#my life gets longer and my knowledge and experiences grow but the fucking grief stays static

[luminarai]

.

#my Mom keeps bringing up how our family dog doesn’t have a long way to go anymore #and like #where we’re gonna bury him and so in #and it just keeps wrecking me #like she wants me to be emotionally prepared but I’m not #I’ve already lost two very near family members over the past two years #and I love that stupid silly old dog #I just keep crying at random times because I can’t stop thinking and it hurts #why does grief never get any smaller #my life gets longer and my knowledge and experiences grow but the fucking grief stays static #it just appears in new forms. every time I think I’m ready to move on it takes a new form #I love that silly stupid old dog!!!! and I can’t handle losing him I can’t #I just need everyone I love to stay and not change and to stop the match of time #is that really too much to ask #sorry about this unhinged rambling I’m currently sobbing into a pillow #death mention tw #cecil blogs her life #pet death mention tw

[selfproducingfanfictionauthor]

the worlds collide - i: an old face

Summary: Who are you? Now that the new world has collided with the remnants of the old? 

Pairing: BTS x reader (slight Got7/Jackson x reader)

Warnings: Referenced violence, covert sexism, zombies  Notes:  I knoooow I should be working on lessons to build and looking back at you but this idea just won’t let go. I originally wrote it for my 30 minute challenge but it got out of hand. So here it is, a zombie au! Not sure how long it’ll be yet but we’ll see! UNEDITED. Word Count: 3.2k

At the center of the end of the world, humanity was stripped to what it only needs to exist - strength, camaraderie, and grit.

With the undead nipping at your heels day and night, the only thought that remained were thoughts of where the nearest exist is, how to store food, how much farther for the next stronghold, and how long will that stronghold last. To survive, you stripped away everything unnecessary from your former life. All the bashfulness, the shame, and coated yourself with an armor as thick as the new callouses on your fingers - you still remember the first time you’ve went topless around Namjoon, and neither of you flinched.

Frankly, you’ve forgotten how to be anything else but this brought you to your new role in the new world. You’re no longer a girl, or a woman - you’re a survivor.

And with your old life etched in the sinew of your muscles, of your arms and your legs, you became a valuable member of the group. Along with Jungkook and Hoseok, you carry the front, bashing heads of zombies left and right, clearing the way to a new possible food source and haven.

It was a tiring existence, the type of tired that can’t be washed away by sleep. If that’s what you can call those pockets of peace you have when you’ve finally trusted them to watch your back.

It took long for you to finally drop your guard around these boys that you now call your family. Understandable, given that men didn’t really have a great track record for women to trust them even prior to the apocalypse. But you’ve met them in a tight circumstance, that had them trusting you before you even bothered to try.

(It was Jimin who first reached out, somehow unchanged by the cruelty of the new world. Always soft, always yearning.)

The seven of them had been friends before shit went down, and you were just a lucky one to be part of their orbit.

You remind yourself of this now that the new world has began.

This is the longest you’ve stayed in one place since two years ago, and it’s starting to feel like a place everyone could plant their roots in. The town’s largely untouched by the apocalypse, its strategic location in the mountains and quick response had them building trenches and walls, to keep the hoard from closing in.

It’s an extra precaution thoughtfully made by a self-sustaining community. For once, isolation brought forth more benefits than mishaps. They’ve barely lost people, largely untouched by the terrors of the world outside theirs. Innocent. Their lives went on. No nightmares, nothing.

The first time one of the pleasantly-dressed girls approached you with what could’ve been friendship, you flinched.

The boys were taken to it so easily, perhaps being as weary as you are didn’t make them jaded as it has made you.

Namjoon was swept away by the village committee, his brains and leadership evident with how he led you to safety. Jin and Jimin’s apprenticed under the village doctor, Yoongi’s turned to farming along with Taehyung, while Hoseok and Jungkook’s muscles are put to test building houses at the craft shop.

Everybody’s found a place except you, because while this town’s been untouched in all the good ways, it’s also been untouched in a sense that it kept to all the antiquated ways of the old world.

And, you hate how much you resent it in your deepest of hearts.

It’s as if they thought that putting you in a dress will wash away all the blood in your hands, as if you didn’t shed as much as all the boys did if not more. You’ve been turned away from all the things you could do, and are now being forced into things they want you to.

It’s suffocating, being torn with the desire to put your foot down and the fear of being perceived as ungrateful.

“They don’t understand, do they?”

You blink out of your thoughts and turn to a familiar face making himself comfortable beside you.

Jaebeom’s pushed away the unfinished basket to the side and pulled up one of his long legs to rest his elbow on.

By his side is his gun, locked and loaded, always ready even after months of quiet. You didn’t even hear him come in, but instead of being unsettled, you’re a slightest bit relieved to know that at least someone hasn’t gotten rusty.

The scar on his eyebrow stands out underneath the moonlight, and on  the porch of your little house way’s away from the center of the town, you two make a fine pair of outsiders.

“No, they don’t.”

Even in times of peace, loss is inevitable.

Namjoon mulls over this as he looks at the list of names up for the next supply run. Two names have been crossed, and two funerals were attended last week. One had a body, another didn’t.

Old man Jungho died of a heart attack after his son died outside, and along with the grief, Namjoon could feel the pressure placed on his shoulders by a community unused to “unnatural” losses.

He’s developed a cycling procedure that makes it slightly fair to everyone who volunteered. Marked with blue ink are the ones who were in the previous run, those in black are the ones who are up for the next one.

With the latter list down by two, Namjoon turns to a different corner of his notebook to see your name. Until now, he’s had every excuse not to put you out there but now…

“Fuck,” Namjoon sighs and rubs his face with his hands. He doesn’t know why you’ll want to do this again. He’s tried asking you but somehow, you’ve grown farther and farther away.

When he tried to find you in the village garden with Yoongi, suddenly you’re out getting water. When Seokjin did your monthly checkup, you’re as impenetrable as the walls, when Hoseok tried to approach you with improvements for your home, you brush him away saying you’ve dealt with it with Jaebeom.

Jaebeom.

Whom you’ve only met a month in after you’ve settled into town. Who somehow’s been rumored to visit your house after dark, when the boys you’ve spent two years with haven’t even gotten the chance to step into your home.

Namjoon lets out a shaky breath. You’ve been so unreachable it’s made him cry out of frustration when the nights are dark and the seven of them feel your absence the most in their own quaint home.

They miss you, so much. Even Yoongi who’s as taciturn as they come has tried reaching out to you, working endlessly hard in his own little garden at the back of their house to produce strawberries that you love so much.

“Who’s on the list?”

Hoseok steps in the kitchen and jolts Namjoon out of his longing. He’s wearing his “fight” pants and boots, his gun taken out of the secret cellar and empty go bag slung on his shoulders.

Namjoon pushes his notebook towards him and watches as his friend’s face grow dark at the sight of your name.

“No.”

Namjoon sighs at the conviction in his friend’s voice. It draws in Jungkook from the living room, wearing the same pants and same tension in his shoulders every run.

It’s different when it was just the seven of them, now, they have to lead a bunch of unseasoned people outside the walls just so they don’t go in blind when - not if - shit hits the fan. The loss of the Youngho weighs heavily on Jungkook. They were of the same age, but not the same life experience and ultimately, that was what killed him.

“No, what?”

Jungkook takes in the tension of the room and glances down at the open notebook. “Oh.”

He mouths your name silently, treasuring each syllable. How long since he’s called you? How long since you two talked? Back outside, he liked to believe you and him had a special bond born in the midst of danger and trivial common hobbies from the old world.

He still has that photo card of an old gaming character you two loved.

“I can’t play favorites.” Namjoon states, teetering between duty and keeping you safe inside the walls. If you knew, you’d probably hate him for this, but you don’t.

“You can - you have!” Hoseok slams his hands on the table, the sound echoing inside their house. Everything falls silent followed by footsteps from the second floor.  “What makes it different now?”

“The difference is the fact that we lost someone!” Namjoon bellows, his anger and stress rolling off him like waves but Hoseok doesn’t stand down. He knows its selfish, but the only thing that has him going now that you’ve pulled away is the knowledge that you’re safe.

“We always lose someone—“

“It’s not just us anymore, you know that, Hobi.”

Hoseok bites his cheek at Namjoon’s use of his nickname and he could feel the rest watching him like a hawk. All at once the fight goes out of him. It’s true. In exchange for safety, the get a community - for better or worse.

A hand lands on his shoulder and he turns to Taehyung, who in turn offers a strained smile. “At least, she has two of you to keep an eye on her out there. Like old times.”

Hoseok never thought he’d feel nostalgic about the times they’re elbow-deep in zombie gut but — “Yeah, like old times.”

Except, it isn’t like the old times.

Jungkook’s always been an awkward guy around girls, especially pre-apocalypse. He was all long limbs and Bambi eyes, not quite steadfast on what he was as a man and easily shaken by every attractive girl’s attention.

And although he’s grown a bit, confident in his looks and skills in this new world, he still hasn’t mastered the art of rejecting someone.

(He’s never had to, not when it was you.)

And so, he’s stuck at the last meeting with his back against the wall and one of the town’s remaining daughters - Hyerin-  crowding his space as opposed to being beside you across the room.

He doesn’t even know that Hyerin signed up for the run, especially with how he’s told her that it’s dangerous and that she hasn’t had the proper training to go out there. It rankles him all sorts of wrong when she said that her father said that “it isn’t as dangerous as they made it out to be” as if they’re lying about the dangers they’ve faced.

And sure, they’ve cleared out a large space around the town of zombies but things can always go wrong, and if there’s anything Jungkook has learned is that things have a habit of luring you to a false sense of security before fucking everything up.

Hoseok’s giving the briefing to their small group of ten, and he could see his friend’s eyes linger a second too long whenever it passes you. You with your hair pulled back and back straight, it almost brings him back.

But then you smile at something Jaebeom says and Jungkook feels his chest tightening on cue. You haven’t smiled nor even looked at him since the start of this briefing. What had he done wrong? What have they done wrong that drove you away?

“We might encounter people on this run, and I want you to remember - people are more dangerous than zombies.” Hoseok reminds the group, “They can think, they can plot - and are much harder to predict. We’ll need someone to bring up the front before we flank the space—“

Before Jungkook could raise his hand, yours shoot up along with Jaebeom’s.

“I’ll do it.”

From the back, Jungkook could clearly hear the murmurs of the men in the group. Someone, someone stupidly brave enough speaks up, “I think you should let the men handle this, darling.”

Jungkook sees you put your hand on Jaebeom’s arm before turning to where the voice is. It’s one of the older folks, large and burly with eyes alight with mockery.

You smile sickly sweet, “Oh? I’m not the one who puked on the side of the road during the last run, am I?”

The man sputters and laughter erupts around him, his friends who were equal parts terrified at the sight of a half-torso crawling towards them last month. It’s easy to laugh when it’s not your ass on the line.

Before he gets another word in, you remind him, Hoseok, Jungkook and everyone in the room how dangerous you were on the outside. And how dangerous you still are here.

“And for the record, could you stomach killing a man when you can’t even finish off a zombie? I can,” you pause the silence being answer enough, “So, no, I’m not leaving this to the men.”

“Antagonizing them isn’t earning you any points.”

Keeping your eyes on the road helps you steady your nerves. Outside, you could see the remains of pushed over cars as your caravan makes its way away from the forest and down the mountain.

According to the last team’s run’s intel, there were traces of people loitering down the town proper and so Namjoon’s sent a team before you get caught unawares.

Hoseok coughs, “Y/N. Are you listening?”

“I didn’t know there were points to earn.”

One line, and its scathing but, Hoseok thinks, at least you’re talking to him. He was afraid he’s forgotten your voice.

He may have abused his power a bit to split you up from Jaebeom but it still makes sense, given that you two have worked together longer outside. You with your speed and him with his agility, you make a pretty good team.

And with your pretty face, people tend to underestimate you until its too late.

Hoseok pauses and mulls over your statement. Adjustment is hard, he knows, pandering to people who don’t know how hard it is on the outside but it’s needed. He doesn’t understand where your dislike of it comes from, so much so you’ve decided to ostracize yourself not only from the people in town but also from them.

(He’s a man. Of course he doesn’t understand. Old or new world, men can only touch the surface of what damage the world has done to women.)

“Y/N, it’s just so we could live with them peacefully. No trouble.”

You finally turn to him and he shivers from the coolness in your eyes. “When have I caused them any trouble? I help out, don’t I? I’m a functioning member of the community - is it required to be all chummy with them?”

Framed like that, Hoseok doesn’t have any answer but a semblance of the truth lying in a question, “Why don’t you talk to us anymore?”

Outside, the caravan reaches its destination and people pour out of the old trucks.

“Is there anything to talk about?”

Of course, of course there is, Hoseok wanted to say. But job calls, and  when the sight of tracks greet your group, everything goes back to the back burner.

By the looks of it, there were at least four people about. All with large feet which most likely mean they were males.

Hoseok made a executive decision and sent back all of the group except you, Jaebeom and Jungkook. Given the situation, your group had too many people for this run turned reconnaisance and moving that many people will slow down any retreat you might need to do.

So he sent them back up with a message to Namjoon about the situation. He’ll get a lashing later but he’s sure the guys will understand. A small group is more manageable, but a group with established trust and dynamics (at least with the three of you) is more than ideal.

Your tracking leads the team to one of the larger convenient grocery stores in town. It’s long been looted and cleaned out, but somehow, one of the older craftsmen in the village figured out how to run the generator. Now, it’s store room is being used to hold and freeze any meat and fish you can’t afford to salt. How long you’ll have it running with the generator, who knows?

At what previously was an aisle for chips and snacks, you and Hoseok tread lightly, guns cocked and hands steady, your ears straining to hear any off-beat step as you get deeper into the store. Somewhere across the room, you know that Jungkook and Jaebeom are doing the same, closing off the larger exit.

It’s four on four, the odds may not be on your favor if it comes down to it but it’s not on theirs entirely either -whoever they are.

The morning light filters through the broken glass windows and reflects on your gun as you step forward to the large space at the end of the aisle. At the corner of your eye, you see Jungkook, -free of that girl hanging off his arm- tilt his head towards the large freezer ahead of you.

Behind him, Jaebeom moves to the right, taking position for a surprise attack while you three continue to advance. The freezer’s door is slightly ajar and you could almost make out the conversation and the shadows moving about inside. There’s unfettered laughter and guffaws, pulling you into a false sense of familiarity.

That laugh…

You were so in your head that your next step crushes a stray glass and echoes in the store. For a moment, it rings in the air, suspended like Hoseok freezing to look at you, before suddenly everything just- drops.

Out the door, someone tackles you to the ground, grabbing your gun and tossing it under the shelves. Your head bounces against the tiles and it steals your breath in pain but without missing a beat, you drive the heel of your palm to the man’s chin, hard enough to unbalance him off your waist.

The man rolls to the side and tries to grab your foot before you break free and kicks it to his face. With satisfaction, you hear him grunt in pain before grabbing at you again.

To the side, you see Hoseok trying to reach you, his gun similarly tossed away by the paler and taller man clutching his shoulder, slumped against a turned over cart. You’re ears are ringing, and you might’ve hit your head but vaguely you could hear someone punching someone at the other side of the aisle.

