Women's reusable heavy incontinence briefs
MindfulMensis: A guide to reusable menstrual products
2014.08.26 01:52 MindfulMensis: A guide to reusable menstrual products
This space is for women who use or are interested in reusable menstrual products. These include but are not limited to: cloth pads, menstrual/soft cups, reusable tampons, sponges, and (new) Thinx underwear. Whether you use RUMPs for fiscal, environmental, or comfort reasons you are welcome. This is a positive, safe community for the veteran and interested alike.
2023.06.03 03:36 GeorgeYDesign 'Like a heavy pressure': The silent condition leaving many women in pain
2023.06.03 03:21 chainsawx72 THEORY: Kote is missing a thumb and forefinger.
Kvothe is still powerful... but he's missing a thumb and forefinger, and Bast uses glamourie to hide it. Just a theory that I can't prove.
Kvothe swears on his 'good left hand' to Denna.
- (Promise me you won’t try to find out anything about him)......I swear it on my name and my power. I swear it by my good left hand.
Kvothe's greatest fear is having his hands crippled.
- I was terrified of burning my hands. Every talent I had revolved around them.
- I was standing in line, half stupid with the mental effort of not thinking of someone maiming my hands, when I noticed the Adem standing nearby were staring at me.
- but to me, with so much of my livelihood relying on my clever hands, the thought of a broken thumb was terrifying.
- Only his thumb and forefinger remained, enough to grip at things, but not enough for any delicate work. The half of his hand that remained was a mass of puckered scar. I kept my face even, but it was hard. In some ways I was looking at my worst fear. I felt very self-conscious of my uninjured hands and fought the urge to make a fist or hide them behind my back.
Other examples of the crippled hand theme, with focus on losing the thumb and its grip.
- His left hand was whole, but his right was viciously crippled, with only his thumb and forefinger remaining.
- Kvothe swears on his left hand, and other mentions of thumbs make me believe that Kvothe's finger loss will be the exact opposite of this Adem's hands (other hand, other fingers).
- I would have bet my thumbs they hadn’t been worn more than a half-dozen times.
- Tim made it nearly half a mile despite the loss of his hand...
- Had I known you would require proof I would have let Dedan bring you a sackful of thumbs.
- Then he made a gesture as if paring off his little finger and throwing it away.
- He thought for a brief moment, tapping his lips with a finger “And cut off his thumbs."
- If you catch him larking around again, I’ll let you cut off his thumbs.
- Lorren will cut off my thumbs if anything happens to it.
- I named all twenty-seven bones, alphabetically. Then the muscles from largest to smallest. I listed them quickly, matter-of-factly, pointing out their locations on my own upraised hand.
And bloody hand examples, not even counting the Amyr references:
- Then I thought of the blood and how it would feel on my hands.
- I stared numbly at my hands, bloody where slivers of wood had pierced the skin.
- I balled my bloody hands into stinging fists.Only then did I notice the blood on my hands was dry.
- Someone had even cleaned and wrapped the mild abrasions on my hands
- As I turned it over in my hands, one of its sharp edges cut my finger.
- The rain had mingled with the blood, and it was everywhere. My hands were dark with it.
- My hands and arms were covered with the sentry’s blood.
- I remembered the blood. The way it had felt against my hands.
- My hand stung and I saw a thin line of blood trailing down my thumb.
Kote as innkeeper seems to look at his hands a lot.
- He looked down at his hands, one curled inside the other, resting in his lap. After a moment, he lifted and spread them, as if warming them by the fire. They were graceful, with long, delicate fingers. He watched them intently, as if expecting them to do something on their own. Then he lowered them to his lap, one hand lightly cupping the other, and returned to watching the fire.
- Kvothe paused for a long moment, looking down at his hands. “Do you know how many times I’ve been beaten over the course of my life?”
- The innkeeper looked down at his hands on the table and seemed surprised that one of them was curled into a fist. He opened it slowly and spread both hands flat against the tabletop.
