#somebody give her xanax | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pallasperilous · 3 years

Text

Occursus

Castiel/Dean Winchester Gen/Teen, 4341 words 15x20 coda AO3 version “The natural environment of the human soul is a human body,” Cas says. “Humans have yet to meet a foreign substrate that they don’t immediately attempt to colonize. My form in Hell was not an exception.”

Then he shuts his mouth very deliberately and gestures back to Dean like his mic is going live in three, two. “Or the bit where my soul gave you some kind of STD?” Dean finishes. “It was a poor analogy. I apologize.” “So what’s a better one?” Castiel drums his fingers for a second. “It’s more like…the way a parasitic jewel wasp injects a cockroach with venom, and transforms it into a willing host for wasp larvae.” “Holy shit are you ever bad at this,” Dean says, with that signature brand of fond horror he special-orders just for Castiel, Angel of the Gourd.

It’s half past midnight by the time Dean gets another run at Cas.

Granted, what the fuck does half past midnight even mean here, where time is as free as tap water? Why does anybody even bother? For all it matters, Dean could set his watch to eleventy minutes past twenty o’ nope and still never miss last call.

Then again, somebody felt it necessary to invent the idea of Tuesday in the first place, and Dean’s not gonna volunteer himself for the task of replacing it with something better. What’s important is that he’s survived (or rather, he hasn’t survived) a battery of poignant moments and tearful reunions. He and Sam hugged out burdens registering in the triple digits. They even had a little fight, pretty much for the fun of it, while Ellen fucking Harvelle watched them over the bar with her eyes shining. She still charged them, though.

Right at the beginning of the party Dean and Castiel had their eyes-across-the-room thing, followed by the same magnetic, exhausted embrace they’ve shared on just about every plane of reality now. Dean supposes he could ask Cas for a nickel tour of the Empty just so they could hit for the cycle, but he’d really rather not. Sam let them eke out a few gruff, tear-choked monosyllables before diving in, sweeping Cas up in a bear hug and laughing like a fucking kid. Dean doesn’t push it, because it’s been longer for Sam, after all. Or something.

And now it’s quiet, just the jukebox and the clink of glasses back in the kitchen, a few folks murmuring in booths. It might be dark outside, it might not; it’s waiting on Dean’s opinion before it commits to anything. And so is Cas, who is standing in the warm glow of the jukebox, hands in his pockets.

Dean walks up, leans against it, bottle still dangling from one hand.

“C’mon, sunshine. I’ll show you yours, you show me mine.”

Cas looks up and into Dean’s eyes with the wary, elegant patience of a deer. “What is it that you would be showing me, Dean?”

Dean gives him a long, languid blink and bites his lip, and Castiel lags for half a second before rolling his own eyes. “I see death hasn’t refined your sense of humor.”

“Nope. Guess the billionth time aint the charm.”

Cas remains stonefaced, which means a corresponding you dumbass blush starts crawling up the sides of Dean’s neck. The jukebox switches records like it’s making a suggestion.

“I’m gonna sit down outside,” Dean says. “C’mon and sit down with me. There’s a patio somewhere, right? Ellen was always talking about adding one out back. No way she hasn’t bossed somebody into buildin’ it.”

“There’s a patio,” Cas says, taking his hands out of his pockets.

Heaven’s patio is pretty nice; twenty square feet, some scattered picnic tables, fences covered in ivy and string lights. It still smells like fresh pine boards. There’s even a fire pit, which seems kinda bougie for the Roadhouse, but hell with it, it’s warm and pretty, and since when did pretentious people get to lay claim to “a hole with a fire in it”? There’s no moon overhead, and so the Milky Way is giving them the full monty — the runnelled spine of it, the ribcage packed with galaxies.

“Are they all alive?” Dean asks. The warmth from inside leaks out of his collar, wisps away.

“Who?”

Dean points up. “The stars. They always make a big deal about how most of the stars you can see from Earth have been dead for millions of years by the time we get the light from ‘em. That still true here? Or is everything on auto-renewal?”

“That’s a very complicated question,” Cas says, not looking up, only at Dean. He does that a lot, Dean knows, but it turns out to mean something different than what Dean had always assumed, which was ironically pretty similar to what it actually meant, but was reassuringly unactionable and therefore unfuckupable.

“I’m a very complicated guy,” Dean says.

Castiel smiles at that. “I don’t actually know the answer,” he admits. “And it would take an extremely long time to investigate. There are some other things I’d rather do first.”

“What, you can’t just call the kid for directory assistance?”

Castiel lets a good-humored sigh. “Like many young people these days, Jack prefers to avoid the phone.”

This is a solid riff, and Dean respects it. He picks the table closest to the fire and takes a bench and Cas sits next to him, instead of opposite. Dean thought he managed to break him of this habit a few years ago, but here all things are made whole again.

“So what,” Cas says, without a single molecule of playfulness or seduction, “is it that you want us to show each other?”

“Yeah, I was…it was a dumb joke. But I mean it, just not in a ‘playing doctor’ way.”

Castiel frowns, tightens his lips; the firelight throws a fluttering shadow across his face.

“I mean…Christ.” Dean takes a medicinal slug of his dwindling beer. “I don’t really look like this anymore either, right?” And he gestures at his usual shitshow personal presentation, which death has also noticeably failed to refine.

Castiel frowns, smoothes his hand across the surface of the table. “This is a corporeal world, Dean. It operates on a different set of rules, but your body here is no more of an illusion than it was on earth.”

“Seriously?” Dean ponders a second, squints through the dim light at his fingernails, at the high-resolution grime contained therein. “Jesus, that sounds like a lot of work. At least compared to Holodeck Heaven.”

“It is. But we didn’t build this place to be a...a…doorprize. It’s a real world,” Castiel enthuses, looming forward. “It’s the one that should have been created for all of you in the first place.” He pauses, glances down. “For all of us.”

Dean shrugs. “Okay, so no holograms. I’ll keep all that in mind next time Charlie tries to convince me to go skydiving.”

Castiel snorts, but not in pure aggravation, so Dean feels like he’s finally got a point on the board. “What I’m sayin’ is…physical or not, this place has different rules, right? So could I look at you without my eyeballs exploding? The…you know, the angel parts of you. Not just your vessel,” and Dean fwippies his hand at Cas to indicate that true beauty is contained within and Dean is completely indifferent to the fact this dork-ass alien managed to bodysnatch a guy who’s never dipped below an 8.5.

“It isn’t a vessel anymore. We can create our own bodies, now.”

“Peachy,” Dean clips, because that shit is a little late coming off the line.

Castiel sighs. “You could see me in that form without coming to harm. But you should know that I don’t consider it any more a reflection who I am than this form. Not anymore.”

Dean rolls the bottle towards him, nudges a knuckle. “You’re a real boy now, huh?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Castiel says, and smiles a smile so small that Dean would need a microscope to figure out if it’s pleased or pained.

So Dean thwacks the bottle down on the totally-real table and claps his totally-real hands. “Well then let’s go. Hit me with that angel weirdness. If we’re gonna do this, I gotta taste all thirty-one flavors.”

Castiel smiles a little more convincingly, but it still doesn’t reach his eyes. “There are really only the two,” he says, and holds his palms out to the warmth of the fire.

“Great, then we’ll be done in time to catch Letterman. Then if you’re good maybe you can help me shimmy out of this thing.”

Cas cocks his head. “Out of which thing?”

“This super real heavenly meat-suit, dude. It’s not fair if only one of us gets naked. Peep show has to go both ways. I see your angel-face, you see my soul.”

Cas looks stricken, like Dean is asking to suck on his toes next to a playground. “I mean, unless that’d fuck you up,” Dean adds.

“No,” Castiel replies, a little absently. “It wouldn’t fuck me up. But it…wouldn’t really accomplish anything, either.”

“What, no soul kink? That’s bullshit and you know it. You love this crap.”

Castiel replies, “Your soul is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” with the easy confidence of a regular latte order. With the same uncanny, 2 Blessed 2 B Stressed face he had when Dean plowed Ruby’s knife hilt-deep into Jimmy Novak’s sternum, that he had when the Empty collapsed him like a carcass in an acid bath.

That face shuts Dean right the fuck up, because it sends him skipping backwards into that fucking basement, where his phone is buzzing and the gritty concrete chill of the floor is seeping through his jeans into the useless meat of his legs and leeching into the hot, wet channels of his piece of shit heart.

Turns out you can work up a good little panic attack in heaven, which seems like a significant oversight.

From a million miles away he feels Cas’s warm, dry palm slide over the back of his hand –– there’s a ring there now that Dean lost down a motel sink drain ages ago, is nobody spotting continuity errors here?—then Cas’s hand tightens on his and it feels like a Xanax kicking in. (The good kind, direct from the hot nurse with the little paper cup, not the kind you get in a from a shady burnout at a truckstop, that’s been ground up with baking soda or benadryl and carefully remolded, as if you could possibly give that much of a shit when you’re freaking out bad enough to buy Xanax at a truckstop.)

Point being, he calms the fuck down.

Cas has good hands. They can do a lot of impressive shit, and they look nice doing it. They don’t look like –– they’ve never looked like –– they belong to somebody whose main job is destroying people, places, or things. They’re hands that how to play the cello, or make tables from reclaimed wood, or give soapy, encompassing handjobs in the shower on cold evenings.

“It’s been years, though,” Dean rasps, not looking up yet. “I was a kid when you got me out of Hell, Cas. I’ve done a lot of shit since then. Maybe souls get stretch marks.”

Castiel’s hand tightens on his, clamps it down on the table. “I’ve always been able to see it.”

“Okay,” Dean mumbles, but Cas keeps on going –

“The only time I couldn’t see any part of your soul was when I was without grace, and I promise you that was one of the greatest deprivations imaginable.”

Dean snorts, looks away, but his hand is still on lockdown. “Worse than going hungry, huh?”

“Much.”

“Hey, what about Sam? Or, hell, fucking Donatello. They both were both walking around minus their creamy filling, and you didn’t say boo.”

Cas shrugs. “I can’t see their souls under ordinary circumstances.”

“So what, mine’s just extra loud, or day-glo, or what?”

“It’s both of those things, but that isn’t why,” Cas answers, and the boy is downright wry.

Dean tugs his hand out, raps his knuckles against the wood. “Okay, so stop bein’ coy and tell me before I get a complex. And if you say it’s because of love or some shit, I’m bailing to Rowena’s.”

“You infected me,” Cas says.

“Uh,” says Dean.

The fire pops and a log shifts; Cas glances over at the kerfuffle, absently lifts his fingers to his chin like he’s looking for an old scar. “In Hell, when I retrieved you…I had to grip your raw soul. I was meant to wear a gauntlet, so I wouldn’t be burned.”

Dean snickers. “You’re telling me you were supposed to be wearing a soul condom. What happened, you get too excited and forget to suit up? It’s okay, I know I’m a lot to take in.”

Castiel purses his lips. “No, I was properly armored. But my arm was torn off in combat shortly before I reached you.”

“Ouch.”

“Ouch,” Cas agrees. “I didn’t have time to retrieve the arm or its protection from the pit, so I had to grow a new one very quickly.”

Dean really should’ve switched to whiskey before starting this. “What, you didn’t pack a spare?” He wheezes.

“Ordinarily, yes, I would have had the resources, but I was equipped very lightly for that mission. It was a raid, not a siege. You understand the difference.”

“Sure, yeah, you left your emergency arms in the trunk. So you just popped out a new one. No big.”

“It was a big. Your soul was close enough that it forced me to grow a human arm, instead of a much quicker and more powerful extensor.”

“Okay, uh,” Dean pinches at the bridge of his nose, “there’s a lot to unpack there.”

“What part of it confuses you?”

“I dunno, the bit where apparently angels are I guess heavenly octopuses,”

“The plural in the Greek is octopodes,” Cas interjects, not without pleasure.

Dean glowers. “Or the part where you can apparently swap in different drill bits,” Dean continues,

“Mm,” Cas notes, careful not to open his mouth,

“Or that I, like, accidentally bullied you into growing a person arm,” and Dean pauses for breath here, which Cas evidently takes as permission to dive in with more Planet Earth commentary.

“The natural environment of the human soul is a human body,” he says. “Humans have yet to meet a foreign substrate that they don’t immediately attempt to colonize. My form in Hell was not an exception.” Then he shuts his mouth very deliberately and gestures back to Dean like his mic is going live in three, two.

“Or the bit where my soul gave you some kind of STD?” Dean finishes.

“It was a poor analogy. I apologize.”

“So what’s a better one?”

Castiel drums his fingers for a second, listens to the fire pop in its little cage. “It’s more like…the way a parasitic jewel wasp injects a cockroach with venom, and transforms it into a willing host for wasp larvae.”

“Holy shit are you ever bad at this,” Dean says, with that signature brand of fond horror he special-orders just for Castiel, Angel of the Gourd.

“What I’m trying to avoid saying,” Castiel sighs, “is that you rubbed off on me.”

Dean nods. “Yeah. That’s fair. I wouldn’t be dumb enough to say that around me, either.” He lays a couple little pats on Cas’s hand. “Lookit you, though, seeing around that corner. I’m proud of you, man. That would’ve totally flipped your breaker back in the day.”

“Just one of the many ways you have reshaped me, Dean,” Cas says, with warm sarcasm.

“Alright, so you rawdogged me, I whammied you. Chocolate, peanut butter, peanut butter, chocolate.”

Cas’s forehead wrinkles in skepticism. “I still prefer the cockroach. But some part of your soul injected itself into one of my more exposed frequencies. Under different circumstances, I would’ve stopped and excised the affected area before it spread, but. I was being pursued, and the mission had taken much longer than any of us anticipated.”

“Us? Thought it was just you down there.”

Cas looks vaguely offended, straightens and folds his arms like he just remembered he’s giving a deposition. “No, of course not. Michael assigned sixty-six angels in eleven groups of six, each escorted to the field by a seraph. We struck simultaneously at six different areas in perdition. From there we dispersed to individual targets –– to cause as much chaos as possible in order to help obscure the object of our mission, and to increase the odds that one of us would actually find you.”

“And you were the lucky winner.” Dean pushes down a touch of sick shame at the thought of it — he’d been coiled up like a snake around somebody else’s torment, anesthetized by it. It was one of the random rags of infernal time where his own pain decreased in proportion to how much he dealt out, and that was the closest thing Hell had to a Friday night.

“I was,” Castiel nods. “I took some liberties with my assignment,” he adds, squinting. “I flattered myself that I shared a special affinity with The Righteous Man.”

“That guy always sounded like kind of a cunt to me,” Dean notes. “You know, not withstanding the fact that I’m him.”

Castiel shrugs. “I found you, and I did what was necessary to save you, and my siblings did what was necessary to save me.” A little falter enters his voice. “Only twelve of us returned from that mission.” Cas looks up, out, away. A dove coos somewhere nearby of the Roadhouse; did it have a run-in with the windshield of an eighteen wheeler one day and show up here, Dean wonders, or does heaven make its own birds from scratch? That’s gotta be a softball compared to whether Betelgeuse is still open for business.

Castiel waits until the bird shuts up, then says, “Of those twelve surviving angels, I personally murdered nine, in everything that followed.”

After a moment Dean says “Yeah,” with practiced neutrality. He’s got some similar tallies, written in Sharpie on the back of his eyelids.

Cas sighs and his attention comes back down to the table. “By the time I received the authority to restore your soul to your body, the infection had spread almost past the point of containment. That’s why I resisted taking a vessel at first. I worried that occupying a human form would speed up the process.”

“Hey now. I thought you showed up naked because you thought I’d be one of those special people,” Dean quips, “Who can handle angel stuff without going all kibbles ’n bits.”

“That was only a partial truth.”

Dean tips the beer bottle in salute. “You’re a real special flavor of asshole, Cas.”

“So I’ve been told. I was right, though. When I took Jimmy as a vessel, I contracted — condensed — myself very severely. The infection had a much shorter distance to travel to reach all of my extremities, and a human form was the most hospitable environment possible.”

“You got a raging case of the Deans.”

Cas’s head kicks back in a laugh that kinda surprises them both. “Yes,” he says, grinning. “I did. I was very displeased, and very concerned I’d be found out and judged unfit for duty. And I very much was. Unfit, that is. Though I was not found out.”

“C’mon, never? You went rogue on the company.”

“Uriel suspected. Naomi certainly detected it later, as did Metatron. But in the moment, no. The Host’s attention was focused on the Apocalypse ahead, not on debriefing a mission that was considered a success. After the Cage was closed, I had too much influence to come under that level of scrutiny.”

“Hmh.” Dean realizes he’s been systematically picking down the label on the beer bottle, so he sets it on the ground before he gets sticky little shreds everywhere. “So I gotta ask. My little souvenir, the handprint. That’s where you grabbed me, with your lil…Mister Potato Head human arm?”

“It is.”

“If I’m the one who infected you, how come I’m the one who got burned?”

“My hand didn’t burn you.”

“Well, it ain’t fingerpaint.”

“Your own soul burned it, as it flowed out of your flesh and into mine. It burned until the moment when I finally released you from my grip. My hand healed itself; your arm did not.” Castiel gives a thin scoff. “I hadn’t planned to leave you interred.”

“Oh, no? Well that’s nice to hear, you know, a decade after the fact. I still have nightmares about that shit.”

Castiel winces. “It’s no excuse, but I was in a great deal of…the equivalent of pain. It took an immense effort to break off the inflow of your soul, and when I did manage it, I was thrown quite a ways by the recoil. By the time I recovered enough to return, you were already looting a gas station,” He finishes, dryly.

“Yeah, well, Dad didn’t think much of leisure as a virtue. Also I was thirsty, because I’d just crawled out of my own grave.”

“And I was distracted, because I’d just fought my way out of the inferno while being digested by a demented human soul.”

“You wanna call it even?”

Cas lifts his brows. “If you don’t mind.”

There is a long, dark breath, during which their little smiles fade.

“So, all that,” Dean says, because he’s a fucking coward.

“All that,” says Cas, because he isn’t.

Dean clears his throat. “That means you can see my soul-stuff 24/7, huh?”

Castiel slides one leg up onto the bench, shifts to sit astride it, like he’s maybe about to deliver an after-school PSA on the Real Deal About Drugs. “I can always see myself, and extensions of my self. And since your soul made itself into an integral part of me…I can see you.”

“I take it that’s not exactly in the manual.”

“No. I didn’t entirely understand it at first — for a long time, I convinced myself it was because you were designed to be a celestial vessel, and that I had been destined to save you from Hell.”

That thin, acidic feelings starts to rise up in Dean’s chest again. “Do you…” A dry swallow reflex grabs his throat. “Hm. Fuck.”

“What?” Cas asks, scooting forward. An angel. Scooting. What a world. “You can ask me anything, Dean. I hope we’re both past being offended.”

“Have you ever thought that. This whole deal. Our…thing.” Dean lets out a breath. “The way you feel about me. The way I feel about you.”

“Do I worry that its only basis is our shared material?”

Dean licks his lips, works a jaw muscle, forces out a nod.

Cas frowns, sets one elbow up against the table, then lets his head tip to the side. “Why do you love Sam?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I get it, he’s my brother. We got shared material, too. But we’re not talking genetics.”

“Genes were the initial basis of your love for Sam. But you share half as much material with Adam. Do you love him fifty percent as much as you do Sam?”

“One, love doesn’t work that way and you know it, and two, fucking of course not. I barely know the guy, and what I’ve seen didn’t exactly blow me away.” Not that the poor dumb kid ever really had a chance. “Sam’s Sam, he’s earned it a million times over just by bein’ him.”

“Then you understand.”

“But Cas, man…I…” Dean laughs, which is an abbreviated form of screaming, “I treated you like shit.”

Cas nods. “You did.”

“Okay, the rules say you’re not supposed to agree with me.”

“But the balance remains in your favor. Dean, are you genuinely afraid that you — care for me…” and Dean can hear the FCC live-bleep in that one, like does his total cowardice have a special color Cas can see with his soul-o-vision? “Only out of some compulsion?”

“No,” Dean says, to the great surprise of his frontal cortex, which was busy kicking the shit out of itself. “No,” he says again, just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, that that answer actually came out of him and entered the living air between them.

Then the wave is rolling towards him and he enters that slim moment of body-physics where you either take a lungful and commit to diving under the break, or you kick out against the undertow, arch your back to meet the blow, and let yourself be flown all the way up to the waiting shore––

“No,” Dean says, “I love you.” And he chokes up a little, first at the release of saying it, then at how much of exactly jack-shit it changes anything so what was he even scared of, and then at the look on Cas’s face: how he’s frozen. Like that dog from that video, the one that loved tennis balls so goddamn much that his owner bought him a thousand fucking tennis balls and dumps them out all at once and the dog absolutely stalls the fuck out, just seconds on end of underspecced dog-brain hang time before he finally snaps back to reality and loses his absolute shit scrabbling all over the porch.

Castiel comes back online with a little choking noise of his own, and a kind of awkward scrabble for Dean’s hand.

“I have for a long time,” Dean continues, because apparently he’s continuing, “I’ve loved you for fucking ages, Cas. In people years, anyway, I’m sure that mean’s fuckall to somebody who’s a zillion––”

“I don’t,” Cas says thickly, “really give a damn about the age difference, Dean,” and cracks into a chuckle.

“So how come you never knew it?” Dean asks, feeling freedom turn into a hunger or something like vertigo. “If you can see my soul, how could you not know?”

Cas shrugs, a bit helplessly.

“Seriously,” Dean laughs, “how did I manage to hide that shit so well? Sammy found every nudie mag I ever shoplifted.”

Cas shakes his head. “You’ve never actually been able to hide anything from me.”

Dean scoffs. “C’mon, man. I snowed you plenty, or else we woulda had this conversation dirtside a long time ago.”

“Whatever I missed, Dean…it wasn’t because you succeeded at hiding it,” Castiel says, softly. He takes a slow, shaky breath, and meets Dean’s eyes with a smile. He lifts a hand to Dean’s face, bone and flesh on flesh and bone. “I just loved you enough to look away.”

