can't wait to be back in his arms and rest. And be at peace cos I know that when I'm with him everything is gonna be okay, like my mind and my heart can automatically pause which is unusual cos it runs 24/7 and I'm never not overthinking. Sabi ko nga sa kanya nagayuma ata ako ewan. Everything is just better with him like he doesn't need to give me anything material for me to feel loved. Siguro din kasi sA kanya ko n aexercise yung other love languanges receiving and giving. I learned to much when I tried to give him his receiving LL.

Fucking hormones I'm such a softie, is this my hormones lang or inlove and sobrang yearning lang ako Kay Cassie??? this message is so clingy. I kinda hate that I feel so needy. I can't wait for another call from him tomorrow. He won't be able to call me everyday until next month which is the right timing I think cos I'll prolly have given birth to Papicito by then.

25Nov23

[screamingay]

realized today that i feel a kind of love i thought i wasn't capable of feeling for most of my life until now..

#it's friendship what i mean is friendship dhskfhdkdb #but like the kind of friendship where u can talk abt ur sex lives casually and have a good time just eating lunch in a parked car together #i guess we've had that for a while and i have it with all 3 of them but i dont get to spend a day with them one on one often #and i guess ive never been able to accept that we had that kind of love until today #ive always said everyone should be a little bit in love w their friends but i dont think i realized just what it means to be in love w ur #best friend AS just a best friend until today #it's not some kind of crush it's just that she's smart and pretty and funny and has good taste in music and im so lucky shes my friend!!!!! #in high school i really took it to heart that romantic love was the highest form of love and i still yearn for that constantly of course #but it also led me to see friendship as somehow less valuable and also less attainable bc im a big scary dyke who cant just have friends #without making it weird or falling in love or whatever #but im just a person! who deserves friendship like that! and i havent been able to accept that until very recently #it's v nice to be finally be comfortable w my besties 🥺 #personal

[phoneybeatlemania-bit-the-dust]

It annoys me when people complain about Julian and call him “whiny “. The person that John hurt the most throughout his whole life is his own son! I feel like this gets glossed over because he was more attentive to Sean “At least he was a good father to one of his children”. John failed Julian massively. Having Sean should’ve motivated him to try harder with Julian but I feel like it demotivated him because he realised how much of Julian’s life he missed and that made him feel bad about himself. Even in May’s book she says that John would’ve avoided Julian for the rest of his life to avoid feeling bad about himself & the choices he made with his life. And even when he got his visa he was happy to fly to other countries but not the country containing his son! I mean c’mon that’s very shitty and inexcusable. People can’t relate to John’s callous treatment of Julian so it’s downplayed and undermined by the excuse of “Oh well, John was better with Sean”. I know John appeared more motivated towards the end but doesn’t absolve him of the damage and pain he already caused to his son.

I try to understand John’s neglect of Julian from his perspective - I don’t want to excuse or justify it, but I still want to know what was going through his head to make him treat Julian the way he did - but I just can’t really understand it in the same way I feel like I can empathise with a lot of John’s other flaws. Like I feel like I can understand Johns mistreatment of certain people, or his mood swings, or his anger etc. But when it comes to Julian I struggle to understand him, and I just think its such a shame that Julian never got the closure he deserved with John. But I guess a few things to keep in mind when discussing this are:

1. Alfs abandonment

That Johns father, Alfred, abandoned him at such a young age, this might have affected John in such a way that made connecting with children a real challenge. Of course, he ideally still would’ve made an effort to connect with Julian more - but I guess that this was 1963, and he was someone who at this point had had absolutely no therapy. John’s own father I think was placed in an orphanage around the age of 5, so this neglect and abandonment appeared to be a bit of a cycle within the Lennon family-tree. Alf didn’t develop the neurones to be able to connect with his son the way a father ideally should be able to, and therefore John had trouble forming these connections too.

A real tragic story regarding this disconnect is one that ive heard Paul tell a few times (see this interview at 6:24 to hear him tell it). He essentially compares his ability to just naturally connect with children, to John’s inability to do the same; Paul grew up in a household where children and babies alike were around all the time - and in addition to this, there seemed to have been a lot more affection involved in his early environment compared to Johns. So when Paul was able to pal around at ease with Julian, John asked “How do you do that?” - and its unfortunately just not something you can just learn. I think John did want to be able to relate to Julian, and a part of him wanted to be a real dad - but I guess he just lacked the initiative to do so, as well as not having the needed facilities provided for him to be able to function as “good” parent (< or in other words, that man needed alottttttttt of therapy omg—)

2. Aunt Mimi’s coldness

I think by now its sort of been established that im not Mimi’s no. 1 fan - I don’t hate her, and I think she genuinely loved John, but ive been pretty critical of what I perceive her parenting style to be like. One aspect of this parenting style is that I think she was cold and deprecating towards John, which I presume took a toll on his relationships in such a way that made him susceptible to cynicism and even bitter contempt towards those he loved most.

