#but i at the VERY least expected honesty from someone who claimed to cherish my friendship and whom i cherished

[dabis-57th-stitch]

SFW alphabet: Juuzou Suzuya

 I’ve been looking for a sfw version of this boy for so long that i decided to make my own 

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?) Juuzou typically shows affection verbally, considering he has little to no filter. He won't hesitate to tell you exactly how he thinks of you, at anytime of day. Of course this isn't always such a lovely surprise, but more often than not Juuzou has something good to say. First thing when you wake up? You know it. The middle of a high risk fight? You betcha. With his mouth half-stuffed full of candy? Oh yeah. Sometimes his comments can be a little backhanded, but he's surprisingly good at reading people and will try to learn from these little mistakes.

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend?) Juuzou would be an extremely loyal friend. Though he hasn't had the best relationships, he understands that loyalty and honesty are good qualities. However, while he may be loyal to a fault, he can get a little distracted on occasion so keep him leashed when out and about.

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?) Due to his past Juuzou isn't a very touchy person. He can stand the commonalities, and maybe a little more but generally cuddling is off limits. Now that's not to say he's never cuddled anyone, and that he doesn't want to. Every once in a blue moon, when he's with someone he trusts, Juuzou will indulge himself. He's like a deer when it comes down to it though, any sudden movements or the slightest sign of contestment and he's out. But if you're patient enough, and lucky enough, he'll slowly make his way into your lap, or better yet on top of you. He doesn't much enjoy spooning, and would rather both parties be more equals. Just as well if he's comfortable enough to cuddle with you, he's comfortable enough to do anything and very conveniently forgets what personal space is. He'll be all over you, hands in your hair or tracing patterns along your back. Oh, and a side note, he always smells of sweets and peppermint.

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? ) To be honest, he doesn't even know what that means, really. He's not nearly as job oriented as some of his colleagues, but he's not family oriented either. So, supposing the idea was explained to him, he wouldn't be to interested. In other words, he has enough family at work.

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?) We all know Juuzou doesn't have a filter, so if he decided a relationship needed to end it would be short and sweet. This doesn't just pertain to any specific type of relation either. However, keep in mind Juuzou doesn't always know when bonds need to be broken, so sometimes, to those around him, it may seem as though he's dragging things out.

F = Fiance(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?) Again, Juuzou doesn't completely get the concept of marriage, however he does understand commitment, and as aforementioned he is extremely loyal. Though it's unlikely Juuzou would ever be in some sort of adult relationship, if he did happen to date he would be an outstanding boyfriend. For the most part he's ignorant to such things, but if Juuzou knows anything about healthy relationships it's that they're supposed to make those involved happy. Just as well he's receptive to those around him, and if you happen to claim his heart he'll go to the ends of the earth for you.

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?) Other than during combat, Juuzou is a pretty gentle person physically. Not only is he a smaller person, but he doesn't see the need for constant strength; actually he prides himself in his gracefulness. So unless you're fighting him, no need to be worried. Emotionally, most people consider Juuzou to be cold, and for the most part he is. He doesn't get attached easily, it's just not his nature. When he does cherish someone he'll let them know, and oftentimes make it his duty to protect them if they're unable to do so themselves.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?) As mentioned, Juuzou isn't usually one to be openly physical. If you do happen to be one of the rare few he's comfortable with it just depends on how he's feeling. Some days he won't hesitate to tackle you, and other days he'll leave you wondering if you've somehow upset him. On the days he's especially close he can't stand to be apart from you. Whether it's holding your hand, or draping his arm across your shoulders he has to be touching you somehow.

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?) He will not say it first, no way in hell. However, he's quick to say it back. Once it's said, it's almost as if your relationship has gone to the next level, no matter the type. Just as well, after the first time, you'll never hear the end of it. Juuzou is the type of person to tell you just how much he cares for you in more ways than possibly imaginable. Probably the sweetest thing about this, though, is the fact that it never loses its meaning. In other words, there will never be a time when he says "I love you" and doesn't mean it with every fiber of his very being. He can really only hope that he means as much to you as you do to him, but he'll love you either way.

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?) He isn't really the type to get jealous, more so, he'd probably just be confused. Unless it comes to food, he will get jealous of you having sweets very easily. Sharing is caring. When it comes to relationships and flirting, he does not understand, so don't even try it. Just as well, it's unlikely he'd ever give you a reason to make him jealous.

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?) Similar to cuddling, sometimes he's a love bug and other times he'd rather sit on the opposite side of the room as you. Traditional kisses, on the lips, aren't really his thing, he'd rather kiss you on the forehead or cheek. Just as well, he'd rather you kiss him on the forehead, or temples. When it comes to public displays of affection, he'll kiss you on the hand like a gentleman. Traditional kisses are saved for special occasions, so cherish them when they're given. An example of special occasions would be the first time you tell him you love him, and fyi it was his first.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?) Considering he's still a bit of a child himself, Juuzou usually gets along with kids wonderfully. This can also be a problem because sometimes he forgets that he's in fact a full grown person, and therefore can't play as rough as they do. Just as well, sometimes kids will remind him of his past, and it's not so much that he's bothered by it, more that he doesn't know how to react to certain children. Now when it comes to the question of having kids he's not so well suited, not only in the fact that he can't have children the usual way, but also in the fact that his first parental figure was not such a good one. In any sense, Juuzou would actually be worried about being a father.

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?) Juuzou is most certainly a morning person. Up before his alarm and ready to face the world. If you're a morning person waking up next to him is splendid, full of loud, happy conversation as the two of you get ready. If you're not a morning person, its most certainly not as great, but by no means is it bad. He'll probably wake you, but he'll also lay with you longer just talking quietly or lazily stroking a hand through your hair. He's not much of a cook so don't expect breakfast in bed, but do try to give him the time of day for he's the person to share his dreams first thing so he doesn't forget them.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?) Considering he's more of a morning person there's chance you'll catch him dozing off. Loud noises and the like don't bother him much, but if you so much as come close to him he'll wake up. It's one of those sad things caused by his trauma that he'll never shake. Luckily if you do wake him he'll flash you a small smile, and ask that you lay with him. The thing is, while you can't change what happened to him, or the residual effects of it, you can help him cope. If he's comfortable with you chances are he'll become rather fond of your body next to his. If, and when this happens try not to push him away, this boy doesn't have much concept of self value and will likely go throwing his life away for your sake.

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?) He doesn't have much issue revealing things about himself, his past included. Not much really bothers Juuzou because his concept of morality isn't very constructed. That being said, he isn't one to go out and preach his life story to those who will listen either. Unless you ask him about himself he most likely won't tell you anything.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?) Simply put, it depends on the situation. When on the job, Juuzou tends to be patient, at least as it pertains to killing things. Most often he's patient enough that things don't always have to be happening around him, but that doesn't mean he's actually focused on anything important either. If he's preoccupied with something, like snacks, then chances are you'll have his attention. If that's not the case, then it's likely he'll be found on an all expenses-paid round trip to la-la land.

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?) It's safe to say that Juuzou does not remember everything. He's remembers most of the big important moments between the two of you, but every once in awhile there is some little off-hand moment that sticks with him for some reason. Just as well, he probably remembers, and thinks about a lot more than you'd imagine, but it's likely you'll never hear about such.

R = Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?) It'd be difficult for him to choose his favorite moment. Naturally Juuzou cherishes a lot of your time together, especially fun ones like dates to amusement parks and the zoo. However his favorite moment is something you'd probably have forgotten about. To you it'd be nothing more than one of Juuzou's quirky, less dangerous adventures, but to him it's the time he let you in, and you embraced him. Most anyone who's been around Juuzou for more than a year knows his appreciation for heights especially ones with views of the city. All his colleagues know he goes to the roof if he's particularly distressed. His favorite memory happened to be one of those times, he was upset over a new protocol his group had to follow, and on his way to the roof you had caught him. To you, he was just showing you a good view of Tokyo, but unbenounced to you, he had just let you into his world, and you had accepted it. So yeah, that was probably his favorite memory.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?) He would easily give his life for you, no questions asked. Frankly, if you were unable to protect yourself for whatever reason he'd be quite worried throughout the day. He's not one to mention it though. It's evident in his body language, but most often he feels that he's nagging you if he so much as mentions being more cautious, and Juuzou isn't one for nagging.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?) Juuzou is the type for fun dates over formal ones. He'd much rather smudge his face against the glass of an aquarium with you than sit down and eat. Dates are one of those times to keep him leashed, else you'll have lost him in five minutes, tops. You'd think he would be easy to spot with his fashion sense but that is not at all the case. It should be understood that he actually puts a decent amount of effort into date ideas, of course he knows what he'd like to do, but he always asks you first because he wants the both of you to enjoy yourselves. Sadly that means none of your dates are surprises, however they're always thoroughly enjoyable.

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?) Most of his bad habits stem from the lack of humanity he was shown growing up, so it makes most of these habits impossible to change, no matter how much you work at them. One of them would be his running off. He just simply doesn't think about alerting you of his absence because there was a point in time when no cared whether he was or wasn't. So, probably his worst habit of all is his lack of self value, most times he just doesn't stop to worry if something may damage him beyond the point of no return because he doesn't care.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?) He isn't worried about whether he looks good or not, but he does have his own, extremely evident style. Obviously he likes to take this style to heights most others wouldn't dare but most of the time this isn't all too much of a worry. Just as well, it should be mentioned that Juuzou is quite cleanly. Most people consider him dirty due to his self-inflicted stitches, but in fact he keeps them, and the rest of his body, very tidy.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?) He doesn't much like losing anyone; friends, colleagues, or the like, but most times he can make the cut and walk out alive. However, there is a point where he starts feeling a loss. He isn't one to let a big loss tear him apart entirely, but it can definitely drag him down mentally. A lot of times these losses are a sort of wake up call. If he were to lose you, it would be catastrophic to his emotional health, not to the point of doing anything rash, but he would definitely feel it for the rest of his life.

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.) Shinohara once told you, to your confusion and horror, that Juuzou would sometimes compare you to his weapon, Jason. Naturally, your superior had walked away before elaborating on whatever type of information he had just dropped on you, leaving you to ask Juuzou for yourself. You can bet that conversation was awkward, but he was happy to explain. "Yeah Osa, you're just like Jason: strong, sleek, and sexy!" He wiggled his brows at the end, and that was that. The two of you continue to giggle about that incident.

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?) He couldn't stand a partner who constantly tried to change him. Especially if said changes were simply to benefit their personification of him. Don't try to manipulate him into changing either. Sure, sometimes Juuzou might seem like a box of rocks, but he's no stranger to the crueler ways of the world.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habits of theirs?) Besides his inability to sleep without your company, he has an odd habit of moving his mouth, like phantom talking. From your point of view it seems as though he's speaking to some unknown third party, however he's never actually said anything, and reading his lips is nearly impossible when his porcelain face is all squished up against a pillow. Overall, he's just super cute when he's peacefully asleep.

#juuzou suzuya #tokyo ghoul #tokyo ghoul juuzou #juuzou x reader #fluff #sf

[exhaustedfander]

“Don’t Tell Janus” [Moceit]

This is based on a textpost I saw of drunk Patton telling Janus that he loved him then asking him not to tell Janus. I thought that was such a fun idea so I had to run with it. This gets kinda horny at the end, but there’s no smut. I’d love to hear what you guys think! 

Word count: 3,797

A03 link

Seeing Patton intoxicated was a fairly new development in their friendship. It’s an odd thing to think about, all that’ve changed in the last few months. Janus had been more than a little surprised that Thomas had accepted him, but Patton? The physical embodiment of morality? He’d never been foolish enough to hope for such things.

Janus and Patton’s relationship had been fairly messy for most of their existence. When they were children things were far simpler, but even then, there was opposition. Janus had never gone far enough to claim outright hatred for Patton, not even when he might’ve deserved to do so. It was hard, even when they were so bitter to one another, to claim to hate someone who was usually so kind, so bubbly and full of positivity. There were instances where he’d longed to despise him, but there was always something about Patton that was so likeable and soft, despite what he tried to see.

For years he’d tried, in vain, to win Patton over to his side. Eventually he’d given up, determined to gain some kind of influence in Thomas’s life even if he did so despise by the others. In the end, it took Patton having a frog-related meltdown in order for things to finally sink in. Janus’s importance and everything he represented, as it turned out, was far more nuanced than Patton had ever allowed himself to consider.

Janus hadn’t expected Patton’s acceptance of him, much less his friendship. He had apologized to Janus for all of the hurt he’d caused him just as he’d apologized to Thomas. Janus had tried to rebel against it and not accept it so easily, but he couldn’t help himself. The way that Patton said it, so genuinely, explaining that he felt so awful for all that he’d put him through and that from there on out he wanted to include him more. For the love of God, Patton had hugged him, tucking him into a tight embrace and promising he’d do better by him with tears in his eyes, like he was devastated for the animosity that had festered between them.

And this wasn’t without consequences for the moral side, either. Things between him and Roman had been fractured to say the least, recently. It wasn’t like Roman and Janus were on any better footing; the princely side had been avoiding him like the plague ever since their sharing of rather unkind words. Quite the opposite, Patton had been seeking him out quite a lot.

Chats in the common room between them were beginning to become fairly routine, as strange as that was to admit. Janus was now invited to movie nights and for meals, even to the distain of others. He and Virgil certainly weren’t in the best place and he had been spending even more time with Roman recently to avoid him. Janus couldn’t believe that Patton would be willing to sacrifice so much to spend time with him. It just didn’t make sense.

It wasn’t as though he was complaining. His time spent with Patton was cherished and something he was growing to enjoy more and more as time went on. Janus was growing quite fond of the moral side, maybe more so that he’d like to admit.

He was by no means used to the physical contact that Patton provided him. Embraces were becoming very common, and in all honesty, Janus still wasn’t used to it at all. Being wrapped up in Patton’s arms, feeling far too safe, too warm. It spelled trouble, the way such things made him feel. But who was he to deny Patton a hug or two?

He should’ve. Surely, it would’ve staved off so much heartbreak if he’d been a litter firmer, more distant. If he had been an acquaintance rather than a friend, someone who was of little importance to Patton but played a role in his life nonetheless. For a long time he’d considered Patton a coworker, just as he considered the others to some extent, but things were shifting. He couldn’t call Patton that now; not after everything that had recently occurred.

Physical-contact was one thing but seeing Patton drunk was another entirely. Janus had been fairly surprised to find out that Patton liked to unwind with a glass of wine at the end of the day sometimes just as he did. As it turned out, he didn’t like to drink in front of the others, opting to do so when everyone else had gone to bed.

When Janus asked why, Patton had simply responded, bubbly as ever: “Oh I just get a little silly when I’ve had something to drink is all.” At the time, Janus had assumed that would be the end of it. If Patton didn’t feel comfortable drinking around the others than it was very doubtful he would behave any differently around Janus.

Except on Janus’s search for a late-night cup of tea he found Patton leaning against the kitchen counter, nursing half a glass of wine. He was about to turn on his heel and leave without his beverage before Patton spotted him and grinned wide as ever.

“Jan! C’mer, come talk with me!” Patton invited cheerily, his voice a touch too loud for the time of night. Janus considered leaving. Would keeping Patton company be rude, considering what he’d said? But then again…he’d offered him his company, rather enthusiastically in fact. And the idea of turning Patton down and upsetting him rather than staying for a while was far more unappealing.

“Hello, Patton,” Janus said as he strode into the kitchen and stood beside the moral side.

“Hey – you want some?” Patton said, gesturing to the bottle of wine sitting on the counter. Janus thought about it for a moment, noticing how Patton’s cheeks were already a tough too pink before deciding a little wouldn’t hurt.