It’s a long time before they go back inside. By any measure. {AO3}

#spn fanfiction #spn 15x20 #destiel #deancas #dean winchester #castiel #bless you all for your sexy and angsty coda fics please enjoy this massive wodge of angel lore wankery dating back 11 seasons

108 notes · View notes

slashersins · 3 years

Text

you guys sent in lyrics and had me match them , even if i got some of them wrong . but now ima share some lyrics that i relate to the slashers . now it’s not the entire song in some cases , just a few lyrics that vibe . so let’s go !

jason voorhees

glass half empty , glass half full , well , either way you won't be going thirsty , count your blessings not your flaws . . . there's method in my madness , there's no logic in your sadness , you don't gain a single thing from misery , take it from me

king by lauren aquilina

i just . . . i just want jason to love himself . and he deserves to know that he doesn’t need to suffer alone . . . i just got feels for jason and this song .

michael myers

a sweet tooth for you , i'm wide awake ,the sugar went straight to my brain , feel like a kid , i double tap , my chest with my fist , i like you , say it back

sweet tooth by cavetown

i just feel like michael relating his desire for sweets to the emotions he feels for you would be super cute . and also accurate .

brahms heelshire

why would you ever kiss me ? i'm not even half as pretty , you gave her your sweater , it's just polyester , but you like her better , wish i were . . .

heather by conan gray

yearning , desire , wanting . this song has it all and these lyrics make me just feel for brahms . is “she / her” the doll version of him ? is it the grocery boy ? either way , he’s inside the wall and wishing you loved him .

thomas hewitt

when i'm older , i'll be silent beside you , i know words won't be enough , and they won't need to know the names on our faces , but they will carry on for us , and it's a long way forward , so trust in me , i'll give them shelter , like you've done for me , and i know , i'm not alone , you'll be watching over us , until you're gone

shelter by porter robinson & madeon

this song makes me think of thomas . he wants to do what’s best for his family . he wants to take care of them . he knows he has to . and he’ll do what he has to so that his family is safe . and he’ll keep doing it until he’s the last one . my sweet boy . . .

jesse cromeans

this could be perfection , a venom drippin' in your mouth , singin' like a siren , love me while your wrists are bound , you've been seeing me in your dreams but , i'll be there when your reality drowns

siren by kailee morgue

i don’t know why . the image of jesse tying you up , or you tying jesse up . is it sex , or the hunt ? playful or dangerous ? either way , i love listening to this song and i always think of jesse and the way the red light of his camera glints on his chrome mask .

bubba sawyer

give me strength and gratitude , tell me what it is i can ask of you , tell me what it is that I can't see , tell me now , oh , tell me now , who is it i'm supposed to be

who am i by besomorph

this just . . . bubba is always trying to do what his family needs , he tries to play his part , his brothers have always told him what to do . so it just . . . it just hits so different , and i can’t help but think of sweet bubby .

billy loomis

i wanna be your habit , cut me down like xanax , 'cause if you're nervous you shouldn't be , i'll take away your panic , just leave your head wide open , my love comes in doses , so if you're nervous you shouldn't be , i'll take away your panic

habit by kris trindl & krysta youngs

whether it’s stu or you , i feel like this displays what billy wants . he wants you to be addicted to him . but he also wants to take care of you too . just in his own way .

stu matcher

hold me up, tie me down , 'cause i never wanna leave your side , swear to never let you down , and it's been eatin' me alive , you can take me home , you can never let me go , hold me up, hold me up , and tie me , tie me down , down

tie me down by gryffin & elley duhé

stu wants to be wanted . he loves so passionately and utterly . is he singing to billy ? to you ? to both ? he’s dedicated , he’s loyal , and he never wants you or billy to let him go .

vincet sinclair

yeah, it's funny how you're calling couldn't answer if i wanted , 'cause his lips are on my lips and both my hands are on his body , yeah it's funny how it's different now that i got somebody , yeah it's funny

funny by zedd & jasmine thompson

i cannot listen to this song without thinking of vincent ? and why ? because i picture getting out of a terrible relationship and finding ambrose . because i picture you find vincent , and he finds you and you both find love and happiness , and you’re so so so happy , that even the desperate attempts to get you back after breaking your hard are meaningless because you’re too busy loving vincent .

bo sinclair

everybody tries to tell me that i'm going through a phase , i don't know if it's a phase , i just wanna feel okay , yeah , i battle with depression , but the question still remains , is this post-traumatic stressin' or am i suppressing rage ?

popular monster by falling in reverse

honestly these lyrics just scream bo to me . he’s been told he shouldn’t be so angry , but he is , and it’s all bubbling to the surface all the time . i can’t help just head bang to this part and think about bo doing the same in his garage .

lester sinclair

. . . like a back road, drivin' with my eyes closed , i know every curve like the back of my hand , doin' 15 in a 30 , i ain't in no hurry , i'ma take it slow just as fast as i can

body like a back road by sam hunt

this song is lazy , relaxed , just vibing . yes it’s about making love , but i mean , it’s so casual and fun . just like lester is .

jacob goodnight

still waiting , hands shaking , maybe the coast will clear , but these voices, these strange noises , they followed me in here

panic room by au/ra

jacob has to deal with so much . his past haunts him , he’s easily triggered , having ptsd and flash backs . they will always follow him and it scares it . i can’t not here this song and think about my big boy in a constant state of panic . i just want to comfort him .

martin ( 1977 )

oh , baby , i am a wreck when i'm without you , i need you here to stay , i broke all my bones that day i found you , crying at the lake , was it something i said to make you feel like you're a burden ? oh , and if i could take it all back , i swear that i would pull you from the tide

line without a hook by rick montgomery

much like the first line says , martin is a wreck without you . he wants you to be with him , he just loves you so much that he wants to keep you close , as one of the slashers with yandere tendencies , these lyrics just stick .

carrie white

look damn good in the dress , zipping up the mess , dancing with your best foot forward , does it get hard , to have to play the part ? nobody's feeling sorry for ya

homecoming queen by kelsea ballerini

this song makes me almost wanna cry . especially when i think about how utterly cruel everyone is to her , and how brave she is to try and get through it .

67 notes · View notes

leverage-ot3 · 4 years

Text

notable moments from The Miracle Job

leverage 1.04

Eliot: That was the worst night of my life.

Parker: Come on, man, you've been in worse situations.

[Flashback]

(money is thrown on the table while a man loads one bullet in a gun and spins the barrel. He points it at Eliot’s head and pulls the trigger. Eliot flinches, but the gun does not go off)

[Leverage Kitchen]

Eliot: No. no, that was the worst.

what a dramatic little bitch

,,, also I’m always down for wacky eliot flashbacks

- - - - -

Parker: That’s St. Nicholas?

Hardison: Yes.

Parker: Santa Claus has a church?

Eliot: He’s not Santa Claus.

and the saga of parker loving christmas beGINS

- - - - -

Hardison: You think that we just gonna walk into some random tunnel and find some cholos just all yoked up? You know?

Eliot: Hardison—

(gang bangers follow Eliot and Hardison into the tunnel)

Hardison: "Yo, holmes, let me fix my do rag..."

Eliot: Dude, quiet. Listen. (turns around) Boys. We don't want any trouble. All right? We just want some answers.

Gang Leader: How's this answer?

(the Gang Leader holds his shirt aside to show the gun tucked in his waistband. Eliot reaches out and puts his hand on the gun, cocking it)

eliot’s bde move? how the fuck do you even RECOVER from that???

(another gang member pulls a gun and points it in Eliot’s face)

Eliot: You seeing this, Hardison?

Hardison: Yeah, the--the situation has my attention, yes.

Eliot: You see that's why I don't like guns. They have a specific range of efficacy. See, most guys make one mistake. They get too close.

(Eliot grabs the gun and head butts the gang member, emptying the gun and dropping it on the ground)

eliot hates guns and I love him for that

Eliot: Who rolled... a priest?

Gang Leader: We didn't beat up no priest. We are not monsters.

(Hardison notices a third gang member moving restlessly. He hits the man in the shoulder, and the man goes down in pain. Eliot grabs the gun from the Gang Leader’s waistband)

Hardison: Dislocated shoulder's a biatch. Priest gave him that.

Gang Leader: You beat up a priest? (looks at Eliot) Do you mind?

Eliot (hands him the gun): Be my guest.

Gang Leader: (points gun at gang member) You got a long penance ahead of you. Start by answering the man's questions. Now!

Eliot: Who hired you?

Gang Member: I don't know. I got a call on my cell with an offer, and I called him back after the job was done. He paid me. That's all I know. I swear.

Hardison: You got a number?

(Gang Member pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and hands it to Hardison)

Eliot: Can you do something with that?

Hardison: Seven digits. I could find you on Mars.

Eliot: Gentlemen, we'll leave you to your internal affairs. Come on.

(they walk away, out of the tunnel)

Hardison: How 'bout that? Man, you-you see me?

Eliot: He was injured.

Hardison: Well, somebody got to fight the injured. Shoot, that's my niche

me too hardison

also LMFAO eliot is so done with you you’re lucky he already has imprinted in you

- - - - -

Sophie: What is that you just took?

Grant: Xanax.

[Construction Site]

Grant: For my nerves.

Parker: Actually, caffeine. With a dash of dextroamphetamine.

(Hardison looks at Parker in surprise)

Eliot: You gave him speed?

Hardison: He beat up a priest.

hardison and eliot went from scandalized to mmm, seems fair REAL QUICK

- - - - -

Eliot: How do you know all this stuff?

Nate: I went to school with father Paul. to, uh...seminary school.

(they enter Nate’s office. Eliot hands Sophie a cup of coffee)

Eliot: So you dropped out of priest school to become a -- an insurance cop? And now you're the leader of a band of thieves. Nice.

I love eliot

- - - - -

Hardison: Y-you-you’re a catholic who wants to fake a miracle. I’m pretty sure that puts us in moral-sin territory.

Eliot: So now you're religious, too?

Hardison: No, no, I’m not denominational. It’s just, I never do anything my nana said "don't do." This, what we doin', it just don't seem right.

additionally, the hardison loving his nana saga begins

- - - - -

Nate: Give Hardison anything he needs.

Hardison: As long as I don't have to do anything immoral.

Nate: Ah, absolutely not. No, I just need you to figure out, you know, how to fake a miracle.

(Eliot laughs)

Hardison: We all going to hell

eliot being a little shit to hardison? always iconic

- - - - -

Grant (entering room): Yes, ma’am, thank you for your opinion. (hangs up) Ok, I just received a threatening phone call -- from a nun!

G O O D

- - - - -

I love the shots where the ot3 walks together they cute as hell

- - - - -

Hardison: Hell fire, damnation, et cetera. You know what? I’m gonna step over here, so when the good lord throws down on all of y'all, I don't get hit by the lightning.

Parker: Wasn’t Zeus the one with the lightning?

hardison having a freak out meanwhile parker’s just trying her best

+ bonus: another hidden talent of parker’s is that she knows obscure things like greek gods

- - - - -

BIBLETOPIA

tomas is so fucking done with andy

- - - - -

Hardison: Bibletopia?

Sophie: The man cannot be stopped!

Parker: It’s like everything we throw at him just makes him stronger.

Eliot: Kind of admire him, though. My nephew would like Bibletopia.

Hardison: Oh, no, see? This is what happens when you mess with god. He raises up your enemies with his right hand, and he smites you with his left.

ELIOT META: he has at least one sibling and a nephew fic writers take n o t e

poor hardison is having a Time™ in this episode

- - - - -

Hardison: I hope this is the part where you suggest prayer.

Nate: No, the weeping statue of St. Nicholas is not gonna be stolen. It's gonna miraculously disappear in the middle of tomorrow's mass.

Sophie: I’m sorry?

Nate: In front of the priest, the Vatican, the entire congregation.

Sophie: Have you learned nothing, Nate?

Nate: How much does the statue weigh?

Hardison: About 900 pounds.

Nate: Good.

Hardison: I am so sorry, nana.

let hardison REST

- - - - -

both the boys clipping the gear on parker? thievery hijinks ot3 domesticity

- - - - -

HARDISON AND ELIOT DID THEIR FIRST HANDSHAKE

- - - - -

the little girl calling parker an angel? same

- - - - -

eliot hyping up the crowd lmfao

- - - - -

Grant (to Sophie): Kristi, save me, huh? You can spin this, right? instead of, uh, "felony," maybe soften it to, uh, “controversy" or something.

(cops continue to pull Grant away as press follows)

Sophie: You know, when you say "controversy," I always hear "attention”.

*john mulaney voice* sophie is a bitch and I L O V E H E R

- - - - -

(Nate looks at the candles along one wall and walks over to them. He lights a candle as the rest of the team waits. After a moment he rejoins them and they walk toward the door)

Hardison: Look at that. Saved a church.

Parker: It’s like Christmas. See? I told you St. Nicholas is Santa Claus.

Sophie: No, he's not, Parker.

Parker: Well, who is he, then?

Sophie: St. Nicholas… is the patron saint of thieves.

the team is always there to support each other pass it on

patron saint of thieves? ICONIQUE

#leverage #leverage 1.04 #leverage 1x04 #notable moments #mine #the miracle job #leverage season 1 #season 1

204 notes · View notes

tsarinastorm · 4 years

Text

AA:Ashes to Ashes-Adam Sackler/Reader-Chapter 1

Rating: Explicit, eventual Smut

This is my attempt at a slow burn, sorry if it’s bad!

Summary: You meet Jessa at AA and quickly become friends. She introduces you to her boyfriend, Adam, who it turns out you have a lot in common with. Always a girls’ girl you’ll have to choose between friendship and love.

As usual, everyone went around the room introducing themselves and explaining their issues, you instantly regretted being there but it was for the best. While not a typical addict or alcoholic, you had been mixing alcohol and Xanax, even though you knew better. It began as only drinking during social events, then it became drinking every night, then it quickly developed into drinking every night and using Xanax to sleep. Your therapist suggested going to AA groups to talk to others about your problems, and to ‘socialize.’

It was getting harder to resist the urge to drink and pop a few pills. But you did it to yourself. You had insisted on moving yourself to New York City, taking a job that was lower pay and cutting back your own hours to work on your writing. Now you did mostly contract-drafting work, and were just covering your rent, bills, and general expenses. You had to sell some of your clothes to consignment shops, and tutor some high school students for extra cash. But you thought it was worth the risk to follow your dreams. You were saving money by staying in a small studio apartment in East Village, and while it was tiny, it allowed to save some of your earnings. You were working on polishing your first manuscript to send to publishers.

Everyone concludes introducing themselves, including you, then a woman comes in late. She is a blonde with a British accent, and after taking a look around, she may be the only normal one here. Apparently she thinks the same, because she comes over to talk to you after the meeting is over.

“It’s good to not be the only pretty woman in here, and you look relatively normal.” She says and you nod your head in agreement. You say back, “Yeah some of them look like they’ve been rode hard and put away wet.”

“I’m Jessa, wanna not stay here and get hit on by that guy,” She says as she gestures towards a big man standing over to side who’s eyeing you both suspiciously. That could get weird.

That’s how you became friends with Jessa. The two of you would go grab food after each meeting, and she was pretty much an open book. You were surprised and entertained by her life stories, you told her that she should write a book, a memoir. You could tell that she put up a front to hide some inner vulnerability but who didn’t. She would talk about her former friends, then her boyfriend, named Adam, and what an ‘amazing’ connection they had. But you had never once seen him, or heard from him, he was enigma and it made you wonder about their relationship. She also said that he was her friend Hannah’s ex-boyfriend. The whole situation seemed strange to you, and you were suddenly grateful that you didn’t have that drama in your life.

********

In your third week of hanging out, when the two of you went shopping, or more specifically window shopping, she was talking about her last encounter with college. She told you that she did want to be a therapist but then she dropped out of school because it wasn’t for her. You tried to encourage her that there are other ways to help people with their lives that don’t involve school, and there were non-traditional routes.

“I just feel like I could really help other people so much but I’m not cut out for school,” Jessa says as she moves her hands dramatically while speaking. You listen before saying, “You could be a life coach or something, that stuff doesn’t usually require a degree. You just need to know how to sell yourself, find somebody to guide you in the business.”

As you take another bite of your salad, you can see that Jessa is appraising your suggestion. She pulls out a cigarette, then her eyes light up. She gets excited and exclaims, “That is a great idea! I’m so good at making people buy into my bullshit and telling them what to do!”

“Happy to help!” You say, then you start look up the process for how to be a life coach. This was a much-needed distraction from your daily life and your own stress. For some reason, you were much better about giving other people advice than following it on your own, maybe that’s why you became friends with Jessa in the first place.

***********

Then, the following week was the time she took mushrooms, accidentally this time, and called you to pick her up from the party in the Garment District. You were trying to finish the draft of a contract when she called but you considered yourself a girls’ girl and would feel guilty if something happened to her.

Before you knew it, you were making your way there. You find the address from the drop-pin she sent you. As you walked in you noticed that the party’s attendees were the hippy type, dressed in tie dye, with marijuana growing around the place, yet still fashion hippies because they had on designer duds. The apartment was in an eclectic loft, and was filled with people. It didn’t bother you, it was just tightly packed, and was making you feel claustrophobic. You try not to stare at people, just look for Jessa. A couple guys made a few off-hand comments, but you ignored them, looking for your friend. Then your eyes settle on a blonde sitting across the room.

Jessa was sitting in a corner, and you went up to her. You asked her, “Can you walk? This will be a lot easier if you can walk?”

“I can’t feel my legs. Y/N, fuck I have never felt this good.” Is her answer. Her attitude made you instantly wish you would have ignored her phone call. She should have called her boyfriend or one of her friends that wasn’t busy. Frustrated, you pick her up, she stands, and then she takes a step forward. She is mumbling about something, you place her arms over your shoulder and head out, weaving through the crowd. Once outside, you hail a cab, then Jessa decides that she won’t go and stand stubbornly outside. You really don’t have time for this, so your anger boils over.

“Fine, call your damn boyfriend or whoever else you have, because I am done!” You shout, and throw your hands in the air in an act of disgust. You mentally decide to get in the cab and go back to your apartment to resume your work. As you go to step inside the cab, you hear Jessa speak.

“Wait, Y/N, I don’t have anybody else, okay?” Jessa says, and you help get her in the cab and scoot her over so you can get in as well. She’s able to give the driver her address. As soon as you get her up the stairs which was a task in itself and to the door of her apartment, she vomits. You audibly release a sigh and step over it, and started pounding on the door. You remember that she lived with her boyfriend, and she said he should be home. You’ll wake up the whole damn building if that’s what it takes.

“Okay, okay! I hear you, loud fucker!” You heard a man yell before coming to answer the door. Your jaw drops when a man who’s built like a brick house, opens the door standing in his black briefs. He has amber eyes, black, long, wavy hair, amazing pecs, and your eyes can’t help but notice the bulge in the briefs. That must be the Adam, you were certainly not expecting him to look like that, and you feel a blush creep on your cheeks. You shield your eyes and push Jessa towards him.

“What the hell happened to her?” He demands to know from you. You didn’t like the tone, so you inform him, “Jessa went to a party, took mushrooms, and then called me to come get her. I have work to do, so I assume you can take care of her.”

He nodded in agreement, Jessa stumbled into the apartment, and you left. Now you understand why Jessa put up with him treating her like a consolation prize, and why she was willing to betray her friendship with Hannah for him. You didn’t think that you would personally do that, but you could understand it now. You also knew that you would be thinking of your friend’s boyfriend more than you wanted to.

*************************

When you were heading out of the AA meeting today with Jessa, she said that needed to grab something from her apartment first. So you follow her to her apartment, and once inside, you turn around to see Adam sitting on a yellow couch, this time he was fully clothed. Jessa heads further inside to find whatever it is that she was looking for. Adam turns to look at you, and you can feel his gaze burning through you, you decide to ignore it and admire the architecture and space in this apartment. Besides, considering your recent interaction with him, you weren’t sure you could look at him without blushing or checking out his bulge again.

You were happy that you had chosen to wear black skinny jeans, Chelsea boots and a sleeveless white top instead of leggings and an oversized sweatshirt. Adam gets up to stand beside you, and formally introduces himself, saying, “I’m Adam, thanks for taking care of Jessa that night. Sorry I was kind of an asshole.”

“I’m Y/N. It’s no problem.” You say back as your mind goes blank when his eyes meet yours. He continues holding your eyes for some time before asking, “Are you the friend from AA?”

“I am.” You answer, feeling a bit dazed. It must be equally awkward for him to know a lot about someone without actually knowing them. Or maybe he was socially awkward like you. You felt like you knew him already from hearing Jessa’s stories. He then coolly remarks, “You don’t look like an alcoholic or addict to me.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” You fire back. A person can’t just assume who’s an addict, or who’s not.Your brow furrows and your casual smile turns into a scowl. You take back any nice things about him you had thought before. What an asshole, he can’t even know you for five minutes before insulting you.

“Adam, don’t be an asshole,” Jessa chimes in as she strolls back into the room and glares at him. He finds a way to recover and explain himself. He states, “I meant it as a compliment. You look very put together and classy.”

Jessa scoffs at him and eyes him hesitantly, while you chuckle. You suppose that is a twisted compliment, and you’ve been called worse. You then feel the need to explain yourself to him and add, “Yeah well drinking and the Xanax quickly turned from happening occasionally at social events to all the time to numb myself. I got help before I hit rock bottom.”

“Good. Good for you. I started drinking as a teenager and started AA when I was seventeen. Better to catch that shit early.” He says and you listen to him contently, but before the two of you get to talk more, Jessa is rushing out the door, declaring that she’s found whatever she was here for. You shoot him a smile and wave goodbye before following Jessa out. Adam is certainly a curious man and you want to know more about him, even though it’s against your better judgment.

“Adaptations are almost never as good as the original, end of story.” You inform Ray of your opinion. You had just met Ray earlier tonight, and he seemed to be argumentative. You never backed down from a debate, so it made things interesting. You ignored the fact that Jessa wanted to set you up with Ray, he just wasn’t your type. You’re sitting on the yellow couch with Jessa and Ray. Jessa is listening to your argument while she eats yogurt, not bothered at all. Ray thinks for a moment before he makes his next move in this game of argument chess.

“There can be thoughtful adaptations.” Ray declares, taking a drink of his beer. You’re not convinced, so you counter with, “Yes but they generally lose the heart and soul of the original format.”

“Okay well I can see that I’m not going to win this.” Ray finally concedes. Good. Better for him to figure that out now. You take a drink of your water, and snack on some chips. You’ve been set up with worse guys, and as long as Ray takes the hint, maybe the two of you can be friends.

