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poppywriter · 8 months

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This chapter tackles subjects that can be sensitive to some readers, please do not interact if you are uncomfortable. And it's about my personnal life, though I feel comfortable sharing those facts. Of course, don't read if you're not interested :)

⚠️ Warnings : depiction of mental health (depressive thoughts, suicidal thoughts, self harm, self hate,…).

Read at your own risk. - Beaucoup d’amour, Poppy.

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❀ Pansy n°4 = A little catch-up.

*sigh* So ! There’s a lot to say…

I didn’t plan to make this book, or whatever this is, so personal but I feel like this could do me some good and that it could actually be interesting to share a bit more of my struggles.

I mean, I think this book makes it pretty clear - especially with what I write and think of writing in it - but I suffer from chronic anxiety, ‘masked’ depression and a bit of ADHD. First and foremost, ‘masked’ depression is a bad translation from my native language but basically it means that I try - or at least tried - to hide it from others, to keep up appearances. Which is… Way too true. But anyways.

To start from the beginning, it has been more than a year since I got “diagnosed” with chronic anxiety by my first therapist. He told me it was most likely hereditary - which is true, I got f*cking anxious parents especially my dad. I started therapy in January 2022, after years of mental distress. I always remember being anxious, sleeping badly and feeling lonely as well as inexistant, useless, transparent. It is like, most of what I remember from my teenage years (and I have massive blackouts from my childhood somehow :/). I am constantly struggling with my feelings, thoughts and place in life. It is as if my entire life revolves around internal conflict. I was - and still am a bit - used to dealing with all of it on my own, because I am convinced that you can count on nobody but yourself, but mostly that I shouldn’t burden people with it especially when they won’t care anyway.

Adding to that, the fact that I am the youngest of three siblings, I grew up thinking that I was too much in my family. Like my parents had already too much to deal with and just hadn’t the capacity to fully care for me. Moreover, on my dad’s side of the family I was also the younger cousin. So when my cousins and siblings became teenagers and young adults, I was very clearly put aside. The worst was that everyone was aware of it. I mean they literally gently threw me out of each room they were in when they wanted to talk about more “adult themed” subjects, always promising to call me back when they were done which obviously never happened. At the time, I complained to my parents and relatives about it, saying that I was tired of being rejected and just wanted to spend time with my cousins. But everyone just told me to wait it out, that it was normal as I was younger but with time it’ll change and it ended with people not even caring anymore if I was saddened about the situation. From this experience I think I just came to the conclusion that older people would always look at me as a less valuable being just because I was younger than them and theoretically couldn’t understand their “grown up and experienced” mind. As well as the fact that nobody - not even my family - cares about my feelings even if I communicate them.

I think that is when my difficulty communicating started to grow. I totally closed off from everyone, trapping myself in a never ending feeling of loneliness, even sometimes feeling like I am a spectator to my own life.

So I grew resentful towards my family, always wishing to stray away from them, to flee the country and build a new and better life. Away from everything. Then, I started thinking - very firmly - that without me, things would stay exactly the same. My family wouldn’t be impacted at all as I was only an unwanted nuisance that took too much care and money. I did not feel important, nor truly loved. I felt I just couldn’t be loved as I wasn’t interesting and had nothing for myself to make people appreciate me, just because I craved for attention I was not given by my family.

Furthermore, when I had just started middle school, I found out I had scoliosis. And a pretty bad one at that. After three months of observation, my spine ended up forming a perfect S shape. It was so bad that I had to wear a medical corset, in order to keep my back in check. That is how I ended up wearing a plastic made medical corset 23 hours a day every day. All of that, just a few weeks before my 12th birthday… Yes, it was an amazing gift :).

So, I found myself being sort of disabled. Wearing something totally new to every single one of my classmates and even my school’s administration. Find a way to feel more left out and alienated. Yet, I was not truly bullied for it. People were kind and curious, often offering me to carry my bag or things like that. Still, I was faced with the fact that a majority of people just wouldn’t understand how hard it could be on someone’s body and mind. People just thought of aesthetic corsets when I had to explain what I had, and didn’t understand why I made the choice to wear one as well as why it handicapped me.

In fact, it was truly a burden. It was not only painful, it was also truly incapacitating. I couldn’t bend down, I couldn’t sit without having my thighs being compressed and cut by the plastic, I couldn’t breathe or eat properly. At first I couldn’t even go to the bathroom with it. Plus, you are taught to get it on while laying down so I had authorized access to the nurse office - even when she wasn’t there - to take it off and pee. Only once was I refused the access to it, and my mom was so mad she made sure to call the school and report how it was unacceptable as I literally had a PCP (Personalized Care Project) which granted me special rights like access to the nurse office or even prioritized access to the cafeteria to not risk me being pushed and falling in the middle of a crowd. I actually got crushed by someone once. I was kneeling near my locker and someone fell on me. My breath cut short and I had trouble recovering. I only remember one of my friends opening my corset but nothing after that… Weird. But knowing how much I forget traumatic events I’m not even surprised :).

Aside from that, the corset also took away my dream career of becoming a ballerina. It was a harsh reality check for a 12 year-old who already had a lot going on. So to sum it up, the corset physically blocked me, woke up unbearable back pains, made me feel even more abnormal, broke my dreams, ruined my birthday and made my nights even worse. Nice.

And it is only the beginning.

At the same time I also had a really sh*tty friend group. You know this type of friend circle in which everyone swears they’re best friends but spit on each others’ back? Well it was exactly like that. Adding the fact that they truly enjoyed putting only some people aside. I only have one friend from this group to which I still talk to this day. She is the only one who was honest with me, cared and liked me. And she changed schools during our second year, so she clearly got away from all the drama. But we kept contact and we are still really close.

Yet, I lost my best friend of 7 years to this group. She preferred to stay with them even if they were making fun of her behind her back, while I decided to leave and find other friends. Still, I was fairly traumatized by this friendship as one of the girls very clearly confessed in secret that she thought I was nonexistent, invisible and that without me things would be the same… So yeah, trusting people after that was especially hard.

Man, teenage years s*ck…

Eventually I found new friends with whom I felt a bit more like myself - whoever I was at that age. I got closer to this one girl I met at the very beginning of middle school and who is, today, still my beautiful and amazing best friend <3. That year I remember not having so many dark thoughts, but they became a bit too normal. Now that I had new people around me and felt I could express myself, it became really hard for me to repress my feelings. I was so used to bottling everything up, put on a straight face and feeling numb that once I felt a bit more at ease, it was impossible for me to go back.

I felt better with my friends and started questioning myself. Who I was. Who I wanted to become. Who I liked… I was around 14 years-old when I came out to my friends as Bisexual. I had this huge crush on one of my friends and even if I got - kindly - rejected, I knew where I stood. Everyone accepted me, I wasn’t judged by any of them. My siblings didn’t know yet at the time - as we didn’t share the close bond we have today. And my parents still don’t know to this day…

Nevertheless, this new discovery about myself made me question my attraction towards this one female friend of my friend group (just to bring precision, I didn’t and still don’t really hang out with boys much. Idk why lol). And this questioning ended up with me being in my first ever serious relationship, and it was with a girl behind my parents back.

I won’t go into details about this relationship or how catastrophic my middle sister’s first reaction was. But even if I should have known by now, things didn’t go according to plan… LOL.

I started this relationship thinking I had nothing to lose but in the end I lost my sanity and will to live, is that okay with you ? No but seriously, this girl ruined my life. She was what we call a ‘narcissistic pervert’. Literally made me lose any closeness I had to other people, wanting me to care only about her - even at my own expense. She constantly wanted to make me jealous with weird fantasies she had with her former crushes, making me feel like I clearly wasn’t the only one on her mind or even a tiny bit special. Once she even told me that before we got together she also had a crush on another girl, and that if we didn’t start something she might’ve not chosen me… B*tch. She even made me feel guilty for any little thing I could do or say when I tried to communicate - yes, it is called guilt tripping :). She was weirdly sexist, like she took on the ‘stereotypical role of the man’ in the relationship and wanted to be the one to lead the relationship in everything, even when it was uncalled for. She didn’t value my feelings, many times gaslighting me. Towards the end of our relationship, she often made me feel forced to engage in foreplay and sexual acts…

I know that, in a way, it was also my responsibility as I didn’t communicate much, always putting her first but I also felt like I couldn’t because whatever I said or did she put herself in the victim position while I was made the culprit. You know, she even got mad at me once because I fell asleep texting her - I took plant based pills, and they worked really well at the time. And she was aware of how much I struggled sleeping! Everything just had to revolve around her, all the time. It was clearly a one way relationship.

For other anecdotes - because I ended up going into details… :/. Even when I broke up with her, she couldn’t help but guilt trip me. She was literally telling me how cruel I was not to think about the situation she found herself in when I asked her for a break. (Yes, I needed a break first to see if I was better alone and to prepare myself to break up with someone… Oopsies.) Because of our relationship, I lost a friend who sided with her and it completely broke our friend group as no one wanted to hang out with the two of us when we were together. Yes we were f*cking cringe middle schoolers… Yikes.

One of the worst memories I have, concerning her lack of real care for me, was when I harmed myself… I was wallowing in self pity, hating myself and my life when everything was supposed to be better. I was dying with anxiety as important exams were coming up and as usual my feelings were minimized at home, and in my relationship. Even if it was the year I grew closer to my sisters, our relationships were still rocky - especially with my middle sister. I felt like all of my problems were meaningless, and I was the problem, the one to blame. So for an entire week I harmed myself. It was the simplest way I found to prove myself I had a reason to hurt. What better way to prove you’re in pain than having physical wounds ? That was my reasoning. It was also a clear cry for help as I did nothing to hide it. I constantly thought “the bigger it is, people would see it less.” And it always proved to be true.

One evening, I was having dinner with my two sisters and my mom. Simply wearing a tank top, my scarred wrists in plain sight. When my mom asked me what happened to them. I lied, saying that I simply scratched myself too hard with my long nails. And it was never tackled again. My sisters never caught up with it, my mom never asked more. It just went unseen. But, as I said earlier, my ex did even better. I literally showed her and after arguing a bit I just told her it was my way to cope and she answered “if it helps you, I’ll learn to live with it.” What a caring significant other am I right ?

Then after a week of only being able to think about doing it. I stopped because two of my friends found out and made me promise to never start again. But to be honest, I think I never really stopped. I learned that chewing the insides of your mouth (like really aggressively) is also a way to self-harm. I also used to scratch myself really hard when I felt mad at myself. And I happened to try and use a blade once more a few times, but felt extremely pathetic afterwards. I have been quite clean since then, especially since I don’t deny my own feelings and let myself have breakdowns lol.

During highschool I slowly started healing from this amazing relationship. Sadly, my anxiety grew because of school and just as I thought things could still go better… Boom. World wide pandemic. We had to stay focused on school while being stuck at home. It was really hard on me especially because my dad had to work from home while my mom - who takes care of kids at home - didn’t stop working. The cohabitation was less than pleasant. Anyway, I don’t have anything interesting to say about the period, just that it helped me go down the rabbit hole even faster :). A pleasure.

For my last year of highschool, teachers and adults expected us to go back to normal and be perfect students as if Covid never happened. They expected us to be okay. And it was just not possible. My anxiety went haywire as we had really important final exams at the end of the year that I couldn’t fail. All my friends were feeling down, I was feeling suicidal and just wanted to end the pain. I also lost my great-grandmother and a month later - literally two days before Christmas - my dog also passed away. It was a very difficult time for my family. Then came January and I felt more than ever like dying.

Each passing day I was only feeling like life was just a burden. Why did I have to suffer so much just from living ? I had to take the train every day, always thinking of just jumping on the rails. I had to fake a smile every day, to try and forget. To take care of my own friends who were too feeling horrible. I was just so tired…

Then my savior came. One of my close friends went to express their worries about me to one teacher with whom I was very close. She was a PE teacher and my dance option teacher for two years already. One day she asked me to talk after a class and as I exceptionally had finished class early I accepted.

It was the most intense and emotional discussion I ever had.

We both cried - a lot - I confessed everything. I was honest and she brought so much help. Thanks to her my parents became aware of the situation and I got help. She made my mom call a therapist she had heard only good things about and talked to me about what I could do and take to sleep better. I missed her class to go to my first ever therapy session and she often checked up on me. I could never thank her enough for everything.

She saved my life. Literally.

This therapist was special but not bad. He talked a lot and I didn’t always feel heard, but he diagnosed me with chronic anxiety and slight ADHD. Therapy didn’t really help for my inner conflicts but I started to manage my stress a bit better. I passed my exams with less stress and excelled. But I still felt like it wasn’t a good match so I stopped seeing him. I let summer pass, trying to get my mind off of things. Went on vacation with my bestfriend and just tried to feel better.

Things went okay, but I was still bothered by anxiety as I was to start university. And it didn’t miss. Uni is a literal hell. Like what the f*ck ?? Why does it have to be so hard and stress inducing ? September was my way to hell…

I found a new therapist not far from my house. Since then I haven’t changed. My therapist is just amazing. I feel so much at ease with her, I have real conversations and I can freely express myself. I truly feel like it is helping me. Still, it was not enough for me to feel at least a little better on a daily basis so I started taking anxiolytics. It helped a bit but after a month it was clear that I had to take stronger medicine if I wanted to go through it day by day. So after being diagnosed with depression by a first psychiatrist I got prescribed antidepressant and sleeping pills. It was really hard at first as I had a LOT of side effects.

It did not help me sleep at all. The first night I literally did not sleep and had a mental breakdown just as I got up. I got really shaky and I was constantly nauseous. I missed some classes to rest at home but I couldn’t allow myself to miss more. I went on and even if we add to rise the dosage of my medicine I am feeling a bit better today.

I am still on my way towards healing but I think I am on the right path. I am surrounded by amazing people. My sisters and I are closer than ever, best trio ever <3 And I even grew closer to my mom. I express myself way more and try to be positive. It is not easy everyday but I start to finally believe that it might not be that impossible to heal. Right now school is almost finished for me and I never felt better. I am working on myself, trying to improve the person I am in order to become the person I want to be. I take good care of myself, try to change my mind and go out more. I do things I want and do not force myself if I don’t feel like it.

I feel like I am in my healing era. B*tch I’m gonna glow up ;)

Anyway, if you ever went through difficult things I cannot tell you how important it is to surround yourself with good people and get help. It is really hard to ask for yourself, so if you see friends struggling do not hesitate to get them help. Believe me when I say I know how hard it is to accept the fact that things aren’t going well and that you have to do something about it. It is not going to be easy, it asks for a lot of effort but you are not alone. We can get through this. And… I think it is going to be worth it.

It’s going to be 5 months since I started being medicated, and 7 months since I restarted therapy. Things are looking good right now. I know I might still face some hard times but I am going to continue trying to feel better. I promise, if you promise to try too, dear reader. <3

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🔺Original work please do not steal or copy, Thanks.🔺

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hd-wireless · 3 years

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📻🎶 H/D Wireless 2021 - Weekly Wrap-up #6

Welcome to our final H/D Wireless roundup!

Another amazing round of our fest has now found its end. Thank you all for participating, be it by adding your own works to the collection, cheering and beta reading for our participants, or following the fest and leaving comments or kudos on the works you enjoyed. This fest wouldn't be as amazing as it is without all of you.

See you tomorrow for our anonymous masterlist!

You can listen to the prompted songs for the works we post on two playlists:

Click here for Spotify (many thanks to @evaeleanor for helping us out there)

And here for YouTube

🎶 H/D Wireless Fic 🎶

📻 Born to Drown

🎵 Summary: Draco drives a Knight Bus in the slums of Paris. Sometimes his passengers remind him of Harry. But Harry left years ago. Now, Harry is married to Ginny, and Draco drives a bus. You laugh. “Sorry, I don't know why I’m laughing. It’s really not funny—your dad being dead and shrivelled.” “Fuck off.” I turn to face you. Your eyes are red, your pupils almost blown. Your skin is grey-tinged and sallow, and you're not the one who’s dead. “Merlin, Potter,” I say, hoarse. “How much bloody Dreamless did you shoot up this time?” “Enough for me to live.” You grin wide. “You want me to be alive, don’t you?” Your raw-bitten lips, your chipped teeth, your fucking mouth. I hate all of them, but really I don’t.

📻 Stop And Stare

🎵 Summary: After surviving your everyday war-torn childhood, Harry had found a constant rhythm to his life. The thing is, he didn't quite like it. It was repetitive, dull, and he badly wanted to switch it up. So, when he stumbled upon Draco Malfoy on the verge of committing arson in a muggle library, he proposed a deal neither could refuse. (Well, Malfoy was desperately trying to refuse it. But that wasn't the point!) What he failed to factor in was how pretty Malfoy's hands were. One thing led to another, and suddenly, he was obsessed with the idea of holding them.

📻 Wicked Game

🎵 Summary: Harry and Draco fall into a spring that allows them to enter into each other’s dreams - but Harry doesn’t quite understand what’s happening, not at first. Why does he keep seeing Draco having kinky sex with a dream version of Harry? And furthermore, why does he like it? Morpheus’ tail twitched irritably. “I warned you away from the poppies. The blame lies with you.” “Me? Potter’s to blame for this, he’s the one who dragged me out to this miserable -” “You would do well not to insult the home of those whom you ask for help,” said Morpheus coolly, though Harry saw a bit of detached amusement in his expression. Malfoy had no self awareness. It’s adorable how stupid he is, Harry thought, and then caught himself thinking Malfoy was adorable and became deeply troubled. “I’m…” Malfoy closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. “Sorry. Please - I need advice. I can’t keep him out of my dreams.”