- “Because anything carrying the Cthaeh’s influence away from the tree . . .” Kvothe said, looking down at his hands.
Kote only begins to lose the fight against two soldiers after his grip fails. He then fails at break lion, which involves gripping and twisting.
In a smooth motion, Kvothe stepped forward and struck the man hard in the jaw. The soldier staggered and fell to one knee. The purse arced through the air and hit the floorboards with a solid metallic thud.
Before the soldier could do more than shake his head, Kvothe stepped forward and calmly kicked him in the shoulder. Not a sharp kick of the sort that breaks bones, but a hard kick that sent him sprawling backward. The man landed hard on the floor, rolling to a stop in a messy tangle of arms and legs.
The other soldier stepped past his friend, grinning wide under his beard. He was taller than Kvothe, and his fists were broad knots of scar and knuckle. “Right cully,” he said, dark satisfaction in his voice. “You’re gettin’ a kickin’ now.”
He snapped out a quick punch, but Kvothe stepped aside and kicked out sharply, hitting the soldier just above the knee. The bearded man grunted in surprise, stumbling slightly. Then Kvothe stepped close, caught the bearded man’s shoulder, gripped his wrist, and twisted his outstretched arm at an awkward angle.
The big man was forced to bend over, grimacing in pain. Then he jerked his arm roughly out of the innkeeper’s grip. Kvothe had half a moment to look startled before the soldier’s elbow caught him in the temple.
...
Blood running down the side of his face, Kvothe struggled to free his wrist. Dazed, he made a quick motion with both hands, then repeated it, trying to pull away. His eyes half-focused and dull with confusion, he looked down at his wrist and made the motion again, but his hands merely scrabbled uselessly at the soldier’s scarred fist.
Will Kvothe's lamp explode?
- Do you know how many sympathy lamps I have had explode in my hands over the years, E’lir Kvothe?
Or does Cinder's chill result in frostbite somehow?
- My hands grew cold, as I had no source of heat other than my own body.
- All the way the winter wind chilled the iron around my hands and feet until it burned and bit and froze my skin.
- For a moment my hands stopped aching from the cold,
- My hands were wet and cold.
- The sweat on my hands froze my fingers to the canister’s fastenings...
Or just a fire? ('black hands' and 'blackened body of god' are both likely based in Tehlinism)
- Trying to help right now would be like trying to put out a fire with my hands.
- “Black hands,” she said, scrubbing at her face. “I’ve got chaff in my eyes.”
- “Blackened hands, Cob,” Carter said, his voice thick with reproach.
- “Black hands, shut up!”
- “Black hands, Wil,”
- “Fifth bell?” I demanded. “God’s black hands!
- “Black hands,” I swore. “I should have thought of that.”
Is Kote seeking the Cthaeh's panacea flower to regain his music?
- You can help him dwell on the good things: his adventures, the women, the fighting, his travels, his music. . . .” Bast stopped abruptly. “Well . . . not the music.
An old post from smurphilicious casually mentioned Kote having a ruined hand, but they didn't get into the details of why they thought that... and I think I've seen others theorize this. I had also wondered if the often mentioned damaged hands were a 'clue', and digging into this issue really made me appreciate how important hands are in the KKC. I count 183 occurrences of the phrase 'my hands' in the KKC, not counting similar phrases like 'my hand' or 'his hands' or 'my right hand' etc. You really have to stop and think about how often Kvothe's hands are brought into focus in the story. They are described more meticulously than his face. Denna, his parents, Kilvin all discuss his hands specifically. Hands, like dreams and the moon and music, are a major theme in KKC.
This also likely plays into lefthand = clever and righthand = strong, and the Amyr being the 'strong right hand' of the church. Kvothe losing a piece of the hand he swears to Denna on, his left hand, would mean he loses 'cleverness'?
Well, it's late. What do you guys think?
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2023.06.03 01:42 MicaXYZ My personal conclusion on adoption (TW: unpopular opinion)
I'm a male adoptee in my twenties in an open adoption. After much therapy and deep thought I reached the following conclusion.
