#i have anxiety myself and these kinds of posts are downright awful for me to see | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

honeyrose-tea · 3 years

Note

this has been a strange start to the new year for sure. how are you doing? what did you think of the situation in the capitol? any thoughts or worries about the rest of the month? I'm curious to hear your thoughts on everything. -🌙

thank you so much for the ask💞 almost every day I check my inbox anticipating the next time I'll hear from you. just knowing that someone cares.... it really does a lot for my self-esteem. I don't have many friends right now and the few I do are very busy and have a lot of things they would rather do than talk to me. thank you for making time to listen to me and ask me how I'm doing. you wouldn't believe how many people don't. I haven't always been the most consistent presence for you and I'm sorry. I'm trying to do better and be less selfish because I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of that. thank you for always being kind to me, pen pal.

there is a lot I want to say regarding the capitol and the situation in the country in general. as a social science student (and hopefully one day a professor!) these situations are of great academic interest to me. as a bisexual woman and an informed US citizen who cares about my rights I am also very personally vested in American issues. but first I would like to tackle your question regarding how I'm doing:)

I'm doing pretty good. classes have started back up but most of mine are online. I'm thinking of switching to online exclusively because of how much emotional (and sometimes physical) labor in-person classes are, and also for the sake of my health and my parents'. it's funny how so many things we did with ease before the pandemic seem so burdensome now. even small interactions are anxiety-inducing now, and I find myself having a hard time socializing even casually. like a muscle that has atrophied without use, my social skills are awful now. on a happier note, my productivity and creativity are both at all-time highs since social interactions aren't using up all my energy anymore. I brought my record player to my dorm room and I've been listening to a bunch of music, I've also been writing and recording some music of my own. I have a couple of demos and if you or anyone else is interested, I'll post them on here. once I record and edit full band versions I'll put them up on my soundcloud. I've tried sharing some of my stuff with some friends but none of them really care and I don't want to annoy them. besides, it's more for myself anyway. I wang to prove to myself that I can make music and that I can say something worth saying. a lot of my struggle over the past 6 months has been that I feel as though nothing I do or say can change anything, that none of my actions matter. I struggle a lot with control and I've been working on it for years, but it's still really hard for me. anyway. I'm enjoying class and what I do outside of it. I've been in my element living alone again (in my dorm) and feeling free to wear/do/say what I want, when I want. I wash my dishes and sing to myself and manage my time and drink lots of artificially sweetened and heavily flavored coffee without anyone around to judge me. and I get to cry and masturbate when I want, both of which are helpful in regulating my moods. I don't know. it's not like I'm doing anything exciting, but I am doing each thing I do well and with a happy heart. I feel like this portion of my life is something of a hibernation- the winter seasons combined with the pandemic have me in a cozy little daydream, reading and self-reflecting and getting back in tune with myself and my passions. I have a feeling that the spring and summer will be very vibrant bustling months so I am trying to enjoy my rest and soak in as much knowledge about myself and the world around me as I can. it's hard for me to live in the present and not get antsy (connected to control issues, I think) but I'm getting better at it. on the subject of the future, I've also been using this time to look into grad school and prepare for the GRE (a standardized test required for most grad school applications, similar to the ACT/SAT). I'm learning a lot that I didn't know since neither of my parents went further than undergrad, and I'm getting excited. I'm really looking forward to doing research. I've already been collecting some thesis ideas for an undergraduate-level thesis that I have to complete next year for the honors college, and hopefully I can turn that into a masters and/or PHD thesis when the time comes. now, on to more important matters than my silly little life.

I have very complicated feelings about america. I do have some attachment to some of the original ideas that are at the foundation- "bring me your huddled masses...", "all men are created equal", the general spirit of democracy, etc.- all of these are valid and worth keeping (in some form) to me. I think a lot of good people and ideas exist around us and I believe that we must be as empathetic and kind as possible to one another in order to navigate the current climate and preserve the good that we do have. that said, america was also founded on some pretty terrible, bigoted principles and our history- as well as our present- is marred by injustices. our society has become highly individualistic because of capitalism, and it has resulted in considerable division on every level. the competition that fuels capitalism is like an invasive species of plant, it does not only exist within our economy but it slithers out into our social world and the way we relate to others. I think capitalism coupled with our post-enlightenment founding is the source of most all of our problems as a country. capitalism has taken root in america in a way more malicious and all-consuming than in any other culture, because it was there at the beginning of our country and all of our social norms have grown out of it. many other cultures have existed long before capitalism and though it has modified their culture, it has not altogether become it. because america was founded on capitalism, we have no cultural identity outside of it. america is, itself, capitalism. that is precisely why america is experiencing all of the best and worst parts of capitalism at their most extreme. it is why, as I mentioned previously, we are perhaps the most divisive and competitive society in the modern world, and probably in history. we are the richest and most powerful country but we have the largest wealth gap and incarceration rate, among many other extremes.

all of this is to say that the rise of Trump and fascism in this country has been a long time coming, and unmistakably inevitable. to defeat it we will have to break america down to its fundamentals, throw out everything that is unethical and unjust, and rebuild our entire society from there. this is radical and hard to imagine, it will also be very difficult to execute, but I strongly believe that much of our societal systems just cannot be reformed, they must be thrown out and replaced.

the capitol riots were inexcusable and sickening but decidedly inevitable. this has been steadily building for america's entire existence. I think it will get worse before it gets better, as there are already plans for bigger and more numerous protests across the country in the following weeks. that said, I feel hopeful as I see the anti-fascist movement grow in the wake of fascism, I am hopeful as I see many people being radicalized and awakened to the realities of this country's failings. I don't know how exactly we will even begin to rid ourselves of the biases, prejudices, and downright hatred that plagues our country. I don't know how we will relate on an individual level to those with such deeply-ingrained hate in their hearts. I don't know how we will change our systems of government and economy to reflect new cultural values that we begin to build together. I am not sure what the future will hold. I do believe, however, that we will triumph over this moment and that the future will be better. I think that the only way to radically change and unite so many vastly different people and remove the blinders from their eyes is through a terrible, historic awakening like the one we are having now. the situation itself is awful, but I am hopeful that out of this mess we become a nation more committed to justice and to some of the ideals which we have falsely claimed to be emulating for our entire history.

so yes, I am worried about the next few weeks, months, and even years. there is no end to the pursuit of a just society, and I think every informed citizen is always a bit apprehensive about certain aspects of their culture. there will always be problems to combat and injustices to rectify, but I think that we will soon be moving to a better place, that we will remember these moments and say, "never again". I am hopeful, despite seeing some of the worst of humanity in recent days, that these atrocities will bring positive change.

I know that was long and instead of discussing issues about the capitol, or even just current political issues, I expanded the scope considerably and dragged in a lot of things from history and grander sociopolitical theories. still, I think it is hard to talk about the insurrection attempt without talking about a lot more. thank you for reading my takes and caring about them. I spend a lot of time thinking about these things, and it feels nice to share them with someone other than my annoyed professors who want me to shut up so they can finish the lecture and stick to their semester schedule.

I hope you're well and that you're staying safe and healthy. are you in school now too? have you or your family had the virus? thank you for coming to talk to me, I always enjoy it. I'll talk to you again soon💞

#pen pal

2 notes · View notes

mimzy-writing-online · 4 years

Text

Some Blind Things I (and actual blind person) Have Done

I talk all the time about what’s realistic for a blind person to do and how to write a blind character who isn’t a complete media myth of touching faces and super powers... soooo, part of that is knowing what kind of things an actual blind person (me) fucks up doing because I’m blind.

These moments include: Me sarcastically telling people I cannot see the thing they’re doing. Moments where I have zero manners. Moments where I do have manners. Making people uncomfortable because they’re staring at me. Great phrases like, “I have too much ADHD to count to eight.” and “It’s literally illegal for me to drive.” and “Wait, who are you?” “That’s not how we talk to people Mimzy.” My cats’ growing concern that I can’t see them or tell them apart but continuing to love me. Channeling my inner Toph Bei-Fong. Updates on the ongoing insomnia writing.

There’s no chronological order to them, I’m not sure there’s going to be any order to them at all, but it’s 3 am and I can’t sleep and it’s called the Late Night Writing Advice Blog for a reason.

(I definitely did not have to double check my own blog title while typing that, definitely not)

Note: This list gets a little long, but it’s a funny read and I was up until 4:30 (this note is from a future Mimzy who’s almost finished posting this, after 1.5 hours)

Additional Note: Feel free to send anons with commentary or reblog with commentary because I would love if someone enjoyed this. Like, these are stories of my life, please appreciate them.

The Things!

-My best friend and I hang out mostly at night because of his 9-5 job, and he still lives with his parents who probably don’t like me so when we hang out we’re mostly driving around on random adventures and coffee/tea runs and late night dinners.

So it’s night, and my night vision is awful and I have to wear sunglasses anyway because what I can see is painfully bright headlights so yeah I see basically nothing.

With my best friend, I have

1. after asking him a question: “Did you nod at me and I just didn’t see it.” “I did nod.” or after waiting long enough for a response he’ll realize what he did on his own and say, “I was shaking my head no, sorry.”

2. Reaching into total darkness to touch his shoulder and touched his armpit instead.

3. Dropped something from my bag onto his messy car floor and asked him to find it for me because it all looks blurry and grey-black down there, even without sunglasses

4. Sensed he was going for a high five and I gave him a perfect high five. Surprised, he wanted to test it again. I completely missed.

5. “We’re passing the oil refinery, so enjoy hearing, touching, smelling, tasting that.” plus 3 other identical jokes on the same drive. “Hey, can you stop making blind jokes, I’m starting to hate them these days.” “When did that happen?” “When one not-great classmate slash sort of friend made them all the time.” “That’s a shame.” “Blind jokes from sighted people are also super repetitive. The only blind jokes I seem to like are from other blind people.”

6. Him: “You’re rolling your eyes behind your sunglasses, I can tell!”

7. Once we saw snow once our way driving home from Las Vegas. It was March, it was after midnight, and the warmest it had been at any point in that night was 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 degrees Celsius. That’s a real comparison?? That’s a scary number to an American who’s barely ever left California. We were driving through the mountainy area of California where the temp really drops and for three seconds we saw snow in the wind. Well, he saw it. Something moved, it was small and flaky but like... that was actually snow and I couldn’t see it? (this was three, almost four years ago)

8. Last weekend we drove around the rich neighborhoods to look at Christmas decorations because I love Christmas lights because for ones light actually looks pretty instead of painful and I can see it at night without hurting, so it’s nice. I love the pretty visual things. Blindness will not take the pretty visual things from me! And the decorations just make me so happy and I wanted to do that last year but never did, so we did that this year

9. I also told him about the cripple punk tag on Tumblr last weekend and he was delighted to know it exists because he’s got other chronic health issues including downright awful knees.

Other blind things not directly involving my best friend

1. I have paused writing to ask a sighted person if it’s realistic for my sighted characters to see X item from Y distance away. Usually my dad with his stupidly perfect vision.

2. Realizing I’m forgetting what sighted people can see. It’s been four years since I saw like a normal person. And all my sighted memories are literally blurry from age.

3. But I still have dreams where I see normally. And then dreams where everything is too bright like in real life and I cannot see and what is happening???

At home, specifically

1. I have three cats who I can’t tell the difference between. I have a small black and brown tabby cat. A black and orange tortie cat who is slightly heavy but medium build. An all black cat who is huge and has the longest fur I’ve ever touched on a cat. I cannot tell the difference between them until I’m up close. Especially if the lighting bad.

2. Tonight I almost set my laptop on top of Remy, my brown and black tabby, because I didn’t see here a foot away from me, curled up next to my leg, somehow blending in with my orange and blue comforter. Her concerned look I did see and was horrified by my almost fuck up and apologized profusely for.

3. Cannot see Felix, my black cat, half the time if the lighting is bad and have almost sat on him, put my feet in his face, tripped over him, etc. because he blends into the shadows and oh my fucking god I cannot see that.

Note: Remy cuddles with me all the time. Felix adores me but will not be caught dead cuddling anyone because dignity, but if he’s in my room and nobody’s around to see he’s insistent on cuddling. Rio (black and orange tortie) is devoted to my mum, and she knows she makes me nervous when she suddenly jumps on me and I get really shifty and squirmy and not fun to cuddle with, so we’re cool and I give her pets but she doesn’t usually crawl onto me unless she wants to make my mum jealous.

4. Can sneak up on family members and friends because I move so quietly, so at least there’s that. Not a blind thing, but it makes up for some things.

5. Have walked up to someone I thought was a friend, realized I don’t know them, and the first thing out my mouth was “Wait, who are you?” and then a close friend (and the party host) grab me by the shoulders and say, “That’s not how we talk to people,” and just like, where are your manners Mimzy, wtf, but I never saw that stranger again so it’s okay.

Side Note: blindness aside, I do have a habit of just rudely speaking my mind in not-appropriate settings because I just don’t care and don’t have the anxiety to at least act like I care. They’re very satisfying, but usually very rare moments.

6. Please stop moving things around the house!

7. “What do you mean there are cobwebs?” *Shines a flashlight at the dark corners of my room* “oh my god...”

8. Me, to my family members, “Please close those curtains, light hurts. Please turn off that lamp, it’s too bright in here.” *me, later turns off most of the lights in the house* Family members: “Why is it so dark in here? I can’t see.” *Me, channeling my inner Toph Bei-Fong* “Oh no, what a tragedy!”

9. Mum is the only one who vaguely appreciates my light sensitivity because she also has snow vision (a mild case) and has a little light sensitivity, sometimes, on her bad days.

More Not Quite Appropriate Things!

There are so many things that I say only to realize that there is a very nearby stranger who heard that out of context and it sounded so bad.

1. Best Friend (while I’m walking down stairs just fine, by myself, don’t need anyone’s help, I can do it!) “There are eight steps.” “I don’t need your help.” “I know but--” “I’m fine!” “I’m just trying to help.” “I have too much ADHD to count to eight anyway!”

“I have too much ADHD to count to eight anyway,” is exactly what two strangers heard while walking right behind me.

Why would you sneak up on someone who’s so obviously blind??

2. “Sea foam green is an ugly color anyway.” I was in a mall, it was well lit and I was using my cane and managing with my crap vision, but I managed to see that specific color I hate on a dress right next to me, and the woman walking on the other side of the mannequin display heard that and did a double take on my obviously blind self.

Or so I’m told by my mom who could see what happened.

3. Similar to above, I was in the Artist Village in San Diego, which is a huge tourist trap, and I was sort of a tourist too, but it’s freaking outdoors, so I have the cane and sunglasses. And I’m in an Artist Village (very visual thing) with my parents, so out of place. And this random dude was apparently staring at me. Cannot see him, absolutely no idea which direction my mum is pointing towards, everything is blank and weird and not see-able, but I turned my head and by some miracle looked directly at him and he freaked out and looked away.

4. “Oh yeah, make fun of the blind person!” sarcastically, but loudly, somewhere public after a joke a friend had made that I was actually okay with.

5. “Driving and hiking are my two biggest weaknesses,” said out of context to people who didn’t know I was blind.

6. “I forgot you were blind.” “Well I didn’t.” More channeling of Toph, I think.