Everything happens so fast - and ends so quickly.

Your vision clears up as a cock of a gun rings clear, pausing everyone’s movements.

In front of you is a face you’d never thought you’d see again. He’s darker, with what seems to be a permanent five o’clock shadow on his jaw, but his eyes light up at the sight of you and a smile stretches on his lips, his hands up but uncaring of Jaebeom’s gun against his head.

“Y/N, long time no see.”

You gasp, frozen on the floor. “Jackson.”

End Notes: Hearts are appreciated but comments are gold. Let me know what you think and if you want to be included in a tag list!

#bangtanarmynet #thetruthuntoldnet #bts fanfiction #zombie apocalypse #the worlds collide #bts x reader #bts scenario #rebuilding in a dystopia #slight got7 x reader #namjoon x reader #yoongi x reader #seokjin x reader #jungkook x reader #jimin x reader #taehyung x reader #hoseok x reader #bts angst #bts zombie au #bts fic #bts writing

[writersdaydream]

Humilated Heartbreak

Just something I wrote while feeling a little down (trigger warning I guess? Nothing graphic just mentions of depression) Also my favourite video game and character ><

Masterlist

Word count: 1.5k 

Its common knowledge that when a heart breaks, it can feel like the worst thing in the world. Your mind twists and manipulates things, making you feel even worse – if that could be possible. A majority of humans experience a heartbreak while in school, whether it be from a significant other, disconnecting from a friend, or the death of a loved one.

All things that can make the human heart break.

What they aren’t told, is how to deal with it. There are countless articles online on the grieving process, how to get over an ex, or how to get revenge – if you’re petty enough. Its all clickbait, its all word of mouth from others.

Everybody has a different grieving process. Some more severe than others, some longer than others. This isn’t my first heartbreak; my life story can tell you that. But one thing to note is; it doesn’t get any easier than the first time.

The first time I ever felt my heartbreak was when my older sister was killed. She was at her grade 12 graduation, having the time of her life, just starting the newest chapter of her life. She was responsible, she was the one to organize the ride home afterword. Her death may have been an accident, but it was the hands of a drunk driver. A drunk driver who was at the same graduation she was.

The second time my heart broke was when my parents separated. The grief over losing their first born was weighing heavy on their shoulders. They couldn’t cope together, it was tearing them apart, and ultimately, they decided to divorce. My father fell into a deep depression, barely functioning, hardly going to work, staying up all night. So, my mother won primary custody of me. She wasn’t doing much better however, she threw herself into her work, I barely saw her as is, leaving me to my own devices.

This is the third time I can count that my heart has broke. I didn’t know how to cope with my sisters death. I have had grandparents pass away due to complications or old age, but I’ve never had someone so close to me be gone. It was weird, I didn’t see her everyday. I couldn’t say I loved her everyday, it was hard. My entire routine was thrown off, my life was shaken up. I started going out more, hanging out later with my friends, anything to keep my mind busy and off of the loss of my older sister. That’s when I met Jai.

He seemed to be my night in shining armor. He took me under his wing, he would check up on me, made sure I was doing my homework, making sure I wasn’t slipping. I thought things would be better with him. I felt myself growing out of the shell I had built. He was everything I could have ever wanted, he was there for me, he never asked for anything in return; he seemed genuinely kind.

Until he didn’t.

I had learned from social media that he had been cheating on me. The girl hadn’t made her account private and I had been tagged in the comments. After being happy for what felt like so long, it all crumbled. The boy I thought I knew, was someone completely different.

This is when I started skipping school. I was humiliated, Jai had completely played me, making me look like an idiot. I didn’t know how long his second relationship was going on for, but it was enough for me to grow back into the shy quiet girl I used to be. The first week at school after our ‘scandal’ I was getting sympathetic looks, everyone was pitying me. It was slightly nice to know they thought he was the jerk, but I couldn’t take it. It wasn’t prominent, but it was enough attention for me to want to curl back into my skin.

I couldn’t go to school knowing he was there, the wounds too fresh to face them head on, the sympathy I was receiving was too much for me to be comfortable. I attended less and less, and with mom working all the time, nobody knew.

Or at least I thought.

It was probably day 3 this week of not bothering to show up at all when the doorbell rang at 11am. I tried ignoring it, figuring it was a door to door salesman or something like that, but the rings became more persistent, I just couldn’t find the energy to go see who it was.

“Y/N! I know you’re in there!”

The voice scared me, not just because I knew exactly who it was, but because of how close they were. The door was locked, but that’s not where it came from. He was under my window. I debated going over and closing it, but that would be the confirmation he needed that I was indeed home.

“Y/N/N, you know I’m not afraid to climb in the window” he said. But again, I just started at the open window. A few seconds pass, until I see his boot on the window ledge, and all of a sudden one of my best friends was in my bedroom. He looked around for a second until his eyes fell on my figure in the bed.

“Hi?” He said quietly, taking note of the solemn look on my face. I just stared back at him, a little irritated that he ‘broke’ into my room, and still exhausted from the lack of sleep I got last night. “Y/N, you know me, c’mon I’m not leaving until you say something.” He said taking a seat next to me on the bed. “Sean” I said, turning away from him.

The Diaz boy sighed and laid next to me. “You gotta say more than that Y/N/N” he said using my nickname again. But once again, I was silent. “Alright fine, I’ll speak. I know why you’re skipping, I get it ok? But you can’t do this to yourself. This isn’t my best friend, I understand what happened and trust me it sucks, but everyone thinks he’s an asshole, that girl? She dumped him, and basically no one is talking to him at school” Sean explained.

I sighed and turned over to him, taking his hand in mine and holding it close to my chest. “I’m humiliated Sean. I mean, he cheated on me for who knows how long. I mean cool, he ruined his reputation, but how is that supposed to make me feel better?” I said. “He broke my heart, he played me like a fool, and I just went along with it” I whispered. “Okay shut up, the only reason you went along with it is because you didn’t know. You were the one being wronged, and its happened before and it’ll happen again. Some people are just so shitty in the world, you can’t let shit like this get you down. You didn’t do that when your sister died, so why are you doing it when a dickhead cheats on you.”

Sean held truth in his words, I knew he was completely right and was telling me what I needed to hear, but right now I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to let the world swallow me up and start over in a new town.

“Are you not talking because you know I’m right?” He asked leaning his head on mine. “I will hit you” I say, pulling his hand closer to me. Sean just chuckled at my answer, feeling satisfied I was actually talking.

We just laid there semi-cuddling as he let me wallow in my own embarrassment. “Where’s Lyla?” I asked noting she wasn’t with him. “If her mom knew she was skipping she would be grounded for the rest of high school” Sean answered. I chuckled with him, acknowledging once again he was right. “I know it sucks Y/N/N, but are you up to going to school with me?” I let out a loud breath, “not today.” I answered him. “I mean, it’s already 1:30, I don’t think theres a point in going anymore. But tomorrow, Lyla and I will come and pick you up, and we’ll get on the bus and go to school okay? We’ll protect you from everyone” he teased.

This time, I finally hit him. “Hey! What the hell?” “You make me sound like a fucking damsel in distress! I can take care of myself Diaz!” I tell him.

-

The next day, my friends kept their promise. At 8am sharp, they came to my house, we waited for the bus, and I shared the seat with Sean. I could feel people looking at me, either shocked that I actually went to school that day, or they were still pitying me. What ever the case, Sean would squeeze my hand, and Lyla would confront whoever dared glance my way for a second too long.

They don’t tell you how to handle heartbreak, its something you need to heal from on your own. People tend to fill the void with whatever they find best, and in my case, all I needed was my two best friends.  

#sean diaz #sean diaz x reader #sean diaz imagine #sean diaz blurb #sean diaz one shot #sean diaz fanfic #lis2 #life is strange 2 #daniel diaz #lyla park #writersdaydream #fanfic #fanfiction #free writing #creative writing #square enix #gonzalo martin #estaban diaz #life is strange #lis2 imagine #Love baby

[cosmicjoke]

Further commentary on the ending of Banana Fish (Spoilers):

Look, I understand the controversy and upset surrounding the ending of Banana Fish.  My last post on this topic seems to have pissed some people off, which was never my intention.  But I think maybe I could have worded things a bit better, so I’m going to try again to explain why I feel like the ending of Banana Fish was so perfect.

It’s not a happy ending, and I don’t think anyone, anywhere, will try to tell you that the ending was meant to make anyone happy, or satisfied.  That’s the point.  It’s not MEANT to please the reader.  It’s meant to remain true to its narrative realism.  And in that realism, it’s meant to break the readers heart.  And boy does it do both.

I don’t think anyone would tell you, anyone with any ounce of feeling in their heart, anyway, that Ash didn’t deserve a happy ending, or that he deserved to die after all the awful shit he went through.  I think we can all agree that we would have wanted, if we had a choice, to see Ash have a happy, hopeful ending with Eiji in Japan.  We all agree that Ash DESERVED a happy ending, because he was a good person who was dealt about the shittiest hand in life a person can have.  And despite all that shit, he retained that innate goodness of heart that made him who he was.  He never became a monster, like the people who used him up and abused him over and over again.  That’s what makes him such an extraordinary character that’s deeply loved by so many people. He absolutely deserved to be happy.

But that’s the thing. Banana Fish is a story that deals in reality.  Everything that happens in the story, despite the often extraordinary, larger than life circumstances, is dealt with in a way that is, very often, brutally, painfully honest and realistic.  It doesn’t give us what should be, it gives us what IS.  And that makes perfect sense in accordance with its relation to writers like Hemingway and Salinger.  They wrote stories that dealt in brutal honesty and reality too, and both writers are referenced throughout Banana Fish.  And it’s Banana Fish’s commitment to that brutal honesty and reality that makes it an authentic piece of art.  People want a fairy tale ending, where Ash gets to ride off into the sunset with Eiji and live happily ever after, but at no point in Banana Fish are we given any indication that the story is, at any point, going to delve into the realm of unreality and fantasy, and give us such an ending.  To do so would have been a betrayal of the genuine nature of the narrative. It would have ultimately robbed it of its authenticity as a piece of art, and the story, as a result, would have been left hollow and lacking.  

Banana Fish, throughout its narrative, shows us that terrible things happen to good people, and that good people are often forced into doing terrible things.  It never shy’s away from that cruel, heartbreaking reality, and the ending is no exception.  

It affects us so deeply, and leaves us so upset, because it’s so REAL.  It feels genuine to us, it feels real, because it refuses to betray its honesty for the sake of a happy fantasy.  It remains loyal to the harsh truth of reality, and the harsh truth of Ash’s reality in particular.  Ash is a deeply damaged, broken person, who’s experiences in life are the very definition of cruelty.  Here is a boy who, since the age of seven, has experienced sexual, mental, emotional and physical abuse repeatedly and on a scale truly unfathomable to almost all of us. A boy who was forced into a life of prostitution in order to simply survive on the harsh streets of an unforgiving city.  A boy who, again out of a necessity for survival, has had to kill other human beings. A boy who, out of a desperate situation in which he was forced to choose either to save his soulmate or watch him be murdered by his best friend gone berserk in a mad, drug induced insanity, had to kill his best friend by shooting him straight through the heart.  A boy who, each time in his life that he’s tried to build real and meaningful relationships with other people, Griffin, the girl he liked when he was 14, Skip, Shorter, Eiji, he’s had to watch those people he allowed himself to grow close to either die or almost die, over and over again.  All of that combined creates a level of trauma that’s so far beyond the normal scope or understanding of a regular human being, so far beyond any discernable mechanism for coping with trauma, that to expect Ash to just get over it, for it all to magically be okay just because he moves to Japan with Eiji, is the height of unrealistic, and, again, would be a betrayal of the authenticity the story marries itself to from start to finish.  

Ash’s death is a tragedy, as his life was a tragedy, and the story is a reflection of that.  It stays true to that narrative, and never compromises on it.  That’s the point.  Life doesn’t always have a happy ending.  People that have suffered severe, irreversible trauma don’t always recover, and can’t always heal from it.  People who have suffered in the obscene and brutal ways that Ash has aren’t always going to be alright.  Sometimes it’s just too much.  For Ash, it was just too much.  Too much damage.  Too much heartache.  Too much pain.  Too much loss.  Sometimes we can’t overcome our damage, and that reality presented in this story scares people, I think, because it’s so nakedly honest and unapologetically expressed.

The ending is so god awful painful too because we see, in that moment after Ash reads Eiji’s letter, hope bloom inside him.  For an instant, this belief that maybe he can have a happy ending, when he thinks he’ll catch Eiji at the airport, and maybe go with him.  And in the next instant, he’s mercilessly reminded of that hope’s falsity. Hope springs eternal, but not always true.  Hope and happiness were never meant for Ash.  The chance for that was taken from him before he could even understand what those concepts were.  The thematic arc of the story was telling us from the start that it was going to end in tragedy.

People weren’t meant to LIKE this ending.  It wasn’t meant to make them feel good, or okay with what happened, or fulfilled.  In fact, I’d say, it’s meant to make you feel completely devastated.  As the story reflects reality, so often too does real life end in a way that leaves us feeling lost and confused and heartbroken.  Banana Fish is so good because it stays true to that sense of reality, right until the very end.

The ending doesn’t leave us feeling happy, but it sure does leave us FEELING.  Like any real piece of art would.  The emotions it conjures are immense and, for some I guess, too real. That sense of loss and hopelessness and pain it leaves us with is so effective because, again, it’s so honest. And I guess that because those emotions are so real, and felt so deeply, and with such intensity, it leaves some readers and viewers feeling angry.  Lashing out at a reality which they don’t want to accept.  The irony, of course, is that their hatred and rejection of the ending is testament to just how deeply the ending touched them.  It didn’t leave them feeling nothing, it left them feeling too much, and they then go into a state of denial, which is really just a stage of grief.  A refusal to accept.  You know Banana Fish is a true piece of art for that, in how it conjures sincere feelings of grief and mourning in us for its lead character in Ash.  We CARE about him, deeply.  We want him to be alright, because we love him.

But real art isn’t concerned with placation.  It’s concerned with truth.  So many great pieces of literature have unhappy endings, because that’s the truth of the human condition, and the condition of life in general.  Real art won’t shy away from those painful, awful truths, nor is it afraid to conjure the feelings which go hand in hand with those truths in its audience.  

With all that said, the tragedy of the ending doesn’t demand a feeling of meaninglessness or desolation at all.

Eiji’s love for Ash and Ash’s love for Eiji is still so pivotal and, ultimately, essential in how the story ends.  It’s what allows, maybe not a feeling of hope, but a feeling of peace.

You sense throughout the story that Ash knows he’s going to die.  Like he senses that his life is too fucked up, that he’s been through and had to do too many horrible things for it to last very long.  It’s like the saying of he who burns brightest burns twice as fast.  Ash is burning, and he knows it.  He’s already accepted it as an inevitable conclusion.  He doesn’t actively seek death, but he doesn’t fear, nor fight against it.  At points throughout the story, even, he asks for it, when the horror of what’s happening to him becomes too much.  He knows death is coming for him.  The only thing keeping him from giving in so easily I think is his lack of agency in how he will.  Everything has been taken from Ash, and he doesn’t want to give this last thing away. This choice in how he dies.