“She never hit him: her worst punishment was to ignore him…When she did, he’d plead, ‘Don’t ‘nore me, Mimi!’” - I think that this type of parenting style could have effected the way John relates to Julian, perhaps making him feel it was okay to abandon him, maybe as a result of some unrecognised childhood angst or revenge.

Theres also a story where I think John said something to Julian a long the lines of, “I hate your laugh!”. Like, Jules was just some four year old living his life and then John, his own father, had this massive fucking mood swing. I feel bad for Julian cause my parents were like this (had random fucking mood swings and said some pretty contemptuous things) so I can empathise with him. At the same time though, I feel like I can understand John getting these mood swings (although, I don’t think that showing that kind of contempt towards a child is at all acceptable, and assuming that this sort of thing was a regular occurrence, I would say he was emotionally abusive towards Julian. Maybe John got these mood swings from Mimi (check this post for more on that).

3. Yoko’s influence and isolation

I think we first have to take into account here that John had a history of neglecting and failing Julian, and from what im aware of, he only started making contact with him again during his ‘Lost Weekend’ after being encouraged to do so by May Pang. So I don’t think we can make Yoko take all the blame for Johns neglect of Julian (and certainly not his emotional abuse towards Julian). But I think we have to also account for the fact that Julian has stated Yoko would refuse to put him through when he would ring his dad. And I just don’t know how much John had to do with that - as in, I don’t if John knew Yoko was isolating him to the extent that she did, or if he was unaware that she was rejecting several important and significant figures in his life.

For what its worth, Julia Baird wrote in her memoir of John urging (or really, begging) her to go to Cynthias house and ask Julian to phone him, because he hadn’t been able to get through to Julian, and he was trying to construct a better relationship with him around this time (this was before Sean was born, like you said, he seemed to lose motivation with Julian after Sean was born). I don’t know why Julian wasn’t taking his calls around this time - John seemed to think it had something to do with Cynthia, perhaps it was an autonomous decision made by Julian, perhaps it was entirely just a misunderstanding; I don’t know.

When it comes to Yoko, im conflicted - to some extent, I think John was being manipulated by her, and she was clearly isolating (even abusing) him - but also, he’s a grown man, and so he had to take the initiative for his own life. So I don’t know, but id say she is still partly responsible for spoiling Johns relationship with Julian.

~ ~ ~

At the end of the day, all I can really say is that John was just a classic case of parents needing therapy before they start, y’know, parenting - but it was 1963, and thats just not something most people underwent back then, especially people with more complex and unrecognised traumas, as well as mental illnesses that, whilst prevalent, may not have been so apparent. To clarify that point, I think John could function well-enough in his day to day life to be able to get by, because I don’t think his traits of mental illness tended to disrupt his life to such a degree that he could not function (at least not in 1963, though in later years, id argue more so they did; but even still, I don’t think John tended to struggle with mania or psychosis etc.) But I think he was still dealing with mental illness in a way that wrecked almost all meaningful relationships for him, as well as made feeling love and functioning as an emotionally stable and consistent person, a real hardship and challenge for him. And this inability to feel loved and cared for etc. made being a parent, quite simply, impractical. He needed therapy, and its a shame he died before ever receiving real therapy because it would’ve been interesting to see how John might have come to terms with really acknowledging his failures as a parent, and because Julian might have gotten some real closure with his dad.

All in all, I think Phillip Larkin said it best

#sorry this took a minute #these aren’t all my thoughts on John and Julians relationship btw #i have MANYYY more obviously #but these are just 3 things to consider i guess #asks #anon #discussion #julian #abuse #john lennon #john #johns psyche #alfred lennon #bpd #cynthia lennon #cynthia powell #paul mccartney #julian lennon #complex relationships

[moonbeamwritings]

If you’re up to accepting requests right now and if you do polyamorous relationships can I request JotaKak with a fem reader who’s terminally ill and is in and out of the hospital and she feels like she’s such a big burden to them because she’s sick and they don’t get to hang out that much outside of the hospital. She then has a mental breakdown in front of them because she feels guilty and a terrible gf. (If you dont want to do poly - separate or platonic friends is fine)

i’ve never done anything quite like this before so pls be gentle with me! thank you for sending in and for being so patient! ❤️

!!tw for terminal illness discussions and hospital scenery!! 

poly!jotaro and kakyoin with terminally ill fem!reader

You were growing tired, tired physically and mentally, tired of the guilt that gripped at your lungs as you watched Jotaro and Kakyoin waste another beautiful afternoon worrying after you within the walls of your hospital room. They were both so sweet, hands warm where they lay in yours, eyes shining brightly whenever you could muster a smile. You couldn’t deny the flutter in your heart as you watched them come to visit, eagerly accepting the kisses they placed on your lips and across your face, but with each passing day these moments became colored by insecurity and melancholy. You felt like you were holding them back in some way, like you were tethering them to you like you were to IVs and doctors. It broke your heart.

