#and truly comprehend the disparity where they diverge

[bigskydreaming]

Do you ever get weirded out when people insist that Dick is a "control-freak?" I don't really have a good counterargument for that supposed statement, but that just doesn't really click for me... It kinda feels like one of those fanon things that puts a ton of unrealistic pressure on Dick to be a "perfect being" if you know what I mean....

Yes and no? Like I just mean with this, this is one of those things that I actually do think is part of his character.....its just that it gets snowballed into being this huge flaw and yet another avenue to criticize or condemn him, rather than just being used to explore WHY Dick is this way.

Like personally, I think one of the biggest similarities between Bruce and Dick despite all their differences is the fact that they both have control freak tendencies.....BUT these manifest in very different ways, and IMO stem from very different mindsets.

Because I feel like Bruce’s control freak tendencies stem from his awareness of his own resources, capabilities and knowledge, all blended in with a thread of ingrained classism that frankly, its just unrealistic to think that a born billionaire managed to avoid being influenced by at all.

I think Bruce’s control freak tendencies spiral out of his brilliant mind’s ability to map out so many scenarios in a way that lets them end in an optimal resolution for everyone involved....but ONLY IF he controls as many of the variables as possible himself, because the variables are what make or break a projection and how much it ends up being fully realized.

Bruce is a control freak because when he’s in his own head, when he’s the one in control of all the many varied elements that have to come together in just the right way at just the right times to allow everything to fall perfectly into place and thread the needle so everyone makes it out alive, nobody has to die, so long as Order is allowed access to everything it needs in order to control an outcome, it will prevail and the senseless Chaos that has so often stolen the things Bruce loves and cherishes most in ways he sees as always being preventable, could have been avoided, if only he’d been able to control more of the situation than he actually had at the time........

When Bruce retreats into his own mind to analyze things and project outcomes and try and come up with the one course of action that will accomplish all of his intended goals without anyone being hurt......because he is the master of his own universe there in his own mind, he’s in complete charge of his thoughts, his brain always having been his greatest and ultimate weapon......because there’s nothing interfering with his control of all the little minutiae that need to happen just so in order for his seemingly impossible plans to come together properly......there, Bruce can see it all play out perfectly. A perfect outcome, nobody hurt, nobody losing anything, everyone accomplishing everything they needed to accomplish in order to rate the plan an unmitigated success.

But that’s only in his own head. Where he controls everything. The real world is not so easily controlled and shaped despite his best efforts and considerable reach......and thus, in my mind, the eternal tragedy of Bruce.

Because his control freak tendencies do come from a genuine place, a good place, a desire to see all his loved ones, and everyone else just safe and happy and protected and ALIVE...

But those good intentions butt heads with the fact that so many of the variables he tries his best to control are actually y’know....expressions of other peoples’ free will that he has no right to override or manipulate for them, no matter that he does so with the best of intentions.

Its okay to play God in your own head, in your own assessment of a situation as you run through how you would LIKE for it to play out, ideally.

But that doesn’t mean its okay to play God like that and to that extent in your real life, influencing and superseding the agencies of those closest to you to arrange them all like pieces on a chessboard because you’re convinced you are right and you know best.

Because the thing is - the tragedy - is that Bruce undeniably IS brilliant. His mind probably works in ways most people couldn’t even comprehend. His ability to analyze so many disparate variables and factors in his head and calculate projected outcomes, is like....second to none.

So the thing is.....in his own head, when Bruce maps out solutions to the various crises he comes face to face with.........with him controlling all the variables in play there, he truly does find an optimal outcome most of the time, I think. That’s the tragedy. I believe he really is able to 90% of the time calculate a strategy that could safely navigate everyone of his loved ones and teammates and allies through whatever dangers they face and see them safely through to the other side....but ONLY if he controls the majority of the variables, INCLUDING the actions of all those people. In essence...only if they all do EXACTLY what he tells them to, and just takes it on faith that he is right and knows what he’s doing and listening to him now will keep everyone alive.

And unfortunately, that’s just....not something you can ask of people, let alone expect. No matter how much they trust you, the kind of faith that’s asking (usually in life or death situations and the heat of the moment)....that demands ABSOLUTE certainty that this man has found the one truly optimal solution to their crisis, no matter what anyone else says to the contrary - and most of those other voices usually belonging to geniuses in their own rights. And especially when the things Bruce is asking of them or telling them to do flies in the face of other heroes’ own well-honed instincts that have kept them alive through years and even decades of being a superhero in their own right, without Bruce constantly looking over their shoulder advising them....sometimes, that’s just not something even people who know and trust him are going to be able to do.