Eiji’s love is what finally gives him agency in that decision.

Ash died knowing Eiji loved him, and that knowledge, that certainty that he was loved, genuinely loved by another human being, without any strings or conditions attached, simply loved for himself alone, is what allowed Ash to finally find the peace in death which alluded him in life.  He no longer feels like he has to keep fighting, or struggling on through an endless malaise of misery and pain, because he’s finally found the calm and acceptance which comes with knowing he has this one, pure thing for himself, which nobody, none of his abusers, can ever touch or take away.  With everything else that’s been stolen from Ash, his innocence, his sense of agency, his own body, his own mind, Eiji’s love for him is the one thing nobody could ever steal away.  And that’s, I think, why Ash dies smiling, because it’s that knowledge, that he was worthy of another human being’s true love, that at last shows him that he was a human being himself.  Not an animal.  Not a monster.  He was a human being worthy of love.

Ash’s death is heartbreaking, and brutal, but there’s deep consolation to be had in knowing he spent his final moments with the feeling of Eiji’s love for him alive inside his heart, allowing him at last to feel like a person deserving, worthy of love.

It’s that which allows Ash to finally let go of his struggle, and let’s death’s embrace take hold of him.  It’s his own. Eiji’s love, and his choice to let go of life.

It doesn’t make the ending any less heart wrenching or brutal.  It doesn’t make us any less devastated by Ash’s death.  But it gives us a sense of peace, in knowing, even if we are left feeling lost and heartbroken, Ash himself left life with the fulfillment of knowing he was loved.

#Banana Fish #Commentary #Meta #Ash Lynx #Akimi Yoshida

[severalspoons]

Long Rambling Trigun Meta Discussion 2

I *hate* the reply function in Tumblr. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t function. It doesn’t even open up a findable page so I can respond, and I can’t directly answer the reply. That’s why I reblog.

So, here’s the next best thing:

tiggymalvern

I don't recall anything like that fic you mention from either canon. It's a lovely idea, if only I could imagine Vash and Knives stopping arguing with each other for long enough to do it.

This fic I’m remembering was surprisingly hard to find, and now I’m wondering if it’s from FF.net rather than AO3. Will share once I find it!

The twins argue while doing it, IIRC, and have very different approaches. Luckily for the humans, in this fic the engineer likes the plant and takes care of it well, given how little is actually known about how to do so post-crash. Even so, Knives almost kills the engineer, but Vash stops him and leaves behind a little journal full of advice and encouragement. 

IMO, I feel like this is something Vash would be motivated to do more than Knives:

-- to repair his relationship with Knives

-- because he feels responsible for the people Rem saved

-- because he wants the bulb plants to be safe and happy

(listed in the order I thought of them)

But Knives would see this as slight progress towards Vash seeing things his way, so he’d go with it. What do you think?

tiggymalvern

I've never been entirely clear on the manga ending myself, and I think Nightow left it somewhat ambiguous deliberately. Vash and Knives are fighting, and then the earth forces attack them both, Livia intevenes and Vash and Knives fly off and

six months later we find Vash in hiding with the people who saved him, because Knives convinced them to, and then Knives plants an apple tree to help feed the peopl looking after Vash, and then he vanishes...

I assume he chose not to stay with humans and just went off somewhere, but it's left open

Interesting! Yeah, I got the sense it was supposed to be deliberately ambiguous, too. 

Many people say that Knives died giving his last energy to save Vash, to the point where I thought that was canon. 

No matter what happened with Knives and the tree, I have questions. If Knives planted the tree before dying or disappearing or whatever, I’d want to know where he got the apple seeds, and if providing the energy to make that tree survive on Gunsmoke killed him. If he turned into a tree (which I thought was the canon, but maybe not?), how? I can see why you didn’t interpret Knives as turning into a tree.

All I know for sure is, if Knives were dying, he’d want to do it on his own terms. Ideally in a way that would express his point and make an impression on Vash. I was going to say that creating a tree doesn’t seem like Knives’ style, but then I thought about the apple tree scenes in the anime. However that tree came to be, Vash would most likely associate it with happier times on the ship. Maybe he’d be fucked up enough to see it as a gesture of love. 

Maybe it was the closest thing to a gesture of love someone as manipulative and self-absorbed as Knives could manage...

tiggymalvern  Knives really is a person with no middle ground. When he believed Rem's teachings, he believed them wholeheartedly, that everything would turn out fine and people just needed to be given a chance. When he rejected those teachings and decided it was all just rubbish, he went maximum speed to the other extreme. Reject ALL humans, not just the individuals who had proven that they suck. And reject as in eradicate, not just avoid... 

I love Knives’ all-or-nothing way of being. Maybe because I know and love so many people with a little streak of that. And it’s so believable. Reminds me of a quote I read somewhere about how a misanthrope is a disillusioned idealist.

Knives thinks in utilitarian terms (”the greatest good for the greatest number with the least possible sacrifice”) as a kid for the few short scenes before he turns evil. He also seems to think in terms of groups rather than individuals (”humans,” “spiders,” “butterflies”). It saves him the grief Vash goes through at coming to know and lose so many people, but it also helps him justify a racist ideology. I love that about him, actually. If I were to write a Knives redemption fic, a key arc would be helping him learn to see others as individuals. I have a few paragraphs of something like that written...

Kids definitely need wonder and to see the beauty in the world, but it's also a good idea to mention the possibility of weird strangers offering candy that are best avoided. For these bizarre new non-human children, those warnings would have been extra pertinent, and maybe would have reduced the shock of what came after. Knives is definitely more mature than Vash in those flashbacks. Like you say, he wants to discuss issues with Vash, and Vash just parrots Rem. 

Agree.

I have a theory. Earth, in Trigunverse, seems a lot like our world, only worse.

I’ve seen a lot of people’s sense of wonder, beauty, fun, and curiosity squished. I was the weirdo in preschool, among other four year olds, for being too much like that. Maybe on Trigun Earth, a bleak place to begin with, that’s the norm. (And destroying people’s wonder/curiosity/etc. leads to depression and the ennui of modern life, but that’s another essay).

Some people, like those who run Waldorf schools, overreact by going to the opposite extreme. The worst, most ideologically rigid ones, deliberately wait to teach kids to read so they can explore the world unmediated by words a little longer. (And will even discourage kids who learn to read early, grr). Waldorf philosophy assumes young kids are basically sensing, feeling, and imagining beings, rather than thinking ones. 

I get the sense that Rem is one of these sorts. She was squashed and made to feel worthless for the way she saw the world. Maybe that’s part of the reason she was so depressed and needed Alex’s help. She’s raising the twins the way she wished she had been raised.

That sort of parenting wasn’t appropriate for a plant, of course. But no one had raised independent plants to adulthood before. No one knew what was appropriate. No one knew how to teach them about danger (or how not to). 

Growing up as a neurodivergent person in the Dark Ages, the only kid with allergies and sensory processing problems, etc., I understand all too well how badly things can go when even the most loving parents just don’t know what to do, and can’t find helpful information anywhere. Where helpful information isn’t just hard to find, but it doesn’t exist yet. 

So as critical as I’m being of Rem, I sympathize with her. She really didn’t have much to go on but her own knowledge and experience, and she bravely did the best she could.

Vash isn't thinking for himself yet, but he's a kid, so that's allowable. It does make it harder for Knives, though, who feels he has to be responsible for them both. 

You know, Knives does feel responsible for them both, and I hadn’t thought much about it and about the implications of that. No wonder he was so frustrated and furious. There’s definitely a sense of “something is deeply unfair and wrong” for a child trying to raise not only themselves, but their younger sibling(s).  Perhaps that’s part of the reason I saw Knives as caring about Vash, in his toxic, screwed up way. 

Plant biology is MASSIVELY confusing, and the more you try to piece it together, the more your head hurts LOL. But I think that's almost the point? ...Leaving the readers struggling to figure out the plants is the human perspective.

What do you think about the anime being so much from a human pov, especially considering that the most important characters in it are not?

Wolfwood is the support Vash needs to learn to control his plant powers among other things, the powers that have terrified Vash for so long that he ignored them. But Wolfwood isn't scared of them - or rather, he is, but not scared enough to abandon Vash because of them. He knows all about Vash, he knows all about July and the hole in the moon, he's seen Vash transform into some weird crazy thing with feathers, and Wolfwood still stays. Wolfwood lets Vash know that Vash's mistakes can be forgiven, and Vash is still a worthwhile person despite them. And because Wolfwood believes it, Vash can start to believe it. 

Between how well you put this and the dynamic itself, I’m...blown away and don’t know what to say. 

– “Vash, take care of Knives.” This breaks my heart because so far … he hasn’t. First he follows Knives around. Then abandons him. Then attacks him. I really do think Vash was trying. He followed Knives around for so long while being so angry with him for what he'd done, and yes, part of that was because he didn't want to be alone himself, but part of it was him trying to follow Rem's advice. 

Yeah, true, he did try at first. I undervalued it because by the time the series starts, that was far into the past and Vash probably doesn’t even remember it, but still.

In the manga, Rem specifically says, 'Vash, don't leave Knives alone,' because I think she recognises that Knives is prone to extremes and needs a balance. 

See, that instruction makes so much more sense. And I think the plants would have agreed. (Well, of course they would. They’re a collective consciousness, after all).

Rem probably also knew it’s bad for anyone’s health or sanity to be alone, and an emotionally unstable twin plant even more so. Knives would be in a solitary confinement of his own making.

Vash tried and tried to get Knives to change; he spent so much effort trying to explain why genocide wasn't the answer. But Vash failed, and eventually he recognised that he was always going to fail. So he left Knives, because he needed a life that wasn't that failure. He needed to do something to compensate for Knives. He took upon himself the responsibility of not only protecting the humans from Knives, but protecting the humans from the worst in themselves, which Knives' actions brought to the surface. And that is one hell of a lot to take on, and not a recipe for a happy life.

Yeah, that’s...a heroic life, but not a happy one. In a way, it seems almost as doomed as trying to change Knives. 

#trigun #meta #character analysis #vash the stampede #knives millions #millions knives #rem saverem #baby plants #oversharing #me irl #nicholas d. wolfwood #vash/wolfwood #vash the stampede/nicholas d. wolfwood #vashwood #killing time #fucked up sibling relationships #trigun anime #headcanons

[blacknovelist]

sup ok here’s the promised details on uhhhhhh All for One in @guardianlioness​‘s and I’s Ageswap Mess, formed by collaborative headcanon jamming on discord and then roughly paraphrased via a run thru the unfortunate Quadruple Lengthening Filter that’s built into my brain bc I’m incapable of being brief.

(something of an expansion on this post and this ask. Nooooot spoiler free, actually pretty spoilers, idk, will pop it under a readmore bc who knows how long I’m gonna go on also)

ALSO!! I can’t at u but @randommly-passing-mia u asked forever ago about Toshinori and AfO’s relationship in this AU and i answered what I could then but I’m pleased to announce this goes more into that bc I knew Very Little back then. :)

So, All for One! Now, I feel it appropriate to note that the previous post I made regarding the history of OfA in Ageswap, as well as just about everything I’ve posted abt AfO and OfA for Ageswap (except for the linked ask above, obv) was made before the arc with the League of Villains and Shigaraki’s backstory all came out. Now that we’ve got some of those contexts, we can go a little further in fleshing everything else out, which we did, a little, today.

Pls keep in mind that Ageswap’s goal is not and never has been to make a direct 1:1 translation of adults to kids and vice versa -- good lord we’d have a lot of empty spaces if we were doing that. So, uh. Anyway. it’s time for “we make a mess of the characters and also the timeline and the plot because it’s Our City Now”

Student AfO is a different creature to small Toshinori of our au. For the purposes of this post we’ll call him AfO, because while I’d love to just jump into referring to him as Shigaraki there’s a lot of confusions that lie down that road. Also, again, we’re calling mr heckhands mcmike Tomura, because Shigaraki is a name with Weight.

Because canon parallels, Ageswap AfO has a little brother who we’re making Kyudai Garaki/the Good Doctor and also quirkless for our purposes (whether he’s AfO’s biological brother is up in the air, we haven’t settled yet). Garaki has something of an intense obsession with quirks, constantly studying and doing research, not unlike Izuku, and the age gap between him and AfO is... about six years. Now, because AfO had already manifested a quirk of his own and that quirk had fearsome potential, One for All was originally going to be passed on to his brother, because before Ageswap Izuku, OfA had strictly been handed down to trained members of the family.

Tomura was a member of the group that had, through the generations, been working to fight against the users of One for All. To hit them where it hurt, he attacked Izuku’s mentor’s (we’ll call them the Mentor) home with a group of League fighters. When he found out there was a quirkless boy, and a second one who was all but quirkless for all that he’d been told to avoid using his own powers, he quickly took them in under the League’s wing -- both in an act of cruelty against OfA and out of some misguided sympathy for the boys.

The fearsome thing is the toxicity of the relationships Tomura formed with the League, and eventually with the boys. He meant well, when he took them in, but whatever this version of him went through... well, just about all his relationships are some level of manipulative and unhealthy by default. See: his tendency for physical closeness and being tactile, as mentioned in the ask.

He’s firmly of an opinion along the lines of “if you’ve got the power, and you know you have the power, and you’re not using it to do whatever you can or want, then why do you even have it?” and, for all of AfO’s childhood, Tomura tried his hardest to share this with AfO and sway the kid to his side. With the Mentor having dropped off the grid and abandoned the Shigaraki name in grief, AfO and his brother had nowhere else to go, but AfO was a smart and cautious kid: he couldn’t just listen without a fight, or a reason.

(AfO didn’t know Tomura meant to kill them, that he attacked their home on purpose. When he eventually finds out, he firmly believes Tomura meant to save them)

But Tomura’s persistent, and he doesn’t stop, and eventually he points out: if All for One is a quirk that allows him to take and give quirks, does that not mean he can seek out the perfect quirk for his little brother? All the reasons he’s suffered, AfO has the power to fix that.

That’s the thing that sways AfO to their side, that convinces him to stay with the League and learn under Tomura. Because if it’s for family, isn’t it worth it?

(AfO sees Tomura as a teacher, as a friend, as someone beloved and important. Shigaraki was AfO’s name, but it can be Tomura’s too, if Tomura wants. Then everyone knows they’re family. And Tomura accepts it -- another spit in the face of an enemy, a welcomed token from a beloved student. Shigaraki is a good name for the rest of the world to use, but Tomura, Tomura is a name for the League and the League alone.)

AfO tries, at first, to find other quirks for his brother while he trains, while his brother studies (while Tomura tries to sway Garaki to their side also, because look at what you know, what you could do with that knowledge, combined with your brother’s quirk, you’re so young and so so smart-). OfA is gone beyond the League’s sight, in the hands of the Symbol of Peace, so there’s no point on dwelling on it, really, surely another quirk would work better?

But then One for All comes back around, in the hands of this blond... nobody. His brother’s quirk, running around in a stranger. AfO continues to hunt potential quirks down for his brother and his brother’s studies, but he has a new goal: to try and claim OfA back and give it to who it really belongs to.

the problem of course being that he can’t take it by force like every other quirk, and killing Toshinori would merely render it lost forever.