“I agree with Y/N.” Jessa confirms, and Ray just shakes his head. You smile smugly, triumphant that you’ve won the argument. Then, Adam walks through the door, looks surprised to see all of you there, continues heading into the kitchen. He gets a drink from the fridge before joining the group of you on the couch, he points at you and adds, “I agree with her, adaptations are shit!”

You smile at him, and he smiles back. You’re happy he agrees, because if not you would have to seriously question his taste, and put him the group with Ray. From what Jessa’s told you about him, he’s obviously cultured and has good taste, even though he doesn’t outwardly show it and in spite of outward eccentricity. During the movie, Ray heads out to take a phone call while Jessa goes to the restroom, leaving you alone with Adam. And you actually has butterflies in stomach just from being alone with him, you feel like you’re fourteen again. Inwardly scolding yourself for feeling this way, you keep your eyes fixed on the television screen. You don’t know what to say, so you wait for him to make a move. Or who knows, the two of you might sit in weird silence until someone walks back into the room. Luckily, you don’t have to wait long to see how it’s going to go.

“What do you do?” He asks trying to get the conversation started and end the tension in the room. He glances at you, and takes some chips from the bowl.

“I’m an attorney, but I don’t do typical court work. I do the drafting and back work. That gives me flexibility to work on my writing on the side.” You says as you take another drink from your glass, and you notice that you’re each moving towards each other subconsciously. Or consciously, who knows. Adam chuckles, then jokes by saying, “Well I don’t have good luck with writers.”

“Well I don’t have good luck with tall strangers. What do you do? You’re an actor, right?” You say back, not fazed at all by his bad joke, and you see relief wash over him. He cocks a half-smile, you admire his dimples that are now showing. And you mentally control yourself, because you cannot get a crush on your friend’s boyfriend.

“I am an actor.” He says in a drawn out voice, and you can’t tell if he did that intentionally or if he’s just nervous. He definitely doesn’t strike you as a shy, or introverted guy.

“That’s why you have strong opinions on content forms then.” You say and the two of you continue talking about books, poems, movies and music you like. You find out that you and Adam have similar, but not identical tastes. As Ray and Jessa trickle back into the conversation while Adam is asking you about your trivia talents. Adam stuns you and everyone else in the room by saying, “Fuck, you’re the smartest person I’ve ever met.”

“You’re not too bad yourself. Brawn and brain,” You tease back as Adam tries to hide his blush, which you find adorable. You also know that you’re probably blushing too so you move your face to hide it. Then you remember that Jessa is right there and you worry you might have crossed the line. Self-consciously and slowly you scoot back over across to the other side of the couch, leaving plenty of room for Jessa, and you pat the space beside you. Jessa seems unaffected, and it seems you’re being self-conscious for nothing, she sits down. She puts her arm around your shoulder, saying, “Adam’s right. You are insanely smart, and kind. And you have fantastic skin.”

You blush and you can see Adam watching you out of the corner of your eye. Jessa moves in closer to you and starts telling you about the current state of her future life-coaching business. You listen to her as intently as you can but your thoughts wonder to Adam, then you guilt yourself because you know you shouldn’t think of him at all.

************************************************************************

Adam was walking out of Ray’s coffee shop with his typical, normal coffee. None of that fancy new age coffee that so many people drink nowadays. He’s been in a bit of downward spike lately, he knows he needs to audition for more parts and submit some of his writing to directors. He’s working on what he thinks is a lame indie film, but the pay is decent and the director is well-respected so he supposes he should suffer through the script. Though he’s considered walking out several times.

When he’s getting ready to head to the door, he sees Y/N walk in. She waves at him, and he finds himself smiling and waving back at her. She’s wearing a red sheath dress and heels, carrying a huge tote bag. How does she manage to look hot while still looking like a boss? Adam remembers that she’s an attorney so she’s probably way out of his league, and she’s Jessa’s friend. Once she gets her order, she sits a table that’s in the corner near the street, and motions for him to join her since he’s still standing by the door probably looking like an idiot.

He knows he should probably just politely decline her offer, but instead he goes to sit down across from her. He felt a connection with her the other day when they talked about books, and things they were passionate about. Adam thinks he might as well accept he’s hooked on this girl, at least to some degree. After he sits, he asks, “Are you going to work? I don’t want to distract you.”

“I’m mostly editing and listening in on video calls today. What about you? I mean I know actors and artists don’t have a normal schedule but are you working today?” She says as she takes a drink of her coffee and takes her pastry out of the bag.

“I’ve been working on this indie film and it’s very frustrating.” Adam admits before he remembers that he doesn’t really know Y/N that well, and that she probably doesn’t care about his life.

“Is it good for your reputation or at least good pay?” Y/N asks and sounds genuinely interested. Adam thinks back to the intensive conversation that he had with her a few nights ago, and knows that she gets it. She thinks about art, literature, and expression. So he opens up.

“It’s good for both. It’s just everything else about it is a shitshow. And fucking mediocre,” Adam says. Y/N then continues making her point by saying, “Well stick it out for the credit then you can be pickier about your projects.”

“That’s good advice. Thanks.” He tells her and she pulls out her laptop to get to work, when he gathers himself to leave, she stops him. “Company wouldn’t bother me…If you don’t have somewhere else to be.”

Adam sits back down, content to hang around her. He sees that she has a copy of Forster’s short stories and Emile Zola’s Therese Raquin in her bag. He can’t hold back from commenting, after all he does have a comp lit degree. He motions toward them, saying, “Interesting choices. Let me know what you think of them.”

“I like Forster’s description of sexuality and sensuality. This is my first brush with Zola though, so I’ll save my commentary when I’m better read.” She smiles and it looks like her whole face lights up. Adam can’t look away from her.

He barely knows her and yet he feels like he’s known her all of his life. He’s able to talk to her about things that he could never bring up around Jessa, and forgot what it was like to have a real connection to someone. He and Y/N sit there for hours, talking art, writing, and inspirations. He opens up about his past relationships, Y/N already knew that he dated Hannah, who was Jessa’s friend. Adam chose to leave out the part where he went back to Hannah to offer to raise her child with her. He knew how embarrassing it sounded now, and maybe Jessa had already told her that.

She opened up to him about her writing: short stories and children’s books, though she wanted to do more. She told him about how hard it was when she first moved to the city, and about the ex who got her to mix alcohol and Xanax. She talks about her dysfunctional family, and the friends she’s made in the city. When it’s time to go, Adam finds himself following her outside the shop, not wanting to separate from her.

Outside the door, he stops her to ask, “Can we do that again?”

“Sure. That is what friends do.” She says before she heads on her way. Adam’s never really had friends before but he still feels like this was more than friendship.

#adam sackler #adam sackler x reader #adam sackler fic #adam sackler x you #adam driver #hbo girls #jessa johansson

45 notes · View notes

lastflcwers · 4 years

Text

we love a boy in all black everything anyway hi it’s amanda again and i’m on my bullshit

『NICK ROBINSON ❙ CISMALE』 ⟿ looks like CASTOR DECODY is here for HIS JUNIOR year as a HISTORY student. HE is 23 years old & known to be WELL-TRAVELED, FERVENT, FLEETING & MELANCHOLIC . They’re living in MORIS, so if you’re there, watch out for them. ⬳ amanda. 22. mst. she/her

trigger warning: drug use, death, cancer

NAME: castor “cas” simon decody AGE: 23 BIRTH DATE: august 17th, 1996 ZODIAC: leo sun, scorpio moon SEXUAL ORIENTATION: heterosexual SOCIAL CLASS: upper HOMETOWN: seattle, washington EDUCATION LEVEL: junior studying history FACE CLAIM: nick robinson ADDICTION(S): has been to rehab for xanax dependency DRUG USE: smokes weed mostly but will participate in most drugs otherwise ALCOHOL USE: yes POSITIVE TRAITS: fervent, well-traveled, loquacious, dreamy NEGATIVE TRAITS: fleeting, melancholic, vulgar, unrealistic LIKES: greek mythology, radiohead, napping, writing DISLIKES: talking on the phone, sunbathing, due dates, the beach

my boy castor here is an old muse of mine, dating back like at least three years ??? so i’ve got quite a bit about him but we’ll see how good i am at relaying it

cas is the reluctant only child of a right-leaning politician (father) and a paralegal (mother, deceased). he was raised mostly in beverly hills, but has spent some years living in seattle and toronto as well.

once he graduated high school, he spent six months abroad in europe, mainly staying in greece and italy. it was there that he sort of “discovered” his 18 year old self, and still feels like he left a piece of himself there. he also got really into partying, and did a lot of things he never would’ve done otherwise.

when he came home from the trip, he found out that his mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer while he’d been away. his family did not call to tell him, so he began resenting himself (and his dad) for so selfishly traveling when the best person in his life was undergoing treatment.

at age 19, when his mother passed, cas delve deep into a depression that he’d always sort of had but never let overwhelm him. he began using xanax on the regular, finding it much easier to just become belligerent or nap all day than to face the sadness he was dealing with.

between the ages of 19 and 23 he has gone to rehab a total of three times.

as for his personality

cas is a writer by nature, always romanticizing the shit out of everything. he thinks everything has deeper meaning than it necessarily does, particularly his interactions with women.

has an obsession with stargazing. go fucking figure. knows a lot about constellations and space. kind of pretentious when it comes to his interests but doesn’t actually act like he’s better than people. loves reading so so much. especially mythology. i imagine that he grew up with this fanciful library in his childhood home. something like this.

is VERY keen on anything supernatural which is likely why he chose radcliffe in the first place.

actually very funny??? very self-deprecating humor but god damn does it win people over

tends to be fairly agreeable but will share his knowledge when he doesn’t understand a point of view

drives a nice ass bmw but doesn’t give a fuck about it. he takes little to no care of anything he owns, tbh. isn’t innately messy but just careless

and lastly we have wanted connections

- ex girlfriend(s) honestly castor would be such a sweet sweet boyfriend but they broke up for some reason or another. could be cheating involved on either end or maybe both?

- europe flings ??? idk if anyone has muses that have spent time in europe or are from there but i love the idea of him having this fleeting ass romance with some girl and like running around in barcelona or some shit

- to build off of that further... cas did experiment with his sexuality a bit while in europe. so that connection is open to men to, even though he’s mostly decided he’s into femme-identifying people. internalized homophobia who?

- give me some girl he’s lowkey obsessed with but they are not that close ?? like he writes cute prosy shit about her but they do not hang out other than maybe class or something

- roomies pls. lives in moris, though i imagine he may have at one point stayed in perkins to his own dismay. so maybe ex roomies too?

- hookups? i don’t think castor is like CRAZILY fucking everybody but he’s not about to say no to some hot ass girl

- somebody he lets read his writing... he has to be SO close to this person but also not??? like he wouldn’t want them to know too much about him personally but has to trust them

- friends and pals. fellow night owls. people he can bullshit with. nobody too dull-witted. i know i said he isn’t pretentious but that was a lie

#radintro #almost posted this twice heh

8 notes · View notes

thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 5 years

Note

I don't know if you've read/watched IT, but if you have, how might you think a crossover between IT and Animorphs would go? (Either IT characters in Animorphs or Animorphs characters in IT--I'd be equally interested in either)

Cassie’s hand has gone cold around the phone. Distantly, she realizes that it’s still held to her ear. That she has yet to move, even though the line is dead.

“Cass?” Ronnie says from the bedroom doorway. “Honey, what’s wrong?” He sounds scared. More than just on her behalf.

Cassie gets calls when the truly bad things happen, before almost anyone else. She was the first to hear about the Missouri tornado that left 143 dead. About the domestic terrorist who blew up the Dominican-Catholic church in Arkansas.

In its own way, this is worse. Or it has the potential to be.

“I have to get to Los Angeles,” she says, dropping the phone. Her hands shake as she wrenches open the closet. Drops a duffle on the bed. Grabs clothes at random to stuff them inside. “The town itself is an hour north, but if I fly into LAX then…” She loses track of the sentence. Gives up on it.

There aren’t words, she knows, to explain to Ronnie what’s happening right now. Not her gentle Ronnie. Ronnie has reported on active war zones. But still he can’t know. Not really.

“Cass, you’re meeting the president tomorrow,” he says. “You can’t just go to California—”

“She’ll have to wait.” Jerking the zipper shut, Cassie swings the bag onto her shoulder. “I’ll explain when I get back,” she says. “I love you. More than you know.”

They send Menderash in, after an hour. Technically it’s been an hour and a half since they patched in the civilian call to their commanding officer, but Captain Aximili was only audible on the phone for about twenty minutes. Normally they wouldn’t intervene at all, but they’ve got a bomber exercise in less than an hour and the admiral’s on board right now. In a way, Menderash is honored to be sent. It’s the closest anyone has ever come — can ever come — to acknowledging him and Ax for what they are. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, but that doesn’t mean that U.S. Navy commanders can date their captains. Regardless of gender.

“Sir?” Menderash sounds tentative even to himself.

Ax is staring at the far wall, back turned to the door. He stiffens, but still doesn’t turn. “Did I ever tell you I had a brother?” Ax asks.

“No,” Menderash says, “I don’t think you ever mentioned that.” Which is strange, and verges on hurtful — they’ve been together for over five years.

“It ate him.”

“What?” Menderash steps forward.

“The thing that killed him.” Ax’s voice is robotic. Out of place with the tears on his cheeks. “It ate his body. No.” He swallows, throat working. “Not his body. He was still alive, when it started eating. He fought it, my friends said. To the last. Did so to try and save them. He was still fighting. Still struggling. When it.” A wet breath. “It.”

“Was this… recently?”

“What?” Ax turns, seeming to see him for the first time. “No, of course not. It all happened twenty-seven years ago.”

“Is that why you’ve never mentioned him before?” Menedrash ventures.

“No.” Ax swallows again. “It’s just that I’ve been away from that place for too long. I began to adjust to this version of reality. I began to forget just how bad it became, that place where we came from.”

Menderash dares to put a hand on his arm now. To pull him close enough to get him into the light, at the very least. “Where is that?”

“I can’t tell you,” Ax says. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Ax…”

“I’m scared,” Ax whispers. The admission is almost as foreign as the tears. “I must go back there, Menderash. I must, if I want justice for my brother, and I…” He closes his eyes, jaw clenched. “I’m not sure that I’ve ever been more scared in my life.”

Marco is… Honestly, Collette’s not sure what Marco is right now, just that something is definitely happening to him. He’s ping-ponging through his office with frantic aimlessness, muttering to himself, hair flying in all directions.

“Your plane’s all prepped and ready to go,” she says.

“Collette!” He whirls around. “As I live and breathe. You ever have one of those moments, when, like, reality just—” He snaps. “Fuckin falls away. No, not reality. This is not reality. Reality is the thing that comes out of nowhere and—” He makes a motion like an airplane zooming through the air. “Bam! Takes you off your feet. Everything you thought you knew, all gone in an instant. Because it’s all illusion. Reality is reasserting itself, that’s what it is. Twenty-seven years, just gone! Like it’s all been a daydream all along. And guess what? Big Jake’s calling to wake you up!” He grins maniacally. “Have you seen my glasses anywhere?”

Collette doesn’t say but you don’t wear glasses. She’s been in Hollywood long enough to know that there are plenty of celebrities who never wear their glasses, or retainers, or leg braces anywhere they might be seen. She’s a talent agent who uses a wheelchair. She’s seen it all. “Bend down,” she says instead.

Marco whips his head forward so that she can see the top of it. In the process, his glasses go flying out of his hair and clatter on the floor. She hadn’t meant for him to bend over quite that hard, but at least now he knows where they are.

“Ah yes, a million thank yous!” Marco goes scrambling across the carpet after them.

“What did you take?” Collette asks him. She didn’t think Marco was a cokehead, but then she didn’t think he needed glasses until ten seconds ago.

“Three Xanax, half a handle of vodka, and my entire stash of pot cookies,” he declares. “And look at me.” He spreads his arms.

She takes his point. He’s speaking clearly, forming full sentences. He looks… well, not sober, but also not as though he’s had anything relaxing in the last few hours. “Fine,” she says. “But I’m still driving you to the airfield.”

“Don’t go,” Melissa says. Tobias stiffens where he stands, but he doesn’t put his suitcase down.

“I don’t have a choice,” he whispers, shame and smallness.

“Don’t be ridiculous—” She blows out a breath. “Be safe,” she says instead. “Be here. Forget the past. Let somebody else…”

“Die in my place?” Tobias asks. This is so unlike him, to be even this angry.

“If this Jake person thinks it’s so dangerous there, why doesn’t he just leave?” she asks quickly.

Now Tobias does look over his shoulder. “The fact that you’re asking at all…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He just pulls the door closed behind him, and clicks the latch into place with infinite care.

“Are you sure?” Rachel demands into the phone.

Jake doesn’t answer. He wouldn’t be calling if he wasn’t sure.

“Fuck.” She slams a hand against the drywall. “Fuck.”

“You don’t have to come,” he says.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She hangs up.

“Rachel?” Jordan says, watching wide-eyed from across the room.

“It’s nothing.” Rachel pulls her lips back into a not-smile. “It’s fine.”

“The thing that took Saddler… that took Tom… It’s back, isn’t it?” Jordan asks.

Rachel hadn’t thought she knew. Had thought her sisters believed the story about Saddler’s car accident, about Tom’s running away.

“No,” Rachel says. “Of course not. That’d be impossible.”

Jake doesn’t know who told David, or how. All he does know is that he couldn’t have timed the phone call worse if he’d tried.

David’s widow’s cell phone goes off smack in the middle of his eulogy. Her ringtone, as it so happens, is the Bee Gees’ hit single “Stayin’ Alive.”

“So.” Marco rubs his hands together, looking around the table. “Let the thirty-somethingth non-annual meeting of the Losers’ Club… commence!”

“Are we?” Rachel asks. She looks around at them as well. “Losers, that is.”

“She’s right,” Tobias says. “Marco’s on the Hollywood A-list. Ax-Man has, like, a dozen military awards. I’ve got three different pieces in MOMA, Rachel’s book about… what was it, Being a Badass Bitch Boss? That was number-one in the country for over a month. Cassie’s freakin’ Secretary of State. And…” He comes to Jake, and trails off. There’s an awkward pause.

“The county library’s still open,” Jake offers. “In spite of the mayor’s best efforts to the contrary.”

“No kids, though,” Cassie points out. “For any of us. Not even David.”

“Why would we ever bring children into this world, knowing what we do?” Ax says softly. “Oooh. D. Do.”

There’s another silence. No one disagrees.

“Anyway.” Rachel pulls them back in. “I’m just saying, we’ve come a long way from being the kids that only hung together because no one else would hang out with us.”

Cassie was the only black kid in town. Rachel and Jake came from the only Jewish family. Tobias had been the odd dreamy kid with his head in the clouds, Ax the one with a tendency to repeat sounds. Marco had just never known when to keep his mouth shut, not even when doing so would have been a survival tactic. Small towns could be brutal, even the ones that didn’t have sadistic gods at their hearts.

But they’d found each other, entirely by accident. And together, they’d taken on that god. Because back then, they were too young and stupid to know just how screwed they were.

Jake outlines the grim facts. Fourteen disappearances, two known deaths in this last year. No adults in town paying any attention. The local youth organization might be actively recruiting sacrifices for this thing, or at the very least looking the other way.

“So what’s the plan?” Marco asks. “Same as last time, we all cower behind Rachel as she takes this thing on with a slingshot and half a dozen ball bearings?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Rachel smirks. “Kind of.” The smile fades. “For a while, anyway.”

“It takes power from fear.” Cassie cups both hands around her mug, hunching close to the fading warmth of the coffee. “We can’t let it force us to run or hide. We have to face it. We have to be brave.”

“Yep.” Marco pushes away from the table. “Tell that to David. Or to any of the kids who got torn to shreds. That’s fuckin peachy, ‘don’t be afraid.’”

“We have to do something,” Jake says. “It killed Ax’s brother.”

Funny, Cassie thinks, how they always bring up Ax’s brother, but never Jake’s. Maybe because Alan’s death was simple, in its own way, a clear self-sacrifice. Tom didn’t get anything as glorious as death in battle. It ate Tom from the inside. Sucked at and corrupted his soul until he was unrecognizable. Not even himself anymore. Until Rachel’d had no choice but to put him out of all their misery. Not a clean death. Not the kind of thing you could sum up in a single sentence.

There are other slow deaths like Tom’s, even more than the fast ones like what Al got. David was starting to go, Tobias thinks, even before he got out of town. One too many times he turned and ran from the thing instead of facing it with the rest of them. Once or twice he even tried to bargain with it. Tobias didn’t blame him, not once it’d taken David’s parents and started parading them in front of his eyes.

In parallel with those thoughts, Tobias finds himself rubbing fingertips along the right side of his stomach. The scars faded, and yet now they’re livid again. One shaped like an A. One like an N. Andy Mitchell only got through carving the D in his name before Jake got there in time to save Tobias.

Not in time to save Andy, though. He was gone by the end of the day. Missing, with no one left to look. No one even to comment on his being gone.

A-N-D, carved into Tobias’s skin. A transition. The middle of a thought. The only sign he’d needed, if he’d ever thought to look for one, that this thing isn’t over. That maybe it’ll never be.

“It’s a thought-form,” Jake says. He sounds confident. He almost feels it, too. Looking around at these successful adults who grew from the hopelessly awkward kids he knew, he starts to think that maybe, just maybe, they can find a way to live through this. “So we fight it like Cassie said, just by fighting back at all.”

“Thanks for the motivational speech.” Marco is clutching the plastic gun in both hands. It’s a toy — and yet, twenty-seven years ago, it fired real bullets at that freak clown. “What a day, what a lovely day to die.”

They’re walking toward the sewer entrance, heads held high. Palms damp with sweat. Because they have no choice. Because it’s what must be done.

“What are you even doing here?” Tobias asks. He’s got a baseball bat dragging at his side. It was his mother’s. No one knows for sure what happened to her, but then that’s true of a lot of people in this town. No one knows, and yet some of them can guess.

“He is here because he must be,” Ax says. “And so must we all. Aaah-wwlll.” That’s new, the playing with sounds. In the sense that it’s old. Like so much of them, it faded and then returned.