Because as brilliant as Bruce is, he’s still human. He’s not actually God, he’s not infallible. He CAN be wrong. He HAS been wrong, and will be again. Even if he’s only wrong one out of ten times as opposed to most peoples’ 50/50 split.....that is still a margin of error, and ANY possibility of error, even a one in ten chance that Bruce isn’t right this time, he missed something or didn’t account for something or sheer dumb chance could potentially strike at just the single most critical moment and derail his whole strategy no matter how ingenious it was.....

*Shrugs* Well, when you’re talking life or death stakes, sometimes even just that one in ten chance this might be one of the times Bruce is wrong means that other experienced heroes, even his own family like Dick, have to do what’s right in their eyes, what makes sense to THEM, and not being able to see the world the way Bruce does, see the strategy he’s concocted run through its projections seamlessly and without a hitch in his mind......they sometimes have to say I do trust you, but I also have to trust myself as I’ve gotten this far, and every instinct, all my experience as a hero myself is telling me I have to go a different way on this one.

And the tragedy of Bruce is every single time someone does that, someone makes a choice he advised against instead of adhering to what he told them to do......he can still see in his mind, the shining perfect strategy as he’d envisioned it, still running from Point A to Point B without a single hitch as long as everyone in his mind’s eye performs exactly according to the strategy he’s mapped out....and when that happens, the scenario, the projection ends exactly as it always ends from the very first time he mapped it out and ran through it in his head, checking for flaws.

In his head, no matter how disastrously things might have gone wrong in real life, the second they diverged from Bruce’s plan or someone acted in a way Bruce had specifically advised against.......in his head, where those things don’t happen, where everything goes exactly according to his plan, where he has total, perfect control......there, his projections whether imagined ahead of time or running through them in hindsight, always arrive at the same conclusion:

The optimal outcome he was aiming for. The one where everyone made it home alive and safe, where all objectives were accomplished, where the good guys won and after the movie, Bruce and his parents got ice cream and then went home and nothing unanticipated happened or went wrong, because he had it all under control, as long as everything adhered exactly to his plan.

And that’s a hell of a thing to have to live with....a crystal clear image of things ending the way you wanted them to, the way everyone wanted them to....if only everyone had LISTENED to you and done exactly as you said instead of refusing to trust you or going off script and doing their own thing.

So Bruce is a control freak, IMO, but for a reason.....and that reason is such that no matter how many times his control freak tendencies clash with his childrens’ independence, his teammates’ trust, he can’t view it as a solution, to just rid himself of those tendencies.....because they WORK. When allowed to. He’s not controlling just for the sake of being controlling, he’s just trying desperately to keep as many people as possible ALIVE by the time he returns home every morning.......and even though he’s intelligent enough and self-aware enough to see where those very same tendencies cause major problems in his interactions and relationships with even his own children....I think Bruce is constantly stuck between a rock and a hard place, unable to keep himself from weighing that against his success rate, and how often embracing his control freak tendencies instead of dismissing them has led to an optimal outcome, and kept everyone safe, that he was trying to keep safe.

So I get it, even as it causes clear problems for a character I favor more than Bruce.

Because see, like I said at the start, I do think Dick has control freak tendencies too....but the problem I have with talking about them, or seeing them talked about elsewhere in fandom, is that I truly don’t think its possible to divorce Dick’s control freak tendencies FROM how Bruce’s impacted him while growing up.

Basically....you can’t productively talk about this tendency of Dick’s, IMO, unless you’re willing to also talk about Bruce’s control freak tendencies and how and in what ways they negatively impact his children, like Dick.

Because Bruce and Dick, while similar, are not the same and are never going to be the same, because there’s no avoiding the fact that Bruce is a direct and pivotal - most pivotal, lbr - influencer on Dick’s life, and the man he grows up to become.

And Bruce, as stated....is a control freak. And he already was, before Dick ever set foot in the manor. 

But Bruce grew into his control freak tendencies as a reaction to his trauma, the shock of the unanticipated stealing everything from him, in ways that later, in hindsight, Bruce can’t help but view as being entirely preventable, if only things had gone differently that night, if people had made different choices, if someone had CONTROLLED the situation.