📻 Dedication and Desperation

🎵 Summary: Diagnosed with a rare and serious illness, Draco has mostly given up until Harry comes to visit.

📻 Famous

🎵 Summary: It's a couple of years after the war, and Harry's bored of models now, the same way he's bored of Ron's constant nagging, bored of his Weasley monogram knitwear, bored of the same fucking grin that greets him when he hands his fire-truck red Bugatti over to the valet every night. He wants to find—well, he isn't sure what he wants. Anything but models. Harry is in the mood for...messy. And Draco Malfoy's looking like a walking disaster in the making.

📻 stitched and sewn

🎵 Summary: Harry shudders, fingertips pulsing against Draco’s thighs. He can feel the sharp, metal edge of Harry’s wedding band digging into his flesh, knows he’ll have a bruise there in the morning, a small imperfection that only he’d be able to see. It’s one of the only marks he’ll vanish, not wanting to think about its implications; the rest he’ll keep for himself. Slowly, Harry relaxes, shoulders sinking, breaths changing their cadence to a new tempo. Resigned, surrendered to this dance they do.

📻 Watch the Castles Burn

🎵 Summary: Draco Malfoy knows better than to get involved with Harry Potter. If only someone would have reminded him of that six months sooner, then maybe he wouldn't be in quite such a large mess.

🎶 H/D Wireless Fic and Art 🎶

📻 The Stars Have Courage

🎵 Summary: Draco can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t move. He can’t hear anything besides the buzzing in his ears. The walls are closing in. The world becomes smaller, narrowing itself to the pain in his chest, and it becomes the only thing that makes sense. He tries to cry. Maybe he is crying, but there are no tears anymore. Luna’s words echo endlessly in his brain. Harry doesn’t remember. Harry doesn’t love Draco. Repeating ceaselessly. Infinite, Harry used to say. No. No. No. Draco can’t lose him again. But he doesn’t know who you are now. He doesn’t love you. He hates you. You are no one. His world turns into an overwhelming pain. And that pain is all that he is. — Draco waited five long years to watch his husband wake up from a coma. He's not ready to meet a Harry with no memory of anything that happened after he died at The Battle of Hogwarts, twelve years ago.

#hd wireless 2021 #HD Wireless #drarry fest #drarry fic #drarry fic and art #weekly wrap up no 6

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muse-oleum · 4 years

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The Flower Shop, part 3

Kingsman - Harry Hart x Fem!OC

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3;

Hey folks! Here’s the third installment of my series. I hope you enjoy it! We’re getting into it, finally. Also, I’ve just added another prompt list that you can find here, go give me some inspiration!

Word count: 1.7k

Warnings: none

The camelias shivered in the evening wind. By their place on the windowsill, they overlooked the entire room, with its large bed, desk and the man sitting there.

Harry’s books and notebooks had all been lost when his house was bombed to the ground, so he’d had to start again. Over the course of the past few weeks, he had purchased several anthologies and was still looking for new publications on the subject of entomology.

He missed his old notebooks, relying entirely on the scribbled pages of the battered pad he’d used during his time away.

Harry rarely referred to his time as an amnesiac entomologist as anything else except his “time away.” He was still grappling with the strange sensation of having recovered his life but he wasn’t so sure now, after so many months wishing for freedom to go find his butterflies, which life he wanted to lead.

Kingsman had been his home for decades, ever since he’d left the army to become a secret agent. But before that? He’d been so invested in becoming an entomologist that it almost surrounded him in a shroud of wing dust for the rest of his career. His home was full of them; his head was full of them; and his heart was full of them.

None of his friends had ever understood his passion for the small insects. To be honest, Harry himself did not understand it fully.

His father had been very fond of gardening, and his mother never allowed him to squash any insects he found in his room. Even if it was the biggest spider in the world - at least to the eyes of a little boy - she would just pick it up in a tissue and let it free outside. He had always supposed his interest came from them. But now, looking back on how he had cleaved to his ephemeral friends, he wondered if the root for his interest did not run deeper.

Perhaps he was fascinated by their transience? The manner in which their sense of purpose carried them to their death? He envied that. The whole of the animal kingdom, except humans, seemed to have a purpose. Harry had lost his and didn’t know how to regain it.

Sighing, he turned off the nightstand lamp, plunging the room into darkness. Before falling asleep, he remembered his promise to Rebecca to come fix her garden shed. A small smile tugged at the corners of his lips. At least, he had that to look forward to tomorrow.

Monday ----, 9 a.m

The chime of the doorbell accompanied Harry’s entrance into the flower shop. At the end of a cold February month, the sight of so many blooms was a welcome start to his day.

“You’re an early riser!”

Rebecca stood at her cluttered counter, snipping twigs off small branches. Harry watched, strangely fascinated, as she arranged them in an elegant bouquet. She seemed to know just where to place them.

“It’s for a wedding,” she said, matter of factly. “Apparently, the bride is fond of forest weddings and decided to go for a woodland theme.”

“A forest wedding in February? Good luck to them.”

Her singsong laugh echoed through the shop.

“Yes, the groom seemed rather resigned, poor chap. Let me just finish with this one and then we can go look at the shed.”

Harry followed, calling after her, “I didn’t bring any tools, I hope you’ve got something I can work with?”

Rebecca popped her head out of the shed. “Come and have a look for yourself. It’s in quite a state, but it still stands. My dad was strangely proud of that.”

Harry fit his broad-shouldered frame inside the small shed as best he could without towering above her. Rebecca caught his eye as he attempted to squeeze himself in, chuckling slightly.

The shed was small, built out of wood that had begun rotting many years ago. Daylight filtered through cracks along the walls and dust shimmered in the air. In the corner, a box of tools, its bright red colour contrasting strangely with its surroundings, was waiting patiently for its next use. Rebecca had arranged a large pile of fresh wood and wooden panels next to it, probably to restore the cracked walls.

“It’s dismal, I know, but the roof is still in a really good state so i’d hate it to collapse entirely.”

Harry gently pushed against the walls. The wood cracked and moaned but it held. The problem was the rot, which had weakened the overall structure.

“I’m afraid if you want it to stand for any number of years, we have to tear it down completely first. The wood is rotting. Best to rebuild entirely.”

Rebecca nodded, biting her lips nervously.

“I don’t want to ask you to do that, I thought it just needed a few repairs. But tearing it down and rebuilding it is a job for my brother; he loves to demolish things to rebuild them.”

A small part of Harry’s heart - which he refused to acknowledge - rebelled at the idea.

“Nonsense, I said I’d help and I will. We will just need a lot more wood than that.”

Wednesday, some weeks later ----, 6 pm

Dropping by Rebecca’s shop had become part of Harry’s routine. Nearly everyday after work, he’d go in, buy a few flowers and go. Every weekend, he’d drop by and work on the shed. He was grateful for the distraction it provided and, slowly, began to acknowledge that Rebecca had wormed her way into his heart.

Harry Hart had never dared to think too much about love. The Kingsman code was explicit: no attachments, no weaknesses. Eggsy and, on occasion, Merlin, had expressed how incredibly stupid and bigoted the Gentleman Guide was but the former Arthur had been uncompromising.

Kingsman was slowly adapting and changing, especially after Poppy’s missile catastrophe. A new Arthur had yet to be found but under the capable supervision of the older agents, amongst which Harry and Merlin, the newer recruits were coming into their own. Kingsman was still not operating at full capacity, what with the HQ and the London shop in ruins, but it was getting there.

Exhausted, Harry shook out his umbrella outside the shop before coming in, tucking it neatly in a corner. It had been a long day: recruits to assess, Merlin to check on (he was adjusting to his wheelchair but threw a few dignified Scottish tantrums along the way) and paperwork to work through.

The smell of freshly cut flowers greeted him and, immediately, he felt better. March had brought an early spring and the blooms were peeking shyly from under their green little sprouts.

Harry heard a commotion in the back room and, nerves on alert, made his way slowly towards the garden. Carefully popping his head in, he saw Rebecca, on the ground, looking under the sofa and murmuring soft words of encouragement. Eventually, a small kitten emerged, sniffing her fingers curiously. He meowed a few times, noticing Harry by the door, and meowed even louder, asking for food.

“I believe this little lad is hungry.”

Rebecca gasped, nearly bumping her head on the sofa.

“Harry! You scared the living daylights out of me!”

He held his hands up, taking one step in, chuckling slightly.

“My apologies. You looked terribly busy.”

The shabby little cat, meanwhile, completely disinterested in the antics of those two humans, had made his way towards the kitchen, no doubt drawn to the smell of soup hanging in the air. One or two loud meows later, a large bowl full of ham and leftover meat had been placed for him by the table and he happily forgot all about everything else.

“I found him in the street this afternoon. It was cold and he was shivering and crying, so I brought him in. He wasn’t a fan of being carried somewhere new and he hid under that couch for a solid hour before you came in.”

“Well, he’s one lucky cat.”

Rebecca laughed softly and shook her head, her long curls bouncing around her forehead. Harry resisted the urge to tuck one behind her ear. Tying an apron around her waist, she made her way towards the stove to check on the soup.

Harry observed her, sleeves rolled up to reveal creamy skin, feet tapping lightly to no rhythm in particular, curls pinned up by a clip, out of the way. He felt his heart give a little tug and, unable to stop himself, took a few steps towards her.

She didn’t seem to notice, absorbed in diagnosing what exactly was missing from the soup. The warm smell of tomatoes made Harry’s mouth water. He could tell what was missing from that distance.

“Have you added basil?”

She looked up at him, noticing his closeness, and a pretty blush spread over her cheeks. She tasted one more spoonful before smiling broadly, dashing out of the door and back again. She came back with a shriek, shaking the droplets out of her hair. Harry couldn’t contain his smile.

Suddenly, as she was taking off her boots, a sparkling flash of blue caught Harry’s eye. Looking more closely, he froze. There were two blue butterflies, Adonis blues, flying around her head. One settled into the mass of pinned curls, the other kept looking for a perch.

Harry’s heart soared. how he had missed his butterflies! Their gentle movements mesmerized him and, unconsciously, he took a step forward. He didn’t notice the curious look Rebecca shot him when he reached up to touch one of the butterflies. She didn’t stop him, didn’t move, as if she knew something was happening that she couldn’t see.

Harry felt the flutter of the butterfly’s wings on his fingers and smiled. Rebecca had never seen him smile like that before. He had never smiled happily, always offered small, sad, smiles. She wondered what it was that made him so happy tonight.

The moment ended when their eyes met, Harry blushing furiously and taking a step back; Rebecca reaching up to touch her hair, her blush deeper than before.

“I’m sorry, I-”

“I’ve never seen you smile like that.”

Her tone was curious, not displeased. Harry couldn’t help but answer honestly:

“There were butterflies around your head. Blue ones. I’ve always loved blue butterflies.”

Rebecca frowned slightly. Butterflies? In this season? Surely that was impossible, and she would have seen them. Harry lowered his eyes to the ground, realizing how utterly mad that must have sounded. He was ready to take his leave when she said:

“I love blue butterflies too.”

Taglist: @justawriterinprogress; @tonystrksslut; @emilyyblackkk; the-sea-belt; @flybi91

Comment below if you want to be added to my HH taglist!

#harry hart #kingsman #harry hart x oc #harry hart x reader #harry hart x fem!oc #the flower shop #part 3 #original work #kingsman: the secret service #Kingsman: the golden circle #fanfiction #kingsman fanfiction #original character #original female character

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galaxiqs · 4 years

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i added 5 ocs recently and have posted nothing about them, so i’m gonna add some blurbs under the cut to hold me over till i get Unlazy. some of these are longer than others, and if you have questions? please feel free to ask !

AURORA ROSS ( GLEE OC, LIANA LIBERATO ) — rory is a vocal adrenaline member ( a main soloist, usually ) who has been attending carmel since the seventh grade, but she went to elementary school with the mckinley kids ( first generation ) until her parents divorced, her mom left, and she and her dad switched districts. she loves performing, focusing primarily on pop songs, and she’s in a constant state of needing to be the best. she is also a member of the cheerleading squad, and has been dancing since she was four years old. personality wise, rory has two main personalities that she forces herself to switch between depending on the situation. when she’s with the vocal adrenaline crowd, she’s the top bitch. she’s got the hbic act down to a science and she loves every minute of it, allegedly. but the real rory? she’s down to earth and a sweetheart, and she isn’t here for all the rivalry and dirty tactics, but in order to keep her spot? she knows she has to play along.

BRENNA SLOAN ( GREYS OC, POPPY DRAYTON ) — brenna is the illegitimate daughter of mark sloan and a woman from new york city. she grew up in new york until she moved to seattle for university in 2009. she always knew who her dad was, but she was never a part of his life and he was never a part of hers until she started high school and sought him out. they begin developing a relationship before he moves, and she continues getting close once he moves, and he’s why she chose seattle for college. she was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy in the spring of her sophomore year of high school ( inherited from her mother’s side ), and a year after her diagnosis, she ended up having surgery to solve the issue in the long term. she goes to medical school after university, and she starts as an intern at grey sloan memorial in july 2017 with levi, vikram, dahlia, sam, casey, and taryn. everyone expects her to specialize in plastics ( which she considers ) but her heart is set on cardio. she wants to help people like she was helped. she’s very much the princess type, but she’s not afraid to get down and dirty. she’s very defensive, and on more than one occasion she’s lashed out at someone who claimed she only got where she was because of her last name.

DALLAS QUINN ( PJO OC, LULU ANTARIKSA ) — as a daughter of hephaestus, dallas is constantly striving to make her father proud. she was claimed at the age of twelve, and two years later her mother was killed in an “accident” ( monsters sent after dallas ) and she has been a full time camper ever since. she’s a technopath just like the rest of them, and she has minor pyrokinesis ( she can’t create her own flames, but she can control flames that exist, as long as she is around at least one of her siblings to feed off of ). she’s blunt and snarky, and she’s not afraid to tell it like it is. she loves going on quests, and her weapon of choice is a crossbow.

JORDAN TUCKER ( HARRY POTTER OC, LOGAN LERMAN ) — jordan is a halfblood slytherin. but he thinks he’s pureblood. his mother is pureblood and his father is an unknown muggle. yes, his family name isn’t in the sacred twenty eight, but that’s because of one indiscretion in his mother’s family from centuries ago. he’s kind of inspired by the “my life as a background” series, as in he doesn’t often have anything to do with the main action, but he just watches it all happen and is forced to deal with the fall out. that’s not saying he can’t have connections with the main cast, i just don’t like making assumptions. he’s also a beater for the quidditch team, and that’s a position he holds from third year on. his favorite classes are transfiguration and defense against the dark arts and he aspires to be an auror. he’s ambitious and arrogant, and is willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants. but he also knows when to stay behind the scenes. he’s big on staying out of trouble and if he does have to do something less allowed, he makes sure there’s a fall guy.

SASHA MCCARTHY ( FANDOMLESS POWERED OC, VANESSA MORGAN ) — sasha is from a group rp that my friends made, and i love her. she’s the only girl in a family of brothers and was expected to be the absolute girly girl and the perfect daughter, but that’s never been her. she’s a rough and tumble tomboy and has been from the start. she ended up moving out of her parents’ house and couch surfing just so she could be herself, but she’s recently moved back in and hates every minute of it. sasha is stubborn and argumentative, never the one to back down from a fight and always the one willing to keep going till someone realizes she’s right. she’s not afraid to cross lines and she’ll do anything and everything to plead her own case. she develops the power of mechanokinesis / technopathy, and that’s been incredibly beneficial in her job choice of mechanic. however, she does have a tendency to get dizzy if she overuses her power. in her main verse, this is caused by a misfits style storm, but it can also be a metahuman situation depending on the verse.

#I. STUDY ; AURORA ROSS #I. STUDY ; BRENNA SLOAN #I. STUDY ; DALLAS QUINN #I. STUDY ; JORDAN TUCKER #I. STUDY ; SASHA MCCARTHY

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justinsdaysinthedark · 5 years

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Post #1 - Welcome

Firstly, welcome. Whether you’re family, a friend or even somebody I don’t know - welcome to what will be my journey. I’ll be honest and upfront about what’s going on and I’m not afraid to express my deepest feelings.

Will this blog be everybody’s cup of tea? Absolutely not. I’ll give you the heads up now - this will be boring. This will lead down some dark and negative paths (don’t stress, it’ll be mostly positive!). I do feel however that I need to express myself this way and explore my emotions as they clash with what is going on. Sit back, relax and come with me in what will be some light slightly heavy reading.

Where does one start with such a blog? Let me preface this by saying once all is said and done, I will never complain about anything trivial again. Ever. The past six weeks has been an emotional roller coaster - not only on myself but those close to me. I wouldn’t wish this upon anybody I know and I don’t say that lightly!

Where am I at now? Monash Hospital - Clayton. Over the past six weeks, I’ve spent 26 days in hospital across three different stints. It’s currently 22:49 on Monday 15th July and I’m about to endure what will be the most confronting couple of days I’ve experienced in my life... but let’s roll it back a few weeks and fill you in.