Rachel is walking close, too close, to Tobias’s side. They keep exchanging charged glances. All of them are regressing to childhood all over. Or maybe it’s just that they had to become their own adults, back when they first faced this monster, and it never really wore off.

“I’m here,” Marco says tightly, “because all my life, I’ve never had friends like I did when I was thirteen.” He laughs. “Jesus, does anyone?”

Rachel slips her hand into Tobias’s. On her other side, she’s holding Cassie, who’s holding Ax. That’s the weapon, Jake thinks. The one they’ll swing and shoot and bash at this Joker-knockoff fucker until they put it into the ground. For good this time. Stomp it to so many pieces that it can never put itself back together.

Jake puts the flashlight back on his belt. Takes Marco’s sweaty hand in his, waits for the inevitable bad one-liner about buying him dinner first.

It’s enough. Enough to hold back the darkness. Enough to keep them alive. It’ll just have to be, because it’s all they have.

Together, a daisy chain of madness, they plunge into the tunnel ahead.

#animorphs #animorphs au #au fic #it #stephen king's it #animorphs crossover #it crossover #it chapter 2 #long post #irresponsible drug use #violence #gore #bullying mention #suicide mention #anonymous #asks

103 notes · View notes

anonymous-girl37 · 4 years

Text

Here is my story.

Most stories tend to start with things being normal, however, for this one, it is honestly a clusterfuck of bullshit with a little bit of normalcy thrown in to give me the illusion of stability. Even when I was only nine, I remember fun and family activities were never really with just her and us- it was always with somebody else there to motivate her. I sort of had to raise Katie and Kylie on my own at some points. She took care of us technically speaking; she didn’t starve us or anything, she just wasn’t available for the emotional side of being a parent. The parts that kids grow up to remember, unfortunately for us.

One of the best examples of her neglectful care for us was around that time... Me being around age… eight? Nine? It all blurs together at some points, but the point is I was young.

My mom always takes naps, they last a whole ten minutes sometimes, but she’s always tired, maybe she’s sick. Whenever she’s sleeping, she says I get to play house with my sisters and pretend I’m the mom. My favorite is when she drives to the store for candy for us because then I make the rules for extra long. I get to make them lunch and play outside. Sometimes she lets me read them stories before their nap time, which is mommy’s relaxing time, so I get the whole rest of the house to myself. I get to make all the rules, dad never lets me do that. He doesn’t know, mommy said it’s our secret. I hate when she doesn’t get her naps in because then she’s grumpy. She went away for a whole week and she hasn’t taken a nap or been grumpy since she got back, maybe the doctors did surgery and fixed her. She’s even taking us to the park while dad’s at work tomorrow.

It’s been a week now, mommy was going to take us swimming but she said her head hurt too much, and the next day we were supposed to play in the woods but she needed to take a nap, and it was almost time for dinner when she woke up. Dad couldn’t know she was napping again, or he’d make her go away for a long time she said. She tells me I’m a good secret keeper. Maybe tomorrow she will let us go swimming.

Mommy’s been back home for two weeks and her medicine already stopped working, I wish it worked for longer cause I miss when mommy was fun. Mommy loves when I play house with my little sisters, but sometimes I get tired of it. I have to listen to her anyway. She’s better than dad because she doesn’t have any stupid rules. All dad ever does is work, we only get to play with him for a little bit after work and on the weekends.

It wasn’t something that stopped, her shitty “parenting” if you can even call it that, never improved. I was 12 years old popping Klonopin like candy, with her permission of course. Not only was she okay with me taking drugs, but she also fueled my addiction with her prescription. At least she was generous with her pills, however, she had plenty enough to share. She got a script of 90 a month from one doctor and 60 a month from another. She was good at pretending to have illnesses for drugs, and trust me, it’s extremely escalated since then. I don’t know who else she gave them away to, but when she ran out she always found a way to get more. Pills were more important to her than us having new clothes, and undergarments. She cared more about pills than saving money to do fun stuff with my sisters and me. She only ever wanted to be high, and she was so good at hiding it. She had our whole family fooled for years. She lived and still does live a life of lies. She sucks the life out of everyone she’s near. She sucked the life out of me. She had me becoming friends with kids who dealt drugs, It was a messy situation all around, I hung around people much older than me, I did drugs with men almost twice my age, however, usually Nicole was around for that part. At least she didn’t leave me alone with strange men, before the age of 13, I guess that was the cut-off. She decided I was mature enough, old enough, to hang out with men 8 years older than me. Luckily I had someone to protect me. Anthony tried to at least, to help me become my best. He wasn’t much better off than me in regards to a mother and he had a terrible drug problem. We experienced the same things in different ways. It felt like everything I went through, he did before me. Our lives were nowhere near identical. He grew up with his grandfather who fucked him out of his childhood, quite literally. I was addicted to Xanax, but that was nowhere near strong enough for his need to forget. Heroin was his kryptonite, he couldn’t get enough of it, but no matter how high he was, or how dope sick he was because he couldn’t find any, he made sure I was okay, he told me he loved me. Every day, that was the first thing I would hear him say. Our entire lives were straight ahead of us. He was poetic and artistic, and everything he said to me sounded like a quote from a book. He wanted his story heard, and he wanted me to be the one to hear it. It feels like I’m now responsible for telling the world. He never wanted anyone to know him, just who he was. He wasn’t all happy, and nice, he was a total asshole sometimes, I’m not sure that he was even aware. The love we had was one I’ll never forget though.

I’ve dropped my bottle and there’s broken glass on the ground now. I guess that’s what I get for being lost in these thoughts. It cut my leg but I can’t feel it. The glass reminds me of him. It reminds me of the night all of us got drunk and they were smashing glass bottles on the concrete. He screams “whoever runs through it gets $20 and this” as he’s holding a ½ empty bottle of rum. And some other guy told him he’d give home $100.00 to do it. So he runs through the things, falls, and has glass stuck from his feet to his knees. I’ll never forget that smell, blood, and vodka. I spent damn near two hours pulling glass out of his legs and feet and bandaging them up.

July Summer 2017

Today had to have been the best day of my life. Anthony took me to our spot, and we talked for hours, about nothing and everything, as always. We’re getting sober together. We’re going to do it. We promised. Today marks 1 day clean. Weed is an exception because fuck quitting that. I would do anything to make this man happy. I’ve known for a long time that he loves me, but today made me realize how much I truly love him too. I’m happy with him. My life is chaotic right now, but he’s my calm. He’s my peace. I can’t wait for the day we never have to leave each other again.

August 11 summer 2017

We’ve been sober for a month today. I want to go to this back to school party but Anthony is being a little bitch about it. I’ll convince him to go.

August 12 summer 2017

He died. On purpose. I made him go to the party and he overdosed. I thought he was just drunk. We cuddled on the porch swing until he fell over into my lap. He laid in my lap for 20 minutes before I knew. He had no pulse. He left a note in my back pocket. I can’t bring myself to look at it. I want to get rid of it.

My god damn room is a mess. Today marks 3 years since I lost the love of my life. I'm already drunk and it’s only 10 a.m. and of course, I, the drug addict, would take pills on a day like today. He would be so disappointed, but it’s finally come the time I read his suicide note, it’s finally the day, I’ve worked up the courage, I can do it. I need to do it. I must lock my door again, I can’t have another interruption. The door could’ve become unlocked. It’s locked, I’ve re-locked it twice now. I never imagined sitting on my bed, reading his note, his last words, whilst I’m a high and drunk mess. You’ll have that though, one of the greatest things Nicole ever taught me was to mask my feelings with drugs. I owe it to him. To read his last words. His voice still deserves to be heard.

Katrina,

I’m so sorry. I can’t keep doing this. I still kneel in the shower, and put my face down, letting the water puddle in my hands as if they could grow big enough to protect me from myself. The pain hits me randomly, it’s like I know I have lungs and I must be able to breathe, but I can’t, the air refuses to come. To this day, I get flashbacks, and I hate the feeling. It’s not normal. These are things you can’t forget. You want to rot because it’s better than being beat than being hurt. I have trouble believing anyone when they tell me they love me, but it’s easier with you. You told me I was your happiness and I gave you butterflies. My depression, my struggle, and my addiction gave you the determination to fight to make me happy. I’m sorry, but things are getting bad again. I should have never begun putting you through my pain. I don’t want help, I don’t want you to kill yourself fighting to save me, and I know you would if I didn’t stop you. You may not see it, and I doubt you will agree, but I’m doing what’s best. You have given me the greatest possible love, you have so much going for you, and you’re still so full of life, don’t lose that. Stay clean for me. I can’t fight anymore. Maybe that makes me a coward, but being a coward to the world is better than the pain that never leaves me, I’m tired of living in my hell. My eyes are full of tears writing this, and I can barely read. I owe my temporary feelings of joy to you. Anyone who knows me knows that if someone out there was going to save me, it would have been you. I can’t go on showering you in my pain, I can see the hurt in your eyes when you look at me. I hurt you because I’m so hurt I don’t know how to breathe anymore. If I die tonight, know that it’s for the best. Know that I haven’t truly been alive in a long time, that’s if I ever was at all. Don’t ruin yourself over me. Tell yourself what we had wasn’t real. Repeat to yourself that I never really loved you until you believe it. I treated you like a project, I manipulated you. Fool yourself into hating me. Because you’re going to see me in every single person. You’ll see some piece of me In everyone you meet. I know you, you’re going to look for me, whether you know you are or not, you’re going to seek me. If all of the words you said were true, you’re never going to give up looking for someone like me, you won’t find him. Find someone better. Find someone who fulfills you. You deserve a man who gives you the world even when he is falling apart. You deserve a love that doesn’t end, I want you to have those feelings again. I’m begging you not to look for me, I’m gone. I’m sorry that you’re never going to stop seeing pieces of me. Look for the good qualities, but I’m sure you’ll find the bad ones too. You’ll find my sense of humor in every funny movie, and all the chick flicks will remind you of our love. You’ll find my eyes in the face of a stranger and you’ll see my smile on little kids playing at the park. I’ll always be here for you whether I’m physically present or not. I was never sober. I told you I was because I knew if I got you started I could live with myself for leaving.

In reading this I thought I’d feel relieved, possibly ready to let the last of him go. But now I’m lost, more so than before. Now I’m angry, not with him, but with the world. You can’t hate someone for killing themselves, but you can hate the world for making them do it. You can hate the god or goddess or gods or goddesses you do or don’t believe in for letting it happen. I want to hate him, but I can’t because he’s not here, he took away my power to hate him, and so now I hate everything else. I hate everyone else. He wasn’t lying when he said I would see him in everyone. I see his good qualities somewhere in everyone, I see his bad qualities in every bad person but, I see him in everyone. It’s like when he died he became the universe, the universe swallowed him whole and he left a part of him in everyone. He picked who got his best qualities as if he knew I would find them. I do see his smile on the little kids playing at the park. I see his eyes in the only other man I’ve ever truly loved, they’re not the same, but the feelings in them are similar. I find his humor in every comedy. Sometimes I think maybe what he said was true, that he’d always be there for me whether physically present or not, because sometimes, on some of my worst days, I feel him. For just a minute, I can let myself pretend he isn’t gone. I can let myself pretend he never left this earth. Then my whole world comes crashing right back down. He swore to me he was sober. He promised. I think he only lied so I would be okay. I resent him for telling me to hate him. Because I can’t hate him, I want to so badly, but It’s impossible. Any pain he put me through was nothing compared to how he felt.

That's enough about him for now, as we're going to have to re-open that discussion later. Peach vodka sounds fantastic right now, I'll have a whipped pinnacle and peach smoothie. I could not have possibly made it any stronger than it is. Thank god for mind-altering substances, because quite frankly, I would be dead without them.

Nicole, if you're reading this, how did you do what you did? How were you content with yourself in the way you raised my sisters and me? Did you plan it all, or did you just go with the flow and lie when necessary? You never left a bruise, hell, you never even hit us. You scarred us permanently though, my sisters may not see it yet, but I do. Instead of giving us scars that would heal physically and show your crimes, you gave us invisible ones. The ones that people will deny us having for the rest of our lives. The ones that will always haunt us when we see you. You gave us scars that we can't get covered up with a pretty tattoo. You may not have hurt them as badly as me, but they don't deserve your games. I don't want them to experience even half of what I did.

Her games have left me empty, shallow, broken, and confused. I'm not confused about what she did or who she is, I'm confused about why. Why wasn't I good enough to deserve her love and compassion? What did I do so wrong? Why was I the one chosen to take on her role and try to fix my own life, and protect myself from someone who was supposed to protect and love me? I was forced to grow up so she could go backward. She wanted to live vicariously through me as if she wanted to become me. Everything I did, she did too. All the drugs I did, she just had to try, sometimes do them with me. Nothing was too far for her. She never told my dad though, "don't let your father find out" she would constantly imbed that into my head, it got to the point where I had become two people. One for my mother and one for my father. I remember breaking down one day, crying to myself because I felt like no one knew me and I didn't know who I was, and it was at that moment that I lost my sense of self. I'll probably never know who I am, or why. I have no clue who I want to be. I don't know how to become someone for myself, I've learned to feel as if I must adapt to everyone else.

Nicole told me everything and I mean everything. You may think, "oh that's not so bad, she's being open." Perhaps there are some things you should never tell your children. Some people should never be parents.

She loved to tell me how she was going to be so lost and sad when her "babies"(children all over the age of 10) leave her(by this she meant to grow up and go to school). How she liked sleeping around with all kinds of different men because it was fun and she was good at manipulating them. She told me about her sexual experiences and I wish she wouldn't have sometimes. She told me all kinds of things about her sex life, even asked for my commentary on the experience. Then later she changed many of her stories and said she was raped which had made me feel responsible if that's what had happened because I knew so maybe I should have known. She told me about the men she was dating and even introduced me to some, made sure I knew them well. Her 38-year-old boyfriend talked dirty to me, and the 36-year-old boyfriend did drugs with me, while we were living with him. He was a big mess, but not abusive. However, as soon as she got tired of him she claimed he beat her. She claimed he was abusive so that everyone would pity her. But, she was a liar. He never hurt her. I would have seen it, I would have known. Once again, she had made me question my entire life.

I know about everyone she hates though there aren't many. Now whether it was authentic or a horrible attempt at making me feel sympathy for her, I truly didn't know. I hate knowing everything and having been forced to be her diary, being forced to let her live through me, but she changed me to be what her idea of a kid was. It wasn't a kid at all. She refused to fix any of her problems, no matter how hard I tried to help her, she just wanted to be responsibility-free forever, and I got in the way of that, so she made me her excuse to act like a child. She forced herself to puke and bragged about it. Talking about how much weight she could lose and how quickly. It gave me my sort of eating disorder of feeling strong or like I achieved something by how much I was able to puke up. Still to this day, it's some stupid competition in my head. Drugs are her favorite, they were then too. At Least then it was just Benzos, weed, and hallucinogens. I was the only one who knew, that was stressful, keeping that secret. She constantly made me be someone I wasn't, and she forced me to be someone else for my dad. But I never did know who I was. There was "party secret keeper" me and there was "the most innocent child to exist" me, but I never knew who "me" was without being forced to put on an act one way or another.

chapter 3: The worst of you.

You broke my heart, but I should have known it was coming. It was too often that I looked into your pretty green-blue ocean eyes just to find them glazed over in a drug-induced haze. The last month with you made up for the years of torture. The torture of not knowing where you were or who you were with. Watching you burst into nothing but rage because you couldn’t find your next fix. I never wanted anything but to save you. And when you offered to be sober so long as I was, of course, I took you upon it. I thought you meant it, though I always had my doubts. 3 am is when most of our story was told. You called me every morning at 3, without a doubt, I could always expect that.

July 21st, 2017.

Time 3:00 am

I wake up in your arms and lay there silently as I’m sure you dream peaceful dreams that match the calm state of your face, I still see the shadow of mental exhaustion under your eyes. I breathe slowly, as to not disrupt your sweet dreams. I love you.

July 22nd, 2017

Time 3:00 am

You open your beautiful ocean blue-green eyes to start the beginning of your new adventure. Our fingers intertwined, our eyes locked as if we couldn’t look away. I couldn't ask for a better feeling. I love you.

July 23rd, 2017

Time 3:00 am

The scent of chocolate fills the room. It happens to be your favorite drink, surprisingly, hot chocolate, a drink no one would expect someone like you to like. A half-smile spreads across your face, the smile that tells me at this moment you’re happy. I love you.

July 24th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

I hold you close, but maybe not close enough, feeling the warmth and comfort of your body against mine made me happy though. You make me feel complete. I love you.

July 25th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

You wake me up with a small forehead kiss. You seem to be happy today. That makes me smile. I love you.

July 26th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

The ring sits perfectly on my finger. With it, I promise you I’ll be okay, and I’ll follow our dreams. You have to leave soon, but I don't want you to leave. I never do. I love you.

August 5th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

You're restlessly tossing and turning, I’m sure you haven't slept yet, you’re still withdrawing. I lean over and put my arm across you and place my body against yours. I worry because I wake up to the sound of you crying every time we sleep together. I try to pull you into me and you rest your head on my chest and quietly sob, pretending you’re just sleeping so I won’t notice. You’re stuck in this terrible life. I’m sorry. I love you.

August 6th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

Laying on the couch. I could see you staring at the wall, I felt you caressing my hand, softly. You kiss my cheek softly and then give me a warm smile. I see the pain in your eyes. It shatters my soul more every single second I look at you. You have to leave again soon. I want you to stay with me. I love you.

August 7th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

You look like you've been crying for hours. I'm afraid you’re not okay again. I know you won’t tell me. I love you

August 8th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

you tell me that you don't want to get out of bed today. You tell me that you love me and that you're gonna be okay. I should know better but I believe you because I want to. I love you.

August 9th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

You look like you’re on drugs again, but you won’t tell me that. Your face is pale and you’re always shivering. I love you.

August 10th, 2017

Time 3:00 am

I have yet to see you smile. You look at me over video chat and I know that you're fighting it, you can’t wait to congratulate me on one month of sobriety, and I can’t wait to congratulate you. In-person. Your kisses are always soft but lately, they have a chill to them. The warmth from you has disappeared, I’m worried that you want drugs again. You told me “I’ll always be here for you whether I’m physically present or not.” That makes me feel better. Maybe a party will cheer you up, I have a surprise planned for you tonight. I love you.

August 11, 2017

Time 6:00 am

You died at 1:53 am

I tried to wake you up but you don't stir. The party went silent. The pain in my chest is excruciating. I shook you and your rubber-banded bag fell to the floor. I hugged you harder as if it could bring you back. There is nothing I could do but cry. 15 minutes later I dialed 9-1-1 but I couldn’t speak, I cried so hard that no sound could even come out anymore. The sobs were so quiet they were loud. The ambulance got there, they put you on a stretcher. At first, I refused to let go of you, holding onto your hand, hugging your body with mine as if I could give you the life in me. It was so cold. D.O.A. I love you... The bed feels empty with you gone. The couch feels too big without you next to me. And the porch swing looks like a grave. I can’t go to the party house anymore. My hands feel cold without yours in them. I cried all night. The tears stopped coming out after a while, but I still sobbed. Your scent fills my nose and I cry more. I could have saved you. I'm empty without you. I should have known better. Your last words haunt me. I’m not sober anymore, I’m sorry. The note you left, I don’t think I can ever read it. I love you.

August 3rd, 2018

Time 3:00 am

I had a dream about you. You looked so happy, your wings matched your darkness. But Seeing your smile, your real one, made me feel good, so good that you are no longer only a dark spot in my memory.

August 5th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

I made your favorite, hot chocolate, and a bacon peanut butter sandwich. I wish you had a grave, but they turned you to ash and put you god knows where. Even though you aren't here, the universe still reminds me of you. Even though I know you won't be waking up this time. I love you.

August 10th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

I went to our spot today. I cried when I got home, I hurt so bad. I miss you more than anything. I love you. It's almost been a year.

August 11th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

The first anniversary of losing you. I refuse to accept that you’re gone. Just tell me you’re coming for me. Tell me you’re in some 3rd world country just hiding out like we always talked about, and you’re gonna come find me when I’m 18. I want this to all be a bad dream.

August 12th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

It's getting too hard to sleep. I slept in one of your t-shirts. It smelled just like your favorite cologne. I held it just like I would have held you. I love you. I miss you.

August 13th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

Your mom called to make sure I was okay, your parents are back in New England now. They miss you, it hurt to hear her cry. I guess she did love you in her way. I love you.

August 14th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

I'm going crazy without you. This isn’t allowed to be real. I miss you. I miss your smell. I want you back. I love you.

August 15th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

I visited our spot again yesterday. Remember what you told me? “I’ll always be here for you whether I’m physically present or not”. Those words haunt me, you spoke them the day before left me forever. I should have known. I wish I knew. Maybe then I could have saved you. I love you.

August 16th, 2018

Time 3:00 am

I can't stand being without you anymore. I love you.

August 11th, 2019

Time 3:00 am

It’s been two years. I miss you more than I ever thought was humanly possible. Please come back. I think I’m in love again. It scares me, but I know you’d like him.

August 12th, 2019

Time 3:00 am

No one gets that you weren’t the best thing in the universe, that you were an asshole sometimes, you weren’t always a good person. But you were good. You made life something more than it was and you showed me who I could be. You showed me who I am, in your own fucked up way that included you dying. And for that, I owe you.

August 3rd, 2020

Time 3:00 am

I've finally read the note you left me. I read it over and over. I’m crying so much writing this I can’t even see. Come back. I miss you. I love you.

August 5th, 2020

Time 3:00 am

Why did you have to go and do that? This all must be a fucking joke. I love you.

August 8th, 2020

Time 3:00 am

The day that marks 3 years since you left me is coming up quickly. I don’t want it to come. I don’t want it to happen. I don’t want to accept this. I miss our talks at our spot. I love you.

August 11th, 2020

Time 1:53 am

It’s been 3 years. Today is terrible. Come back. I love you.

I guess your anger is just as much a part of your story as your love. You loved me, that much everyone who knew you knew, but you had a funny way of showing it sometimes. The drugs clouded your memory, or at least you wanted me to think they did. Like the time you shot at someone who stole off of you. Your excuse was being high, but not until you knew how much it scared me. I’m not sure what you thought would happen had you shot him, but I don’t think you cared regardless. Maybe you always knew what you were doing, and you were too tired to control yourself. No matter what, a part of me will always be infatuated with you and a piece of my heart will always belong to you. Our story is one I can never forget, but as time goes on I see more flaws, I find more wrongdoings, and I learn to love you less.