7. “Why can’t you drive?” *points to cane* *he does not get it* “It’s very illegal for me to drive.” *does not get it* “They’re blind dude,” classmate says. “Very blind.” “You seem to get around just fine,” says the man who only see me indoors with the very best lighting scenario for my vision. “Yeah, but that’s because I have the cane.” “So?” You seem just fine, he seems to think. How dumb are you? I definitely think. “Why do you need the cane?” “Because I would die if I didn’t have it. I have almost died. People would die if I tried to drive.”

8. Later: “Did he think you could just drive and use your cane to feel the road or something?” “I guess.”

9. More questions from other people who don’t know me very well asking why I can’t drive. “Because it’s illegal.” Their confusion is wondering specifically why it’s illegal rather than thinking I’m not actually blind. I explain the laws in the driving handbook, because I have read it (unlike some people I guess. How did you miss the ‘drivers must be able to see at least 20/40 with their best corrected eye” and I haven’t been in that category for two years.

Note: My day blindness came two years before my vision acuity reached visually impaired status. So, like, two years of wishing I had a cane but thinking “I’m not blind enough” and still being terrified in certain situations and risking my life walking around without one or some sighted guide.

Similar Public Things

1. I can see indoors pretty well so I get by on prescription glasses and no cane (I see 20/70 - 20/100 with glasses) but sometimes the mall is crowded and nobody gives me space and I’m just not comfortable getting so close to people, so I bust out my cane (and maybe my sunglasses too) so I look extra blind and people will give me the space to walk without running into someone.

2. Have also done that just because the indoor lights were also too bright and I need my sunglasses.

3. Have stared at my phone in public with cane/sunglasses, or tried taking photos with it, and I get so many weird looks because blind people see nothing I guess, none of us have any vision at all! (read sarcasm)

4. Walking into a coffee shop I’ve been to before and I know they change their teas all the freaking time. Also got the cane. “Hi, can you tell me what iced teas you have right now?” “Oh, they’re all on that sign.” *blank look* Do you not realize I’m blind? I’m thinking. “What kind of black tea do you have? Do you have any tropical black tea?” (because they usually do and I love tropical black tea, and they did that day too, so I ordered that.)

5. I cannot read menus. Those restaurants that have the menus above the register are awful, evil. Cannot read. In the wonderful days of my childhood I didn’t have prescription glasses for my moderately not great but still mostly functional vision (my dad has perfect vision and no concept whatsoever about what it’s like to not be able to see those things!) So imagine my parents dragging me to restaurants like that and I’m 10 years old and supposedly can read perfectly fine but I cannot read that menu and I think it’s some personal character fault of mine that I just don’t know how to read those kinds of menus, so I have to ask my mum to help me choose a food to order and eat, and then that’s the only thing I ever order any time I ever go back. So, I’m quickly getting sick of those places because I only eat one item there and I want to try something new with a restaurant with those nice hand held menus, but those are sit-down restaurants and apparently they cost more money, sooo...

6. That was a rant I went on with my best friend last weekend

Side note: It’s almost 4 am, my mum just woke up, saw the light on in my room from under the crack of my door and said hi. I’m at a point right now where she just expects it and isn’t one to judge (unlike my dad who has zero insomnia because he has hypersomnia and I don’t know how humans do that)

Side Note Ten Minutes Later: My laptop is at 10% but I plugged it in because dammit I am finishing this tonight and it will have all the things.

7. “Hey, where’s the trash can? I can’t find one.” *also mistakes a trashcan and a human being just sitting still. All the time* “Why not just litter then?” best friend asks, knowing exactly how I’ll respond. “I have manners!”

8. I hate traveling even a little by myself. My orientation and mobility skills with my cane aren’t that bad, but they’re not good enough for me to feel comfortable walking around by myself anywhere that isn’t super familiar with routes I already have practiced and memorized (school, close friend’s houses or apartments, the blocks in my neighborhood I’ve walked 500 times coming too and from school or walking dogs with my parents). Anywhere unfamiliar or wide/open or crowded or God Forbid, OUTSIDE is a source of terror and will not let my traveling companions leave me alone for longer than a few minutes and certainly not walk away on my own.

9. Will not go to bars because I present female and I am visibly disabled and that makes me look like an easy target and why would I risk that unnecessarily?

I’m gonna cut it off here. This is a long post, and I need to just finally go to bed. Goodnight. I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to send anons with commentary or reblog with commentary. I’d like to know that someone liked this.

#actually blind #cripple punk #writeblr #blindness #writing community #writeblr and actually blind both feel applicable because this is both a blog about writing and a blog about blindness #and other disability #tw ablism #blind character #why not add that tag too?#it's almost 5 GOODNIGHT

97 notes · View notes

echodrops · 4 years

Text

Kicking the Hornet’s Nest...

I’m procrastinating hard on other tasks, but in chit-chatting (both on tumblr and on Discord) about my stance on criticism of fanfiction, I realized that there’s a very low-hanging analogy I can make to explain my thoughts on this, so…

Uh first, please remember this is my personal blog and just my personal opinion. If you think that giving unsolicited concrit is the worst, I promise I’m not here to grab you individually, shake you by the shoulders, and try to change your minds. We can agree to disagree; I’m fully aware my opinion is unpopular on tumblr but also fully aware of the irony of people giving unsolicited criticism on a post about why unsolicited criticism is a good thing.

And second, please note that the analogy used below is only an analogy and not meant to be a one-to-one comparison–obviously the issue of vaccination is a far more critical, serious, and solemn issue and the topic of criticism on fanfiction (of all things) is not equal to a global health crisis that has cost real people’s lives. I’m drawing radical comparisons to thought processes because it’s shocking, not genuinely comparing fanfiction comments to moral and ethical world health decisions because I think those two things are equitable in importance.

Uh and third, please don’t respond unless you’re going to read it all. I'm happy to take your constructive criticism after you're finished with the whole thing. I get so tired of people rushing to my inbox after only getting half way through my arguments–90% of the time, I already addressed the thing you wanted to come yell at me about and you just didn’t make it there, promise.

So, at the risk of pissing off just about everyone who thought they respected me before this:

The current anti-concrit mindset stems from a similar logic to the one used by anti-vaxxers.

(This analogy lasts a grand total of five paragraphs or something, don’t get your jimmies too rustled.)

Most people on tumblr are happy–downright gleeful–to mock anti-vaxxers. The average anti-vaxxer is considered close-minded, self-centered, and under-educated. Although the issue of anti-vaxxing is probably more complicated than we paint it here on this website (to be fair, I wouldn’t know if it’s more complicated, since I agree that anti-vaxxers are generally stupid and don’t look into their arguments very often), almost no one on tumblr has any issue with anti-vaxxers being dragged up and down the block for their bad choices.

Usually, the logic of anti-vaxxers is understood to work something like this:

Anti-vaxxer: I don’t want to expose my child to something potentially harmful, so I am not going to vaccinate them.

Literally everyone else: You’re exposing your child to far greater risk in the long-term by not vaccinating.

Or:

Anti-vaxxer: My child doesn’t need to be vaccinated; they’re fine as they are. Those diseases aren’t a big deal anymore.

Literally everyone else: This mindset will make those diseases a big deal again.

On paper, sometimes anti-vaxxer logic works out–it is true that some children suffer very painful and awful reactions to vaccinations. It IS true that poorly made or contaminated vaccinations have killed children and will continue to do in the future. It IS true that vaccinations are painful and stressful for children in general and can even–depending on how the children respond to pain and how their doctors/nurses treat them–result in long-term phobias and health care aversion. There can be serious lasting consequences from vaccinating.

But most of us laugh in the face of anti-vaxxers. Why? Because we know that in comparison to the number of benefits, the risks are minimal. In the long-term, the number of people helped by vaccines far, far exceeds the number of people hurt.

I hope you can see where I’m going. At its core, the issue of giving unsolicited constructive criticism follows a similar pattern of short-term risk aversion. Authors who don’t want constructive criticism and choose to actively refuse it are following a similar thought process to anti-vaxxer parents:

Author: I don’t want any constructive criticism. Criticism can be painful, and my writing doesn’t need to be exposed to that.

Or:

Author: I don’t need any constructive criticism because my writing is fine as it is and I’m just doing it for fun anyway.

The general attitude seems to be that exposing fanfiction authors to unsolicited constructive criticism carries more risk than it does reward. And please be aware that I’m talking about genuinely constructive criticism here, well-intentioned and polite comments (the vaccine in this analogy), not troll comments deliberately designed to hurt people’s feelings (which would be equivalent to say, an injected contaminated drug in this analogy–no one should be okay with those).

But like anti-vaxxers who insist that the short-term risks of vaccines are more dangerous than the long-term risks of major diseases… is there really any evidence that genuinely constructive criticism, even when unsolicited, really does discourage and upset a large number of fanfiction authors? Or, more to the point of the analogy–is the number of people who would be entirely discouraged from writing ever again by some constructive criticism really greater than the number of people who would benefit from getting some (again, polite) tips for improving their writing? Which is the greater risk–being hurt in the short-term or losing out on the opportunity for growth in the long-term?

Clearly there are different opinions on this and I suspect that my opinion is heavily colored by the fact that I am older than the average tumblr user and therefore have many more years to look back on to weigh on the scales of this debate.

But I will always, always argue that the long-term benefits of helping other writers where you can far, far, far outweigh the short-term risks, for a couple reasons.

1) The world is a shitty, disappointing, stressful, and painful place. We encounter harsh criticisms every single day. Your teachers will give you poor grades. Your bosses will tell you your work isn’t up-to-par. Your friends will tell you the new top you bought and absolutely love… actually makes you look like you’re wearing a potato sack. If you’re into relationships, you’ll probably experience at least one break-up in which you hear that it’s YOU, not them, who is the problem. Your feelings will be hurt by callous comments from others an uncountable number of times. Your confidence will be shaken, if not actively crushed. I’m sorry to say it, but for almost all of us, having some miserable, anxiety-inducing and extremely discouraging moments in life is part of the unavoidable human experience. (And this is doubly, maybe triply true when we are starting out new hobbies or first entering a new field. Anyone who has ever tried to learn how to skateboard and gotten laughed at by experienced skateboarders knows exactly what I’m talking about.)

The world is full of truly awful things. And I’m not the kind of person who thinks we should just be exposed to all of them right from the get-go and fuck you and your snowflake feelings or things like that. I highly urge people to tag for triggering content and am on the record again and again telling people to block characters or ships that make them uncomfortable.

But many fanfiction authors are young authors, some of whom are posting work for public consumption for the very first time. Still more have no positive experiences with constructive criticism in the first place, and the extent of their literary criticism knowledge comes from really awful and boring high school English classes. When budding writers encounter a sudden explosion of access to readers–from having maybe one or two friends read their work to suddenly having their words in front of the eyes of thousands of strangers on the internet:

It’s disingenuous to give starting writers nothing but positive feedback. Only hearing positives about your work actively discourages change and self-reflection. It gives writers an unrealistic picture of their work that can result in far more serious disappointment and embarrassment later. When someone is awful at singing and they’re only told how nice their voice is, eventually when they sing for a more serious group of strangers, they’re going to be in for a very, very miserable time.

It’s a terrible missed opportunity for young writers to get a glimpse of what “professional” writing is like. Everyone benefits from genuinely constructive criticism–both the person getting it and the person giving it. We create young writers who are passionate about improving their writing by inducting them into the culture of planning, drafting, bouncing ideas off each other, finding beta readers, and taking others’ advice to grow their abilities, and oftentimes, one of the first experiences a person has with that process is someone spontaneously going “Hey, what if you tried this instead?” People often become inspired to become doctors and nurses after witnessing a family member experience a medical crisis–people often become inspired to become writers after receiving thorough feedback on things they have written. It’s impossible to really know whether or not you want a piece of constructive criticism until after you have heard what the criticism is, and adopting a “no unsolicited constructive criticism” policy as a whole creates an entire generation of fan writers who would miss out on opportunities for growth and inspiration.

This is waxing REALLY philosophical, but bear with me here, because this is also a well-documented concern of mine: we are entering an age in which people are no longer responsible for the media choices they make, where the internet is no longer viewed as a the equivalent of yelling into a crowd of (potentially dangerous) strangers, and the onus for protection is shifting away from self-preservation “I need to not put myself near upsetting things” to “other people have the responsibility not to expose me to upsetting things.” I’ve seen a lot of people say “If authors want constructive criticism on their fics, they can just say that in a note!” My ladies. My guys. My non-binary buddies. This is the utter opposite of how the internet functions. When you put anything on the internet, you are literally putting it before a crowd of an absolutely uncountable number of strangers and there are no rules (barring the laws of their home countries) dictating how they can respond to the things you put out there. Posting your writing on the internet is explicit consent to receive constructive criticism from anyone at any time unless you take actions to prevent that in advance. Sites like AO3 actively grant you the power to dictate who can SEE your work, comment on your work, give you the power to remove messages, screen comments before they appear, block comments entirely, or simply write in any of your notes sections that you do not want constructive criticism. (If it’s that easy to write “I want constructive criticism!” why is not seen as equally easy to write “I do not want constructive criticism!”?)

Public spaces on the internet are opt out, not opt in.

Why do many (though lord knows, not all) tumblr users easily agree to the idea of “If you don’t like a ship, you should just block it” or “If you see properly tagged content you don’t like on AO3 and you click it, that’s your own fault for not reading the tags,” but have the complete opposite mindset when it comes to constructive criticism? “I’m submitting my work in a public place where anyone can express their opinion on it… But even though there are multiple tools at my disposal for discouraging and blocking opinions I don’t agree with, it’s actually other people’s responsibility not to say anything that might upset me.”

As I said, waxing philosophical here, but this is kind of a scary mindset. The ability to enter a public space–and the internet is the MOST public space in the world–and then declare that you simply don’t want to listen to dissenting opinions is scary. I mean, this is how we get a common anti-vaxxer mindset–I don’t want to listen to your opinion because I have my source telling me I’m right and that’s all I need. “I put my work out in a public place and left it accessible to everyone, but I don’t want to listen to what everyone says about it.” I don’t mean to jump off the slippery slope, but this issue is a slippery slope in and of itself. Down this way lies a dark future. “It’s other people’s responsibility to curate my social experience for me.”

But really, after all this… I just flat out think it’s important to give genuinely constructive criticism to each other without people needing to ask for it because it just kind of sucks to see a fellow writer struggling with something and not say something about it. It’s not about feeling superior or thinking you know better than someone else; we all have our own strengths and weaknesses, and spotting something that could use a bit of work in someone else’s writing doesn’t make you a better writer, it just means that’s not your particular weakness. When someone is struggling to learn to swim, you don’t just leave them to their own devices and assume they’ll figure it out–even if they swear they’ve got it. When someone is learning to sew and you, who has sewed that exact thing before, don’t offer any advice, that’s not encouragement, it’s apathy. There will be many, many, many times in your life where you did not know you needed advice. Where you did not know HOW to ask for advice. Where you might have known you needed advice but not really wanted to admit that. Where you might have known you needed advice and been too shy to ask for help. Where a piece of advice completely from the blue changes the course of your life. Fandom as a whole–fan creators as a whole–cannot become a culture that closes the door to that vital form of communication, rejects willingness to not only uplift but also help each other grow even when we least expect it.