Your feelings reached a boiling point as you sat up one evening, unable to sleep as some late-night television show droned on and on. It became little more than background noise as you spiraled. They deserve better, you reasoned, they shouldn’t be wasting their time day after day. Sure, you’d be alone, but they’d be able to go on and live their lives without daily or weekly hospital visits. They’d be better off. You cried yourself to sleep that night, curled up under the scratchy blankets, wishing they wouldn’t visit.

The next day, you mustered up the best smile you could, tucking in on yourself as you quietly listened to your two lovers go back and forth, chatting about what they got up to when they left, but how excited they were to be back to see you. You nodded along, but failed to really hear them, mind sinking into an all too familiar black hole.

“Hey,” Jotaro spoke, hand dropping to your knee as he watched your eyes gloss over, focusing on an undetermined point across the room, “you alright?”

All you could muster was a weak shrug as you nodded, allowing a small “mhm” to pass your lips.

Noriaki’s eyes flickered between yours and Jotaro’s, “Are you sure? Did you receive news while we were gone that you don’t want to talk about?”

You felt your eyes getting wet, throat closing up with tears. You shook your head.

“Sweetheart,” Noriaki continued, reaching out to cradle your face in his palm, “what is it?”

With one final blink, the gentle, kind lilt of your boyfriend’s voice sent tears racing down your cheeks, unbridled sobs slipping from your lungs as your chest heaved. This couldn’t be happening. You furiously wiped at your face as it burned with embarrassment and frustration.

Noriaki dragged his thumb across your cheekbone, swiping at tears as they fell while Jotaro’s hand remained steady on your knee, his own thumb rubbing calming circles through your blanket.

Together they soothed your sobs, murmuring quiet affirmations and doting on you with small, affectionate gestures. When your chest stopped heaving, and with your heart no longer feeling as though it would burst from your chest, Noriaki’s voice cut through the silence.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Letting out a shaky breath, you rubbed at your eyes, urging your tears to cease, if only for a moment. Your throat felt tight as you finally asked, “Don’t you guys think you deserve more than this?”

The two had the audacity to look confused. Surely they knew how stupid this all was, right? That it was a waste of time?

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Kakyoin shot Jotaro a look, fixing a glare on the other man at his harsh choice of words.

“I just,” you stopped for a moment to allow yourself to breathe, feeling a tear glide down your face, “feel like a burden, I guess. You two deserve better than wasting away in this hospital room with me. This is horrible, can’t you see that? It’s selfish of me to keep you locked away in here, listening to these machines and watching over me like this.”

Jotaro’s hold on your knee tightened for a second before he brought his hand up to your face to take your chin between his thumb and forefinger. The moment your gaze met his, all you could see was love in his deep blue eyes.

“We were dating before your diagnosis, right?”

You nodded.

“And we’re still dating you now?”

A nod followed by a hum.

“Do you force us to come visit you every day?”

“Well, no, not necessarily, but you feel responsible for-”

“You’re right, you don’t force us. We cared about you before and we’ll do it now.”

A new batch of tears began to flow shortly after, though this time they trailed down your cheeks as a sign of your happiness, guilt seemingly escaping along with them.

Kakyoin got up to join Jotaro on your left side, coming into view with a loving smile plastered on his face, “We love you, silly. We’re not wasting time, we’re here to support you. No matter what.”

One after the other they pressed a kiss to your lips, tugging you over just slightly to wrap you into a group hug. Somewhere, lost in the warmth and comfort of your two lovers, you found solace from the thoughts that had been plaguing you for weeks and you were grateful.

#moonbeam answers #jotaro kujo x reader #jotaro kujo imagine #jotaro imagine #jotaro x reader #noriaki kakyoin x reader #noriaki kakyoin imagine #kakyoin imagine #kakyoin x reader #jjba x reader #jjba imagine #tw: terminal illness #tw: hospital

[hargrove-mayfields]

Just A Dream Away

Chapter 1/13 read here on ao3!

my piece for @harringrovebigbang!