Chapter 4

How have we gotten to this point? I woke up today in a great mood, but of course, Nicole couldn’t allow that. It’s been months since I spoke to her, but she’s pinned my best friend and his mother against me. She and her so-called husband say I told them I was going to turn them in. My best friend who deals drugs, and his mother who condones it and takes part. I know what you’re thinking, why the fuck are you, friends, with these people? Quite frankly, I don’t know, I guess I always have been. My best friend, Aaron, was the first guy I ever had a crush on. He was the only person who showed up to my 13th birthday party and he never did me wrong. He took my weed virginity, and he stuck up for me. He didn’t let kids bully me, though they sure tried. He didn’t back down, sometimes it felt like he was the only person on my side. If it weren’t for him my middle school experience would not have been nearly as mediocre as it was. At some points in life, he was all I had, and still, to this day, I can go to him with whatever and he does his best to help. Though, ever since Nicole started her bullshit and I told the police about her abuse, she has been trying to sway him to take her side. She’s good at doing that, she knows how to manipulate just about anyone. She had our entire family fooled for years, had them convinced she wasn’t a terrible person or on drugs.

I guess now is a good time to bring up Josh, the man who took my virginity, if you want to put it that nicely. By that I mean the 19-year-old who forcibly had sex with 13-year-old me, whilst I was high on pills in Victoria’s closet. Victoria was my BFF, we did everything together, mostly drugs. Sometimes random friends of friends would stay at her house, and one time we made a huge mistake. I still remember the feeling, being dragged from bed and onto the ground, through the closet doors. I can still hear how loud the sliding door shut. I remember how it felt, my clothes being ripped off of me, sloppily and just good enough for him to get to where he wanted. He clasped his hand around my throat to keep me pinned down as if I wasn’t already paralyzed by the pills he offered me. Surely I took them, I was too high to know better. I didn’t feel anything, but that was the torture of it. I knew what was happening, and I was unable to stop it. My body was motionless, but he got off on it. His evil grin and cold eyes are permanently ingrained in my brain, I’ll never forget his face because that’s all I could look at. I’ll never forget it because I’m forced to remember. Good thing I never felt it, I’m sure that would be a whole other nightmare. I’m sure you’re wondering how this relates to Nicole, but let me tell you, I told her about the invasion of my body, and she doubted me. I told her what happened and she told me I was wrong. She told me I wasn’t that high, I could have stopped it if I didn’t want it. She told me I wanted it. I the 13-year-old, of course, believed my mom, only to figure out it was sexual assault 2 years later. Nicole of course did absolutely nothing, as per usual. She could have saved me that night. I called her, I wanted to go home because I didn’t feel safe and I thought I was too high, she came and saw me, she told all the people there I was fine, even went as far as saying I was faking it. Maybe she’s the reason I got raped that night, maybe he took my silence as consent because he thought I was sober. Maybe he was rough because he thought my silence meant I liked it. Maybe I only imagined saying stop, perhaps it never came out of my mouth. Or perhaps my pleas to stop convinced him to continue. How could I know anyways? I was in a drug-fueled haze, maybe I remember wrong and I never said stop. I guess that’s the downfall of getting high, you never know what happened. Everything is foggy and the details are blurry. It’s like trying to remember a dream after you wake up, you wonder what happened and the longer you’re awake the blurrier the memory gets. The longer you’re sober, the blurrier your high adventures become. Just because I’ve been thinking about this long enough to write it down, anxiety is jolting through my veins. It starts at the back of my throat, pushing its way up from the inside out, a sting that becomes so much more. The line between what is fear and what is real is becoming blurrier by the second. It feels as if my words are stuck in my throat, stopping me from screaming, from letting my feelings out. This is my brain's way of telling me my words aren’t worth much right now, quite frankly it’s not wrong. He tore my soul to pieces as my pleas ran through his mind as “convince me” “keep going” “I like it”. I can still see his cold, hungry eyes in my dreams sometimes. Imagining his face sends shivers down my spine as I continually play what he did to me over and over again as if something could change the more I think into it. He broke me, crushed my being, my soul, and outright stole my voice. I can’t possibly continue to look at myself in disgust over this man, because it is he who should rot, not me. I’m worth more than becoming the perfect victim, I choose to be a victor. Sometimes I don't think I can do it, my motivation is wanting to be further in life than anyone who has ever hurt me, and I'm already there.

Chapter 5: The Man Who Loved Me Once

The man who loved me once, the one who broke my heart into pieces. Leo tore me to pieces, but I thought I was in love with him. It took a month in a psychiatric facility to conclude that he never loved me. I was 15 with a 21-year-old man. He convinced me it was okay along with Nicole constantly praising me for it. “Damn haha you are just like me”

February 3rd, 2018

I told him to stop, I told him no. I told him I didn't want to do this. I begged and pleaded but that meant nothing to him. He didn't stop, he didn't understand “no”, my begs and pleads for him to stop rang through his ears as “convince me”. His right hand roamed my body, It made me shiver. His left hand went between covering my mouth to shut me up, and pushing me back up against the brick wall. He kissed my lips roughly to silence me, pushing me hard against the wall. His fingers scratched into my skin, making me squirm. I couldn't move much though, the pills he put in my drink prevented me from doing that, what a lovely redo of the last man who hurt me. This one at least did not do it with people around, though it was dark, we were in a public place. He called me baby girl and told me "I am going to fuck you so good". I showered 3 times today, and no one questioned it. I did not eat anything for a few days, and no one questioned it. Maybe you did not mean to hurt me, maybe you thought I liked it. I still love you.

February 27th, 2018

He hit me today, it's not the first time. Hell, it is not even the second or third time, honestly, I have lost count. He loves me. He apologized and then we cuddled and watched a movie. He will change, I know I can fix him. He never means to hurt me. He is a good man and people do not want to try to understand. I have to cover the bruises, good thing it is winter and I can wear a hoodie every day. He makes me sad but he does not mean it. He loves me and I know it.

March 15th, 2018

Today he took me to meet his parents. I had to lie and say I was 18. I pretended I was in college. He made me. He just did not want his parents to give him shit like they always do. He said it was fine that we had an age difference. I trust him, I would do anything for him. I love him.

March 28th, 2018

Today he tried to drown me. It was my fault. I remember passing out and waking up with no clothes. I guess he put them in the dryer because they were wet. He wasn't himself when he did it, I am sure there is just something going on mentally. I can fix him. I can help him. I know he loves me. I know he can get help, I want to help him.

April 3, 2018

I saw him today, our visit was cut short because Nicole wanted me to come home. She knows about him and me, she just missed me because I have been at friends’ houses and with Leo all week. He was pretty mean today, he grabbed me by the throat and I am beginning to think that he needs more help than I can give him. My throat is sore and it is bruised on the side. I will have to wear my hair down. He loves me so much that the pain is worth it. I do not want to lose him. The way he strokes my hair and holds me, while he is apologizing after he has done something that harmed me is so sweet. I love it when he buys me flowers and sometimes he is good for a while. The pain is worth it for the love.

April 8th, 2018

He raped me. He put a glass bottle inside of me, and my vagina bled. He got me drunk, and we started making out, then he fucked me, relentlessly, roughly. He bruised me. In between my legs. My dad picked me up, it was the worst experience of my life. I still love him and I do not want to anymore. I am being punished for it because Nicole will not tell my dad she knew everything. I am being punished for being raped. I am broken. I need help.

April 24th, 2018

I spent nearly a month in a psychiatric facility, it has helped me a lot. My roommate was awesome. I had a nurse in there, a youngish, beautiful, and kind African American woman, she is the reason I am still alive. I am so grateful to have met that woman and another one of the therapists there. It has helped me so incredibly much. I hate that I am still being punished for being raped because I was not, not allowed there. I had permission. I did not do anything without my mom's permission, yet she and my dad punished me for being raped. As in it was my fault. As if I did it to myself. How was I supposed to know any better with Nicole telling me it was okay? I have grown to hate my dad, I make sure he knows it and I feel no remorse for what I say. He sucks and I wish I was just with my mom. I still love Leo, but he never loved me, except once.

I have grown so much since then. I used to think so highly of Nicole. I thought it was awesome to have a mom that helps you sneak around and break rules. I thought so highly of her and I wanted to be exactly like her. I wanted to smoke and drink and be high all of the time because I thought it was so cool. I thought it was normal at that. I just could not realize that she was no good. My dad was the only one who wanted what was best for me, and still to this day he does. He was the one who saw how poorly I was doing and made an effort towards getting me better. He did not even know half of it and from the time he found out and forward, he gave me all of the acceptance and care and love I needed. I regret ever being so mean to him. I know you are wondering what the hell I said to him, so I will make a list.

-I hate you

-You are a terrible dad

-I will never speak to you again

-You are the reason I am so messed up

-I never want to see you again, you suck and I fucking hate you, don't you dare tell me to watch my mouth, you don't get to tell me what to do because you aren't my dad anymore {then I called him by his first name}

-I do not want you in my life

I hate myself for the things I said to my dad. He is one of the kindest, most caring, and genuinely good human beings I know. He does everything he can to make sure my sisters and I can have what we want. He has a job therefore a steady income. He gets us any reasonable thing we want. I am so lucky to have a dad like him because not everyone gets a good dad, I love my dad. He and I finally have an amazing father, daughter relationship and I feel so much better. I wish I never said those hurtful awful things to him, I wish that Nicole never ingrained my brain with lies about him making him seem bad. Now my sisters are saying very similar but even meaner hurtful things to my dad. He does so well for them and they hate him because Nicole is good at brainwashing.

Dad, if you are reading this, I want you to know, it was never your fault for anything that happened. You could not have known, Nicole manipulates well. I love you and you are an awesome dad.

My mind is in a muddle. I can not seem to think straight for some reason. Nicole manipulated me so much I question my trauma. she told my dad and me that I faked being raped so I would not be in trouble. When I went to the party, she said it was real for a while, until it was no longer convenient for her to use. "My poor baby, I feel so bad seeing my daughter shower 5 times a day". Then when it was not getting her attention anymore, she said I was lying.

I wish I knew what to do with the thoughts that are flooding my brain right now. Once you become happy, and you come to be at peace with yourself, you can be okay. However, your demons stick with you forever. Once an addict, always an addict, but that does not make you a bad person. It shows how strong you are when you get sober. Your demons follow you, but you can restrain them, you can imprison them and throw them into the back of your brain. That alone makes you a survivor. Being a victim of rape and having PTSD is just the same. It is hard to suppress the memories, and it is even harder to work through them, but it is possible, I know it is because I am doing it. Your demons follow you, you have to realize that they do not own you.

Nicole is part of the reason I am mentally ill. I hate her for that. I hate her for many things. I wish her the worst. However, I am not going to let her win. I do not hate her, I hate what she did, I hate the way she groomed me into her idea of a good daughter. I hate how she manipulated me into believing my dad was no good, and he drank too much and he ignored us on the weekends for shooting/hunting. I regret not letting my dad have a relationship with me for years. She is not winning this one. I hate everything she did, but I will leave it to someone else to hate her because I am sure other people do.

I have always been in love with Leo, but as time passes by, I realize that nothing he did was good or okay. He was only ever "nice" to manipulate me. I wish I had known then what I know now. I am slowly getting over him and trying to ignore the intrusive thoughts about him. He was like a drug, and I got addicted.

My current boyfriend is amazing, and I could not have asked for someone better.

Chapter 6: This Is Today

Hypomania can be nice, I was hypomanic for like a month, keyword fucking “was”. I’d like to clear the misconception that mania means you’re happy, it doesn’t. I can’t be confrontational right now because no matter what it’s about I’m approaching it like a fight even if you’re approaching it like a discussion. It’s one hell of a fucking high and if you’ve ever done hard drugs you know that it’s usually not good the whole time you’re on a binge after a week or so. You know it’s more intense the more you do and the less you can function. Mania is such an intense thing that it makes you feel like you are on drugs when you aren’t, and as someone who used to do a lot of them, that’s scary, because it brings back so many memories, and for me, that fuels the mania more, it is just feeding the fire. Okay, so imagine like a 2-month long drug binge or drinking (alcohol) binge with the given random withdrawals and mood swings, The comedowns, and the intense parts where you think you’re on top of the world and life could not possibly get better.. Okay? Now imagine having no control over when you feel like you’re coming down when you feel high or drunk when you feel hungover when you are high or drunk at all. Imagine 24/7 constant torture of not knowing what’s next. Don’t fucking romanticize mania, don’t romanticize this. Here I am, in my bathtub, with a bottle of cheap vodka that tastes more like the smell of hand sanitizer than any alcohol at all, and I’m on 2 bars of Xanax (I was coming up on a year sober). Here I am, hot water pouring onto my trembling body in hope that it will ease my trembling, it feels like I’ve been in here for days and it’s only been hours, yet all of my tears are gone. I’ve drained myself of tears and I can’t seem to cry anymore. It's just a dull sob, heavy breathing, shaky hands, a blotchy face, and a trembling body. You think my symptoms would be numbed but I feel like they’re more lifelike now. I feel trapped within them, as if they own me, just like he owned me. I wish I could say he never did but for a while there I was stuck in his abyss. I haven’t slept in way too fucking long. Yes, I am on meds, no they are not working. I’m talking to my psychiatrist as soon as I can. Last night and these past few hours(it’s 3:48 a.m.) have been terrible, I’ve been up talking and pacing and shaking and crying all night in utter paranoia full of what I'm self-aware enough to know are only delusions, going from laughter to crying excessively to panic attacks that feel like the end of the world, to pouring my heart out to a girl I’ve been friends with for a week and telling her all of my trauma(shout out to you dude thank you) to trying to buy fucking animals(specifically a monkey) off of the Internet. Even though I only collectively have $6.00. Mania is embarrassing yourself publicly or even just within your household and not fucking remembering what you did or how you did it or why. Mania is bad life choices and excessive cleaning and exhaustion and impulsivity, for example: “wanna get drunk” yeah I’m drunk rn but sure why not. “Wanna have sex?” Yeah okay “ I don’t have a condom” that’s cool just pull out or don’t I don’t care. Mania is hurting the people you love because they can see how lost you are and how broken you are and how you can’t see that you need help. Mania is researching, stalking, fucking obsessively trying to find your abuser/rapist on the internet because you’re curious as to how he’s doing. Mania is trying to convince everyone around you that you’re fine because you want to be fine because you don’t want it to happen again until you’re so not fine you can’t avoid it anymore. Sometimes you just get stuck in fucking mania and you can’t get out. Sometimes you get hypomanic and start a book then as it progresses into mania you write more and more *cough* me *cough*.

Life has never exactly been easy, and I’ve always had difficulties concluding that nothing that’s happened is my fault, and truly it is not. However, blaming myself has always been easier than blaming everyone else. In complete honesty, Nicole ruined so much of my life and damaged my psyche. The way I view the world will never be innocent, my innocence is gone and I’m not sure I could get it back if I tried to. How much of my life would have been different had I not been an addict? What if Nicole never was abusive? What if I was never raped? What if I did fewer drugs? What if I never told my dad about Nicole? I could go on with the questions, but that probably won’t get us anywhere. It’s funny to think of who I could have become. Maybe I would be a sheltered little bitch with no sense of humor or sense of self. Maybe I would still to this day be a drug addict. The what if’s don’t matter, because they are simply that, what if’s. They don’t mean anything, but my past means everything. I don’t hold grudges against anyone for anything, I try not to hate, but I do strongly dislike Nicole. I do wish she wasn’t such a raging bitch. I wish she could just stop being a piece of shit. I wish my life wasn’t destroyed, yet I am beyond thankful for how beautifully broken I am.

I'll have such loud intrusive thoughts that they feel like voices. It's like there are two people in my head sometimes 3 or 4, constantly talking over one other, and then me trying to get them to stop long enough for me to hear myself think. I will also have snippets of words, phrases, phantom sounds, or music. I begin to hear whole words, phrases, even random sounds, and parts of songs. Sometimes I don’t even know the songs. “Just shut up, no one likes you”

“do it anyway, don’t be a pussy”

“they’ll think you’re crazy, be careful who you tell”

“secret secret secret”

“stop thinking about him”

“don’t stop thinking about it”

I’m sure the thoughts, the voices I’m hearing don’t sound all that terrible, but they are. You’re probably wondering why I let them bother me.

Just imagine constantly hearing the same things over and over and over and instead of letting the voice become a redundant muttering, it becomes more meaningful every time you hear it. They become more hurtful. They become louder with every waking breath. This form of existence is painful. The world wants me to be the same thing I want to be, but I don’t know if this is even me.

I struggle a lot with that. It makes me feel like I led two lives and honestly you’re one of the only people who heard about a lot of my “high adventures” I’ll call them, and I do apologize for telling you about me doing drugs and stuff, you were too young to be hearing about that(you aren’t too young now). However, because I am an addict I’ve made a lot of mistakes. And I did drugs to cope with my existence and how secret I had to keep anything that had to do with Nicole.

The voices in my head won’t shut up. They scream and yell, and go in circles taking turns talking, seeing who can be the loudest. My head is constantly racing. There is constantly something going on in my head. I just want it all to stop. The only things to drown them out are drugs. Maybe I will start taking benzos again, that calmed them last time.

1 note · View note

exjunkiebaby · 4 years

Text

My friend just died and I'm speechless

People from my high school have been dying. Specifically this particular season and this particular year. I got a call from one of my best friends and she told me the news: her once best friend - OUR friend - had passed away this morning due to the disease of addiction. Due to the flood of opiates here in California. Due to very little awareness of harm reduction. And I'm fucking speechless. I exploded into a fit of tears 5 minutes ago, but now I'm sitting on the corner of my bed and staring at the floor. My heart feels heavy. My anxiety is bubbling. I don't know what to do. My first instinct - call somebody who has xanax.

You never think it will happen to somebody in your circle until BAM it does. And it hits you. And the memories, some terrible times some amazing times- they flood your brain. i feel like i could have done more. We talked 2 days ago, and I warned him about the dangers of fucking with opiates. I should have revealed his little secret to the world. maybe he would still be here.

I'm afraid. I feel fear. I don't know what comes after death and I am very afraid. I hope he is in peace. I hope he never feels pain again. I hope this is the freedom he was looking for. I hope the freedom i am looking for is not found in death. He's supposed to be here!!!! For fucks sake, he was about to turn 25. The fact that i have to use "was" to describe him turns a dagger in my stomach. I can't think straight.

Rest in peace Dwayne. I fucking love you. And you're homies loved you so much fucking more, they would give you the world if they could. I'll smoke a blunt for you tomorrow morning. I'll talk to you then.

7 notes · View notes

yourpharma360 · 4 years

Text

How Ambien Works ?

The Ambien defense was also utilized in the event of Julie Ann Bronson, a flight attendant from Texas. Bronson took a few Ambien to help her sleep. She went to bed early, and was drinking wine earlier in the afternoon. She awakened in jail, still in her pajamas, barefoot and terrified. She was horrified when she had been told that she had run such as an 18-month-old woman who suffered severe brain damage as a result of the mess. "It was surreal. It was just like a bad dream." In May of 2012, Bronson pleaded guilty to the felonies of intoxication assault and failure to stop and render aid. "I did the crime but I never planned to do it," she testified. "I wouldn't hurt a flea. And if I would have hit on somebody, I'd have stopped and helped. Ten decades bronson faced, but as a result of this Ambien defense, she will serve six months in prison and have ten years of probation.

What is Ambien 10mg

It was only in Patrick Kennedy's 2006 middle-of-the-night vehicle accident and explanation to arriving officers that he had been running late to get a vote the eccentric side effects of Ambien began to receive national attention. Kennedy claimed the sleeping aid had been obtained by him and had no recollection of those events and Buy Ambien Online Overnight .

On March 29, 2009, 45, Robert Stewart, stormed to the Pinelake Health and Rehab nursing home in Carthage, North Carolina and opened fire, killing eight people and wounding two. Stewart target was his estranged wife, who was employed as a nurse. She hid in a bathroom and was unharmed. Though there was evidence that Stewart's actions were premeditated (he allegedly had a target), Stewart's defense team successfully argued that since he was under the effect of Ambien, a sleep aid, at the time of the shooting, he was not in control of his activities. Instead of the fees Stewart was convicted on eight counts of second-degree murder. 142 -- 179 years was received by him.

Ambien Overdose

As a result of this Schweigert verdict, an attorney used the Ambien defense by asserting his client's arrest had been shifted six months following by the drug's labeling to overturn a 2006 DWI conviction for a New Jersey woman. The court agreed, stating it would be an"injustice to hold her accountable for the side effects of a popular and readily available medication that she was lawfully prescribed and properly handled." Not many prosecutors will consider the Ambien defense, and its position within criminal rules that are established is tenuous. It doesn't actually fall under"voluntary intoxication," in which somebody is responsible for their intoxication and some other events that happen as a consequence of that intoxication. The Ambien defendants took the medication, but they weren't aware they were drugging themselves in a means that could produce anything other. The defendants knowingly took the medicine, because they're recorded as potential side effects in the information, and also the responses weren't unpredictable. In the end, there's the"unconsciousness/sleepwalking" defense, where the individual is not responsible for the crime if he did not intentionally cause the sleepwalking or unconsciousness. So that this defense does not really apply the whole motivation for taking Ambien at the first area is to create unconsciousness.

Ambien 5mg vs Ambien 10mg

After its approval, Ambien Dose rose to dominance in the sleep aid industry. Travelers declared by it to fight jet lag, and girls, who suffer more insomnia purchased it. Sanofi, the French manufacturer of Ambien, made $2 billion in earnings in its summit. In 2007 Ambien's generic version was published, Zolpidem, and in less than $2 a tablet, it remains among the most prescribed medications in the usa, outselling painkillers such as prescription and Percocet strength ibuprofen. Not everyone who engages in bizarre behavior of accepting Ambien as a result ends up in trouble. And a few people today enjoy the large they get from the drug so much they are willing to miss the blackouts and effects that result. Recreational users started out taking the drug to treat insomnia, but discovered that if they fought the sleep-inducing effect of the drug, they could get really high. "It's like having that drink in the pub when you realize you need to go home -- I would combat the pill's effects and stay up, often telling my friends mad things like how to turn the light inside the room in energy, or the way that paintings of forest scenes in their walls were actually drawings of mermaids bathing themselves into blood," writes one young woman whose dependence on Ambien caused increasingly bizarre and alienating behavior. She continued staying awake regularly until one morning she awakened with a cut and two black eyes across her nose and taking the pill. Her cushions were bloody, and a stranger was, wrapped in a rug, on her floor and naked. This situation jarring, was not sufficient to get her to give Ambien up; the high was too good. It wasn't until she was discovered wandering the Brooklyn streets in the middle of the night, almost nude, that she managed to give it up.

