#ALSO THE WAY I'M ACTIVELY IGNORING MY TRIP OUT OF SEVERE ANXIETY | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

serendibity · 2 months

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Advantage Point

Sigiriya is a small village located in the northeastern part of the teardrop island. Its biggest draw is a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as Lion's Rock, a granite toadstool that soars 183 metres into the air thanks to volcanic activity from the 5th century.

The Lion King of Sigiriya, Kasyapa himself, transformed it into a fortress and palace in the middle of a landscaped water garden. Later, it became a pilgrimage site before falling to obscurity in the 12th century, to be rediscovered in the 1800s.

There's no two ways about it - from the ground, it is spectacular.

I pay my obligatory foreigner ticket of $36 (for reference, locals pay 36 cents), ignore the swarms of so-called "guides" that offer "tours" for varying degrees of payment, and start climbing.

After the first bit, I have to sit down.

No one said anything about this being the 9th circle of hell for someone with vertigo. Although to be fair, I should have known better.

But whatever - my acrophobia has never stopped me before (maybe it should have). Besides, the purpose of this trip was for me to tackle my fears. So, I ignore the copious warning signs my body is pumping out and tackle the next stage.

Suddenly, I feel like I'm going to fall off the monument. With my heart pounding and head spinning, I sit precariously on a rock-faced step, put my head in between my legs, and try not to pass out.

Several anxiety-stricken seconds go by.

All of a sudden, I feel a tap on my shoulder.

"Hello! Are you OK?"

I look up into the face of a friendly local who looks worried. I say yes and meekly wave him off, but he stays put. Strange, but not unusual - he's probably just a concerned citizen, one of many who visit this sacred place on their day off.

The nausea isn't passing, and as much as I hate to admit it, it's time to call this off. The bitterness starts coursing through my veins, and I'm furious with myself, least of all because I've failed on several fronts.

The next time I raise my eyes, I ask him where the exit is.

Quick as lightning, he starts guiding me down the path from whence I came. Shaking in my boots means I am grateful for his presence, and several times, he offers to hold my hand through a particularly vomit-inducing passage. I clearly am not in any position to get back by myself.

This wasn't one of my most extraordinary ideas, I have to say.

We're about 40 metres to ground level when he starts mentioning money.

At first, I brush him off and focus on where my feet are landing. But then the pestering becomes more frequent.

He starts directing me towards merchants stationed on every corner, selling anything from wooden frog souvenirs to supposed magic healing oil.

It finally hits me that I've been had. He's one of the guides I pushed through in the beginning.

I start walking faster now that we're on terra firma, but he lingers in my shadow and won't let me go. He tries to take my hand or arm, which I wrestle out of his reach. If it wasn't for the fact that I'm still incredibly light-headed, I'd be running.

Now I'm scared. He's getting more aggressive and in my face. "Euros. Dollars. Rupees. Anything."

I hand him a nominal amount in the latter denomination, which he refuses.

I step aside, and he blocks my way.

I give him more, and he shouts, "Not enough."

"Take it or leave it. I have nothing else."

Ain't that the truth. My anger is palpable. In a moment of physical and mental vulnerability, when I'm counting on the kindness of a stranger, I've been taken advantage of by someone who saw me as an easy target because I couldn't think straight.

Now, I take full responsibility for my naivety. But this encounter doesn't help my general view of the world that people are just no good.

He finally understands that I mean business, takes the bill, and slunks away, probably in search of his next unwitting victim.

But hey - this is the first time I've ever paid someone to eff off. So there's something worth commemorating.

Also, do me a favour - for anyone reading this, go to Pidurangala Rock instead.

#sri lanka

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maychorian · 5 years

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Hey, so, i hope you're not bothered or annoyed by this, you can really just ignore me if you are... I just wanted to know if you could tell us about the future of yofa, bc I'm a shitty reader and too obsessed by your fic to sit and wait for the next chapter, although you're so amazing and super fast with the uploads. Like, is mcdaniels gonna play a role, or will tim have breakdowns or fights with the others, or anything else that would be okay to share? I'm really sorry for being like this

Ha, you're not annoying. I'm quite pleased to know that I have readers who are impatient for more, truly. The problem is that I don't really have answers for you, because I don't know. I've talked about this on my blog before, but I am very much a seat-of-the-pants kind of writer, or a gardener. I don't make outlines, because it's not fun for me to write like that. When I write a long, detailed outline, I lose all interest in actually writing the story, because it feels like I've already done it. It becomes work instead of play at that point, and fanfiction is very much my playtime.

I like to plant ideas and watch them grow, or dig the story up from the dirt of the subconscious like a big boulder (Stephen King's analogy for how he writes). One of my favorite writing quotes is about how writing a novel is like driving a car at night--you can only see as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. I believe that's from E.L. Doctorow, and I don't know who that is, but I agree with that philosophy.

This has the downside of me having tons of WIPs that will probably never be finished, at least one in every fandom I've written more than a one-shot for. But the upside is that I have a lot of fun writing, and I go through the same emotional rollercoaster as my readers. I often feel compelled to keep writing because I want to know what happens next, just like you do.