Anyway, I’m literally just writing this to avoid real responsibilities, but the point I’m trying to make is:

Most writers, even very young writers, will not be discouraged by polite, well-intentioned criticism. They may not like it. They may not take any of the criticism to heart, but most people, even young people, are far more resilient than tumblr (which on the best of days is a negative feedback loop that can romanticize a victim mindset because having the saddest backstory makes you immune to cancellation) wants to give them credit for, and a vast majority of writers will not be traumatized or scared away from writing by people trying to offer them genuine advice. Remember, no one here is advocating for asshole trolls who post comments like “Your writing sucks and you should delete your account.” A majority of writers, even very young writers, will be able to weather the storms and tosses of even really rudely-worded advice and recover. Sometimes it might take a while, but human beings have survived as a species because we’re really, really persevering.

(But some people aren’t! you might say. Some people really will give up writing if they’re criticized! And you’d be correct. There are people who will give up, even if all they are faced with is a single gentle, well-intentioned piece of criticism. But the truth is… People give up on hobbies for all kinds of reasons! Not every hobby is for every person! Every hobby carries with it its own challenges, its own share of risks, and its own pains. Learning a new hobby consistently requires putting yourself out of your comfort zone. Wanna learn how to ride a snowboard? You will get bruised. Wanna learn how to play chess? You will lose. Wanna learn to draw? Someone will make fun of your early drawings. You will make fun of your own early drawings. Wanna post your writing on a public platform? Someday, someone is going to say they’re not a fan.

And that leads me to address the point that just keeps coming up and coming up in this issue: People aren’t always posting their fics to improve as writers! A lot of times people are posting for just fun or for personal reasons.

Yeahhhhh bullshit. No, no, hang on–I don’t mean that people don’t have fun writing and posting fics, or that fics can’t help you through traumatic experiences because everything I’ve ever posted is basically me dealing with my own personal shit–what I mean is that there’s always an additional dimension to posting your fics on large-scale public websites. People write stories and share them with their friend groups for fun. People write characters overcoming trauma and share them with their therapists (or the friends who help to fill that role) for healing. People post their stories publicly, where anyone can respond, for validation on top of their fun and healing. There are ways to hide your fics entirely on many sites. You can leave things in drafts. If a fic is appearing as unmoderated and open to the public on a major fic site such as AO3, Wattpad, ff.net, etc., it’s because that fic’s author wants responses from others! They want views. They want subscribes. They want kudos. They want comments. There’s literally no reason to post publicly except for your work to be viewed by the public.

The fun one has writing a fic is often tied directly to the thrill of seeing a comment or kudos notification pop-up in your inbox. We love seeing people enjoy our fics–it absolutely makes my day when someone sends me a message telling me they re-read my fic for the third time.

It’s NOT fun to write something and get no response.

Writing something and getting no response is actively discouraging, actually.

So whenever someone says “They’re not writing fics to improve as writers; they’re just doing it for fun!” I have to laugh a bit–because when the concept of “fun with fanfiction” is tied so closely to the experience of having your work viewed and enjoyed by others, the fastest and surest way to increase the fun you have with your fanfics… is to improve as a writer. The more you write, the more you improve. The more you improve, the more loyal readers you gain. The more loyal readers you gain, the more excited people you have to gush about your fics with. Want a Discord server full of people willing to help you brainstorm ideas for your favorite AU? Write well, attract followers. Want fanart of your writing, probably the most fun and exciting thing I can think of as an author? Write well. Just plain old want more friends in the fandom to talk about your favorite characters and fic ideas with? Make writer friends.

People have fun writing about their favorite characters and post publicly to receive responses and validation for their creations… Responses increase the fun writers have because they make the hard work of writing worth it and give you people to keep writing for and with… Improving your writing increases the number of people attracted to your works and the number of people willing to spend time responding to them… The bigger the response you get, the more invested you become in your fics, the more fandom friends you make, and the more you want to write–it’s a process that is self-fulfilling, but also one that exposes you to criticism by its very nature. The very act of seeking responses from readers means that you’re open to responses that you don’t necessarily want to hear.

And I actually don’t mean this in the way of “If you can’t handle the heat, don’t jump into the fire.” What I mean is that it is impossible to create a world in which everyone who starts writing sticks with the hobby and keeps churning out works for us to enjoy forever. It is impossible to create a world in which no young writer will ever feel discouraged and give up. The writer you decided not to give constructive criticism to might just as easily become discouraged and quit writing because they didn’t receive enough response.

The first time you give your child a new vaccine, you cannot predict the results. Your child might suffer an allergic reaction. They might die. Every year, numerous severe reactions to vaccines do occur. But the majority of people don’t question the effectiveness of vaccines because we understand that the number of people who have severe reactions is very low in comparison to the number of people who benefit from the vaccine. The number of people who will be discouraged from writing by genuine, polite, constructive criticism is minuscule in comparison to the number of people who will either 1) benefit from it directly and be thankful you gave it, 2) not benefit but not be upset by it, 3) be mildly upset by it but then benefit, or 4) just be mildly upset by itself and then move on with life unharmed because sometimes people say things we don’t like but that doesn’t ruin our lives every single time it happens.

I’m not saying that providing polite constructive criticism doesn’t have risks, just that its risks are smaller than its benefits.

And I’ve successfully whittled enough time away with this now that I can go to sleep without guilt over the things I didn’t finish, but I started this by saying the long-term benefits outweighed the short-term risks and I feel obligated to defend that…

The long-term benefits of well-placed constructive criticism are enormous. Sometimes people need ego checks. Sometimes we need wake-up calls. Sometimes we need a gentle helping hand and didn’t even realize other people could be the help we needed. Sometimes we need a reason to get fired up–even if that reason is spite, trying to prove a critic wrong! Sometimes the answer is glaring us in the face and we don’t notice until someone else points it out. Sometimes we just plain out make mistakes. Sometimes we need a teacher because the ones in school let us down. Sometimes (oftentimes) other people bring incredibly unique perspectives to our stories that we would never have been open to on our own. Sometimes we write something unintentionally hurtful and need some gentle correction. Sometimes we could be having a lot more fun if we knew the tips and tricks others had to offer. Sometimes improving ourselves is hard but worth it. Sometimes bitter medicine is the only thing that will cure an ailment.

Shots hurt. People avoid them because they aren’t fun–what parent wants to expose their child to the painful, stressful situation of getting stabbed with needles? (What parent looks forward to the yearly flu shot themselves?)

We naturally flinch back from criticism. There are many times when we swear we don’t want it, don’t need it, can’t bear it! In the moment, it is incredibly difficult to be confronted with someone basically implying that you should change something integral to yourself–your art. No one likes to feel like they’re being picked apart for weaknesses, definitely not.

But sometimes a single comment can make a massive difference in your life–even when you didn’t want it at first.

All my life, I have been helped along by teachers, family, and friends who refused to settle for patting me on the back. The people who mean the most to me, who I most credit with getting me where I am today, are not the people who just told me I was good at things. They’re the people who told me I was good at things BUT. They people who challenged me to not just sail through life or even coast in my hobbies, content with the level I entered on–they’re the people who had faith in me and trust that I could refine my skills, could have even more fun IF I took that next step, challenged myself to go a bit harder… They’re the people who took the time not just to skim over my writing and slap a thumbs up on it, but the people who thought hard enough about it go: “This story was good, but have you thought about…”

Today, I’m a professor of English because I started writing fanfiction when I was 11 years old. Because I started posting fanfiction when I was 13. Because at 14 years old, someone–without being asked–taught me the correct way to format dialogue and how to strengthen my dialogue tags. Because at 15, someone flat out laughed to tears at a cliche metaphor I’d extended too far and I was ashamed, but they taught me something else to try instead. Because by 18, I’d received–and taken–enough unsolicited writing advice to land myself the highest paying on-campus tutoring job my university offered. Because by 19, someone challenged me to write something I told them was impossible for me. Because by 20, that impossible writing became the sample that got me accepted to grad school. Because by 21, I was furious enough at the criticism I received from my creative writing masters classmates to write a thesis so feverishly overwhelming that it inspired one of the foremost postmodern poets in the country. Because by 27, it was brutally honest criticism that gave me the gall to finally leave an abusive job and apply for a teaching position. Because by 30, I got to sit at a public literary journal volume launch and watch an entire class of my creative writing students become published authors.

And even though I joked about why I was writing this, and even though I’m really not, at the heart of it, trying to persuade any one person over to my side, I hope it’s clear how much of a labor of love this post is. How passionate I am about this topic.

This whole thing is a drawn-out plea: Please, do not let fandom creation sites become a place where no one offers advice unless it is begged for. Do not miss your chance to help someone else improve. Do not close the door to criticism that could change your life. Do not let fear of short-term discouragement prevent you from seeking long-term growth. Do not let the immediate side effects cloud your view of the global benefits.

Inoculate yourselves with good advice as a shield against the very hard future.

A dearth of criticism will not make fandom a better place. It will just make it a quieter one.

#anyone want to take bets on how long it takes someone to get outraged #skip reading the actual argument itself #and put something in the replies or my ask box that was blatantly answered on this post itself #it's 4am so like I give it about ten minutes #writing #fanfiction #constructive criticism #I tire more each day of tumblr's bizarre ways of thinking #like could you imagine if this was the attitude in any other hobby #nah bro #I know I almost broke my arm back there but I don't want any skateboarding advice #I got this #yeah I know the horse has broken loose and is kicking people but have you tried NOT commenting on that #you didn't brace your sculpture correctly and it no longer resembles what the art gallery expected #Jesus ask before you give concrit for once

26 notes · View notes

kris10tisme · 4 years

Text

Social Anxiety Origin Story

Social Anxiety is classified as a disorder. Isn’t that crazy!? You can actually read up on it on the MayoClinic or Webmd websites which shows that it really is a legitimate thing; it's not just you being a pussy. Most people who have social anxiety disorder don’t know what it is or why they’re like this. When we first become aware of our incomprehensible phobia we usually feel completely alien. People with this ailment tend to feel like the ultimate freaks, which knocks down their self esteem tenfold. If you have desperately searched online to potentially find answers: I feel you. The first time I felt a sense of belonging in this world was browsing through internet forums, reading about how people had the same irrational fears I did. You can find comfort in it sure, but it's definitely not the same as finding belonging in person. I didn’t know that I wasn’t completely alone in this struggle until I was maybe fifteen or sixteen years old navigating through my insufferable high school life! During that time google searches quickly became my best friend.

I can’t even really pinpoint where my SAD began for me. As a child I was pretty shy but I’d eventually open up once I became semi-comfortable. I didn’t ruminate whether or not I made some sort of fool of myself publicly. I was just having a blast man. Childhood is all fun and games but you really do get the carpet ripped out from under you when you enter adolescence.

I grew up a very privileged child financially - my parents both being middle class. My bills were all taken care of, and I didn't have to worry too much about the connections I would make with others in life. I was a kid. When a kid has no friends it's sad, but when an adult has no friends you wonder what they did wrong and you try to steer clear of them. There must be a reason why they are friendless: they must fetishize feet in their spare time! When you’re a child your only occupation is being a student. I’d wake up, go to school, learn stuff, socialize a bit among peers and then go home to watch TV and repeat, not questioning or overthinking the minutiae or idiosyncrasies in my life; just living day by day. Everything was smooth sailing. I figured I would hit my peak as a teenager and do all the cool teenagery things I saw on television like going to parties, making the cheerleading squad (though I’m not athletic at all; it would just happen), and have a tumultuous relationship with several boys. I’d pick the most special one to lose my virginity to on prom night! Then college would come, I’d go there and graduate and get a job. Sounds simple right!?

WRONG!

Hitting puberty was a big eye opener for me. It’s like once I menstruated my self-esteem plummeted. Everything about life just seemed a lot more competitive. There are all these milestones that society expects you to complete by certain ages: your first beer, your first kiss, your first fornication, your first job. All terrible and unfamiliar things! Now that I had bled and grown boobs, I was in the process of becoming a woman. I had to start making preparations to accomplish these milestones.

Seventh grade was the first year of my life I was depressed, and that terrible feeling hasn’t really depleted all that much since. In sixth grade I felt like a rock star… until the end of the year. I was a downright bully, mocking people in my class for the way they looked and acted. Some of my classmates found me funny, and I liked feeling that bold. I liked knowing that people were on the edge of their seats waiting for me to comment on a situation. It wasn’t until the end of the school year when one of the girls I heavily bullied called me out on my malicious means of garnering attention from my peers. She didn’t even insult me, she just spat out the truth. “You’re mean KRISTEN! You’re a BULLY!”

I can’t even explain how thrown off I felt by that mere observation. I never questioned why I did what I did; I liked the attention. I liked being someone people would be eager to hear from to know my latest outrageous comments on what surrounds us. Hearing this girl call me out for being a mean bully was a gut punch like no other. I couldn’t believe my ears. To me this girl wasn’t a person; she was a vessel. Someone to make fun of. Someone who was an easy target because she had a whole line of insults thrown her way since even before I saw her as easy prey.

No one ever downright called me out on my behavior. My dad did tell my mom that I was a horrible daughter, and he even asked who would want to have a daughter like me. But that was mostly because I was disrespectful towards him. Such a justified comment for a parent to make about his adolescent daughter right in front of her :)

That summer break I had tons of time to reflect upon my actions. I recognized how downright awful I had been to a lot of my classmates and vowed to make amends in the coming school year. I want to say, most of the bullying took place before I began menstruating, so you can blame my abhorrent behavior on my lack of emotional resonance and the fact that my womanly empathy and sympathy had not yet kicked in. That’s how I excuse how I acted.

So by seventh grade I was menstruating, and I grew D cup breasts overnight. I became a stand-up person - someone who didn’t throw vulnerable people under the bus for my own benefit. I became what you would call... “compassionate.”

Seventh grade was the year everything went downhill for me. Maybe it was the hormones kicking in and getting the better of me, or maybe it was me becoming more aware of what society deems as acceptable and proper. I felt like I should be cultivating a role in society, and I didn’t know what role to take. I couldn’t be loud and obnoxious anymore because my victims were starting to bite back and I realized the biting back hurt me more than I could handle.

For the rest of Junior High I struggled with my transitioning into a new person. My classmates instantly recognized how much softer and kind-hearted I became. I didn’t throw around as many insults, and if I did it was just playful banter. Me and the girl I had so savagely bullied were on decent terms, though we never really interacted with one another except for when obligatory social protocol called for it. I struggled with finding my niche again within my class. I got along with people just fine, but I suffered through a big identity crisis: I didn’t know what I could contribute without being outwardly obnoxious. I didn’t know what stereotypical personality trait defined me. Things got a bit more fucked at home for me, so that really took a toll on me mentally. I’ll get into how family influences your socialization tendencies in another post.

I’ve never wanted anything more in life other than to be liked. I know they say that not everyone’s gonna like you and that you should accept that, but I can’t! I just can’t accept it! The only way I will accept someone not liking me is if they’re completely indifferent to me, like when I have not done anything to them or in front of them to warrant them having an opinion on my character. So I keep my mouth shut. BUT THEN… I worry about what a weirdo they must think I am. If I’m too quiet then I give people the opportunity to make assumptions about me based on the impressions they have on me. They can be thinking anything, like that I watch tentacle porn, or that I collect toenail clippings or something.