Please do not proceed with reading if you still wrestle with severe trauma related to adoption as my opinion might feel very offensive. Everybody else I'll invite for discussion. It is a very sensitive topic and I intend a civil debate if any at all. If my reasoning turns out to be too upsetting I want to ask moderators to please delete this post.
My conclusion is as follows: The most traumatized being in the triad is not the adoptee although this viewpoint is tempting. It actually is the birthmother. Denying this in my current understanding is just another dead end of patriarchy mindset which elevates the child over the mother. The woman who actually creates life is degraded to a vessel.
Women who have the ability of creating life possess a sacred gift. This doesn't imply they are a good person on a human level or in anyway better or worth more than others. But deep down on a strictly biological sphere it is a gift that enables humanity to exist. And in my opinion this ought to be respected. To carry a fetus through all the stages of evolution to term and give birth to a child is a great achievement and labour of a body.
Again, I'm not talking about the human level, there can be a certain 'ugliness' on the human level. Some women seem to get addicted to this gift or crave the 'status' and so on. I'm not interested in this stuff and I don't mean to bring moral or ethics into this.
Women should also not be reduced to fertility and they should be able to choose if they want to give life or not. It comes with a certain responsibility and there are women who do not want that or can not live up to that in the given situation. Birth control and abortion are sound tools to give women authority over their biology and they should be respected as such but of course in the case of abortion handled with care. Women should also be supported in their responsibility and helped in shouldering it if they allow it.
Birthmothers may neglect their gift and the responsibility that comes with it. So adoptees have every right to be angry at their birthmother and everything. Also, many adoptive parents do good and shoulder the responsibility the birthmother didn't assume or righten the pain she inflicted consciously or subconsciously on the child. Also I don't mean to disregard birthfathers and their role in it. I'm strictly talking about a very basic biological level - carrying a child 9 months to term and then leaving it.
I came to this conclusion because all my healing attempts of my trauma didn't work out until I reached that sobering understanding. It helped me to put the heavy feelings back to where they belong in my opinion. To my mother. And fortunately in my case she happily took them back. Yes, I still feel the abandonment and everything but it is not that severe anymore. I understood on a deep level that my creation and birth is not defined by her traumatizing situation.
Of course I was put in the situation to experience it with her without having any say in it. So I do feel victimized and there is a certain grudge I still hold. But it's taking me nowhere to take it out on her. In my situation I actually came to forgive her early on becuse she tried her best to shield me from her trauma. She genuinly intended to give me a good life despite her situation. I recognized that on a deep level and now I consciously grasped that although I formed amidst her traumatic situation immersed in her feelings being forced to share it, it isn't helpful if I direct my anger at her in that respect. I could have chosen to part with her for good and fully focus on my adoptive parents. But in my case I love her too much and my adoptive parents actually enhanced her trauma in certain ways which I cannot forgive.
It might very well only be something that is just valid for me and my situation. I just wanted to put it out there if maybe somebody else might find value in it. Thank you.
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2023.06.03 01:40 EntertainmentProper 8g mushroom psychosis, tried to strangle friends mom, destroyed room, and more
(The fact that I tried to strangle my friends mom wasn’t even the worst part of this story, but I figured it would grab your attention)
I was 18 when this incident took place, and I had done acid lots of times with no issues at this point. Including a 500ug dose during a car ride that turned out fine, so I thought I had psychs under control. Shrooms, however, I had only done twice, a 2g and a 3.5g trip. The 3.5 trip was pretty scary, I almost slipped into egodeath but I’m pretty sure I held onto reality enough for my ego to not fully dissolve. I assumed that it was scary because my set and setting wasn’t very good, so after that I wanted to experience a moderate dose of shrooms again, but this time in a good setting and hopefully have a great time.