Guideline For Ambien 10mg

Ironically, you are likely to succeed with the Ambien defense should you injure or kill someone than if you crash into a car or a tree. DWI laws just need the prosecution to show that the defendant got and was loaded into a vehicle to drive. There's no requirement. When someone is hurt, nevertheless, it is up to the prosecutor to demonstrate that the suspect was conscious enough to become guilty of the crime. It's hard to claim that they have knowledge of their actions, if people on Ambien are behaving in an automatic, or unconscious state. That's why people prefer Lindsey Schweigert get permits while Donna Neely, that was sleep-driving on Ambien and murdered a mother of 11, was acquitted of vehicular manslaughter. Tiger Woods was also famously associated with Ambien when one of his mistresses claimed that she and the golfer could have"crazy Ambien sex" Ambien reduces inhibitions and erases memories, an perfect combination for someone who's cheating on his spouse. The buzz created by the drug seems to boost sex. One girl described feeling"quite relaxed and sensuous" when she had sex on Ambien. "I suddenly have floaty energy. . I am tired, but lively. It's almost like I'm at a state. I could compare it somewhat to weed, but nothing I've done really contrasts, in all honesty."

Ambien is one of the best dose

Lindsey Schweigert took one Ambien Sleeping Pills prior to getting into bed at 6pm. She woke up with no idea how she'd gotten there. In the following weeks, Schweigert pieced together the events of the night. She'd gotten out of bed, drawn a tub, and left the house. After leaving her house she began driving to a local restaurant but crashed shortly. She was explained by police as glassy-eyed and swaying. The flipside to Ambien's supposed attributes is the fact that it's becoming increasingly used as a date rape drug. Actually, the single case of"sleep-sex" that appeared at an 2008 medical journal review of case reports on Ambien-related sleep behaviors involved the Ambien taker being raped. The identical absence of inhibition together with amnesia which makes it possible for people indulge in behavior that is dishonest, to commit offenses, and also have sex on Ambien is an ideal formulation for a sexual predator. Ambien is also readily accessible and more widely accessible than rohypnol, the drug related to date rape.

Ambien Overnight

Schweigert had. She had never been in trouble with the law and was scared of losing her job and having a criminal record. Prosecutors initially wanted to inflict a six month jail sentence as well as other punishments, but Schweigert's lawyer contended that Lindsey's bizarre behaviour on the night in question was a result of a drug which cautioned right on the tag that"After taking AMBIEN, you may get up from bed whilst not being completely awake and perform an activity that you do not understand you are doing. In fact, the attorney argued, Schweigert must have been taken to jail, not to a hospital. Prosecutors dropped the charges and enabled Lindsey to plead to the lesser charge.

Shortly Ambien users resisted Sanofi because of eccentric behaviours while. Based on attorney for the class action suit, Susan Chana Lask, folks were eating things like buttered eggs and cigarettes, complete with all the shells, while under the sway of Ambien. He blames Ambien, but for lapses in his memory within five decades and an extended period of writer's block. "...a great deal of my memory is gone. If you've ever taken Ambien, I don't know, but it's kind of a memory-eraser. This shit wiped out five decades of my life. People might tell me stories, and it's like,"I did that?" Eminem has maintained a few of his writing from this period, confessing to Rolling Stone that"It fucking out me...Letters all down the page -- it was like my hands weighed 400 pounds. I have that shit. As a reminder that I don't ever wish to go back."

Final Words

A part of the category of drugs known as hypnotics, ambien, was accepted by the FDA in 1992. It was designed for short-term use to fight insomnia and was a welcome change in the prevailing sleep aid at the moment, Halcion, which had been implicated in psychosis, suicide, and addiction and had been banned in half a dozen countries. Ambien works by activating the neurotransmitter GABA and binding it at precisely the exact same place as the benzodiazepines such as Xanax and Valium. The extra GABA action triggered by the drug inhibits. To put it differently, the brain is slowed down by it. Ambien is effective at initiating sleep working within 20 minutes. Unless it's taken in the release type, it does not, however, have an impact on sustaining sleep.

#ambien amb amb10mg

1 note · View note

emikvs · 5 years

Text

SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY. PLEASE CONSULT A DOCTOR BEFORE TAKING ANY MEDICATION....

september 14th, 2018 10:55 p.m. los angeles, california ocean view recovery center

journal entry #1. apparently i have to write these everyday, can you believe that? literally who am i talking to. dear therapist reading this, i think you’re stinky and a nosy piece of shit. ok that was mean. not a piece of shit, but the tie you wear kinda makes you look like an asshole. you kinda look like the old dudes that hang around my dad at political fundraisers. guess that’s why he picked this place, huh? but for real, i hope you don’t wear that tie again. it upsets me. you guys are supposed to care about that stuff right? if i’m upset? well i have some more to complain about. dinner today was okay. i give it a 6/10 stars. okay, maybe it would have gotten a 7 if you didn’t give me green jello. not even red jello.....but green. i can’t even begin to describe how much that upsets me. even the hospitals know better. fuck. i really wish i was high.

october 29th, 2018 10:13 a.m. los angeles, california ocean view recovery center

journal entry #45. some of the people here are really weird. i can’t tell if they’re celebrities or not when everyone starts whispering around them, or if they’re just really fucking weird and that’s why everyone is whispering. i will get to the bottom of this. also, i just want to say i think it’s very unfair you keep asking me about my dad when i know he did some not so legal stuff to get me here and out of school without penalty. doesn’t that make this center an accomplice? i’m not sure how it works, but what i’m trying to say is it seems a bit unfair on my end for you to be trying to act all professional and stuff when i know you aren’t. ask me about anything else. maybe drugs? isn’t that why i’m in rehab? whatever. there were oranges at breakfast today. i liked that.

december 25th, 2018 8:05 p.m. los angeles, california ocean view recovery center

journal entry #102. merry christmas! i think i’m finally remembering just how miserable it is to be sober. i know, not what you wanna hear, but for the sake of honesty i’ll go on. it’s not that i miss the drugs, exactly. i just miss being happy. that warm fuzzy kind of happy where i can’t feel anything. my brain doesn’t know how to do that without drugs. i don’t think it ever did. wanna know a fun fact? i never liked christmas very much as a kid. i though santa was a real asshole. all my life my parents would warn us about bad men that break into homes and how they were dirty criminals, but this red suit motherfucker gets a free pass because he leaves us presents? i didn’t get it. i thought santa was a bad guy. so one christmas, i think i was six, i stayed up. i waited for my sister to go to sleep and then i snuck out of our room to use the phone in the kitchen and i called 911. i told them someone was breaking into my house. naturally the cops showed up. i mean, you get a 911 call from a kid i guess you assume their parents are being held at gunpoint or something, i don’t know. but they took it seriously because they showed up to our house even though it was christmas and it was snowing. and i remember being so furious that santa hadn’t shown up. i was throwing a fit, crying and stuff. and my mom must have thought i was sad because there were no presents under the tree because all of a sudden she’s telling me that santa isn’t real, that daddy is the one who leaves the presents under the tree. that was my moment, the one people always talk about, when you figure out your parents are just people. that they kinda suck just like everybody else. i wish it was snowing here. i like the snow. it makes things quiet.

may 7th, 2019 2:34 p.m. los angeles, california ocean view recovery center

goodbye journal. goodbye ocean view. goodbye nosy (not a piece of shit) therapist. don’t hate me, but i bought you a tie. it’s got cats on it. nobody will mistake you for an asshole ever again if you’ve got cats on your tie. you can thank me the next time i overdose and have to check back in. (i’m kidding)

CAUTION. SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE...

september 9th, 2019 2:33 a.m. charlottesville , virginia university of virginia

dizzy ––––– she’s dizzy and she wishes she could blame it on the molly she’d stolen from cynthia, the molly she’d swallowed dry when she’d slipped out of sage’s apartment while everyone had been too distracted to notice, but she figures it’s all the other shit that’s got her legs literally shaking. plus it’s been a couple of hours now, and emiko really doesn’t think she’s high anymore. there’s too much noise inside her head. too many thoughts. she’s sweating despite the chill in the air, fall kissing summer as it says goodbye, the breeze blowing strands of dark hair into her face as she walks across a mostly empty campus. for a moment she’s tempted to take her shoes off. not for any particular reason, except maybe the hope that the action of curling her toes into solid ground might be enough to remind her that she was attached to her body still, her mind playing tricks. shadows dancing at the corners of her vision, the wind rustling through the trees sounding like voices ––––– she considers whether or not she’s going crazy before remembering the insane don’t ask those kinds of questions. the realization was more of a disappointment than a sigh relief. perhaps if she was out of her mind, truly out of it, then nothing would matter. every event that had transpired would be nothing but a string of meaningless moments. memories that held no substance, events that carried no weight or power. she’d be free. it’s in that moment that she starts to cry, her tears warm as they slide down her cheeks, the saltiness gathering onto the curve of her lip so she can taste it in her mouth. and then she laughs. if someone saw her now, alone and teary eyed, nails bitten down to bloody stubs, what would they think ? she’d like to imagine whatever narrative an onlooker might place her in, it would be kinder than the one she’s currently living. fuck did she need to be high right now.

there was a biology major that owed her a favor. and while neither of them remembered how exactly this debt had been acquired, he’d opened the door when she’d knocked, the scent of marijuana wafting the way someone’s perfume might if you stand too close. “ ––––– emi ? jesus christ, you look like shit. ” she didn’t doubt the truth in his statement, because she felt like shit, like every breath she took was filling her lungs with more air than she could handle and she was one second away from choking on it. still, he’d let her in, not asking any questions besides if she wanted water and if she wanted to do a line of coke with his girlfriend and roommate. she’d said yes to the coke. sitting at the edge of the couch after losing count of how much she’d snorted, emi had been counting the tiles on the ceiling before she’d spoken what would be her first sentence in over an hour. “ have you ever almost died before ? ” and she’s not talking to any one of them, really, their faces like little paint smudges on a much larger canvas. she can’t even tell if she’d received an answer, the sound of her own voice deafening. “ there’s nothing there. no light, like in the movies. it’s just fucking empty. ” she lost track of time after that. at some point she’d ended up in the bathroom, the coldness of the tiled floor a blessing to her fever hot skin. when she gets up, she’s met with her own reflection for the first time all night. her eyes are bloodshot, dark circles beneath them prominent enough to make someone think maybe it’s mascara that’s smudged under there. her bangs were matted into a sweaty mess, slick against her forehead. she smiles, just to see if her reflection does the same. the image didn’t feel real. that’s when she sees the pill bottle next to the sink.

impaired judgement. emi had always found it funny how that was listed as a side effect for intoxication, as if the judgement of a sober person was automatically assumed to be logical and clear. but that couldn’t be the case. no, impaired judgement was a side effect of being human, of being an imperfect creature with a tendency to self destruct. the pills she’d stolen rattle inside the pocket of her hoodie. emi feels them like a weight, as if every round capsule were made of lead and they were heavy enough to break through the lining and spill across the floor, exposing her for the thief she was. she wouldn’t have taken them if it had been any other normal night. she’d been desperate before but never like this, the urge to keep numbing herself until she slipped into the dreamy confines of unconsciousness stronger than she’s ever felt before. and that image ––––– the knife plunging into ashley, over and over. she wanted so bad to be rid of that. above all else, that was fucking with her head the most, like a movie she couldn’t figure out how to pause before it had learned to loop. her place is empty when she arrives. she hadn’t been checking her phone all night, but she figures maybe everyone is still at sage’s place. or maybe everyone had parted. or maybe they’d all disappeared like mina had, there one moment, gone the next. mina. the thought squeezes her throat shut, her chest tight with....grief ? or maybe it was panic. fear. hopelessness. she was too high to think about it too hard, to decipher just about anything that had happened since she’d slipped away from the rest of her friends. she takes the pills out of her pocket when she gets to her room, cross-legged on the bed as she realizes she’d swiped somebody’s anxiety medication. xanax. i’m a shit person, emi thinks, fingers going white as she grips the bottle tighter. she’s never missed rehab before, but in that moment she does, misses the way she had someone to talk to when the thought of doing something really fucking stupid crossed her mind.

ANY ABUSE OF MEDICATION CAN LEAD TO DEATH. PLEASE CONTACT POISON CONTROL IF NECESSARY...

one pill. then another. then another. emiko doesn’t remember much about when she’d overdosed, only how she had felt a little bit before it happened. she’d felt as if she was going to die. and it hadn’t been scary, not really, because she couldn’t feel much at that point. it was like pins and needles all across her body, only her body wasn’t her body, and her head was floating so far up into space she’d imagined saying hi to every single one of jupiter’s moons as she drifted past them. and then she’d woken up in a hospital room. that was the part she didn’t like to think about much. the look on her father’s face. the beeping of machines. the scratchy hospital sheets. one pill. then another. then another. if she closed her eyes, she could imagine she was in space, her vision going black. emi had never asked her parents what exactly it was that they’d told her siblings while she was in rehab. maybe they’d also been fed the study abroad excuse, the poolside pictures she’d posted from the ocean view recovery center enough to fool them the way they’d fooled her friends. all she knew was that they didn’t visit her the seven months she was there. on her worst nights alone in california, emi wondered if maybe they did know the truth. if maybe her father had told the rest of the family, but none of them had cared enough to visit her, so disenchanted with the reckless actions of their youngest sibling. but she knew that probably wasn’t true. her father’s political career depended on her secret being kept. family was no exception. one pill. two pills. she looks down at her hands. half the bottle was missing, her heart skipping a beat at the realization of exactly what she’d just done. fifteen seconds ––––– for a good fifteen seconds, emi considers closing her eyes again and leaning back. she’d never believed old people could really die painlessly in their sleep because of natural causes. maybe this was the next best thing. but then she’s up and on her feet, quick to kneel down in front of her toilet and shove her fingers down her throat until she’s retching, emptying her stomach, the burning sensation almost unbearable. when she’s done, she presses her face against the base of her bathtub, her body sinking down to the floor. she lets her eyes unfocus for a moment, everything blurry and white before she shuts them. snow. it looked like snow.

#╰ ♡ . 𝒊 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒅𝒐 𝒃𝒂𝒅 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒚 𝒎𝒚𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇 ── exploration ! ┘#drug tw #overdose tw #IDK WHAT ELSE TO TW THIS UHH #suicide tw #kinda ???#just to be safe <3 #me: hmm kinda wanna write a lil something aha #me: doesnt stop

2 notes · View notes

heartsofstrangers · 5 years

Photo

What has been one of the most challenging things you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

“The molestation of my son when he was 11 years old; I miss him being a part of my life. It was tearing me apart, spiritually within, and I started using drugs even harder. Because there was so much other stuff that I was going through, but that was the bottom that drew me deeper and deeper into hell. The thought of someone having sex with my son and I couldn’t stop it—it was mind boggling. It was all I could ever think of and I would smoke, smoke, and smoke to stay up because I was afraid to go to sleep. That was the most destructive thing in my life, and he’s not in my life now. I used to try to talk to him about it, but he still says that it didn’t happen, so I leave it alone. He’s grown now. He liked the man and liked what he was doing to him. That’s his journey. That’s his purpose. For a long time, I blamed myself because I wasn’t there. He was the child I protected. When he was a baby, I always felt somebody was going to do something to him. I always had him with me because I always felt somebody was going to hurt him. I don’t know why I had that feeling. I carried him forever. People would say, ‘When you going to put that boy down and let him walk?’ I protected him, not knowing why.

“When it happened, I went to the school because I was so depressed I couldn’t work. Being on the State, with food stamps and all of that stuff, I was embarrassed because I was raised that you don’t get on relief, you don’t get on the State, you work for what you get. If there’s something you want and you can’t afford it, it’s not meant for you to have; that’s how I was raised. Be independent and self-sufficient. After I got hurt on the job, I came here and ended up on the State with my children. I was so tired of getting a check twice a month up here. I just wanted to get a job, but people up here would say, ‘Girl, you want to get a job?’ When I called DCF when what happened with my son, they said, ‘You must be crazy. You’re going to get your check cut,’ and I said, ‘My check? I don’t care about the check.’ I wanted to help my son and I wanted to get a job. Knowing what my son was going through, I brought him to Clifford Beers; I went right on the bicycle to Clifford Beers. I feel like I put money in front of my son by getting a job and nobody would help me.

“I was getting ready to go to work—I went to school, and the lady who watched Musadi would come there. I went to school on the Boulevard at night, and I came home one night and they had been there. He had had sex with Musadi and he had sex with Leanne, and he was really, really upset because the man gave Pam his money, and she was going give him $20, and he said she didn’t give him his $20 and he wanted his $20. I thought they just sold my son. I was just so afraid—I could have called the police and told on her. Fear is something. Fear is something, you know. I just miss him.”

Who is Pam?

“She was a lady who lived on Beer Street. She was a dealer. I didn’t know she was into that, her and her husband. Then I found out that they called her husband ‘Black,’ his real name was John, and it turned out that he was the one. I blamed myself for years. I trusted people, but I learned that you have to be careful; sometimes, nice people are perverts. The nicest people to you and you trust them with your child. That’s why you have to be careful, but then they put so much fear in the child and that’s why it took him so long to tell me. They put fear in my son and told him that if he told anyone, they were going to kill his whole family (mother, sister, niece, brother). They said, ‘I’ll kill your whole family.’ That’s why he didn’t tell and held it in for so long; fear that he would hurt us. But I didn’t believe he was going to hurt us because I was so close to Almighty, I knew that he lived inside of me; he’s not a person that lived in me, but the spirit that was in me. Even though fear was there, the doubt just didn’t go off. Are you going to be smoking crack all of your life? If you don’t stop smoking crack, you’re going to die. Wow! This is taking me so many places.”

At this point, you’re sharing that you’re not making enough money through the support of the State to support your child, so you’re going to school, or you’re working, which is taking you away from him?

“I was going to school and was getting ready to get a job working with an agency on Sherman Avenue. It was too much stress on me and I wanted to go to a program. I had called DCF, but they didn’t help me get into a program; they just left me. I sent my son down South to his grandfather and his father and Talama got an apartment for her and Annetta. James went at first because his father came and got him.”

Those are your other children?

“Yes. James is my oldest son. His grandmother brought his father up here and they took him South. Musadi’s father is from the South too, but he was never in his life. He would be in his life when nobody was around. It used to bother him because one day he asked me, ‘When people are around, why does my daddy act like he doesn’t know me?’ But, when he went to the park by where we lived, right across from my back door, Stacey would come and teach him how to box, but he doesn’t say anything to me when people are around, because he was married. He wanted me to name him one thing, but I wanted to name him Clive, a strong name, because he was my last son. He said he wanted me to name him Jamar Musadi, and I told him, ‘Nope. This is my last child, and I’m going to name him a family name.’ He said, ‘If you name my son Clive, I’m never going to own him,’ and he never did. That’s what Musadi was looking for—a father. He knew his mother loved him. I always just wanted a man role, but I always made wrong choices. I felt like I neglected him. I wanted a better life, that’s how I was raised. Even now, I’m happy and feel good, I have medical coverage and stuff. Plus I worked so hard, and I liked what I did. I have lots of skills. I paid the Federal and the State. All that money that they gave me, I want to give back. I just want to be able to look at what happened with my children. I’m realizing now that I had nothing to do with it. I’m at the point now that I don’t blame myself because one day he told me that wasn’t the first time that happened. He told me that when we lived down South, somebody molested him there too. He never told me who it was, and I always wondered. Wow. When we moved up here, he was in the third grade; it was already happening.”

When did you find out that it was happening? How did you find out?

“He was eleven. I would get so angry. I knew something was wrong because he would go outside, he would go outside, and then go back and forth, back and forth to the bathroom, making pooh all the time. I would smell it and was wondering why would it be smelling like that. I had a friend named Willie, and we were real tight; he was gay and worked for the bank. We were real good friends. Being that I got to know him, it was helping me a little bit, out there in the front because I couldn’t change my son. Trying to find acceptance—that’s his life. Sometimes I wanted to know more about it so him and his friend would come over. They would do their thing, that’s how I found out what the smell was. I would be getting high and they would be on the other side of the room, walking around the house, and that’s how I got used to the smell. And then Musadi would be in the house, and I would say ‘Willie’s not here.’ Ask me something else.”

Through your relationship with your friend, Willie, you were able to recognize some of the signs that your son was engaging in some of the behavior.

“Yes. The person who lived down the street would come home and would have cakes, he always liked cakes. That’s how he got him, he would always buy him cakes, and then he would come in the house and I would ask him where he got the cake from, and he would tell me that somebody bought it for him, and I would tell him, ‘I told you about taking stuff from people. We have stuff here,’ and he would say, ‘I like this.’ That’s how he lured him.

“When we moved up here and, like I said, I wasn’t working and it was always me and Musadi. When I did start using drugs, my son didn’t get the attention that he always got from me. He wasn’t getting it anymore, and I know my baby was kind of lost. He wasn’t getting it anymore, and somebody else got his attention. I don’t know how that happened down South because he was always with me. He didn’t go to a babysitter when we were down South. It’s something I’m going to figure out. When we moved up here, our whole lives changed. I already had a bunch of anger with me; a family had stolen our inheritance. I already had a bunch of anger in me. I got so cold. I really had lost me.”

Had you already been using drugs when you moved here?