That's also why I don't have an update schedule. That would require me to have, like, a backlog of chapters, or at least some idea of what's happening next. I tend to write a chapter over the course of three or four hours, give it a cursory reading for typos, and post it immediately. I usually only figure out what the next chapter is going to be about after cogitating on the last one I wrote for a few days. Right now, I'm thinking that the next chapter will be about Tim's friends visiting him at the manor, but I need to read more Young Justice before I feel comfortable writing Conner, Bart, and Cassie, so it might be a while before that chapter comes out. Or I could realize that something else needs to happen first, as has happened several times over the course of the story.

I do have...vague ideas about what might be up ahead in the future. Someday. Maybe. These ideas might or might not happen, or they might be in a different form by the time I get to them. I'll put them under a read more, just in case anyone wants to avoid even possible spoilers.

Edit: Frigging heck, tumblr won’t save the read more line. Whatever, if you don’t want to see possible spoilers, hit J on your keyboard now.

As for McDaniels, he will be returning to the story, but I'm not sure when. It might be at the end, as some sort of catharsis for Tim, or it might be in the middle as part of a plot complication. For now he's too much of a useful motivation for Tim to have anxiety and Jason to want to protect him, therefore keeping Jason in the picture when he might otherwise take off. The family and their allies will keep looking for him, and it's going to be a major frustration and source of friction that he's so hard to find. I definitely have a picture in my head of Tim going out in the city for the first time since the incident and thinking he sees McDaniels, then having an anxiety attack that Jason or someone else will have to comfort him through. That idea has been in my head since very early in the writing process, but who knows if it will happen.

Tim having breakdowns? Very probable. Fights? Maybe. Eventually he and Dick do need to work out the hurt between them. But Dick has promised to let Tim take the lead on that, so it will have to be on his terms, and I don't know when Tim will be ready for that conversation.

I have ideas about Damian. I'm thinking that Tim is going to be very bored, waiting for his body to heal enough that he can do things again. He can't even exercise until his ribs and knee heal up some, he can't swim with his casts, he can only type with one finger, and that kind of hurts...all he's going to be able to do for a while is sit around and watch TV or listen to Jason read to him, and that's going to get old, fast. So he might take an interest in Damian. Damian is puzzling, and Tim likes to solve puzzles. It remains to be seen whether or not Damian will appreciate the attention. Probably not.

But Damian's feelings are evolving, too. He hasn't been in prolonged contact with Tim...ever. And he has promised to be civil, as well. It's going to force them to find new ways to communicate, new ways to be around each other. Jason might also be helpful for bridging the gap there, since he spent time with the League and will probably understand Damian in a way no one else does.

Also, bored Tim results in Jason taking him on rides on his motorcycle. Great bonding. Tim likes to go fast.

Once the casts come off and the pins comes out, Tim's hands are going to be very weak and shaky. He's going to need a lot of therapy, and it's going to be frustrating and painful. Also: hand massages help. (Dick is also going to keep treating his back, trying to minimize the scarring from the whip marks. Because it really, really sucks for a teenage kid to have whip scars.) So they're all going to take turns massaging Tim's hands when they get cramped, and it's going to turn out that Damian is the best at it. Damian is going to be territorial about this, because it's something tangible he can do that is visibly helping, and as much of a brat as Damian is, he also has the heroic, helpful impulse as well. Once the dust settles and Damian and Tim are more like friends and brothers than they have been in the past, Damian will be just as protective of Tim as everyone else in this story. That's the end goal I have for them.

One thing that will happen relatively soon is Bruce enacting a Big Comfy Couch Protocol, or BCCP for short, in order to be a better dad to his children, all of whom have trauma of varying levels. When one of the kids is having a bad day, or feeling fragile, or suffering nightmares or flashbacks or what have you, or just needs their dad for whatever reason, all they have to do is tell Bruce that they need to activate BCCP, or BCC Protocol. Bruce will nod seriously, then set aside at least an hour in his schedule. And they will go sit together on a big comfy couch in a quiet room, just the two of them. It might involve cuddling, or talking, or just being together, whatever the kid needs. But it'll be just the two of them, no work, no books or movies, no distractions. Because Bruce needs to be very deliberate about connecting with and being there for his kids, and putting a structured protocol in place to make sure that happens is a very Batman thing to do.

Tim will probably drag Jason along for his BCCP time, because of the bodyguard thing. (And because Jason would never do it for himself, and Tim knows he needs it and is not even a tiny bit above manipulation to get his way or help other people.) Eventually they're all gonna like it, though.

And...that's pretty much it, so far. I think about this story a lot, so new ideas pop up and float away in my head all the time, but they're mostly about what's going to happen or might happen in the next chapter. Like, I imagined the conversation between Jason and Bruce going a bunch of different ways. Once I actually sat down and wrote it, though, it turned out differently than anything I'd come up with in my head before.

And that's why I like writing this way. It's always surprising. I let the characters go, and they do things I don't expect ninety percent of the time.

#askbox #yofa #writing #Anonymous

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