Art and moodboard from my amazing team, @monochromegee and @shewritesdirty respectively, to come soon!

~~~~

Six months. Six months and twelve days.

That’s how long Billy has been in the hospital. In a coma. His health rapidly deteriorating.

After one month it was required he be put on a ventilator. Two and his wounds started getting infected. By month three, the hospital asked that a representative be chosen for him, just in case he didn’t pull through.

Neil Hargrove refused. Barked into the receiver something along the lines of, “What do I care if the boy wanted to go and get himself killed?” It was entirely defensive, his voice cracking as he finished his sentence, but the hospital still never contacted him again, not for updates or bills or anything. His wife was far too busy taking care of one grieving child and a lazy husband already to worry about an additional burden.

All of Billy’s extended family was still in California, had written him off years before they’d even left home for Indiana anyways. The moment his mother walked out the door, nobody else wanted him either, so they were off the table too.

The town of Hawkins had been turned inside out by the deaths of more than thirty community members, some of which were still being reported as missing so many months later. Nobody had the time, or in many cases the heart, to take care of the lone survivor.

That left only one person. The one who’d been taking care of him even before he’d fallen into a coma. The one who’d understood him better than anyone else, who’d given him a chance, who’d loved him more than anything.

Steve gets a call from the hospital, the way he is usually woken up these days. Every other morning, as soon as visitation opens, a nurse calls him for a quick update. The duties of a representative for someone unconscious, for his Billy in a coma.

He’s beyond exhausted, dragging himself to and from Hawkins General day in and day out, sometimes bringing Max or a few of the other kids along with him. Mostly because every day is the same thing, walking through the halls, facing the polite smiles from nurses who deal with this on the daily, don’t understand the way it feels to see the one you love on that bed.

If he does hear anything new, it’s usually not good news. He knows Billy is getting worse, but still he sits in that room for countless hours, watching and waiting for the moment he’s struck with a miracle, and he comes back to him.

The hospital is not quite as patient though, and since about month four of Billy’s hospital stay, they’d been encouraging Steve to consider his wards right to die. After so much time had passed by without signs of improvement, the nurses had started hesitating in the doorway when he was around, and offering kind little suggestions that were supposed to push him towards the decision to let Billy go.

Things like, “It’s not really him anymore, honey.” and, “He’s getting worse by the minute, poor thing.”, and Steve’s favorite, the one that made him leave the hospital in tears, “If he wanted to wake up, he would have done it by now.”

But no matter how true what they were saying may have been, Steve really did not want to hear it. The only reason the thought of letting Billy go had ever crossed the minds of doctors and nurses was because of what was on the news, all these up and coming stories about hospital ethics committees that were popping up all over the country recently.

They were being selfish, willing to let Billy die just because they were scared they wouldn’t be able to stand the heat that would come from keeping an eighteen year old boy on life support for as long as they had. Whether or not they actually thought they could save him was a question for another day.

So they would mail Steve countless papers and claims and pamphlets to try to reason with him, to persuade him that the best thing to do was to kill Billy because they didn’t want to deal with him anymore. It made him sick to his stomach, to think that people who were supposedly trained to help people were so hellbent on giving up on a patient.

He wonders sometimes, if they wouldn’t be so hasty to pull the plug had he been an easier case. If his father was more supportive and his biological mother present, or if the government hadn’t worked so hard to cover up the origin of his injuries. Maybe even if his representative was a nice young woman instead.

But there’s nothing he can do about it, so he just crumples the papers and ignores their premature condolences, and goes to visit Billy at every moment he can.

The drive to the hospital that particular morning feels like it takes a whole day instead of the 20 minutes the route actually is, Steve feeling like he’s suspended in time. It doesn’t seem real, taking the stairs up to the second floor, elevators were a no go after the free fall he took at Starcourt, and taking a visitor sticker and a bunch of papers from the woman at the reception desk.

He’s walked this route more times than he can count, but this time he can feel that something is wrong, different. On the top of the very first sheet the desk lady hands him, in bold black letters, are the printed words “Right-to-Die” and Steve already knows what is coming.

The woman gives him a half sympathetic look and reads off her scripted spiel. “The Hargrove boy has been unresponsive for six months now, with no signs of improvement in his condition. The recently instituted hospital ethics board wants you to seriously consider the contents of these forms.”

The words are so hollow, the look on her face mostly bored. Steve guesses this same speech was probably given to a thousand other people who’d come through this hospital, and it makes him feel nauseated just listening to it, her less than genuine pity as she reads off her clipboard, making it seem like she doesn’t even care what she is asking of him.

“It’s of course among your rights as representative to say no, but we want to remind you that he has no quality of life being artificially kept alive, and it might be best to let him go.”

“No, they told me he couldn’t feel anything. He’s not suffering.” Steve insists, and as much as he believes that he is right, the confidence in his voice is false. This was something he’d been thinking about every day for the last half a year. “You’ve kept him alive this long, right? That’s got to mean something.”

“Still, this is about him. We just want you to think about if keeping him alive is the right thing to do anymore when we can’t be sure what he’s going through. When he isn’t himself.”