What’s wrong? Where and how did it all it begin? Let’s touch over a few things...

Sunday June 2nd - It all started with an immense eye pain one Sunday afternoon. I’d stayed up late into the night to watch Australia’s first Cricket World Cup clash with Afghanistan. Getting to bed at roughly 3am Sunday morning and waking up normally by 10am, I thought this particular Sunday was going to be a stock standard one. I stayed over at my partner Courtney’s house and we went to watch her nephew play football. 4pm rolled around on Sunday and I thought I was suffering from what I thought was a simple case of eye strain - a deep, immense pain in my left eye. After all, my mum, dad and sister all have glasses so I assumed my time was up!

Courtney booked me an appointment at the optometrist for the following weekend and I kept on in my evening assuming this eye pain would settle with some rest.

Monday June 3rd - Waking up Monday morning, the pain was still there. Had it gotten slightly better? Not at all. I continued on my Monday as normal with an incredibly busy day at work and headed around to Courtney’s for the weekly ‘Monday night roast’ courtesy of her mother. Knowing I had a rostered day off on Tuesday, I knew I could sleep in, relax, take it easy and my eye would eventually get better - surely! It has to!

Tuesday June 4th - With the day off, no alarms set I was woken up at 8:30am with the call I was least expecting. My mum was in tears as she somehow bravely blurted that my grandfather had passed away that morning. Poppy was ill and attempting to recover from a recent hip operation he had after a fall - we all thought he’d fight through it and keep battling but unfortunately his time was up and nanny had called him to join her. A man I was so close with, a fighter had suddenly left us. I was in shock, but raced to pick mum up from work. We made the decision to join my family in Bairnsdale - 3 hours away from where I live. Mum and I shared the driving there, no worries in the world. My eye pain was still there - Worse than it had been, but that was secondary this day. I could still see perfectly normal still assuming it was just eye strain.

Wednesday June 5th - As soon as I woke up, I knew something wasn’t right with my left eye. The pain had slightly subsided however my vision just wasn’t right. I can’t explain what I felt that morning. My left eye was still moving as it should however the vision just wasn’t right. I chose to close my left eyelid and primarily look through my right. It was at this moment I just knew it wasn’t an eye strain - it was something worse.

Mum went down the street that morning and I tagged along. Fortunately, Specsavers (Bairnsdale’s local optometrist) was open and they could squeeze me in for an eye check. I knew I had to rule that out before attending a hospital.

Not to my surprise, my vision was 20/20 out of each eye as it had been for my life. The optometrist suggested if I’m having issues, to head to the local hospital - so that I did.

Rolling on into Bairnsdale Regional Hospital at 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon wasn’t exactly on my schedule when heading down to Bairnsdale originally, but that’s what it had come to. The triage nurse saw me immediately and rushed me through to be seen (within 30 minutes and a waiting room full of patients!) The doctor - who was only in his second year out of uni was quick to assess that I was having issues with my third nerve (something that wouldn’t be mentioned again for a couple of days). In consultation with the Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne, it was recommended I leave Bairnsdale immediately and go and present myself to them - a 4 hour drive. With other matters on my mind, I was hesitant to go. My family basically pushed me out the door and it was at that moment that I knew I had to go.

9pm I walk in the entrance to a ridiculously busy waiting room. I present myself to triage and they pull the papers they had from earlier in the day. I thought this may mean I’d get through a bit quicker - boy oh boy I was wrong! Fortunately, State of Origin I was on and that entertained me until 10:30... and from there it was a genuine slog. 11:45pm I walked through the sliding doors and was met by who I can best describe as an overenthusiastic young(ish) Pom who was keen to have a look at me. It was late. I was tired. This bloke was over the top, but my word did he know his stuff! Did that help him diagnose me? No. 2am came around and he sent me home, telling me to expect a call at 9am with plans on what to do next.

Thursday June 6th - Just to his word, a phone call comes in at 9am from the doctor I’d seen only seven hours earlier. He advised I needed a CT scan (at 1pm) and an appointment with a specialist (3pm). The CT scan went well and I assumed I’d be out by 4pm and be able to head to the Sandown Greyhounds for the night as I’d been busy organising a night out over the weeks prior. This all changed when we saw the specialist. She ran her basic tests and ordered an MRI scan ASAP. I got taken over to St. Vincent’s Private Hospital for the scans via an underground tunnel - yes! They exist! My very first MRI scan was done and back to the Eye and Ear Hospital we went. The specialist that I’d seen earlier in the day was rostered on that night in emergency fortunately for me! She got the scan results back and ruled out a stroke and bleeding on my brain pretty early. This was a relief, I suppose. I wasn’t going to die in the short term! It was from here where she advised i’d be required to be admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital that night for further tests over the next few days. It was at this point where I felt helpless. Disappointed and helpless. I was expecting to have a few tests done and go home and continue my life as per normal. I didn’t want to be admitted to a hospital so far away from home. I didn’t want to wait around for tests. I wanted to be home. In my bed. Some normality at least. This is where my mindset had to change and that it did - pretty quickly.

Dad walked with me over to St. Vincent’s and we entered the emergency department. We were told “you won’t have to wait long... they are already expecting you.” Well, once again, what was I thinking? A city central hospital with no waiting in emergency? In retrospect, I was definitely getting my hopes up.

A solid 3 hour wait finally saw me enter through the doors and be seen to. This is where dad left me - for the first time in this ordeal I was alone. Was I scared? I won’t lie. Yes, yes I was. At 24 years old, no idea what’s wrong with me and alone in a major hospital in the city? I think that’s justified.

How’s the eye at this stage? Terrible. In the prior 24 hours I’d developed double vision and my left eye had significantly moved with no ability to control it - as you can see below.

Friday June 7th - 4am I was finally taken to a ward and had a bed to myself. It was on the 9th floor in the ward that generally deals with major bone breaks and reconstructions/replacements. I was wheeled into a twin-share room with an old guy who had just had his hip replaced. In retrospect, I had such a good room in what turned out to be an incredible hospital. The food was excellent, the nurses went above and beyond to make sure you were comfortable and as happy as you can be and in the end, I had a great view of Melbourne.

10am came by and I saw the first of what felt like 100 doctors that day. They were pretty quick to diagnose me with Third Nerve Palsy in my left eye - something I hadn’t heard since I first presented in Bairnsdale two days prior.

Unfortunately, being a part of the neuro team of doctors - things didn’t happen too quickly. Just my luck too, this upcoming weekend was the Queens Birthday long weekend. I didn’t realise or even think that hospitals go on skeleton staff over the weekends and scans don’t get done very quickly... I wasn’t booked in for a follow up CT and MRI scan until Tuesday...

Monday June 10th - I’m not going to lie. Mentally I was struggling. Presented to a hospital on Thursday night/Friday morning for what was Third Nerve Palsy and they just left me there over the weekend. No follow ups. No nothing. I didn’t realise how much hospitals shut down over weekends - I certainly do now! I was a mess. I felt lost. I didn’t know what was going on or even why for that matter. My eye was doing something it had never done and I couldn’t control it. I felt helpless and lonely.

Courtney was just getting over a serious case of the flu, so I hadn’t seen her in over a week and it was killing me.

I broke down Monday night after I’d calmed down from what was a good win by my Pies. 8pm came around, visitors were gone and I was there by myself. No clear plan about what was wrong with me or how they were going to fix it. I was an emotional mess.

Tuesday June 11th - Finally. The long weekend was over and didn’t I notice the difference. 7am and the hospital was a hive of activity. My CT and MRI scans were booked in for later that day as well as what will turn out to be my first of many lumbar punctures (LP) - something that scared the life out of me. Mentally, 24 hours later I was doing okay. I could see things progressing...but one thing was playing on my mind. Poppy’s funeral was on Friday and I knew within myself I had to be there to say my final goodbye. I let the nurses and doctors know and they seemed to be okay with letting me out on day leave - however logistically that left an issue. 4 hour drive with an 11am funeral wasn’t going to be possible.

Wednesday June 12th - At this stage, my eye hadn’t got any worse. It was just the third nerve affected and otherwise, I was perfectly fine. The results of my scans and LP came back which showed inflammation on my third nerve (which was expected) as well as a high white blood cell and protein count. This lead the doctors to believe it was due to either inflammation or infection. The doctors pretty quickly leant away from infection as I wasn’t presenting with any other signs so they treated me with an incredibly high dosage of a steroid called methylprednisolone to treat the inflammation.

IV drip for the first lot on Wednesday night and 10x 100mg tablets on each Thursday and Friday.

Thursday June 13th - The doctors agreed to let me out Thursday afternoon providing I had no further reactions to the methylprednisolone. Turns out I didn’t, so they fortunately let me out at 3pm to do what I needed to over the following few days. They were happy not to see me again unless of course things progressed and got worse and organised a follow up scan in two months time. At this stage, the diagnosis was Third Nerve Palsy due to inflammation of the nerve that was treated via steroids and may get better over the following weeks or months - or may not get better at all.

Friday June 14th - Sunday June 16th - Whilst Friday was a heavily emotional day saying my final farewell to Poppy, physically I got through it okay and had no further issues. This was my life now - whether I liked it or not. Deep down I had confidence it would get better in time and I’d have to see St. Vincent’s every few weeks to check up and I was okay with that.

Monday June 17th - I wake up Monday morning at home incredibly sick. What was wrong with me? I didn’t sleep during the night and was having hot and cold flushes, dizzy spells, hallucinations, no appetite and had absolutely no idea where I was. It was the flu, without having the flu or feeling sick. It was such a strange feeling. I started to develop an immense pain in my right jaw - incredibly similar to my eye. I started to worry - instantly. I called the doctor who was looking after me at St. Vincent’s and he wasn’t worried about it. He advised me to go to my GP and just get an X-ray to make sure everything is okay.

Deep down, I knew something was wrong but didn’t know what. I suspected the sickness was the come down from such a high dosage of steroids (which was later confirmed) but this jaw pain felt all too similar and I was scared.

Needless to say, I didn’t go to the GP or get an X-ray purely because I didn’t want another round of doctors looking at me, wasting the prior time at St. Vincent’s.

This continued through Tuesday and Wednesday. Exactly the same symptoms... I got further worried.

Thursday June 20th - Mum was on my back about going to my GP. I was resentful, but booked an appointment for 4pm to get checked out. I was still a mess, but better than I had been. Dad took me to my GP appointment and came in with me. By this stage, I couldn’t chew. I’d lost all strength completely in my jaw - both right and left side. My regular doctor took one look at me, checked my files she got from St. Vincent’s that morning and advised that I needed to head back into hospital - be it St. Vincent’s or Monash Hospital Clayton. She recommended Monash Clayton for two reasons; 1. Closer to home & 2. Well renown Neuro doctors.

I was hesitant, but knew I had to. I was more open to going than I had been a fortnight prior and was happy to be in for the long haul. Mentally, I was in a good spot. I knew something more was wrong and it wasn’t just inflammation. Alas, in I went. Straight to Emergency Department at Monash Clayton.

Friday June 21st - To cut a long story short, to get a bed at Monash Clayton was horrible! I spent a few hours in emergency, followed by 5 hours in short stay and eventually 24 hours in a day ward before I was moved onto a general medical ward. Friday was spent in the day ward with Neuro doctors coming back and forth obsessing over my eye and jaw issues.

I’d bloody done it again. Gone into hospital late on a Thursday... this time I knew not much would happen over the weekend and I was prepared for that.

Monday June 24th - As expected, not a whole lot happened over the weekend. I got moved to a general medical ward and that was it.

Monday afternoon finally brought some news once the Neuro team had looked at me properly. I’d lost my third nerve (which we already knew) and my fifth nerve (jaw) was also shot and gone. Great. I couldn’t eat. I was put on what was called a ‘minced and moist diet’ which can only be described as an unknown meat, minced with gravy with a few unknown vegetables on the side (see below). It was horrible. I didn’t have much of an appetite however what I did have was quickly swept away with the sight of this food.

Over the next few days, more CT, MRI, Ultrasounds and LP’s were done. Blood tests twice daily. I was quite frankly getting sick and tired of getting poked, prodded and scanned only for the Neuro doctors to come in once (maybe twice) a day to tell me there’s no real update and they needed to wait for tests to come back.

Thursday 27th June - During the week, things had progressively gotten worse. I’d lost my sixth nerve in my left eye as well as feeling in my chin (just below my mouth) and started to develop quite a large, painful lump underneath my right earlobe.

Doctors were then forced to act fast. They’d suspected I was suffering from either a virus that hadn’t made itself too known and was attacking my nerves or an auto immune disease that was forcing my white blood cells to attack my own nerves, picking them off one by one.

They did some more tests and sent them to both Brisbane and Canberra to be looked at as Monash Clayton or anywhere in Melbourne couldn’t get the results they wanted.

Immediately, they started to treat me for both of these conditions simultaneously. I was having an anti-viral drip 3x/day every 8 hours for the virus as well as what was called IVIG (derived from blood) to fight the auto immune disease and kill off my bad white blood cells.

I was scared. Every day I was getting worse and I suppose I just wanted to know what was wrong with me. I probably felt most for my direct family and Courtney who all had no answers despite all the tests and scans I’d done previously. They were left in the dark - as was I. 22 days it had been since I felt some sort of normality and it was killing me. The fact they had no answers was slowly eating away at me, but I put on a smile and a positive attitude as I always do. They’ll find something soon. They have to. It’ll come back positive for auto-immune, I’ll get treated and away we go back to normality. I was wrong.

Friday July 5th - This treatment cycle went on for the next week or so. The doctors were happy I wasn’t getting worse, my sixth nerve had slightly returned so they were happy to let me go home. 15 days in hospital this spell. It didn’t feel like 15 days though, not to me anyway. I think that’s probably because of the positive mindset and willingness to stay in until they found what was wrong with me. I’d started to develop muscle aches and pains in my left leg but I thought nothing of it - assuming that was just because I’d been in hospital and confined to a 3x3 room for 15 days!

I’d had a full body MRI scan and ultrasound on my leg the day earlier and they saw something around my stomach they wanted to investigate a little bit further. Before they let me out, we agreed to have a follow up MRI in two or three weeks as well as a PET scan within the next week and a bit to investigate my stomach a bit more. I was happy, the doctors were happy and away I went. Back into the world they call life. I was happy.

Monday July 8th - After spending a relaxing weekend between home and Courtney’s, I had an unexpected call at 1pm. It was a woman from Moorabbin Hospital wanting to urgently book me in for a PET scan and was wondering when I was available. She advised she only really had the following day at 2:30pm available for the next three weeks and advised I need to be there. So I took it. I had no bloody idea what a PET scan was, so as any 24 year old would do, I gave it a Google.

“A positron emission tomography (PET) scan is an imaging test that allows your doctor to check for diseases in your body....”

My heart sunk as I read a bit more. PET scans are generally used to pick up cancers. Wait. What? Why do the doctors want to do this so urgently? They were talking over the next week and a half, so why are they doing it now? My gut feeling wasn’t good. I knew something deeper was wrong but I brushed it aside - my condition despite being unconfirmed was in my mind, still auto-immune.

Tuesday July 9th - I’d never had a PET scan before but I did a YouTube search so I knew what to expect. It was like a CT scan pretty much. They inject the radioactive glucose into you, wait an hour so your body can absorb it and have a scan. Simple.

For the first time in this whole ordeal, something went exactly as I expected it. It was an easy process made easier by the wonderful nurses in there. My PET scan went well and I was happy. I was convinced nothing would show but still had that deep feeling in my gut that something wasn’t right.

I had a call that night and booked myself in for a follow up MRI at Monash Clayton for the following day - once again a few weeks earlier than expected. The woman on the phone said the doctors wanted to rush it through and once again, my gut sank. Something just wasn’t right. Why are the doctors pushing through these scans when we’d only discussed 4 days earlier about having them in a few weeks. Whatever. I’ll go. I have to. I just want to know what’s wrong with me!

Thursday July 18th - 16:32. An unknown number calls. This is how I’ve been getting my scans booked. Is it another one? “Is that Justin?” the gentleman on the other end of the line goes.

“It’s Jason from the haematology department at Monash Clayton. I’m not sure if your Neuro doctors have called you yet, but I’ve just had a look at your PET scan from Tuesday with them. We can see significant areas in your stomach, liver, gall bladder and groin that has lit up which we weren’t expecting. It’s your lymphnodes that have reacted with the glucose and are showing us we need to investigate a bit more. We’ll need to get you in for another LP and we’re going to have to do a biopsy of those lymphnodes to get more of an idea. At this stage, we’re looking at lymphoma as a genuine cause of what’s wrong with you...”

I tune out. I’m still processing his first few sentences. What? You mean they’ve found something that isn’t related to the nerves in my eye? Lymphoma? Isn’t that cancer? I might have a type of cancer? But I’m 24? That can’t be right.

I finish the conversation with him and hang up the phone. I was home with mum and the time. She looks at me and asked what the phone call was about. I break down. I cry. I don’t know how to process the news. I’m a mess for a solid 15 minutes. I eventually get strong enough to tell mum. She breaks down as well. It must’ve been incredibly difficult to hear your 24 year old son may have lymphoma. I call dad and let him know....and Courtney. Other than that, I keep it on the downlow. I don’t want to get ahead of myself. What if it is nothing?