“Sure, I suppose a glass would be fine.” Patton smiled at that, grabbing a wine-glass from the cabinet and providing a generous pour before handing it to Janus.

“Thank you,” Janus said, holding the glass to his lip and taking a dainty sip. Janus felt Patton’s eyes on him in a way he couldn’t ever recall them being. He was practically beaming on him, staring not with any kind of distaste but what Janus could only identify as unabashed fondness. The very idea was terrifying.

“So, do you do this often?” Janus asked, hoping the question might get Patton to stop staring at him like that, “Have a late-night drink, that is?” Patton shook his head, the action more forceful than necessary.

“Not too terribly often, no. Just something to take the edge of, y’know?” Patton said, taking a sip long enough to drain the rest of the glass. Janus noticed the way Patton’s hand trembled as he poured himself a second.

Ah, Patton was a lightweight, then. That explained why he didn’t like to have the others watch him while under the influence. To them, he was to some extent a father-figure and one who always wanted to do right by his “kiddos.” Perhaps he thought that being drunk and saying something “silly,” as he’d phrased it, could disrupt that somehow. Why, then, would he allow Janus to be with him now?

“I do,” Janus said, turning the words over in his mind. It was interesting to consider, Patton wanting to take the edge of. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t thought that Patton had just as many problems or stressors as the rest of them, it was just odd to contemplate, the fact that Patton was even telling him.

“And drinking alone helps? It takes the edge off?” Janus didn’t mean to sound cruel. It was just…sad to think about, really. Patton being too embarrassed to relax in front of the others, feeling like he could only do so by himself. Patton shrugged, the deep red liquid nearly sloshing out of his glass.

“I mean…yeah. It’s not always ideal – but that’s why it’s nice having a friend like you around! A drinking buddy!” Janus laughed at Patton’s enthusiasm, as well as at the idea that his presence was making Patton comfortable. That was reassuring, considering how long they’d had a distaste for one-another.

“Well then I’m happy to be of service,” Janus replied, only to find Patton clapping him on the back a touch too hard for his liking, the wine sloshing in his hand.

“Don’t say it like that. you’re not “of service” you’re – we’re friends. You’re my friend, I like having you around. I wish we’d been doing this years ago,” Patton said, sorrow blanked beneath the slight slur of his voice.

“I enjoy your company, too, Pat,” Janus said honestly, maybe too honestly, laughing fondly as he watched Patton set his glass down and hoist himself up so that he could sit on the counter.

“Oh! I see why Virgil likes this, sitting up here. And now I can do this,” Patton said with a giggle, reaching out and pulling Janus into a tight embrace, his legs wrapping around his waist. Janus stiffened, feeling every muscle in his body tense up. Patton was already incredibly affectionate while sober, but this? This was overwhelming, terrifying, even. Janus became hyper-aware of how hard his heart was beating, knowing it would be impossible for Patton to miss it what with him burying his face into his chest.

“Mm, you’re warm, an’ comfy, too. I like hugging you, Janny. Coulda been hugging you so long ago…” Patton had certainly never called Janus “Janny” before.

Patton trailed off, snuggling against him. Janus sighed, wrapping his arms around Patton’s shoulders and returning the embrace, despite the fear that was bubbling up in him. It was greedy, accepting this while Patton’s in such a state. He’d never be this outwardly affectionate if not for the alcohol, certainly not with Janus. Janus could feel the heat radiating off of the moral side as he peeked up from his chest and rested a hand on the left side of his face. Janus shuddered.

“Smooth, they’re smooth,” Patton said with a loopy smile, running his fingers along the scales slowly, “I always wanted to touch em. Can I touch em?”

“You already are, Patton,” Janus pointed out, not that it seemed like Patton was registering it.

“They’re cold, too. It feels so nice. And pretty. Have I ever told you how pretty your scales are, Janny?” Patton could feel the blood draining from his face, uncertain under Patton’s burning gaze.

“Uh – yes. Yes, I think you might’ve mentioned that,” Janus lied lamely, hoping it gets Patton to drop the issue. Patton shook his head.

“Nu-uh, I would have remembered that! Your scales are scalerific! Or something like that…” As it turned out, Patton’s sense of humor didn’t transfer over too well when he was intoxicated. Patton gasped as he lost his grip around Janus, nearly falling forward before Janus caught him and set him on his feet.

“I think it’s best that you go to bed,” Janus advised, taking the glass from Patton and allowing Patton to lean on him, his form noticeably trembling, “We wouldn’t want you to fall down, now would we?” Patton sighed.

"I guess not, but I must say I’m already falling for you,” Patton said, followed by a hiccup, “Gosh my head’s fuzzy…” Janus’s heartrate spiked at the joke, thinking, for a fleeting moment, what if? But such things were dangerous, and he knew that. Patton was drunk, and nothing he has to say should be taken too seriously.

Janus helped Patton down the hallway and into his bed, removing Patton’s shoes and cardigan. He snapped his fingers, placing Patton in a set of pale blue pajamas. It wasn’t anything Janus had ever imagined himself doing, tucking morality into bed, and yet here he was nearly losing his nerve enough to give him a goodnight kiss.

Janus had simply meant to help Patton to his room, but before he knew it he was tucking the blankets over him and placing a glass of water on the nightstand as well as some headache medication for the morning. He was about to get up and leave the room when Patton spoke, voice thick with exhaustion.

“You know, I like Janus. He’s so beautiful…” Janus froze, standing near Patton’s bedside, thankful he’d already shut the lights out.

“What are you –.”

“I love him.” The statement punched the air out of his lungs, nearly leaving him gasping for air. There was such a genuine, lovesick tone to Patton’s voice, as though he’d contemplated the notion of loving Janus for a long time and it was something he believed with the utmost sincerity.

“Don’t tell him, okay?” Janus didn’t know who Patton was convinced he was confiding in, he didn’t want to know. He needed to leave now, he needed to lie under the blankets and pray the memory away.

“Okay, Pat. I won’t.” Janus said breathlessly, walking to the door and shutting it. Janus’s back collided with the door as he slid to the floor, blinking back tears.

=+=

Janus slept very poorly through the night. Even in his fleeting moments of unconsciousness he was haunted by what Patton had said. I love him. he could still feel Patton’s hand against, the strangest mix of burning fire and tenderness he’d ever experienced. He should’ve left the kitchen when he found Patton, he shouldn’t have entertained his company, for God’s sake he shouldn’t have been stupid enough to fall for him.

Janus heard the sound of the others bustling around the kitchen and common room, but he stayed in bed, wondering how missed he would be if he just hid in his room for eternity. Surely if he tried it Remus would barge in and bother him, or Logan would tell him that he was being unproductive and not cooperating, or Virgil would make fun of him for being so useless, or Paton –

He couldn’t think about what Patton might do.

He would stay here until he had the strength to leave and face anyone, to face Patton. That might take a millennium.

There were knocks on his door that went unanswered. Whoever was on the other end didn’t seem to care enough to check on him, which was just fine as far as Janus was considered. This was punishment for the fact that he’d been foolish enough to endear himself to Patton and he was paying a price most severe. For so long now he’d been ignoring the dull ache in his chest whenever Patton was around, but it could go unaddressed no longer. Not when the spark of a flame had become an inferno.

It was not a strict necessity for a side to eat, so Janus went without meals, deciding instead to stew in his misery. He’d been torturing himself in Patton’s presence, he realized somberly. Every brush against him, every embrace, every moment shared together hurt him a little deeper until those three little words drove him to agony.

This pain would eat him from the inside. Janus had wondered occasionally what it might feel like to be in love in the past. He’d never imagined it would be such a detrimental pain and he pitied those who sought it out. He pitied himself.

“Janus?” Patton’s soft voice on the other side of the door startled Janus out of a trance, disgusted to realize he’d been crying. Janus scrubbed at his face, untangling himself from the bedsheets.

“I haven’t seen you at all since…well, I’m worried. Can I come in?” Janus felt his pulse hammering in his ear, praying that Patton would leave him rot.

"No, I’m – I don’t want any company right now, thanks.” He cursed the weakness his voice betrayed. Since when had he been so pitiful?

"Janus, you’re hurting. I know you are, and I want to help, if I can. Please, let me in?” Janus sighed in defeat, knowing Patton’s persistence and damned good heart wouldn’t allow him to leave well enough alone. He’d stay there until Janus let him in, no matter how long that took. Keeping him waiting would only be staving off the inevitable.

Janus trudged to the door, pulling it back to reveal a terribly concerned looking Patton.

“I’m fine, Pat, nothing to concern yourself with,” Janus muttered, wondering how he’d ever been known as Deceit considering how abysmal that lie was.

“No you aren’t,” Patton said, his voice soft and sad, “I can see you’ve been crying…Jan, please, tell me what’s going on? Or don’t, if you don’t want to. I don’t want to pressure you it’s just…I’ve been really worried and trying to give you space but then you didn’t come out of your room for so long and I just…I had to come and check on you.” Janus sighed, walking to his bed and all but collapsing onto it. Patton sighed as he shut the door and sat beside him.

“I’ve done something to upset you, haven’t I?” Patton asked after a moment of bitter silence. Janus exhaled, his eyes landing on the floor.

“It’s not your fault. You don’t need to worry about it.” Patton shook his head, gingerly placing a hand on Janus’s shoulder, reminding him ever too much of how touchy-feely he’d been. “Of course I need to worry. I’m so sorry for whatever I said to you, Janus. I can’t even imagine; that’s exactly why I don’t like to drink in front of anyone. I get so silly. Gosh, I remember I touched your scales…I’m really sorry. I didn’t even ask, I was so rude.” Janus wondered if this would be his demise? Patton’s kindness, his apologetic nature despite the fact he clearly didn’t remember the things he’d said, didn’t mean them.

“It’s fine. As I said, you don’t need to worry about it. I know you didn’t mean it anyway.” And if Janus had ever had an oh shit moment in all his life, this was definitely it. Patton cocked his head, his grip on his shoulder tightening just barely.

“Didn’t mean it? Janus what – what did I tell you?” Janus swatted Patton’s hand away, half-expecting to demand Patton leave his room at any time now. He couldn’t take this kind of love, he hadn’t been built to carry it and at this rate he was bound to break down.

“Patton please, just don’t.”

“Jan, what did I tell you? I can see that you’re hurting. I don’t want to hurt you ever again. Please don’t let me hurt you.”

Janus cursed himself as he felt the tears welling up behind his eyes again, wondering when he’d gotten to be so soft. The others would laugh knowing he’d become so infiltrated with sentimentality and longing; he used to be so much stronger before this love.

“You…” he swallowed, wondering if half of the truth might suffice, “you said my scales were pretty. And you, uh, called me Janny, which you don’t usually do. That’s all.” After an uncomfortable moment of silence Janus dared to meet Patton’s eyes, finding, to his surprise, a great deal of terror flickering in them.

“That isn’t all, though, is it? I told you…didn’t I?” “Told me what?” Janus asked dumbly. He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it…there was just no way.

“Oh my gosh, I did. I thought it had been a dream,” Patton said quickly, his voice pained, “And now I’ve made you uncomfortable. I was so excited we were finally friends, and I’ve gone and ruined it.” Janus’s mind was ringing out with What if’s and Maybe’s, the tiniest bit of hope welling inside of him. Patton seemed so frightened and sad, and despite all that he’d been feeling, it was horrible to see Patton in a similar state.

“Patton…the thing you told me, the thing you asked me to promise not tell, well, myself? Did…did you mean it?” Patton’s eyes finally met his again, glossy and wide.

“With all my heart.” And that, it seemed, was all it took to cut Janus lose from his nerves. He cupped Patton’s face in his hands, the skin warm and faintly pink with a blush.

“Me too,” Janus said finally, smiling wider than he had in what seemed like forever. Their lips connected hesitantly, just a brush before Janus felt Patton relax into the embrace, digging his fingers into his hair and pulling him closer. Janus hummed against Patton’s lips as the moral side depended the kiss, edging on desperate. The pair collapsed onto the bed, a tangle of limbs sharing frenzied, passionate kisses Janus hadn’t even dared to dream about before. Even if he had, this surely would’ve exceeded all expectations.

“I love you, Janny,” Patton said breathlessly as they parted pulling him close, “I really, really love you.”

“I love you too, Pat,” Janus gasped as Patton pressed an open-mouthed kiss to his pulse-point, his mind still reeling, feeling Patton’s hands on him. “I never thought – I mean, considering how things were for so long. Fuck, I’ve got to get you drunk again, I’d love to hear what else you have to say.”

“Language, sweetheart,” Patton scolded, peppering Janus’s neck with kisses that were going to be hard enough to leave a mark if he kept at it. Janus hoped he kept at it.

“You really think they’re pretty? My scales, I mean. Not – not that I care.” Patton giggled, moving so that he was straddling Janus and pushing him down into the mattress.

“Of course I do, cutie,” Patton said, pressing a kiss to the left side of Janus’s face, earning a moan from the deceitful side because, damn, he’d never imagined that would feel as good as it did. He ran his hand along the smooth scales slowly, stopping when he’d reached the collar of his shirt. “How far down your body do your scales go?” Janus arched his back to capture Patton’s lips in a burning kiss.

“Only one way to find out.” Patton grinned more mischievously than he’d ever imagined was possible.

“Oh, that sounds like an exscalent idea,” Patton said, barely giving Janus enough time to register the pun before his hands were on him again and Janus was very much doubting that this love would be his downfall. No, he would embrace this, nature these feelings as much as possible. Janus had never been one in favor of vulnerability but with Patton, he was fairly certain he’d bear every ugly, wretched part of his soul if it meant he could have him.

Janus would always be thankful he’d walked in on Patton in the kitchen, thinking of all he’d be missing out on if he hadn’t.

=+=

#Moceit #romantic moceit #Janus Sanders #Patton Sanders #Janus Deceit Sanders #Deceit sanders #hurt/comort #angst #fluff #angst/fluff #love confession #drunk love confession #my writing #sammy writes

[uwuowotf2waslife]

The mercs with an s/o who is on the autism spectrum? If you want to

 as a person with diagnosed autism( ASD that later changed to SCD but concidering my countrys lack of proper diagnosis and non-existant support when i was growing up, im not sure,it might was a result of chronic abuse or i was a really weird kid) its my duty to answer this ask,

always know that you are perfect with all your imperfections 

just because maybe your brain is wired different it doest make you less of a person

you are poetry

Scout

-my boy has adhd ( probably undiagnosed until he was examined by Medic) so you two might have a little problem at the begining.

-he might be the closest to a jack russel in human form, but he cares about you and is willing to sit down and do his research so he can understand you and your struggles. He isn’t a hypocrite, he is a hyperenergetic bundle of daddy issues and is sure he will annoy you from time to time, he annoys pretty much everyone except his mom on rare occasion, he is a hanfull and he knows that years now. But he also has come to understand that everyone has struggles and little things that make them more special than others.

-if you have problems with communication , he’ll be your mouth .Problems with sensory overstimulation? he will escort you to the safest place and hug you tighter than he thought hes capable of. People mistreating or bullying/insult you? the bat is in his hands and his ready to hit home runs on their balls. You might not be the perfect couple, you will struggle like every couple and have fights and arguments, but he is ready to phase every difficulty that comes on your way. He loves you and he is here for the ride even if its bumpy.

Soldier

-( I and i think a big part of the community claim he is actually autistic) Probably the most tricky of the mercs, since at one side he might completely relate/understand you and the relationship go smoother than soft butter on bread, or he might have problems communicating the relationship problems with you.