I had a really good dealer, he was a kind person, and would often throw in free tabs with my orders and stuff like that. I told him I wanted 8g of mushrooms, and that me and my friend were going to take 4g each at his house that night. He sold me the shrooms, and I didn’t have a scale or anything I just trusted him, and I assumed that he gave me 8 grams. I had never seen 8 grams of shrooms before, it looked like a lot but I thought that 8 grams should look like a lot, but in retrospect I think he had sold me about 14 or 16 grams or even more. They weren’t very high quality from what I had seen before and he was probably just trying to get rid of them honestly. It was a bag of small caps and stems and it was about the size of an oz of we’d. They were pretty hard and chewy, not as fluffy and soft as the white giants I had in the past, but I powered through and ate as much as I could. My friend said he couldn’t eat anymore because he was sick of the taste, so I would say I ate about 60% of the bag. That puts my estimate at about 8-10 grams that I had consumed at my friends house that night.
A little more context before I get into the horrifying and scaring events that took place that night, my friends mother was home and she was absolutely not okay with anything more than weed or alcohol being consumed at her house. This led my friend, who we will call Jay, to feel a little paranoid about taking them in the first place, because he didn’t know if we were going to be loud or anything. Jay had only done shrooms one time, and it was with me when I took the 3.5, and he was also freaking out and trying not to let his ego dissolve. He also took acid with me at my house one time, probably a 100ug dose. In retrospect it was completely stupid and irresponsible for me to push him to take what I planned on being 4 grams of shrooms at his house while he was paranoid about his mom and inexperienced with psychedelics. Also, my parents are not accepting of any drug whatsoever, no alcohol no weed whatsoever. I had been caught drinking one time before this, and that was a major shock in the family which completely devastated everyone. Somehow this wasn’t enough to get me to stop seeking substances.
Anyways, we waited on his porch during the come up, and when I started feeling it it hit me like a brick wall. Everything started to look like the old 3D movies used to look if you weren’t wearing the red and blue glasses, if that makes any sense. This is hard to explain, but I started to have this deep feeling that I was entering a realm where I had been before but hadn’t been to in a long time, and it felt like it was the other half of my life that I had completely forgotten about. Again I can’t explain it that well but it was an extremely powerful feeling and I was overcome with emotions about how I had forgotten about this place and that I had spent my whole life without remembering it. After this we quietly went inside into his room, his mother was sleeping. I remember talking to him for a while about random trippy things for a few minutes, but after that things got very, very weird.
The following events happened to me like they were movie scenes, I remember one event then I do not remember what happens between that time and the next event. The next thing I remember after talking to Jay was him sitting across the room on the bed talking about how he wasn’t feeling very good, something about nausea and confusion and general anxiety. I was like “no man don’t worry, we’re actually in a dream right now. I think I’m actually dreaming right now” and he was pretty confused and didn’t know what I was talking about. I pulled out my phone and texted him, despite him being 10 feet away from me, trying to explain to him that I was having this crazy feeling like I was in a dream and that it was nuts. I guess for a few minutes I forgot he was there, because I was texting him like I was sharing my shroom experience from my house and I was trying to tell him about it.
The next thing I remember is opening Pokémon Go on my phone and there was a treecko, and when I tried to catch it I thought that it was my dad. I legitimately, without exaggeration, thought that this treecko on my screen was my actual true father, and I was just fascinated. I couldn’t believe this discovery and just spent a few minutes thinking about it. I then tapped on another Pokémon to try to catch it, and when I did it turned into a freaking ditto. Those of you that play Pokémon Go probably can imagine how fucking insane it was to catch a ditto high as shit on shrooms, I thought the damn world was about to collapse or something it was unbelievable.