Of course this was something he’d considered in his own mind, six months is a long time, and it was inevitable that a few times on his worst days, he’d have to think about pulling the plug. It was just so different hearing this nurse who didn’t know Billy insisting on it, it was just so impersonal, and it made him think about the hospital's greed, and how they probably just wanted to save money on ventilators and open up another bed.

Without saying another word to her, Steve walks away without the clipboard of papers, and off to room B-216. Of course he'd known this was coming. They’d been trying to drop hints since the moment Billy stopped being able to breathe on his own, but he’d been in denial. As long as Billy's heart was still beating, Steve had hope that he would recover if the doctors would just try.

Still, as he sits down in the chair next to Billy’s bed, he decides he doesn’t want to call Max today. He takes the desk woman's advice, as angry as it made him, and takes the time to truly reflect on the boy in that bed, with the feeding tube down his throat, the respirator breathing for him beside his bed, the IV in his neck, there because the veins in his arms had been so overused.

His hair is much longer now, just past his collarbones, but without maintenance, his blonde curls are knotted and dull. His skin is unnaturally pale, his freckles faded to nothing, and his whole body is littered with angry, dark red scars. The hole in the center of his chest still isn’t all the way healed, and the nurses are constantly fighting to keep it free of infection.

When he wakes up, they say he will be in immense pain and that he will have forgotten how to walk and talk and probably even breathe on his own. There was a chance too that his memory will have gaps in it, which could mean anything from forgetting what happened to him in July, to not even knowing his own name.

Basically if, no- when he wakes up, he won’t really be Billy.

Steve had always heard about and seen in the movies coma patients who twitch their fingers or moved their eyes, or who really give any signs of life, miraculously waking up and being themselves again, but Billy, he had only done the opposite.

At some point, he has to accept that Billy won’t be like one of those other patients, and, in the condition he is in, all pale skin and open wounds and zero signs of responsiveness, they were only prolonging his death. They had tried just about everything they could thanks to Steve’s willingness to cover the expenses, and, although he didn’t want to believe it, maybe just couldn’t accept it quite yet, it was, as the nurse had said, time to think about letting Billy go.

Not today though. He’d spend today with him at the very least, trying to push those thoughts to the back of his mind while he still could. The nurses used to say, when Billy had first been admitted and they still thought there was a chance of recovery, that Steve and Max, whenever she could come, should try talking to him, and Steve always did.

He never really has a whole lot to say, not since everything has been calming down recently. There were no more funerals to attend, no more grieving families to take a hot dish and his condolences to. The kids didn’t need him to watch them anymore, and Family Video had decided to lay him off until he didn’t have to make daily hospital commutes and he could work again. Basically, Steve’s entire world was Billy.

So it was only fair that Billy was what he usually talked about, reminiscing about everything they’d gotten to do together before the accident, telling him about what was happening with his sister now that she was getting older, and giving him updates on how many days it had been and how much he missed and loved him. One of the nurses had heard him say that once, seen him lean forwards and press a kiss to Billys forehead, but she had only turned away, pretending she hadn’t noticed.

Today though, it was much harder than usual to think of something to say to him. He always tried to leave all of the bad stuff at the door, didn’t think it would do Billy any good if he could even hear, to be listening to him always complaining or moping about their situation, but with death weighing heavy on his mind, what else was there to think about?

The anger and the remorse and the depression would be for when he went home tonight and downed a whole bottle of Fireball, Billy’s favorite whiskey, and called Robin drunk off his ass at two in the morning to tell her about how terrible he felt.

It was because he loved Billy with all of his heart that he wouldn’t put him through that. Even if it hurt more than anything else to see his love broken down and dying, which was, in Steve’s opinion, the worst thing that had ever happened to him, he always wore a smile on his face every day he walked into that hospital room.

As hard as that was, and as guilty as it made him feel to admit, Billy's sickness wasn’t the only thing making Steve miserable. He had also been through some unimaginable things himself while trapped in the Starcourt mall, and he didn't come out the other side the same.

Nightmares plagued him constantly, so that when he would eventually come back home from the hospital, he didn’t sleep more than fifteen minutes through the night. Being alone for too long warped his perception of reality, made him think everyone he knew and loved was gone, that he’d been abandoned or all his friends killed. He would constantly call to check on them, most of the time drunk and panicking, but they’d stopped picking up after the first few times. There were so many triggers too that could send him back to that night in an instant, where he’d just get stuck again.

And perhaps that is exactly why he can’t let Billy go so easily, because even if it is heartbreaking and makes him feel so empty inside being there with a version of his Billy who couldn’t speak to him or who he couldn’t hold, he was still alive. If he died now, Steve would have nothing. It would be no different from the losses everyone had suffered, the death of the chief of police and at least thirty other community members robbing them of their soundness of mind.

Letting go of Billy would just be another blow, to him and to the tight-knit community who had come so close together after the accident that rocked their little town. You wouldn't be able to tell from the fact that his room was always empty except for Steve or his sister, but the papers had revered him as a hero. Who he’d become after being hospitalized meant his death wouldn't just affect loved ones.