-as all relationships you two must sit down and communicate your problems. Believe me he isn’t mentally retarded ( a horrible misconsumption ive seen being thrown around), yes he is stubborn and can’t read social cues to save his life, but he is a loyal beefcake with a golden heart hardened by a lifitime of war. He knows he isn’t the perfect man, he has nightmares and panic attacks on the regualr after so much trauma in his life. But he also knows that if he S/O needs him, it doesnt matter if its a small or big thing, he is ready to go through hell and back to make them happier or more comfortable 

-you can’t stand loud noises? copy that privet, he will stop yelling/ screaming around you. Certain things make you uncomfortable/ anxious? hes at your side and he is ready to snap necks...you have his heart and his adoration, he ain’t a coward or a pansy, you’ll win over any challenge that comes your way like the absolute unit you are and he is there to assist

Pyro

-fresh from the start they can recognise you have autism, i lowkey think they might be ( actually in young adults asd and mild schizophrenia can be mixed and confused by not good qualified doctors, its been years since i read that study so correct me if im wrong) or have really good gut insticts. Either way, they know you are struggling and trie in subtle ways to help you

-did an important call without stuttering? hug and smooch on the crown of your head, completed all your work/homework? they will cover you in stickers and cuddle you in their pillowfort, stood up for yourself? my girl theyll make a huge cupcake tray and youll two will eat while watching sappy disney films

- you won’t struggle as much, i see them as more easy going than other members of the team. But they also have big issues that may create problems in the relationship that you both need  to work on. They are more than a handfull and they aren’t unaware of it, they spended years locked inside their own head doing god-knows how vile and harming things to their mentality and body, they can’t believe they are alive and they wake up every day next to the most beautifull human being they have come across their lif, ( Y/n). You will bond slow but strong , you are their sunshine and theyll make sure their sunshine shines no matter what they have to do

Engie

( lowkey i think is canon he has some form of high-functioning autism, just hide its behind the southern warm and soft hospitality)

- when you confess, he hugs you ( a big thing coming from him since i dont consider him a touchy fella)  and returns the confession that he is too. He knows each person experiences different so he won’t press you for explanations or description of what you have is excactly. He just assures whatever happens, he is there to help you with

- doesn’t really change how he views you, but he takes the initiative for things like talking to strangers, calling to order or things that you struggle with, but he doesnt baby you. You are an adult person and will be treated as that, even if sometimes he feels he needs to “help” or “protect” you

-one of the most  easy going of the mercs, but his work is his priority so there will be long arguments about it. He understands your frustation, but he is a workaholic years now before you came in his life and can’t bring himself to change that. His work is his routine, the only comfort he knows and the only place that accepted him for who he is. But, he will be more elastic and have more breaks/ days off even if it means the project will be finished an hour or two later, unless it has an urgent deadline. He knows he can be very cold and emotionless, he is an engineer, not a spy for that reason. Furthermore he has his own times when he is stubborns or has an anger explosion because something broke/didnt meet his expectations or got way too invested into something that turned to be worthless/ uselless so he isn’t the one to judge if you are in a sour mood or you have your own “ explosion”. After all said and done, late at night when you are both alonein his workshop he will just cradle you in his arms and make a silence promise to always be there for you through thin and thick ( as we say to go through 40 waves and 40 more ) because you are something that no machine or creation can emulate or recreate, you are ( Y/N) and you are the love of his life.

Demo

-arguably one of the three more knowledgable of the mercs in the topic of mental health department. Being raised in an orphanage i doubt he didnt had at least a dozen other kids who had from high to moderate to severe autism ( during the 20th century it wasnt uncommon for people with autism to be thought less human or that the family of said people couldn’t provide for them in severe cases so theyd be dropped on orphanages and psychiatric hospitals)., so he has some first hand experiene with what autism is. It isn’t something for him in all honesty, after so much trauma and hardship in his life he is at peace that peopleare different and their brains are rarely wired the same

-he also know he isn’t ideal, he acts really stupid when he is drunk and his alcohol consumption alone is a very big problem for any relationship he ever had in his life and i doubt he is the image of psychological perfection, but he also knows that if you are willing to keep him around you have seen him wasted out of his mind, he is more than willing to put up with anyof your quirks or difficulties.

-you want to stim? go ahead he’ll leave the room/the house so you can stim to your hearts content, you want to stay? sure thing lass, hell sit in a corner and drink a bit while you have your thing. Work/ school/ home life is stress full and you are in the verge of a breakdown? he has already wrapped you like a burrito and he is holding you while you cry/vent, you dont want to be touched at that moment? hell take you to an open field and you can blow things up to get all those feelings out of you. He isn’t ideal, he is at peace with that, but now that you appeared in his life, you became the apple of his eye. He’ll cherish you and protect you both as body but as a mind and a soul for whatever shit life throws at you, he was never one to back down a challenge.

Heavy

-due to the language barrier and his nature as a quiet man it’ll take him some time. If you bring it up he’ll simply nod and run to Medic or Spy for translation. He isn’t shy to do a doctors worth of research so he knows what he has to deal with, he knows his english is broken and would prefer to have a migraine over the amount of books hes read than make you feel uncomfortable. Probably will ask advice from Medic ( the most qualified on the team) untill hes satisfied he knows enough.

-probably the sanest of the mercs, but he isn’t perfection. He had to endure famine and death from very early in his life, always be the stone his family anchored on and most people on his life, so he has his own big problems. At one side he is used to so many things, he is somewhat indiferent. You aren’t harming anyone nor its life threatening, so it doesnt really change what he feels about you. All people have flaws, noones perfect and if they do think they are perfect, they are very, very wrong. I won’t lie to you, some times hell get confuse with your behavior or will get tired of being the “ anchor” of the relationship, but he will never admit it. He survived the Gulags and years in Siberia, this is nothing but a walk in the park for him. He isn’t a fuckboy, he doesn’t want you just for some fuck and then hell forget you exist, he is much more sentimental than he appears to be. He beginned this with you because he sees you more than a body, he sees you as someone he wants to spend the rest of his life with even if itll be a challenge, he was never a quiter and he wont be now.

- don’t expect much communication help from him, unless its in russian. But whenever you feel the tiniest bit of self-doubt or anxiety his arms are open to embrace and warm you with  his love. He might was raised among anarchy and war, but he is a gentle giant with a heart bigger than Russia herself. He knows you two will struggle especially on the communication domain but he is willing  to do what it takes to make your life easier/ less challenging. He came here to stay, only if you allow him 

Medic

-Arguably the most medically qualified of the mercs, but considering the era of his studies hes at least rusty on modern terminology and general understanding of what autism is. Nontheless his a doctor ( with or without a medical license) and i doubt he ever followed the rules of ethical and unethical medicine. He is a healer primeraly and he can’t claim to be the most mentaly stable of the team.

-he might be many things, he knows hes at least crazy by normal standards and has made extremely questionable choices in his life,but he cares for the people he is close to, lovers and collagues alike. He won’t try to ‘change’or ‘medicate’ you; unless you specifically ask him for, like yes he has defied any sort of ethical medicine and has played god many times in his life, but he knows that if he changes you, you won’t be ‘you’. You will be you still, but nothing more than a lobotomized version of yourself and he fears that. Let’s be real, he probably choosed you because you are a smart individual ( that includes both street and book smarts alike) so if he “killed” your smart he would essentially kill you and this doesnt sit well with him.

-feeling down? no worries, the doctor is here ( afterhe finis hes re-connecting snipers new kidneys). Stressed? Archimedes will be your own personal cheerleader and the rest of the flock won’t let you all stressed and alone while Medic is working. In the simplest of works,he wants you to know that  he might be a madman on the field and the medbay, but he is also your lover and that means he cares about you. He doesnt care if act a lil strange or you have some special things about you, guess what? he doesnt cares. H e never cared and he will never cared, all the greatest minds had something  special about them and you are no exception. He chosed to have a relationship with  you and you accepted the love request of a surgery-happy maniac , im sure he is beyond equiped to handle you in all aspects. He might not be the most touchy but he will make his point across that you are someone who means wayy to much for him to change

Sniper

- ( i highly think he is autistic, just the way hes potrayed in most fanfics he acts lowkey autistic, mostly in the communication and sociable part) growing up in the middle of nowhere probably he has never even heard ‘autism’ as a word , so his very lost. (another headcanon of mine is that he is also iliterate) You need to explain to him what autism is and how it affects your life. He has a non-pleasant expression on his face, because he realises most things that you say what that “autism”is and the thing it has are things he actually  has and felt throughout his life. He looks like hes having a religious expierience and when you are done he only nods and hugs you almost mechanically.

-he will need some time, not because ofyou, but because of him. You might think he is breaking up with, butin reality he just needs some time alone to sit down and think about all the things you said. Its one of the biggest revalations he has experienced on his life and it has hit him like a wall of bricks.

- after a few days he will return to the base and will ask you to meet with him on the most secluded of his snipers nest. While you prepare for the upcoming breakup, he actually showers and wears somet hing nice for the first time in a while. He goes out of his way to make the sniper nest a bit more “ comfortable” even bribe spy into giving him one of his fancy wines. Once you go up the nest and you two meet, he is the most clingy he has ever been and almost drinks the whole bottle out of pure anxiety. Once his tipsy enough he actually confesses that from the things you said, he found out hes also autistic. Que him basically clinging you like a broken koala baby while half-sobbing to expell all the tension he  has inside him. Please pet his hair and rub his back,he will melt and quit his rugged manly man persona for that moment. He needs you there, he needs your soft touch to ground him while his whole life comes crushing down and a weight he never imagined is being lifted from his shoulders.After that, its quaranteed you two won’t be seperated ever again, he needs you to ease all this pain he has gathered from his troubled life and he will provide you the world and the stars.

Spy

- he knows what autism is( as a spy he should know about human psychology/mental disorders just to know how to impersonate any person with or without issues) and he is a very observant man. He has above average attention span and knows how to read body language so he has figured you are autistic a long time ago. He is just waiting for you to open up about it or confess it, but he also knows the social stigma around autism so he keeps his mouth shut because he really doesn’t want you  to feel uncomfortable or ‘naked’ in front of him

- i heavily headcanon him to be at least depressed/having an ugly anxiety disorder or even a dissosiative disorder considering a big part of his life is carefully crafted theater , so he can’t say he is any more better than you.Furthermore he never really cared about what society thinks about mental ilnesses, whos here to judge who sane and not? he has seen so much shady things behind closed doors of “ pure” people he has lost all respect for what society thinks its normal and what is weird or not acceptable. Yes he follows the rules of “good” society but thats more of a habit than a need. Plus have you seen what the good ol’ society behind close doors? yap youll need a good bible study and some church to wash away the sins.

-eventually when you confess to him,he doesn’t really act. He knows its a heavyemotinal moment for you but he can’t open up for his own problems, at least now. But he will embrace you for now and say all the sweet words you need to hear...untill the same time he gets drunker than he can and confesses to you in french all his psychological troubles while he cries on your chest. He won’t let go unless he wants to vomit and he will cling to you for dear life while he experiences one of the ugliest meltdowns he has experienced in the last decade. Probably will wake up with a monster of a hangover, but once he feels you wrapped around him and feel your heartbeat on the bones of his back something will meltin him. He will gather whatever strenght he has, turn around, give you one of the most genuine smiles he has ever given in his entire life and peck your lips bore he starts whining and requiesting you to either kill him or fetch medic. Perhaps one day hell say all the things he wants to say in you mother tongoue but for now, just know he will cherish you and love you like the most exquisite poetry that has graced his life

#tf2 #tf2 imagines #tf2 facts #tf2 self insert #tf2 spy #tf2 scout #tf2 soldier #tf2 pyro #tf2 medic #tf2 heavy #tf2 sniper #tf2 engie #tf2 demo #so #all #long post #autism #relationships dynamic #mentall health

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 25

The apocalypse? In your lifetime? (It’s more common than you might think! Click here to find out why)

Er. I mean. I return, featuring Sheriam and Egwene.

Chapter 25: In Darkness

That title, the Black Ajah chapter icon, and the first word is ‘Sheriam’. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Things were going quite well for once.

Uh huh. Sure. You really should know better than to say things like that. Or even think them. Especially when you’re a secondary-at-best character in epic fantasy and have very probably sold your soul. There’s tempting fate, and then there’s flinging yourself off a thousand-foot cliff in the form of a goldfish.

Confirmation, in case any was needed, that Halima/Aran’gar was the one from that brief scene of Sheriam being punished.

Well, so long as Egwene was away, that tent was functionally Sheriam’s for all but sleeping. After all, an Amyrlin’s Keeper was expected to look after her affairs.

Sheriam smiled again.

If she had a moustache, she’d be twirling it right now.

Pain would come again. There was always agony and punishment involved in the service she gave.

Not sure I’d put that on the recruitment posters – I’m still partial to ‘Immorality for Immortality’ myself – but points for honesty.

But she had learned to take the times of peace and cherish them.

Oh, the irony. Swear yourself to a force of chaos and destruction and only then learn the value of peace. That is bitter.

At times, she wished she’d kept her mouth closed, not asked questions. But she had, and here she was.

Now who does that sound like? Hmmm…

And, separately, I want a story sometime where asking questions isn’t punished. Not that it doesn’t make for good stories when they are – seeking out truth need not necessarily be painless, and it’s certainly not unrealistic to have negative consequences of digging too far, or asking the wrong questions of the wrong people – but it also seems to be one of those story elements that so often goes unquestioned (if you’ll pardon the slight pun). As someone who comes from a scientific background, where the entire purpose is to ask questions of the world and see any answer at all as a reward, I’d like to see someone at some point take a different angle on this trope. Mostly just because I think it’d be interesting, and as a reader I’d be curious to see how that kind of premise would work, and what would result from it. One for the wishlist…

Not infrequently she wished she’d chosen the Brown

NOW WHO DOES THAT SOUND LIKE? HMMM.

and hidden herself away in a library somewhere, never to see others.

I mean sure, that’s one way of being Brown, but.

There was no use wondering about what could have happened.

NOW. WHO. DOES. THAT. SOUND. LIKE?

She wasn’t so naïve as to feel guilty about the things she’d done. Every sister in the White Tower tried to get ahead; that’s what life was about! There wasn’t an Aes Sedai who wouldn’t stab her sisters in the back if she thought it would give her advantage. Sheriam’s friends were just a little more…practiced at it.

Hey, I’m not judging; as a Slytherin I can appreciate some honest, pragmatic, amoral ambition.

But why had the end of days had to come now of all times?

But I am laughing. If you’re going to sell your soul, you’d better read the fine print and make absolutely sure the deal is worth it, even when the price is called in in full. Sheriam seems to be more of a realist than some, but not quite realistic enough. Area Woman Never Expected To Actually Pay Her Mortgage.

And there’s the actual confirmation of Black Ajah. So…what does it say about the Aes Sedai that at one point, both women claiming the title of Keeper were Black Ajah?

It’s ‘blood and ashes’ or ‘blood and bloody ashes’ never has it been just ‘bloody ashes’ yes this is a nitpick no I shouldn’t care yes I care anyway because of Who I Am As A Person.

Sheriam opened her eyes to find a jet-black figure standing above her cot; slivers of moonlight passing through the fluttering tent flaps were just enough to outline the figure’s form. It was clothed in an unnatural darkness, ribbons of black cloth fluttering behind it, the face obscured by a deep blackness.

#aesthetic but why do I get the sudden feeling we’re in a 2006 music video?

Also, Halima had never come in such a…dramatic way.

Embrace the emo, Sheriam. Just go with it. Don’t question. Only ‘90s children will understand, etc.

(I feel like I should be posting this on myspace or something. How did we end up here? I have no idea and I’m so sorry).

“Egwene al’Vere. She must be deposed.”

Good fucking luck. That girl has as much ambition as all of you and she serves a Righteous Cause. You may as well just give up now. Accept it. Write a song about it and move on.