Jason calls back later that night. Pretty much says I have an appointment on Monday for another LP and they want to do the biopsy ASAP. He said not to go to ED at Monash Clayton and just to expect a call at any moment between then and Monday that they have a bed for me. When I get the call, I had to go in. I was okay with this. It wasn’t going to happen for a few days!

Sunday July 14th - Court and I went down to dads for the lunch and catch up with his wife and her kids. It was a great day to forget about the reality of life for a few hours. That was until we went to Coles to get stuff for lunch and I had a missed call from a private number. Without listening to the voicemail, I knew what it was. My gut dropped. I told Courtney and we listened to the voicemail together.

“Hi Justin, we’re just letting you know a bed is available and if you could come into the ward ASAP.”

I’m okay with it. I knew it was coming... then a few minutes later I broke down in the middle of Coles. What hit me? I don’t know. Reality I suppose. I didn’t want to go back in. I knew I had to. I knew this trip was going to be about whether or not I have lymphoma - a type of a cancer. I was scared. I grabbed Courtney’s shoulder and just cried. Cried for a solid 5 minutes. I couldn’t control myself. It just hit me.

I thought I’d wait until they called back instead of making that call to enquire further to bide myself an extra hour or two. Half an hour later, they call and I answer. I was able to arrange an extra four hours until I had to be in there. This gave me enough time to get home, pack a bag and mentally prepare myself to head in.

By 5pm that night, I was in a bed with the lumbar puncture booked for the following day at 2:30pm.

Monday July 16th (Today) - I’m not afraid to say I hate LP’s. Being larger than your average 24 year old, they can’t do the blind and require them under CT guidance. It makes the process easier, but it certainly doesn’t feel as pleasant!

I saw the haematology doctor at 11:30 this morning. He was open and honest with me. Which I appreciated. He basically said up front “We’re 90% sure you have lymphoma. All we are waiting on is the biopsy to come back positive and we can start treatment...which will be chemo...”

That’s about all I took out of the conversation. It hit me. Not hard that I’d cry, but the reality hit me hard. Here I am, apart from overweight, I’m a normal otherwise healthy 24 year old. In the space of six weeks, I’ve developed symptoms I don’t wish upon anybody and getting told the doctors are 90% certain I have lymphoma.

I’m not going to lie, it’s not easy to be where I am at the moment. It’s a funny time in my life. I’m being as positive as I can however I know I’m about to face the biggest battle of my life. In a way, I really hope the biopsy does come back positive - just so we finally have something. Confirmation on something and can start treatment pretty much instantly.

With my biopsy scheduled for between 8:30 - 11:30 tomorrow, I’m not going to lie, i’m shitting myself. Sedate me. Put a camera down my mouth to my stomach. Take tissue samples of my lymphnodes. Sounds like a great Tuesday morning to me. For once in my life I think I’d prefer to be at work!

Realistically, I’m expecting the results back from the biopsy in 24-36 hours from tomorrow morning and expect if confirmed to be lymphoma, to begin my chemo treatment late this week.

As I said earlier, it’s going to be the biggest fight of my life...But I’m ready. I’m not prepared to fail, I never have been. I will beat whatever is wrong with me.

If you’ve made it this far, kudos. It’s now 1:32am and I’m starting to get the tired eyes. As I started, I feel as if I had to start this blog to move forward mentally. Whilst this will be my longest entry I’ll have, it certainly won’t be my last. I assure you of that.

Wish my luck for tomorrow!

Juzz xx

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businessweekme · 5 years

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George H.W. Bush, U.S. Leader as Iron Curtain Fell, Dies at 94

George H.W. Bush, the U.S. president who fashioned a restrained response to the Soviet Union’s collapse and assembled the multinational coalition that liberated Kuwait from an Iraqi invasion, hoping that would be a model for “a new world order,” has died. He was 94.

Bush died shortly after 10 p.m. Friday at his home in Houston, according to a statement from a family spokesman. The longest-living president in American history, he used a wheelchair in recent years after being diagnosed with a form of Parkinson’s disease. His wife of 73 years, Barbara, died on April 17 at age 92.

“George H.W. Bush was a man of the highest character and the best dad a son or daughter could ask for,” his son and former President George W. Bush said in a separate statement.

President Donald Trump said in a statement: “President Bush always found a way to set the bar higher.”

Read More: George H.W. Bush’s Death Spurs Tributes From Clintons to Trump

“I love you, too,” were his last words, spoken to his son George W. Bush, according to the New York Times.

George H.W. Bush drew on a lifetime of experience in international affairs during a presidency that faced tests around the globe. The achievements he could claim on the world stage weren’t enough to win him a second term, as American voters held him accountable for rising unemployment. His 1992 defeat at the hands of Democrat Bill Clinton made Bush the eighth U.S. president to lose a bid for re-election after serving a full term. The Bush name was far from done, however, as two of his sons became governors who ran for the presidency, with one succeeding.

Groomed for Success

Born to New England privilege, successful in the oil business in Texas, Bush straddled the Republican Party’s ideological divide between northeastern moderates and southern conservatives. He built his specialty in foreign policy as he ascended in Republican politics, serving in Congress and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, special envoy to China and director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

His rise to the pinnacle of American power was based more on experience, friendships and party service than on any signature cause or exhortation, and as the 41st U.S. president, from 1989 to 1993, he struggled to articulate what he called “the vision thing.”

‘Sacrificial Devotion’

“Despite an almost sacrificial devotion to the Republican Party,” former New York Times writer Tom Wicker wrote in a 2004 biography, Bush “sometimes exhibited chameleon-like changes of coloration within its spectrum of opinion and never overcame the suspicions of its most conservative elements.”

Bush served as vice president under Ronald Reagan even after mocking Reagan’s campaign agenda as “voodoo economics.” He courted his party’s tax-cutting wing as a candidate for president in 1988 — “Read my lips: No new taxes” — then infuriated it by agreeing to a tax increase. He appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court both David Souter, who became a gift to liberals, as well as Clarence Thomas, a hero to conservatives.

Following his 1992 defeat, Bush’s eldest son, George W., carried out a rapid rise through politics in time to succeed Clinton as president in 2000.

Burned Up

Bush 43, as the son is sometimes known, signed on with the tax-cutting conservatives who had distrusted his father, resumed armed combat against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and, on the strength of the leadership he showed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, won the second term his father had been denied.

Had Bush 43 sought to distinguish himself from his father? Such speculation “burns me up a little bit,” Bush 41 said in a 2009 interview with Fox News. “I don’t think there’s ever been any competition of that nature that I’m aware of.”Still, their legacies were intertwined. Public approval of the first Bush presidency slid during his son’s terms, then rebounded, according to the Gallup Poll. Bush received a 63 percent approval rating in June 2014, compared with 53 percent for his son.

In “41: A Portrait of My Father,” published in 2014, the younger Bush praised his father’s accomplishments and said that while other biographies may be objective, “This one is not. This book is a love story.”

Family Business

Another Bush son who went into the family business, Jeb Bush, the former two-term governor of Florida, lost his bid to become the Republican presidential nominee in 2016.

The popular image of George H.W. Bush as president was that he was cautious above all, a caricature sealed by “Saturday Night Live” comedian Dana Carvey’s impression of him repeating the phrase, “Wouldn’t be prudent.” Bush’s refusal to gloat when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated spurred accusations that he cared more about his friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev than the quest for democracy around the globe.

Later scholarship would take a kinder view.

With his restrained public comments, Bush “coaxed the Soviet Union toward worldwide surrender” by “never giving Moscow a pretext to reverse course,” Michael Beschloss and Strobe Talbott wrote in “At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War” (1993).

Deliberate Restraint

Publicly celebrating the fall of the Iron Curtain “would have been the stupidest thing I could have done,” Bush said in “41,” an HBO documentary about his life that aired in 2012. “Everybody’s got certain levels of respect and pride, and for me to stick my finger in the eyes of Gorbachev or the Soviet military would have made no sense at all.”

In an address marking Gorbachev’s resignation on Dec. 25, 1991, Bush said, “We stand tonight before a new world of hope and possibilities and hope for our children, a world we could not have contemplated a few years ago.”

The “new world” Bush envisioned had, earlier that year, survived a major test.

After Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait in August 1990, Bush arranged the coalition of dozens of countries that came to Kuwait’s defense. Following weeks of bombardment that began in January 1991, coalition ground troops routed Iraq’s army in 100 hours in Operation Desert Storm.

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 29, 1991, Bush said that what was at stake in Kuwait “is more than one small country. It is a big idea: a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind — peace and security, freedom and the rule of law.”

Bush chose not to chase the enemy into Iraq to topple the Hussein regime. That could have made the U.S. “an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land,” he later wrote, a comment oft-quoted years later when his son did order an invasion of Iraq.

Protecting Kuwait

Saving Kuwait was the high point of Bush’s term in office, lifting his approval rating to 90 percent in polls before a faltering economy at home chipped away at his popularity. The U.S. went into recession from July 1990 until March 1991, and the unemployment rate climbed to 7.8 percent in June 1992 from 5.4 percent when he took office.

A growing federal deficit also forced Bush to renege on the “no new taxes” campaign pledge he had made, to acclaim from his party.

The deficit rose each year of his presidency, from $152.6 billion in 1989 to $290.3 billion in 1992. During closed-door budget negotiations in 1990, the Democrats who controlled Congress insisted that Bush, not they, put tax increases on the table.

Bush, relenting, released a statement that included “tax revenue increases” in a list of necessary measures. In some quarters of his party, that was never forgiven.

Did he regret his acquiescence? “Nope, because it was right,” he said in the HBO documentary.

Poppy’s Youth

George Herbert Walker Bush was born on June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts, named for his maternal grandfather, George Herbert Walker, founder of the Wall Street investment firm G.H. Walker & Co. Since his grandfather was known as “Pop,” Bush became “Poppy.”

His father, Prescott Bush, was a partner at Wall Street’s Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. before serving as a Republican senator from Connecticut from 1952 to 1963. While experiencing politics and public service through his father, Bush said he learned important lessons about modesty from his mother, the former Dorothy Walker.

“She had these kind of truisms that served me in good stead even when I got to be president of the United States,” he recalled in the HBO film. “She said, ‘Nobody likes a braggadocio, don’t be bragging about yourself all the time.’ She said, ‘Listen, don’t talk all the time.’ She said, ‘Give the other guy credit.’”

Meeting Barbara

At Phillips Academy boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts, Bush lettered in baseball, soccer and basketball. At 17, attending a dance in Greenwich, Connecticut, he met 16-year-old Barbara Pierce, daughter of the president of McCall Corp., publisher of magazines including McCall’s and Redbook. They married in January 1945, while Bush was on leave from the U.S. Navy.

Bush enlisted on his 18th birthday, seven months after the U.S. entered World War II. He was the youngest U.S. naval aviator when he completed preflight training in June 1943, according to the Navy.

He flew 58 combat missions in the Pacific war against Japan, one of which almost ended his life.

On Sept. 2, 1944, the TBM Avenger he was piloting in a bombing raid on the island of Chichi Jima was struck by anti-aircraft fire. Bush parachuted from the airplane before it crashed in the ocean. A U.S. submarine located his yellow lifeboat and rescued him. His two crewmates didn’t survive.

Bush received the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery in action.

Family Connections

After the war, he earned an economics degree and made Phi Beta Kappa at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where he was captain of the baseball team. He then parlayed family connections into lucrative business success in Texas, a path that his firstborn son, George W., would later follow on his own way to the presidency.

With his wife and that son, Bush moved to Odessa, Texas, to join an oil field-supply firm that was a subsidiary of Dresser Industries, on whose board his father sat. Dresser was acquired in 1998 by its competitor, Halliburton Co. After his apprenticeship he settled in Midland and helped start a new business buying and developing oil leases.

With two partners, brothers Hugh and William Liedtke, Bush founded Zapata Petroleum Co. in 1953, the name inspired by the 1952 Marlon Brando film “Viva Zapata!” By the end of the 1950s, Bush had moved his family to Houston and was running an offshoot of Zapata that churned out profits from high-risk offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Enters Politics

In Houston, he became chairman of the Harris County Republican Party. Following a spirited, unsuccessful challenge to Democratic U.S. Senator Ralph Yarborough — “He does not represent Texas; he represents the New Frontier and the labor bosses in Detroit,” Bush said in one television commercial — Bush won two terms in the House of Representatives, from 1967 to 1971. After another failed Senate bid, he was named ambassador to the UN by President Richard Nixon.

Nixon turned again to Bush two years later, to succeed Robert Dole as chairman of the Republican National Committee. Bush was handed the unenviable mission of revitalizing the party as the Watergate scandal was bringing it down.

“It was a bleak future at that moment” for Republicans, Bush said in the HBO documentary. “But that’s why these things come and go. It gives me perspective over the years. I mean, when it seems gloomy and down, you bounce back.”

China Assignment

Gerald Ford, who became president when Nixon resigned, appointed Bush chief of the U.S. liaison office in China in 1974. Based in Beijing, then called Peking, Bush sometimes traveled to meetings by bicycle and entertained guests with old movies, popcorn and soft drinks, according to a 1975 New York Times profile that said he “succeeded, at least to a limited degree, in erasing the image that many persons in Peking had of America as an elitist country.”

Ford recalled him in 1976 to take over the CIA, an agency, Bush later said, that was “battered by a decade of hostile congressional investigations, exposés, and charges that ran from law-breaking to simple incompetence.”

When Democrat Jimmy Carter became president in January 1977, Bush was out of politics for the first time in a decade. He began a campaign for president in May 1979 that, for a time, looked like it might spoil what became the Reagan Revolution.

‘Voodoo Economics’

He defeated Reagan in the kickoff Iowa caucuses and went on to win six other primary contests before bowing to Reagan’s overwhelming delegate lead. Along the way, he derided as “voodoo economics” Reagan’s contention that lower taxes could be combined with higher military spending with no effect on the deficit. That didn’t stop Reagan from naming Bush to his ticket.

Bush’s “finest moments” as vice president, Time wrote in 1984, may have come when he acted “calmly and with sensitivity” amid the turmoil set off by the assassination attempt on Reagan in March 1981. Bush deferentially declined entreaties to take a helicopter directly to the White House, where aides were monitoring reports of Reagan’s medical condition. Bush later explained, “Only the president lands on the South Lawn.”

During Reagan’s second term, Bush tried to distance himself from the Iran-Contra scandal, the secret effort to aid anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua with money raised from arms sales to Iran. He claimed he had been “out of the loop.”

That view would be challenged by Reagan’s secretary of State, George Shultz. He wrote in his 1993 memoir that he had warned Bush, face to face, that an arms-for-hostages exchange had at least been attempted and “would never stand up in public.”

‘Gentler Nation’

Along with his “Read my lips” tax pledge, Bush vowed to shape “a kinder, gentler nation” as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in 1988. His victory over Democrat Michael Dukakis, whom he portrayed as soft on crime, made Bush the first sitting vice president in more than 100 years to get elected to the top job.

Seeking re-election in 1992, Bush found himself challenged not just by Clinton but also by Ross Perot, the billionaire founder of Electronic Data Systems Corp., running as an independent. Television cameras caught Bush checking his watch during a three-way debate in which Perot displayed a folksy wit and Clinton demonstrated his ability to connect with voters’ pocketbook concerns.

Perot’s Share

On Election Day, Clinton took 43 percent of the vote to Bush’s 37 percent, with Perot winning almost 19 percent. Of Perot, Bush would later say: “I think he cost me the election, and I don’t like him.” Others doubt that Perot had a decisive impact on the result.

In a final chapter to the arms-for-hostages case, Bush, in his waning weeks in the Oval Office, pardoned Reagan’s defense secretary, Casper Weinberger, and five others.

Bush moved from the White House back to Houston, where he monitored development of his presidential library. He formed an unlikely and lasting friendship with Clinton, teaming up to raise relief funds for victims of the December 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia and of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. He parachuted from airplanes to mark several birthdays in his later years. His last jump came when he turned 90.

In November 2017, about midway through his 94th year, he became the longest-living U.S. president, a distinction that had been held by Ford, who died in 2006.

Bush is survived by sons George, Jeb, Neil and Marvin and daughter Dorothy Bush Koch, plus 17 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. His first daughter, Robin, died of leukemia at age 3.

The post George H.W. Bush, U.S. Leader as Iron Curtain Fell, Dies at 94 appeared first on Bloomberg Businessweek Middle East.

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xtruss · 3 years

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What I Learned When I Rented My Parents’ Former Home as an Airbnb

They’d tried to escape the future by building a home off the grid. But the future found them anyway.

— By Thad Russell

— The Atlantic | August 29, 2021

September 2005 (All photos by Thad Russell)

About the author: Thad Russell is a photographer who lives with his wife and two children in Providence, Rhode Island, and teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Two summers ago, my siblings and I found my late parents’ former house in northern Vermont listed on Airbnb. Once we got over our shock—“Wait! That’s our house!”—we immediately made reservations to rent it for a family vacation. The new owners had known my parents and generously waived our rental fee upon realizing who we were. The online description—“rustic retreat”—brought back memories of countless family gatherings of summers past: taking long walks, swimming in the lake, eating local corn and blueberry pie. I remembered hanging out together on the deck that extended into my parents’ gentle, south-sloping meadow like a pier, appreciating the peaceful view of hay fields, spruce trees, mountains, and an ever-changing sky.