Essentially, AfO’s primary grudge against Toshinori is the fact that he’s the current bearer of a quirk that, in AfO’s eyes, should belong to Garaki. And Toshinori’s quirklessness, or past quirklessness... is easy to know when you know the secret of One for All.

Some good stuff gets said abt AfO vs Toshinori in this answer here I think, and I’m drawing on it: Toshinori’s more instinct and heart to AfO’s logic and strategy. That’s not to say, obv, that neither of them draw on the other quality, but it’s what stands out most to me about the two of them and just, kind of their general dynamic (or at least, that’s how it seems).

USJ was a subtle message laid beneath a louder declaration. Two-for-one, if you will. “Wouldn't it be so nice to have a quirk that fit better in your hands? that didn't fritz or go funky whenever you so much as turned your head? A quirk you might not even have to coax and strain and train and change your body for?”

But AfO does not confront Toshinori until much later, until after the sports festival. See, the mall incident in this AU is a scene on bargaining.

He confronts Toshinori at the mall -- his face is not known, and it’s a simple matter to pull him off to the side. But there won’t be fighting here today. No, he only came to talk.

Questions, first. About Toshinori, his experience with One for All, what he thinks of other people’s quirks. About what it was like for him, growing up quirkless, left abandoned by so many people for it. Eventually, his conversation circles back around. I have a little brother. He’s quirkless, just like you. You know what he went through, what he suffered.

All for One even did his research, is even willing to play by rules closer to Toshinori’s own: tucked under his arm is a folder, with lists upon lists of people. Villains with sentences for life, villains under the death sentence, people who would have no life of returning to the world ever again. People who don’t have a reason to use their quirks any longer. People for whom it wouldn’t matter if he took their quirks anyway. “Take your pick,” he offers Toshinori. “I’ll give you whatever quirk you’ve ever wanted. I’ll even take it from a villain so none of your precious civilians have to suffer the loss — but that one belongs to my little brother.”

And, well. We all know he says no.

Why would Toshinori hang onto a quirk that isn’t even his? All the people out there, bearing the quirks that his brother and even his greatest enemy were robbed of at birth, and AfO has the power to grant both Toshinori and Garaki the power that they’d dreamed of, that belongs to them. He knows what it means to suffer without a quirk. Why won’t Toshinori let him fix that?

and idk specifically what Toshi would say, but I think it’s something along the lines of “no one asks for what they're born with or given, but we make the most of it anyway. That's how we're supposed to live.“

Anyway Toshinori and All for One hate each other SO fucking much but. Unfortunately, also just kind of Get Each Other on some level. Like, they despise one another but also, if there’s one thing they can believe in, it’s that the other will always Be The Way They Are. Friendly Enemyship, if you will.

There’s some level of pity that AfO also holds on the percieved coldness of Toshinori’s relationship to his mentor, Izuku. Izuku is... really awkward, in his relationship with Toshi, and while Izuku loves his student very much he has a hard time showing it -- and Toshinori thinks so poorly of himself, it’s hard to grasp how close they are from the outside sometimes. AfO totally tries to recruit Toshinori to their side, even after he figures they’re Tight and also even though he knows Toshinori won’t ever say yes. Like, he hates the guy, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be a kickass ally.

Tomura would like Toshinori and AfO says as much to his face. “You’re more like him than I am, anyway. You can act without overthinking. And he wouldn’t care if you were quirkless. He doesn’t with my brother.”

(Toshinori hates that. He isn’t, he isn’t he isn’t like him at all.)

Tomura has also more or less promised AfO that, at the end of his lifespan, his student should take on Decay. AfO, of course, doesn’t want that and is on the hunt for a good longevity quirk to give to his mentor

In the end, the way All for One is kind of being played in this AU is something not so far off from Anakin Skywalker.

In Lioness’ words:

Noble in his desire to keep his family alive

But horribly misdirected

#Boku no hero academia #BNHA #My hero academia #mha #Ageswap AU #Blacknovelist talks #BNHA AU #BNHA Spoilers #long post #fukc this is long #All for One #AfO #Shigaraki #also technically #Toshinori #yeehaw yall

[terfhunter420]

“how ya holding up?”

This is about how I'm “holding up” how I'm “doing” and if I “need anything” as a covidclerk because so many beautiful kind amazing stellar friends and otherwise have been asking me that more times than I can muster to answer, at some points. The long story short is “fantastic!!” because that's true – every letter of the word FANTASTIC has about a million facets intertwined within them.

Betwixt grief and global pandemic there is an incredible relationship. I have been through the standard stages of grief that I wholly know – I expect to cycle through them in multiples the longer this goes on, while always growing despite/in spite – I created new stages of grief that are probably related to the new type of cognitive dissonance I have mastered, and I have re-grieved the loss of my partner due to the fact that I can feel Nhiki laughing about the most reptilian parts of all this. The word GRIEF and the place of grief is not a triggering word or a scary place, rather, a declaration of floating just above the Earth – place of rest and reflection, a powerful position to be in for action and clarity. I don't want anyone to feel unsettled approaching me knowing I am cycling through a grieving process and I don't want anyone to feel spooked that I am answering with raw emotion.

DENIAL: what denial in a pandemic setting looks like is not true denial, per se. I'm not hoaxin' out or making light of the severity of the pneumonia and organ failure and cardiac arrest perpetuated by this virus. I am trying to absorb as much new information about how the virus behaves in the body and regurgitate harm reduction practices and efforts from each piece of new study. What denial has shown itself to be for me, as time has moved on and on and on, and every day I keep showing up to work in a fucking contagion zone, and I continue to remain healthy – even though I DID get sick when this all started – the more I am (hopefully, productively) twisting what must be fear into believing that I will be okay. I will stay alive. I am not dying from this. I can FEEL the sickening aura of tremendous outsider grief, and it's not colliding with my own. Which is interesting – I am empathic, and I have isolated my own grief from the rest? Is this something I can consider a level-up, or a form of denial? Have I sharpened a tool in my coping toolbox or have I dulled one?

ANGER: there is so much and it is not harmful. I am made of fire – my heart exists on fire – I am surrounded by salty chicks because they throw salt on my heartfire – I am knives – my knives are on fire! – I have a prayer to Lord Shiva tattooed on the base of my neck and it is vibrating constantly. OM NAMA SHIVAYA  – wild destruction for the sake of wild growth. I WANT TO SEE THIS FAILED SYSTEM COLLAPSE. I MICRO/DOSE BELLADONNA TO BECOME ONE WITH THE ENTROPY. THERE IS NO FULL, CONTINUOUS UNITY and holy fuck is that scary or what! The response my own store took for basic safety measures was drip drip blackstrap molasses slow. The response the state has been unrolling has been drip drip pure unfiltered honey thick. The inappropriate responses of the TRUMP administration has been a maniacal outpouring of American vomit and bile foam. WHYYYYY of all presidents did this have to happen under this one? Well, some folks I know say it's because that's part of The Plan. I know what they're talking about. I hear them wide and clear – and it does not make sense for me to focus my energy exertion on processing the Grand Scheme of the Bourgeois and how it relates to global elite efforts. You begin saving the world one person at a time, after all. My biggest anger I have felt relates to the social conditioning that I felt like a threat to everyone around me, and everyone around me felt like an even bigger threat. That conditioning is nauseating so I have broken it.

BARGAINING: Should I keep my nails long or keep my nails short? Should I call out of work today? Should I lie about symptoms? I could keep my mouth shut at being placated or I could open it up and let the words fly out. Should I leave the cats to my mother or to a friend if I have to die? Should I spend time with this thoughtful chick? What if I cut most of my fingernails short? How do I get this guy to stop calling me a frontline hero and thanking me for my service? Can I trade spots with Nhiki for one day? What if I called out of work and said I needed a mental health day? What if I lied about symptoms just to get three days off and not two weeks off? What if I bought some scratch off lottery tickets? What if Nina met Death with me? How did I get here and how can I assure that I am never here again? HOW DO I GET OUT OF HERE?!?!? AM I TRAPPED WITH A METAPHORICAL GUN TO MY HEAD OR AM I JUST UNAFRAID? What if this is God (God is short for Good) placing me in a situation that I know I am meant for? How do I convince God (God is short for Good) that I am not meant for this? What if I convinced myself I am meant for this? Oh fuck it turns out I'm meant for this and it was insane to doubt thyself so much in the first place.

DEPRESSION & EXHAUSTION: My strongest trauma-bond is with the experience of helplessness. Living in a big helpless fury for weeks will lead to the inevitable: YANG flame snuffs and YANG must reignite itself. My candle wobbled, the YIN spilled everywhere. Now I have to carefully chip out the wick from the pool of wax, YIN poured up and out and over – tears, tears, tears – I had one night alone since this all started and I spent it in a heap on the ground full of trauma, remembering the way eyes with no life behind them roll in any direction that gravity takes 'em, being terrified that my baby would find me dead because that is the most horrific thing to go through, especially if that corpse wasn't supposed to die any time soon – tears, tears, tears – mourning the loss of our already fucked normalcy and expressing the fears of the future through screaming out to absolutely fucking no one. My face is puffy – and I need to work quick – because I'm too tired to keep going without my flame. What's that? I'm out of time?! TIME TO START TAKING TREMENDOUS AMOUNTS OF CBD. Oh god, perfect. All the serenity, without the cognitive hinderance... yeah baby, a global pandemic is what this shit was made for. At least something is made for this. Oh fuck, I have to remember I was made for this too. Not today – oh fuck, every day is today.

ACCEPTANCE: I am passionate. I am passionate for what my life means. I feel everything and everything and it is very beautiful. I love taking care of people, Nhiki taught me how to be taken care of. My life means help. My life means protection. My life means others are better from my existence – Yes – IT IS SYMBIOTIC, because that is WHAT MY LIFE MEANS. I am indeed a vessel for your sorrows and euphoria of all to flow through one side and come out the other sparkling and validated and warmed. How did I end up working in a vitamin department of a grocery store during a fucking global pandemic? HOW DIVINE THE NATURE OF TIMING – GOD IS SHORT FOR GOOD – ALL THINGS GOOD IN GOOD TIME. I assure you, dear customer, you will do everything I can so you won't die on my watch. My girls... you will not die because you are here, with me, and I love you. I have four beautiful girls in my house, and if I can keep them all fed, Dad is happy. I have a very important woman who has graced me with her presence, and if I can keep her feeling warm and smiling and appreciated, Dad is happy. The normalcy and it's failing systems can be collapsing all around me – somehow my world remains strong, remains in love, and remains standing – REMAINS GROWING AND PATIENT AND PROTECTIVE, as does my nature.

PASSIVE-AGGRESSION: I get passive aggressive at people who actively ignore the public health and safety standards imposed around me... apparently. You know I breathe in my own air for 40+ hours every week so it shouldn't be that much trouble for someone stopping by my store to do that for 40 minutes. Public Health is Selflessness. I feel like I work in an airport with the placating, gentle overhead announcements stuck betwixt the stepmom radio tracks reminding everyone of CDC guidelines and in-store signage instructions. The bright-but-not-abrasively-bright signage directing the flow of the public becomes such background noise that I almost forget it is there until I clean my glasses again or bump into it. I got a “talking to” by my bosses that I am passive aggressive. I probably am... Passive, Aggressive. This whole thing has been a balancing act between the two of these states and I think most moments I'd rather hop off that beam except I can't hop off it so it's a good thing my cautious vibe has taught me how to stay still.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: I was raised with the understanding that patience is the best virtue and the only acceptable state to operate from is “calm, cool, collected” –  my whole life I've done hard work on balancing the importance of operating from that state with the equal importance of allowing my heart-on-fire to steady burn. Since pandemic started at the grocery store I have become LOUD AND OBNOXIOUS AND DANCING AND PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE ABOUT PUBLIC SAFETY AND HIGH AS FUCK ON CANNABINOIDS and have managed to balance that with MY REQUIREMENT to stay helpful and calm and knowledgable. I do active harm reduction with people that find themselves standing in front of me and a row of incredible forces of nature, looking for the slightest of anecdote for their respiratory/immune/blood/stress systems. And, WOW, gaining that footing in this new balance within a two month period of time has not been always graceful, or easy. Cognitive dissonance was required to achieve it and that's all on my brain's capacity to immediately shift my thought flow, like I have an internal sensory overload kill-switch.

LOVE: My Glorious Baby of Buttercups. You will thrive. I am your dad. I love you. You will always eat before me. I know you know that I know Death, baby. I convene with Death eagerly, and not one morning begins without immense gratitude to Death for Just. One. More. Day. “THANK YOU DEATH FOR SPARING MY LOVED ONES OF THE TRAGEDY THAT WILL BE THE LOSS OF ME. I LOVE YOU – BOOM SHANTI!!” The tip of my iceberg-on-fire of Love is a base idea that I want to give the world everyone... because every one deserves the goodness and glory of the world, and all it has to offer. God is short for Good. Beneath that sea surface, oh my god. It is inexpressible at best, the depths of passion I hold for the well wishes of everyone who has touched my soul. I thought before this pandemic I was already grieving everyone I know and love. I was attuned to mortality salience as sharply as could be. As I continue to know and love ANYONE, the more I grieve. Grief and Love is a tandem ride, and that is the most important lesson I have ever realized. Now, the tuning has only gotten FINER – like discovering a new energy wave that is actually measurable, the edges of my sword of feeling everything all the time are thinner and shinier and more deadly – Here and Now, I am digging pits of love and sorrow for strangers like never before. Reaching new rock bed foundations of my soul's capacity to care about the world and wanting everyone to be okay. Sparkly rock-beds! The infinite vast in my grief for my family, for my chosen family, for my Eastside community, for all of my girls leaves me in awe. I am unabashedly unafraid to speak to everyone and anyone. I MAY SAY I HAVE ALL OF THE TIME – I MAY SAY THAT YOU HAVE ALL OF THE TIME – THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU AND I HAVE ALL OF THE TIME. I refuse to squander all of this time not connecting.

And then – ohhh and then – as if Grief and Death and Life and Love have not unraveled me and twirled me back up often enough, the brightest softest Violet found herself around me, and I am stumbling, then falling, then floating for such a beauty and my grief for her is already so immense – despite all this newness, my grief for her feels ancient. Where she landed from I don't know – and where she'll go – I can't know. I think of her so gently, softly, and it turns out SHE IS GENTLE AND SOFT – so much meditation has been wishing I could more consciously grasp onto the first moment I saw her because that was the only point in time where I wasn't grieving her so immensely yet – because we caught on like my heart on fire and she can do anything she puts her mind to and she deserves to do anything she wants to do and I am privileged that it seems to be me that she wants to be held by and I'm really proud of her and I want everyone I love to meet her – sometimes it can feel really sad to be always grieving the people you love, and sometimes I question it by wondering if it pulls me away from the present – except when I realize, this practice is a mindfulness practice. GRIEF TEACHES YOU BALANCING PRESENT WITH PAST AND FUTURE BUT NOBODY ACES THESE PRACTICES ALL THE TIME, NOT EVEN DADDY.