I wonder if keeping my mouth shut all these years has done me more harm than good emotionally. Speaking up opens you up for attack, and I always feel like I have to be on the defensive. But when you say nothing to anyone, are you really living your life to the fullest and taking advantage of opportunities that could benefit you?

Meeting someone and getting to know them feels kind of like a step by step interrogation for me. The worst question I always get is, “What do you do?” Which I assume means “what do you do for a living?” Another one is,“Do you have a boyfriend?” It seems to me that the general public believes having a solid and steady job and being in some sort of romantic relationship completes the prerequisites for having a satisfactory life. Do these people even consider that you may be unemployed AND single? And that they’re unintentionally making you feel shitty about yourself? Just keep the convo focused on the weather for god sake.

I started this blog to vent about my feelings. I have been journaling a lot recently to blow off some steam because it's uncomfortable to complain about this stuff in real life. Only people on the internet can understand certain problems. I don’t know if anyone’s going to read this, but I feel like social anxiety is an underrepresented disease in mainstream media. It’s embarrassing to tell people that you are anxious for your next family gathering because you don’t know if you should greet someone with a kiss on their cheek if they’re sitting down. Do I just bend down!? Should they stand up? Am I being too forward, or are they gonna be offended if I don’t make a move to embrace them? That's a whole ordeal for me. It's not what people call a “real problem” but this is the shit I think about while I lie in bed at night. So if shit similar to that wanders through your mind when you contemplate the world, maybe you can find some sort of catharsis through this blog. We may not have a very mainstream disease, but at least we’ve got each other to relate to. We’re people who find solace in reading about similar experiences we’ve experienced online.

Just thinking back on the fact that what jump started my anxiety issue was a small little comment made by someone whose life I made torturous. I don’t place the blame on this girl, as I just enabled her to pull the trigger on some deeper rooted issues I bore. Although it is quite the struggle I am glad that the nastier person I was eventually transformed into a more compassionate one. I never got to formally apologize to that girl. I hope I didn’t leave a big lasting impression on her. I was really shitty to her. I would reach out to her through social media and apologize, but I’ve got way too much social anxiety for that!

Well now that we’ve covered my origin story I would love to hear about all of yours. I will continue to write about various social situations or predicaments that freak me out, as well as stuff I’ve been through at home and in high school and how I’ve evolved and haven’t evolved. I don’t want this blog to be filled with negativity. Hopefully it's self-effacing in a not too depressing way. If it’s too depressing please let me know. I don’t want to spread the feeling of hopelessness with this blog. I want people to find comfort and humor, and maybe we can come up with some potential resolutions for certain scenarios and give each other tips. If there are any readers out there, thanks for reading. I hope this in some way made you smile and feel like less of an outcast. Keep trooping on! You’re not alone :)

#social #anxitey #social anxious #social anxiety #depressed #depression #sad #origin #story #generalized anxiety disorder #help #myparentsdontunderstand #mental heath support #puberty #hormones #peer pressure #mental health #overthinking

1 note · View note

ma-ri-yana · 5 years

Text

Wanderlust

A/n: Can you believe I have yet to give this thing a title?? Crazy, I know. Let’s see if I give it one before I post the third chapter. Lmaooo, watch me wait till I finish this fan fic to give it a name...

Wait, tHat’D acTuaLly bE pRetTy cOoL! If my writing wasn’t complete shit, but okay.

Edit: she has a name now. Not that anyone cares or anything... 😔👉👈

I’ve got some good news and bad news: Hurricane Dorian doesn’t seem like it’s gonna come to Florida. The good news is that my hurricane snacks haven’t gone to waste because of the hurricane parties I’ve been having. Just kidding, I ate them all by myself. As if I have friends...

Me: Should I even bother with a word count?

Also me: alright, y’all. Word count: 2678

Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

HaVe fUn ReaDinG tHiS piEcE oF ShiT thAt iS aLsO noW mY bABy. but if it thinks it’s not a piece of shit, it’s got another thing comin’.

"You seem to be taking everything fairly well." Sypha commented, sitting beside the other female as they travelled through the forest in a carriage. This carriage looked very much like the ones used by the pilgrims. Sypha's words were heard and processed almost immediately but Aurora didn't verbally respond to her with the same speed, she only nodded her head as she shivered uncontrollably from the unbearably cold wind the breezed over her. She couldn't bring herself to speak. Taking it well? How does one take something like this well? She wasn't 'taking it well' at all. She was worried. Beyond worried. Downright scared out of her mind. What if Marisol was killed? What if she was kidnapped? These were different times with different laws and different mindsets. Speaking of different times, she somehow managed to go five hundred and some odd years back into the past in a completely different country on the other side of the world with no way to communicate with anyone she knew and no way to go back to the world she knew. She was in a foreign land, foreign country, foreign time and she was alone with strangers she'd just met. She wasn't exactly the type to voice her true feelings, she only ever exposed enough of herself and her feelings to make people think she was the type to overshare and that she couldn't keep her mouth shut. But whilst she ran her mouth about a lot of subjects and joked around to no end. Whilst she made people believe she was a motormouth, she kept her mouth shut when it came to a whole lot more, when it came to truly expressing herself.

She couldn't help it, she'd been that way since she was little. Even when things that were beyond horrible, absolutely atrocious happened to her. When she'd been ripped of her innocence at far too young an age to be able to even know what was going on, she'd kept her mouth shut. She didn't even tell her sister, the person she confided in the most. All she needed was to be with her to feel better. Aurora didn't realise how accustomed she was to having her sister around to comfort and reassure her, until she almost felt like suffocating. But of course, she wasn't going to say anything. This was how she ran her life for seventeen years and it wasn't going to change in the span of two hours.

It wasn't as if anyone would notice that she was 'uncharacteristically quiet', they'd just met her. Well, that was what she thought, but Sypha knew something was wrong, her intuitive nature told her so. She didn't ask at the moment because she didn't want to pry, but she had made a mental note to herself to try and get Aurora to open up to her at some point.

They continued walking a bit longer before Trevor spoke up, "Let's make camp here."

The group hunkered down and made themselves a little camp site, built a fire with the wood they found and sat near the fire. Aurora remained quiet in the duration of it. She sat the closest to the fire with hopes of keeping warm, but she didn’t feel like speaking to anyone. Luckily for her, it didn't seem like there was going to be a lot of talking on her end as the conversation the group was having revolved around the tall blond male she'd just met not too long ago. Apparently, they'd all just met each other a few weeks ago. She thought they were close friends that'd been together for a long time, turns out, they met by unfortunate circumstance. Aurora didn't quite believe the things the man was saying, though. Half vampire? Him? Vampires didn't exist. They never did. This story he told was full of hyperbole. Everyone knew that this "mass genocide" was really a plague and that this whole story was just something the people in the area made up to explain something they didn't comprehend. It was reminiscent of the blame the Jews got for the black plague not too long before their current time. Of course, this perspective would not have been easily shared with the rest of them.

"You? A vampire? Those don't exist. They're myths." She finally spoke up from her little spot near the fire whilst she put her hair in a ponytail using the hair elastic -or as she would say, ‘cola’- she had around her wrist.

"Oh, but they do exist. And so do the night creatures." Adrian chuckled, watching the girl as she put her hair up only to let it back down once she realised how much colder she was with it tied up.

"And magic." Sypha interjected.

"Prove it." Aurora challenged, crossing her arms. She was confident they wouldn't be able to. Whatever tricks they could pull out of their hats, she was sure there'd be a scientific explanation for it. There was no way, absolutely no way in hell they could change her mind. No way at all.

"Would you like to go first? Or shall I do the honours?" Adrian asked, not making any attempt to hide his amusement. The youngest of the group wasn't pleased.

"We should save the best for last. You should go first." Trevor intervened, crossing his arms as well as he leaned back against the wagon they had. Sypha smiled to herself and answered his comment whilst tucking a lock of her rather short hair behind her ear.

"Well, I'm not going to deny that my powers are be--"

"Got anything other than teeth?" Aurora asked the dhampir, rather unimpressed. Her face was void of any amusement to just how uninterested she was. But as cocky as she was about her beliefs, she wasn't quite expecting what she saw next. She watched in awe as he levitated off the ground and her jaw dropped without her permission. "What the hell? You're lying. You're probably wearing some sort of harnesses with like, a wire hooked to it that's also attached to a tree. That's not scientifically possible. Humans can't just--"

"As I’ve said, I'm not human. Only half that and half-vampire." He spoke nonchalantly as he circled around her. Aurora watched him as he did so, trying to find a way to justify what she was seeing without openly admitting she was wrong; without having to openly admitting that the things she'd been told her whole life were just stories actually had truth to them.

"If you think that's impressive, look at this," Sypha giggled, drawing her hands together before separating them and moving them around in awkward motions. Aurora watched the older woman as fire spouted out of the tips of her fingers. After a few seconds of her demonstration, she stopped. "What do you think?"

"I don't think I know what to think right now."

The three strangers laughed at her response, prompting her to laugh nervously and tear her eyes away. "I think I'm just gonna listen to music for a bit…" she mumbled to herself as she reached for her backpack and looked inside. The group was, needless to say, a bit confused as to how this girl was just going to listen to music without a band of musicians to play something for her; but, they decided not to question it and leave her be. Alucard watched the girl closely as she pulled out her iPod and plugged her headphones in. Aurora put her headphones on but she didn't play any music. She suddenly wasn't in the mood for it any more. Her conflicting emotions were replaced by her ever growing anxiety. "I don't have enough medicine."

"What do you need medicine for? You look fine." Trevor scoffed.

"I don't really know, I just need it," she shrugged. "My mom told me that I have a medical condition and that I need to take these pills three times a day or else I'll, uh… die."

"Have you ever tried not taking them?" Sypha cross-questioned.

"Do I look like I wanna die?" Aurora chortled, but stopped abruptly for dramatic effect. “Don’t answer that.”

"How long have you been taking them?"

"As long as I can remember...?"

"What exactly are pills?"

"May I see the ‘pills’ you speak of?" Adrian asked her. He was fairly interested in seeing how medically advanced humans have gotten.

"Why don't you stop taking them? I mean, if anything goes wrong, I'll fix it. I'm a pretty good healer, if I may say so myself." Sypha bragged, pointing to herself with her thumb. She had a pretty smug expression on her face when Alucard called for her.

"Sypha, do you mind taking a look at this? I need a second opinion."

"Huh? Ah, yes." The woman walked over to him.

"It looks like it's laced with magic." He analysed, holding the pill up so Sypha could see it better.

"Magic? That can't be right," Aurora muttered, watching the woman that stood next to the dhampir as she too looked at the pills inside the bottle. “How does it look like it’s laced with magic?”

"I recognise this… This type of magic is used to conceal things…" the woman began, "certain physical features… it's also used to neutralise other kinds of magic."

"Why would my mom give me those?" She was still very skeptical.

"To protect you, maybe? People do get killed for practising witchcraft, you know." Trevor chuckled.

"Interesting…" Sypha whispered before clearing her throat. "The magic in this thing is oddly specific."

"Specific, how?" The brunet inquired.

"The characteristics and powers it's focused on hiding… are those of vampiric nature."

"Meaning…?"

Sypha rolled her eyes to express her annoyance. Could this man be any dumber? "Do I need to hold your hand and walk you through everything?" She scoffed, "it's clear she's a vampire."

Aurora erupted into a fit of laughter, causing everyone's attention to turn to her. "What's so funny?" They all said in unison. Their question wasn't answered. For a while, she kept laughing. Laughing and laughing and laughing until her laughs turned into high pitched wheezes that signalled her increasing need for oxygen intake. Once she'd caught her breath, she continued until her fit of laughter turned into a fit of coughing and more wheezing.

"Oh, shit. I'm sorry, this just sounds like a shitty fan fiction plot. Am I getting Punk'd or something? You guys really had me going there. I even believed you guys with that whole magic spiel. Y'all really got me with the flight and light show. Really, you guys really did. But now it's time for it to stop. Where are the cameras? Marisol must be laughing her ass off. I bet she orchestrated the whole thing," she ranted. Aurora walked around the perimeter of the camp site and looked for hidden cameras and her lost sister who, in her mind, wasn't lost, just hiding. She was desperately looking for a rational explanation for everything that had happened within the past 3 hours.

"What are you doing?"

"I think she's gone mad."

"Maybe my Romanian's shit." Aurora muttered to herself. She slowed down her speech as she spoke to them. "Cameras. Where are they?" When they stayed quiet, she pulled out her phone and pointed to the camera. "Where are they?" Again, nothing.

At that moment, her alarm went off. The alarm that told her to take her medicine. "Ah, it's time. May I get those back, please?" She reached out to grab them.

Sypha pulled back, "how about you don't take these pills and you see what you are for yourself?"

"Because I’m nothing but dead if I don't take those damn pills?" The seventeen year old argued.

"Those pills will only hinder you, we don't know how long you'll be stuck here and you’re going to need to--"

"You're gonna hold us back if you don't learn how to fight." Trevor interjected.

"Right, better I die than hold you back from your made up war with vampires that sparkle in the sunlight,” she cackled. Alucard seemed to be amused by her comment and didn't waste a second to answer.

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but vampires don’t sparkle--”

Sypha interrupted him rather rudely and made a poor attempt of reassuring the frightened woman, "I'll heal you if anything happens to you--"

“You can’t heal me if I don’t even know what in the living fuck is wrong with me. If I don’t know, what makes you think you will? Are you a doctor?”

"I've had enough of this." Trevor complained. "Sypha, can you please make her shut up?"

"Um.. No? I don't know any spells for that."

"She's just in denial, she needs time to process this." Alucard sighed.

"We don't have time for this," the brunet complained, his arms extended all the way out to point in the teenager's direction.

"We don't, but we have no choice. And we can use all the help we can get. Assuming she can read, she can help us look--" Adrian was interrupted by the Belmont.

"What was that?"

"Animals humping in the undergrowth." Adrian chuckled to himself at his own joke. "Wait, no." And that was when he heard Aurora shriek.

"Which is the nearest town? Is it still Gresit?" Trevor asked.

"Argeș is closer to us," said Sypha.

"What in the actual living fuck are those things?"

"Night creatures," the blond answered as he kicked dirt into the fire, killing their light source. He turned to face the beings and didn't bother to look back at her when he spoke again. "Do try to stay out of the way." Aurora rolled her eyes at his request but did as was asked of her anyway. He was treating her like a child and she wasn't too keen about it. That was something her sister would've said to her. One of the many things that aggravated Aurora about her look alike. Now that she thought of it, she couldn't help but feel slightly better. Now that she knew she was… a vampire and that her sister was one as well, she had felt relieved to know that she was most likely safe. Then again,was she really a vampire? Or was her growing suspicion of being the victim of an elaborate prank not merely speculation, but the absolute truth?