After this, Jay decided to turn on some YouTube to try to relax and distract us both, because he could feel things going south. I guess he took it as a bad sign when I was telling him that a treecko was my dad. I had a thought like “I think they say you’re not supposed to watch tv on shrooms” but I thought nothing of it and figured it might be fun. The tv started talking to me, the characters in whatever the video was were talking to me about how we were all living in a simulation and that we have to figure out who is causing it. Once we found who was running the simulation, we would have to find them and tell them that we realized we were in a simulation and that the game could end, and at that point we would be released into the actual true reality and be free from this dimension. That sounded super cool to me, and I had a discovery that the person running the simulation was his mother. I thought that as soon as we went to her room she would be waiting on us to tell her we “figured it out” and at that point we would be released into true reality. So I told Jay, and he immediately told me that was a terrible idea and that it was all nonsense and that if we woke up his mom that we would be fucked and might even go to jail. I debated with him for a while, trying to explain to him what I was thinking and why it was legitimate, but he was having none of it and would not let me leave the room. Eventually I gave up the idea, which you would think was a good thing, but when you hear what happened instead you’ll realize it probably would have been better to go talk to his mom and get kicked out of his house.
The next thing I remember is Jay laying in bed, I think he said he wanted all of this to end and that he was going to try to sleep, so I was alone with my thoughts. I started to feel alone, so I crawled into his bed with him, which was very weird because I was never one of those people who is comfortable sharing a bed with another guy or anything like that. This is when the full blown psychosis started. I suddenly thought I was 10 years old, and that I was in my old bedroom laying in bed with my dad early in the morning. I really wanted breakfast, so I started poking Jay, who I thought was my dad, trying to get him to wake up and take me to Hardee’s. This didn’t work and he wouldn’t move. So I just continued to lay there and daydream and think about whatever was going through my head. I remember seeing a shape on the wall which was familiar but I had no clue where it was from, and I suspect this was something that I had seen very early in my childhood like when I was a baby or something that started to manifest itself on his walls. It was like a circle with three shapes in it that kinda reminded me of a face of some kind but looked nothing like a face. I can still imagine it to this day, but if I actually tried to draw it I would have no clue what to draw, it’s just some abstract thought.
I do not know what happened but I ended up in his floor, and the delusion that he was my father was over at this point. Now, I had completely forgotten he was there, I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing but I knew that somehow I had escaped whatever fake simulation I was in and that now I was in true reality where I could do whatever I wanted. I was pleased with this, my first thought was that I wanted a strawberry donut. Yes, apparently if I was given the power to do anything I wanted to without consequence the first thing I would do was manifest a strawberry donut. I figured that it would take time to learn how to fly and walk through walls and stuff, and that for now I would start simple. So I decided to piss my pants, since that was one thing I thought in my past life I wasn’t allowed to do, and since I could do whatever I wanted now I said freak it and pissed. It was warm and gross and I kinda regretted it for a second, but I quickly forgot that it had happened. I was distracted by some other fantasy which I cannot remember, but it had something to do with me doing something I couldn’t do before and I was amazed at it.
At this point I am fully in a delusional psychosis that I have escaped the simulation and there are no consequences to any action that I do. Kinda like I had a reset button and could just undo any action that was done or something. I didn’t think it was in a dream anymore, I literally thought my new reality was this world. And so, I did whatever I wanted to, with no thought or hesitation.
The next thing I remember is waking up to his room being completely destroyed, the lights on, Jay and his mother standing there looking at me in shock and horror, and me being pinned to the ground by a giant wardrobe, the type with doors on top and drawers under it. There was shit falling out of the doors onto me and I was covered in ashes from an incense tray. I didn’t remember how the wardrobe got on top of me, but weeks later my friend told me that it fell on me while I was climbing on it and eating the ashes out of the incense tray. The wardrobe was really heavy and I couldn’t get out from under it, but I was still fully in psychosis and asked Jay and his mom why they weren’t fucking helping me out when I obviously was stuck. I was yelling and screaming at them, “What the fuck are you doing? Don’t just stand there get this shit off me so we can go get a strawberry donut what the fuck are you doing?!” I couldn’t figure out why there was no reaction from them, if anything just disappointment and disbelief, and that started to really piss me off. Why weren’t they down to go get some strawberry donuts? Obviously it was time for fun and destroying shit and they’re just sitting there looking at me. This wardrobe is fucking heavy and crushing me and they’re just looking at me like deer in headlights. I remember there was a cord for something near my head and I just grabbed it and started chewing on it, like actually trying to eat it since I could do whatever I want. Jay’s mom came over to me and said to cut that shit out or to stop or something and I was like “fuck you, you’re pissing me off quit killing the vibe let me eat it” I was pissed off. She took it from me but I just kept grabbing it again. She was wearing flip flops and I think I took one of them off of her foot when she was trying to kick the cord away from me and I tried to eat the shoe and I think she hit me in the face with it, but that’s so blurry in my mind that I don’t know if it actually happened or not. I kept trying to eat anything I could get my hands on.