Bruce’s tendencies grew out of a failure to react properly, and grew INTO an extreme form of proactiveness. Bruce doesn’t wait for things to happen, if he can help it, because too often that means by the time you act, its already too late. Bruce prepares as much as humanly possible. He acts preemptively to take out threats before they can become actual threats. He forms contingencies way ahead of ever needing them, because by the time he needs them, he knows he won’t have the time needed to properly map a plan out from scratch/

But this kind of proactive approach to life as a superhero - a mindset he never truly ever leaves behind in the Cave even though he changes before going upstairs, because the line between Bruce and Batman is far too blurred, there is no real distinction in Bruce’s mind...he’s ALWAYS Batman, and thus he’s ALWAYS on guard and doing his best to be prepared.

However, the caveat to that is that means that a lot of time, a lot of his life and how he goes about living it......is according to plans he’s mapped out to preempt or stave off or avoid even POTENTIAL problems or dangers in his day to day life.

In essence....he spends a lot of his life choosing his course of action based on not just avoiding existing threats....but even potential threats, whether or not they ever end up being something he had to be concerned about.

And the thing that gets left out of criticism of Dick’s control freak tendencies IMO....is this is Dick’s father. This is the man who raised him, for MUCH longer than any other Batkid has been raised by him. This is the way Dick grew up.

And it was fine at first! When he was younger, a kid, it didn’t bother him to live his life according to Bruce’s advice and wishes and plans, because children that young, like, they’re USED to parents making a ton of their decisions, steering them towards certain choices because they’re literally too young and too lacking in life experiences to know what the best choice to make even IS.

That’s the way its SUPPOSED to work, and thus, for a long time...it DID work.

But...at a certain point, parents are supposed to pull back, take off the training wheels, stamp down their desire to overrule the choices their children make that they view as misguided or disasters waiting to happen, because its their life to live now, and they need to be allowed to do that. For better or for worse.

And the problem was.....Bruce didn’t do that. Because I honestly don’t think Bruce knows HOW to do that. Because when he thinks he knows better than someone else, I don’t think he’s just sure he’s right, I honestly think he can SEE it in his head. He’s face to face with it, can’t avoid looking at it no matter how determined someone else seems to steer themselves down a far more harmful path, when it would be sooooo easy, in Bruce’s estimation, for them to get what they want without any risk of danger, he can see it so clearly, if only they would just LET HIM STEER.....

And as Dick grew up, grew into himself and his own surety in his own instincts and priorities and choices.......that just....didn’t work for him. At all. Its practically anathema to who he is and what he cares about most, values most for his own life. Its oil to his water. He CAN’T live like that, the very idea chafes at him, probably.....the thought of just surrendering his own choices to someone else’s directive, even if it is his own father, even though he does believe that Bruce only wants what’s best for him and for him to be safe and happy.....

Because the thing is, I don’t think Dick CAN be happy living like that. He is someone who desperately needs the freedom to make his own choices even if they’re the wrong ones, sometimes even especially if they’re the wrong ones.

Because Dick is a product of his own traumas and tragedies just as Bruce is of his own.

And the thing that took Bruce’s parents from him, ruined his life, wrecked everything and put him on the path to becoming the Batman.....was something Bruce sees as avoidable, preventable, with the missing variable being the control he lacked. But the thing is, Bruce always had agency. He grew up the privileged heir of a vastly wealthy and influential family. He NEVER lacked for personal power, for the ability to make choices and have them respected.

So the problem the night his initial tragedy occurred on was not that he was lacking control or agency he normally possessed, that someone else had removed it or countered it......he was the same as always. No, the problem was that even though he had his own personal measure of control, his personal agency....that wasn’t ENOUGH to subvert his tragedy. That on its own was never going to be able to seize control of enough of the variables in the situation that he could then guide it safely to a different outcome, no matter how many times he mapped it out in his head looking back on it. He had his control and agency, but it wasn’t enough....he needed MORE. Only by having more control over the situation, his environs, his person, the influence he could wield on people around him......only that could give him ENOUGH control to influence the high volume of variables needed in any given scenario, to assume control of that situation overall, and be the one most influential in deciding what outcome ultimately resulted from it.

But Dick is another matter entirely, and his situation - for all its parallels to Bruce’s - was always INHERENTLY different.

Because Dick wasn’t born the privileged heir of a family of wealth and power....and even after being taken in by Bruce, that didn’t remove his origins even in the eyes of Gotham society, and no matter how much Bruce’s wealth and connections made Dick’s life better and easier in many ways, merely being raised by him starting at age eight or nine was never going to actually give Dick the entirety of all the privileges Bruce enjoys, and always has, his entire life.

No matter the size of his bank account, the way the general public views Bruce Wayne and the way they view Dick Grayson, the poor circus orphan Bruce took in for some unknown reason....they are entirely different things, and not remotely interchangeable.