I looked forward to the reunion for months. And yet, as I drove with my wife and young children along winding mountain roads that I knew by heart, I was surprised by the emotions stirring inside me. I began to realize something that should have been obvious. This special, idealized place that I was so excited to return to wasn’t a repository of just happy memories, but of difficult ones too. My parents had been concerned about the political and environmental trends in America. Their place in Vermont was meant to be a political statement in the form of a modern-day frontier house—hand-built, off the grid, and completely DIY. In other words, it was very difficult to live in and maintain. Now that many of their worries about climate change and political unrest have become reality, I understand the prescience of their vision and the virtues of the life they were designing. I also realized something even more important, however, when I rented their home as an Airbnb: No matter how hard you try to escape the future, the future will find you anyway.

May 2015

In the 1990s, my parents sold our family home in suburban Boston and moved to a virgin piece of pasture in Vermont’s rural and remote Northeast Kingdom in order to build a house—and a life—from scratch. They wanted to slow down, to live simply and more in concert with nature and its seasonal rhythms. My siblings, their spouses, and I not only supported this new chapter but were actively involved every step of the way. Though we all had careers, homes, and lives in other places, we would parachute in every August to help pour a foundation, build a timber frame, side a barn, or mow a field. This collective labor gave us a sense of investment in the property—“sweat equity”—and senses of accomplishment, pride, and joy in its growing compound of rough-hewn structures. We finished the “little house” (which is actually tiny) in time for my sister’s wedding one August, and we finished the “big house” (which is actually quite little) in time for my brother’s wedding six years (to the day) later.

This property was the realization of a long-held dream. My father was an MIT-trained architect and builder with his own brand of rugged modernism. His houses were shrines to their specific surroundings, made out of locally sourced wood, stone, and glass. After spending a lifetime building homes for others, he wanted to finally build one for himself and his family.

But he wasn’t trying to construct a well-appointed vacation home, and my parents weren’t hoping to retire comfortably to the country. They were hoping that their modest compound could be a refuge, a place separate and protected from the evil and disease of the modern world, a place to which we could all retreat when the long-prophesied and always-imminent economic and ecological disaster of Man’s own making finally came home to roost. With its solar panels, windmill, vegetable garden, root cellar, and well, it was designed to be a self-sufficient place apart, a lifeboat of sorts.

Though my parents’ organic, less-is-more lifestyle was supposed to be simple, it was never easy. Their life was intentional and incredibly labor-intensive, marked by hard work and discomfort. Their property became an unrelenting taskmaster. Many projects never got completed. Some just didn’t work. The sun didn’t always shine. The wind didn’t always blow. Batteries failed. The bespoke, high-efficiency refrigerator didn’t actually keep food cold. The well was contaminated with surface water from a nearby cow pasture and never produced reliably potable water. My parents’ self-imposed restrictions on energy usage—my father designed an aggressively frugal system that used only one-20th the amount of electricity of an average American family—seemed arbitrary, impossibly difficult, and puritanical; a dishwasher or clothes dryer was out of the question.

They—and we—argued a lot about how they lived, and the choices they had made. I thought theirs should be a model home, an equally attractive, non-fossil-fuel alternative that others could easily emulate so that we could collectively save the planet. My father thought it should be more of a laboratory that embraced cutting-edge experimentation, took risks, and courted failure. He thought it should be difficult by design so as to attract only zealots, purists, and true believers.

August 2019; May 2015

My mother sometimes complained about the ways the house didn’t work and she felt burdened by the endless list of domestic chores that seemed to fall disproportionately on her, but she nonetheless embraced this new life with passion and conviction. Why? For starters, she loved my dad and believed in his genius and vision. She was also a longtime political and environmental activist. Lastly, thanks to her strong Protestant work ethic and her progressive Christian faith, she always believed that wisdom and virtue came from labor, sacrifice, and struggle. I think she loved this new, difficult chapter of her life, not despite the challenges but because of them. It made her feel more alive, more connected to her husband and to herself, her planet, and her God.

One particularly hot and restless night in the summer of 2003, while sleeping in my parents’ barn, I awoke with a scary premonition: Things here were not going to end well. My parents were not going to live forever, and I had a feeling that their path ahead might be far more difficult and treacherous than any of us were prepared for. A few months later, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. The next three years were consumed by her illness, including her weekly drives across the state for radiation and chemotherapy. The August after she died, we had a memorial service for her under a tent in the exact same spot in the meadow where my sister and brother had each been married years earlier.

My father lived for eight more years, but his heart was never the same. First it was broken, and then, eventually, it began to fail. What he could do—and wanted to do—shrank considerably. For the first time ever, he stopped planting a garden. “What’s the point?” he said. Mail piled up. Bills went unpaid. Phone calls went unanswered. Dirt and dust collected everywhere. Necessary and long-overdue house maintenance was put off indefinitely. He would spend hours and days sitting and staring, at the clouds in the summer and at the wood fire in the winter. The house he built with his own hands became a waiting room, a purgatory clad in native spruce. One day in November 2013, he couldn’t get out of bed. I was visiting at the time, having driven north from Rhode Island after receiving a call from a concerned neighbor. I remember the ambulance in the front yard, parked on top of my mother’s perennial garden and EMTs dressed in Carhartt overalls taking my dad away on a gurney.

My father died the following August; two months later, we mixed my parents’ ashes and spread them in the meadow as friends and family looked on.

After my father’s death, my siblings and I debated whether to keep the Vermont property. I always thought we would. But the more we talked, the more I realized it was going to be financially and logistically impossible. The buildings were not in great shape. Managing their restoration and preservation was going to be complicated and expensive, and was going to take time, energy, and money that none of us had. Moreover, the property was hard to reach. We also realized that we weren’t simply inheriting a house or a piece of land, but a way of life, a philosophy, a set of values that we all respected but didn’t fully subscribe to. No, we all decided, it wasn’t right—or perhaps the right time—for any of us. With heavy hearts, we decided to let it go.

October 2005

Fast-forward to the summer before last, five years after my father’s death: We were returning to our family homestead, but this time as Airbnb guests. As we approached the house from the long dirt driveway, everything was at once familiar and surprisingly different. I instantly noticed all of the improvements: a new metal roof, new wood siding, and a completely rebuilt breezeway connecting the two houses; lush new landscaping featuring exotic flora and brilliant orange poppies that reminded me of California; a new well, professionally dug, with (I learned later) sweet, cold—and E. coli–free—artesian water.

The interior was stunning and immaculate. Everything seemed carefully and painstakingly finished, no more exposed electrical wires or pipes. A new floor was made out of spotted maple, and a fresh coat of satin varnish covered all the wood surfaces. The decor was modern and sparse—chairs made out of soft Italian leather and German stainless-steel appliances, including a dishwasher and a dryer. To my eyes, the house had never looked better and had never been more beautiful, more finished, more realized. The future looked good on this house. My appreciation was complicated, however, tinged with envy and regret. Why couldn’t this beautifully designed and now brilliantly realized house still be ours?

I also couldn’t help but notice what was no longer there: the vegetable garden; the windmill; the woodshed, wood stoves, and Finnish oven; the solar electric system. The house is now on the grid and comfortably heated with gas, its massive propane storage tank elegantly concealed underground. Sure, the house still looks groovy, but it’s now hippie house lite, like tie-dyes and distressed bell-bottoms one buys at the Gap. It has the counterculture aesthetic but all the dirt, difficulty, and rebelliousness have been removed. As my father might say, “What’s the point?”

But I have come to realize that the new owners have actually been the perfect stewards of our old property. Their careful and systematic restoration has removed the dust, decay, and dysfunction while preserving the essential design and rustic charm. I also realize that it is their house now, not ours, and maybe that’s a good thing. The burden of the property, its deferred maintenance and challenging memories, was too much, and is too much for me still.

The author’s brother, mother, and father. August 2001

Now, two years—and a world of difference—later, I find myself thinking about that piece of pasture in northern Vermont and my family’s 25-year adventure there. We are living through such scary and turbulent times. We are simultaneously in the throes of a resurgent global pandemic and a rapidly emerging climate crisis. Viral death tolls, huge heat domes, megadroughts, and 1,000-year floods mark our daily news. As I write this, dozens of massive western fires burn uncontained, their smoke turning even eastern skies an eerie and unhealthy shade of ocher. The world is changing in ways that many people find hard to believe and hard to endure, but that my parents essentially anticipated. They were preparing for this future; they saw it coming and tried so hard to protect their family—and themselves—from the pain and suffering that they feared it might bring. Now that that future is here, I realize we can’t really escape it. The future always catches up with us, and no matter where we are or where we go, we are all survivalists now.

— Thad Russell is a photographer who lives with his wife and two children in Providence, Rhode Island, and teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design.

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vallyg-blog · 6 years

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Cancerversary

I was watching TV with my mom one day and one of those fundraising commercials for children with cancer came on. I had to have been at least 6 years old and I asked my mom, “I will never get cancer right?” She responded, “Of course not baby.”

January 1998 (8 years old) I was visiting my grandparents in Florida and I broke out into a wild rash, which is not abnormal, however that is where my cancer journey began. One day I was on the playground and like a typical child tumbled over which resulted in a broken left arm? I got a hot pink cast of course. The WORSE was when I sprained my middle finger. You could imagine the amount of teasing I got from that while being a third grader with a huge splint on my middle finger. I remember going to the emergency room once for god knows what, and before I was released, a nurse spoke to me and my mother and said, “I am afraid she MIGHT have cancer.” I felt absolutely hopeless in that moment. I rememberer being in the school nurses office EVERYDAY and she was wonderful, however one day I think she got fed up and told me I could not keep going to her everyday. I am not one to fake an illness. Even now a days i don’t take a pill for every ache and pain. I was very offended and felt so sad. How can she tell me that I cant go to her when I could not function in class? You think a third grader would rather be sleeping in the nurses office instead of being with her friends? It was then Easter 1998, I remember being in a wheelchair and my uncle gave me a massage as he was a licensed massage therapist and when he was finished and left the room and whispered to my mom, “I think it is cancer.” I remember laying facedown behind the glass front door watching my cousins leave and waving goodbye. My mom told me recently that she was reported to CPS by my school. I HAD NO IDEA! I am one that is proud of the town I grew up in and only have good things for them to say about it. Then this was sprung upon me. I was pissed. During this ENTIRE time my mom was a single parent and my dad was struggling with his own battle of addiction at the time.

June 24 1998 I entered the hospital and I was immediately sent to get a bone marrow biopsy while awake. I had a needle up my spine for at least 20 minutes. After my mom was asked to talk to the social worker. I was then called in. My mom’s hands were in her face and she looked at me once and started to cry hysterically. I knew at that point my life was going to change forever. The social worker then told me, “Valerie you have Leukemia.” I was eight years old and knew what that was.

The next two and a half years of my life was spent in and out of the hospital. I had to get a mediport two days after I was diagnosed. The mediport was a small internal contraption that was placed right above my chest so my veins would not collapse in my arms since I had to get multiple iv treatments. I was not allowed to go in public places for a while and I could not play like normal kids. I had to always be in my home or at the hospital. If I was out in public, it was for a very short time. My grandparents had a summer house on the water and I had to always wear a t-shirt and be soaked in sunblock. Sometimes my Poppy would make me wear his bucket hat. So embarrassing. It was upsetting watching all the other kids playing and `I had to be controlled all the time. The worse experience I had was being told six months after remission that there were leukemic cells growing again and I was told that I may have to get a bone marrow transplant. I thought my life was over. I remember seeing those kids and they were worse off than me. I looked ill, they looked deathly. It ended up that it was normal for leukemic cells to resurface and I was in the clear. I never had to loose all my hair, although my hair did thin out. I missed all of 4th grade and I had a tutor. I was so sick that sometimes my tutor would just come and let me nap. School was really hard for me because I pretty much missed all of 4th grade and it was hard to bounce back. My mother was the soul caretaker of me at the time and due to the amount of attention needed to address my illness, my younger brother had to be bounced around from family member to family member. I used to have a book that I took pictures of hospital staff and hospital patients and many of the children have passed in that book.

In addition, the medication I was on affected my brain chemistry so it is very hard for me to focus and stay on track. I have a hard time paying attention during conversations. A lot of times my mind just goes blank and I just look dumb founded. I also have hard time expressing my thoughts verbally where ill stop mid-thought and have to think about what I was talking about in the first place. It is very hard to socialize and be professional with my “chemo brain.” College was where I first stared to notice I was different. Not only was I attending a private school while in a sorority with a lower-middle class background that made it hard for me to relate, I also struggled fit in due to my lack of communication skills. I had my own pledge sister say to me verbatim, “Val’s brain is like wind,” and she proceeded to make a gestural gust of wind. I have had my own friends that I grew up with make comments alluding to me being “slow.”

June 24th this year will be my 20 year anniversary. I have had many wonderful experiences since. But not everything has been rainbows and butterflies either. I also continued to experience adversity. I will continue to write about the good, the bad and the ugly in my following blogs so you can see how a child who lived traumatic experiences (more to come) fought through hardship. Life is beautiful, but life is also hard and it is not always perfect, but it is important to never give up.

#childhoodcancersurvivor #leukemia #cancerfree #ellen

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pkstargazer · 7 years

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You can believe what you want, but I'm going to put this out there now. My dead name is Katherine Grace, I'm 18 and a senior in highschool, and I've been trying to get help for years. I go by Michael Evan now and my parents still won't listen to me. I've been self harming since 7th grade, around when I was 13-14 ish. @merckele can attest to this. I've never been diagnosed with depression or anxiety, but I had a therapist named Sydney who said I had both, and that I needed to get diagnosed. I attempted suicide last Wednesday by taking 4 Menstridol pills, about 800 mg of Naproxin. My mom was with me the whole time, pissed off at what I had done. She and my dad yelled at me when I got home, and I was not allowed to tell a soul. But I did tell. I told @blondconnor @localbnhamutual @jenostheascended @katie-kat-yo and @strawberrypoptart . I also have evidence of talking to a lifeline over text, her name was Ava. I'm not getting help, and I'm still scared. If you don't believe me, okay, don't believe me. But don't yell at me for saying I'm lying when I'm telling the truth. I'm not lying, I'd never lie about something so severe. If you don't believe me, ask all these people. If you don't trust them, at least ask Astrid, Poppy, and/or Deku, they have no reason to lie on my behalf. Astrid and I haven't talked since my mom made me block them on all social media because we wanted to date my freshman year but first of all, I couldn't be a lesbian, and second of all, according to my mom, "She could be a 21 year old cougar from Ohio trying to creep on you and sell you off." Poppy has no reason to lie, we've only been talking for two months, and even though we're good friends, I trust that they wouldn't lie just to protect me. And I trust deku wouldn't lie on my behalf bcause he's just not the kind to lie, he's sweet and he wouldn't really lie to protect me. So don't call me a liar when I'm saying the truth. You can talk all you want about me, but don't say horrible things that aren't true.

You can also ask @yamagucci-tadamnshi we recently broke up and I doubt they'd lie at all to protect me after I screwed up everything between us. I don't think they know about my attempts or anything, but I do know our talks got dark sometimes. I also hope they're doing okay so if they say don't ask about me, or send me death threats or something, leave them alone, I deserve that.

#evan.txt #just dont yell at me for something you domt know the complete story to #i wasnt lying #self harm ment #sui ment

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autistickogaynewrites · 7 years

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Awkward Instagram Encounters

Adrinath August Day 3 - Social Media!

Adrien Agreste has a major crush on instagram artist Nathaniel Kurzberg, but he's content to sit on the sidelines and simply buy every print Nathaniel makes. Of course, Marinette is not nearly as content to watch her friend flail and fangirl over a guy he could so easily message. So she does it for him.

“Adrien Perfection Agreste, if I hear you sigh one more time, I’m throwing your phone out the window.”

Adrien jumped, eyes darting away from his phone and to Marinette, who was glaring at him over the edge of her laptop.

“Sorry,” He whispered, setting his phone face down on the table and looking back at the project that was displayed on his laptop screen. “What exactly did you need help with again?”

Marinette sighed dramatically, leaning back into her chair, closing her eyes, and resting the back of her hand on her forehead.

“Here I am, trying to get the advice of the great Adrien Agreste, and he’s too busy acting like a lovestruck schoolboy to even pay attention to me,” Marinette spoke, one eye opening as she turned to him with a smirk.

His face flushed as he ducked lower so he could hide behind his laptop, fingers twitching towards his phone. “Sorry, I’m so sorry. It’s just...he said he was going to be putting some new prints and stuff in his shop and I don’t want to miss the announcement.”

Marinette sat forward, letting her head rest on her fist as she raised an eyebrow at the model sitting across from her.

“New prints huh? Are you sure that’s the only reason you keep refreshing his instagram page?”

Adrien buried his face into his hands with a groan as Marinette simply laughed.

“He made a post yesterday about doing a live Q&A video today, and I really don’t want to miss it.”

Marinette was about to make a joke about his instagram crush when their waitress showed up, a blonde girl about their age who was seemingly obsessed with goats and knew the both of them personally at this point.

“Same as usual for the both of you?” She asked, pulling a small notepad out of her apron pocket and waiting for their response.

“Yeah, same as usual for me,” Marinette nodded, turning to look at Adrien.

“Uh, I just want a lemon poppy seed muffin today please Ja-meme-sterella,” Adrien laughed, ducking as the waitress swung her tray at his head.