(Look I don’t even know. It’s been a while, okay?)

“It was by orders from one of the Chosen that I helped raise her as Amyrlin in the first place!”

“Yes, but we’ve done a companywide reorg and sometimes that just means reversing every single thing anyone has accomplished in the last six months; also she doesn’t work here anymore so I’m your boss now.”

“Yes, but she has proven to have been a…poor choice.”

That’s one way of putting it. It’s almost too bad you didn’t try to recruit her; that would have been hilarious.

Sheriam hesitated. Her first instinct was to lie or hedge—this seemed like information she could hold over the figure. But lying to one of the Chosen? A poor choice.

(Somewhere in a distant universe, Marisa Coulter is laughing at you).

But that’s the value of having legend and 3000 years on your side; The Forsaken may be only human but so much has been built up around their names and image that most don’t even dare to challenge them. Useful, that.

Stealing the ter’angreal could be a nuisance for Egwene, though. Not an insurmountable one, because this is Egwene al’Vere we’re talking about, but more and more things are drawing to a point where it all has to come to a head soon. Egwene imprisoned having forced Elaida’s hand, the sisters in the Tower just starting to listen to her, the rebels growing less and less certain of Egwene’s return, some beginning to talk about moving someone else into her tent, Lelaine setting herself up to be the next Amyrlin, and now Sheriam about to try preventing the dream-meetings. Something has to happen and soon to break the deadlock and prevent a slide back into inertia.

Oh, speak of the Amyrlin and she doth appear. Hi Egwene.

Her two days of imprisonment had not been pleasant, but she would suffer them with dignity. Even if they locked her away in a tiny room with a door that wouldn’t let in light. Even if they refused to let her change from the bloodied novice dress. Even if they beat her each day for how she had treated Elaida.

Because that worked out so well for you last time, Elaida. Anyway, at least now I know who to call next time I need to move house; Elaida’s very good at boxing things up.

Of course, as with everything else about the theme-and-variation of the parallels between Rand and Egwene, this is presented in an entirely different tone and through a very different lens than Rand’s imprisonment. I know I talk about this a lot but it’s because playing with the possibilities narrative symmetry offers is one of my favourite things, and this is such a well-done example over such a long stretch of series now; give two different characters situations or arc elements or paths that on the very surface are similar, and use these to highlight all the variations. It’s like controlling your variables; you can take two similar characters and throw them at entirely different problems, or you can take similar problems and throw them at two very different characters. You can also just write two completely different stories without the thread of similarity but this way feels so much more satisfying. It gives a unifying theme or undercurrent to two characters who spend almost the entire series thus far diverging. Same yet opposite; allies yet adversaries; Dragon and Amyrlin, saidin and saidar, Rand and Egwene.

Egwene was surprised she had visitors, but Seaine wasn’t the only one who had come to her. Several had been Sitters. Curious.

The tipping point approacheth. And so her imprisonment carries with it the note of rising, of moving towards something victorious, whereas Rand’s carried little more than a sense of spiralling impending disaster. A victory in the end, sort of, but.

Egwene may find it surprising that Sitters are visiting her, but she’s also no doubt been more effective in fighting her war than she perhaps thought. Also, rumours have a tendency to spike curiosity when something this dramatic happens; the Amyrlin losing her shit and lashing out at a novice who then stands there calm and bleeding and lectures her, and then is locked away out of sight? It’s as if Elaida wanted to draw everyone’s attention to Egwene. (Or no, it’s like Elaida wanted to do exactly the opposite of that, because Elaida has a talent for accomplishing the opposite of what she wants. A Talent, even).

Seaine at least seems to be on Egwene’s side, and I doubt she’s the only one.

“Proving that accusation is difficult by Tower standards,” Seaine said. “And so I suspect that she will not try to prove it in trial—”

Couldn’t they use the Oath Rod in trials to verify claims like the one Elaida is trying to make – that she expelled Egwene from the Tower before beating her, for being a Darkfriend? Even if Elaida genuinely believed the Darkfriend accusation, she’d struggle to state the rest outright because that’s…not what happened. Also the other Sitters who were there could go under Oath (literally) and testify as to what happened. Seems like a pretty damn effective tool in a trial…

Also, if she’s not going to try to prove in trial something she’s using as a justification for her actions, what the hell is she going to do? Hello yes I would like to speak to the Aes Sedai’s legal adviser…

“partially because doing so would require her to let you speak for yourself, and I suspect that she’ll want to keep you hidden.”

How To Make A Martyr (in 8 Easy Steps) by Elaida do Avriny a’Roihan

“But if she can’t prove I’m a Darkfriend and she couldn’t stop this from going to trial…”

“It is not an offence worthy of deposing her,” Seaine said. “The maximum punishment is a formal censure from the Hall and penance for a month. She would retain the shawl.”

But would lose a great deal of credibility, Egwene thought.

That would require her having credibility to begin with…

But now I’m still stuck on the notion of the Oath Rod being involved in trials. Mostly because it seems like a perfect solution at first glance and then has the potential to be absolutely terrible depending on how those involved chose to use it, how skilled those questioning or testifying are at either bending the truth or forcing a desired narrative using nothing but true confessions put together into exactly the story they want told, thus forcing someone to condemn themselves with their own words…

Anyway.

I like Seaine still; she’s a Tower Aes Sedai, secluded and not particularly revolutionary, but she’s also very…honest, I suppose. She even seems to have a degree of humility, and deals more in facts and evidence than in ambition and denial.

Things are getting worse, the Pattern is still trying its hand at interior design by randomly moving rooms in the Tower and all things considered should probably not quit its day job.

“You have to bring these things up, Seaine,” Egwene said softly. “Keep reminding the sisters that the Dark One stirs and that the Last Battle approaches. Keep their attention on working together, not dividing.”

It’s not just Sheriam who is less than thrilled with the fact that this is happening during her lifetime. You see that sort of thing with evil characters fairly regularly—it’s the Faustian story, or variations thereof; characters who sell their soul or commit themselves to an evil cause because of the perks (power, immortality, a great healthcare package…) and don’t really expect it to be called due in quite the way it is—but I don’t think it applies solely to villains.

People who actually want to or are willing to be heroes, to give their life and maybe their death to a cause, to face the ultimate crisis point of something they’ve committed to, are rare. It’s one thing to commit yourself to something in peacetime, or to commit to something when it’s an abstract or low-level issue. It’s another thing to realise that the tipping point or catastrophe will come in your lifetime, or is happening right now. It’s why we tell stories about heroes; they’re extraordinary. It doesn’t mean ‘ordinary’ people are lazy or not really committed or cowardly; it just means we’re human. How many people, faced with Achilles’s choice (to die a hero and be remembered forever, or to live a long and peaceful life and die forgotten) would choose the ‘heroic’ path? Some, certainly. Most? Probably not.

We’re human; we’re not good at dealing with The Actual End Of The World, and we’re very good at denial when it comes to potential large-scale all-out disaster. A character can swear away their soul and never really expect that the Forces of Evil will actually call upon them to fight in the last battle, and a character can commit themselves to the cause of good or Light and never expect to actually have to stand in that final catastrophe. And I feel like if I take this much further I’m going to end up solidly in current events so I’ll just…stop there. The point is, this sense of ‘oh shit you mean this is actually happening now and I’m a part of it? I didn’t mean to sign up for this take it away’ doesn’t belong solely to villains.

So it’s a nice place to put this particular conversation, right after we see Sheriam thinking in explicit terms that she never really wanted to be a part of this, seems fitting and nicely balancing.

“You must work hard, Seaine,” Egwene said, rising as the Reds approached. “Do what I cannot. Ask the other sto do so as well.” […] “The Last Battle comes, Seaine. Remember.”

Also, Egwene is one of those people absolutely willing to be a hero in the ‘give your life to a cause’ sense. She was not chosen; she chose. And she continues to choose this path, even as it becomes difficult, even as it is painful, even as it seems too much. It’s why she’s such an effective rallying point; she has committed absolutely to the cause they are all sworn to, and she faces the impending apocalypse with determination and dignity and grace, and doesn’t try to turn away or deny it.  It makes her a source of inspiration to those who are more…human about facing this reality and their upcoming role in it. Which I supposes you could argue is part of what heroes are for.

(In case you can’t tell, another thing I’m generally fascinated by is the entire notion and spectrum and variants of Heroes and Villains and the ways in which they exist and interact with their stories and worlds).

Even if Elaida was punished, what would be done with Egwene? Elaida would try to have her executed. And she still hand grounds, as Egwene had—by the White Tower’s definition—impersonated the Amyrlin Seat.

I must stay firm, Egwene told herself in the darkness. I warmed this pot myself, and now I must boil in it, if that is what will protect the Tower. They knew she continued to resist. That was all she could give them.

And she will give them everything she can, willingly. She is not having to pay the dues on a debt she never thought would be called in; she is not being dragged into a fate she has no choice but to accept. That’s not her story. She is the one who faces what is coming with eyes open, even when it turns out to be bigger and more difficult and worse and more painful than she expected. She understands what might be…I hesitate to even say ‘asked of her’ because that’s the point, isn’t it; she looks at the situation and she simply asks this of herself, because that is the only way to win.

It is part of why I’m still relatively certain she will not survive this series. I don’t think Elaida will execute her, but I do think she will give her life for the world. Because she’s one of those who would not choose to die needlessly, but could do so willingly and thus powerfully.

Next (TGS ch 26) Previous (TGS ch 24)

#I have been informed that I have ~130 chapters left #and I am DETERMINED to finish this year so uh #wheel of time #neuxue liveblogs WoT #The Gathering Storm

[caemec]

To what would a best friend relation with boys look like ? (part 2) (Eldarya)

Hi guys ! Here is the part 2 of the headcanon for the Eldarya boys.

Ugh, I am so sorry for the delay, to tell you everything I had a few weeks of lack of motivation and ideas, but I will try to make it better from now on. I hope that post will be correct enough, I’m not really satisfied with it. I am so sorry if you feel that way too, just tell me and one day I will update it !

Part 1 (here) : Nevra - Ashkore - Leiftan

Part 2 : Chrome - Valkyon - Ezarel

Enjoy ! 

Chrome

In general ? 

You babysit that little brother all days and nights. He is an unbereable little nosey parker, and you will definitively have to deal with his mood swings. A single word could be enough to start a verbal fight, and you both finish to argue in the middle of the canteen, maybe even in front of a whole gathering. If you claimed your maturity before, since people see you with Chrome by your side, no one believes you anymore.

Yet, you couldn’t find a better friend to make stupid and childish challenges, to pace up and down the Guard’s corridors with a way too obvious innocent smile to not alert people around you, or to plan a revenge against Nevra or Ezarel (which will honestly fail each single time). You wanted a troublemaker in your life ? It is now done. But it’s worth it, because he’s a good and kind boy at heart. You are a sister to him, you’re his chosen family.

You are in couple ? 

Honestly, Chrome could encourage you to go out with Nevra. Just because he hopes that his chief guard would be nicer to him, the "adorable best friend and first man in his girlfriend's heart". He can be so annoying with that, and clearly, whoever you like, he will be that jerk who raises eyebrows multiple times and smirks each time the person is near from you. Without any discretion, obviously, or it wouldn’t be funny.

BUT. If someone even dare to think to hurt you, his best friend, the puppy will show he also can be a real and very dangerous werewolf. People don’t mess with your feelings, by extension, they hurt him too. You want revenge ? He’s your man for that, he even has some not really legal contacts (episode 17) to help.

He is in couple ? 

It would probably be his first relationship ever, and he is the cutest little thing you ever saw when he speaks about it. Be ready for the classic big sister speech. He doesn’t feel at ease, is a total mess in front of you, speaking about it will make him blush as never before. All those emotions together, and you already can predict he will finish to be upset and yell at you for no reason, before escape and go to his bedroom. Poor lovey-dovey child.

But don’t worry, he will come back really fast. Chrome is maybe the one who needs the most your advices and your presence. You can reassure him when he doubts, and if people start to understand what happens to him, you will have to be his new bodyguard for a while. Keep an eye on Ezarel, he will never let Chrome in peace after that, and if Nevra comes to him with so-called seduction advices, don’t. Trust. Him.

From “best friends” to “more than friends”? 

Huh, he’s like what, fifteen ? When our main character is way much older and legally an adult ? It’s a major no no here.

Valkyon

In general ?

The sweet, shy and kind Valkyon has no secret for you anymore. That was quite hard, we have to be honest, he’s not the most talkative and extrovert guy in the world. But somehow, you managed to find how he operates, and respect his way to do so. It is why you must have a particularly strong and unique relationship. He is probably a good balance between the fun part of the friendship and the seriousness you both need sometimes. One of the best when you need to evacuate some bad feelings, thanks to his practically forced trainings.

BUT. Be careful. Valkyon can be the devil in a pretty package. We all know that he can be as cynical and playful as Ezarel. The difference between them ? Ezarel uses the irony to protect himself, while with Valkyon, it is a proof he is comfortable in your presence. Still, he would never be an asshole or cross the line, he learned so much about you since you arrived, and despite your relation, he still stays respectful. 

You are in couple ?

Finally a sane best friend who will not try to kill your partner, or at least traumatize him/her. He would never be like that, he considers you as an adult, you are able to make your own choices, and since it is your couple and not his, he doesn't have to be involved more than what you decide. Still, he stays quite curious, and will clearly love to hear some funny anecdotes from time to time. 

He is also the one who will talk about your behaviour with a total honesty, always thinking of your happiness first. You messed up and has to go apologize immediately ? You take an argue too much to heart ? You should think twice about the sincerity of your Partner ? He will let you know all of that, still with so much kindness and concern that even if he raises a sensitive issue, you couldn’t be mad at him.

He is in couple ?

He is so secretive, so he would probably avoid to talk about that at the beginning. But as the person he trusts the most, he needs to confide in you. You would have to remember him that he is as attractive and full of beautiful details as the other men in the HQ. If there is one subject where he can be insecure, it is the trust, and yet to make a relationship working, you need to lower the guard. Not easy to do for someone like Valkyon.

Actually, for once, it wouldn’t be you who would have the reasons to be jealous, but the other girl. He is probably quite exclusive, can talk about you for a long time, even during a date with someone else, without understand that he destroys his chances. He is too pure and loves you too much to not talk about you, a whole part of his life. Well, how to tell him...

From “best friends” to “more than friends” ?

If you finish in that situation, you would officially be the cutest persons ever. It would be all about shy looks, blushing face, insecure smiles and a light embarassment when you touch each other or have sweet words. People are all “aww” around you, and they all see the truth, when you are still searching why you act like a teenager in front of your best friend, until the day someone will let out a “you two would make a great couple”.

It would probably take time for you to decide to be more than friends, in part because of your desire to do right. But isn’t it the best way to discover each other in a new light ? One thing is clear, with Valkyon, you will always pass first, and you will definitively feel it. How lucky you are.

Ezarel

In general ? 

You already wanted to kill Ezarel before ? Well, since he is your best friend, you officially plan to resurrect him, just to kill him a second time. Ezarel as a best friend, how to say... he's the kind, if you fall, to laugh so hard he will wake up the next morning with a painful jaw (karma). Don't expect for a "are you okay?", he reserves politeness to normal people. You are way too close to him to receive that kind of treatment. Ezarel’s logic, he is merciless with people he cherishes the most.

Of course, you will never have the time to be bored, he will always have a new prank or a stupid joke to try, and as his best friend, you are also his official test subject. He has a reputation to maintain, so consider yourself as a part of his success. Pranking him still stays dangerous for your life, in part because you can identify better than anyone else his weaknesses (and he clearly doesn’t like that).

You are in couple ? 