Bruce’s problem was that even as much control and agency as he initially possessed, it wasn’t enough to give him as much influence over outcomes as he NEEDED in order to protect people and keep them safe.

Dick’s problem was that from the moment his parents were murdered, he barely ever was even ALLOWED any control over his own life or personal agency at all.

Dick’s tragedy was preventable too - he could have stopped it from happening....if only he could have gotten someone to listen to him about the strange man he saw, to believe him and check things out as a result. But Dick was never the kind of kid Bruce was, even after he came to live with Bruce, because he needed to be the kind of kid people LISTENED to and took at their word in order for so many of the events of those first few years in Gotham to play out differently than they did....and he just wasn’t that kind of kid. 

He was a brown boy from a suspect background and heritage, he was willful and spirited and proud, which led to him clashing frequently with those who tried to look down on him and walk all over him....with him then often facing consequences from adults or authority figures, because.....he wasn’t the kind of kid they listened to and took at his word, about what had actually happened, not when more privileged kids were saying otherwise.

And that pattern has only repeated throughout Dick’s life....not just because of Bruce’s control freak tendencies, but because of classism, because of the prejudices that led CPS to unilaterally declare the environment he’d happily grown up in until then was no fit place for a child, and even freaking JUVIE was a place more ‘fitting’ for him. Dick never got any say about having to stay in Gotham, the city where his parents died, with him stuck and grounded in the one place that held the most painful memories of his life thus far, when previously he’d been a citizen of the world and used to traveling all over, never chained down to one spot, let alone a spot where he’d already lost so much.

And like I said, its only gone on in that same pattern ever since. He’s been brainwashed and had his mind messed with more than practically any other hero, and with some of these instances lasting months and even up to a year at a time. He’s been canonically raped twice and sexually violated and harassed in numerous other ways countless times.

His choice to honor his parents’ memory via his choices of costume and names are never respected or deemed good enough to justify said costumes’ or names existence.....the things he always intends as a memorial, a tribute to the parents he loved and misses always get weaponized against him and made objects of scorn and mockery instead, a reason for people around him to look down on him instead of trying to understand him and why he made the choices he did.

He didn’t get a say in keeping the name his mother gave him, when Bruce fired him and he was forced to come up with an entirely new mantle. He didn’t get a say when Bruce passed that mantle on without even asking him, as though the second Robin had become associated with Batman, that association took priority over all others, even the association with his parents that led him to choose that for his superhero name in the first place.

Despite living with Bruce the longest, Dick has had the least social influence and standing and legal benefits from being Bruce’s son, given that he was Bruce’s ward the entire time he lived with Bruce, his wardship dissolved at eighteen and he had no ties to Bruce whatsoever for at least another couple of years after, at which point he and Bruce finally reconciled, and it was still a couple more years after that when he was finally adopted, the way most of his siblings were adopted while still living at home and getting vastly more security and assurance from being legally bound to Bruce as his children by his choice, a choice that Dick was never offered, not until long after he was used to living on his own, and by necessity had already been forced to come to terms with not being Bruce’s child by adoption - Dick’s adoption has always in reality been more honorary than beneficial in a way he actually needed or could have benefited from, if it’d happened earlier or had been in place when first having issues with Bruce.

Etc, etc, etc.

So like I said way back at the start of this, the problem I have with talk of Dick’s control freak tendencies is NOT that he doesn’t have them - he does, very much so.

Its that you simply can not talk about them without talking about Bruce’s and acknowledging how Bruce’s affect Dick’s, IMO.....because while Bruce’s control freak tendencies are born of a desire to be as proactive as possible.....Dick’s are entirely REACTIVE in nature.

Dick’s a control freak not because he wants to control more than is healthy or acceptable without impinging on others’ agency and choices.......but rather, because he just wants to have the same kind of control and personal agency everyone BUT him seems to be granted in life.

They stem from the fact that so often in his life, even the most basic and personal levels of agency have routinely been stripped from him and denied to him. Bounced around like a pinball at the whims of others, who very rarely consider his opinion about his own life worth even listening to. They’re a reaction to the many times and many ways in which his privacy has been violated by Bruce and his boundaries crossed as though they’re nonexistent - which they are, if Bruce refuses to acknowledge them as existing and respect and abide by them. 