“You make a meme joke one time, and nobody lets it go.” She muttered to herself as she left, leaving Adrien snickering as Marinette glared at him.

“Why do you have to harass her every time she shows up?” Marinette asked, rolling her eyes as the boy continued laughing. “You know you harassing Jamie won’t make me just forget the fact that you’re crushing on this boy. Hard.”

Adrien paused, face flushing as he tried to avoid eye contact with her, nodding with gratitude when Jamie came back with their orders.

“Seriously Adrien, you’ve been obsessed with him for almost a year. Why don’t you just message him?”

“Are you insane?” Adrien hissed, leaning forward so he could whisper to her. “He has over a hundred thousand followers, he probably gets messages constantly. There’s no way he’d even notice mine.”

“Just take a chance. I did, and look! I now work for Gabriel Agreste, one of the greatest fashion designers ever, because I sent his son a message on twitter.”

Adrien chuckled for a moment, remembering the awkward, rambling message that had led to his friendship with the girl across from him.

“This is different Marinette!” Adrien whined, pushing his laptop aside so he could slump over the table. “He’s Nathaniel freaking Kurtzberg! Me messaging him is like trying to message Beyonce! What would I even say to him? Hi, I’m Adrien Agreste and I’ve been obsessing over you and your art for the past year and I have bought literally everything you’ve sold but I’m such a big wuss that I can’t even message you!!”

Marinette smiled and turned to look at him over the edge of her laptop, right hand reaching to grab her way too sweet drink.

“That’s a perfect thing to say to him! So perfect, that I got into your instagram account and sent it for you!”

Adrien bolted up, horror painted across his face as he stared at Marinette, sure that she was bluffing.

“There is no way that you managed to get into my account. You’re lying,” He said, eyes narrowing as she simply smiled, turning her laptop so he could see the screen.

“Am I?”

His face paled, reading the message, noting that she tacked a ‘so my friend sent this for me.’to the end of it.

Adrien just barely managed to stop himself from screaming, hands flying to grab at his hair as his eyes darted between the message and the girl who had sent it.

“Why! Oh god, why would you send that! He’s going to think I ‘m a total creep, and he’ll block me, or file a restraining order, and then it’ll get in the news, and dad will be so mad and he’ll disown me and I’ll live alone and--”

Marinette quickly cut him off, one hand covering his mouth as the other pulled one hand out of his hair.

“I highly doubt he’s going to file a restraining order against you because you told him you liked his art. Worst case scenario, he doesn’t respond, but who knows! He might actually message you back, so stop freaking out, okay?”

Adrien seemed to relax a little at her short speech, both hands falling out of his hair as he slumped forward.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right Mare-Bear. Thanks,” He said, holding his muffin up for a toast and opening his laptop again to help her with her project, leaving his phone facedown on the table the whole time.

~~~

When Adrien finally got home later that evening, he was more than ready to hop into bed and forget about how awkward the day was when he remembered the Q&A Nathaniel had promised for that night. Grinning, he scrambled around the house, connecting his laptop to his tv, grabbing his phone and a snack, he set himself up on the couch, practically bouncing as he waited for the video to come up.

Seven minutes later, it finally popped up, and with his cat, Plagg, in his lap, he hurriedly clicked the link and leaned back, smiling when the video loaded to show Nathaniel’s room. The chair facing the screen was empty, but the sounds of someone shuffling around in the let the viewer’s know that Nathaniel was there, but probably grabbing some last minute items, as he usually did.

When he popped into view, Adrien nearly fainted, heart pounding at the sight of the boy smiling at the camera, bright red hair pulled up into a ponytail as he adjusted his paint-smeared shirt.

“Hey everyone! Didn’t think so many people would jump on so fast, but welcome to depression time with Nathaniel Kurtzberg!” The boy laughed, turning his head when someone yelled.

Nathaniel quickly sat himself down, typing something on his computer before turning his head to the side, waving someone over.

“So I know I promised a Q&A awhile ago, so I decided to finally get on it, especially with how many questions you guys had! I invited a few friends to sit with me for it, so I hope you guys didn’t ask any really weird questions, cause those would be super awkward to answer with them sitting here,” He spoke, seeming as if he was talking to himself more than his viewers as his two guests sat in the chairs on either side of him.

“So these are my friends, partially wanted them in this so you guys would stop commenting that I don’t have any, Rose Lavillant and Juleka Couffaine! If anyone wants to submit some last minute questions including them, I’d be happy to answer, but I’ll start answering questions now since it’s been awhile!” He chuckled, smiling as the two girls beside him waved at the camera.

They were both very pretty, Rose in a flowery pink kind of way whereas Juleka seemed more reserved and darker, but Adrien’s eyes were fixated on Nathaniel as the man stared at his screen for a moment before leaning back and smiling.

“Alright, so a few of you asked what my next plans are, since I just got the latest t-shirts and prints sent out and really, I have no idea,” He shrugged, smiling at the blonde next to him. “I am actually super bad at planning things out, but I have been working to try to get a gallery showing sometime this month, so if I can get that all sorted out, I’ll make a bunch of posts about it and hopefully a few of you will be able to come! I’d really like to meet you all and hear what you have to say.”

Clicking at his laptop some more, Nathaniel’s face seemed to harden slightly at whatever he saw before softening and Adrien leaned forward unconsciously, worried about what someone could’ve said that brought that look to his face.

“I’m sure this one was sent in as a hate mail kind of piece, and honestly I’m amazed that I’m apparently now popular enough for that, but I’m going to answer it anyway! I am actually mentally ill, I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and insomnia, which let me tell you, is a cocktail of fun! I am medicated, no I’m not ashamed of it, and my friends have been a wonderful support system for me, especially back when I was still in school and everyone thought I was just being an angsty teenager. I also know people like to believe that people who are depressed are more creative and artistic, but I don’t paint because I’m depressed. I paint because I’ve always loved drawing and sculpting and painting, and now that the meds I’m on help stabilize me, I can paint when the inspiration strikes without feeling like I’m simply wasting my time.”

Adrien wiped a tear out of his eye as Nathaniel did the same on screen, accepting a tissue from Juleka before smiling back at the camera. The way Nathaniel had stood up for himself and revealed that info about himself made Adrien’s heart beat just a little faster.

Nathaniel continued with the questions for the next fifteen or so minutes, ranging from when he decided to truly pursue painting all the way to how he had met Juleka and Rose. Usually his Q&A sessions lasted around an hour, but at the fifteen minute mark, Nathaniel was humming to himself as he scrolled through messages when all of a sudden his face went bright red and he froze. Rose and Juleka both looked at him with raised eyebrows before turning to his computer and smirking. Rose leaned in to whisper something in his ear. Once she leaned away, Nathaniel jumped forward, smiling awkwardly at the camera as he waved.

“Well guys, I’d really like to answer more but something’s come up and I’m so sorry but maybe I’ll do another Q&A later this week and bye!” He practically yelled before shutting down the livestream.

Adrien frowned, upset that he had only gotten to see fifteen minutes of his crush as opposed to the usual hour, but he figured it would be best for him to take the opportunity to go to bed, so feet dragging, he got ready for bed, plugged his phone in on the bedside table, and threw himself in bed, quickly drifting off.

~~~

“Oh my god!” Nathaniel shrieked, hands flying to his head as the pulled and messed up his ponytail. “Adrien freaking Agreste messaged me! What do I do? Do I open it? Oh god, What did he say? What if he hates my work?”

Rose smiled, turning to look at her girlfriend over Nathaniel’s shoulder, the both of them shaking their heads in amusement.

“The only way you’ll find out is if you open it, but I doubt he’d say anything bad. You said he’s been following you for about a year, and I doubt he’d wait this long to message you if he hated your work.

Nathaniel turned his head slightly to look at her, hands still running through his hair anxiously.

“But Rose~!” He whined, slumping his head over onto her shoulder. “What if he sent a really cool message and I just reply like a loser and he wants nothing to do with me ever again?” “You can’t reply to it until you read it Nath. Just open it! Who knows, maybe he’s confessing his undying love for you.”

Nathaniel turned a deadpan stare to Rose before turning back to the computer, trying to psych himself up into opening the message.

“You’re right,” He whispered, reaching for his mouse. “He wouldn’t wait this long to message me if he hated my work. Maybe he just wanted to tell me he liked it.”

With a quick breath, he hurriedly clicked the message and snapped his eyes shut, taking several deep breaths before slowly opening them and reading the message.

adrien_agreste: Hi, I’m Adrien Agreste and I’ve been obsessing over you and your art for the past year and I have bought literally everything you’ve sold but I’m such a big wuss that I can’t even message you so my friend sent this for me.

Without thinking, Nathaniel screamed, hands flapping as he jumped out of his chair to pace the small space of his bedroom, Juleka and Rose both turning to him with a smile once they’d finished reading the message.

“So, maybe not his undying love, but it certainly sounds like he might have a bit of a crush on you,” Rose smiled, turning her chair fully so she could watch the redhead pace. “Why don’t you send a message back telling him you like his work too! You’ve had a crush on him forever Nath, take a chance and message him back!”

Nathaniel turned to the blonde and stared at her as if she had suddenly sprouted two new heads, shaking his own roughly before sitting on the edge of the mattress.

“Oh yeah, and say what? Wow, thanks Adrien, that means a lot! I’m also super into your work and have had a crush on you since I saw your instagram page but I didn’t want to come across as a stalker, so I’ve never messaged you and now I’m freaking out because I don’t know how I’m supposed to talk to people who are really cute and cool and hot and I’m dying!” Nathaniel shrieked, falling back on his bed with a groan.

“That sounds perfect, and sent!” Rose sang, causing Nathaniel to jump off the bed and over to his laptop, where his anxious ramblings had been typed up and sent to Adrien.

“Rose! Why would you send that? Oh god, he’s going to think I’m a total creep and he’ll file a restraining order and no one will want to buy art from a stalker and--” Nathaniel panicked, cut off as Juleka placed a hand on his shoulder and gave him a small smile.

“Oh Nath, if his message was any indication, I bet he’ll be ecstatic that you replied!”

Nathaniel only raised an eyebrow before sighing and letting his shoulders slump, the emotional outburst having drained him of the last bits of energy he had.

“Guess there’s not really anything I can do besides wait, right?” He asked, looking up as Rose nodded. “I’ve got to clean up and then I’m going to head to bed if you guys want to head out.”

Rose and Juleka stayed a few minutes more to help clean and make sure he took his meds before heading home. Nathaniel grabbed his phone off his desk as he shut the laptop and slid into bed, sighing as he hoped Adrien wasn’t creeped out by him.

~~~

“He replied to me! Marinette, he messaged me back!” Adrien yelled into the phone excitedly, bouncing around his apartment as he got ready for work. He had seen the notification when he woke up that morning and although he hadn’t seen what Nathaniel had said, he was none the less excited that he had gotten a response.

“Adrien, as happy as I am for you, it’s four in the morning and I don’t have to be up till eight, so let me go to bed and we can talk about it over lunch today, okay?” Marinette slurred, glancing over at her bedside clock with annoyance.

“Oh, sorry Marinette,” he whispered, pulling the phone away from his ear to check the time. “I’ll talk to you during lunch. I’ll pay today as an apology for waking you up. I’ll see you at work.” He finished as he hung up and returned to his morning routine, excited and nervous to see what Nathaniel’s response to his message was.

~~~

As soon as Adrien had seen Nathaniel’s reply message, his face had flooded with heat as he had to hold himself back from screaming. It was a bit awkward when he replied back, but once the two of them got into the flow of things, the messaging became calmer and easier. They learned they had a lot in common, and the longer the messaging went on, the closer they got.

Adrien revealed that he had a weakness for anything sweet and loved all shades of blue, while Nathaniel told Adrien all about how he had a horrible habit of baking at odd hours of the morning and cried every time he watched a Studio Ghibli movie, no matter what.

It was a month later when Nathaniel opened the app upon seeing a notification that Adrien had messaged him back that things changed again.

adrien_agreste: So I know we’ve been messaging back and forth, but I wanted to know if maybe you wanted to go out sometime? It doesn’t have to be a date if you don’t want it to be! I’d just like to get to see you in person. We could go to the movies or the museum or something if you wanted?

Nathaniel let a wide grin spread across his lips as he typed out a reply, secretly thankful for Rose and Juleka replying to Adrien’s message a month ago.