Let's be clear. For Ezarel, at the moment he will learn the good news, your crush will officially become his new favourite target. That's a serious reason to break up with you, by the way. People could even avoid you during parties, when he is too close from where you are to make the situation safe enough.

In case of broken heart emergency, he will have is own particular way to treat the situation. Don’t expect for a lot of affection, he is upset by what happened, and will basically evacuate it... on you. A tears session ? He will react with a “just kick his ass once for all and stop crying on my shoulder”. If you need advices, start to ask to other persons too, because clearly, Ezarel will not make the best psychologist ever. It is just that he is really angry, in part against himself to not be able to help you correctly. However, if your ex crosses his way when he is alone... Let’s just say that he has never exercised his cynical and bitchy art better than that day. Classical Ezarel, acting in your back to make you smile again, while pretending nothing happened. 

He is in couple ? 

Huh... What ? You probably missed an episode (or even a whole season), because you weren’t aware at all of that kind of... stuffs ? Obviously, he will just let you know he has someone, between two potions, without telling you the name. It’s so much more fun to imagine you searching with anger than just explain the truth. He suddenly becomes close with everyone, just to lead you on wrong cluses. What a child. But you also know he acts like that to avoid to speak seriously about his feelings. Introvert guy until the end.

If he can manage his relation alone, you will have a moral support to bring when he goes too far with his jokes or upset his partner. With Ezarel, that means you will have a lot of work to do. I can understand if you start being jealous. He’s not easily really close to other people, and is totally that kind of guy who has unique relations with everyone. That’s a bit rude to live sometimes, but hold on and talk to him, he will understand it’s quite important for you to be reassured.

From “best friends” to “more than friends” ? 

With anyone else, you would normally see a seduction game from really far, thanks to a sudden tendency to tease each other much more than usual. But with that guy, it is absolutely impossible to take that as a repair. Look closer to his way to do it. Is it still innocent, or does he tease you about your ex, your way to dress, his remarks about little habits you unconsciously have (like biting your lips in front of a troubled Ezarel). Here are your signs.

He maybe could be the most playful of all the boys. Each single step to lead to the couple status will be a source of joy and fun to him. It can honestly be fatiguing and can upset you from time to time, because you don’t operate the same way and at the same rhythm than him. You could think he plays with your feelings more than anything else. Let him understand if he goes too far, it will be the only safe way to manage the whole situation.

💫 Masterlist 💫

#eldarya #nevra #ezarel #valkyon #eldarya headcanon #chrome #leiftan #ash #ashkore #eldarya nevra #eldarya ezarel #eldarya valkyon #eldarya leiftan #eldarya ashkore #eldarya chrome #eldarya boys #beemov #eldarya gif

[fasa-umich]

AJ Espinoza, 2019-2020 FASA Co-President

Hello FASA! As you read this, I hope all of you are safe indoors with the people you love. If not, I hope you’ll be with them soon. I’m writing to all of you from the solitude of my place in Ann Arbor, and it definitely isn’t the same around here with all of you. I miss every single one of you very dearly, but I don’t want to use this time to lament what could have been. We’ve been through a lot together, so don’t consider this mourning the last months of this semester and consider this as more than a reflection – this is a celebration of our time together and a celebration of everything I’ve learned from every single one of you!

The Journey

It may surprise some of you to learn that I had no intentions of running for this position. This was for several reasons: Feeling burnt out after dedicating so much of my time as External Chair, my desire to be a good example of an active general member (and perhaps be a choreographer for PCN, lol 😉) etc. However, chief among my reasons was my self-doubt. I didn’t believe that I had what it took to be the mature and reliable leader that the position of Co-President deserves, and I didn’t believe that I was worthy to succeed Jean and EJ. 

I remember other board members asking me, some even pestering me (read: Matt), to consider running, and it wasn’t until Battle of the Bamboo 2019 that I decided to listen. Long story short, with all of us there to watch, I had a great time talking to the now-sophomores about Battle and my love for the Filipinx American community. Despite how much I didn’t feel ready, at that moment I at least knew that a Co-President should be someone who cared about shaping the experiences of FASA’s members in this little Fil Am community we share like I did, and that I could learn to be a better leader while in the job alongside people who supported me.

So what does the job entail? Well, the job is certainly unique to others on E-Board. With this job, you’re not required to put together many things aside from Lineages, the Intern Program, and the day-to-day functioning of E-Board. Most of the time, you really are trying to steer the board in the right direction, offering advice and structure wherever it’s needed. The job certainly entails being one of the first if not the first E-Board member to offer support to other E-Board members when they need it, and there’s definitely a balance that needs to be achieved between allowing E-Board members to be independent while trusting them to do their job and simply micromanaging. Trust is key in this job, not just to your fellow E-board members and Co, but to yourself! There will be difficult calls to make and difficult conversations to be held, and you can often find yourself and your Co as the people best-suited to make the final call. Every decision should be made with the intention of doing what’s best for FASA, and if you come from there, then you’ll be happy to find a team that is willing to stand right there with you. 

My other tips include:

Professional before personal. I can’t emphasize this rule enough. As an elected member of FASA’s Executive Board, it is your responsibility to deliver a good experience to FASA’s members, and to fulfill your responsibilities to the very end. As for your fellow Executive Board members, my philosophy was this: Not everyone has to be good friends, but to serve the greater purpose of FASA and its members, you do have to be good co-workers. Trust, respect, patience, and honesty are critical in all professional settings, however they can also be ingredients for good friendships down the line!

Board member first, chair position second. As an External Chair, I made it a point to emphasize that it was up to everyone, not just myself, to represent the best of FASA at external events. Similarly, no matter who the event’s main organizer was, Matt and I emphasized that every FASA event was an E-Board event. This meant that all hands needed to be on-deck to support every step of every event, and that we would stick together like this from the very first event to the very last event. 

Surround yourself with people who believe in you, and in turn believe in them. This job often entails confronting impostor syndrome, and there will be no shortage of moments in which you are unsure of your qualifications for the task at hand. Remember: You were elected for a reason! You owe it not only to FASA’s members but also to yourself to have faith in your and each other’s abilities! And if, like me, you struggle to believe in yourself sometimes, then trust the people who believe in you.

Win together, lose together. Matt and I happily gave this year’s Executive Board the freedom to grow and understand themselves as leaders through their respective positions. No one on this board was perfect – we each had our fair share of imperfections, and with those mistakes came criticism, both for Boardies and the Executive Board overall. It was very important to us all that we defended and uplifted one another in the face of criticism, and I believe this created a board that functioned stronger than any team I’ve ever worked with.

From Gambles to Gratitude

This year had no shortage of challenges, but with those challenges came great accomplishments. Speaking for FASA and myself, this couldn’t have been possible without this year’s Executive Board. I say it wholeheartedly and without exhaustion every time: This was and will always be a spectacular group of people to work with. Without echoing the sentiments of everyone else’s testimonials too closely, I will miss every single part of serving with these people. Two-hour board meetings every week from 8-11 (not a typo), the immediate homework hangouts for many more hours after, lugging around event equipment with Mango and Hannah, Reggie dodging my hugs with hi-fives, saying “lamp” for our checkouts and for annoying the interns, I’m grateful to every single person for giving me the greatest experience of my college career. This was a board that fought some hard fights, but we fought hand-in-hand at every minute, and there was nothing but love for each other at every second. The role of Co-President may not have many tangible products or events to claim success to, so I argue that my greatest success as Co-President is this board. I know I said that it’s important to treat each other as co-workers first and foremost, but I am beyond grateful that I found my best friends along the way. :’)

Nowhere does this gratitude extend more than it does to my Co-President. Matt, my teammate and my brother, the second half of #TheCollectiveKuya, from the bottom of my heart, thanks for everything. Thank you for holding me up at my lowest, for putting up with my need to take everything too seriously, and for teaching me what it means to be a truly mature leader. I’m proud to have watched us both grow into the leaders we are now thanks to one another. We fought together, we laughed together, we triumphed together, and above all else we respected each other. You were the first person to believe in me, and even though I will endlessly jab at you for putting me in this position to begin with, I am so glad that you did. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. 

The End of the Beginning

With my time on board coming to an end, you can bet that I’m celebrating the eventual return of my free time, and I’m happy to say that being a general member again won’t be too much of a struggle. I’ve had the privilege this year of being not just Co-President, not just an E-Board member, but also an active general member. From PCN Modern Tinik practices (shoutout to Angela and Bea, thank you for keeping me fed every week lmao) to New Member Dinner and my Kaibigan Korners, I will always cherish these moments as the ones that still made me feel like a new member all over again. I feared that I wouldn’t get to know a lot of you by way of being older or being Co-President, but I still got to meet and get to know so many of you as simply a friend and fellow member. I’m happy to say that I’m still a lovable goof at best and a roastable meme at worst. In a way, I’ve come full circle, but I also never really stopped being what I am at heart: Just another regular member embracing the culture, and I still have a year left to do it! Every moment spent getting to know all of you has been an absolute joy – you’ve made this upperclassmen’s year in FASA one for the books. I encourage all of you who are considering running for E-Board to please reach out to me, I would love to sit and chat. 😊 

As I write this, we now find ourselves in the precarious position of being scattered from one another, both across the country and around the world, much sooner than we were expecting. There are feelings of discouragement, frustration, and betrayal for not getting the sign-off we feel we deserve – I am no stranger to this, and I am willing to bet that many of you feel the same way. It’s okay to feel this way. It is OKAY to feel this way. We’ve faced many goodbyes in the last week-and-a-half, and it’s easy to mourn and grieve for the time together that we can no longer have. If it means helping any of you find closure, I’d like to share some thoughts. 

I’m happy to say that I still got to be your Co-President, despite not thinking that I deserved it. For many of us, it’s safe to say that this is not the ending to the year that we deserved. I think that, for better or for worse, rarely in life do we get what we think we deserve. For that matter, I try to focus on being grateful for what’s in front of me in the face of whatever I may deserve. This year was swiftly and cruelly closed on us, however I try to take stock in being endlessly grateful for everything that you’ve given me up to now. I am so unapologetically grateful for everything that FASA has given me this year, so much so that I am prepared to return it doubly when we soon see each other again. To me, this is truly just the end of the beginning of the best that is yet to come. No matter where life takes us, nothing can break us apart, I just wanna be with you I encourage every single one of you who is reading this to look forward into the future with the best of your time in FASA on your backs. The memories we have made together will never leave us, they will never weaken us, and they will never fail us. 

My final request as your Co-President is a simple one: Look up at night. Look up at the stars in the sky. Look up at the vast expanse of the air and remember that we are all doing the same: Sharing the same sky, looking up at the same stars. With the sun and stars in the sky, on our flag, and in our blood, know that we are never truly apart. No matter how far away, we will always be right there with you, and no matter how much time may pass until we meet again, just know that the best is yet to come. Because that’s all this is, the end of the beginning – our tale still has yet to be written.

Your Co-President,

Aber John Ibarreta Espinoza

#2019.20 #FASAPrez

[illidria]

Hello! How about nr.2, Olivier and Bucc for the dialogue prompt!

Here it comes, the prompt, having taken way to long...

I`m sorry, nothing wants to be funny at the moment, but I hope you like it :D

When the lookouts of the graveyard-shiftmeet you on your way up an hour earlier than usuall, you knew that the Queenhad taken residence on top of the Wall. She`d sit on the edge, feet danglingover the steep metal wall, claiming to make sure that no-one was nearing whomeant them harm. But Buccaneer knew that she was only there to think insilence, alone, breathing in the clean, crisp air and revelling in the mental privacyyou only were awarded when taking watch.

"Was is it that you want, Lieutenant?"

She didn’t turn around, just keptstaring off into space, quite literally. It always struck him, how she huggedher sword to her body, of course looking regal, but also like a child, notclutching, but holding onto their favourite stuffed toy. He knew that anheirloom passed down a family for generations meant someone had to die for herto get it. He wondered if she`d loved that person.

He saluted, not stepping closer tothe edge.

"Sir! Captain Miles ordered meto inform you that the patrol-rooster needs to be talked through once again, asfour men of beta-group are not declared fit for duty. He is able to sendsomeone up who can cover your shift, Sir!"

The blonde sighed, yet making nomove to get up from her perch. He knew that she often tried to claim an hourfor herself on top of the wall and rarely succeeded. More than once he had toget her before even fifteen minutes had gone by, just because a problem arosethat needed her immediate attention. The morning was only coming on slowly, thestars still bright in the sky.

"And I guess you`ll substitutefor me when I go down? If I remember correctly, you just came back in from apatrol."

There was a hostility to her thispast week, that was so clearly aimed at him, that even the densest of the cubshad noticed it. And still, she thought about his well-being, which at leastinsured him that she wouldn’t just fling him over the wall anytime soon. But heknew that his friend had more in mind than just getting the Queen to talkpatrols with him, when he was send up to get her.

Miles had been with them in NorthCity, when all dams had broken and they`d kissed each other. He`d not heardtheir words, only seen them kiss and while the man was pestering him endlesslyfor details, Buccaneer remained tight-lipped. They`d not talked about it again,hadn’t had the privacy needed to do so. And judging by the Queens demeanour,she was feeling something women often seemed to associate with him: regret.

A bout of bravery had him steppingcloser to the edge.

"A cold wind has never deterredme, Sir!"

He`d sounded cheesy, her quiet groantold him as much. And maybe his pun hadn’t been as subtle as he thought, the comparisonsdrawn between her and the Briggs weather plenty and plain. With a snide toneshe spoke on, that was devoid of honorifics, but a command still.

"What do I have to do for youto go back down, tell Miles some bullshit about why I`m not coming and leave meto my troubles?"

"Permission to speak freely?"

"Permission granted, Lieutenant."

"If last week`s happenings aretroubling you, I`ve got a proposition to make: Let`s just forget this everhappened."

He knew he`d said the wrong thingwhen she turned around, her expression something between anger and disbelief.Maybe disbelieving of how angry he could make her. She seized him up with afierce gaze and he was suddenly hyperaware of the sword in her hands. But hemeant what he said: If it would make her feel better, he`d forget the kiss, thewords, and just go on as if nothing happened between them.

Hands behind his back, tall and rigidhe stood on the top of the Wall, stars making way for the sunrise, his body tooclose to the edge for comfort. But he endured the feeling, taking it astraining, for what was soon to come.

When she turned away again, lookingout over the wide mountain range of Briggs, he had the feeling she shrunk alittle.

"I knew that you`d regret whatyou said to me at one point in time, William Buccaneer. But I hadn’t expectedit to be so soon."

Her sadness was a thousand times worsethan her anger. Had the fear inside of him rising faster than her ire evercould. Of their own accord his feet moved, until he stood at the very edge,sitting down on the small ledge of the Wall. Facing away from the sunrise.

At that very moment, he did not understandwhy her eyes went wide.

"Olivier, I don’t regret what Isaid that day and I never will, because it was the truth. But for a woman likeyou to be with someone like me..."

"And who would you be, WilliamBuccaneer?"

Her tone was that of a commander, albeita kind one. Her blue eyes looked straight into his, unwavering, with firmresolve.

"I`m a man of mixed heritage,with a broken family, a missing arm, too many scars to count and a perspectivethat doesn’t go much further than the walls of this Fort. I`d do nothing butdrag you down."

He avoided her gaze, but could notavoid her gloved hand, touching his cheek. Turning his head so he was facingher.

"I cherish your honesty, but Inow see no reason either to regret what I said to you. You are no drag and justwait until you see my family before you call yours dysfunctional. And youshould know by now, that appearances mean nothing to me. I judge with my own eyes."

A devilish grin, before her lipssoftly touched his and worries melted away for the moment. They`d need to talk,a lot. They`d both need to learn that you could not resolve everything on yourown. They`d need to learn to just let feelings happen, for once.