AFTER YOU'RE GONE: NHIKI WHY DID YOU LEAVE US – OM NAMA SHIVAYA – NAM MYOHO RENGE KYO – it is always unfair (the word UNFAIR in this context is my inner child speaking) that no matter what is happening that you are not here experiencing it with me. Everything I have experienced since you left our Earthly bond (despite the beauty or despite the turmoil of it) has a permanent burnt tinge of envy of your celestial nature, with your concave shadow (this reformation of my heart) upon it. We could have pandemic'd successfully together – although we may not have known how to do this so easily as I have been without the knowledge I gained from the Death of You – now its just me and my Dad Energy digging all this out, and feeling you're just above up next to me – my missing you is so TANGIBLE it can manifest the whole energy of a room into the shape of your eyebrows, your teeth with the light from the window hitting the spit on them, your hands cracked/tracked open, or healed back shut – whatever you want. I can hear you: “You're so beautiful, Ems!” – and I can hear your bells go off and your tuning fork go off and I can feel you holding me and I can feel the REGRET IN EVERY NUCLEOUS REPLICATING WITH EACH NEW STRAND OF RNA – (REGRET HAS BEEN AN EPIGENETIC TRAIT OF MINE FOR FIVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY DAYS) – regret! about missing our night-time snuggle on our last night together! October 25 2018 was my last chance to hold you and I squandered it – because I fell asleep early – because you were high high high and the next day you finally got high enough and I am here, NOW: sometimes floating over this ground made of griefy-lovey sand dunes not wanting to use the full effort of my toes to keep my feet on the ground for too long, anymore. I do it anyway, with a full understanding of how to fix exhaustion. My grief for you is just love, with nowhere to go – and my grief is thusly my safest resting place. To wander my thoughts in my boundless love for you is to reset, relax, detach from any superficial misery and behold the most powerful thing: EVERYTHING. I remember what the soft edge of your ear feels like on the tip of my nose. I remember feeling the soft edge of your ear with the tip of my nose, and thinking, I need to remember this feeling for the rest of my life because you might not be here for it.

EUPHORIA: I grew a mustache. I left peak fertility and I have never felt more FULL of life.

CREATIVE OVERTAKING: I can see how one may deduct the opposite of “fantastic” based on the raw emotion I openly spew up and out and over. Except... thinking deeply, I couldn't feel so outwardly expressive and creatively fired if I wasn't feeling fantastic. I hold rage and serenity together, I hold grief and love together, I hold water and fire together, I hold anxiety and creativity together. Since the pandemic settled, my creative outlets have expanded into almost every thing I am up to. I made a crossword, I am making collages, I made a painting, I am wandering the neighborhood and being in awe of how lucky I am, I am making up silly songs, I am reading, I am making up love songs, I created a prettier place to sleep, I am wool felting, I am stringing my thoughts together with a new mindfulness level-up, I am etching new facets to listen with in my ears. That's the coolest part...

LISTENING: Throughout my life, I have admired most the people who can make you feel like the only person in a crowded room with how intently and wholly they listen to you. My grandparents, several grandparents. Nine times out of ten, these inspirations in the mastery of listening are people are significantly older than me. Listening is a lifelong practice, after all, so I am naturally in awe of those who have had the most time to practice. I have made it a point to cultivate this ability from an early age. Sometimes, it takes a fucking pandemic to further sharpen your coping skill tools – and your listening skills, too. I think as well, with fleetingly meeting Death more and more often as time goes on, the ability to listen more sharply naturally strengthens. Nothing is worse that not being able to remember what someone sounds like, feels like, looks like – and most importantly, their unique characteristics and mannerisms displayed when talking about something they love.

So these are the classic stages of grief and the newfound stages of grief that I am cycling betwixt and down and over and out. That may or may not answer the question of “how are you doing?” and it's the best way I can answer that one.

I get asked “how ya holding up?” and I'm wondering if that is the same inflection as the previous question, although I could take it for a spin relating to my direct physical position during these moments in time. My back hurts, but it's not terrible most days. My feet hurt, but not most days. I am fed, for most days. My menstruation got wild. My world is not collapsing, I am getting paid, the state gave me back my tax dollars and sent me a cheque for some future tax refunds of mine, I have four beautiful critters to quarantine with. I cook for them, I buy us everything we want, we get El Oasis sometimes, and I come home and the dishes are done.

I come home and the dishes are done was a thing that hadn't happened to me since my Nhiki stopped spoiling me on this plane of reality, so, it's a really special and thoughtful thing that I am treated to – and have been treated to for two months. For a long time after Nhiki left us I unconsciously stopped accepting help with physical things like bringing groceries from the car or carrying things or chores or having my food paid for or help on house maintenance and it has become a new complexity of my grieving process: to allow others to give me physical help that they believe I deserve from them, even if the thought never crossed my mind to ask. No I certainly don't have to do everything just because I don't mind doing everything. It is a special symbiosis and I have been so humbled by my baby buttercup. I love taking care of her – without feeling like I am literally taking care of her, because she loves taking care of me, without feeling like she is literally taking care of me.

Taking care of others – LOVE AND CARE is the only thing that moves me and things and time along. Time suspends when I am useless. And time suspension, well, that's a creepy fucking thing when you live majority of your consciousness on a linear plane of reality. Luckily for me there is literally/technically everyone available to love and care for. Even more luckily, I need not seek anyone. They are dancing down their own paths and those paths happen to collide with mine, and it is beautiful. How am I holding up? Um, considering I have so many fantastical souls I have the honor of caring for – I AM holding up. Not how, just am.

My boss quit our job a few days ago, and I was welcomed into her magical home. There is a deep ethereal bond between two people who have lost big loves to an untimely tragedy. Hers was five years ago – her heart aches for my measly eighteen months. My heart aches for her knowing what she's felt for so long. We talked about the guilt of waking up every day feeling good about being alive. Our loves wouldn't want it any other way, and yet... the void left behind when their suffering finally changed from theirs to ours is a big and trippy one. “Strong people” choose to fill that void with joy, we are both “strong people” although, if anyone asked us personally if we feel strong... we may disagree. Strong is the wrong word. The fact of the matter is, there is no other choice – except to crumble. And, when you are needed – when you have people to care for and attend to, the choice to crumble becomes a non-issue, a non-reality. LOVE IS EVERYTHING, and I feel everything – I am a fully feeling being. DEATH does not stop the fire that tells its story and moves within me. Absolutely not, it only makes the blues deeper and heartier, and the bright more blinding in its awe and heat. In heaven there is no heat, I've heard. Until then: I AM BURNING AND COVERED IN SALT and my business card says “Call me if your love drops dead, I know how you feel.”

The question of “do you need anything?” directed at me will only move me to flip that question back at the bearer. Do YOU need anything? Because baby, I have everything. Other than flipping the question back I tend to tell people “what I need is for you to follow the public health and safety guidelines to the best of your ability” and “stay safe” and “if you think of anything I need or want I would be honored” and I like to hope that is a creative prompt. The kind gestures and thoughtfulness I have experienced off my friends? Oh, they have taken flight with said prompt – soared! – and have filled my heart up!! Lovely!

People intuitively understand kindness, care, love, compassion. Yes these things are practices and yes they are mindfulnesses and every person still has all of this within them. This is the key understanding I try to keep at the forefront of my head, especially when protestors/outsiders storm my city to hold a Trump rally. Their anger is misdirected. Damn every safety net that was spun of illusion and damn every systemic failing that has led to a dramatic display of these human beings wearing their rifles around my downtown. Maybe because my world is so full of kindness, and love, and beauty, and patience... that I failed to remember these sorts of protests/gatherings would indeed happen the longer this shutdown went on. And HEY that’s WONDERFUL fuck remembering that.

Clearly the trifecta of my existence is LOVE and ENTROPY and MUTUAL AID – so to all of you wonderful humans who only reach out to ask me “how i'm doing” and “how i'm holding up” I want you to remember that simply you, thriving in all your glory, makes me proud to be alive and knowing you – and remember that I am constantly betwixt the sparkles of grief and love and anger and serenity and exhaustion and vibrance. So, nothing much with me has changed, even though I have overheard once or twice the theory that “everything” has changed, except the world that changed is not mine – because EVERYTHING IS LOVE. Remember to tell me about yourselves to me. I want to know how you feel, too. Because you matter, and you are essential, and so am I, and we are EVERYTHING.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

#covidclerk howareyoudoing howareyouholdingup doyouneedanything love mutualaid entropy

[bananafishmetas]

Further commentary on the ending of Banana Fish (Spoilers):

cosmicjoke

Look, I understand the controversy and upset surrounding the ending of Banana Fish.  My last post on this topic seems to have pissed some people off, which was never my intention.  But I think maybe I could have worded things a bit better, so I’m going to try again to explain why I feel like the ending of Banana Fish was so perfect.

It’s not a happy ending, and I don’t think anyone, anywhere, will try to tell you that the ending was meant to make anyone happy, or satisfied.  That’s the point.  It’s not MEANT to please the reader.  It’s meant to remain true to its narrative realism.  And in that realism, it’s meant to break the readers heart.  And boy does it do both.

I don’t think anyone would tell you, anyone with any ounce of feeling in their heart, anyway, that Ash didn’t deserve a happy ending, or that he deserved to die after all the awful shit he went through.  I think we can all agree that we would have wanted, if we had a choice, to see Ash have a happy, hopeful ending with Eiji in Japan.  We all agree that Ash DESERVED a happy ending, because he was a good person who was dealt about the shittiest hand in life a person can have.  And despite all that shit, he retained that innate goodness of heart that made him who he was.  He never became a monster, like the people who used him up and abused him over and over again.  That’s what makes him such an extraordinary character that’s deeply loved by so many people. He absolutely deserved to be happy.

But that’s the thing. Banana Fish is a story that deals in reality.  Everything that happens in the story, despite the often extraordinary, larger than life circumstances, is dealt with in a way that is, very often, brutally, painfully honest and realistic.  It doesn’t give us what should be, it gives us what IS.  And that makes perfect sense in accordance with its relation to writers like Hemingway and Salinger.  They wrote stories that dealt in brutal honesty and reality too, and both writers are referenced throughout Banana Fish.  And it’s Banana Fish’s commitment to that brutal honesty and reality that makes it an authentic piece of art.  People want a fairy tale ending, where Ash gets to ride off into the sunset with Eiji and live happily ever after, but at no point in Banana Fish are we given any indication that the story is, at any point, going to delve into the realm of unreality and fantasy, and give us such an ending.  To do so would have been a betrayal of the genuine nature of the narrative. It would have ultimately robbed it of its authenticity as a piece of art, and the story, as a result, would have been left hollow and lacking.  

Banana Fish, throughout its narrative, shows us that terrible things happen to good people, and that good people are often forced into doing terrible things.  It never shy’s away from that cruel, heartbreaking reality, and the ending is no exception.  

It affects us so deeply, and leaves us so upset, because it’s so REAL.  It feels genuine to us, it feels real, because it refuses to betray its honesty for the sake of a happy fantasy.  It remains loyal to the harsh truth of reality, and the harsh truth of Ash’s reality in particular.  Ash is a deeply damaged, broken person, who’s experiences in life are the very definition of cruelty.  Here is a boy who, since the age of seven, has experienced sexual, mental, emotional and physical abuse repeatedly and on a scale truly unfathomable to almost all of us. A boy who was forced into a life of prostitution in order to simply survive on the harsh streets of an unforgiving city.  A boy who, again out of a necessity for survival, has had to kill other human beings. A boy who, out of a desperate situation in which he was forced to choose either to save his soulmate or watch him be murdered by his best friend gone berserk in a mad, drug induced insanity, had to kill his best friend by shooting him straight through the heart.  A boy who, each time in his life that he’s tried to build real and meaningful relationships with other people, Griffin, the girl he liked when he was 14, Skip, Shorter, Eiji, he’s had to watch those people he allowed himself to grow close to either die or almost die, over and over again.  All of that combined creates a level of trauma that’s so far beyond the normal scope or understanding of a regular human being, so far beyond any discernable mechanism for coping with trauma, that to expect Ash to just get over it, for it all to magically be okay just because he moves to Japan with Eiji, is the height of unrealistic, and, again, would be a betrayal of the authenticity the story marries itself to from start to finish.  

Ash’s death is a tragedy, as his life was a tragedy, and the story is a reflection of that.  It stays true to that narrative, and never compromises on it.  That’s the point.  Life doesn’t always have a happy ending.  People that have suffered severe, irreversible trauma don’t always recover, and can’t always heal from it.  People who have suffered in the obscene and brutal ways that Ash has aren’t always going to be alright.  Sometimes it’s just too much.  For Ash, it was just too much.  Too much damage.  Too much heartache.  Too much pain.  Too much loss.  Sometimes we can’t overcome our damage, and that reality presented in this story scares people, I think, because it’s so nakedly honest and unapologetically expressed.

The ending is so god awful painful too because we see, in that moment after Ash reads Eiji’s letter, hope bloom inside him.  For an instant, this belief that maybe he can have a happy ending, when he thinks he’ll catch Eiji at the airport, and maybe go with him.  And in the next instant, he’s mercilessly reminded of that hope’s falsity. Hope springs eternal, but not always true.  Hope and happiness were never meant for Ash.  The chance for that was taken from him before he could even understand what those concepts were.  The thematic arc of the story was telling us from the start that it was going to end in tragedy.

People weren’t meant to LIKE this ending.  It wasn’t meant to make them feel good, or okay with what happened, or fulfilled.  In fact, I’d say, it’s meant to make you feel completely devastated.  As the story reflects reality, so often too does real life end in a way that leaves us feeling lost and confused and heartbroken.  Banana Fish is so good because it stays true to that sense of reality, right until the very end.

The ending doesn’t leave us feeling happy, but it sure does leave us FEELING.  Like any real piece of art would.  The emotions it conjures are immense and, for some I guess, too real. That sense of loss and hopelessness and pain it leaves us with is so effective because, again, it’s so honest. And I guess that because those emotions are so real, and felt so deeply, and with such intensity, it leaves some readers and viewers feeling angry.  Lashing out at a reality which they don’t want to accept.  The irony, of course, is that their hatred and rejection of the ending is testament to just how deeply the ending touched them.  It didn’t leave them feeling nothing, it left them feeling too much, and they then go into a state of denial, which is really just a stage of grief.  A refusal to accept.  You know Banana Fish is a true piece of art for that, in how it conjures sincere feelings of grief and mourning in us for its lead character in Ash.  We CARE about him, deeply.  We want him to be alright, because we love him.

But real art isn’t concerned with placation.  It’s concerned with truth.  So many great pieces of literature have unhappy endings, because that’s the truth of the human condition, and the condition of life in general.  Real art won’t shy away from those painful, awful truths, nor is it afraid to conjure the feelings which go hand in hand with those truths in its audience.  

With all that said, the tragedy of the ending doesn’t demand a feeling of meaninglessness or desolation at all.

Eiji’s love for Ash and Ash’s love for Eiji is still so pivotal and, ultimately, essential in how the story ends.  It’s what allows, maybe not a feeling of hope, but a feeling of peace.

You sense throughout the story that Ash knows he’s going to die.  Like he senses that his life is too fucked up, that he’s been through and had to do too many horrible things for it to last very long.  It’s like the saying of he who burns brightest burns twice as fast.  Ash is burning, and he knows it.  He’s already accepted it as an inevitable conclusion.  He doesn’t actively seek death, but he doesn’t fear, nor fight against it.  At points throughout the story, even, he asks for it, when the horror of what’s happening to him becomes too much.  He knows death is coming for him.  The only thing keeping him from giving in so easily I think is his lack of agency in how he will.  Everything has been taken from Ash, and he doesn’t want to give this last thing away. This choice in how he dies.