Alucard drew his sword and muttered, "no further," just before the beasts lunged at him. He teleported further to the right and sliced one of the beasts in half, vertically. He continued to fight and dodge different blows as they breathed fire in his direction. Aurora distanced herself from the fight a little more. Unfortunately, this drew the attention of a night creature that was just flying in. So now, instead of finding a safe hideout, she was running for her life. Luckily, Sypha caught on to what was happening and burned the thing to death. Aurora panted and thanked her, earning a grin from the woman. Trevor's whip cracked against one of the beasts, forcing it and the other creature it was clinging to, to fall from the sky. The vampire hunter happily finished them off. And just when they thought it was over, more appeared. Those night creatures directed their attacks at the two men. Sypha used her magic to stop the fireballs from hitting her friends and collected the fire, redirecting it to work against the beings they came from. All were killed except for one. That one beast decided it wasn't having it and the second time it tried to burn her alive, she forced the fire to stay within the thing and cause it to combust instead. A few seconds after it's sure defeat, it forced itself up and flew off. All four of them stared at it as it left, Aurora quietly walked over to the other three without tearing her eyes away from that creature. Alucard was the one to break the silence. "Nobody's going to Argeș tonight."

#castlevania #castlevania x oc #alucard x oc #adrian fahrenheit tepes #alucard castlevania #hector castlevania #hector x oc #castlevania netflix #why am i doing this #i dont know #but im doing it anyway #thanks for reading this guys #trash #timetravel au

17 notes · View notes

noblehope · 5 years

Text

Having spoken to a few friends about what caused me to make my last post which you can find here, I’ve come to the decision that I actually should speak out about this incident instead after some recent news. I have appropriately tagged this post with everything that I could think of, and as an extra precaution will be putting the rest of this under a read more. Please understand that I am not only making this post for me, but for everyone that this person has wronged.

The above ask is located on his ouma blog. This is what is causing me to make this post now as I am directly vagued here as are many others. My writing below is my explanation. For the majority of 2018 I was Komari’s best friend and knew him for a total of nine months. I cut contact with him in November and have focused on my own recovery and happiness ever since. Komari is the most manipulative, toxic, and downright abusive person I have ever had the misfortune to know personally, but I am now in a much happier and healthier spot than I was in November.

I have moved on from tumblr to roleplay in the dangan/ronpa discord oc community instead. While I do want to come back to tumblr at some point to roleplay Sonia and Peko (and maybe more), right now I couldn’t be happier with simply applying my own characters to games, spectating games, and making friends through killing games I do get accepted to. This year has been so very kind to me in so many different ways.

However, my year did not start this way. Because of the abuse I went through I was at one of the lowest points in my life, and I would not have been able to recover as quickly as I have if not for my friends or the ones I’ve gained through discovering how deeply Komari’s abuse really ran.

This post is not a secret. Sin made a post on her blog clearing up lies Komari spread about her. Seeing this unexpected post caused me to have a breakdown to be reminded of him so soon after feeling comfortable enough to return plus coming to terms with that he’s wronged me in more ways than I imagined. He fed me lies that I took as truths and has damaged the reputations of several people who are recovering just as I am to this day.

After speaking to Sin and thanking her for her post even though it hurt to see, I spoke to others that I was under the impression of them being awful people and vice versa. We cleared up all misunderstandings between one another and our healing truly began at that point. I love all of them so, so, so very much and I’m happy to call them friends now.

All of this leads us up to two days ago where I received an unexpected message @/outcastedkiller, someone I have never had regular conversations with. I can’t even remember the last time we had a topic outside of discussing artists to commission/showing off art or some discussions of rwby back when the last season was airing. I have always viewed Goldie as a distant friend/associate and while I enjoyed speaking with her, lately I have been having a hard time ignoring red flags like I used to.

I now have her blocked after the following conversation being unable to push aside my growing concerns any longer:

I will now clarify a few things. The post she is referencing is the following with a timestamp:

PLEASE LOOK AGAIN AT THE TIME STAMP AND NOTICE THIS POST WAS MADE FOUR MONTHS AGO.

I have since removed this post like I should have a long time ago, but because of my inactivity I forgot to do exactly that. Next, I’m going to show you all my most recent post that I made before coming back today to show how long it’s been since I’ve been active on this blog.

There is absolutely no reason for any of them to have been looking at my blog when I have not been here. He is fully aware of the fact that I cut ties with him and did not want to be associated any longer, and yet he and Goldie found it appropriate to message me about something four months old.

Not ONLY that, but Komari is FULLY aware of my stance when it comes to people trying to contact me after I have blocked them: to ask first through a third party if I would be alright with a message from them, and only after gaining my approval would the conversation begin. Goldie went straight to messaging me without any context, without even spoken in nearly a month let alone months since we spoke about Komari himself, and sent my anxiety spiraling. Having confirmation that this was Komari’s idea to send me his blogs to block sent me into a complete panic attack. While the gesture may seem innocent on the surface, I must make it clear that this is just another tactic of manipulation and I and several others have seen through it. I have all of those blogs blocked and MANY more that he has retired for my own comfort ever since I cut contact. Because we were so close, I knew about every single one of those blogs and more that he did not list. I am very efficient when it comes to ensuring my comfort, and that means keeping my block list up to date on literally every one of my blogs. So again, he had no reason to send me his blogs to block. None whatsoever.

I am repeating myself, but there is absolutely no reason to message me about a post I made back four months ago let alone when I am inactive. All this has done is caused me and several others grief to where old wounds have reopened. I have not seen his apology that an anon on his blog has spoken about. I do not know who sent him that anon and none of my friends do either. None of this concerns me or them and we do not want an apology. We want to be left alone.

He does not have the right to message any of us asking for anything and should refrain from SELFISHLY involving anyone else. If there is one thing I must apologize to Komari for, it’s for calling Sin’s post a callout in my panicked state because I could not find another word for it.

Even if I had read this apology on his blog (which is no longer found on his ouma apparently and is only located on his deep sea prison multi muse blog now) and I had felt an ounce of truth in it, it would have been immediately revoked seeing him vague me and hound others for information.

If there WAS a callout for him, there is no reason to be looking for it as someone reading about a callout on themselves is definitely not the healthiest course of action. Moving from my professional tone for like, five minutes, that’s like the exact opposite of “not wanting to be involved in drama”. He has shown already that he has not changed at all and no amount of poorly disguised nice “gestures” or words is going to convince those he harmed otherwise. He and Goldie are also blatantly ignoring where I said I meant to delete my post about needing mentions of his tag. This is not a trigger anymore and they should not be insisting that it is. I DO suggest you to block his blogs if you have made it this far for your own safety and comfort, but that is not a course of action I will make anyone take. I make this post to make things clear as to why this is happening and for my friends who still roleplay here on tumblr. Chances are when I do come back fully, I’m going to remake for a fresh start.

Also, if there ever is a callout made about Komari, I will ABSOLUTELY reblog it everywhere possible because of how dangerous he is. Thank you for reading. ** also https://kiboumukou.tumblr.com/post/182940204064/kiboumukou-i-usually-avoid-drama-but-someone is the url for the post that started this whole mess if my hyperlink above did not work correctly.

#drama /#callout /#drama tw #callout tw #ask to tag /#〚》𝔾《 straight from the horse’s mouth ( out of character. ) ✧ 〛

37 notes · View notes

niall-is-my-dream · 5 years

Text

You & Me - Part Eight

2500 words

Sydney, Australia

Callie's POV

"This is perfect." You mumbled to Tara. You were sat on a massive seating area at the end of a boat, sipping a beer whilst sailing on Sydney Harbour.

"Apart from those Paps on that boat over there." She replied.

"Bastards never leave him alone do they? Suppose it's good press for tour, him hanging out on this boat with his friends and crew."

"Yeah I suppose. I found it so weird when I first started working for him. He's the first high profile person I've worked for. We were spotted coming out of a club in L.A. together, Paps had a field day. It was only when some fans kindly pointed out that I work for him and that not every girl he's seen with is romantic that they laid off me."

She's must have noticed your horrified face because she backed it up with. "Don't worry about it, ok?"

"To be honest I've only ever experienced the comments on Instagram. They actually weren't that bad, but then they just think I'm his guitar tech."

The two of you were sat alone, the first time in ages that you'd had a chance to talk to her privately.

"What's bothering you Callie?" She asked, looking around to make sure no one could hear.

"Nothing, I'm fine."

"You know you can talk to me."

"I know I can."

She looked at you, knowing you were lying about being fine. There was something bothering you, Saskia. You had stupidly stalked her Instagram and Twitter. She had so many subtle posts about Niall, the one she posted just yesterday had tipped your anxiety over the edge.

"Saskia posted about being in an airport around the time we were flying here yesterday." You said, your voice low.

"I know she did. I've been watching her activity."

"You have?"

"Yeah, it's my job. After Nialls email to management about her harassing him, I've been asked to watch her and her friends and see what they're up to."

"It really got to me." You admitted.

"I know this doesn't help, but just ignore her ok, don't check it again. I'll deal with it." She said as she tried to reassure you.

"I think Niall is finding it stressful. He says it's just nerves for tour and the album release, but I know that's not just it."

You'd spoken about a lot of things when you'd been together on your 'first date' back in Sweden less than a week ago. Snuggled up in bed, having consumed pizza and beer you talked until nearly 1am. The 'what are we?' chat had happened and you'd both blushed when you admitted that you had been thinking about it a lot.

Niall hadn't had a girlfriend in a few years, having just casually dated since then. He had first met up with Saskia back in December 2016 after a Jingle Bell Ball show. They knew some mutual musicians and had swapped numbers. It became apparent to him she was using him for attention when he was celebrating the success of slow hands. She posted numerous times on social media in May hinting about him and by June when she showed up at nearly all the summer shows he appeared in, he had had enough.

You were pleased that he had shared this information with you. He explained that he had told her after they first went out, that he didn't want anything serious with her. She obviously felt that he would fall for her and want something serious after a while, but of course that never happened.

Breaking things off with her at the end of June had been a relief for him. He didn't ghost her or anything nasty, he just suggested at their last meeting that they should go their separate ways. Of course this didn't go down well with her and she continued to text him almost everyday and then she turned up at rehearsals a month ago and then the Dublin show.

He showed you her messages, the latest one being sent to him that day, whilst you were in the hotel room together. She went from being sweet about him doing so well with his shows to being downright nasty that he had decided to end things with her. Thinking she was quite the catch, she didn't understand how her, a beautiful successful model had been dumped.

Niall hadn't replied to any of her messages for weeks. Choosing to ignore her and hoping she'd get the hint. But her appearance at his Dublin show had really shook him and that's when he decided to get management involved.

Sitting here with Tara and seeing Niall finally relaxing with his friends made you immensely happy. Tara's reassurance that Saskia was being watched and that management were dealing with it made you feel a bit better.

"You having another beer?" You asked Tara.

"No, think I'll just stick to water. Pace myself!"

"Was thinking the same thing. I'll go get us some."

You stood up and made your way to the main area of the boat, some of the lads were sitting by the bar. You saw Niall look up when he heard you approach and give you a smile. Deciding to pop to the loo before you got your drinks, you made your way below deck to find them. You were just washing your hands when you heard a tap at the door.

"I'll be just a second." You called out as you dried your hands.

"It's me." You heard Niall reply.

You smirked and shook your head as you opened the door to him. His expression matched yours and as you went to step out of the stall he made a step forward and guided you back in there.

"Ni." You whispered.

"Just five minutes." He said, as he leaned into kiss you.

The stall was small and cramped but he had you pushed up against the locked door in less than a minute. Breaking away from his kiss, you smiled as your eyes met his.

"Can't keep away can you?" You whispered.

"Nope." He whispered back. "Just wanted to kiss my girlfriend in private."

You nervously bit your lower lip and blushed before leaning in and kissing him again.

You walked up the steps to the main deck five minutes later and were instantly met by 3 pairs of eyes. Gerry, John and Jake all smiling disturbingly at you.

"Everything ok lads?!" You questioned, your eyebrow raised.

"Oh grand Callie, just grand." Gerry replied.

"Good."

"Oh look, Nialls there to." John smirked as Niall made his way up the steps behind you.

"Look a bit flushed there Callie. You feeling ok?" Gerry asked you, a look of compete glee on his face.

"I'm fine thank you." You replied, shaking your head in amusement that the lads had clearly figured out something was going on between you two.

Niall made his way over to the table by the bar where the lads were sitting and took a swig from his beer.

"Oh would you look at that!" John said. "Nialls a bit flushed to."

"Enough of that Bird." He replied, his eyes going across the boat to a couple of management and crew who were luckily not in listening distance.

"Right you are." John replied, instantly toning down his banter.

You knew the lads would figure it out soon enough and you trusted Niall when he said he wouldn't tell anyone anything. But they were a close band and spent a lot of their free time together, so his absence from their group sometimes would easily be noticed.

Grabbing two bottles of water from the bar you made your way back over to Tara.

"Thanks babe." She said as she took the cold bottle from you.

"I think the lads have realised Niall and I are together." You whispered as you sat down.

"Why what did they say?"

You relayed the last five minutes back to her and she laughed.

"It's so obvious sometimes that you're together, I mean he hasn't stopped looking over here at us for the past hour."

"I didn't notice." You replied and you meant it, too busy enjoying the beautiful sun and views of the harbour.

This was exactly the type of experience you had hoped for when you'd joined the crew. You'd always wanted to travel, especially to Australia.

"Don't worry about them, if they have figured it out they won't tell anyone."

"Honestly, us keeping this a secret is harder than I thought. I didn't realise it was that obvious that we are together."

"You forget how close as a team we all are."

You laugh lightly at this, you knew you had seriously underestimated how difficult this was going to be.

The crowd in Sydney were amazing, they had clearly been online and viewed the Dublin, London and Stockholm shows. Everyone knew the words to all his songs. Niall was absolutely buzzing when he got off stage. He embraced you with a big sweaty hug, you should've been grossed out by it but you weren't. Placing a kiss to your temple, he let you go before high fiving the rest of the crew.

You were in complete awe of this man and could feel yourself falling more and more for him. So much had happened in such a short space of time that you suddenly felt overwhelmed by it all. Excusing yourself to the bathroom, you walked quickly away from everyone. You could feel his gaze burning into the back of your head as you did.

Splashing some cold water on your face helped calm you down. You looked in the mirror, silently giving yourself a pep talk.

Don't ruin this Callie, you've got this.

Keep calm.

Don't get scared.

Your heart was pounding in your chest as you careful took some long slow breaths.

Ellie came suddenly bursting through the bathroom door.

"Are you ok?!" She asked, the worry evident on her face.

"Yes, sorry. Was so hot backstage. Just needed to cool myself down." You replied calmly.

"Are you sure? Niall said the colour just drained from your face. He's really worried about you."

"Oh, I should go tell him I'm ok. I didn't mean to worry everyone. Was just so hot back there." You replied using your hand to fan yourself.

Ellie reached across and stroked your arm, the support that the whole team gave each other was strong. Her touch and kind words instantly calmed you.

Your phone buzzed in your pocket. Taking it out and looking at the screen you saw it was Niall.

"That Niall?" Ellie asked.

"Yeah it is. Didn't mean to worry him. Just got a bit too hot."

"I'll get going, I've got to finish packing up. Are you sure you're ok?"

"I'm fine, thanks Ellie."