And, standing up from the ledge,quickly walking back to the middle of the wall, Buccaneer wanted to thank andhit his best friend at once.

She stood up and followed him, a redtint to her cheeks that not only came from the frigid winds, and a smile on herlips that had his heart remind him of the fact, that he was in head over heels.

She spoke like she always did now,like a General, but now that he knew how she sounded, he could hear Oliviertoo.

"Aren’t you afraid ofheights?"

Buccaneer nodded, looking strictlyon the stairway straight ahead.

"I am, but as long as I`m nottoo close to the edge, it is no problem."

He felt her gaze on him, but didn’tsay anything more concerning this matter. Only when he held open the door toher, oblivious to the sun having finally beaten the stars and rising in thesky, he spoke again.

"What are we going to do aboutMiles? He`s becoming way to nosy for my liking."

A pleasant shiver went downBuccaneers spine, when a wolfish grin pulled on her lips.

[oovitus]

My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign

Happy Monday, everyone, and happy first day of NEDA week. For the last couple of years I’ve used NEDA week as an opportunity to celebrate the recovery process. This year gives me special reason to do it: I spent much of 2017 navigating loss, and as I did, I called upon the patience and sense of resilience that anorexia recovery has taught me.

The theme of NEDA week this year is “Let’s Get Real,” and the goal is to expand our collective dialog about eating disorders and how they show up in real life. This means challenging preconceived ideas about how eating disorders might look or whom they impact, breaking through stigma, and being more radically honest than ever about the complexities of recovery. You can read more here.

I love this theme. I love any effort to create a more open, accommodating, reality-based dialog about disordered eating. Because the topic this year resonates so strongly, and because I’m celebrating the lessons of recovery in such a personal way right now, I’ve made the choice to gather a little support for NEDA—the National Eating Disorders Association—this week. More about that in a bit. First, I want to honor the start of this week by sharing some of the affirmations that have guided me through recovery.

What becomes clear to me as I move deeper into recovery is that the struggle with food can recede, but the old demons might continue to show up in other, sneaky ways. In my life, they tend to emerge as arbitrary rules and deadlines, unnecessarily strict boundaries, binary thinking, and other means of resisting and avoiding uncertainty. They urge me to remain guarded when I could be generous, to withhold my creativity when I could express myself, to dwell where it’s safe instead of allowing myself to take risks.

This is one of the realities of recovery that I didn’t expect. Redefining my relationship with food set me free, but I’ve learned that I need to protect that freedom by remaining mindful of the many and varied ways in which I tend to keep myself contained.

I’ve written a lot about affirmations this year and the ways in which they’ve helped me to cope with depression and anxiety. I haven’t said much about my recovery affirmations, but they’re worth sharing, especially today:

Keep it real

Take up space

Break your rules

Be love

Keep faith

I’ll elaborate on each one as the week continues. “Keep it real” aligns with NEDA’s “Let’s Get Real” theme, and it seems like the right place to start.

Keeping it real, for me, means doing the opposite of what I did when I was sick, which was lie to myself and to everyone around me, all the time. I lied about my motivations for the food choices I made. I lied and said I was OK. I lied to myself in thinking that I was better than everyone, that I had a special claim to self-control. I lied and said I’d eaten when I hadn’t; I lied and said I wasn’t hungry, then ate in secret. I lied about my rituals, my habits, my compulsions.

It’s easy to look back on all of the dishonesty and denial and feel ashamed, and sometimes I still do. But shame doesn’t get me anywhere. What moves me forward is to hold myself to a different standard now—one of radical honesty. I examine my motivations with food carefully, I check in when I feel distanced from my appetite, and I don’t eat furtively or deny when I’m hungry. I openly talk about the food anxieties that have stuck around (and I’ve still got plenty: anxiety when mealtimes get delayed, anxiety about sharing my food, anxiety about travel and limited food options—I could go on.)

I don’t succeed all the time, which is OK. I still strive to stay real with myself and the people who love me. That intention is what matters most.

“Keeping it real” also means not glossing over how confusing and complicated recovery can be. Recovery is so good, and sometimes it’s so baffling. I said a moment ago that I didn’t anticipate the ways in which ED compulsions would show up outside of the actual disease. Here are some of the other recovery realities that have taken me by surprise:

● Physical recovery is often the first step. Maybe it feels like a blessed restoration; for me, it felt like disfigurement. It was a battle that waged for a long time, and watching my body change was a continual affront to my sense of identity. I’m not sure it was the hardest part of recovery, but it’s the part of the process that most often made me want to quit.

If this is where you are, try not to quit. It doesn’t last forever. At some point, maybe when you least expect it, you’ll start to feel at home in your body again.

● As you move through the journey, people who care about you might express how grateful and glad they are that you’re healing. Maybe you’ll see these comments as the expression of love that they are.

If you’re like me, you’ll greet them with rage and shame; you’ll be angry to be given reminders that the disorder no longer distinguishes you. Peoples’ support may even sometimes make you want to dig in your heels and stay sick, as if healing is a concession to something or someone you’d rather not please.

This is a lonely experience. Part of you wants to bask in peoples’ support, while another part of you wants to reject it and stay where you are, or where you used to be. Don’t force things. If you continue to do the work of loving yourself, it will become easier and easier to accept love and well wishes from other people.

● There will be days when it seems as if food will always be a big, bad deal. You fear that you’ll never figure it out, and you wonder why the business of eating seems to be so much harder for you than it is for other people. Instead of feeling struggle or pain, you’ll just feel tired—tired of the process and tired of yourself. At these moments all of the recovery talk about self-love and self-acceptance will ring particularly empty.

Then some time will pass—maybe a day, maybe two, maybe a whole week—when food isn’t such a big deal. Maybe you’re still a little preoccupied with it, but suddenly there’s something else you’d rather be thinking about. It’s hard to put into words how sweet these days will feel. Cherish them. Celebrate them. They’re a big deal.

● At some point you might go weeks or months or even years feeling that sweet sense of freedom. And then there might come a day when something or someone triggers you and you find yourself restricting, bingeing, purging, chewing and spitting, or eating in secret. Or maybe you think seriously about one or all of these behaviors.

This is a good moment for an accountability check: a phone call to a friend, some real talk in therapy, using an app that supports mental health, journaling. But please, don’t let these moments talk you into thinking that you’ve failed at recovery.

Being recovered doesn’t mean that you never again struggle with an ED impulse or do something strange around food. It means living by the intention to nourish yourself and treat your body with respect. That intention sometimes lives alongside old tendencies and impulses. It can be confusing, and it’s reason to be vigilant, but it’s OK. It really is. Just be sure you have a toolkit for dealing with these moments and supporting yourself through them.

● You might sometimes run across someone who seems to be wearing the signs of an ED or disordered behavior, and in spite of yourself, you kind of envy him or her. You don’t want to admit that you feel this way, but you do. You envy the semblance of control, or you envy something about having a single, all-encompassing preoccupation, a pursuit that seems to give life purpose and shape.

Forgive yourself. It’s OK to miss the memory of the illness and who you were within it. If you’re like me, pondering this very issue might make you realize that there were many years of your life in which your ED was your closest friend, the best company you had, and isn’t it normal to miss the presence of someone we’ve lost?

I miss “her”—a word I sometimes use in therapy to denote my ED itself, sometimes to denote my anorexic self—sometimes. I missed her a lot last year, when I was feeling blinded by anger and heartache and didn’t have a coping mechanism that felt even remotely satisfying to deal with it. Therapy gave me a safe space in which to admit that I was longing for my ED the way I’d miss a now-absent friend or lover, and to acknowledge that the ache was OK. It’s a part of my growth.

If you find yourself feeling this way, you might spend some time thinking about what you’ve gained in recovery. Maybe you’re more social. Maybe you get out and explore the world more than you used to. Maybe you’re more open, less secretive; maybe you’re braver. Perhaps you’ve found a sense of spontaneity and adventure you never thought you had, or you’re quicker to laugh. Perhaps you’ve relaxed some of your critical thinking, let some judgment go.

All of the above is true of my recovered self. She’s got a lot of imperfections; as I said yesterday, she’s messy in ways that my anorexic self wasn’t. She makes judgment calls she regrets, plans she’s not able to follow-through on, decisions she sometimes wishes she could take back. But she’s loving and engaged and interested and curious, and if I had to choose, I’d much rather spend time in her company than in the company of the frightened and painfully self-contained person I used to be.

The whole point of the “let’s get real” theme is to acknowledge that there is no defining ED narrative. The experience is bound to be different for each person who’s been through it. Maybe none of the above realities resonate with you, but if you’ve been through recovery, you no doubt have your own realities to consider. Perhaps NEDA week can be an invitation for you to reflect upon them and what they’ve taught you.

Back to the gathering of support I mentioned at the top of this post. It feels like the right year for me to show my appreciation of organizations and people who are working to raise awareness about eating disorders and the toll they take. So, I’m gathering contributions for NEDA, which is the organization that makes NEDA week a reality. NEDA supports individuals and families affected by eating disorders, serving as a catalyst for prevention, screening, and facilitating access to quality care.

If you’d like to join me in showing a little support for NEDA and the work it does, I welcome you to check out my GoFundMe page—I even made a little video to help explain the campaign and why it matters to me (speaking of stepping outside of my comfort zone!). If the message resonates , perhaps you’ll consider a contribution. Anything you give will help to keep NEDA’s hotlines, referral system, public resources, and legislative advocacy going.

And of course, if this type of support doesn’t work for you, there are so many other ways to give back this week. Maybe you can let a person who’s struggling with an ED—or other mental health challenges—know that you care. It might feel like the right time to volunteer with a local organization that does mental health or food-related work. Perhaps you find a way—gently and intuitively—to speak up about your experience. The more we share our stories, the more able we are to create a vibrant, dynamic, stigma-free conversation about recovery and all of its gloriously messy realities.

Perhaps at some point this week you’ll do something especially kind for yourself. That’s a great way to honor the spirit of NEDA week, too.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another one of my affirmations on offer. For today, sending out love and strength—along with my tremendous gratitude—to you.

xo

  The post My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign appeared first on The Full Helping.

My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign published first on

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My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign

https://www.thefullhelping.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Stocksy_txp1f563e41Syq100_Medium_20737.jpg

Happy Monday, everyone, and happy first day of NEDA week. For the last couple of years I’ve used NEDA week as an opportunity to celebrate the recovery process. This year gives me special reason to do it: I spent much of 2017 navigating loss, and as I did, I called upon the patience and sense of resilience that anorexia recovery has taught me.

The theme of NEDA week this year is “Let’s Get Real,” and the goal is to expand our collective dialog about eating disorders and how they show up in real life. This means challenging preconceived ideas about how eating disorders might look or whom they impact, breaking through stigma, and being more radically honest than ever about the complexities of recovery. You can read more here.

I love this theme. I love any effort to create a more open, accommodating, reality-based dialog about disordered eating. Because the topic this year resonates so strongly, and because I’m celebrating the lessons of recovery in such a personal way right now, I’ve made the choice to gather a little support for NEDA—the National Eating Disorders Association—this week. More about that in a bit. First, I want to honor the start of this week by sharing some of the affirmations that have guided me through recovery.

What becomes clear to me as I move deeper into recovery is that the struggle with food can recede, but the old demons might continue to show up in other, sneaky ways. In my life, they tend to emerge as arbitrary rules and deadlines, unnecessarily strict boundaries, binary thinking, and other means of resisting and avoiding uncertainty. They urge me to remain guarded when I could be generous, to withhold my creativity when I could express myself, to dwell where it’s safe instead of allowing myself to take risks.

This is one of the realities of recovery that I didn’t expect. Redefining my relationship with food set me free, but I’ve learned that I need to protect that freedom by remaining mindful of the many and varied ways in which I tend to keep myself contained.

I’ve written a lot about affirmations this year and the ways in which they’ve helped me to cope with depression and anxiety. I haven’t said much about my recovery affirmations, but they’re worth sharing, especially today:

Keep it real

Take up space

Break your rules

Be love

Keep faith

I’ll elaborate on each one as the week continues. “Keep it real” aligns with NEDA’s “Let’s Get Real” theme, and it seems like the right place to start.

Keeping it real, for me, means doing the opposite of what I did when I was sick, which was lie to myself and to everyone around me, all the time. I lied about my motivations for the food choices I made. I lied and said I was OK. I lied to myself in thinking that I was better than everyone, that I had a special claim to self-control. I lied and said I’d eaten when I hadn’t; I lied and said I wasn’t hungry, then ate in secret. I lied about my rituals, my habits, my compulsions.

It’s easy to look back on all of the dishonesty and denial and feel ashamed, and sometimes I still do. But shame doesn’t get me anywhere. What moves me forward is to hold myself to a different standard now—one of radical honesty. I examine my motivations with food carefully, I check in when I feel distanced from my appetite, and I don’t eat furtively or deny when I’m hungry. I openly talk about the food anxieties that have stuck around (and I’ve still got plenty: anxiety when mealtimes get delayed, anxiety about sharing my food, anxiety about travel and limited food options—I could go on.)

I don’t succeed all the time, which is OK. I still strive to stay real with myself and the people who love me. That intention is what matters most.

“Keeping it real” also means not glossing over how confusing and complicated recovery can be. Recovery is so good, and sometimes it’s so baffling. I said a moment ago that I didn’t anticipate the ways in which ED compulsions would show up outside of the actual disease. Here are some of the other recovery realities that have taken me by surprise:

● Physical recovery is often the first step. Maybe it feels like a blessed restoration; for me, it felt like disfigurement. It was a battle that waged for a long time, and watching my body change was a continual affront to my sense of identity. I’m not sure it was the hardest part of recovery, but it’s the part of the process that most often made me want to quit.

If this is where you are, try not to quit. It doesn’t last forever. At some point, maybe when you least expect it, you’ll start to feel at home in your body again.

● As you move through the journey, people who care about you might express how grateful and glad they are that you’re healing. Maybe you’ll see these comments as the expression of love that they are.

If you’re like me, you’ll greet them with rage and shame; you’ll be angry to be given reminders that the disorder no longer distinguishes you. Peoples’ support may even sometimes make you want to dig in your heels and stay sick, as if healing is a concession to something or someone you’d rather not please.

This is a lonely experience. Part of you wants to bask in peoples’ support, while another part of you wants to reject it and stay where you are, or where you used to be. Don’t force things. If you continue to do the work of loving yourself, it will become easier and easier to accept love and well wishes from other people.

● There will be days when it seems as if food will always be a big, bad deal. You fear that you’ll never figure it out, and you wonder why the business of eating seems to be so much harder for you than it is for other people. Instead of feeling struggle or pain, you’ll just feel tired—tired of the process and tired of yourself. At these moments all of the recovery talk about self-love and self-acceptance will ring particularly empty.

Then some time will pass—maybe a day, maybe two, maybe a whole week—when food isn’t such a big deal. Maybe you’re still a little preoccupied with it, but suddenly there’s something else you’d rather be thinking about. It’s hard to put into words how sweet these days will feel. Cherish them. Celebrate them. They’re a big deal.

● At some point you might go weeks or months or even years feeling that sweet sense of freedom. And then there might come a day when something or someone triggers you and you find yourself restricting, bingeing, purging, chewing and spitting, or eating in secret. Or maybe you think seriously about one or all of these behaviors.

This is a good moment for an accountability check: a phone call to a friend, some real talk in therapy, using an app that supports mental health, journaling. But please, don’t let these moments talk you into thinking that you’ve failed at recovery.