“Not really; but when I got hurt, the doctor was helping me. Someone came to my house and I was in so much pain, my head was busted, they would give me Xanax and all that stuff. I was sleeping all the time, and someone said, ‘Try this.’ I knew that cocaine was for pain. I learned that in high school. One of my friend’s parents were doctors, and I knew that they used it for pain. To me, cocaine was a good thing. I remember when I was in high school, I would get powder and I would take four blows, three times a day, so that I could cook, lift pots and stuff, go wash clothes and take the boys to the park. It would numb the pain, but then when I got up here, I didn’t trust people and didn’t want to get high with people, so I had a friend of mine come up here and we tried the freebase. I wanted to help people, but how can you help somebody when you know nothing about it? He came up here and I got high for seven days, and we got some crack. I was going to quit after seven days, but that doesn’t work. Then I learned that the pain goes away really quick with crack.

“Whenever I would go to a program, come back and be clean, all that excruciating pain would come back. I never was into pain-killers so I would go back to smoking crack. I got so far out there, not knowing who the person was doing it to my son. I wanted to kill everybody, I really did. Every time he would tell me somebody, and then he would say it’s not them. There was one guy, he was working, and he would always come by on Thursday, and Musadi said that it was him. My plan was, he would come over on Thursday and he always put a big lug on his pipe, he would stand up, and he would be outside of himself, his spirit wouldn’t even be in his body. So, that day, I was planning on him taking a big hit and my boys had a bat behind the door. My goal was when he took that big giant hit, I’d snatch the bat, hit his knees, and when he was down on his knees, I would beat him in the head. I had planned that out. When he grabbed his head and fell on the floor, I would beat his dick up. That’s how angry I was.

“However, that night I got set up. Somebody called. I wasn’t supposed to be going anywhere that night. A girl came to my house. I had told her not to come to my house at night, as I was meditating and I didn’t want to see anybody. She came with a guy, and she knew I didn’t play that, I didn’t want anybody bringing strangers to my house, and then she wanted a beer, but she didn’t want to go down to the after-hours spot. She was always prostituting and I didn’t prostitute back then, I hadn’t gotten to that point. She said she wanted a beer, wanted something to drink. I told her that I wasn’t going to the after-hours spot because I had my pajamas on. Then the guy asked me for $20, and I told him I didn’t want to smoke that night. You can get two for me and she said, ‘Come on, Mom,’ and I told her not to come to my house. And then after I was putting my coat on over my pajamas, a thought hit me, wear a coat, because I knew that something was going to happen. I put on a leather coat with fur around the collar; I had never worn that coat in New Haven and I wore that particular coat to the after-hours spot. When I was walking down Edgewood Avenue, I saw a police car in front of me, with the lights blinking. I was thinking that I didn’t do anything and I walked past them. I would always say hi, and they never bothered me. When I walked past him, he snatched me and threw me on the car, on the back door. I knew I hadn’t done anything so I elbowed him and asked why he was doing this to me and he told me to get in the car. I thought to myself that something must have gone wrong, maybe he’s protecting me. I got in the car and he asked what my name was.

“I remembered that my boyfriend used to go to Stop & Shop a lot and would come home with lots of meats, and I wondered how he was getting all this meat. He made me go with him one day, and he was throwing all this meat in the buggy. I asked him how he was getting all of that and he told me not to worry about it. I got mad because he was always bringing it home and the boys and I wouldn’t eat it. I was pissed off in that store, but if I left, he would beat me up. I was walking around the store, thinking that my boys needed batteries for their cars. I had no money and I don’t know what possessed me to get them some batteries and popcorn. I said to myself ‘I’m getting out of here,’ and, as I was getting out of the store, the security guard came up to me and said, ‘Excuse me, Miss, will you come upstairs?’ When he took me upstairs, there was JJ; he had stolen all of those meats. The lady said to me that she could tell that I didn’t know how to steal because I was right in the camera. She asked me what I had and I said that I took some batteries for my boys and some popcorn. That’s exactly what I had in my pocketbook. I said that I was really sorry, but she had already called the police. She said that she could see that I was getting things for my boys. Then they came and I started freaking out because I was in Stop & Shop and all the people were at the cash registers. The police came, put me in handcuffs, took me to jail with JJ, and then they let me go and gave me a Promise to Appear. I asked them how I was going to get home and they told me to tell the Boss Man that I was coming from jail and he’d take me home. I had never done anything like this before.

“When JJ was up there, they asked him what his name was and he said Henry Birch, which was my father’s name and he was deceased. I couldn’t believe he said that and then he looked at me with that mean face and I knew that I couldn’t say anything. I was released with a Promise to Appear. When the day came that I had to go to court, JJ asked me where I was going and I told him that I had to go to court because I have a Promise to Appear and, if I don’t do, they’ll have a warrant on me. He said, ‘Oh, you don’t need to go to court.’ I said, ‘What? They’ll put a warrant on me and I’ll go to jail, you know that much.’ He said, ‘Just ignore that. You did nothing before and you’re never going to do anything.’ So I didn’t go. So, that night, when the girl wanted me to go get her something to drink and the police put me in their car and said, ‘What’s your name?’ I remembered that JJ wouldn’t let me go to court. He would have beat me up, he wouldn’t let me go anywhere. I said my name was Charlotte Birch. When the police looked it up, there was nothing under Charlotte Birch, and he told me that I could go. When I was just about to go, he opened the door to let me out, the thing must have made a sound, he got back in the car and said, ‘Your name isn’t Delores Birch, it’s Charlotte Birch.’ I didn’t really like that name so I didn’t use Delores up here. He said that he had to take me downtown, and I had my pajamas on. I asked him why he had to take me downtown and they ended up taking me to Niantic. I cried for three days because my kids didn’t have me—I was always home. The lady got Musadi again. This is taking me so many places. I guess it is what it is.

“When you have to look at something face to face, for what it really is, there might be pain behind it, but it’s understanding I can’t change it. I wouldn’t tell the lady what was going on while I was in jail because I was so worried that they were going to get my son. My blood pressure was going up and they put me in the infirmary because my blood pressure was so high they thought I could have had a stroke. I saw a counselor lady and I was crying and crying in her office, and she told me that I have to tell somebody what’s going on because I could have a stroke because my blood pressure was up to 200 already. I told her what was happening with my son and that he was eleven years old. She said ‘Miss, you’re not the only one. I don’t know what it is, but that’s the age; it didn’t just happen to you.’ She said that was the age that they get ahold of kids, that she believed me, and that she was glad that I shared it with her. After I shared it with her, I realized that I had to stop this crying. She told me that I was going to get out and would go to court on Monday; she didn’t know why I was sent there and said that I shouldn’t have been sent there, that I didn’t belong there. I went to court on Monday, the judge got mad and he wouldn’t see anybody else, and I was told that I had to go back to Niantic. I was crying and crying again. Eventually, it hit me “why are you crying so much?” You know you didn’t get sentenced, you’re not supposed to be here. They weren’t supposed to send me to Niantic. When the judge found out I was there for nineteen days, he was pissed. I wasn’t supposed to be in New Haven because the warrant was from Hamden. New Haven shouldn’t have done anything. If anything, when the warrant came up, they were supposed to call Hamden, but they took me.

“Whatever was happening, kept happening with my son. Like I said, my daughter knew the stuff. I think I forgave her, but I tried to get her to say it and she acted like this was nothing. I just don’t trust her anymore because she was a part of what was happening to Musadi. They’re real close. They’re real close.”

Were they both being molested?

“No, Joselyn wasn’t being molested. She never said anything to him, but said that she didn’t like him. I would go into the 4 C’s on Grand Avenue and sometimes I would take my granddaughter with me. That’s when I found out that Jocelyn wanted to get her own apartment, and she never did anything for her daughter. Her daughter couldn’t hug or touch her, nothing. She told me that she was going to get her own apartment; she said that when she turned twenty, people would say, ‘you’re twenty years old and still at your mother’s? You can get your own apartment; you got a little girl.’ That put juice in my daughter’s mind. I told my daughter that she could get her own apartment, but she couldn’t take Annetta with her. I told her that she didn’t do anything for her little girl and that she isn’t going to let anybody do anything to my granddaughter. You’re just not going to do it. I told her counselor that she was trying to get her own apartment and asked her to help get her an apartment at the Y for young mothers so they can bond with their kids. To this day, Jocelyn thinks she left home on her own, but me and her counselor worked something out, and then she got her own apartment. I get lost and stuff.”

It sounds like there’s a significant age difference between Musadi and Jocelyn.

“Yes. Jocelyn and James – there’s nine years, and James is two years older than Jubari. So, it’s eleven years.”

So, you’re in and out of Niantic prison at this time. It sounds like she had gotten her apartment.

“She had gotten her apartment, then she wanted to come back home, and I told her “nope, you’re not coming back home, you’re going to bond with your daughter because she calls me mommy … you can’t come back.” She was a little sassy and stuff anyway. One day I had gone to the 4 C’s and Annetta wanted to come with me. I had gotten a thought … JJ’s here so you stay here with JJ. She stayed there at the house with JJ and when I came back from the 4 C’s, my magazines that I had on the table were all torn up, every page was torn up, like she was sitting down, tearing all the pages, all over the living room floor, you could barely see the carpet. The pages were torn and thrown everywhere. I asked her if she was by herself and asked where JJ was, and she said ‘mommy was here’ and I said, ‘Your mother was here; she doesn’t even like JJ.’ She said, ‘Yes, she was in the room with JJ.’ I said, ‘Get outta here.’ I asked her what they were doing and she said that she was in the room talking with JJ. I said, ‘Oh, Annetta, your mother doesn’t even like JJ, why would she be talking to him?’ Then it dawned on me, she was only 2½ years old. I smiled at her, asked what they were saying and she said mommy was saying ow, ow and JJ was saying aah, aah. I asked her where she was sitting and she picked up her little chair, put it right in front of my bedroom door and sat in it. I said to myself this little girl is not lying.

“About two days later, I mentioned what Annetta had told me to Jocelyn. I was washing dishes, she back handed Annetta so hard that Annetta flew in the air, landed on her legs at the sink and then she jumped up, ran to her mother, and was crying, crying, crying. Annetta never told me the truth again; she lied all the time, and she doesn’t remember. She wonders why her mother acts like that because they have her thinking it’s me. I talked to Jocelyn about JJ and told her that I don’t want him. I wondered why he kept coming back here after he was locked up after beating me up, and now I know why; it ain’t for me, it’s for you. She just looked at me and I said, ‘well, what comes around goes around. You have a little girl right there too, you know – it could come right back to you like that.’ Annetta is something, but it’s okay because that’s how her mother does; Annetta doesn’t remember. Jocelyn makes her think it’s me because she loves me, and she just couldn’t figure out what was going on between me and her mother. Before she had the twins, she wanted to get us back together and said that she would take us out to dinner and said that we were going to talk. I told her, ‘honey, there’s nothing you can do, and it’s not me; I’ll tell you one thing – it’s not me.’ I can forgive what happened; what happened happened, and that’s it. She doesn’t remember what happened. If it wasn’t for her, I would have never known that.

JJ used to always tell me that Jocelyn doesn’t love me. She’s going to hurt real bad one day, he used to say that all the time. I never put two and two together and then I started having dreams of them together. I would tell JJ that I dreamed of him and Jocelyn, and then I would get beat up because I dreamt it. He would beat me up big time for saying that, but it happened.”

Where is your son in all of this?

“Musadi? He was there. Whenever Jocelyn was in the bedroom with JJ, the man with the money would be in the room with Musadi. Jocelyn knew it all the time, she knew all the time. JJ would be with Jocelyn—It was a cult thing. Jocelyn was there; I don’t know if she knew what they were doing. Whatever they call it … rituals? Yes, rituals because Musadi explained to me how they do it. Then again, she could have been right there doing the rituals, I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. I do love her unconditionally and that’s on her path, but I miss my son and she allowed all this to be happening, and I did so much for her. I stopped my life for her. I couldn’t work anymore. I kept her daughter for her so she could go back to school. I couldn’t even pick her up because I couldn’t lift anything over five pounds. Jocelyn went to school and I wondered how I was going to do this; how could I bathe this little girl. I would put the pad thing on the bed and would do it real easy because I couldn’t use any muscles. I would rub around her and would give her oil baths. She was in a towel and I would turn her over by taking her little arms; Annetta was my weights to exercise and made my legs stronger. She loved music when she was an infant. I would put her between my legs, hold her hands and then I would do like this … I was exercising. I would stand up and I would dance with her. She loves to dance now. God blessed Annetta to be my weights because they thought I was never going walk again, never do anything; I would be bedridden forever.”

What happened to you to be in that condition?

“At the housing department, like I said, they tried everything to do me in. When I had the burning truck, they cut my brakes, and the brakes went out. We were hauling dirt one day at a dumpsite where it was real deep and you could see the tops of the trees. It was muddy that day and Dennis told me to “come on back, come on back,” but I wouldn’t watch him, I would watch my back tires. That day he said there was a woman at the dumpsite that was so deep that when she lifted her bed up, the truck fell down in the dump thing and she died. So, I always watched him because I could never trust him because he always got hurt when I worked with him. I didn’t like working with him. I had an old truck and the tailgate would fall off and there was a chain on one side so it wouldn’t fall all the way on the ground, but one side would fall off.

“This particular day it was muddy and, when I lifted my bed up, I didn’t go all the way back, even though Dennis was saying, ‘Come on back, come on back.’ I said ‘shut up’ and just threw my thing up and went back really slow. When it got all the way up, the mud got stuck in the bed so the thing flipped, but when the mud fell, it didn’t fall all the way down; it fell in the ditch. So when it fell out of the truck slowly, it fell right here so, therefore, the tires couldn’t go anywhere. If it hadn’t, my truck would have flipped over; my truck went way up in the air, and he was laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing, and said “just jump” and I was way up there and he was down there. I said ‘no that I wasn’t going to jump because my shirt might get caught on that thing; I’m not jumping down’. When I said that I wasn’t jumping down there, all of a sudden the front of the truck just came down to the ground and I got out. Dennis said that he didn’t know why women worked out here anyway and then he told me that I had to help him put the tailgate back up. I told him that I couldn’t lift the heavy tailgate of that old truck; but, then I thought about what my foreman had said. He said that you shouldn’t say what you’re not going to do because they’ll never hire any more women; what you do is pretend that you’re doing it, and then say that it’s too heavy, you can’t do it. So, that particular day, I made motions, and I had the side with the chains and was lifting like this here, but wouldn’t take my eyes off of Dennis. So, I was looking at Dennis and it was getting really heavy, so I looked real quick to see how much chain I had left and, when I did like that, he just let his end go and it whiplashed me. He was just laughing, laughing, laughing. The whole tailgate shifted on me. When it happened, I flexed like this, but I didn’t know if I was standing because I couldn’t feel my legs. I didn’t know if I was standing or my legs were broke, and it was up to here. I stood there for a while, took some breaths, and I just looked down (I didn’t want to bend yet). I looked down and saw my boots on the ground. My feet had gone into the mud. Now, if it hadn’t been muddy that day, I would have broken my back; the mud had become a cushion. He put it back on there and I went and told the foreman what Dennis had done and he asked me if I wanted to go home. I said that I didn’t, that I’d be okay, and I took it easy that day.

“After work that day, I went to the laundromat and, when I finished drying, all of a sudden, all in here just locked up and I couldn’t walk. I wondered what happened and then I had a spasm from the weight of the tailgate. I drove myself to the hospital and they gave me something for muscle spasms. Then it got worse and worse … my neck, everything, my shoulders, I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t walk. It just locked up in the nighttime. When I did go to the doctors, nobody would help me. Everybody was saying that I was really, really hurt, but they worked for The State and didn’t want to lose their job. I went to lawyers to try to help me, and nobody would help me. My husband had passed and I went down South with my oldest son. People from the Highway Department saw me, and they couldn’t believe it. They said that I would never walk again, but God helped me.

“I had gotten a lawyer, Mr. Dewitt. I was hurting so bad and I had driven all the way to Cheraw. I was crying and had to lay down. Cheraw was a good distance from Dillon. It was a black man too. He sat up in his chair and said, ‘You worked for the Highway Department? And, how many children do you have? You’re going to win this thing.’ I figured he was really going to help me. I went to go see him and the day the hearing was supposed to be, he called after I took my medicine, around 11:00 at night, and I was out. I had no phone at that time so I had to walk all the way to Lennon’s house and I answered the phone, he apologized for calling so late at night, but said that he was calling to let me know that the hearing for tomorrow had been cancelled. I was kind of glad because I was so drowsy. The next thing I know I had lost the case. I got a letter stating that I lost the case because I wasn’t there for the hearing. They had cut off my worker’s compensation and everything. They were really doing it to me, but he tricked me. He got that money and he told me that the hearing was cancelled.

“There was a lot of depression because I was played in so many different ways that I turned to crack to relieve the pain, but I got the Wellness and stuff; it has helped me so much. I’m so glad that I didn’t go to opiates because I would probably still be on opiates. Being that I met with Wellness—it’s really helping me fantastically. The stress with my son doesn’t bother me as much, but he’s just not in my life, although I haven’t stopped loving him. I know they’re still controlling him. They do, and I don’t even get into it with him, especially when he told me that day, ‘Mom, they’re never going to stop, they’re never going to stop, because they don’t want you to win.’ Sometimes I feel the way he is towards me is because of the man. He would tell me things sometimes, it would be just me and him in the house, and he would tell me different things and explain. Then, one day he came in and told me that he couldn’t tell me anything anymore because he said “he knows everything I tell you and he gets really mad.” So, he stopped telling me anything. I don’t know if the cult thing still got him or what because he changes up so much. I do know that cult stuff can happen. Through him, my son, especially he explained all the things they do … get in the mirror and call the demons; afterwards, they even had him snorting coke, and that was enough. Deep inside, I feel that’s the reason why. I still can’t believe it was him doing that that day, going to my crotch. It don’t be him. Like that lady, that teacher’s wife … she said that something’s different in my son because the voice that was coming out of him in the kitchen, while he was tearing everything up, was definitely not my son.”

That was a lady who was fostering him?

“Yes.”

You had been telling me before we started the interview, about the hand up your leg. This was your son you were talking about? You were sitting on the couch or lying down?

“I was laying down on my daughter’s bed and he came over, we were talking, and the TV was on. I was laying on my stomach and he put his hand on my leg (and I was thinking ‘this is my son – that was a love touch’). I was laying there, I guess I fell asleep, and I was thinking ‘what is he doing – how far is he going to go?’ and I knew how the thing was controlling him. I knew that was not my son doing something like that. Not to startle him, I stretched and yawned. I flew downstairs to tell Joselyn what Musadi just did, and she said “oh, mom, no he didn’t.” That’s when I realized she was in on this and thought, ‘what do they do?’”

Did you have a conversation with Musadi about what was happening to him?

“Yes, we did conversate, but he didn’t say anything. Matter of fact, he told me in the beginning it’s more like that didn’t happen. So to say what was happening, he don’t go there. To keep from arguing, I stopped talking about it.”

But when he was young, you mentioned something about having him write with a crayon?

“Yes. I had him write with a pencil about what was going on in his life and that’s when he told me that he feels like he’s in a cage, his heart is outside of the cage, he’s trying to reach to get his heart, and he can’t reach it. It’s something to wonder about. I don’t know much about cult stuff, but the little bit that my son shared with me. I told him that we’re going to the police department and they’re going to show you a book with some pictures in it, and he said I’m not going to show the picture. I told him that they would be looking for expressions that would let them know that’s the person. When I said that, my son got up, punched the kitchen wall, and made a hole it in. He said “I like him and I like what he does”. That’s when I decided he needed a check-up and I called DCF. I took him to the hospital and, when the people came out and told me what he said, I said that I can’t handle this anymore, call DCF and tell them to come get my son. When I went home, I started sweeping and cleaning up and, the next thing you know, I saw the police car pull up in front of my house. I told them the truth, this is my life, and I can’t handle it anymore. They knocked on the door, and I told them that it was open and to come on in. There was a man and a lady. They said, ‘umm …’ I said ‘yeah, I know my son, you don’t know what I’m going through and I can’t handle this anymore on my own; I just can’t do it anymore, call DCF and that’s what you need to do—I need help for my son.’ Both of them just stood there and didn’t say anything. I let them know what I was going through and no one wanted to help me. I said that I was helping my child. They said, ‘Okay, Miss,’ and they just got in their car and left.

“The police did call DCF and DCF called me and they were so proud of me. They couldn’t believe I called DCF. They said ‘I can’t believe you called us’. They said that usually when things like this happen, a neighbor calls and the parent never calls. She said “but you called us”, and I said “yes, I want to help my son, and I’m on crack, I can’t go to sleep at night because they get in here. I locked the doors, but they still get in.” Then I later found out they weren’t even locking the door.

“My landlord’s mother came over one day after that happened. She sat on the floor on the carpet (she used to live there—it was her family’s house) and asked me if my son was eleven years old, and I said yes. She said, I’ll tell you what move from this house, take your children and move. When we moved there, the boys found a Ouija board in the basement, and I told the boys to get that thing out of here. They took it and threw it in the dumpster down the street and do you know the next day, that thing was right back. I said, ‘oh God, get that thing out of here’. I told Cheryl that my boys found a Ouija board in the basement, they threw it out in the dumpster, and it came back. She looked at me and smiled. I asked her who used to play with Ouija boards and she said ‘we did when we were kids; we used to do rituals and stuff. I said, “girl, you did rituals and was calling dead people” and she said that they were just playing. I told her that was not a game, she never told me that they called people back, and I asked her if they ever sent anyone back. She said no and I told her that those spirits are still here. It was weird, and then I had to because they were doing all these things. I would pray all the time and I had my little meditations. I told her that she needed to send those people back. I didn’t want anything to do with that stuff because I’m not into that.

“All these things kept happening was happening and happening, and getting worse. I would pray, because I knew that they were there, but there was one that was black. It was so tall, you couldn’t see the head. It was like a … I don’t know, but I could picture it now. I told Cheryl because she was fixing up the second floor and she was going to move into the house. I told her that she called those spirits here and never sent them back. I told her that there was one that just wouldn’t go, that it was mad, and that it must want to see her. When I said that to her, she stood straight like a soldier and said, ‘well, I’m ready—I’m a soldier’. I looked at her and thought to myself ‘God, they really did’ and eventually I got out of the house. That stuff is not just on TV. When I see things on TV, they got that story from somewhere; it only comes on Scifi, but it happened.