You leaned in and gave her a hug, which she returned.

"Take it easy packing up."

"I will."

She turned and left, leaving you alone. You looked down and read Nialls mesage.

"Babe are you ok? Where are you?"

"I'm in the bathroom, Ellie has been with me. Sorry, was too hot backstage."

"Are you sure you're ok? Come to my dressing room."

"I can't, I have to go back and help pack up. Come find me when you're showered."

"Are you sure you're ok? I'm really worried about you. X"

"Honestly Ni, I'm fine. You did amazing tonight. X"

"Thanks babe, I'll come find you when I'm done."

Checking your appearance in the mirror, you straightened out your shirt before breathing out a massive sigh. You started to feel more relaxed and even slightly stupid for overreacting. The way you were feeling about him should be embraced. You had no idea if he felt exactly like you did, but you knew he liked you a lot. Staying up with him talking the other night and his need to sleep next to you assured you of that.

When you got back to the stage, Adam and James checked on you before offering you a bottle of water. The crew always looked out for eachother. You started to pack away Nialls guitars ready to be transported to Japan for the next leg of the tour. The pack up for a flight was a bit more than when it was being transported by road. Martin gave you all the labels you needed, your worst fear was one of them going missing.

The atmosphere tonight was infectious and everyone was singing and laughing as you packed up. You had done enough shows with Niall over the last ten months to have a good setting up and down system. Niall appeared a little while later, freshly showered and dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt. He made a beeline straight for you, not caring who saw him he reached up and brushed a strand of hair out of your face.

"You ok?" He asked his eyes full of concern. He stroked his thumb gently across your cheek.

"Yeah, I'm fine. As I said I was just a bit hot."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I was just was hot, overwhelmed, it was all a bit too much. I'm sorry I worried you."

You were aware of everyone around you, some looking your way. Niall noticed to and quickly moved his hand down from your face. He didn't move away from you though. Leaning down and whispering gently to you.

"You can talk to me, you know if you're worried about something. I know this is new to us both."

His eyes showed he was worried about you, it made your heart flutter. Was he talking about the tour being new to you both or the relationship you had decided to embark on?

"I know I can babe." You replied smiling.

"You really had me worried Petal." Your heart that was already fluttering in your chest began to beat faster at his use of the cute pet name.

"Honestly, I was fine." You said reaching your hand out and giving his hip a squeeze in reassurance.

"I wish I could kiss you right now." He mumbled.

"Plenty of time for that later." You smirked.

"Will you stay with me tonight?"

"I stay with you every night Mr I can't sleep without you!"

"Hey! Can't help it. Ever since that first night at yours, I find I sleep much better when you're next to me."

You smirked and shook your head.

"What? Don't hear you complaining when I snuggle up to you?!" He added.

"I sleep better with you too." You admitted.

Later that night as you snuggled up together in Nialls hotel room, you felt truly at ease.

"Cal, you awake?" Niall whispered in the darkness.

"Hmmm."

"I'm so happy we're together."

The flutters were back again as you replied, "me to."

Part nine

https://niall-is-my-dream.tumblr.com/post/183066083788/you-me-part-nine

#Niall #Niall Horan #Niall fan fic #Niall Horan fan fic #Niall fan fiction #Niall Horan fan fiction #solo Niall #one direction #1dff #Niall fluff #niall smut #niall imagine #flicker sessions #tour life #Emily writes

55 notes · View notes

plotbunnie · 6 years

Text

Mm so there’s a lot of stuff under the cut I just feel like I can’t express directly? Please don’t feel obligated to read the mess going on in my head, I just need to put it somewhere.

So this is just a big,,, massive dump of things I sometimes wish I could tell people but either it is socially unacceptable to discuss or I simply feel too guilty to do so, or feel as if I will not be understood. It’s really a big mess, so this is kind of a second ‘hey, turn back now!’ warning if that’s the sort of thing you’re not about. This is a queued post, also, because it makes me feel a little less like I’m begging for attention that way, and knowing that will probably reduce the appearance of urgency it gives by being all big and emotional.

I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been venting, more. Which is natural, I’m in school, I’m stressed, yadda yadda. But like- the things I vent about are never what really upsets me? they’re usually related but not- the thing and I’ve been examining myself to try and figure out why, and it boils down to the fact that what I end up venting about is genuinely insignificant, or at least mostly so, especially compared to whatever’s actually bothering me.

I’m also always trying to- dismiss and explain away everything that upsets me. “Oh, it’s just hormones”, “Oh, it’s just school stress making me crazy, you know”, “I’m just being oversensitive rn, it’ll pass”.

But like whoops, no, it’s not passing cause the actual root issues are a lot deeper than “I feel bad bc my teacher laughed in my face when I asked a question he didn’t like”.

And here’s the thing- I can tell myself how irrational the feelings I keep getting are all I want and it will not make them go away? In fact it’s just been forcing me to internalize them and feel shitty for feeling them at all.

So I guess here’s the part where I actually say what I’ve really been feeling, so I can look at it, and stare at it, and figure out what the hell I can actually do about it. Cause in some cases the solution seems so easy- and then it’s fucking not, and I just feel worse for failing at it.

I feel insignificant, invisible, probably some other word that starts with an ‘in’. Like I no longer exist the moment I’m outside of someone’s immediate vicinity, and only re-enter their memory bank once I’m in front of them or on their screen again. Like my whole existence is just floating in the void and sometimes a comet passes by or whatever and acknowledges me, and I’m just screaming for that acknowledgement and have no way of making it permanent. A lot of this is probably because of the fact that, thanks to my roommates & their situation, all but maybe four or five of the 20 people I met and started interacting with semi-regularly last semester no longer even acknowledge I exist- literally their expressions glaze over and they move past me, even when I’ve directly addressed them ( though I stopped doing that right quick, of course ). I’ve never, in my whole life of being picked on and pushed away from people, felt so small or alone as I do now. And I don’t know how to change that. I keep telling myself there is a way to change that, and I will find it, and all sorts of other shit a therapist would probably say, but ultimately, even if I am not this invisible being, I don’t know how to make myself stop feeling like one. I mean it’d be nice if I could ask people to remind me of that, but wow I guess that leads to the second problem?

I hate asking for things. heck, I hate receiving things without asking for them. A friend told me they were giving me something they’d gotten with digital currency they’ve amassed to a point it is no object and I still almost had a panic attack and immediately had to work out how I could even the score and pay them back. This friend reasoned that they were paying me back, but on a numbers level their gift still sort of dwarfed what I did? And so it still incited genuine fear until I could find a way to repay it back. And it’s not that I don’t want to be given things? Because then if the exchange of things ( be they compliments, edits, art scribbles, inconsequential digital currency gifts, anything because yeah, literally all of those result in the same anxiety- though some I’m better at combating the resulting anxiety than others ), then I start getting that unfortunate human response that makes me sad because I’m not getting things, when it is a commonly accepted concept that when you like someone you give them stuff ( again, not necessarily monetary or physical- applying to compliments and emotional support and all that junk as well ), and to NOT receive those things at all just feeds back into my first problem?? And it’s this awful vicious cycle. And worse than being given things out of the blue ( because the resulting warm fuzzies do generally balance out the panic and make it well worth it ) is asking for something- whether it is something I want, something I need- even suggesting something totally inconsequential that can be given to me to help someone else combat their anxiety over being given something. But kind of especially asking for things I need? Asking for help, asking for emotional support, asking for an ear to speak to- it’s why I’m typing up this long-ass post I all but begged people NOT to read despite kind of?? really wanting someone to understand what I am experiencing ( because is it real if people don’t acknowledge it or know about it or understand it? ), rather than just- talking to someone. I don’t want to burden anyone with my neediness? I don’t feel I have the right, I don’t feel that I’m a Level 7 Friend who can request emotional support, and I feel like I leveled wrong on my lower levels so I can literally never reach Level 7. Nevermind that people just plain don’t want to hear about this sort of thing because it makes people uncomfortable and that is a fact not many people are willing to acknowledge? Like in my experience ( and I am CERTAIN this is not always true, but for me it has been, or feels like it has been ) no matter how close with someone you are, chances are they don’t want to hear about your deep shit. No matter how much they say ‘never feel bad for asking for help or wanting to talk’ they are also probably internally praying you ask someone else. And that is fine? Like they gotta do they own thing and I will never begrudge them that ever ever ever because Wow Dude I Get It Big Time, but it really is a struggle when there is no one who IS willing to listen?

And sure, I could see a therapist, I did for a bit last semester and I keep telling myself to find a new one this semester since the previous one left, but honestly that one just allowed me to feel like I was trying because that’s what you do when you’ve got emotional turbulence, you see a therapist- and that’s... literally the only benefit seeing one brought me. Because they seem to be more focused on “well here is a list of ways you have already tried to potentially combat this small par of your problems without actually addressing the source”, along with “do you REALLY have this thing you were told you have because you don’t have any of these stereotypical and often inaccurate symptoms listed in this short passage of a book that is my only frame of reference for it”. ( yeah, that last one is really specific but like- I was trying to talk??? about how betrayed I felt that my freaking mother was told by professionals I’m autistic NOT ONLY when I was a child, but again when I was a teenager seeing a therapist, and then told my EX BOYFRIEND before she finally told me- casually and in passing. And instead of focusing on the emotional issue I wanted to address, she focused on whether or not it was an ‘accurate diagnosis’ ).

Like I have all these problems and they affect me and how I function, but I didn’t learn what they were or how to address them or in some cases even that I had them until very recently, and I just want to acknowledge them, but if I try I’m just asking for attention or making excuses and I just don’t know what I can do about that but man that is almost a footnote in all this ugh.

And I’m sure this factors in somewhere but heck if I know where but like touch is something humans tend to need and wow I’m very touch-starved to the point I am now touch-repulsed and while the part of me that needs support is downright begging for someone to fucking hug me for like 3 hours is constantly battling the instinct to never let anyone near me ever because what if I’m too clinging what if it hurts what if it turns out it doesn’t help shit what if they take advantage of me what if they get weirded out what if what if what if

And then the final thing- and god I know this is choppy by now and I’m honestly scared of anyone who bothered to read this far cause heck, guess you know how to destroy me now, and also why- is that I am starting to wonder if there is a point to anything I do? Like obviously there is but-- I am a creature that thrives on acknowledgement more than most it feels like and I think that I am suffering a lack of just that has been made a little clear by now so I’m at that point where like- I just want someone to look at my work, really look at it and examine it and explore it and give me deep feedback and talk with me about it but nobody wants to fucking do that, as exemplified in almost all the above points and like if it’s not worth looking at in depth is it really worth looking at, at all?

Am I really worth looking at, at all?

#ooc #sky speaks #vent #negative #negative tw #depression tw #invasive thoughts tw #?#not actually sure that one belongs there but I think some of these classify as invasive thoughts #like i'm fine I'm not going to harm myself we good there I'm just- a lil lost and this is me tryna find a fucking map

4 notes · View notes

nashvilletonihon · 6 years

Text

There’s No Race, There’s Only A Runner. Just Keep One Foot In Front Of The Other...

Hey guys. It’s been a few days (ok, maybe a little bit more than that) since I last posted anything. To be honest, I don’t have much to tell. I’ve been at my high schools for two weeks now and have actually taught less than a handful of times. This upcoming week is the Cultural Festival, so both Amino and Kumihama have been focused on preparing for that. This means there are shortened classes and varied schedules depending on rehearsal times. Cultural Festival is a school wide event that requires the students to all participate in various activities. At Amino, the First Years are required to perform in a play. The second years are required to sing and the Third Years are required to dance. There are also food stalls, games and activities that the teachers can buy tickets to. (I have one for a Japanese tea booth I plan on visiting on Wednesday.) At Kumihama, all of the students chose to perform in different plays depending on their homerooms. There is a general atmosphere of excitement and anticipation filling the hallways and classrooms at both schools and I am 100% ready to see all of the students hard work and effort come to fruition. We just have to hope against hope the typhoon doesn’t ruin everything.

This past month has been one of the most difficult of my life. I’ve been very open and honest about my struggles regarding moving to and living in Japan. This week was especially hard because I was not feeling well, school and classes did NOT go how I had imagined them and I was incredibly emotional and homesick. (For those of you following the saga that is my sleep schedule, I wish I could inform you that it’s getting better....but it’s not.) I thought maybe a run would combat the stress and anxiety I that I was feeling, so Wednesday night I did just that. In 90 degree weather and at least 1,000% humidity I put on my running clothes, laced up the new sneakers I bought (because I FINALLY found a pair in my size) and just...ran. I didn’t have a set destination. All I knew was that I needed to run away from my emotions. (Spoiler alert: They caught up with me later.) As I was aimlessly running, I stumbled upon a park a short distance from my apartment. Curious, I decided to take a little detour to see what it had to offer. Turns out there were a few tennis courts, a small lake, a really, really nice baseball field and some nature trails heading up a “mountain” toward one side the stadium.

Feeling adventurous, I decided to explore one of the trails. I quickly realized how out of shape I am as I began to climb the almost vertical stairs. Huffing and puffing I hauled myself up this mountainside. With each step I took I became more and more emotional. I kept thinking about how classes that day had been a total bust. The students sat there. Stone faced. Silent. They just stared at me like I had grown a second head as I attempted to introduce myself. The more I tried to make it exciting, engaging and fun, the more they refused to participate. You want to talk about feeling judged? Stand in front of a classroom full of 30 high schoolers who want nothing to do with you and what you have to say.

(It ain’t fun.)

Wheezing and panting, my mind filled with failures of the day, I finally reached the top of the mountain. Exhausted, stressed, anxious and downright fed up, I sat down next to a small, run down temple and cried.

“What am I doing here? Why did I leave the great life I had in America for this? The students don’t care. I can’t understand anyone. I’m alone and I miss my family. I miss Preston so much. Does he miss me like I miss him? I miss going to movies with him. Feeling his arms around me in bear a hug. God, what I wouldn’t do for a hug. From anyone. I could still be working at a really great job right now back in the States and having the time of my life with my friends. Instead, I’m here. I don’t want to be here anymore. I feel like such a failure. This is too hard and I honestly don’t know if I have anything left to give. It’s only been a month but it feels like a lifetime. I want off this roller coaster. Please. I just want to go home.”

I cried until I thought I couldn’t cry anymore. (I did the next day while on the phone with my mom.) I sat there next to that temple with snot, sweat and tears running down my face and felt so, hopeless. To have so many things beyond my control is new for me and I hate it. I knew this was going to be hard but I had no idea it was going to be THIS hard. I know by now that I must sound like a broken record when it comes to this. “Yes Rachel, we get it. It’s hard but god bless, pull up your big girl panties and DO something about it.” Or maybe that’s just what I would tell myself from the outside looking in. And I promise you all that I am. I’m studying Japanese like it’s a dying language, saying yes to every offer that involves hanging out, grabbing food or exploring, getting involved in after school activities like Kendo and attempting to stay as busy as possible to keep my mind off of the crippling doubt and anxiety ridden thoughts I’m having.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

That being said, I’m a firm believer that the universe gives you exactly what you need precisely when you need it. Enter Kate and Jess on a rainy Thursday evening. A few days earlier, Leah (my predecessor) had reached out and informed me that last year an older Japanese couple, Kumi and Masani Yoshida, had invited some of the JETs over to their house for a weekly dinner. The wife used to be a JTE at Amino (my base school) and apparently their bread is famous among the Kyotango AET’s who have had the pleasure of attending one of these gatherings.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to go. I had just finished bawling on the phone to my mom when I got the message that they were outside my apartment. I quickly splashed some cold water on my face, slipped my sneakers on and walked outside. No make-up. Messy hair. Sweaty and sick looking. “Sorry I look like death warmed over.” I mumbled. “Not at all. You look great.” Kate replied with a smile. (Already being much nicer than I deserved.) “Would you like to follow us so that you know how to get there the next time?” Not feeling particularly social, I quickly agreed and got in my car. 20 minutes later we had arrived at an adorable Japanese home with two of the kindest people waiting for us inside. (I dare someone to find an unkind person in Japan.)