Being recovered doesn’t mean that you never again struggle with an ED impulse or do something strange around food. It means living by the intention to nourish yourself and treat your body with respect. That intention sometimes lives alongside old tendencies and impulses. It can be confusing, and it’s reason to be vigilant, but it’s OK. It really is. Just be sure you have a toolkit for dealing with these moments and supporting yourself through them.

● You might sometimes run across someone who seems to be wearing the signs of an ED or disordered behavior, and in spite of yourself, you kind of envy him or her. You don’t want to admit that you feel this way, but you do. You envy the semblance of control, or you envy something about having a single, all-encompassing preoccupation, a pursuit that seems to give life purpose and shape.

Forgive yourself. It’s OK to miss the memory of the illness and who you were within it. If you’re like me, pondering this very issue might make you realize that there were many years of your life in which your ED was your closest friend, the best company you had, and isn’t it normal to miss the presence of someone we’ve lost?

I miss “her”—a word I sometimes use in therapy to denote my ED itself, sometimes to denote my anorexic self—sometimes. I missed her a lot last year, when I was feeling blinded by anger and heartache and didn’t have a coping mechanism that felt even remotely satisfying to deal with it. Therapy gave me a safe space in which to admit that I was longing for my ED the way I’d miss a now-absent friend or lover, and to acknowledge that the ache was OK. It’s a part of my growth.

If you find yourself feeling this way, you might spend some time thinking about what you’ve gained in recovery. Maybe you’re more social. Maybe you get out and explore the world more than you used to. Maybe you’re more open, less secretive; maybe you’re braver. Perhaps you’ve found a sense of spontaneity and adventure you never thought you had, or you’re quicker to laugh. Perhaps you’ve relaxed some of your critical thinking, let some judgment go.

All of the above is true of my recovered self. She’s got a lot of imperfections; as I said yesterday, she’s messy in ways that my anorexic self wasn’t. She makes judgment calls she regrets, plans she’s not able to follow-through on, decisions she sometimes wishes she could take back. But she’s loving and engaged and interested and curious, and if I had to choose, I’d much rather spend time in her company than in the company of the frightened and painfully self-contained person I used to be.

The whole point of the “let’s get real” theme is to acknowledge that there is no defining ED narrative. The experience is bound to be different for each person who’s been through it. Maybe none of the above realities resonate with you, but if you’ve been through recovery, you no doubt have your own realities to consider. Perhaps NEDA week can be an invitation for you to reflect upon them and what they’ve taught you.

Back to the gathering of support I mentioned at the top of this post. It feels like the right year for me to show my appreciation of organizations and people who are working to raise awareness about eating disorders and the toll they take. So, I’m gathering contributions for NEDA, which is the organization that makes NEDA week a reality. NEDA supports individuals and families affected by eating disorders, serving as a catalyst for prevention, screening, and facilitating access to quality care.

If you’d like to join me in showing a little support for NEDA and the work it does, I welcome you to check out my GoFundMe page—I even made a little video to help explain the campaign and why it matters to me (speaking of stepping outside of my comfort zone!). If the message resonates , perhaps you’ll consider a contribution. Anything you give will help to keep NEDA’s hotlines, referral system, public resources, and legislative advocacy going.

And of course, if this type of support doesn’t work for you, there are so many other ways to give back this week. Maybe you can let a person who’s struggling with an ED—or other mental health challenges—know that you care. It might feel like the right time to volunteer with a local organization that does mental health or food-related work. Perhaps you find a way—gently and intuitively—to speak up about your experience. The more we share our stories, the more able we are to create a vibrant, dynamic, stigma-free conversation about recovery and all of its gloriously messy realities.

Perhaps at some point this week you’ll do something especially kind for yourself. That’s a great way to honor the spirit of NEDA week, too.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another one of my affirmations on offer. For today, sending out love and strength—along with my tremendous gratitude—to you.

xo

    [Read More ...] https://www.thefullhelping.com/my-five-recovery-affirmations-neda-week-campaign/

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[oovitus]

My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign

Happy Monday, everyone, and happy first day of NEDA week. For the last couple of years I’ve used NEDA week as an opportunity to celebrate the recovery process. This year gives me special reason to do it: I spent much of 2017 navigating loss, and as I did, I called upon the patience and sense of resilience that anorexia recovery has taught me.

The theme of NEDA week this year is “Let’s Get Real,” and the goal is to expand our collective dialog about eating disorders and how they show up in real life. This means challenging preconceived ideas about how eating disorders might look or whom they impact, breaking through stigma, and being more radically honest than ever about the complexities of recovery. You can read more here.

I love this theme. I love any effort to create a more open, accommodating, reality-based dialog about disordered eating. Because the topic this year resonates so strongly, and because I’m celebrating the lessons of recovery in such a personal way right now, I’ve made the choice to gather a little support for NEDA—the National Eating Disorders Association—this week. More about that in a bit. First, I want to honor the start of this week by sharing some of the affirmations that have guided me through recovery.

What becomes clear to me as I move deeper into recovery is that the struggle with food can recede, but the old demons might continue to show up in other, sneaky ways. In my life, they tend to emerge as arbitrary rules and deadlines, unnecessarily strict boundaries, binary thinking, and other means of resisting and avoiding uncertainty. They urge me to remain guarded when I could be generous, to withhold my creativity when I could express myself, to dwell where it’s safe instead of allowing myself to take risks.

This is one of the realities of recovery that I didn’t expect. Redefining my relationship with food set me free, but I’ve learned that I need to protect that freedom by remaining mindful of the many and varied ways in which I tend to keep myself contained.

I’ve written a lot about affirmations this year and the ways in which they’ve helped me to cope with depression and anxiety. I haven’t said much about my recovery affirmations, but they’re worth sharing, especially today:

Keep it real

Take up space

Break your rules

Be love

Keep faith

I’ll elaborate on each one as the week continues. “Keep it real” aligns with NEDA’s “Let’s Get Real” theme, and it seems like the right place to start.

Keeping it real, for me, means doing the opposite of what I did when I was sick, which was lie to myself and to everyone around me, all the time. I lied about my motivations for the food choices I made. I lied and said I was OK. I lied to myself in thinking that I was better than everyone, that I had a special claim to self-control. I lied and said I’d eaten when I hadn’t; I lied and said I wasn’t hungry, then ate in secret. I lied about my rituals, my habits, my compulsions.

It’s easy to look back on all of the dishonesty and denial and feel ashamed, and sometimes I still do. But shame doesn’t get me anywhere. What moves me forward is to hold myself to a different standard now—one of radical honesty. I examine my motivations with food carefully, I check in when I feel distanced from my appetite, and I don’t eat furtively or deny when I’m hungry. I openly talk about the food anxieties that have stuck around (and I’ve still got plenty: anxiety when mealtimes get delayed, anxiety about sharing my food, anxiety about travel and limited food options—I could go on.)

I don’t succeed all the time, which is OK. I still strive to stay real with myself and the people who love me. That intention is what matters most.

“Keeping it real” also means not glossing over how confusing and complicated recovery can be. Recovery is so good, and sometimes it’s so baffling. I said a moment ago that I didn’t anticipate the ways in which ED compulsions would show up outside of the actual disease. Here are some of the other recovery realities that have taken me by surprise:

● Physical recovery is often the first step. Maybe it feels like a blessed restoration; for me, it felt like disfigurement. It was a battle that waged for a long time, and watching my body change was a continual affront to my sense of identity. I’m not sure it was the hardest part of recovery, but it’s the part of the process that most often made me want to quit.

If this is where you are, try not to quit. It doesn’t last forever. At some point, maybe when you least expect it, you’ll start to feel at home in your body again.

● As you move through the journey, people who care about you might express how grateful and glad they are that you’re healing. Maybe you’ll see these comments as the expression of love that they are.

If you’re like me, you’ll greet them with rage and shame; you’ll be angry to be given reminders that the disorder no longer distinguishes you. Peoples’ support may even sometimes make you want to dig in your heels and stay sick, as if healing is a concession to something or someone you’d rather not please.

This is a lonely experience. Part of you wants to bask in peoples’ support, while another part of you wants to reject it and stay where you are, or where you used to be. Don’t force things. If you continue to do the work of loving yourself, it will become easier and easier to accept love and well wishes from other people.

● There will be days when it seems as if food will always be a big, bad deal. You fear that you’ll never figure it out, and you wonder why the business of eating seems to be so much harder for you than it is for other people. Instead of feeling struggle or pain, you’ll just feel tired—tired of the process and tired of yourself. At these moments all of the recovery talk about self-love and self-acceptance will ring particularly empty.

Then some time will pass—maybe a day, maybe two, maybe a whole week—when food isn’t such a big deal. Maybe you’re still a little preoccupied with it, but suddenly there’s something else you’d rather be thinking about. It’s hard to put into words how sweet these days will feel. Cherish them. Celebrate them. They’re a big deal.

● At some point you might go weeks or months or even years feeling that sweet sense of freedom. And then there might come a day when something or someone triggers you and you find yourself restricting, bingeing, purging, chewing and spitting, or eating in secret. Or maybe you think seriously about one or all of these behaviors.

This is a good moment for an accountability check: a phone call to a friend, some real talk in therapy, using an app that supports mental health, journaling. But please, don’t let these moments talk you into thinking that you’ve failed at recovery.

Being recovered doesn’t mean that you never again struggle with an ED impulse or do something strange around food. It means living by the intention to nourish yourself and treat your body with respect. That intention sometimes lives alongside old tendencies and impulses. It can be confusing, and it’s reason to be vigilant, but it’s OK. It really is. Just be sure you have a toolkit for dealing with these moments and supporting yourself through them.

● You might sometimes run across someone who seems to be wearing the signs of an ED or disordered behavior, and in spite of yourself, you kind of envy him or her. You don’t want to admit that you feel this way, but you do. You envy the semblance of control, or you envy something about having a single, all-encompassing preoccupation, a pursuit that seems to give life purpose and shape.

Forgive yourself. It’s OK to miss the memory of the illness and who you were within it. If you’re like me, pondering this very issue might make you realize that there were many years of your life in which your ED was your closest friend, the best company you had, and isn’t it normal to miss the presence of someone we’ve lost?

I miss “her”—a word I sometimes use in therapy to denote my ED itself, sometimes to denote my anorexic self—sometimes. I missed her a lot last year, when I was feeling blinded by anger and heartache and didn’t have a coping mechanism that felt even remotely satisfying to deal with it. Therapy gave me a safe space in which to admit that I was longing for my ED the way I’d miss a now-absent friend or lover, and to acknowledge that the ache was OK. It’s a part of my growth.

If you find yourself feeling this way, you might spend some time thinking about what you’ve gained in recovery. Maybe you’re more social. Maybe you get out and explore the world more than you used to. Maybe you’re more open, less secretive; maybe you’re braver. Perhaps you’ve found a sense of spontaneity and adventure you never thought you had, or you’re quicker to laugh. Perhaps you’ve relaxed some of your critical thinking, let some judgment go.

All of the above is true of my recovered self. She’s got a lot of imperfections; as I said yesterday, she’s messy in ways that my anorexic self wasn’t. She makes judgment calls she regrets, plans she’s not able to follow-through on, decisions she sometimes wishes she could take back. But she’s loving and engaged and interested and curious, and if I had to choose, I’d much rather spend time in her company than in the company of the frightened and painfully self-contained person I used to be.

The whole point of the “let’s get real” theme is to acknowledge that there is no defining ED narrative. The experience is bound to be different for each person who’s been through it. Maybe none of the above realities resonate with you, but if you’ve been through recovery, you no doubt have your own realities to consider. Perhaps NEDA week can be an invitation for you to reflect upon them and what they’ve taught you.

Back to the gathering of support I mentioned at the top of this post. It feels like the right year for me to show my appreciation of organizations and people who are working to raise awareness about eating disorders and the toll they take. So, I’m gathering contributions for NEDA, which is the organization that makes NEDA week a reality. NEDA supports individuals and families affected by eating disorders, serving as a catalyst for prevention, screening, and facilitating access to quality care.

If you’d like to join me in showing a little support for NEDA and the work it does, I welcome you to check out my GoFundMe page—I even made a little video to help explain the campaign and why it matters to me (speaking of stepping outside of my comfort zone!). If the message resonates , perhaps you’ll consider a contribution. Anything you give will help to keep NEDA’s hotlines, referral system, public resources, and legislative advocacy going.

And of course, if this type of support doesn’t work for you, there are so many other ways to give back this week. Maybe you can let a person who’s struggling with an ED—or other mental health challenges—know that you care. It might feel like the right time to volunteer with a local organization that does mental health or food-related work. Perhaps you find a way—gently and intuitively—to speak up about your experience. The more we share our stories, the more able we are to create a vibrant, dynamic, stigma-free conversation about recovery and all of its gloriously messy realities.

Perhaps at some point this week you’ll do something especially kind for yourself. That’s a great way to honor the spirit of NEDA week, too.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another one of my affirmations on offer. For today, sending out love and strength—along with my tremendous gratitude—to you.

xo

  The post My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign appeared first on The Full Helping.

My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign published first on https://storeseapharmacy.tumblr.com

[oovitus]

My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign

Happy Monday, everyone, and happy first day of NEDA week. For the last couple of years I’ve used NEDA week as an opportunity to celebrate the recovery process. This year gives me special reason to do it: I spent much of 2017 navigating loss, and as I did, I called upon the patience and sense of resilience that anorexia recovery has taught me.

The theme of NEDA week this year is “Let’s Get Real,” and the goal is to expand our collective dialog about eating disorders and how they show up in real life. This means challenging preconceived ideas about how eating disorders might look or whom they impact, breaking through stigma, and being more radically honest than ever about the complexities of recovery. You can read more here.

I love this theme. I love any effort to create a more open, accommodating, reality-based dialog about disordered eating. Because the topic this year resonates so strongly, and because I’m celebrating the lessons of recovery in such a personal way right now, I’ve made the choice to gather a little support for NEDA—the National Eating Disorders Association—this week. More about that in a bit. First, I want to honor the start of this week by sharing some of the affirmations that have guided me through recovery.

What becomes clear to me as I move deeper into recovery is that the struggle with food can recede, but the old demons might continue to show up in other, sneaky ways. In my life, they tend to emerge as arbitrary rules and deadlines, unnecessarily strict boundaries, binary thinking, and other means of resisting and avoiding uncertainty. They urge me to remain guarded when I could be generous, to withhold my creativity when I could express myself, to dwell where it’s safe instead of allowing myself to take risks.

This is one of the realities of recovery that I didn’t expect. Redefining my relationship with food set me free, but I’ve learned that I need to protect that freedom by remaining mindful of the many and varied ways in which I tend to keep myself contained.

I’ve written a lot about affirmations this year and the ways in which they’ve helped me to cope with depression and anxiety. I haven’t said much about my recovery affirmations, but they’re worth sharing, especially today:

Keep it real

Take up space

Break your rules

Be love

Keep faith

I’ll elaborate on each one as the week continues. “Keep it real” aligns with NEDA’s “Let’s Get Real” theme, and it seems like the right place to start.

Keeping it real, for me, means doing the opposite of what I did when I was sick, which was lie to myself and to everyone around me, all the time. I lied about my motivations for the food choices I made. I lied and said I was OK. I lied to myself in thinking that I was better than everyone, that I had a special claim to self-control. I lied and said I’d eaten when I hadn’t; I lied and said I wasn’t hungry, then ate in secret. I lied about my rituals, my habits, my compulsions.

It’s easy to look back on all of the dishonesty and denial and feel ashamed, and sometimes I still do. But shame doesn’t get me anywhere. What moves me forward is to hold myself to a different standard now—one of radical honesty. I examine my motivations with food carefully, I check in when I feel distanced from my appetite, and I don’t eat furtively or deny when I’m hungry. I openly talk about the food anxieties that have stuck around (and I’ve still got plenty: anxiety when mealtimes get delayed, anxiety about sharing my food, anxiety about travel and limited food options—I could go on.)