“When I was in Niantic and talked to that lady and, especially after Cheryl ‘s mother came over and told me that. As a matter of act, we stayed there for three years and people on Edgewood Avenue would say that no one ever stayed there over a year and that we were the longest people who stayed there. No one had ever stayed there over a year because something would always happen to their family, but it was an experience. It may sound crazy or whatever, but hay. That’s because people don’t talk about that stuff. I did share it with my clinician and I would talk about it because I didn’t care, I wanted to talk that stuff out of me. You have to let people know and once I told it, they put that label on me. Me and my children we really, really experienced it.

“When I did go to the program and James came back, Joselyn said that Donlan and Musadi were laughing one night and that somebody had called her house and said that they had got the wrong son, who they wanted to get was James, and they were laughing and said that they were going to get him. They said that they got the wrong son, James is the one that they need to get. Joselyn was laughing and I told her that that was nothing funny.

“Things would happen to my brother here in New Haven, and I would warn James because James was an outgoing person. He would be trusting people and look what they had done to him here in New Haven, by people he thought were family. He found those people, or they found him, and they ended up setting him up, and he went to Rikers Island for five years. They were looking for us, the first people that stayed here, when Clive lived in Manhattan. On the way going back to Manhattan, at Union Station, the police came up to him and they wanted to see his ID. They looked at the ID and they said it was the right last name, but the wrong first name. Back then, Levander, he sold, I don’t know what he was selling, maybe heroin, I don’t know I was a kid, I didn’t know anything about it. I think I was in grammar school when that happened.

“When we moved up here, James must have been nine, a man came up to me and asked if James was Levander’s son, Clive’s brother. Clive always said that James looked like Levander when he was a little boy. The man said that he always thought that was Levander’s son and I told him that that was my son. I didn’t even want to go there. I’m glad that James is no longer in New Haven; I really am. James is his own person. I’m glad he finally got a job. He would come to my house and I would tell him not to leave anything in my house, no money, nothing. Because if they come in here looking for something and they find it, it’s mine, it’s in my apartment, so don’t bring anything in here. I told him that I’m in recovery now and I don’t want any of that stuff in my house. I didn’t want him to smoke weed or anything. They tried, they really tried. He couldn’t get a job here.

“James finally moved. He had gone to Stone Academy and I think he almost had a 4-point something, a high score, but he couldn’t get a job here. He wanted to get a job at Yale, but he couldn’t get a job here. He was one of the top students at Stone Academy. He was always a top student, even when he was little. He was a smart, smart kid. He did get a job, and I had told him that he was getting older and needed to pay Federal taxes. (Look at me, I worked for The State and I can’t even get my stuff.) I told him that he had to get stuff.

“Musadi had a fantastic job with disabled children. I think he worked at a group home and something Musadi did, I never forgot things, but they didn’t fire him, something he was doing at a group home. Then he messed up – he was getting somebody’s Social Security check. The people asked Musadi to put it in his bank account. Musadi was making $30.00 an hour; he was doing really, really good and had been working for them for years. He put the check in his account and they busted him. Musadi lost that job and has no job now. He’s a diabetic and doesn’t take care of himself. We talked one Thanksgiving about his father, who is a diabetic; his grandmother, my mother, and my father are all diabetic as well. It runs really, really thick on both sides.

“Musadi has no job anymore and they came and impounded his truck, and now all he has is Miss Keyes. Miss Keyes never let me see him and told me not to come around or call him. Now, a few years ago, once I got in here, she would call me and say that he has to do something because she is old now. She stopped me from doing things with my son. She wanted him to stay with Jocelyn, but Jocelyn wouldn’t do it. I don’t know what’s going to happen to my son. I got to look out for me because I know his capabilities. It ain’t fear because I know Center has me. I’m guaranteed Center has me now, but still if I was to really, really get involved, Center doesn’t want me to go there, just keep loving him unconditionally. That was his choice that he made; I believe he knows what he’s got to do. I don’t know what his plan is. I’m not concerned because I’m in a different space in life now.’

Who is Miss Keyes?

“Miss Keyes is a foster parent and she lives on Bassett Street.”

He’s still with the foster parents?

“He’s still there. A lot of kids were there and they moved on, but Musadi hasn’t. When I was talking to him a couple of Novembers ago, when we were at my sister’s for Thanksgiving, I told him that there are people he can talk to and he has to tell somebody, not just me because I’m not in the picture anymore, I’m not. I told him that he needs to tell someone what he told me. The day he told me he said that he was telling me because I’m his mother and he wasn’t telling anybody else. I let him know that there are people out there that can help him. The way things are … Look at the people in here. I pray he never comes here, but they don’t want him here. It’s just sad. When I was on the other side I prayed that he would never come through here. It’s a smoking cigarette; there’s nothing, no encouragement or anything. It’s just eat, eat, eat, you blow up. You eat to get full; it’s not about nourishment. People smoke, smoke, smoke cigarettes. People can’t even stand up—they push them out in their wheelchairs, they come back to their room, and hook them up to their oxygen tanks. I don’t want my son to come here. He’s going to end up going somewhere.”

Do you think he’s afraid to talk about what has happened to him, that he might be labeled or treated differently, or feel some pain?

“I think he’s ashamed because he knew the longest. I believe that’s what it is, despite what others may think. Even when I started taking him to Clifford Beers, eventually he didn’t want to go anymore. He said that the doctors were stupid and he didn’t tell them anything. I said that he told them what they wanted to hear, that he didn’t tell them what really happened. He’s just closed up. I pray that he does come out somewhere, but I’m not going to argue about anything, “well you said this and you said that, and then you tried to brainwash me”. It’s painful to know, that was my Bear; his middle name is Bear.

“Me and James were close too, but James always took care of everyone, he was the big brother. I always felt that someone was going to hurt Musadi. Until this day, James will say ‘you gave Musadi all the time’. James is angry, very angry. Musadi would lie on James all the time, and I would believe Musadi and James would get punished. Those things did happen, but that was then and this is now. I don’t hate nobody—those are my babies; I didn’t have to have them, but I did. There was fear, but I did, and I’ve come a long way with this.

“There was a time when I was really, really angry. People were doing all kinds of things to me, and they would let them. I remember one day I went to Walgreen’s. I used to use the vinegar and water douche, and they were on sale, Summer’s Eve, I think. I got a few of them and, when I came home, I put them in my drawer. A couple of days later, I was going to use one and I took it out of the package and it was open. Instead of it being like this here, it was backwards. It was like someone had taken it out, heated it, stuck it on, and stuck it on wrong. I asked Musadi about it. He came in the room, looked at me, and said that John was here and he had been smelling that stuff all the time and John put it in him. I said that there was something in it and asked him what it was and he said that they put something else in it. If I hadn’t noticed that it had been opened, I would have used it and didn’t even know what they had put in it. I would get really pissed with him and would spank him. I was so pissed because he was allowing people to do things. Some of things I just can’t say, but I know they did because I know how I felt when I woke up. I’m fortunate to be here—this was no joke.’

What’s been the catalyst of your recovery and healing? It sounds like you’ve experienced a lot of trauma.

“Step work, and I got a sponsor who doesn’t judge me or anything I say. Even if she doesn’t believe what I say, she doesn’t say so. I had to cleanse myself. It’s going on twelve years that I’ve had her. It would have been thirteen years, but I relapsed when I was clean for a year and two months. Through step work because I can’t say church. With step work and my higher power, Jesus Christ. I don’t look at that in a religious way. I look at it in a spiritual way, my spirituality. The power greater than myself is his holy spirit. Spirituality, not religion, because dealing with it religiously, it would take you to a whole different place. You can’t wonder about why this happened; it happened for a reason. For me, it was to learn something.

“My friend, Johnny, the one I told you about – I could just accept him. Remember, I told you about the guy that had killed him? I wanted to help this kid because I always knew he was going to be feminine from when he was a little boy. Every time I went to Josephine’s house, he always took to me, bouncy, bouncy. As he grew older, I’m the one he would come to and share stuff with. I prepared him and opened his eyes; it is what it is. I didn’t get the understanding that inside you is a female – God put the wrong person in you. I wasn’t there yet because I always thought that God didn’t make mistakes. I always felt that somewhere down the line, someone did something when he was a little infant; you don’t know. All he knew was that he was looking for that feeling somewhere. Someone had given him that feeling, that’s the way I look at it. Someone did something to him as an infant, when he was a little tiny baby, on the bed because that’s how people do it; they’ll do it to an infant with a diaper on. They will do that because no one can tell nothing, but I never told him like that. I would school him and let him know not to let people take advantage because he didn’t know. He was the cutest little thing, he should have been a girl. He just loved him some bouncy.

“People would say. ‘Wow, you and Johnny are always together, umm … if anybody can change Johnny, you can.’ I would just laugh at them. People would be thinking that me and Johnny were doing something. Me and Johnny (he was younger than me) thought it was so silly because I already knew what he wanted. When he was a teenager, he was doing the same thing as me and he had to slow down. He’s still so special to me. A person is going to do want they want to do or what they think makes them happy. I accept it with him, even little El, even with them. I guess because it wasn’t my child, I don’t know. I just want to pay attention to you to let you know. You got to be yourself. I look at how times is now, we all have feminine and masculine; we all do. Some people say ‘I’m just masculine’; no, we all have two. We really do; it’s just which one overpowers the other one. I have a recovery CD that explains that we all have a feminine side and a masculine side, and it’s all good. I used to listen to it so much and it helped me a lot.

“I can’t be around my son, even though I’ve grown and expanded so much, I know what he went through. I know the goal of theirs, I don’t know, yes I do know … he’s still part of something.

Even his little girl’s mother, she doesn’t want Musadi around their daughter without Jocelyn or Annetta. I believe something happened because she doesn’t trust Musadi with his own daughter. As a matter of fact, he did something to Annetta when she was little when we lived on Commerce Street. I would be the one to give Annetta a bath all the time because Jocelyn would never do it. One night when I was giving her a bath, I was washing her, washing her really, really good and she did something she never did before. I washed between her legs and she said “oh grandma, oh grandma, let me do you, let me do you.’ I was sitting on the floor, by the bathtub, and that just blew my mind, ‘let me do you, let me do you.’ I looked at her and asked her who was playing games with her. She was so excited—it was like ‘wow … it just hit me when she said ‘let me do you grandma, let me do you’. I kept washing her, and she told me that Musadi would play tickling games with her. I told the people at the 4 Cs because Jocelyn wasn’t paying attention. They ended up telling DCF, and Musadi wasn’t supposed to be around Annetta.

“Whenever he would come and visit Jocelyn, and I came there on that weekend—he was sleeping with Annetta, and that never left me what he did. So I slept in that little bed too; we were all in there together. I don’t know ... I’m kind of concerned about my great grandchildren because Jocelyn doesn’t pay attention to this stuff or she lets things happen. I don’t know; I don’t know what Jocelyn’s choice is either. Kids will play, but … if it is, it is, but I think about my greats because if Musadi was to come there, Jocelyn would leave him there with them, and go and do whatever she has to do, and they’re little. That’s another reason why I don’t get involved. I know what he did to Annetta and I know what he was going to do to me. I don’t know what kind of relationship Jocelyn and Musadi have, I don’t know, but I know incest is in the family.

“There’s incest in the family and my grandfather was an incest. My mother’s mother told me about it. He always had sex with all of his kids. He had a child by one of his daughters. Moom was the baby, she went with Diddy, and she had her first child at age thirteen because she didn’t want her father doing to her what he was doing to the boys and the girls. Moom was always around Diddy’s family. She would be with Diddy behind the field and stuff, and they would stay together because she didn’t want her father to do that to her. The boy that my grandfather had with one of his daughters—the slave owner was pissed off about something with David and he was the one who told David that his grandfather was his father. He told him that his grandfather raped his mother and that hurt David really bad. David was so angry with Grandpa Jessie. One night, they sat down and had dinner together. David even let Grandpa Jessie smoke his last cigarette after dinner. He was sitting by the window, behind him, he waited until Grandpa Jessie finished smoking the cigarette, and then went outside and blew his head off. It’s in the family. They don’t talk about stuff like that, but I’m alert to it. I’m grateful that I know these things, but everybody else runs from it, but you need to know. You can’t shove it under the rug. It is what it is.”

It sounds like the pattern of abuse and trauma is continually passed on from generation to generation if it’s not healed or talked about.

“They don’t talk about it and they pretend it doesn’t happen. Nobody can say anything anymore, so the next generation doesn’t know. Children to children, they won’t know where it came from. I’m so glad that my Grandma Charlotte told me things. I’m just glad and I told my son, James, and Jocelyn so much. Jocelyn uses it as a weapon, but that’s okay, that’s okay. I thought she was going to be my best friend, but it ain’t like that. I never knew that she envied me as much as she does. I now understand that it’s attention, especially when I’m around. As a matter of fact, she told me that when I’m around, I get everyone’s attention. We are who we are.

“My son, James, has anger issues. One thing I realize is that children fail to understand that their parents went through a whole lot of stuff too. Parents had trauma and we pretend that we are so strong for our kids, that we can conquer anything. I was the toughest mama. Everybody wanted me to be their mother. I think that’s the envy of Jocelyn and James because all the kids would come talk to me about anything. They envy that I was nice to them, especially when things were happening and disappearing. James would say ‘yeah, you were nice to so and so and so and so, where they at now when you need stuff’, and I would look at him and it would hurt. All those kids are down South and if they were here, they would be there for me. I’ve met Center now—if there’s something I really need, he really does provide. He’ll guide someone to me because everyone that comes up, is sent from Him.”

What have you learned through these experiences with Musadi, getting clean, and arriving at where you are now in your life?

“Everything happens for a reason. It’s to strengthen you, to accept others for who they are even though you have been taught it’s supposed to be so and so’s way. There is no supposed to be no certain way but the way it is. You can’t plan anybody’s life. You don’t know anybody’s emotions. You don’t know other people’s desires, except for what they tell you, but it may not be true. I have learned people are who they’re supposed to be, they’re in their own process, if they’re not running from themselves, but it’s up to them. We can’t make anybody. We don’t even make ourselves. We might have intentions, but the thing about that is, nobody is that way, but being in the presence of an individual and know that if it could only be another way, but it can’t be another way the way you think it’s supposed to be, to please you. That’s what I’ve learned. I learned that this life, my children’s lives, anybody’s life—it’s what pleases them when they’re ready. When they’re ready—what will be revealed. You can see something and you don’t want it to be that way, and sit and wait for it to change to something else, but it isn’t supposed to change to something else. All I can say—with Musadi and all of my children, I planted the seed in spirituality and the Word.

“My son, James, has faith in Jesus, but as far as what the Bible says, James ain’t having it. My son, James, is something. He’s like an old soul. He feels like the Bible, how man switched the purpose of the Bible, to control people and they’re slaves. That’s where my son, James, is. James feels like how man has changed so much because of the books they’ve taken out. He doesn’t believe every word in the Bible. It’s a control thing and a negative fear thing, not a positive fear. I always felt that he was going towards … Allah is God, Buddha is God, he’s got different names.

“Jocelyn just isn’t into it. She’s not there. One day I asked her why she doesn’t go to church with me, and she said that she didn’t like the church that I go to because if she went to the church that I go to, people would see who she really is. I looked at my daughter and said to myself ‘God, who is she?’ It reminded me of something my mother had told me once. My mother had told me that I named her the wrong name after we had moved down South. She asked me why I was calling her Jocelyn, and said that she was a jackal and I should have named her Jacqueline. I told her that her name is Jocelyn and she said “I don’t know who you think she is”.

“One night I was watching Animal Kingdom and they were showing jackals and hyenas, and I thought about when my mother told me that I should have named Jocelyn Jacqueline. They were talking about jackals and hyenas. I said “wow” and now I see it as an adult. I wanted Jocelyn to be the way I saw her, but that’s not it. Her father was an atheist and she is an atheist, but she likes to portray that she really isn’t, but she is. He was an atheist and so was his sister; they both were atheists. They didn’t believe in God and we had nothing in common. With Jocelyn, I tried to make her who I wanted her to be.”

How did that work out?

“Not good at all, but my relationship with her is fine now, but when she sees me, it’s her time. I was downtown recently and saw her coming down the street. I called out to her and when she saw me, she ran the other way. She’s always been like that. I am who I am; I’m spiritual. I’ve always been that way, even when they were kids. In my house, I played a spiritual station; I love to dance. When I hear songs and dance, all those love songs, the only person I think about is Jesus. The love is in you; you don’t have to look for it. You are love, and just be you and expand the love. Me and my children – they’re on their page.”

What have you learned about yourself?

“What have I learned about myself? I’m a compassionate person. I care about others and sometimes I think I care about others a little too much and put myself on the back burner. I always put others in front of me. I always did … I always did. I would do without because if it weren’t for me it’s not going to happen. All that I have learned? I say within the last three years, I’ve learned more than I have in a lifetime. I really have. There were so many secrets, secrets, secrets. When I was a kid, I was told ‘you can’t tell anybody’. That’s a tough thing to say to a child, ‘you can’t tell nobody’. Then, all you’re going to do is think about it … you’re going to think about it and it’s going to play over and over in your head. I guess that’s why I’m so expressive now.”

Secrets can make us very sick.

“Yes. For real. Then you find out the secret was exaggerated. My grandmother would say to me all the time, “it’s a good thing you weren’t born when I was born” and I would ask my grandmother why she always said that and she said “because they would have lynched you.” I think about that every now and then and I think about other things that people have said to me now as I’m an adult. I remember when I had vocabulary words and I think I was in the second grade, yep Mr. Haynes’ class, and one of the words was lynch. I was the first one to raise my hand up when he said lynch. I thought my grandma meant they would beat me, so I said it meant to beat you, and someone else raised their hand, and said that it meant hanging. I was in shock. It shocked me. Oh, that day troubled me because I couldn’t believe my grandmother would say that … they would hang me.

“One day when I was in high school and something happened. My Uncle John, my father’s brother, had come to stay with us. He was always so cold to me all the time, but I loved him because he would always make ice cream when we went to Brooklyn. That’s the only thing I loved him …him making ice cream. One day after Uncle Calvin had passed, he called me a witch and said that I wished Calvin dead. I looked at him and told him that I did not. Then I remembered years ago, Nana was in her garden and I was sitting on the porch, watching her in the garden. She came back and took her little boots off and I said ‘gosh Nana, I hope Uncle Calvin dies before you do’ because I didn’t know what was going to happen to me and I always felt that I didn’t have anybody. He died first and he was my tie. If it wasn’t for him, I would have still been in New York all those years because Nana didn’t want me after I got pregnant. Uncle Calvin was the one that wanted me to come back with my little girl, but he went first, and I felt so guilty. That’s when I decided to go to my real Momma. She got answers for me and I’m so glad I did.

“I thank God for my Nana—she told me a lot. She didn’t really tell me, but she was on the phone all the time, talking about stuff, and I’m glad I was there because, even though I was a little kid and they think children don’t have ears, I’m glad I was there to hear. I needed to hear stuff from my mother, for real, because there were things my mother knew and it removed the anger. It was all good. It was all to make me whole. I’m not whole, but I’m on the way.”

If you could give your younger self, when you were a little girl, some advice coming from the woman you are today, what would you say to her?

“Stop being so hardheaded because you don’t know it all. I used to like to read. I was always reading something all the time. Yep, stop being so hardheaded because you sure don’t know it all.”

Do you have a favorite quote that you’d like to share? Anything that someone has said to you or something that you’ve read, even a verse from the Bible?

“Nothing formed against me shall prosper.”

What does that mean to you?

“Anything negative won’t interfere with my purpose. Whatever is supposed to be is going to be, if it’s meant for me. I don’t have to chase it. I don’t have to make it happen because life just happens. Oh, I have another on: It is what it is.”

What does that mean?

“Same thing … life is going to be. You have to go with the flow. You have to find a way, acceptance, not to be content, but acceptance.”

Do you think that it’s possible that by sharing your stories and experiences, in a way that is honest, could potentially bring someone else some hope and inspiration, in whatever they’re going through, they’re not alone in whatever they’re going through?

“Oh, most definitely. The things I have shared—I’m not the only one that went through this. I know there’s many people that have gone through similar situations and they think ‘oh, it happened to me’, or the whole if and I should have. That doesn’t get it …ifs and should haves. Like the saying goes, if I coulda, woulda, shoulda, what would I do? Go with the flow. You have to move on … You have to move on. I could wish that something didn’t happen, but it was already on my path from when I was in my mother’s home. Can I handle it? I got to in order to be who I was made to be. Sure, there’s going to be pain, but there’s no ‘why me?’, why not me? It is a rough road and there’s going to be a rougher road, challenges. That’s what life is; it’s a challenge … every day. I look forward to challenges, especially what I just went through. That was a challenge and I saw my growth through that. My growth of faith and believing that Center has me and my soul has all the answers. Whatever you want to know, all you gotta do is listen within. All of the answers are inside of us. You don’ have to run around, asking this one and this one. People may have suggestions, but they may not be the suggestions for you. Those are their suggestions, but when you just get quiet and listen, not to your head, because that’s the wrong place to listen. Listen to breath. Breath has some strong words, some strong, solid, low words. Once you get that understanding—life fulfillment … there’s no end. It may not be what you expect, it’s just what it is. I am.”

How has it felt to share these feelings and experiences with me today?

“It felt good. It felt freeing and just to know that I’m not the only one. In the beginning, when we first started, I thought to myself, oh my God, I hope this doesn’t hurt anyone’s feelings; that’s what I thought at first. It happened and it’s true. It’s not true just in my sight, I can look at it now. I didn’t exaggerate it. I don’t care who judges me because I lived these things, and there’s going to be more, but I’m ready because I’m not doing it by myself. I’m not who you see. I am not these clothes. Wow …if a person could just see me now. They’d have to put their shades on. Yep, I feel like it doesn’t matter, because this helped me. This has helped me. It doesn’t matter who believes it. I have lots of stories, but that one … that was the bottomless pit where everything started falling off the sides of the pit, all the rocks and boulders, the sand and dirt, so much fell. That was it, and I thought it was all this other stuff, but that’s where my bottom began. It began because it was so much deeper. The depths never ended and that’s what opened the bottom of the world. That’s when all the anger and revenge came out, but it all worked for the good, and that’s true. It may not feel good but, in the long run, when you look at it, it’s for the best.”

#abuse #trauma #addiction #homelessness #prison #recovery #healing #journey #mentalhealth

1 note · View note