Eiji’s love is what finally gives him agency in that decision.

Ash died knowing Eiji loved him, and that knowledge, that certainty that he was loved, genuinely loved by another human being, without any strings or conditions attached, simply loved for himself alone, is what allowed Ash to finally find the peace in death which alluded him in life.  He no longer feels like he has to keep fighting, or struggling on through an endless malaise of misery and pain, because he’s finally found the calm and acceptance which comes with knowing he has this one, pure thing for himself, which nobody, none of his abusers, can ever touch or take away.  With everything else that’s been stolen from Ash, his innocence, his sense of agency, his own body, his own mind, Eiji’s love for him is the one thing nobody could ever steal away.  And that’s, I think, why Ash dies smiling, because it’s that knowledge, that he was worthy of another human being’s true love, that at last shows him that he was a human being himself.  Not an animal.  Not a monster.  He was a human being worthy of love.

Ash’s death is heartbreaking, and brutal, but there’s deep consolation to be had in knowing he spent his final moments with the feeling of Eiji’s love for him alive inside his heart, allowing him at last to feel like a person deserving, worthy of love.

It’s that which allows Ash to finally let go of his struggle, and let’s death’s embrace take hold of him.  It’s his own. Eiji’s love, and his choice to let go of life.

It doesn’t make the ending any less heart wrenching or brutal.  It doesn’t make us any less devastated by Ash’s death.  But it gives us a sense of peace, in knowing, even if we are left feeling lost and heartbroken, Ash himself left life with the fulfillment of knowing he was loved.

cosmicjoke

Thinking more on the reasons why Ash chose to let himself die, I haven’t seen anyone mention how really, it’s probably a combination of all the reasons stated, not just a single one.  Ash’s wish to protect Eiji, Ash’s own weariness at his constant struggle to survive, Ash’s overwhelming trauma, and Ash’s contentment at finally finding true unconditional love and acceptance from another person, immeasurably grateful for the chance to know how that felt, even if just for the briefest of time in a life otherwise burdened by suffocating pain and sadness.  All of these factors no doubt contributed to his ultimate decision in the end.

One thing I was thinking about too was that, given how we see Eiji’s letter prompt Ash to try and make it to the airport, whether to see Eiji one last time, or to actually go with him to Japan, I think once Lao’s attack happened, Ash was brutally reminded of the danger that followed him everywhere he went, how it would never end, that he would never be a safe person to be around, and that reminder, taken with the realization of what he had been about to do, how his vow never to see Eiji again had crumbled in the face of Eiji’s love, and his love for Eiji,  Ash probably felt fearful of his resolve cracking again.  With the reinforcement of his conviction of the danger he would put Eiji in were he to be in his life, he decided then and there, in that moment, to eliminate that possibility by letting himself die, rather than risking his resolve once more abandoning him.  I think, as well, Ash understood that Eiji himself wouldn’t be able to stay away from him, were he to come back to New York, that Eiji WOULD come back to New York, and it would be the same dilemma, with Ash putting him in danger simply by being near him.  So, then, Ash letting himself die was his final act of sacrifice for the one person who had given him true unconditional love and acceptance.  His final act of love for the one person who had made him feel human.  His final gift, for the one person who had let him be the boy he truly was.

There’s also the concept of, if you love someone enough, you let them go.  Ash had always understood that sometimes, in order to protect the ones you loved, you had to hurt them.  Sometimes, in order to protect the ones we love, we have to be willing to push them away.  We have to be willing to hurt their feelings.  “Tough love”, as it’s called.  Sometimes needing to be harsh, even unkind, in order to help, in order to protect.  Willing to sacrifice feelings and sentiment for the practical safety of another.  We see this with Ash trying to always send Eiji back to Japan.  Even knowing it would hurt Eiji, in the long run, he knew it would be better for him, and so he’s willing to incur Eiji’s anger and maybe even hate, to take that burden onto himself, in order to help Eiji.  I think the same applies to letting himself die.  Ash could only ever see himself as bringing Eiji pain and as endangering Eiji’s life, and he was willing to sacrifice Eiji’s love for him to keep Eiji safe.  He doubtless knew Eiji would be hurt by him dying.  That that hurt might even turn to hate.  Ash was willing to sacrifice the love Eiji had for him in order to ensure Eiji had a long, well lived life.  I think it also ties back into Ash’s inability to love himself, or to ever see himself as deserving of Eiji’s love, even as he knew he had it.  Because Ash was unable to see his own worth, it’s likely he felt Eiji would eventually come to the same realization, and be able to move on from him.  That Eiji would eventually realize Ash hadn’t been worth his love after all, and get over his death.  Again this comes back to Ash and the best way he knew how to express his love for others.  He was always willing to let someone hate him if it meant keeping them safe.  He was willing to let them think he was a jerk, or an asshole, as long as it meant they would be okay.  

To Ash, Eiji’s hate or anger would be worth keeping Eiji safe. When you’re willing to let someone hate you because you think their lives will be better if they do, pushing them away from you for their own good, taking on the burden of their anger and hate so they can be alive and free.  When you think you’ll only hurt someone by letting them love you, the way Ash felt letting Eiji love him would, then it makes all the more sense why he was willing to let himself die.   In some ways, that’s the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate show of love, when you’re willing to sacrifice someone’s love for you because it’s the only way to keep them safe. I think this, too, probably played a part in Ash’s decision to let go.   He never wanted to hurt Eiji, and I don’t think he ever knew just how much his death would, ultimately, again tying into Ash’s inability to see his own worth.  He was only doing what he thought was right, expressing his love the only way he really knew how, by sacrificing himself.

Ash needed Eiji to live, and if that meant he had to die, then that was okay.

#Banana Fish #Ash Lynx #Eiji Okumura #Meta

[canimal]

I wanted to write a time travel fanfic and about Evan Rosier/Hermione Granger as a main pairing but... I'm stuck. I didn't choose the most redeemable character (Rosier was killed by Moody after a magical fight) and it's complicated bc how Hermione can fall in love with someone like Evan no matter how charming and smart he is ? How did you deal with that (Hermione, Death Eater and their ideology) ? All I can see is something like Jaime/Brienne (GoT) and a very slow burn. But it still feel wrong.

(Please bear with me as this is going to be a super long response.  I’ll put it underneath the cut so those who want to read it can read it and those who want to scroll past it can do so quickly.)

To be perfectly honest, if a story feels “wrong”, you shouldn’t be writing it.  Trying to force something that you don’t feel comfortable writing and don't fully believe in will not only make for a story that feels forced and unnatural to the reader, but it will also become a story that you will not enjoy writing.  (Never forget that this is our hobby, not our job.). Eventually, you would likely hit a wall where the story was unable to progress further and you’d be stuck.  Lots of writers try to write a story with certain elements or pairings that are “trendy” and end up stuck because they forced a story.  Writing should flow fairly smoothly.  I’m not saying that writers should never stumble or feel blocked, but I am saying that if you’re not allowing a story to remain organic and grow naturally, you will find you quality and likely your own enthusiasm and enjoyment in writing the story suffer.

Why do you want to write a story with Evan Rosier?  Is it because you find his character fascinating or you want to uncover more about him?  Or is it because he’s not a character that’s written about a lot and you’re hoping to stand out in a growing sea of Death Eater stories?  

I promise I’m not trying to be rude or condescending, even if it seems like it.  This is an honest question.  If your answer is on the first couple, awesome.  Go for it.  

But, if you’re hoping writing about him will get you instant recognition and a large number of followers on your story immediately, I’m sorry to tell you that that probably won’t happen.  Most readers don’t want to take a chance on unknown characters.  They just don’t.  I’ve mentioned this many times, but when I first started writing Thorfinn Rowle as more than just a one-dimensional bad guy in the background in first, The Dark Mage’s Captive and then Parolee and His Princess, I frequently got PMs and reviews asking me who the fuck Thorfinn Rowle even was and that I might actually get more people to read my stories if I didn’t write such weird pairings. 🙄 (Let’s not forget the troll who commented “This should’ve been a Dramione” on literally every single chapter at least twice.  Sigh.) So it’s both amusing and incredibly frustrating to have readers in the fandom announce that Thormione is their OTP when most of them wouldn’t have given my stories the time of day when I was writing them and they were the ONLY Thorfinn stories in existence on FFN for certain and probably everywhere else.  Because so few people were interested in reading a story with Thorfinn as the main love interest when I was actually writing Parolee and His Princess, if I was only writing the story in an attempt to stand out and not because that was the story I wanted to write, then I likely would’ve gotten frustrated and quit before I ever finished.

So, if you’re serious about writing an Evan Rosier story because it’s what you want to write, I wish you the best of luck.  It’s always challenging to write a character with little to no background info in canon.  Challenging can also be a great deal of fun.  If we never challenge ourselves as writers, we won’t ever get any better.  Writers must be willing to learn and try new things if they want to get better.  Practice is crucial.  Too many writers (professional and otherwise) get to a place where they don’t believe they need to improve and their writing gets stagnant.  It’s sad.

Now to your question about how or why Hermione might fall in love with someone with such a different and dangerous ideology... there are many different ways this can be tackled.  I must stress thought that you make sure the decision you make makes sense within your story.  Don’t try to force something.  Let it grow naturally.

First of all, I don’t believe anyone is unredeemable.  (Or irredeemable. Same meaning, right?) Perhaps it’s because of my own personal faith and religious beliefs, but I don’t believe anyone is wholly evil or wholly good.  Yes, even in this hyper-partisan world we now live in, I don’t believe that anyone (even those who might disagree with me) are pure evil.  This has actually gotten me a lot of grief from angry trolls and super sensitive former readers alike.  I’ve been accused of being an “apologist” for all manner of depravity including, but not limited to, rape, violence, murder, racism, all the bad things ever, etc. simply because I believe that no is unredeemable... irredeemable.  Ugh, whatever.  You know what I mean.  

Everyone has good qualities in them, even those who appear to be nothing but evil.  Far fewer good qualities than most certainly, but still there.  I’m also a firm believer that people, even really bad people, can have an existential change of heart and want to be a better person.  Many just have to be given the opportunity to change.  Of course, I don’t believe that they shouldn’t be punished for their crimes or they should be excused just because there’s something good about them.  I’ll never understand why I’ve been accused of being an apologist.  🙄 Some people are truly exhausting.

For every story about a Death Eater falling for Hermione, there’s a different explanation.  If you’ve ready any, you’re probably already familiar.  Because I try very hard to make every story I write unique from the others I’ve already written, I’ve mixed it up.  Antonin only joined for knowledge and power without realizing until too late what was really happening.  Rodolphus was pressured by his wife in one and his grief and depression made him fall further in than he meant to.  Sometimes the Death Eater was pressured by family to follow in their footsteps; others by their peers.  There are countless reasons why people join these kinds of groups.  Disillusionment, looking for a place to belong... you really could make it anything.  I’ve known people who were drawn in and brainwashed by cults because they were desperate for purpose, for belonging, for a feeling like their life actually mattered.  It can be super easy to get sucked into a cult and takes years to get out... if you can.

JKR wrote the Death Eaters as being simply bad for bad’s sake.  They’re almost all one-dimensional.  No person is actually one-dimensional.  They have hopes and fears and dreams just like everyone else.  Maybe they thought they believed in the sort of pro-Pureblood world that Voldemort imagined, but once they got in they were in over their head.  Reality rarely meets our expectations.  People grow and change.  Even my own beliefs have changed as I’ve grown older.  What I used to think was important no longer is and there are issues I have done a complete 180 on as I’ve grown up and begun to live in what I call “grownup reality”.  (Life is much different for me than it was even when I was just in my twenties and how I see the world has changed drastically in some instances.). So if experience and time has been able to shape and change my beliefs and even my values to a minute degree, why could the same not be said for a Death Eater who discovered all was not as it seemed when they were recruited?

It’s also important to remember that no one thinks, acts, or believes like everyone in their set group one hundred percent of the time.  Each individual has their own thoughts and beliefs.  Maybe they joined because they hated Muggles, but then they realized they were wrong to do so.  Maybe their family pressured them to join but they didn’t agree.  Maybe they were afraid to die so they joined.  I know a lovely man whose father died in World War II fighting for the Nazis - not because he was an admirer of Hitler and believed in everything dreadful and evil the Nazi party believed in.  No, his father was conscripted into the German Army and fought because he would’ve been arrested in the best case scenario and executed in the worst.  His young wife and their two small children could’ve also been in danger had he refused.  It’s a terribly sad story.  And hardly the only one.  That’s just one example.  History has countless other incidents all over the world when scared people fought and fell in line with a terrible leader because they had no other choice. Or at least it seemed like they had no other choice.  Not everyone is strong and brave enough to stand up to injustice and evil when their lives are on the lines.  Humans by our very nature can be quite cowardly at times.

It’s possible that a person who has done evil deeds or believed just absolutely atrocious things could want to change and be a better person.  Though it wouldn’t be easy, someone like Hermione could choose to forgive them for their past.  Especially if they’re truly remorseful.

Of course, it’s also unfortunately true that there are sometimes relationships that are just absolutely toxic.  Love can make idiots of us all.  How many women (and men to an extent though not nearly as often) see the potential in a man and want to change them into something good and perfect?  It happens so often it’s a cliche.  Woman falls in love with bad boy.  Wants to change him.  Stays with him with hopes and dreams that he’ll stop being so awful.  Is disappointed over and over again.  Have you ever known someone who fell in love with a truly terrible person and even though their relationship wasn’t healthy whatsoever never seemed to quit them?  Kept going back for more even when everyone told them it was a terrible idea?  I’m pretty sure you have.  You might’ve even been in one of those relationships yourself.  I know I was.  No, he might not have been a murderous minion of a madman, but he certainly had his terrible qualities that I thought I could help him get past.  Tale as old as time.  

I could go on and on and on about reasons why Hermione might fall in love with a completely unsuitable man who might even wish her dead, but there’s no reason.  It could be for a thousand reasons.  And don’t forget, Hermione isn’t exactly some innocent paragon of virtue herself.  She’s pretty dark even in canon.  Trapping a lady in a jar?  Cursing a girl’s face possibly permanently?  Leading another witch into a forest knowing there are centaurs in there who are dangerous?  And those are just the things that unobservant Harry noticed!  Who knows what she was doing off-stage?  She has her own darkness and her own demons to fight.  She’s not perfect nor is she some pure angelic creature who only uses light magic for good.  Nah, she’s pretty twisted at times. (On a side note - Please don’t try to write her as being all-powerful, perfect, and never do anything the least bit bad.  That’s not her character at all.  It bothers me to see her written as some sort of pearl-clutching virgin who has never done anything bad in her entire life.  That’s NOT the Hermione I read in the books.)

You just have to find the right motivation in your own story.  If you’re not forcing the story and allowing it to develop naturally, you’ll figure it out.  If you’re forcing it, I’m afraid you’re going to stay stuck.

I hope this can be so some help!  Sorry I’m rambled on and on and on.