But more than any of that, he just didn’t want to give up on him. Pulling the plug meant sacrificing so many more moments they could have together, losing the chance to move on from what had happened. How could Steve ever know when it was the right time to do that?

When was it safe to say that Billy wouldn’t ever recover, and that they were just stretching out the inevitable? When could he feel right in letting his very best friend and the love of his life die? Deep down, past his initial reaction of shock and heartbreak, he knows he’ll never truly be ready to say goodbye, but that now was that time regardless.

Just like the nurses said, he wasn’t really Billy anymore. Who he’d been was a teenage boy with too much energy to burn, always getting into trouble and always in motion, bouncing his knee, twisting the ring on his middle finger or the locket around his neck, chain smoking cigarette after cigarette. It used to drive Steve insane how he wouldn’t sit still for anything, but now he would give anything just to have that back.

There was no personality left in him, no stupid jokes to cheer Steve up, no pestering his sister and her friends like a big brother does, nothing left in him at all that made him distinctly Billy. Steve wondered if maybe he had already given up.

If maybe, Billy wasn’t even in there at all anymore, and they were holding on to nothing just to feed their own selfishness. Steve wasn’t the most emotional of people, usually panicking before he got upset, but he could feel tears pricking at his eyes now, as he watched the slow rise and fall of Billy’s, or not Billy’s, chest, and listened to the beeps and hums of the machines that kept him going.

He knew what needed to be done. Just not today.

For now, he holds Billy's hand, unmoving and just warm enough that he could tell he was alive, and whispered to him anything that came to his mind.

If Billy could hear him, he knew he was probably tired of hearing the same stories over and over, thinking of Billy waking up and complaining about Steve being too boring made him chuckle to himself. An instant pang of regret tightens his chest, feeling guilty for being happy.

There was a really sweet nurse about the age of his mother who always checked in on him at the same time everyday, like he was the one with tubes and machines sticking out of his body. Her name was Dale, and she always peeked her head into the room around meal times to ask if he had been down to the cafeteria yet. Usually he hadn’t, and sometimes he still forgot to eat anyways, but it meant a lot to him.

Today though, she came all the way in the room, a sad look on her face, and he had to avoid her gaze entirely to keep himself from breaking down, choosing instead to focus on Billy’s slender fingers where he’d laced them through his own.

“Steve, honey, I know this is really hard for you, it’s hard for all of us when something like this happens, but you need to take care of yourself.” She was just being kind, but he wouldn’t hear it.

If this was going to be the last full day he’d ever spend with Billy, he was going to make it count. A soggy sandwich in the dingy old cafeteria wasn’t worth spending a single moment away from the other boy's bedside. He feels vaguely guilty about it, but he ignores the well meaning nurse, even as she says her generic condolences that all of them were trained to say.

He smooths out Billy's hair, brushing the part that always hung in his eyes to the side carefully, something Billy himself had always seemed to do when he was nervous. It reminds him of the time they tried to do each other's hair and Billy taught him how to make a braid, so he tells Billy about it.

When he hears the distant roar of a car's engine from the open window, it reminds him of the first time Billy drove him home in the now totaled beyond recognition Camaro, so he talks about that. A bird landing on the windowsill reminds him of sitting on Billy’s bed and talking about the seagulls and the beaches back in California where Billy had grown up, so he tells Billy that story too. The phone ringing at the receptionist's desk down the hallway reminds him of the time Billy had called him in the middle of the night to invite him out to the quarry, where they’d kissed for the first time and Steve clumsily asked him to make things official, so again, he told Billy all about it.

It's mostly a comfort to himself, keeping his mind off of the reality of the situation, but then the desk lady announces over the overhead system that visiting hours are over, and it’s time for him to go.

They had been giving him a lot of leeway here at Hawkins General, allowing him to visit every single day and sometimes with a 14 year old, which was strictly against the rules of the ICU. The end of visiting hours was a rule they always stood by though, and despite how much it crushed him to leave Billy by himself overnight, he always did it.

On his way out, he grabbed the stack of papers the receptionist tried to give him off of her desk. He would call Susan in the morning and ask her what she thought. He would try to involve her in the choice, since she’d technically claimed Billy as her dependent after her marriage to his father, who had given enough verbal and written agreements that he wanted nothing at all to do with his son while he was hospitalized that his wife could, and had, stepped in.

He went home that night with the thought in his head that this was the last time he’d do this, and by this time tomorrow, Billy would be dead.

#harringrove big bang 2021 #harringrove #steve harrington #billy hargrove #billy x steve #ej writer #story by ej! #so excited to start sharing! #chapter two will be on tumblr later today! #it’s up on ao3 already if you wanna get ahead!

[chocoholicannanymous]

If the Spit Hits the Fan (Glee) Pt XVIII

This is the last part of this. Of a story that I was pretty certain I wouldn’t finish and just posted the bit I had in my scraps and snippets tag for a lark. You read that, and you liked it, and your response made me want to try and finish it. And so here we are, ~29k finished fic. 

Thank you for the support.

Follows pt I, pt II, pt III, pt IV, pt V, pt VI, pt VII, pt VIII, pt IX, pt X, pt XI, pt XII, pt XIII, pt XIV, pt XV, pt XVI and pt XVII.

New York is big and loud and filthy and expensive.