They’re born of his attempt to seize control of ANYTHING he can in order to ground himself, to be able to hang on the NEXT time the ground is ripped out from under him and his whole world is upended just like it was when his parents were killed and when Bruce fired him the first time, and the second time, and when the Titans disbanded, and when Jason died and Bruce hit him and when the woman he slept with was not the woman he was in love with but a virtual stranger who tricked him and started a chain reaction of events and fights and blame and resentment on both sides that ultimately ended in Dick and Jory breaking up. Or when Terra turned out to be a traitor or when he found out he’d been under the Church of Blood’s mental control for a whole year without even knowing it and he now had no idea which of the choices and actions he’d made the past year had been HIS and which had been the Church pulling his strings. Or when Joey turned out to have betrayed the team and then turned out to be possessed and then ended up dead. Or when Donna died or when Jason came back except he tried to kill Tim and instead of coming home devoted himself to becoming a literal crime lord. Or when Tarantula raped him and he was violated in that way for the second time, and Babs dumped him while he was blamed yet again for things that literally weren’t his fault and he was the victim of. Or when Blockbuster burned down the circus that had been his home for the first eight years of his life, just because it was his and he’d been happy there, or when the apartment building he’d gradually over time built into an actual community he was a part of rather than just a building he lived in was destroyed and everyone in it was killed. Or when his entire city was destroyed in part to spite him, specifically, 

Or in the New 52, when he found out that he wasn’t actually the only surviving member of his family....he had a great-grandfather except lol oh wait, whoops, Great Grandpappy is an undead zombie assassin with seriously whack family values and reveals that he’d been selected before birth and was intended to be groomed as a future undead zombie assassin as his ‘destiny’ because his homicidal Pappy he only just met had apparently decided his genes swimming around in Dick’s DNA meant his call to force Dick into a life that would actually span several lifetimes, in servitude and mindless obedience to people who opposed everything he’d ever stood for and fought against every single day of his life as a hero.

And forget about the lack of control Dick had in anything to do with Forever Evil and Spyral, or anything to do with Ric because its not Dick in the driver’s seat there, and lol ON TOP OF THAT it turned out RIC wasn’t even actually in the driver’s seat either, it was the Court of Owls all along, yet again pulling his strings like they thought he was Pinocchio and had a stamp on the bottom of his foot that said Property of William Cobb and His Cult of Crazy Bird-Equivalent-of-Furries.

So yeah. Bottom line is yes, Dick IS a control freak in a lot of ways at a lot of times, but like I often say about his instances of anger.....these are not flaws, these are humanizing aspects of his character that if looked at from his POV rather than just used as a reason to condemn him, they’re completely understandable even if they’re not always the ‘best’ of all possible choices or reactions he could have.

Dick’s a control freak because he kinda pretty much HAD to be. Seizing control of any scrap of well, control, within reach, any chance he could get, was initially just a survival mechanism built around what he considered necessary for HIS survival.....because to Dick, being alive means nothing if he’s not also allowed the ‘courtesy’ of being in control of his own mind, his own body, his own life and choices and path.

I believe for him, it started as a REACTION to Bruce’s own control freak tendencies, as well as the other factors in Dick’s life that habitually stripped him of his agency and choices. Controlling whatever he could in his immediate vicinity or sphere of influence was I think, initially just to act as a counterweight, balancing out the many times his personal innate agency was disregarded or taken away. If he couldn’t control his own life, be allowed his own choices, he’d just have to gain enough control of a situation through other means that it gave him a kind of leverage he could then use to take back what was taken from him.

And I think that’s absolutely understandable and relatable.

Obviously, there have been instances where Dick’s control freak tendencies have negatively impacted others the way Bruce’s have at times negatively impacted him. When he’s run over other peoples’ ability to make their own choices because he lost sight of what he was doing and why. Sometimes these are logical narrative choices and actual mistakes and errors he usually eventually acknowledges and tries his best to make amends for.......and of course, he’s just as vulnerable to being written by shitty writers who don’t know shit about things like agency and thus have him run all over other peoples’ agencies in ways that I don’t think are true to his characterization even with his control freak tendencies front and center. *Shrugs* Its all subjective.

But yeah. That’s my long dissertation on the control freak tendencies of both Bruce and Dick and why and how I consider them intrinsically linked. You can’t talk about the one without the other, because the one in large part only originated BECAUSE of the other. If Dick’s vigilante persona was named and themed Control Freak, Bruce’s status as KING Control Freak would be his origin story there.

Here endeth the word vomit. Byyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyye.