[elasticmatchbox]

i was pregnant

I was pregnant, and now I’m not. 

We have this narrative of miscarriages. Pain, blood, shock, grief. Silence. 

We don’t talk about it. We don’t share our experiences. We aren’t given space to mourn. We pull each other aside to divulge our own histories, our own pain. We whisper quietly after the topic has come up casually. We send a meaningful text or email, after the fact, to express our condolences and solidarity. We don’t tell people about our pregnancies because the risk of a miscarriage is so high, and then we don’t talk about the miscarriage because no one knew about the pregnancy. We suffer silently, we grieve alone. 

My first positive pregnancy test was a Tuesday morning. We’d tested over the weekend and watched the HCG levels from my trigger shot go down to zero. After that, any line that showed up the next few days was a positive result. Tuesday morning we woke up at 5:45 to test. I’d get up, pee on a stick, put it down, and Elisabeth would start the timer. We’d wait our three minutes, then she’d pick up the test from the bathroom and carry it to the light in the kitchen. We’d hold hands and suspend our breath, and look on the count of three. And sure enough, Tuesday morning, a faint blue line appeared. 

Wednesday morning, faint blue line. 

Thursday morning, faint blue line. 

The box says we’re pregnant. Forums, conventional wisdom, everyone says a line is a line and a line means pregnant. It wasn’t getting darker, but we read account after account of lines staying faint until weeks into the pregnancy. 

Thursday we went to the hospital for a blood draw. This was our big day, our beta test. Today was the day we confirm the results we’ve gotten at home. They took my blood and I went to work. All day I checked my phone between sessions, watching for a missed call. At 3pm, I got a voicemail. I called Elisabeth from my office and we listened together, breath suspended. “Congratulations, Katherine. You are pregnant.” She immediately burst into tears and I gasped, unable to feel the floor beneath me. We listened to it over and over, letting it sink in. This is it. We’re pregnant. 

We got instructions for a follow-up test, two days later. We ordered What to Expect When You’re Expecting, on rush delivery. Elisabeth picked me up at work, bouquet of flowers in hand. We ordered a pizza to celebrate. I referred to myself as “we” and repeated “I’m pregnant” under my breath. Elisabeth kissed my belly over and over. We giggled, we cried. We drowned ourselves and each other in gratitude. We’d finally made it. 

IVF had been grueling. My body responded well to the drugs, which produced great results but made every inch of me, inside and out, hypersensitive to the world. I cried constantly. My breasts grew a full cup size over the course of a week. My belly puffed out as my ovaries swelled. Ultrasounds became even more excruciating than usual. Being injected with so many hormones made me feel tiny and desperate to be held. It also made the physical act of holding me too painful to bear. But at the end of it all, we had seven frozen embryos and a perfect, healthy embryo burrowing into my body and making a home. It was worth every second. 

Saturday morning we took another pregnancy test. Faint line. Still positive. Still pregnant. We walked to the hospital. We talked about ways to tell my parents, baby names, maternity leave plans. I continued to murmur “I’m pregnant” to myself and touch my belly whenever I was alone. We finished the second blood test and came home to What to Expect at our door. We dove in and skimmed through, marking the chapters we wanted to read first. We made a healthy lunch and Elisabeth wrapped me up in blankets, wanting “us” to stay warm. 

And the phone rang. 

“We’re so sorry, Katherine. Your levels have dropped. It looks like a biochemical pregnancy. Come back on Monday for more bloodwork. I’m so sorry.” 

If my heart could twist itself into a knot and drop out of my chest, it did in that moment. We collapsed into each other. My sobs overtook the room and my heart crumbled. I cried for hours. 

And for three excruciating days, nothing happened. No cramps, no bleeding. No outward signs of a miscarriage. Just the knowledge that the little thing inside of me, which had grown to the size of a sesame seed, was no longer viable, and we were waiting for it to go. It could be days, or weeks. My sesame seed was dying inside me and all I could do was wait for it to be over. 

Monday’s blood test confirmed that I was no longer pregnant. Tuesday the pain started, and I had one of the worst periods I’ve ever had in my life. The pain was unreal. With endometriosis, cramps start in my uterus, and then extend to my lower back. The pain goes up to my stomach and throbs every time I eat or drink. The endo is growing on my sciatic nerve, so I get burning nerve pain for days that makes laying down and sitting unbearable. And during all of this, in the pain and the blood and the shock and the grief, my little sesame seed left my body and I was no longer pregnant. 

I was five weeks pregnant, and I hadn’t told anybody. A few friends knew where I was in the process, and knew if I wasn’t bubbling over with happiness, that something had gone wrong. I confided in a few close friends at work that I was having a miscarriage, but the rest of the world knew nothing. 

I was five weeks pregnant, and then I wasn’t. And while my little sesame seed never got the chance to become a baby, it was a relationship, and it was a loss. The whole idea is that you keep your pregnancy a secret until the risk for miscarriage is over, but it leaves the grief of miscarriage, when it happens, disenfranchised, with no place to simply be. I went to work like everything was fine. I made small talk with clients, with strangers, as my body purged itself of a pregnancy that was no longer viable. The heaviness of that loss hasn’t left me, and I am still in mourning over what could have been. 

Today we would have started telling people. Today would be the end of my first trimester, when it would be safe to share our news with the world. Today I could announce that after four failed IUI cycles, surgery, and IVF, we were finally pregnant. And instead, I’ve had two more mind-alteringly painful periods and am back on hormones for yet another try. Our What to Expect book is tucked away in a corner of our home where I can’t find it, because I couldn’t bear to look at it until it was finally time. The little stocking we had saved to announce to our parents that our family was growing has been put away for another year. The picture of our embryo, the one that could have been, is buried deep in Elisabeth’s pile of papers so I won’t accidentally stumble on it and ruin my own day. Today I took my estrogen pills, my baby aspirin, changed my estrogen patch, and waited one more day for our next little miracle to make a home in my body. 

I don’t want to be silent anymore about how hard this process is. My heart has broken over and over again, as my dream for a family gets pushed away by another month. My life, my career, my dreams are on hold as I do everything I can in a process where I have almost no control. I don’t want to carry this secret anymore. I don’t want my infertility and miscarriage to be shameful and guarded and things that don’t get talked about. I don’t want to hold this by myself. Miscarriage is an excruciating and totally disenfranchising process of grief, and I don’t want to perpetuate silence around it any longer. 

I was pregnant, and now I’m not, and I’m really fucking sad and I’m still grieving and I’m not sure I’m ready for another try but I’m pushing through the doubt and I’m scared and excited and nervous and it’s constantly on my mind and I am equal parts so upset with my body and trying to encourage my body to do this thing it’s supposed to do naturally and it leaves me in a constant state of uncertainty about what happens next and I don’t want to be quiet about that any more. I had a miscarriage and I lost my pregnancy and I am grieving. 

Pain, blood, shock, grief. No more silence. 

[cummunication]

The before and after of Trauma

If my life were a movie, it’d be a film where you’re brought past to present, switching between the two. 2017 is coming to an end and it was a transformative year with extraordinary breakthroughs. I’m ending on a high note, and for the first time in a long time I’ll admit, there’s not much I would change in my life. It started with a budding romance; I began dating someone from my job and we were together from January till May. Although this relationship had some triggering and conflictual moments for the both of us, I walked away with additional knowledge. Relationships help you mature, and I don’t regret any of mine since they’ve aided me in being more resilient. This year I realized not all love has to end in tragedy. I dated more this year than ever before and this is beneficial. I used to avoid dating & people in general because I felt weary of allowing anyone to get close to me. I was convinced I couldn’t get hurt if I built a high enough wall. Nothing transpired from these dates, nonetheless, it’s vital to put ourselves out there and face our fears. If we stay in our comfort zone, we prevent ourselves from reaching our fullest potential. Dating builds character so you recognize what you will and won’t accept. It also helps to come to terms with the fact there’s many fish in the sea… some are sharks while others are dolphins, you just need to find the right ones. You can try & protect yourself from heartbreak by isolating and forbidding love, yet this only makes your heart grow cold and numb. People do this because they are terrified of rejection [I would know] however when we do this we reject not only the bad but also the good. This year I got back together with my ex-boyfriend. This was unplanned and not called for. Although it took me about a year to try and move on, when I saw him randomly in June, I realized I never genuinely let go, and I wasn’t over it at all. Yes, the month or two we dated again was re-traumatizing, still, I trust the universe made our paths cross for a reason. Some may say closure; others are convinced I was just weak. Loving him was like driving lost in the dark without headlights. When you are away from a person you love for an extended period of time, you begin to miss the person you wished they were… you grieve the loss of what could’ve been. You idealize them in your mind and put them on a pedestal they may not deserve. It’s less painful to remember the tragic times & easier to imagine the good, no matter how few. It took me getting back together with him to see how much progress I’d made in the last year without him. The year without him I felt so alone, but I never felt as lonely as when we were together. Love can sweep you off your feet & before you know it, you have all the wind knocked out of you. A large portion of this year was spent depressed and enveloped in my eating disorder. Even though depression sucks to put it lightly, I know I wouldn’t be where I am currently without having experienced such lows. Currently, my depression is in remission as well as my eating disorder. I still have setbacks of course, but I’ve developed the tools to get my shit together a lot quicker. I’m a firm believer of people, places or things entering your life for a reason, to teach you a lesson or to be a guide to help you blossom. We might not see it at the time, and it’s hard to feel gratitude when we are drowning in our sorrows. It’s easy to thank God and love life when things go our way; on the contrary, it’s not as simple when things keep going wrong. We say “why me?” and doubt Gods existence because if there was a God, this wouldn’t happen right? I believed this for a while too. When I look back on my 23 years of life, it’s challenging to not view it from a “before and after” point of view. I can’t remember who I was before 21 years old. I remember things that happened; many events I wished hadn’t occurred. I used to be trusting, naive and wore my heart on my sleeve. Part of me is sad when I dwell on the innocence lost, while another is thankful. Today my mom stated I am “emotionally scarred” from the last two years. I’ve known this for a while but it’s worth mentioning; we all have scars. Some are physical & some invisible. In my experience, the internal scars have been tougher to heal than the external. Something I learned this year is that everyone has their own pace of healing, and you can’t compare your healing journey to someone else’s. Last night I was asked “what did you see in your ex?” It would’ve been faster to blow off this question, to ignore it or proclaim “I don’t know, I was young & dumb and he was a jerk” Blaming others is the easy way out. Truthfully, I don’t blame my ex for anything, even when he had no problem blaming me for everything. I hold him responsible for his actions but I also take responsibility for my role in our dysfunction. When I was together with him (for simplicity, I’ll call him Jackson here on out) I became who he wanted me to be. Often I want to bury this side of me, erase the memories of my past. It makes me feel ashamed that I let someone treat me so poorly; he treated me like nothing so I became nobody. Nevertheless, that part of me is still inside; I realized that a few months ago. We all have a side of us we hide; that is small and frightened and craves love and acceptance. We must make peace with this side of ourselves, acknowledging the wounded child within us, he or she carries the weight of the stories we tell ourselves; that the way people treat us is equivalent to our value as a person. When we quit feeding ourselves these lies, and wake up to the idea that we don’t need others approval to be worthy of love, we have a shot at self-love. Jackson and I demanded too much of each other. He wanted to control me and have complete power, and I wanted him to fill the ache inside. He used me and I guess you could say I used him too, but for different reasons. When you feel as if you no longer have a say in relationship, it’s impossible to flourish. Jackson’s rancidity spread through me like an infection; but I was willing to grin and bear it in exchange for [a false sense of] belonging. Before 2015, I was coy, always pleasant, afraid to rock the boat. I wish I could say I’m a badass who gives no fucks but who are we kidding? I’m aware change takes time. Lifelong habits don’t disappear overnight. A people pleaser inside me still lives. I continue ignoring my needs and accommodate from time to time… but not nearly as much. We are convinced if we set boundaries or aren’t a doormat maybe somebody wont love us or they’ll leave. If your opinion doesn’t matter to your significant other, it’s a blessing if they leave, trust me. There’s a quote that says something along the lines of “we don’t know a person until we don’t give them their way.” Real love is not conditional. Now, I make my desires top priority in my life & the person I look to please most is me. This year, I began to find my voice; a voice that had been taken from me and unfortunately lost. I see how you can still be assertive and a kind person. In fact, you are more capable of loving if you are willing to communicate your limits and be authentic. One of the biggest takeaways from this last year is no longer identifying as having PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). I do not deny PTSD being one of the worst things I’ve underwent in life. Today, I identify more with PTG (post traumatic growth). I thought my heartbreak would kill me. Some days, I wished it would since I was in so much agony. My biggest fear is loss, abandonment, the feeling of grief [this could be linked to the loss of my father]. I used to say “I would never get back with Jackson since I can’t handle losing him again” Obviously, I doubted my strength. Either way, I did lose him, twice. My worst nightmare at the time, manifested and I still survived. I trust if I can survive that, I can survive anything. Falling in love is scary shit. We hesitate to be vulnerable because it’s like we’re on a plane while your lover is the pilot. They maneuver how high we fly and if we go up in smoke. It doesn’t have to be like that though. Last night, I was on my way somewhere and I felt butterflies. It was unbelievable and simultaneously, horrifying. I hadn’t felt that way in quite a while and frankly, I didn’t wish to. But I know feelings, like anything else in life are temporary and thank god! Instead of panicking that it won’t work out, I can relax knowing “rejection is God’s protection.” Cliché, but true. I’m ending this year knowing my worth; practicing trusting my beautiful intuition which I frequently ignored. My instinct is my friend and I will not turn my back on her anymore. I advise you do the same. Others can try and tell you what’s good for you or what’s not, but you already know the answer if you listen to the voice inside. From the outside, I see my life as before and after yet I also understand my circumstances and past do not define me. We can choose to change our story, thereby changing our life. Or we can choose to own our stories, and own our lives. Either way, the choice is ours

#metoo #me too campaign #me too movement #trauma #trauma survivors #domesticviolencesurvivor #dvsurvivor #abusesurvivor #blog #blogger

[puresponk-blog]

From Start To Beginning. How And When. What & Why... My Story So Far.

I’ve always thought from when I was young I wasn’t the same as anyone else, I’ve shown people who I am even if sometimes I haven’t the clue who that is, but after everything, I think I’m starting to realise you only know how to live life the day you go six feet under.

From The Start To Beginning

I remember an ungodly amount from being as young as 5/6 and onwards, Im born and raised in England in a small town called Barnstaple, nothing major, I remember our first house, living with my mum and dad, in a very tiny two bedroom semi-detached house. After so long being there I remember Sam being born, from literally two days after he popped out he’s been there ever since. I was to understand why I think why I do, how I am and why? Just a little more so, finding yourself is the worst thing you can do. We are working class and very had much... iv never been on holiday, and I guess it's okay, can't be sad about something you never had I guess.

I remember things, days, moments from living there even if I don’t think of it, I remember walking to school, living next to a girls house who’d walk with me, one of my friends would live two minutes up the drive, another who I only saw at school but have known since we were babies, not so much know just our mums were friends, still are but never meet.

I like remembering how I used to think Father Christmas was real, the little things like the tooth fairy, even the odd few pounds would give me the power to feel what it’s like to decide what I want, even if it’s a sweet, toy car, it’s special.