Kurt's first apartment had been an absolute rathole. He'd shared it with four others, and his “room” had been a repurposed coatroom. There had been just enough place for a bed and a tiny table instead of a desk. He'd only brought the most necessary in way of clothing, and with the exception of two shirts hanging from a nail in the wall he'd been forced to keep everything in a suitcase under the bed.

He'd moved out after a month, tired of never being able to keep food in the kitchen, weary of the nicks surrounding the lock on his door – he'd replaced the old one day 1, but even the best of locks only went so far – and fed up with having to carry all his valuables with him at all times.

Luckily the Warbler network had activated and Trent's older brother had offered up his guest room (and if that wasn't a sign of wealth, a student in New York with a guest room, then Kurt didn't know what was) for the rest of the year provided Kurt find someplace else to spend the night on those occasions it was needed. During the fall it'd mostly been solved by Sebastian coming to visit and the two sharing a cheap hotel room, and during the fall by Kurt spending the night at Sebastian's apartment. It had been tempting to move in with Sebastian then, but Kurt had resisted and they both agreed they'd become stronger for it.

Living together had been tough, especially since Sebastian had a lot more money available than Kurt. They'd managed to find a balance though and looking back Kurt feels proud of the work they'd put in to make it work. Three years (and counting) together and these days Kurt is willing to proclaim that Sebastian is as much of a perfect boyfriend as it's possible to be.

Yes, New York is still loud and filthy and big, but it's also full of light and laughter and love. Kurt's learned to find his way around both city and school, and he's on track for graduation with excellent prospects. Life is good.

Of course, that kind of means he's overdue for a cold shower and unfortunately it comes as cold and icy as is possible.

“Blaine. I guess I should have known you'd turn up.”

Like a bad penny, Kurt thinks. His ex-boyfriend just smiles wider at the words, clearly not picking up on the undertones.

“Yes! I'll always come back to you, Kurt. We're meant to be – you're my soulmate.”

Kurt shudders. All these years, and he still haven't gotten over his negative reaction to those words.

“Yeah, I'm pretty sure you and I have different interpretations of what those things mean. Personally I can't see how someone who walked out of my life without a word years ago could be considered my 'soulmate', but that's me.”

“That's not fair! I never wanted to leave you, but my parents made me.”

Blaine does this thing with his face that resembles what Kurt remembers of Blaine's “I've apologized, sort of, and you should forgive me now” expression and Kurt thinks that if Blaine could see himself he'd never ever do it again. It's not pretty. It kind of looks like he's about to shit his pants, frankly.

“Right. Your parents. And why, exactly, were they so determined to get you out of Lima without saying goodbye?”

Blaine flinches, and Kurt can see the realization hit him. Strange. It's as if he never even thought about the possibility that Kurt would know about the lies Blaine had told. Emotions run across Blaine's eyes and face, one after the other, and Kurt just waits without even trying to figure out what's going through his ex's mind. He's beyond caring.

“Kurt, I... I, I have a confession to make. When I got home that last night, my parents, they were waiting up for me. They made assumptions, and I, I let them.”

Blaine's face twists, and a couple of tears start falling. Kurt would be touched, really he would, except he happens to know that Blaine can cry on command.

“I know I shouldn't have, I know it was wrong, I was just so afraid! I thought they'd throw me out, and so I kept quiet and did what they wanted. I'm so sorry I did that to you.

“I love you, Kurt!”

The thing is, he can remember when those words from Blaine's lips would make him melt. That's no longer true. Now he listens to them like he would a performance, and he finds them lacking. He should have gone for soft instead of intense, a hint of tears maybe, not volume and anger.

This isn't school though, even though it very much is a performance, nor is it worth critiquing. It's not worth anything, really. Kurt sighs a little, just wanting all of it to be over and Blaine to be gone.

“Here's the thing. I understand, I guess. In your shoes I would have been worried to tell my dad the truth too. I think just about every teenager out there would be at least a little afraid to tell their parents they got drunk and stupid.

“But I also think that just about every teenager out there knows that there's some kind of middle-ground between 'I got drunk and tried to rape my boyfriend' and 'my boyfriend drugged me and tried to rape me'. Except apparently you didn't. You just went with what would get you of the hook the fastest and easiest.”

“Hey! That's not fair!”

“Oh, it isn't? You doing what you did is okay, but me calling it what it was is unfair? Now, why am I not the least bit surprised that that's how you feel?

“You know, at first I didn't understand how you could do it. How you could say you loved me and then not just leave me, but let your parents believe that I would do something like that to you. Well, that you could let anyone think I'd do that to anyone.

“But as I said, I understand why you did it.”

A triumphant look flash up in Blaine's eyes. Oh, he's doing a pretty good job at hiding it – much better than he would have been able to as a teenager – but Kurt knows him, and he's looking for it.

“You threw me under the bus because you knew it'd be an easy out. You could have told your parents something else, anything else, but you chose the worst possible lie – one you had to have known would get me in trouble. You did it because it was easy, and it would get you of the hook – maybe even get you some sympathy instead of the punishment you deserved – and you did it because that was all you cared about. You.

“I always knew you were a bit self-involved, but I told myself it was just part of you being a performer. A healthy ego's pretty much a must, and I used to think that was it. Except it turned out you were so focused on you, and your needs and wants, that nothing else mattered. Certainly not me.