[loveisallthatmatterstome]

Clarity, Acceptance and Understanding

This Covid situation has really allowed me to really delve into my thoughts and mind more than ever. Honestly, even though this situation is unfortunate, it happened at the perfect time of my life. I’ve begun to believe in that so much. That everything happens at the right time. Never before in my life have I ever felt so aware of my emotions and feelings. 2020 has lowkey been an incredible year for me. Even if I was only able to live my dream in NYC for a relatively short period, everyday has felt like a dream. I feel alive. I feel things deeply. I noticed my surroundings. I continued my quest to make more sense of this world. There’s been a lot on my mind. But there has been one topic that has been really prevalent as of late. I guess I could start by saying that as I continue to move forward. Understanding myself and others more. Making mistakes. Learning what it means to use those mistakes to nurture growth. The more and more my past becomes clear. I see my past with more clarity than ever. There’s this saying that you truly cannot see things for what they really are while in the midst of them. Only after things have concluded can you look and understand things. Obviously it is also a fact of reality that there is no 100% certainty in answers. My perspective could be really wrong. But, what we could do as humans is to see reality for what it is and try to shape our perspectives of it as true to ourselves of possible. I want to try and see the good in everything,everybody and every situation. What I’m essentially trying to get at is that I’ve reflected on moments of my past and found clarity. I truly believe that everything in my past has led me to where I needed to go. Anyways, I keep going off on a tangent. The topic I really wanted to talk about is the first girl I ever really loved. She’s been on my mind so much lately. I’ve accepted and let those thoughts come to me. I’m not going to run away from what I’m feeling. I feel deeply in myself that I’ve reached the point of understanding and acceptance that I wanted myself to get to.

Even though things have long came to a conclusion. Even though our paths and connection have diverged. I’ve been thinking about her often. It’s insane to me that even months later, she still gives me a platform to learn more about myself. I know she never really did anything extraordinary for me. And that most of the realizations came from within myself. But there’s meaning to be found in every relationship and experience. Sometimes, you have to delve deeply into yourself to find those lessons. I feel like I’m becoming a bit repetitive, but I’ve grown to understand the experiences that I had. I always just wanted to be as understanding of her as I could, even if she never opened up. I made a lot of mistakes. May have said the wrong things at the wrong time. She made mistakes as well. But they were necessary. Mistakes are an inevitability of complex human connections. I’ve been thinking about some of the mistakes that I made. Thinking about the pressure that I had brought upon her. I realized that she was always probably afraid. Of things going wrong. Being cautious with her heart. That if she ever opened herself up, she would’ve never met the expectations that she felt that I had set on her.There was this standard of the idea of what my dream girl was at the time. My whole ‘dream girl’  idea caused a rift for someone who was already struggling to figure out who they were. I bet she always questioned, how someone could love someone that didn’t understand themselves. How could someone understand someone who didn’t even understand themselves. She never asked for me to give my unconditional love. Nor do I think she ever felt that she deserved that.

When she addressed my initial confession after we had met, she said that I was notorious for falling in love with everybody but that she loved that I love love. In an increasingly cynical and nihilistic world, I’ve chosen to risk my heart a countless number of times. She was someone who had knowledge of my whole entire experience with romance. She knew of every girl that I ever found interest in. She even encouraged me on. She knew that for the longest time I would find excitement in someone only for it to fade quickly. I think that was always on her mind. My past experiences when it came to romance. I think she was always expecting me to lose interest eventually, and for me to move onto someone else to crush on. But, when I made the decision to have faith in her, she couldn’t have fathomed it. She didn’t know how to react. I think she always had a fear that she was just another quick phase in my love life. That I would quickly move on.

After reflecting on my love life, my experiences with different people. I understand myself a bit more. Yes, I was notorious for falling in love with everyone, but that flaw has grown into something that I hold dear to who I am. That I want to see the good in others. That I want to show people what is lovable in them, even if they cant see it for themselves. Admittedly, earlier on in my life I lived in idealizations. But I now know that finding something to adore in people’s true selves is something that I strive for. As my standards for what I wanted in a relationship developed, I realized deep down all that I ever wanted was someone who understood me deeply, saw good in me, had faith in me and chose to build something meaningful with me. I thought that she understood me and had faith in me. She came into my life when I didn’t yet know who I was. I struggled so much in my past. I was once a very broken and flawed person. So much has changed in amazing ways but someone who understands where I come from has become important to me. People who meet me now can appreciate the person who I’ve grown into, but its harder for people to empathize deeply with the obstacles that I’ve had to overcome. She knew who I used to be, and I wanted to share my journey with her. I wanted to be there to help her get through her own obstacles. But that decision was up to her. Never before has my life been so full of deep love and happiness, I just wish she was here with me for this. She’s not and that’s okay.