nath_the_illustrator: I’d love to go on a date with you. This Saturday at 6 work for you?

~~~

Of course, this was the most popular story told four years later at their wedding. Marinette, Juleka, and Rose all laughing at how oblivious and awkward the two were back then, although even after all those years, the two men still blushed and grinned like lovesick fools when looking at each other, so I guess some things never really change.

#miraculous ladybug #adrinath #adrinathaugust #adrinathaugust2017

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cokeisrael4-blog · 5 years

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Can South Philly Hold On to What’s Always Made It Unique?

City

It’s our most famous neighborhood, defined by its immigrants and its characters, by intermingling (sometimes clashing) cultures — and by near-constant change. Where does it go from here?

The rapidly changing South Philly. Photograph by Adam Englehart

In the late summer of 1981, very much against my Catholic mother’s wishes, I had just moved into a rowhouse at 17th and Naudain — then the very bottom edge of Center City — where my new boyfriend lived. Mom, who’d recently been diagnosed with cancer, was coming for her first visit, reluctantly. The neighborhood was admittedly sketchy — most of Center City was, back then — but I was proud of our chic little home, with its new sofa and drapes and the garden planted out back. Mom knocked, I opened the door, and she peered past me into the narrow hallway.

“Oh my God,” she said, and not in a good way. “It’s just like Morris Street.”

That was where my mom grew up: 128 Morris Street, in the heart of South Philly. A hundred or so years ago, for reasons that are lost in the sands of time, Casimir Norvilas, a Lithuanian immigrant, moved there. He was still in his 20s, but he’d already lived an exciting life, having served in the merchant marine and fought Pancho Villa on the U.S.-Mexican border.

In Philly, perhaps calling on some leatherworking skills acquired on the horse farm near Vilnius where he grew up, he opened a shoemaker shop. He married a fellow Lithuanian immigrant, bought the house on Morris Street, and had three daughters, the eldest of whom was my mom.

The part of the city where he settled was traditionally a point of entry for immigrants. It was close to the docks where ships arrived from the Old World; those same docks provided jobs for laborers whose only skill was brute force. The first big flush of migrants to the city had been Irish, pried from their hearths in the 1840s by a potato blight that caused widespread starvation, killed a million people, and drove another two million to exit the Emerald Isle. The next was Italian, propelled by the “unification” of small city-states and the breakdown of the peninsula’s feudal system. Some seven million mostly Southern Italian peasants decamped for foreign parts.

The Morris Street house where the author’s mom grew up. Photograph by Michelle Gustafson

Since then, wave after wave of newcomers has inhabited the rowhouses of South Philly, on both the east and west sides of Broad Street — Southern blacks with the collapse of Reconstruction, Eastern European Jews starting in the 1880s, more Italians after World War II ended. Mexicans moved north under the 1942 bracero (“one who works using his arms”) program, and smaller tides of Cubans and Puerto Ricans and Vietnamese and Cambodians and Liberians landed here, too. South Philly was a place to gain a foothold, to begin anew, to build something from nothing for impoverished families from all over the world. Then your kids got the hell out.

That was what Mom did. She made her way to Girls’ High, which was then at 17th and Spring Garden, and after graduating went even further up Broad Street to Temple, where she met my dad. Together, they began a family and a series of successive moves away from South Philly, to Willow Grove and Glenside and finally bucolic Doylestown. They raised a solid middle-class clan of four kids and a dog on a third of an acre there.

Which is why, I think, the house on Naudain Street so unnerved Mom. When you’ve spent a lifetime trying to escape the past, it can’t be easy to realize that your child just cheerfully leaped back in.

That was the only time Mom ever visited me and Doug, who eventually became my husband. She died three months later. I’d like to think it wasn’t seeing the house.

•

The workingman’s homes that make up Philly’s rows were built in the mid-to-late 19th century, as the city underwent rapid industrialization. But there were rowhouses even before that; witness the city’s oldest block, Elfreth’s Alley. William Penn envisioned his city filled with gracious single homes set amid green lawns, but it didn’t take long for speculators to slice up the blocks he laid out and eke the most from them by erecting rowhomes. The city was built atop clay, which is what you make bricks from, which is why the rowhomes were brick.

I have the vaguest memories of the house on Morris Street; Poppy’s shoemaker shop and the penny-candy place next door made more of an impression on me. I know this, though: Mom’s parents, like so many new arrivals here, found the fact that they were allowed to own land amazing. Slaves from the South and serfs from the Baltic States and paesani from Italy had all fled societies in which “real estate” belonged to the master or czar or king. To buy for yourself even the postage-stamp property beneath a rowhouse was a marvelous thing.

Which is one reason newcomers stayed put. “People would move to South Philly because it was close to jobs on the waterfront or in the garment factories,” says Bryant Simon, a history professor at Temple. “Then they created a culture that reminded them of where they were from.” They opened butcher shops and bakeries, planted grapevines in tiny backyards, built churches and fraternal organizations. They dug in, deep.

A window near 8th and Tasker. Photograph by Michelle Gustafson

Southern Italian immigrants, notes Penn city planning and urban studies professor Domenic Vitiello, had a particular pattern of migration: “They settled in groups of people from the same town. You could identify them — this block from this village in Abruzzo, this block from this village in Calabria.” Mexican immigration, Vitiello adds, would later follow this same pattern.

My mom’s mom’s sister, Adeline, married an Italian my grandfather fondly called “Goombah Jimmy.” We only visited Adeline’s house, on Wolf Street near Broad, for the Mummers Parade and the occasional funeral, but it stood out because it was so unlike anything else in my bland suburban life. People drank, hard; everyone was loud; the women and the food — Italian sausages, kielbasa and pierogies — smelled wonderful; and in an upstairs bedroom there hung the biggest painting I had ever seen, a full-size reproduction of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, with all that bare-breasted flesh. Who could look away?

I went back to South Philly recently and checked out the house on Wolf Street. There were potted plants taking the sun beside the front stoop. Mom’s people were farmers at heart. She would have liked that.

I went to Morris Street, too, to see what was left of number 128. It looked good — the trim all freshly painted, a fancy ornamental door. There was a planter beside it, too. The houses on Mom’s row are tiny — under a thousand square feet, with two bedrooms and a single bath. Yet when she was a kid, her family took in a boarder to help with the bills, which wasn’t rare. A 1904 survey of the area from 8th Street to 9th Street between Carpenter and Christian showed that 41 of the 167 houses were occupied by three or more families. That’s a tight squeeze.

Bryant Simon says you can tell when a neighborhood gentrifies by the house numbers; newcomers prefer sans serif fonts. There’s a lot of sans serif on Mom’s block. Another clue: the four new three-story townhomes with garages and roof decks. They have three bedrooms and two and a half baths and, you can bet, one family apiece.

•

Mom’s old house sold for $43,000 in 1995; today, its estimated worth is $218,985. The big difference between people buying in South Philly these days and those from the old days is that the latest arrivals don’t land here with nothing. They bring along advanced degrees and SUVs and Mitchell Gold sofas and IRAs.

Back in 2011, Kate Mellina and her husband, Dave Christopher, moved from Asbury Park to Philadelphia, where Mellina had grown up: “In the Northeast — St. Timothy’s parish. But my dad was from South Philly. St. Monica’s. You forget how Philadelphia is defined by its parishes.” The couple, both artists, were looking for an area that was “up-and-coming,” Mellina says, and they bought a house in East Passyunk, overlooking the famed Singing Fountain. “It was not quite as developed then,” Mellina says, “but you could see it was on its way.”

Not long after they moved in, one of the couple’s friends happened on a vintage photo album at Lambertville’s Golden Nugget flea market and recognized some famous faces posing with the grinning strangers inside: Bob Hope, Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, Liberace. On the back of the album was the photographer’s studio address, on East Passyunk Avenue. “Our friend knew we’d moved in around there, so he gave it to us,” Mellina explains. “He said, “Here’s your housewarming present — find out who these people are!”

Naturally, Mellina says, she started by showing the album to her neighbor, “Frank from around the corner, who’s been here forever.”

“Oh, that’s Palumbo’s!” Frank said.

“We were like, ‘What’s Palumbo’s?’” Mellina had never heard of the now-defunct nightclub at 8th and Catharine that hosted everyone from Sinatra to Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. back in the day. It started life as a boardinghouse for immigrants sailing from Italy; legend has it they’d arrive speaking no English but with signs around their necks that read PALUMBO’S.

Plenty of Palumbo’s stars were homegrown. South Philly’s rowhouses all looked alike on the outside, but they sheltered singular individuals inside. The roll call just of those who passed through South Philly High at Broad and Snyder is startling: Marian Anderson, Mario Lanza, Chubby Checker, Jack Klugman, Frankie Avalon, bandleader Lester Lanin, composer Vincent Persichetti, NBA founder Eddie Gottlieb, world heavyweight boxing champ Tim Witherspoon, mayor Frank Rizzo, boxing trainer Angelo Dundee … It’s hard not to feel optimistic in a neighborhood where just a few streets over, a Jewish punk named Eddie Fisher grew up to divorce Debbie Reynolds so he could marry Elizabeth Taylor. America. What a country.

“South Philly is a real neighborhood,” says Kate Mellina. “It’s a mix of people whose families have been here for three or four generations — in the same houses — and new people moving in with dogs and babies.”

Since the album was foisted on her, Mellina has visited senior centers and the local library in her quest to identify the non-famous people in its pages. She discovered that it had belonged to Arthur Tavani, a writer for a little local newspaper. “His sister was still alive then,” she recalls, “living in the same house they grew up in. She greeted me like a long-lost daughter.” Mellina also talked to Carmen Dee, who’d been the bandleader at Palumbo’s, which burned down in 1994. And she’s chronicled her efforts at a website, Unexpected Philadelphia, that lets you scroll through the photos in case there’s anyone you know.

“South Philly is a real neighborhood,” says Mellina. “It’s a mix of people whose families have been here for three or four generations — in the same houses — and new people moving in with dogs and babies. Everyone seems to get along. You take your lawn chairs out front in the summer, and people parade by with the kids and the dogs.” Asbury Park, she notes, actually was a small town — “but it didn’t have that small-town feel.”

The small town has gone big-time over the past decade. Townsend Wentz, Nick Elmi, Chris Kearse, Lou Boquila, Lynn Rinaldi, and Lee Styer and Jessie Prawlucki have all opened restaurants along this stretch of East Passyunk. The neighborhood has coffee shops, twinkly string lights, a British pie shop, and Artisan Boulanger Patissier. You’ll find dim sum and doggie boutiques, a retro typewriter repair shop, breweries and bike stores, not to mention a yoga studio that recently hosted a visit from an alpaca. It’s a freaking hipster paradise.

A block or so north, the paradise ends.

•

Philly’s Italian Market, which stretches along 9th Street roughly from Dickinson to Fitzwater, started out as a Jewish market. It’s now mostly Asians and Latinos who run the iconic sidewalk stalls. To go from twinkly Passyunk Square to, say, Giordano’s produce stand just above Washington is sort of a shock. The market hasn’t gentrified. It still has flies in summer and burn barrels in winter, and wooden skids and flattened cardboard boxes are piled everywhere. (“That’s not real trash,” Bryant Simon teases when I raise the subject of the market. “They bring it out every morning so it looks like a scene from Rocky.”) It also has guys who pick out your tomatoes for you, thank you very much, and put them in a bag. The area is a good example of the challenges of gentrification. “How do you maintain the market while the neighborhood changes?” asks Simon. “That’s a delicate balance. Tourists can only buy so many vegetables.” Anthony’s Italian Coffee & Chocolate House has stood here for four generations. Now it has online ordering, and seasonal lattes like the Spring Fling and the Crème Brûlée.

There have been fitful efforts to start up a Business Improvement District for the market, so merchants can kick in to gussy things up. A few years back, Michelle Gambino, business manager for the South 9th Street Business Association, described her vision for the future, with organic foods and craft booths alongside the homely produce carts: “We’re hoping that the look will continue to be Old World, but just upscale.”

To add to the balancing act, New York developers have so far unveiled three iterations of an apartment building planned for the heart of the market, right at 9th and Washington, ranging from six to eight stories in height. The latest version has 157 units. Merchants and shoppers panicked when plans showed the driveway to the building’s underground parking right on 9th Street, where it will surely disrupt the market’s traffic and pedestrians. So much for Old World.

“There are two processes going on in South Philly right now,” says Bryant Simon. “Longtime residents are being displaced by new immigrants and by high-end creative-class people.” In other words, old South Philly’s getting squeezed from both sides.

The Italian isn’t the only market in South Philly. The busy commercial stretch of Washington between 6th and 16th earned the soubriquet “Little Saigon” thanks to immigrants who settled there after the Vietnam War. (Condé Nast Traveler once dubbed the area “Pho Row.”) The city’s Asian population has continued to grow, jumping by 42 percent from 2000 to 2010; Philly is now home to the East Coast’s largest population of Vietnamese immigrants. At Horace Furness High, near Mom’s old house, 48.5 percent of the kids are Asian.

In Little Saigon, too, change is coming. Developers have proposed new rowhomes and duplexes, plus parking spots, on the site of the Hoa Binh shopping center, which occupies almost an entire block at Washington and 16th. The current shopping center isn’t pretty. But neither are most newly built rowhomes, when you think about it.

There may be no better example of South Philly’s metamorphosis than what used to be the Edward W. Bok Technical High School at 8th and Mifflin, where neighborhood kids not bound for college once studied tailoring and plumbing, hairdressing and bricklaying. After closing down in 2013, the Art Deco building, constructed in the 1930s by Franklin Roosevelt’s Public Works Administration, was reborn as BOK, an urban playground with a roof-deck bar, boutiques, “maker spaces,” tattoo artists and, of course, yoga. “I think BOK is a fascinating symbol,” says Bryant Simon. “There are two processes going on in South Philly right now. Longtime residents are being displaced by new immigrants and by high-end creative-class people who value urban spaces and are knowledge workers.” In other words, old South Philly’s getting squeezed from both sides.

•

We tend to think of “South Philly” as the Rocky world that’s east of Broad Street, but Point Breeze and Grays Ferry are South Philly, too. They were settled along familiar lines, first by European Jews, then by Italians and Irish, and finally by blacks driven west from their original stronghold in what had been farm country near 7th and South. There were race riots here in 1918, touched off when a black woman moved in; thousands battled in the streets. By the 1920s, according to a resident quoted in Murray Dubin’s South Philadelphia: Mummers, Memories, and the Melrose Diner, from Lombard Street to Washington Avenue between Broad and 20th was “solid black.” Still, racial strife bubbled up regularly. In 1997, then-mayor Ed Rendell had to negotiate a compromise with Louis Farrakhan to ward off a planned protest.

Today, Point Breeze is ground zero for Philly gentrification. The median housing price in the most gentrified section rose from $29,000 in 2000 to $234,000 in 2016, while the population of black residents changed from 80 percent to 46 percent. Bryant Simon, who wrote a book about Starbucks, says you can trace the spread of gentrification in coffee shops. He mentions developer Ori Feibush, who fueled Point Breeze’s gilding by opening OCF Coffee House at 20th and Federal “as a way of planting a flag. He was smart about that.”

Neighbors playing at 2nd and Porter. Photograph by Michelle Gustafson

For many residents of western South Philly, Feibush, who’s been building new townhouses everywhere, has become the face of black displacement. In 2015, he ran against incumbent 2nd District Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson in a bitter primary fight that stirred race into the already boiling pot of tax assessments and abatements and property values. Johnson won. In May, he introduced a bill that would ban from Grays Ferry and Point Breeze the balconies and bay windows featured on many newly constructed rowhomes — a pointed up-yours to Feibush and gentrification. The resentment is understandable.

Racism has a long history throughout South Philadelphia. “It would have helped if Frank Rizzo didn’t tolerate white resistance, or if there had been no redlining,” Simon says. Old photos of South Philly High show integrated sports teams as far back as 1918, and black and white cross-country runners in the ’50s with their arms draped around each other. But as recently as 2009, black students were beating up Asian immigrants. Following a boycott, a new principal, and a Justice Department investigation, matters have improved.

In fact, says Penn’s Vitiello, you could make the case that since the 1970s, South Philadelphia has been the city’s most successful neighborhood in terms of immigration: “A wide variety of refugees has found it comfortable and livable. There’s a wide variety of ethnic groceries, goods and services. The housing stock is still affordable. There are still plenty of absentee landlords who see new immigrants as an important source of income.” And many older residents, he says, “welcome newcomers in a very humane way. They appreciate that their neighbors are here just trying to raise their kids and provide for themselves.” It was former mayor John Street, he points out, who first established sanctuary protections in Philadelphia back in 2001, along with Irish-born police commissioner John Timoney.

“Change related to new immigrants is nothing new in South Philly,” Bryant Simon says. “It’s never been without tensions. Change is kind of perpetual there.”

To some extent, Vitiello says, politicians here have embraced immigrants because they know that without them, the city would be shrinking, not growing. He puts Michael Nutter in this economically motivated camp. But Jim Kenney, whose parents came to the U.S. from Ireland — and who grew up five blocks from my mom’s house, at 3rd and Snyder — “has consistently been more about treating people as humans, as neighbors,” he says.

At the same time, South Philadelphians, Bryant Simon points out, have always shown “a commitment to maintaining their turf.” Historically, this is the land of mobsters and payola, not touchy-feely empathy. “We make fun of yoga studios and deck bars serving IPAs,” Simon says, “and the identity that goes along with certain cultural practices.” But alpaca yoga isn’t South Philly’s big problem now: “The real tensions are over real estate values.”

On the positive side, he notes, “Change related to new immigrants is nothing new in South Philly. It was always a place of immigrants. It’s never been without tensions. Change is kind of perpetual there.”

•

I used to live in South Philly. In 1988, Doug and I bought a little rowhouse near 20th and Snyder for $35,000. We were ready to have kids and wanted some stability. We were an odd fit for the neighborhood back then. There was nobody our age on our block; old people lived there, and their kids drove in from Jersey for Sunday dinner. One entire wall of our bathroom was mirrored; it became our daughter’s favorite part of the house. Once, when I was taking the bus into Center City with Marcy when she was two, a nun asked what parish we belonged to. “We don’t go to church,” I told her. “Surely you’ve had her baptized,” she said. I shook my head. She looked me dead in the eye and said, “Do you want your daughter to go to Hell?”

Most people, though, were nice to us. Johnny from the auto shop across the street would invite us in for barbecued deer during fall hunting season. In winter, we pushed the kids in strollers beneath rainbows of Christmas lights. In summer, there were walks to the water-ice stand and cooling showers from fire-hydrant sprinklers. The mobster’s mom down the block wouldn’t let her grandson come to Marcy’s birthday party, but she did show up afterward with excuses and a gift.

After six years, we got tired of chasing guys with guns off our stoop, of worrying that the kids would get hit by cars, of the endless litter and the fight to find parking. I longed for a real garden, not a couple of barrel planters. We escaped to the suburbs, just in time for Marcy to start school. We sold the house for less than we’d paid for it, to two Cambodian brothers. We always have been terrible at real estate.

Today, the house we dumped for $32,500 is worth an estimated $195,954. I go back to see it, for old time’s sake. The neighborhood is still dotted with bodegas and pharmacies and Chinese takeout joints, but there’s a new coffee shop that delivers through Grubhub. Our place looks tidy and kempt; there are a host of potted plants beside the front door, which is painted deep blue. The house numbers are a bougie font. The young woman who lives there now walks dogs for a living. We exchange emails, and I ask if the bathroom still has that mirrored wall. She LOLs. It does.

In nearby Girard Park, I pick my way through downed tree branches from a recent storm to view a plaque honoring Kenyatta Johnson for nabbing $600,000 in improvements to its drainage, benches and walkways. Within eyeshot of the house where a pipe bomb blew up Phil “Chicken Man” Testa in 1981, I join a woman sitting on a park bench with a little girl in a stroller. I smile and tell her my daughter learned to walk right in this park. She smiles back. “I’m the nanny,” she says.

A nanny. In Girard Park. It’s the beginning of the end.

Not so fast, says Vitiello. “South Philly is pretty big,” he points out, “and gentrification moves in waves. There are some indicators that suggest South Philly will keep growing, and others that suggest its growth will be slow and halting.” That means South Philly’s seemingly impossible balance of old and new, rich and poor, black and white and everything else, could endure. Large tracts here, Vitiello insists, should remain affordable for a long time to come.

Maybe so. All I know is, there’s new three-story housing going up across 20th Street from our old place, no doubt with garages and roof decks.

Oh my God. It’s just like Morris Street.