“It took me a while to accept, but I know now that regardless of what you said you didn't love me. Not really. You might have thought you did, but Blaine? Love means that the other person's just as important to you as you yourself are. And I never was that to you.”

He ignores Blaine's protests and just continues, projecting his voice to be heard over the barely restrained excuses and lies.

“The truth is that your lack of empathy and care for other people borders on Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and quite frankly I am better off for not having you remain in my life. Just don't expect me to thank you for it though.

“No one else will either. Do you realize how many people you worried with your little disappearing act? There was quite a few at Dalton who were convinced that your parents had shipped you off to conversion camp. They were counting down until your 18th birthday and from what I heard there was even the beginning of a fund to pay your way at Dalton if you escaped and were disowned.”

There's a triumphant gleam in Blaine's eyes. Clearly he's pleased about his friends being so worried about him and so ready to help him out. Kurt just wants to stomp that light out. Violently.

“Then when you didn't resurface after your birthday a few started worrying that your parents had you in a mental hospital, and there was talk of trying to stage some kind of rescue. That only lasted so long, of course.

“You see, somehow it's hard to convince anyone that their friend is practically jailed and in need of a rescue when they're seen out and about clubbing in L.A.. After all, these days everyone carries a phone, so the idea that you were unable to contact someone – anyone – and ask for help went up in flames pretty quick after that.”

Thad had been so angry that he'd made sure every single Dalton student that had ever know Blaine found out, and even the boy's most die-hard supporters had given up then and there.

They'd all understood not wanting to getting into a conflict with your family, especially when said family usually paid for college and any possible trust funds tended to be under the family's control for a while longer. What they hadn't understood was Blaine's total lack of communication. Email telling them that Blaine was okay but under orders not to contact anyone from Ohio would have gone a long way to ease worries, and was, they felt, the very least he owed them.

“Funny thing about you showing up here now? I can't help but remember that you turned 21 a couple of weeks ago. You didn't happen to get access to a trust fund then did you? Not that I actually care, but there are some old bets to settle.”

There wasn't, not really, but enough Warbler had warned Kurt about this very scenario with an added “I bet he shows up afterwards, thinking you'll take him back” for it to not quite be a lie.

Blaine splutters before launching into a long row of “explanations”, one more shitty than the other. It's obvious that he didn't expect Kurt to be angry with him, but instead to be welcomed with open arms. It's even sounding as if Blaine expected Kurt to take him back and just let him slide back into his life as if nothing had happened. Kurt isn't quite sure if Blaine intended for him to move in with Kurt and start a new life in New York, or if the idea was for Kurt to give up everything and follow Blaine back to L.A., but both options are equally ridiculous.

“Stop. Just, stop. I told you, I don't care. If you want to get in touch with any of your old friends from Dalton and McKinley and explain all of it to them, do so. But you don't need to explain anything to me. I don't want to hear it. Your window for explaining yourself to me closed years ago. It closed after you let your parents walk into a police station ready to have me charged with rape.

“Nothing you can say will ever make that okay. Nothing you say can make me forgive you.”

Kurt stops himself and takes a deep breath. There's so much he could say, so many accusations that could be made, so much hatred to be poured out.

Blaine's actions had gotten Kurt into trouble, and could have landed him in jails. They'd been what had stopped Burt Hummel from running from reelection after being asked – while nothing had come from the Andersons' accusations there had still been enough people who had known about it for it to leak and ruin a political career. After all, who cared if it was true when it made for a good weapon? And “local congressman buries son's rape charge” made for a great weapon.

Kurt had been willing to risk it, but his dad hadn't wanted to. Had it leaked the only way to prove Kurt's innocence would have been to make the video of Blaine trying to assault Kurt public. No good parent does that to their kid had been Burt's position, and Kurt had been grateful.

That didn't mean he wasn't aware of exactly how much that had cost not just his dad but the whole state. The man who'd replaced his dad had been the kind of bigot that wasn't good for anyone, not even his followers.

Kurt still blames Blaine for that, and even if he'd been insane enough to consider forgiving everything else he's never forgiving that. The chance of making Blaine understand any of that is minuscule though. The chance of him caring is even less.

There is, simply put, no point in spending even another second on trying to get through to him.

“You're not welcome here. Please leave. Goodbye Blaine.”

Once the door is closed and locked behind Blaine Kurt finally relaxes. He's closing the door on Blaine in more than one way, finally able to truly do that – because regardless of what he's hoped he's always known that one day his former boyfriend would pop up again.

“If he comes back you're filing for a restraining order.”

“He won't come back, Sebastian.”

“You don't know that. He did today, didn't he?”

It's obvious that Sebastian is coming from a place of care and worry, and Kurt feels himself soften. Blaine hasn't just been the monster under Kurt's bed during all of these years.

“Yes, he did, and no, I guess I can't really know. But honey, I really don't think he will. Blaine was reminded today that actions have consequences, and he found out I have the means to ensure said consequences. Coming after me and trying to change my mind is more work than he's ever shown himself willing to put in.

“After all, he's not the kind to stick around when the spit hits the fan.”

Luckily Sebastian is.

~ The end ~

#chocoholic fics #kurt fic #kurt hummel #sebastian smythe #kurtbastian #itshtf