We lived there for a good few years before moving about 20 minutes more so next to town, I kinda figure this’s when I remember a lot about life thinking about it now.

Everything seemed to get a little more and more unfair as I started to realise that some of these kids would have these new toys, but it didn't matter to the sense that it would bother be that much... young and naive as they say. Mom XY Dad So you kinda got a feel for what it was like living in the old house because it doesn’t matter as much when you’re young and don't remember. My mum is sweet and in some sense innocent, but she absorbs life instead of steals it, take things how it is just she hasn’t had a holiday, never been out of the country, hasn’t had many boyfriends at all, very content in how you just live and take things how they come. She’s into some mellow stuff and loves music, a huge music fan and was influenced loads from her mother as I in a way.

My dad is a little different, he’s into his old time rock a’ billy sound, more vintage metal if anything, his dad wasn’t the greatest influence though… he left him with his mother and didn’t do the most knowledgeable things, I remember him telling me a story of how his dad used to take him when he was a baby and go to hospital car parks and try of kinda not lure but use him as a little introduction to the lady business… and then left around the same year as when it kinda got a bit much I imagine, but is 100% take things when you do and don’t really help yourself if you can’t be fucked… very down to earth and will take anything if he thinks he can handle it, not a serious man at all, also an alcoholic and has a problem.

How & When

When we moved into the new house I still went to the same school, as my brother started at this point, kinda when you’re growing up and hit that age when you don’t wanna be treated like a kid anymore, music wise I wasn’t very varied, but wasn’t into that side as of yet just getting a taste almost, dipping your toe into the pool. This is when it stated getting pretty understandable, it wasn't okay anyway, wrong even but didn’t really know why in some ideas.

My mum caught on from when we weren’t born yet that my dad just wasn’t going to do anything with himself, he’s drinking got worse and worse not going out, treating many of us to the little things, just a drive would be like a two day holiday out of town with the experience just to go out almost… she didn’t love him anymore and used us as a starting point or excuse if you will to stop drinking go out more and live life but never got more than another town.

Around this time it got harder to understand many things, I was getting bullied from other kids for things like how I looked, pale ginger kid who wasn’t that amazing at a lot, as it was more everything at once around then, every day was just getting more tackling, going home to arguing constantly and awful silence to total screech and slaughter house environment… to wake up and get picked on it was just hard.

By now it’s getting to the end of primary school, there’s another baby on the way, I remember seeing dad trying for a few times taking us out but just to the beach the odd time, nothing major but probably proved more I his mind than actually proving something, he must have pulled off another stunt like oh let’s have another kid I’ll fix everything but probably didn’t last long, I remember him having cans next to his bed, waking up and just drinking from morning to day, everything you’d have in a normal home from what I could see was not in our favour, yet I guess you got to take it how it is…

… Anyone who knows what it was like as a kid must know how day to day you don’t feel the same when you’re older, the days are much slower and have more meaning, almost every day was a lesson, so you really pick up everything around you, and when there’s nothing but grief, stress, hatred it feels a lot more than it should do, kinda what makes me think everything stays with you when you’re younger…

I was in school and this is secondary, so the teenaged years are here… It was coming up to my birthday before I even started… not saying from now until I was born I never got anything or didn’t experience a lot, I joined a tennis club which only two people out of the entire school went… and wasn’t half bad at it at all, and cricket we ended up doing school leave play as well as football.

I was the defender in the school team and didn’t loose to any school for four years running, something silly like 9-2 every other year, so I wasn’t not doing anything, more so to just leave home so I don’t have to get shit from each ear about alcoholism or how she never touches him and how she has to sleep in the kids bedroom (Sam & Kane, Kane being the youngest now) cuz she can’t stand him all that shit… but he wasn’t leaving because his one stubborn man when he goes the ideas of pure bullshit in his head… mum would say he fools for his own bullshit…

I asked for an electric guitar for my birthday, which means money, something we don’t have much of, but I kicked and screamed and did this for days, I was in my first year of secondary school coming to 13/14.

They got my one tho, and couldn’t have been more grateful, by this time my music range was the complete opposite direction as anyone who I knew, mainstream wasn’t in my vocabulary… listening to hard rock, heavy metal, screamo, all the old stuff everything under what music stand for when everyone who I knew had the new 50 cent ringtone and got phones and hand this, that, and everything I’ve never thought of even having… so when I saw these guys making these songs which made me feel something totally different than I’ve ever felt I wanted to do that.

But still he didn’t leave, not the normal thing to do so the arguments went on for years… if you can think of crying and how shit is was STILL getting bullied not ever having many friends at all…

I think why I think like I do is because of my parents, kinda like that for everyone... I think if someone doesn't fit in it's because they're weird not because they're an individual? Could be very dependent, but from my experience... once you know you don't fit it, you never really will...

Come to day to day life it was get up, listen to screaming, go school, feel shit as fuck, go home, and feel even more shit so say to day life wasn’t pleasant but the appreciation for things like a roof or food just seemed mandatory so why’d I ever feel special?

By now it come to choosing GCSEs, I got really into art by this time and more so towards drumming, before I even chose my gcses I saw an electric kit in school so when I realised that I could go to this music room and not have to deal with anything but me in a room with music I could play cuz I couldn’t at home made a difference… and I ended up being pretty good when it comes to the drums as my alcoholic father says I got a real talent… as all drunks talk pure shit…

So now I begged and begged for a drum kit… and my dad some how got one because my mum didn’t work but dad worked in a factory…

I remember watching this video of trivium and it was the lead guitarist… and I was real into my music by now, and creative side to everything, in primary I loved English writing about wonders and things instead everyone else loved maths and I hated it, if never know what they were talking about and ever felt good when it happened…

But I saw him head banging with this sharp black Flying V just looking how I felt, and he had hair down to his shoulders or longer even, and thinking I want to look like that… I want the feeling of your hair going everywhere not seeing your face just the look, so when I bring it up sometimes as a joke but being deadly serious on the inside dad was very against it. He was very metal nothing poncey dying your hair like… but mum being very flower power opinionated for me to go for I touched me to do it and do things if you want to and think don’t worry what they thing…

So this pale ginger kid with a broken family who had fuck all to do other than play music and relate to heavy music has now dyed his hair from orange, or brown with a highlight of orange just orange in the sun to black mid length and very unpopular so I didn’t really help myself…

At all…

Coming towards the end of the year I had a little group of friends that looked like me, very emo very scene, very outcast very used to taking shit for literally anyone and everyone… so it was kinda a sanctuary, then the people who I thought were my friends for so much of a year decided to do something which kinda made things worse…

I went to the park where we kinda hung out when I only ever got a pity invitation from one of the guys or sometimes girls, like they’d be like why’d you bring him but always behind my back, I met them and we hung out in this girls house and wanted to check my Facebook and when it come to me leaving I forgot to sign out, so they went on all like five six of them threatened a bunch of different 18 year olds and dealers they’d pick up from and kids from our school… all thinking it’s be because they want to believe it, they didn’t know me so would’ve assumed the worse but shit it was so obvious… so it figuratively no one liked me again.

After that day for a solid few weeks it just didn’t feel safe to go anywhere, do anything I had to stay in this horrid house, I kinda turned to music a lot because I cut my hair down sort so it was natural, I left anyone who ever hurt me and moved towards the same friends as I did in school, the one who lived up the drive, and my other who was kinda raised with, kinda hung out with their friends and then on to be some of the best people and funniest people I’ve ever met.

They were also outcasts just not visually anything, stereotypically they were the nerds, living online with a controller in their hand doing nothing all day.

I kinda always picture the worst happening because that's always what's happened, now a days it's more you choose what happens and not being afraid to tell people what I think, it help a lot when in the middle of the first year I did kickboxing... and was the best in the class, I took it seriously which lead me to ranking up belts twice or even three times more than anyone else, I soon become a brown belt, one off a black but the teacher was flaky and we stopped going, me and my dad that is... I met my first actual girlfriend there, it was the teachers step daughter, we would learn up stairs and we the adults we upstairs we hung out downstairs... she was also not one to fit in everywhere but she had a few friends. After I cut my hair and looked sort of normal I noticed a real change of how people act around you especially kids by how you look, in my mind you can be this or that, but now, it really doesn't matter what you wanna be people are gunna say whatever and it won't bother you in a month? You won't remember in a few weeks so why let it get to you now? You'd be labelled for what you are and that really sticks with people so you might as well be true. My new friends... I liked them because at least I had people to see and talk to and be okay with saying hi when they walked down the hall, but still was not liked by many at all…

When I finished school everyone says your school days are the best you’ll ever have and I I thought If that were true I think I might have to blow my brains out… but it wasn’t easy and after everything that was happening at home and in school something weird happened in my life…

Essentially my dad hit my mum well… he did, it was getting really horrid between them and like I said they did this for years living in the same house but not together like… my mum tried to move out it just couldn’t happen, she couldn’t find work and no council flat or house was ready in a few months time… more like years… but because so when this riot of a show which I’ll spare you the details of (don’t worry it was nothing major at all just it was fucked up) she called the police and obviously I stopped him as soon as he touched her ya know it was just instinct but he got taken away, and the next morning smashing a window trying to get is after mum throwing his shit out. But he left… and stayed with his mother as he is doing right now… 50… btw…

And I was skating at the time, doing not half bad at all and was getting pretty used to playing a lot on guitar and drums, and is what I still do today because I’m pretty good at it, not so much art unfortunately, but I left secondary and all the friends I made we never seen again, it was time to choose what to do with your life…

I didn’t really have a clue with not enjoying a subject other than music art and a little graphic design but nothing major…

Mum and dad being working class they wanted me to be an electrician, they wouldn’t go a conversation without thinking of the money, and I never got what you’d call affection from either when I really think about it but wasn’t interested in the outside so I guess I never had the opportunity… kinda why I down play anything I’m good at because of my own mum and dad can’t find anything to encourage out of me hearing them say how good I could be if I follow their advice and become an electrician with no interest in it al all I pursued it…

All these built up feelings, anger was one... feeling like why would who people have a kid if they couldn't get them everything they wanted... why don't you go on holiday if you could? The worst thing is wasted time which could possibly spend making memories? Depression was also one... and I kinda felt it suited a lot to do with at home... you can't go through all this shit and expect not to wanna express it, even if it meant crying because you didn't know what you did for so many people to hate you? I never thought self harm as a realise until you think of actually having something to complain about, feeling a cut on the outside is sometimes better than feeling shit on the inside.

Now I haven’t mentioned any love life or anything like that until now, because I did loose my virginity but it wasn’t what you would call boyfriend girlfriend… more we would meet and then go with it… but I met this girl, and I couldn’t think of a better time for someone to somehow enter at the most right time?

No arguments, no bullying, I was normal looking and had made a few new friends, and now meet one of the most important people I’ve met since.

I mean I don’t wanna go on cuz like we aren’t together anymore but in a sense it was pure poetry everyday, everyday felt bliss, the fire they say that lights in your belly was roaring, feeling nothing but shit to sunshine for the first time it was one of the best feeling s I’ve ever feel and still searching for it again, I just hope I don’t get to relate to those quotes you see about never finding love again…

This girl, seen the country’s of Germany, Spain, two or three others I think, and yet she want to the same secondary and got spoken about the same way people did about me yet never spoke to her before ever, just the odd few times and one day, as Im walking home from collage who do I see walking under this underpass and smiles… the very same girl?! And she smiles at me?? Not like one of those side ounces like no effort like ya know she’s making pretty darn obvious and I literally thought na it’s cool I’ll look at her she’ll look at me and we will look away like everyone who’s ever looked at me…

And I don’t even smile back so I messaged her saying sorry I didn’t smile back?? Like wtf… how lame… but come a few days later I see her sitting on the opposite table as my friends and later messaged about getting a drink… the rest is pretty much history, perfect if you will… just I don’t think I’ve met anyone who was as serious as me when it come to something so special? Never mind the fact I already did another year of collage to get my level 2 diploma in electrical which I was starting to kinda get the hang of, still not interested but I did it, and yet we ended up living together, sharing everything, thoughts food, bed, house, life, and that’s what makes me think, how can someone know someone that well inside and out, how do you find that agin I don’t know? How I did in the first place I’m not sure at all…

But now it’s starting to get a little more clearer… I read somewhere that once you realise things will never be the same that’s when you can truly move on, another was when you find love it takes twice or sometimes three times as long to get over and honestly you’ll never get over it and yet that’s poetry… it’s not how who choose, it’s the ones who you want to see for the rest of your life because sometimes memories last a life time…

And who can me anymore satisfied with how you can go from the the worst days of your life to a few years later find this soul that’s exactly the same in so many ways yet the differences are what made it fun… I was having fun and I was in love… I think once you know what something’s value is, it’s not to imagine it to be a sad loss once it does go,enjoy what is happening right now… not what was yesterday? I want to think about tomorrow.

What & Why

So I think you’ll never understand what will happen if something will happen tomorrow who you’ll meet or what you’ll be, I’m in a band and we got a festival to play in June, to 350 people and I’ve played to a crowed of 15… and other to about 40? And I’ve been giving for about 3 months, I lost my job cuz I was always late and the people were absolutely awful… and now I got an interview with some of the sweetest women and team ever? You just never know what will happen? Iv applied to a music course to do for a year and after I’m moving to Plymouth to continue a degree in music? And you know what’s stayed through the worst and the best?

Music, my skateboard, my drum kit, my mum, and even the one who can leave something behind which can never be replaced? Memories… I can’t say I’ll ever understand life and I don’t think going about it seriously was what I should’ve done and it goes for anybody? You’ll never know what will happen? So just flow with it?

My Story So Far.

So what am I doing today? What’s made it easier? Who’s there now? Do you feel any wiser? Mistakes are probably the opposite to regret for the most part…

Just because I wouldn’t be here today if I had courage to do something sooner? I might be a hell of a lot wiser and probably a lot more understanding and normal… but what’s made it all worth the story? The journey instead of the destination… and that’s why I think you’ll only ever be completely understood of life is when you get laid six feel under? You just won’t know what you’re doing ever? If you told me six years ago I was going to be make a studio and be with a bad that’s planing a week tour I would’ve been laughing…

Hopefully I can think about what I was doing today in a few years thinking of the most ridiculous ideas and be living it… and I can’t wait…

The Story So Far? Can’t say I know yet… still enjoying the journey, not thinking about the destination, I think what makes it serious, when you care too much about what’s happing next instead of now? If you never do the things you’ve always wanted to, do they happen?

You’ll never know, will i ever know what love feels like again? Does it ever feel like you’ll know what you’re doing with your life? Does it make sense that what’s happening right now is for a reason? Do you ever want to hug the people you never think about touching again? Do selfish people ever say sorry for being selfish? Variety is the spice of life? No one wants to be stuck with someone until their teeth go? That’s boring? Sex is the most fun without laughing? You’ll never know where you are until you realise you are no where…

P.s. I hope you knock on my door, I want to leave Devon without knowing the people who meant less to me think more of me? I want to know that whenever either of us look back, it’s not shit but laughing…

From Start To Beginning. How And When. What & Why… My Story So Far.

@invisible-fate98

#I'm moving away soon and want you to read this before I do