I know that my decisions during this past fall surprised a lot of people who were aware of the situation. I know that not many people could fathom my decisions in the process. I continued to choose faith, even in moments of doubts and hurt. As I decided to continue pour more affection, she began to have more fears. She never felt like I knew her. How could I love her if I didn’t know her. She was right. I didn’t know her anymore. People can change a lot. She made the decision to close herself off. But, I realized even in these situations you can still love someone. I know I loved her. I realized that it was because I had so much faith in her journey because she meant a lot to mine. I hoped for a point where I understood her deeply. Inevitably this caused more internal conflict for her.

Developing feelings is always a risk on your emotions. Although I’ve grown to learn that the risk is always worth it, she wasn’t at the right space and time. She was never in the right place to give the love that I always told her I strove for. I’ve come to understand that. She would always tell me that I deserve someone incredible. At that time, if she never felt like she could live up to that, her internal conflicts would only grow. So she did what was easier for her. She went MIA. Hoping for a slow fade. Hoping for the maintenance of a friendship. But it so happened that the opposite happened for me. I pushed forward. There was no going back. After each moment of doubt I kept my faith. I feel like that’s something that not a lot of people my age can really comprehend, sometimes I can’t myself. This disparity between our choices of action only caused more internal conflict for her. She could’ve never loved me back the same way because she was at the part of her journey where she still didn’t know who she was. While for me, I was at the point of my journey where I finally understood myself. The pace of our journeys were on different wavelengths. She was at a point where there was no way she could’ve pushed forward. Even if she felt undeserving, I realized that she always deserved love, even if she didn’t yet know she was. Even if we find ourselves to be unlovable, everybody deserves wholehearted love. It can help us become who we can be. She deserved the love that I chose to give, even if she didn’t ask for it.

I guess one thing that does sting a little is that even though I tried my best, my decision to let go only confirmed her fears. That things could go wrong. I bet that whole conversation of me deciding to let go shocked her even she had expectations of it as an eventuality. But it needed to happen. A mistake I made was not being there for her. The emotions were strong at the time of letting go. She was already fighting her own fight. From her perspective, I can see how it could be seen as me giving up on our friendship. I could understand how I caused more struggle for her. That fall had the best moments of my life at that point. But I know she was still trying to figure so much out, she didn’t need to explicitly say it for me to know that.

I do believe that she wanted to love me too at some point. I believe in that. She just couldn’t. Even if I pushed forward, she couldn’t. There was no way I could’ve forced it upon her. I’ve come to understand that it only could’ve come from her. We were on different life stages. When I let go, she grew detached. I was at the right time of my life to see the good in the situation. But she was at a point where it was much harder for her. Then there was a period in January, before our final exchange. I feel like the both of us were hurting just a little because our friendship was no longer the same. We moved past a point of no return. When I told her that I felt hurt, it hurt her. I believe that’s why her response was so harsh. She was already hurting. I think me living out my dreams in NYC allowed me to not be greatly affected emotionally by it for the long term. I found appreciation instantly. But I feel like for her, it was harder. The situation put me in moments of doubt and hurt. But i wouldn’t change a thing. It grounded me and made my perspective on love so much stronger. I now know that love is more than a feeling, it’s a choice and an act of faith. I have strong trust in myself now because I hold no hurt or resentment in my heart. I realized that I really loved her. I still do. I know that I don’t know her anymore. But I have deep hope and belief that she can become the amazing person that the universe wants her to be. Even if I wont ever see it personally. I’ve long accepted that things were not meant to be. But that doesn’t mean I will lose my faith in her journey. Having faith in her means so much to me. 

I’ve reached clarity with the situation. I know that people always say that love should be 50/50. But I realized that I have something special in that I can give someone my 100% and still be able to fully give to myself. That in the midst of loss I can still see the good and find love. I hope she reaches this point too. Where she finds love in everything, especially herself. I don’t blame her, and I don’t blame myself. All we could do as humans is have faith in our journeys. No longer are there doubts, only acceptance. 

I hope one day that I meet her again. That I see her thriving and living her best life. I’ll be happy for her, even if it’s just for a single minute. I had a dream that I was walking along a city street far into the future. I locked eyes with someone. I realized that it was her. We just smiled at each other, and both continued walking. Maybe that’s how it will go. I wish her nothing but love and happiness.

I love you Ashley, I never stopped loving you. I hope you’re well.

[supermatthewward]

Benefits and Drawbacks of the Internet as a Research Provenance

Ignoring the occurrence that turning to the Internet has become an unconcealed choice when asking for research paper writing help, the Internet, like any appliance, has unmatched characteristics that create both benefits and free student essays.