Dinner was entirely vegetarian, comprised of dishes like noodles, rice and vegetables all grown in and harvested from their personal garden. AND THE BREAD. (I would 100% die for that bread.) The Yoshida’s didn’t even seem to mind that I was mostly speaking in English, too tired to try to work out what I wanted to say in Japanese. Kate and Jess have been in Japan for five years now and did most of the translating for me and the Yoshida’s in return. I was maybe a little more candid than I should have been upon first meeting them about how lonely and miserable I was. (Keeping in mind that I had my incredibly gracious hosts sitting right next to me.) I told them mostly everything. How isolating the countryside is, especially when you’re a Prefectural JET because you don’t get the luxury of meeting all the Municipal AET’s at the Board of Education almost every week. I talked to them about how sad and homesick I was and how I didn’t know if I had it in me to last an entire year. They both listened with patience and responded with kindness. Kate told me about how she went through the same feelings and emotions when she arrived. Her situation was a little different from mine because she wasn’t a JET at that point and had no job to work at or school to attend. “I was home for 10 hours a day, by myself. It was awful.” she confided in me. “But don’t worry. We’ll make sure you’re not alone anymore.” I almost started crying at the dinner table.

As the meal began to wind down, we made plans to return again the next week. This time Kumi invited us to come earlier than 6:45 so that Kate and I could help her cook dinner if we wanted. It’s a fantastic opportunity to expand my Japanese recipe book and authentic dish making skills, so of course I adamantly agreed. Laden with leftovers and some brand new towels (the Japanese love giving gifts) I slipped on my outside shoes as Kate informed me that Kumi is well versed in the art of tying and wearing 着物 kimono and that there is a festival dedicated to kimono is October. I was immediately invited and have plans to attend with Kate and Kumi if our schedules allow. Kate and Jess also made plans to pick me up the next morning to show me around Kyotango, take me to the grocery store so that they could help me with any questions I might have regarding labels and food items and to basically let me know that living in the countryside isn’t a death sentence. (However much it might feel like one at times.)

So this morning, we did all of that. It may have been raining but that didn’t dampen our spirits as we bought locally grown veggies and homemade bread at a cute café down the street from where I live, drove along the coastline for some of the most gorgeous views I’ve ever seen and a place that I definitely plan on taking my family and Preston when they come to visit next year. We grabbed a delicious lunch of ramen at the mall where I do some of my grocery shopping and capped off the afternoon with a trip to this tucker away liquor store next to the train station where I can find all of my favorite American whiskeys and spirits for half the price. Places I never would have known about if Kate and Jess hadn’t taken time out of their Saturday to drive around and show me. I am forever indebted to them and their kindness. We already have plans to go hiking once the weather cools down for good and to go to the 温泉 onsen (Japanese bath/hot spring) for some girl relaxation time when school gets to be too much. I laughed and smiled more today than I have all week. Most importantly though, I didn’t feel judged for the way I’ve been feeling. Here they are five years later with no plans to leave and a potential house in the works. Life’s funny, ain’t it?

I have no idea what tomorrow will bring. I have no idea what the next 11 months will bring. (Except maybe tears. And most certainly memories.) What I do know is that I am slowly surrounding myself with a group of wonderful, kind, caring, gentle, patient and genuine human beings who make each unknown day a little bit easier to manage. It makes me excited to introduce my family and boyfriend to them. To show my loved ones the people who have become so dear and so close to me. My network of support and a safety net when walking the tightrope gets to be a tad too scary.

I’m one fortunate gal, I tell you what. I haven’t given up just yet, and I’ll keep puttin’ one foot in front of the other.

- レイチェル (Rachel)

2 notes · View notes

plutoandpolaris · 6 years

Text

An Open Letter to All of Us

Hello everyone.

While this letter was inspired by @no-strings-puppet's Open Letter to Mark’, mine is going to be a little different. I touched on some of these topics in the ‘My Hiatus Experience’ post, (linked here if anyone cares to read it: https://plutoandpolaris.tumblr.com/post/170124481611/plutoandpolaris-my-hiatus-experience-take-this) but not as thoroughly as I had meant to. Thus, here we are. This letter is mostly for my own benefit, to put all of these thoughts somewhere so they’re not cluttering up my brain.

To begin, lets touch on the cult. Again. Yeah I know that I talk about it constantly at this point but it’s important to the whole. Here’s the facts first: Mark created a cult for his own entertainment. The cult was mostly spreading “positivity” in a creepy and off putting tone. There were a lot of unintended consequences to this cult. Several people took it too far and roped Jack and Ethan into it. Mark has made no comment.

Now for the opinions, (mine, to be more specific.) Was this entirely Mark’s fault? No, of course it wasn’t, that’s absolutely ridiculous. No man can effectively monitor 19 million strangers, especially considering he was on the road at the time. However, he could have handled it much better. Mark’s community is notoriously excitable, if I had to choose a word for it. While that’s certainly not a bad thing, Mark fails to set enough clear boundaries. If you don’t put your sheep in a pen, they’re going to get out, wander around, cause trouble and probably get eaten by coyotes. This was a lesson of self control on our end and responsibility for your flock on Mark’s end.

Not only that, but it caused a clear rift between Jack’s community and Mark’s community after Jack liked a post stating that the cult was a purposeful jab at his “PMA” movement. Do I think this is true? No, no I don’t. I don’t know Mark, but from what I do know of him, (or the side of him he makes public), he’s not that mean spirited and downright nasty. He can come off that way, but I doubt that it was on purpose. This, like another event that I will bring up later, was most likely the product of boredom that got blown way out of proportion and caused a lot of unnecessary backlash. In the following days from the incident there was a lot of bad energy in the communities. No outright hate, but it felt like two hissing cats on opposite ends of the room staring each other down. However, much to my relief, the cats never actually pounced, and things settled down.

For awhile.

Now, to take a small detour into the cesspool that is my brain. Thus far I’ve been attempting to be rational and focus on what we know for sure, but now were going into a place where rationality doesn’t exist and there's nothing but constant anxiety covered up by a thin veil of nihilism. Ever since the Melanie Martinez incident, I’ve been paranoid that the people I love aren’t who they say they are. I’ve seen people get “cancelled” before. The hashtags and the instagram spam and the milelong tumblr text posts telling you in 70 languages why the person is trash. It casts a cloud of hatred over the entire internet for about a week, and after that you seldom hear of the ‘cancelled’ person ever again. It’s actually quite horrifying, but most of the time the people deserve it and most of the time it’s never someone I personally knew. Until the #melaniemartinezisoverparty happened. I loved her music, I bought the entire crybaby album, I had a pin, she was one of the first artists that I ever truly loved. Then it was ripped out from under me in the span of 12 hours. I spent that time deleting all of her music from my playlists, basically sponge washing her from my life, but I didn’t feel better afterwards. I didn’t feel like I was doing a good thing, “ giving a horrible rapist what she deserves” so to speak. I just felt awful, and, ever since then, I’ve been followed by an intense fear that it could happen again with someone like Mark or Jack.

Especially Mark. Every time there’s a new drama around him the paranoia comes back, the fear that everything he’s built is a well crafted lie. That he paid teamiplier to be his friends, that all of this was just a ploy to gain fame when he’s actually a horrible, irredeemable person. That someday 25 years from now, his “friends” will come forward and tell us that the real Mark was awful and that they only worked with him for money. Is this completely ridiculous? Yeah, it sure is, but I told you that we’ve left the realm of the rational.

The worst part is that the rational part if my brain isn’t coming up with any better options. Realistically, he’ll just start making mistake after mistake, slowly pissing off his fandom so much that they all leave and the Markiplier legacy fades into youtube obscurity like Fred or TobyGames. Then, when we’re all in our fifties we’ll look back on all of this and say

“Remember that Markiplier guy we used to watch as teenagers?”

“Yeah, what an asshole. Wonder what he’s doing now?’

“Eh, he’s probably dead.”

To some of you that may not be all that bad, but to me, having all of this slowly fade away and there’s nothing I can do about it? That’s horrifying. I can’t do anything. I’m a goddamn 15 year old from the middle of nowhere. I can’t hold a shotgun to Mark’s head and force him to address this, I can’t put back all of the pieces myself. Hell, this letter is most likely useless considering no one reads posts this long. I’m throwing this out there just to get rid of all of these thoughts, because these are the kinds of things that keep me awake at night, (among other things. My own inescapable death, the threat of nuclear war, the economy, my own deteriorating mental health, the fact that getting a job with a speech disorder is extremely difficult and that I’ll probably die under a bridge with no money, normal stuff.)

We have arrived back in the rational part of this letter. For those who weren’t scared off by our little trip through paranoia lane, congratulations. You have a stronger will than I do. Now, I’m going to discuss the newest drama nugget in the 5 piece meal that was the month of January. (That was officially the strangest analogy I have ever used.) The fact that the entire hullabaloo around Dark and Wilford’s ‘death’ was nothing but Mark setting us on fire for the fun of it. Many people see this as him mocking the community’s dedication. Do I see it this way? It’s complicated. To start off with, I’m used to feeling unappreciated and laughed at by youtubers, I’m a fanfiction writer. We are completely ignored by our inspirations and when aren’t it’s because they’re making fun of us. ‘Let’s pick a really weird and creepy fanfic and laugh at it while indirectly mocking the rest of the fanfiction writing community.’ I know they do it for laughs but I’m just imagining what the writer feels in that moment. Completely different topic, I digress.

I do agree that it was not cool. We put work into these theories, we pour so much love into these characters, and when it feels like a youtuber doesn’t appreciate it, that hurts. Plus, while it was fun for him, it hurt a lot of people. The aftermath isn’t worth whatever entertainment he got out of it. Sure, watching a house burn down may be fun, (in a morbid sort of way) but that doesn’t mean that the people trapped inside don’t get burned. When you’re the figurehead of 19 million people, you need to step up and be a leader. When you hurt someone, even on accident, you apologize at the very least. At the end of it all, I can’t force Mark to address this. I can’t do much at all, really. What I can do, however, is talk to all of you. Don’t make it worse. Treat each other and Mark with respect. Take responsibility when it is your fault, because maybe then Mark will do the same.

-Pluto

@hufflepufftrax @lum1natrix

#markiplier #jacksepticeye #pluto's rambles #mark fischbach

55 notes · View notes

stellxuk · 4 years

Text

Broad lesson(s) from my solo trip

Some time has lapsed since I’d written the last post but as always words keep escaping me and at present time so o o o much has changed to how we’re essentially going about our daily lives. Being an introvert through and through, I don’t feel the effects of staying home as much as others but it has also created a new flux emotionally. I’ve been getting really vivid dreams (a side note), and have become more reminiscent of my trip to the UK, seeing it in different lights than the atomic now-I-know-I’m-not-a-solo-traveller vein.

It has brought me immense gratefulness (more than I can express without sounding like a brat who decided to spend money on a leisure trip in the midst of then an impending pandemic) that I got to experience what I experienced in the UK before everything started going downhill. A lot, and I mean a lot, of unfounded worries surrounded me during the trip, which made me think that it was just a wrong time to have travelled and experienced the cities I went to. But now it has, in my own windings and projections, taught me a lot of empathy for the kind of fears people are going through now, and how important it is more than ever to surround yourself with the assurance that this is a time that will pass. It has also opened up a lot about who I am as a person inherently as well.

Picking up The Idiot Brain by Dean Burnett (a read I’d recommend) after reading 2 chapters and abandoning it for an awful long time (the pages have started to yellow kind of long), I understood how the irrational fears I felt during my trip were my cortisol levels trying to get me to hit optimum self-preservation mode and survive alone - something I have never done. Never! Of course my brain had trouble computing the experience then. I’ve never been physically alone more than an afternoon/ evening completing work at a cafe, or watching a movie solo, or a drive, or at most taking a solo flight (note that these aren’t survival activities but also just leisure activities). I’ve been wrapping my head around why I was so fearful and it seemed I couldn’t be at ease with myself more so than others who seemingly adapted pretty well to studying/living abroad alone.

But it wasn’t a measure of courage and sensibility, it was apples and oranges in how I was raised and the circumstances which surrounded me as I embarked on the trip.

In the last post I wrote about enhanced responsibility traveling against my parents’ full consent (to clarify, they supported me in my decision but if they had a say they would’ve completely shut the trip down until the entire virus situation tided over). It had been weighing over my head the entire trip and through my mom’s frequent check-ins that as much as I wanted this trip for myself, I’m not my own person. We all aren’t. I read an essay “No Patient is an Island” by Anita Ho on Aeon and it presented studies on moral philosophy such as Rene Descartes’s “rugged individualism” where the self is individualistic, independent and in autonomous control of their lives. This goes against the inherent significance of family relationships - that which is characterised by collectivity, non-consensuality, sensibility and favouritism.

While it may seem that the end goal is independence, coming into your own person, much of our identities and idea of self is constituted by our relations with others. Besides navigating the new cities I was visiting, I was also grappling with a sense of guilt almost for having my mother worry over me, but also a sense of subtle want for defiance - to maybe miss a text or two, get back to the airbnb real late one night - and prove that I can be on my own. It is weird to say this even now but when I hadn’t done that, eventually caved to the messages my amygdala was sending and made sure I kept to my itinerary, don’t do anything stupid, and to assure my mother that the train ride home takes only 15 minutes and the station’s still crowded so I wasn’t alone, I felt like I still wasn’t really being fully independent. Even though I literally was - alone.

To me the premise for the trip was mild, non-social activities. Visit a park, a museum, catch a theatre play, take train rides to explore architecture, nature, boutiques, local cafes. That sort of thing. I remember catching up with a friend a week or two ago and he frowned when I said I started my days early around 8am but I was back in the airbnb most nights by 8pm. He proceeded to ask me why hadn’t I gone to a bar. Lol. Why would I be in a bar? Nothing wrong with bars - I’m not insinuating that if I had gone to a bar any of the nights that would’ve been the last you heard of me. I was just perturbed as to why there seemed to be a “generic itinerary” everyone had to follow and me missing out on these overtly “I’m solo tripping I am my own person now” type activities meant I had an odd trip.