Published as “True South” in the July 2019 issue of Philadelphia magazine.

Source: https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/07/06/changing-south-philly/

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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portfolionicolio · 7 years

Text

Mother!

On Friday, I turn twenty-three years old.

My mother, grandmother, and sister came to my house today. My sister and I had plans to go out to dinner. Her birthday is a day before mine - she is five years and three hundred and sixty four days younger than me, so we planned to celebrate together. My mother and grandmother came to drop her off at my house beforehand.

“Happy Birthday,” my Grandmother hands me a card and kisses my cheek.

My mother and I don’t make eye contact. I can’t remember the last time we did.

I give my sister her birthday card.

My mom starts: “So for your birthday this year. . .”

A few years ago, when I was still under my mother’s policy, a birthday meant a free month of car insurance.

“I am going to drop you off the phone plan this month,” she continues.

A year ago, she’d gotten in the habit of trying to guilt me about the fact that I’m still on her phone plan, and that she foots the bill. I immediately told her to take me off of the plan. She then told me it was actually saving her money to have me on it.

I remind her of this, but I’d had enough.

“Just take me off.”

At our birthday dinner, my sister and I talk about our family. We admit we sometimes cry because our grandmother is too cute for words. We also admit we cry about our father often. It’s difficult to explain why.

My sister is my absolute best friend. She is deeply intelligent. She screeches when she notices something funny. She is resilient and hopeful. She sees things for how they are.

My mother, she says, has stopped buying groceries. They eat out most nights, or subsist on snacks. They almost never eat a meal at the table in our dining room.

When I still lived at home, we ate dinner at the table every night.

My mother, she says, has been taking the entirety of my sister’s paycheck every month. My parents put out money for my sister’s first car, and my mother has been forcing her to make 500 dollar installments for every paycheck she earns until its payed back. My sister used to buy groceries for herself, chicken breasts that she’d cook and eat alone, but now she doesn’t have the money for it.

It is difficult to describe our situation to people who aren’t us. We have seen the secret few are privy to, and even fewer will reveal. Our mother is somehow very threatening, although she’s barely over five feet tall.

To others, she is considerate, friendly, outgoing, caring; a genuine, good person. She is well liked. But this has never been the mother we’ve known.

We had a mother and a father. We lived in a house. We weren’t hungry, or cold. We spent most of our time with our mother, while our father worked. By more than a few standards, we were alike many of the other families in our town.

But I always felt somehow separate from most of the other people I knew. I was extremely prone to sadness as a child. I was painstakingly self-conscious. In elementary school, I had to keep myself from crying during the pledge of allegiance every morning. I didn’t understand why it happened, because, being so young, I didn’t think I was sad about anything.

I actually cried every morning before school. Daily, while getting me ready, my Mom pulled my hair into the tightest half-up ponytail she could. She ripped through my knots with the brush. She didn’t hold the roots of my hair like my father did when he brushed it. She tied the hairband so tight that my scalp felt icy under it. I told her it hurt, but every morning she pulled it up into the same high half-pony, and every morning I cried, hoping no one would notice when I got on the bus.

In middle school, I developed a sweating problem. My feet would sweat terribly, and my armpits were damp no matter how much deodorant I used. It wasn’t on hot days. It was in the breezy fall, the dead of winter, early spring. It was every day at school.

But I did well in school. I excelled in sports and I was a high honor roll student, so no one noticed anything was wrong.

I started watching my little sister while my parents were out when she was three. I was nine. She challenged me. She was wild, and wanted my attention. She wanted any attention.

She was innately different than I’d been as a baby. A few weeks after I was born, my mom took me to the doctor because I never cried. But my sister came out of the womb screaming, and didn’t stop. She had a vivaciousness that I was born without. I had a natural easy-going-ness that was opportune for my mother to control. I strove to be perfect for her. I changed myself in exactitude to what she wanted me to be. But Andreanna’s nature could not be so easily molded. She was stubborn and outspoken and alive.

While my parents were at work, I watched her for summers at a time, asking her questions, reading to her, trying my best (in a way that was almost unnatural for someone my age) to raise her to be the best person she could be.

When my sister was in middle school, she posted a story on her newly created Facebook. It was very well-written for a twelve year old. It was about a young girl’s inner thoughts as she contemplated killing herself.

My Aunt, also on Facebook at the time, and concerned about what she saw, called my sister’s guidance counselor.

“Please don’t tell my Mom,” my sister pleaded with the counselor.

But they did.

When my sister got off the bus that afternoon, my mother was waiting for her at the end of the driveway.

“I don’t need the school calling me telling me that my daughter wants to commit suicide,” she said, “You don’t have anything to be sad about.”

And that was the end of the discussion.

“Yeah, Poppy just died, and my sister was gone, but no, I didn’t have anything to be sad about,” my sister says at our birthday dinner.

That was the year that our great-grandfather passed away, and the year I moved out after high school. Leaving her alone in that house is something I still feel guilty about.

That was a few years after my Mom started calling my sister fat. She was not even slightly overweight. She had a different build than my mother and I, she took after my father’s more athletic, built side of the family.

One of the most heartbreaking conversations I’ve had with my mother was when I pulled her aside at my grandmother’s house after she’d called my sister fat, sending my sister into a violent fit of tears. I desperately tried to explain to her that she was at the age when girls are most sensitive about their bodies, when they are most susceptible to criticism, when they are most likely to develop eating disorders. I begged her to stop commenting on my sister’s body. I was terrified for my sister’s health, for her safety, for her mental health. If you love her, you won’t say that stuff anymore.

A few hours later, she made a comment about my sister’s backside being way too big.

My mother criticized both my sister and I. To both of us, she was cold and callous, and often cruel, but also sometimes silly, affectionate, docile. She swung between anger and contentment wildly; we never knew which to expect from her.

Within that nature, she treated us in bizarrely different ways. She had to control every aspect of my life, but she didn’t seem to care about the details of my sister’s. I, the putty of a child she’d been able to manipulate since birth, was manicured and obsessed over. My sister, at the expense of feeling cared about, was allowed to grow up more uninhibited.

She’d beat me (not an exaggeration) if I didn’t go on shopping trips with her; she didn’t think twice about leaving my sister at home.

It was an absolute sin if we didn’t all eat at the dinner table when I lived there, but now that I’m gone, the table is bare and the fridge is nearly empty.

My Mother’s father never told her that he loved her. Never said it once. He said he just couldn’t do it. He was an abusive alcoholic who mellowed with age, and sobered after being diagnosed with diabetes.

The grandfather that I knew was much different than the father she had. He was grumpy, but he always liked me. He took me places, bought me presents from yard sales. He got me vanilla wafers from the country store. I liked history, and playing in the woods, and Native Americans and WWII and all the things that he had a library full of books about. We were both fairly reserved. We both liked reading. He was apparently drunk for the first few years of my life, but I don’t remember them.

I think I am the person who saw the most kindness from him. It never struck me that this might feel unfair to my Mom. He passed away a few months ago, and my mother wrote a poem for him. The first few lines mentioned the fact that he’d never said I Love You.

One day, while I was still in high school and living at home, my Dad, my Mom and I were playing tennis on the high school courts.

I wasn’t very good, but it was fun. It was my Dad on one side of the net, and my Mom and I on the other. He’d bat them at her and she’d hit almost all of them. She was very good. On the ones she’d miss, he’d bemoan her.

“C’mon!”

I, on the other hand, missed most of his passes. On the ones that I’d actually hit, my Dad would cheer and encourage me.

“Nice one!”

He meant no harm; this is the nature of playing with two people with different skill levels. Expect more from the pro, encourage the novice.

After a few too many misses, however, my Mother was getting flustered.

I hit a decent one, and he once again congratulated me.

“Good job!”

“WHAT?!” my mother exclaimed. I jumped. I hadn’t noticed her getting mad.

“You would never say that to me if I hit that one like that!” she was almost in tears.

My stomach turned. Was my mother jealous of me? Jealous of my relationship with my Dad? I felt disgusted. I dropped my racket and ran from the court. I started towards home. The high school was only a few miles from my house.

We never spoke about it again.

I didn’t realize that there was something really wrong with me until I moved out of the house. I had no one telling me who to be anymore, and that made me realize that I wasn’t anyone. I felt unreal, I was severely depressed. I didn’t believe that anyone should love me, or even interact with me. These feelings existed for me before, but now they washed over me like a monsoon. I was not worthy of the friends that I’d already made, and I didn’t see how or why I could make any more. Everyone told me I was great, but it went right past me. I was not a person. Everything that people thought was good about me was a lie, something I’d fabricated to fool people into liking me. Nothing was real.

I eventually called the suicide hotline. I wasn’t planning my suicide, but I didn’t know who else to call. I needed help and I hoped they could point me in some sort of direction. The woman who answered was a mother, she said.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded.

I explained, or tried to. I didn’t know how to say it all. I didn’t know if I really had a reason.

“Have you planned how to kill yourself?”

“No.”

“Do you feel like you’re going to kill yourself if an ambulance isn’t called immediately?”

“No.”

“So you’re telling me nothing’s wrong? You don’t have any reason to be calling this number,” she told me. “You don’t have any reason to be sad.”

A mother, she said. I apologized through my tears and said goodbye, and wondered if she began working at the hotline because of her child’s suicide.

I have only my friends and my sister to thank for making it through that year. My friends kept me company, and my sister gave me a reason to stay alive.

My second year of college, I moved off campus. My first year, my Mom told me her and my Dad would match half of whatever I earned during the year, to help me pay for living expenses and food. That never happened, and it was never addressed. With no financial safety net, and the stress of school full time, I ended up in the hospital after a severe anxiety attack. My heart had been beating out of my chest for a month. It was actually sore. I lost fifteen pounds because I had no appetite. I’d gone to the doctor thinking I was developing asthma. It ended up just being another physical symptom of the anxiety. One day, I felt like my heart was going to explode with terror.

My friends took me to the hospital, my girlfriend at the time sat with me for thirteen hours in the psych ward until I could see the psychologist. I didn’t tell my parents I was there because they certainly wouldn’t be of any help or comfort to me.

That was three years ago, the day after Halloween.

Since then I’ve been to three different therapists, taken Lexapro for a few months, dropped out of school, gone through intense periods of depression. I’ve discovered a name for what my mother is: a Narcissist. I’ve read articles about daughters of narcissists that could have been written by me.

“Narcissistic mothers cannot love their children. Did they ask to become narcissists? No. Do they cause psychological harm to their children? Yes. The psychodynamics between the narcissistic mother and her child are very complex but clear. When we have a mother who is emotionally and psychologically unavailable, who blames us for everything we do or don’t do and who is constantly projecting her venom on to us, there is no way to be our real selves. The extreme fear and anxiety and feelings of inadequacy and rootlessness that these mothers cause to their children is monumental. These children never have had a true home where they could find solace, respite, acceptance, affection, freedom and psychological and emotional safety.

Home is a war zone–both hot and cold wars rage behind closed doors. Narcissistic mothers are highly secretive and make sure that in the outer world their beautifully constructed image is perfect. They purposely build relationships with friends and acquaintances and other family members designed to always see them in the best light–as good, kind, considerate individuals. Only a few in a family or social group are not fooled by them. Often these individuals keep quiet and don’t reveal the truth because they are very intimidated by the forcefulness of the narcissistic personality. They decide not to make waves or speak out.”

- Linda Martinez-Lewi, Ph.D.

When I send my sister a link about being a daughter of a narcissist, she replies that she doesn’t exactly feel what the article is describing.

In her statement there is a victory. I would not wish these feelings on anyone, especially not my sister, the one I love most. I can comfort myself in thinking: maybe I shielded her from it. But what is closer to the truth is simply that while my mother obsessed over me, she let Andreanna alone.

But she has her own issues.. The sadness that appeared in her middle school Facebook post has not wavered. She is bubbly and alive, but within her runs a dark, secret river of feeling un-cared-for. She is drawn into relationships that control her, because she was denied this type of love that she saw showered upon me. She has trouble articulating deep emotions, and is prone to angry or emotional outbursts.

Having a narcissistic mother is knowing your creator, and your disease.

I have been surviving. I have relied heavily on my best friends, my chosen family, my first real supportive one, to get me through it.

On Friday, I will turn twenty three years old. I feel stable. I live with a person I love and his father, and our dog, and I have two steady jobs.

But it still overwhelms me sometimes, more than sometimes. It overwhelmed me after hearing my sister at dinner tonight, reminding me that our mother is somehow getting worse. She’s barely coherent, she’s more childish and moody, she isn’t buying enough food.

“She’s just decided that she’s done being a mom,” my sister said.

My mother and I barely have a relationship, except when she talks to me about money--what I owe her, how she can get out of my student loans she never wanted to take as quickly as she can. She has disrespected me, she has embarrassed me, she has hurt me. She has done all this to my sister too. And to my father, though he’ll probably not admit it.

But as I sit here writing this, I’m no longer angry. Well, okay, I’m still a little angry. But mostly I wish I could heal this woman who is obviously in such deeply rooted pain, so deep that even she can’t see it. She’s denied to herself and everyone else that it’s there. The way she treats us is just a way to deal with herself.

She’s a narcissist, something that many people claim cannot be treated. I don’t want to see her get worse, and I don’t know how to help her. And we, her daughters, have to heal ourselves, too.

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pinelife3 · 7 years

Text

Online Family Museum: Dead End Edition

I emailed Poppy this morning and heard back from him almost straight away:

Hi Kath,

Well this has been a long standing subject but at long last, I have received a disc which contains the details of my Army career covering 21 years. Well, it sort of covers my army career but what it actually covers is 21 years of pretty dull administration over those years of movement on many postings. Nothing of the real world and what I actually did in that time, where I went or what actually happened in Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam or New Zealand.

Kath, most of what is on this disc ---- nearly 1,000 pages!! Is just administrative paperwork which covered the day to day activities of peacetime soldering. All pretty dull and it has very little of what really happened in the big wide world in which we live. It does not contain the detail of what I did in 3 1/2 years in Malaysia or two years in South Vietnam or, for that matter, two years in New Zealand or all the other years I spent in Australia. So you may do with it what you wish and all I can say is that I am sorry it is such a dull story.

When I requested details of my service I thought that I would get some detail on the jobs I held and the work I had been involved in but I was miles away from the truth and ended up with all of this tripe. I’m sure you will agree that it is of very little value or interest. The truth of the matter is that I am running out of time to be collecting stories that are just on fifty years old which may or may not stand the test of time. I’m sorry this has taken so long but I’m sure you will understand the problems of dealing with public servants who are secure in their jobs and happy to stay right where they are. I have sent the disc on to you and, as I have said, it’s yours to do with it as you see fit.... with my sincere apologies.

I trust that you are happy in your work and that you stay that way for many yeas to come. Sorry you lost your cat but think of all the clean bath towels you can enjoy!!

My love to you Kath .... enjoy your life.

Love, Poppy

Am I wrong in thinking this is a sad email? (I could just be projecting because I feel upset that Poppy is getting old and sounds let down.) Often his emails have some resigned reference to time in them:

How does the old saying go .... “Time and tide wait for no man ... “ and we, Kath, are no exception to this wisdom.

And this from when I started all of this last year:

I was urged several times over the years to record my memories/my experiences and unfortunately I have not done so. And then, along comes Kath with a request for me to dig deep and search the past. One of my most used sayings is, ‘It’s all history now.’ And so it is BUT it is OUR history. And, therefore it is important …. if you want to worry about it.

...

Kath, I will give this a go and I will do my best but it will take time and my memory may fail me at times. If you are happy to proceed under these circumstances we will go ahead and see what happens. OK?

Kath, you have stirred things up and if you would like to know more of our history I will send you a few things from the past but you will have to understand that this really is history time.

A couple of months ago he was diagnosed with dementia and I think he had been struggling to remember things for quite some time (which is why he sent away for his military records in the first place: because I was asking questions he couldn’t remember the answers to). I want to know what happened and what he did during his time in the Army but I feel like we’ve hit a dead end here.

Mum always said that I should ask him about it - I was initially very shy about doing so because I know he’s never really spoken to family about his time at war. Every book about war I studied in uni and high school followed the war is hell formula, so my understanding is that war destroys everything, breaks hearts, signs men up for a lifetime of night terrors and alcoholism, and is a relentless force of evil that no one comes out of whole and happy. This may not be the case for all soldiers, but mum’s told me stories about Poppy not sleeping and being frightened by (frightened probably isn’t the right word - more just having a visceral reaction to) noises in the night when he came home. So if there were a noise in the night he would instinctively roll under the bed because he was so practiced at reacting that way from his time in Vietnam. Even now he is very easily startled by sudden, loud noises so we need to be careful not to let doors slam, etc. When he was diagnosed with dementia, mum mentioned that it makes sense in a way because he’s spent a lifetime trying to forget what happened.

If there’s nothing good on the disc, my final option is to talk to one of his Army buddies. At his 80th birthday party a few years ago I met this guy John who was in Vietnam with Poppy. John is quite a bit younger than Poppy so it may be fresher in his mind. I might see if I can email him: I feel weird about doing that because it seems like quite a personal thing to let me nose around in, but I know Poppy was chuffed when I asked about his military service so maybe John won’t mind.

I think Poppy was initially pleased to talk to me about his military service but we’ve been going back and forth for nearly a year now and all we’ve really covered is his time at the Officer Cadet School in Portsea and a little bit about conscription. What I didn’t want to do is cause him any stress but the tone of the email above is very apologetic and I just really hope he’s not disappointed.

Just to give you an idea of the kind of questions I had been asking Poppy:

I read online that due to the nature of the work with the AATTV, team members tended to have extensive experience and were considered experts in counter-revolutionary warfare and jungle operations - someone mentioned that many men in the AATTV had served in the Malayan Emergency. I know you lived in Malaysia for a while (and Mum was even born there) but I guess that would have been after the Emergency (the emergency ended in 1960 and mum was born in 1962) - were you there during the Malayan Emergency? What was that like? What was your role?

So it’s not like I’m asking: how many men did you kill? Or: I know the AATTV had some involvement in Operation Phoenix, did you help them torture and kill people? Or: approximately how many liters of blood did you personally cause to spill and soak into that rich jungle soil? I’d honestly be happy with just a general outline. This seems like something that a military record should cover, right? Was he involved in the Malayan Emergency? What was his role? What kind of training did he receive? Anyway, I’ll update once I get the CD in the mail. Another hurdle: my laptop doesn’t have a CD drive. My work computer doesn’t have a CD drive. I’ll need to get a plugin one from somewhere.

What started all of this was that dad had done some research (through the National Archives) for Grandma about the military service of her dad and uncle in WWI - hearing this crazy story from dad (you can read it here) about these guys at Gallipoli, I realised I didn’t know anything about Poppy’s time in the Army except that he had served in Vietnam. There’s nothing about Poppy in the National Archives (I don’t think they’ve released docs on Vietnam soldiers yet) but I’m holding out hope that the CD will have something of interest on it.

#Vietnam War #malayan emergency #AATTV #Dementia

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