On the reassuring side, the Internet offers the following:

- Access to creative and valuable sources of bumf that came into being because of the Internet. These count electronic journals (e-journals) and Internet discussion groups.

- A more economic direction after accessing certain standard knowledge sources such as newspapers, surprisingly overseas papers, and electronic versions of existing issue journals.

- Access to a prodigious amount of information. Currently, it is estimated that there are about 800 million pages of information on the Web.

- Access to non-mainstream views. Boundary groups and those without access to the media or a printing compress can right now make their opinions known on the Internet.

- Access to delphic and arcane information. Because there are so diverse people with such varied interests on the Internet, a search can usually attack up the most unusual and hard-to-locate nugget of data.

- Access to digitized versions of primary sources. Some libraries are digitizing (making electronic versions) of primary inspection sources such as special letters, bona fide control documents, treaties, photographs, etc. and making this nearby quest of viewing to the Internet. The same is real despite audio and, in some cases, video.

- Access to searchable databases and datasets. There are uncountable sites on the Internet where you can search a gleaning of statistical information, such as demographic or social science data. While some databases on the Internet are fee-based, others are free.

- Access to government information. The U.S. federal administration is the whole of the largest publishers in the sphere and it is utilizing the Internet as its preferred method for disseminating much of its information.

- Access to international information. Not just can you easily find valid information from other countries by connecting to embassies, consulates, and foreign governmental sites, you can also search other countries’ newspapers, review issues with citizens from around the world on the newsgroups, and find Snare sites established alongside individuals from other nations.

Other indicator benefits that the Internet brings to the researcher list:

- Speed. Searching the Internet can take proper seconds.

- Timeliness. On the Internet, you can discover a word that has just been made to hand only one minute earlier.

- Multimedia. The Internet delivers not due text, but graphics, audio, and video.

- Hyperlinking. The power to click between Spider’s web pages can promote an associative classification of inquiry, and create it easier to observation citations and supporting matter from a text.

On the downside, the Internet, regard for its verified and speciously growing benefits to the researcher, still presents undoubted drawbacks. Mass the most significant are:

- Divergent accumulation of information. The Internet is truly a potpourri of information that's everybody of its strengths, but it’s also undivided by its weaknesses. On the Reticulum you can come across all from a profound legal paper published on spark physics to a 14-year-old’s theme on her summer vacation; there are newswire feeds from respected press organizations like the AP and Reuters, as well as misinformation from a Mass murder denial number; there are commercials and advertisements, and there are scientific reports from the U.S. Office of Energy. All of this disparity makes it difficult to separate manifest and pinpoint precisely the genre of the word you want.

- Burdensome to search effectively. A standard electronic database that you sway search in a library may bear undersized lore and convention, but some time ago you get the stay away from being delayed by it, you can become a real searcher. But on the Internet, unchanging if you recognize all the ins and outs of searching, because of the built-in limitations of Internet search engines and the character Snare pages are created, you’ll merely be skillful to search a minute piece of what’s on the Net. You also won’t be superior to doubtlessly distinguish the valuable from the trivial pages; and you can exist with unpredictable results.

- Priority on new information. The Entanglement came into being in the early 1990s, and, as a result, most of the advice close by on the Internet postdates that time. However, this is changing as undisputed Net position owners are loading older, archival material.

- The paucity of context. Because search engines will-power profit perfectly for a free period from a multipage instrument, you can old maid the larger ambiance from which that dirt was derived.

- Be deficient in permanence. Web pages are notoriously unstable. They come, on the way, and perish without a trace regularly. This can be of noteworthy concern seeking scholarly researchers, who requisite to cite a long-standing stage payment allusion purposes.

- The selectivity of coverage. Undeterred by the size of the Internet, the massive bulk of the delighted’s understanding undisturbed resides in print. So a search on behalf of the word on the Internet in no modus vivendi = ‘lifestyle’ represents a wide search of the smashing’s facts or knowledge.

Similarly, a chaste act of what’s on the Internet is “off-limits” to search engines and is not retrievable. These off-limit sites include those that are at hand one to those who register, input open sesame, or pay a promised fee. These comprehend most of the major commercial fee-based databases and cheap essay writing services that bring into the world propinquity on the Web. Other “off-limit” sites group newspapers that are lacking subscriptions or registration, masterful tie members-only sites, and so forth.

In all, ditty can see that researching on the internet can be a gain or an impediment also on behalf of cogent results. But doing some examination on the internet can, at least, provide a wholesome institution as regards your researching endeavors.

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