I guess where I’m getting at is it all boils down to who I am, maybe neurologically my anterior hippocampus might be average sized or even smaller, or biologically I have inherited the DNA that encoded the same over-protectiveness and social paranoias my mother has (chemically, her oxytocin levels has surged through 3 childbirths and hence socially, my sense of danger and worry has also been compromised). There are so many reasons as to why I choose the straight path most times and I don’t take much risks. Don’t get me started on my psychological flaws on fears of failure and subconscious need for social (including parental) acceptance 🙃. But it doesn’t mean it was a horrible trip!!!! (I finally got to the point).

When friends asked me how was my trip, I felt socially obligated to preface that it wasn’t that great - because globally we hadn’t known we were about to fight a pandemic together, and because when I got back my parents were more relieved than excited to hear my stories, and I was slightly ashamed of how cautious I was and at some points, downright fearful. But now I understand, that I hold my life to great regards in accordance to others, and I attain a sense of selfhood through my connection with others. I have my fair share of social anxieties, but by my own measures I can deem the trip a great one regardless. An old friend who reconnected on my birthday (and we got to talking about her experience on her own solo trip) said this:

yea it’s not easy but it’s memorable hahaha there’ll be something about this trip that will stay with u for life and it’s sth that will be difficult to put into words or explain to anyone... try and relax and enjoy yourself! afterall this opportunity definitely didn’t come easy. you’re brave enough to even take ur first step :)

At that moment when I read her message a wave of calm just came upon me and that birthday I gallery-hopped - V&A Museum, The National Gallery, Hayward Gallery and Tate Modern - and I spent what others might think was the most mundane birthday but to me, one of the best yet.

Will I go back to the UK alone again? Absolutely! Knowing all of the above doesn’t mean I’m okay with it and am set to just live like a hermit for the rest of my life. It means I have so much to work on and look forward to in growing myself more and more. This will (continue to be) on my own terms, that will also be considerate of the people I value and how I’ve been raised. It means communicating my fears and assurances for others better, and it means going against my amygdala sometimes and trying new things (that I would enjoy) to overcome irrational fears. I hope if you’ve read this far that you’ll also be patient with yourself to give yourself time to figure out why you feel/think in certain ways about certain things, and to understand that everyone is on their own path. I hope you’ll give yourself time for yourself, and not by social standards of what it should look like at this stage of your life, going through whatever it is you’re trying to figure out.

Regular blogging content that actually talks about what I’d done on the trip in the next few posts :>

0 notes

sarahburness · 5 years

Text

Why Highly Sensitive People Make Amazing Life Partners

“Our relationships are a reflection of the relationship we have with ourselves.” ~Iyanla Vanzant

Looking back at my life I see that all of my romantic relationships up until now suffered because I did not recognize or value my sensitivity.

For much of my life I thought there was something wrong with me. I was too quiet, too shy, not interesting enough in group settings, too easily hurt, too easily overwhelmed and stressed. I judged myself for being irritable when I didn’t feel rested. I was easily bored with surface conversation, and craved deep intimacy, but thought maybe that was silly and unrealistic.

For years, all of this made my love life challenging and downright difficult to navigate.

Though I did find a good match in my first husband, eventually my own self-contempt and inability to accept and honor of my own qualities—the guilt and shame I walked around with much of the time— along with my lack of insight into how to work with my trait, led to my first marriage’s demise.

My ex had the exact same experience within himself (I happen to know this because we are still wonderful friends). As you may have guessed, we’re both highly sensitive people (HSPs).

HSPs often reject themselves, as my ex and I did. When we don’t understand our trait well enough, we tend to not value ourselves.

This not a surprise, really, because our culture doesn’t yet fully recognize and celebrate us for our strengths—it actually does the opposite—so why would we know how to value ourselves?

The heart of most relationship problems for everyone—HSPs and non-HSPs alike—lies in a sense of insufficiency on some level. To have thriving, loving, healthy relationships we need to deeply love and accept ourselves.

It took me some hard lessons and some real courageous work on myself, but now I am so proud of who I am, and my partnership reflects that health. I have a joy-filled, fun, deep, lovingly connected relationship with the man of my dreams.

When I look at what enabled me to feel so sure of myself as a wonderful person and wife, I know the key was learning to see, appreciate, and honor my sensitivity.

Because we HSPs are amazing. We make the very best partners when we take our well-being seriously, rid ourselves of our insecurity, and feel deep down good about ourselves.

I’ve made it my mission to help other HSPs accept and nurture their trait so they can have the relationship they really want. I want you to see your own value and beauty!

Here are some of the many ways you make an amazing partner, when you are healthy, centered, and honor your trait:

~You are naturally conscientious, compassionate, and very caring, so you are great at being supportive or loving when your partner needs it. You want the best for them. They feel and appreciate this.

~You are aware of your partner’s feelings and subtly attuned to what they’re experiencing (almost as if you can read their mind, sometimes before they can!). You easily pick up on their subtle cues, which helps them feel understood and cared for. With good skills in place, this ability can also help de-escalate conflict quickly, keeping your relationship harmonious.

~You see the best in others, even the subtle beauty and goodness that others easily miss, and you believe in that part of them strongly. Because of this you can draw out your partner’s gifts and be a great source of confidence building and affirmation for them. They will feel very loved.

~Your love of meaning and beauty in all forms enriches your partner’s life. You point out and expose them to beauty and depth they may have missed otherwise (including their own inner beauty).

~You are loyal, great at listening, creative, and dynamic. You are complex. This makes you a fascinating and safe person to spend one’s life with.

~You experience love and joy intensely, as well as other positive emotions. You are full of life and share that with your partner.

~You are a loving, calming, grounding presence. You emanate this to your partner and it nourishes them.

~Though it can take a long time to make choices, you are so thorough and intuitive, when you finally do reach a decision it’s usually a good one that benefits both you and your partner.

~You reflect and work things out inside yourself at length. This can lead to great self-awareness, which can enhance your ability to grow and flourish in your relationship, especially as you learn to be honest and open with your partner.

~You like to process what’s going on in your relationship and get to the heart of the matter with your partner, which you do well because you are deeply insightful. This helps you both better understand yourselves and your relationship.

~You have a knack for seeing the big picture—all sides of the coin. This gives you strength and perseverance to work through things when relationship challenges arise.

~You thrive on depth and complexity. In a love relationship this means you will be dedicated and willing to work hard at creating truly meaningful connection, making it more likely to have a rich and healthy committed relationship!

See how amazing you are? I could go on and on…

You really are worth celebrating and loving deeply. Right now, pause for a moment and just take that in. Let it fill you with a sense of pride. Let it touch and start to wash away old pains of not being good enough.

It’s essential to believe in ourselves. We must do this so thoroughly that we can honestly look at and accept the less ideal parts of our trait, as well. From there we can muster the courage and commitment to address those more challenging aspects and work with them wisely.

Otherwise, we risk bringing out our worst side: someone who can be grumpy, judgmental, intolerant, demanding, anxiety riddled, resentful, picky, needy—someone our partner needs to walk on eggshells around, which is a death sentence for intimacy.

When we do honor and manage it well, we show up beautifully.

I interviewed my husband one day about what he loves about me. As you see, most of what he said has a big connection to my sensitivity:

“With you I feel so cared for, seen, and loved for who I am. I feel you really get me. You are so kind, loving, and caring; you sparkle with life. You are so compassionate. I’m in awe about how deep we can go in conversation and how in tune we can feel. Life is so meaningful with you, and being with you makes me not just want to grow into a better and better person, but to really do what it takes to actually do so.”

I feel so much love. The tenacity and effort it took to get here was more than worth it. I would do it over and over if I needed to. Because, as an HSP, being in such a flourishing, deeply loving relationship is so fulfilling.

About Hannah Brooks

Hannah Brooks is a Relationship Coach who helps caring, sensitive, deep-feeling women create the supportive, loving, and genuinely connected relationship they really want with their partner. For further tips and guidance check our her free toolkit, 3 Essential Steps to a More Loving Relationship, Even When You Feel Irritable, Resentful, or Disconnected. Find her at lifeisworthliving.com or join her free Facebook group.

Web | More Posts

Get in the conversation! Click here to leave a comment on the site.

The post Why Highly Sensitive People Make Amazing Life Partners appeared first on Tiny Buddha.

from Tiny Buddha https://tinybuddha.com/blog/why-highly-sensitive-people-make-amazing-life-partners/

0 notes

seafoam-mermaid · 7 years

Text

Does anyone want to give a bully on here a taste of her own medicine?

I was scared and hesitant to post this because a) I didn't want that horrid monster coming after me and b) I know no one is going to read it because it's so insanely long but I have decided I will. And honestly I just kind of want to delete my tumblr blog even though I’ve had it for more than seven years because I’m just so hurt :’( I’m too sensitive and unstable and borderline for this shit. Especially right now with so many things wrong in my life. My dog has cancer, there's no money for his treatment, I've been unemployed for way too long and have no money left (no money to help my dog, my to pay for anything even the most basic things, and to get help and treatment for all of my very severe and crippling mental disorders, there's barely even any money for food), I'm bitterly and unbearably lonely and depressed and have watched everyone abandon me and forget about me, and I just recently got abandoned by the same person again. Everything has been so unbearable for so long and I just didn't need all of this hate and drama on top of it all.

I can’t believe these are the kind of people tumblr is filled with. Hateful, petty, childish pieces of shit that act like high- schoolers and go out of their way to be hurtful and then cry and play the part of the victim when confronted. I hate that I basically now have to be in hiding and afraid of more harassment and bullying even though I changed my url, disabled comments, and closed my inbox. It (that bitch) could still find me. She's always going to know my url no matter how many times I change it. I’m so afraid. I shouldn’t have to be afraid on tumblr and on my own blog. All because of this piece of shit bitch that plastered my url on her blog, hell bent on slandering me and getting all of her gullible and lackey followers to come on to my blog and send me hate too. How fucking high school can you get. How fucking SHIT do you have to be??? Preaching ~love and kindness~ and then slandering me in a very public place and threatening to call the police on me because she claims that a) I told her to go kill herself ((which I did NOT. I don’t know who that was but it was NOT me. I did call her a bitch (only because she refused to even acknowledge my genuine apology which I DID NOT EVEN OWE HER BECAUSE I AM ALLOWED TO POST WHATEVER I WANT ON MY OWN BLOG, but was so rapt and attentive towards all the other ones from her followers putting me down) but I did NOT tell her to kill herself so right there, another flat out LIE)) and b) to have my IP address (which I feel is another invasion of privacy.) She should not have access to my address and it's bullshit and grossly invasive.

How fucking hypocritical can you get??? I’m too old for this childish high school bullshit. I’m too old and too tired. What a downright fucking cunt. But I am so wound up and agitated and upset right now and just want to GET IT OUT. Since clearly I am never going to get my justice. I have no idea how I'm going to sleep. I already stayed up so many other nights from the fear and anxiety that I would wake up to hate messages. I did absolutely nothing wrong. I say that with complete confidence, which is saying a lot because I’m never confident at all. I would gladly show anyone the goddamn fucking tags that she claims were so “offensive.” I am not afraid or guilty in the smallest amount. I don't even regret making the comment because there was LITERALLY NOTHING offensive about it. And even if this deluded bitch DID get offended, she could have quietly unfollowed me. I wouldn't have given a shit and that would have been the end of that. What made me so angry was that she went out of her way to send me a meanly worded message, ordering me to be nice, on my own fucking blog. As if I owed her that. As if I owed her anything.

And I actually DEGRADED myself by apologizing for something I shouldn’t even have had to apologize for in the first place. I was trying to be the bigger and more mature person, unlike her, and unlike how she was accusing me of the complete opposite. Just the very fact that she kept on posting all of the drama publicly proves her massive immaturity. All of this could have been handled PRIVATELY, as I had intended to do so to begin with. I only requested that she take down my url from her post as a) I did not and have not ever mentioned her url on my own blog and b) it was causing me great anxiety, distress, and fear of her followers coming after me (which a few actually did and I had to block them), but all she did was ignore me and kept on publicly posting my pleas (which clearly were very agitated - so much for the kindness she was so vehemently preaching) so she would keep on getting all of her praise and applause from her clearly retarded followers.

I just want justice. She gets to get away with this and will keep on receiving her praise for bullying and harassing me and I have to just be terrified because my blog is nowhere near as famous as hers and of course I have no one to defend me, as I have so few followers and kept the drama completely off my blog anyway. I’m so angry and hurt and upset. She deserves to be shut down but I know tumblr won’t do anything at all. I can’t stand feeling this powerless. I’m having a legitimate panic attack and I want to cry. I wish there was an option to deactivate instead. And to have the power to shut down someone’s blog. I’m just too scared and upset right now. All because I got upset over being told what to think and say on my own blog. Her message was NOT kindly as she claimed it was. It was rude and almost as if she was ordering me to remove the tags she thought were so offensive. Only it wasn’t even anything offensive at all. I didn’t hurt anyone at all. No one else got offended. If it bothered her so much she could have just quietly unfollowed me and it would have ended there, I wouldn't have cared at all, but she had to go out of her way and tell me what to do on my own blog in a very rude tone. Of course that made me angry, anyone would have gotten angry. Throw on top of that my cocktail of various mental illnesses and of course I got extremely angry. Yet even then. I still DID NOT call her out by name. Like she did to me. This piece of shit HYPOCRITE.

And even more pathetically, the fact that she SAW my angry post about how I didn't deserve her message or any of her bullshit. She had already unfollowed me. So for her to have seen it means that she was literally sitting at her computer, refreshing my blog obsessively, to see what or if I would say anything in response to her very rude and unsolicited message. HOW PATHETIC. And yet another invasion of privacy. She had already UNFOLLOWED me. Of course I wouldn't have made the post if she had still been following me. And furthermore, the point is I DIDN'T MENTION HER NAME OR URL EVEN ONCE IN THE ENTIRE GODDAMN POST. NOWHERE ON MY ENTIRE BLOG IS OR WAS THERE MENTION OF HER URL. So even though it made her upset, it's not like I was publicly calling her out and humiliating her. Nothing like what she did to me. No one knew who I was talking about. It could have been anyone. And no one saw the post anyway because I have such few followers to begin with.

What a sad and truly pathetic person. To sit at home all day and do nothing but tell people what to do while hiding behind the mask of anonymous, then crying and wailing and blubbering when she gets confronted about her rudeness and bullying, and turning to her pathetic and abusive followers to not only praise her for her actions but to get them to come after me too. How. Pathetic. I don’t ever get involved in stuff like this. I always go on tumblr and vent and scream and cry and rant because it’s the only place I can do so, and no one ever cares, and that’s that. I never set out to intentionally hurt anyone and if I do ever vent about someone in my life or that I knew I never mention names and they don’t follow me on here or anything. But now I feel afraid. This is all so shit and so unfair to me. I don’t want to have to close down my seven year old blog all because of what some truly awful bitch and cunt on tumblr did.

I just can’t believe that all of this is due to what someone that preaches softness, kindness, and love but is the complete opposite of all of that did. Nothing but a hypocritical, cruel, and pathetic bully. She never even apologized ONCE for all she caused. This is just TOO MUCH for me. I wish there was something I could do. To cause her as much harm and suffering and distress as she caused me. It’s what she fucking deserves :’(

#i wish someone could go into her inbox and give her what she deserves #i wish she could have been shut down #i wish she could suffer and receive hate and have to suffer as much as i have #personal

0 notes