I don’t succeed all the time, which is OK. I still strive to stay real with myself and the people who love me. That intention is what matters most.

“Keeping it real” also means not glossing over how confusing and complicated recovery can be. Recovery is so good, and sometimes it’s so baffling. I said a moment ago that I didn’t anticipate the ways in which ED compulsions would show up outside of the actual disease. Here are some of the other recovery realities that have taken me by surprise:

● Physical recovery is often the first step. Maybe it feels like a blessed restoration; for me, it felt like disfigurement. It was a battle that waged for a long time, and watching my body change was a continual affront to my sense of identity. I’m not sure it was the hardest part of recovery, but it’s the part of the process that most often made me want to quit.

If this is where you are, try not to quit. It doesn’t last forever. At some point, maybe when you least expect it, you’ll start to feel at home in your body again.

● As you move through the journey, people who care about you might express how grateful and glad they are that you’re healing. Maybe you’ll see these comments as the expression of love that they are.

If you’re like me, you’ll greet them with rage and shame; you’ll be angry to be given reminders that the disorder no longer distinguishes you. Peoples’ support may even sometimes make you want to dig in your heels and stay sick, as if healing is a concession to something or someone you’d rather not please.

This is a lonely experience. Part of you wants to bask in peoples’ support, while another part of you wants to reject it and stay where you are, or where you used to be. Don’t force things. If you continue to do the work of loving yourself, it will become easier and easier to accept love and well wishes from other people.

● There will be days when it seems as if food will always be a big, bad deal. You fear that you’ll never figure it out, and you wonder why the business of eating seems to be so much harder for you than it is for other people. Instead of feeling struggle or pain, you’ll just feel tired—tired of the process and tired of yourself. At these moments all of the recovery talk about self-love and self-acceptance will ring particularly empty.

Then some time will pass—maybe a day, maybe two, maybe a whole week—when food isn’t such a big deal. Maybe you’re still a little preoccupied with it, but suddenly there’s something else you’d rather be thinking about. It’s hard to put into words how sweet these days will feel. Cherish them. Celebrate them. They’re a big deal.

● At some point you might go weeks or months or even years feeling that sweet sense of freedom. And then there might come a day when something or someone triggers you and you find yourself restricting, bingeing, purging, chewing and spitting, or eating in secret. Or maybe you think seriously about one or all of these behaviors.

This is a good moment for an accountability check: a phone call to a friend, some real talk in therapy, using an app that supports mental health, journaling. But please, don’t let these moments talk you into thinking that you’ve failed at recovery.

Being recovered doesn’t mean that you never again struggle with an ED impulse or do something strange around food. It means living by the intention to nourish yourself and treat your body with respect. That intention sometimes lives alongside old tendencies and impulses. It can be confusing, and it’s reason to be vigilant, but it’s OK. It really is. Just be sure you have a toolkit for dealing with these moments and supporting yourself through them.

● You might sometimes run across someone who seems to be wearing the signs of an ED or disordered behavior, and in spite of yourself, you kind of envy him or her. You don’t want to admit that you feel this way, but you do. You envy the semblance of control, or you envy something about having a single, all-encompassing preoccupation, a pursuit that seems to give life purpose and shape.

Forgive yourself. It’s OK to miss the memory of the illness and who you were within it. If you’re like me, pondering this very issue might make you realize that there were many years of your life in which your ED was your closest friend, the best company you had, and isn’t it normal to miss the presence of someone we’ve lost?

I miss “her”—a word I sometimes use in therapy to denote my ED itself, sometimes to denote my anorexic self—sometimes. I missed her a lot last year, when I was feeling blinded by anger and heartache and didn’t have a coping mechanism that felt even remotely satisfying to deal with it. Therapy gave me a safe space in which to admit that I was longing for my ED the way I’d miss a now-absent friend or lover, and to acknowledge that the ache was OK. It’s a part of my growth.

If you find yourself feeling this way, you might spend some time thinking about what you’ve gained in recovery. Maybe you’re more social. Maybe you get out and explore the world more than you used to. Maybe you’re more open, less secretive; maybe you’re braver. Perhaps you’ve found a sense of spontaneity and adventure you never thought you had, or you’re quicker to laugh. Perhaps you’ve relaxed some of your critical thinking, let some judgment go.

All of the above is true of my recovered self. She’s got a lot of imperfections; as I said yesterday, she’s messy in ways that my anorexic self wasn’t. She makes judgment calls she regrets, plans she’s not able to follow-through on, decisions she sometimes wishes she could take back. But she’s loving and engaged and interested and curious, and if I had to choose, I’d much rather spend time in her company than in the company of the frightened and painfully self-contained person I used to be.

The whole point of the “let’s get real” theme is to acknowledge that there is no defining ED narrative. The experience is bound to be different for each person who’s been through it. Maybe none of the above realities resonate with you, but if you’ve been through recovery, you no doubt have your own realities to consider. Perhaps NEDA week can be an invitation for you to reflect upon them and what they’ve taught you.

Back to the gathering of support I mentioned at the top of this post. It feels like the right year for me to show my appreciation of organizations and people who are working to raise awareness about eating disorders and the toll they take. So, I’m gathering contributions for NEDA, which is the organization that makes NEDA week a reality. NEDA supports individuals and families affected by eating disorders, serving as a catalyst for prevention, screening, and facilitating access to quality care.

If you’d like to join me in showing a little support for NEDA and the work it does, I welcome you to check out my GoFundMe page—I even made a little video to help explain the campaign and why it matters to me (speaking of stepping outside of my comfort zone!). If the message resonates , perhaps you’ll consider a contribution. Anything you give will help to keep NEDA’s hotlines, referral system, public resources, and legislative advocacy going.

And of course, if this type of support doesn’t work for you, there are so many other ways to give back this week. Maybe you can let a person who’s struggling with an ED—or other mental health challenges—know that you care. It might feel like the right time to volunteer with a local organization that does mental health or food-related work. Perhaps you find a way—gently and intuitively—to speak up about your experience. The more we share our stories, the more able we are to create a vibrant, dynamic, stigma-free conversation about recovery and all of its gloriously messy realities.

Perhaps at some point this week you’ll do something especially kind for yourself. That’s a great way to honor the spirit of NEDA week, too.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another one of my affirmations on offer. For today, sending out love and strength—along with my tremendous gratitude—to you.

xo

  The post My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign appeared first on The Full Helping.

My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign published first on https://storeseapharmacy.tumblr.com

[oovitus]

My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign

Happy Monday, everyone, and happy first day of NEDA week. For the last couple of years I’ve used NEDA week as an opportunity to celebrate the recovery process. This year gives me special reason to do it: I spent much of 2017 navigating loss, and as I did, I called upon the patience and sense of resilience that anorexia recovery has taught me.

The theme of NEDA week this year is “Let’s Get Real,” and the goal is to expand our collective dialog about eating disorders and how they show up in real life. This means challenging preconceived ideas about how eating disorders might look or whom they impact, breaking through stigma, and being more radically honest than ever about the complexities of recovery. You can read more here.

I love this theme. I love any effort to create a more open, accommodating, reality-based dialog about disordered eating. Because the topic this year resonates so strongly, and because I’m celebrating the lessons of recovery in such a personal way right now, I’ve made the choice to gather a little support for NEDA—the National Eating Disorders Association—this week. More about that in a bit. First, I want to honor the start of this week by sharing some of the affirmations that have guided me through recovery.

What becomes clear to me as I move deeper into recovery is that the struggle with food can recede, but the old demons might continue to show up in other, sneaky ways. In my life, they tend to emerge as arbitrary rules and deadlines, unnecessarily strict boundaries, binary thinking, and other means of resisting and avoiding uncertainty. They urge me to remain guarded when I could be generous, to withhold my creativity when I could express myself, to dwell where it’s safe instead of allowing myself to take risks.

This is one of the realities of recovery that I didn’t expect. Redefining my relationship with food set me free, but I’ve learned that I need to protect that freedom by remaining mindful of the many and varied ways in which I tend to keep myself contained.

I’ve written a lot about affirmations this year and the ways in which they’ve helped me to cope with depression and anxiety. I haven’t said much about my recovery affirmations, but they’re worth sharing, especially today:

Keep it real

Take up space

Break your rules

Be love

Keep faith

I’ll elaborate on each one as the week continues. “Keep it real” aligns with NEDA’s “Let’s Get Real” theme, and it seems like the right place to start.

Keeping it real, for me, means doing the opposite of what I did when I was sick, which was lie to myself and to everyone around me, all the time. I lied about my motivations for the food choices I made. I lied and said I was OK. I lied to myself in thinking that I was better than everyone, that I had a special claim to self-control. I lied and said I’d eaten when I hadn’t; I lied and said I wasn’t hungry, then ate in secret. I lied about my rituals, my habits, my compulsions.

It’s easy to look back on all of the dishonesty and denial and feel ashamed, and sometimes I still do. But shame doesn’t get me anywhere. What moves me forward is to hold myself to a different standard now—one of radical honesty. I examine my motivations with food carefully, I check in when I feel distanced from my appetite, and I don’t eat furtively or deny when I’m hungry. I openly talk about the food anxieties that have stuck around (and I’ve still got plenty: anxiety when mealtimes get delayed, anxiety about sharing my food, anxiety about travel and limited food options—I could go on.)

I don’t succeed all the time, which is OK. I still strive to stay real with myself and the people who love me. That intention is what matters most.

“Keeping it real” also means not glossing over how confusing and complicated recovery can be. Recovery is so good, and sometimes it’s so baffling. I said a moment ago that I didn’t anticipate the ways in which ED compulsions would show up outside of the actual disease. Here are some of the other recovery realities that have taken me by surprise:

● Physical recovery is often the first step. Maybe it feels like a blessed restoration; for me, it felt like disfigurement. It was a battle that waged for a long time, and watching my body change was a continual affront to my sense of identity. I’m not sure it was the hardest part of recovery, but it’s the part of the process that most often made me want to quit.

If this is where you are, try not to quit. It doesn’t last forever. At some point, maybe when you least expect it, you’ll start to feel at home in your body again.

● As you move through the journey, people who care about you might express how grateful and glad they are that you’re healing. Maybe you’ll see these comments as the expression of love that they are.

If you’re like me, you’ll greet them with rage and shame; you’ll be angry to be given reminders that the disorder no longer distinguishes you. Peoples’ support may even sometimes make you want to dig in your heels and stay sick, as if healing is a concession to something or someone you’d rather not please.

This is a lonely experience. Part of you wants to bask in peoples’ support, while another part of you wants to reject it and stay where you are, or where you used to be. Don’t force things. If you continue to do the work of loving yourself, it will become easier and easier to accept love and well wishes from other people.

● There will be days when it seems as if food will always be a big, bad deal. You fear that you’ll never figure it out, and you wonder why the business of eating seems to be so much harder for you than it is for other people. Instead of feeling struggle or pain, you’ll just feel tired—tired of the process and tired of yourself. At these moments all of the recovery talk about self-love and self-acceptance will ring particularly empty.

Then some time will pass—maybe a day, maybe two, maybe a whole week—when food isn’t such a big deal. Maybe you’re still a little preoccupied with it, but suddenly there’s something else you’d rather be thinking about. It’s hard to put into words how sweet these days will feel. Cherish them. Celebrate them. They’re a big deal.

● At some point you might go weeks or months or even years feeling that sweet sense of freedom. And then there might come a day when something or someone triggers you and you find yourself restricting, bingeing, purging, chewing and spitting, or eating in secret. Or maybe you think seriously about one or all of these behaviors.

This is a good moment for an accountability check: a phone call to a friend, some real talk in therapy, using an app that supports mental health, journaling. But please, don’t let these moments talk you into thinking that you’ve failed at recovery.

Being recovered doesn’t mean that you never again struggle with an ED impulse or do something strange around food. It means living by the intention to nourish yourself and treat your body with respect. That intention sometimes lives alongside old tendencies and impulses. It can be confusing, and it’s reason to be vigilant, but it’s OK. It really is. Just be sure you have a toolkit for dealing with these moments and supporting yourself through them.

● You might sometimes run across someone who seems to be wearing the signs of an ED or disordered behavior, and in spite of yourself, you kind of envy him or her. You don’t want to admit that you feel this way, but you do. You envy the semblance of control, or you envy something about having a single, all-encompassing preoccupation, a pursuit that seems to give life purpose and shape.

Forgive yourself. It’s OK to miss the memory of the illness and who you were within it. If you’re like me, pondering this very issue might make you realize that there were many years of your life in which your ED was your closest friend, the best company you had, and isn’t it normal to miss the presence of someone we’ve lost?

I miss “her”—a word I sometimes use in therapy to denote my ED itself, sometimes to denote my anorexic self—sometimes. I missed her a lot last year, when I was feeling blinded by anger and heartache and didn’t have a coping mechanism that felt even remotely satisfying to deal with it. Therapy gave me a safe space in which to admit that I was longing for my ED the way I’d miss a now-absent friend or lover, and to acknowledge that the ache was OK. It’s a part of my growth.

If you find yourself feeling this way, you might spend some time thinking about what you’ve gained in recovery. Maybe you’re more social. Maybe you get out and explore the world more than you used to. Maybe you’re more open, less secretive; maybe you’re braver. Perhaps you’ve found a sense of spontaneity and adventure you never thought you had, or you’re quicker to laugh. Perhaps you’ve relaxed some of your critical thinking, let some judgment go.

All of the above is true of my recovered self. She’s got a lot of imperfections; as I said yesterday, she’s messy in ways that my anorexic self wasn’t. She makes judgment calls she regrets, plans she’s not able to follow-through on, decisions she sometimes wishes she could take back. But she’s loving and engaged and interested and curious, and if I had to choose, I’d much rather spend time in her company than in the company of the frightened and painfully self-contained person I used to be.

The whole point of the “let’s get real” theme is to acknowledge that there is no defining ED narrative. The experience is bound to be different for each person who’s been through it. Maybe none of the above realities resonate with you, but if you’ve been through recovery, you no doubt have your own realities to consider. Perhaps NEDA week can be an invitation for you to reflect upon them and what they’ve taught you.

Back to the gathering of support I mentioned at the top of this post. It feels like the right year for me to show my appreciation of organizations and people who are working to raise awareness about eating disorders and the toll they take. So, I’m gathering contributions for NEDA, which is the organization that makes NEDA week a reality. NEDA supports individuals and families affected by eating disorders, serving as a catalyst for prevention, screening, and facilitating access to quality care.

If you’d like to join me in showing a little support for NEDA and the work it does, I welcome you to check out my GoFundMe page—I even made a little video to help explain the campaign and why it matters to me (speaking of stepping outside of my comfort zone!). If the message resonates , perhaps you’ll consider a contribution. Anything you give will help to keep NEDA’s hotlines, referral system, public resources, and legislative advocacy going.

And of course, if this type of support doesn’t work for you, there are so many other ways to give back this week. Maybe you can let a person who’s struggling with an ED—or other mental health challenges—know that you care. It might feel like the right time to volunteer with a local organization that does mental health or food-related work. Perhaps you find a way—gently and intuitively—to speak up about your experience. The more we share our stories, the more able we are to create a vibrant, dynamic, stigma-free conversation about recovery and all of its gloriously messy realities.

Perhaps at some point this week you’ll do something especially kind for yourself. That’s a great way to honor the spirit of NEDA week, too.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another one of my affirmations on offer. For today, sending out love and strength—along with my tremendous gratitude—to you.

xo

  The post My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign appeared first on The Full Helping.

My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign published first on