The next thing I remember is Jay on top of me, fully restraining me like a cop has to restrain a resisting criminal. He had my arms pinned town beside of me and he was sitting on my stomach area trying to keep me from moving. It fucking hurt a lot. I was like “Dude Jay what the fuck are you doing get off me I’m trying to have a good time and you’re actually hurting me”. I remember it really hurting my stomach because Jay was a bigger guy and I felt like my stomach was about to explode and kill me. I had a brief thought that I had been sent to hell for doing whatever I wanted to do, and that the rest of my eternity was going to be him sitting on top of me while I screamed in pain. I thought that it would never end, and I started going ape shit crazy screaming and yelling and crying begging him to get off me. Like I literally pictured this painful scenario lasting for another minute and couldn’t stand it, then realized this is what it will be like for the next hour, and the next 24 hours, and for the next 40 days and 40 years and I couldn’t bear the thought. I didn’t know how the wardrobe got off of me at the time, but again weeks later Jay told me that I somehow became a superhuman for a second and pushed the wardrobe off of myself and lunged straight at his mother’s neck trying to strangle her. I got pretty close to her apparently, and she had to jump back, but I don’t remember any of that, that’s just what he told me. At that point he had to take me down and restrain me, because he recognized that me trying to kill his mother was not a good thing and it had to stop immediately, believe it or not.
At this point his mother had called my mother and told her the situation, a phone call that I am sure my mother will remember for the rest of her life, because she could hear me screaming and cursing in the background of the call. She put her on speaker and mom tried to ask me what I was doing and I just told her to fuck off and come help me because these people weren’t letting me have strawberry donuts and get wild like I wanted to. That call didn’t last long, but she sent my dad to come and pick me up. Jay restrained me until my dad got there, and when he got there they told me to leave and that my father was there to pick me up. I was like okay fuck you guys I’m going to party with my dad, and I got in his car. He didn’t say a word to me and I was still fully in psychosis and did not realize what was happening. My pants were soaked so I just took them off, dad told me to stop and that I couldn’t take my pants off but I was like “no, they’re wet they have to come off” so I got completely naked in the passenger seat of the car.
Unfortunately, that moment was when the psychosis ended and I became fully aware of what had just happened. I think this moment will forever be the worst moment of my life unless I do something else stupid in the future. Every negative emotion you could possibly feel hit me right there, guilt, shame, anger, all of it hit me right in the chest and I swear I almost passed out. It was physically painful when I realized what I had just done. I probably lost my very best friend forever, his family hates me now, my family knows I do psychedelics, I am naked in my dads car, I have just fully ruined my life as I know it and I have no clue what went wrong in the trip that led to this point. I have no clue why I went into psychosis, but I sure did and I fucked my entire life up in the span of 4 hours. I cannot explain how terrible that moment was and I’ll remember it for the rest of my life. I was defeated. Being the real man of genius my father is, trying to I guess lighten the situation or something idk, he went through the damn Hardee’s drive through and ordered me some food. The lady at the drive through did in fact see me naked in the passenger seat, which I’m sure made her day. The rest of the car ride was just me being completely speechless and more or less paralyzed with fear and regret, and when we got home I ran inside straight to my room and locked the door. I refused to look at my mother, who wanted to talk to me obviously, I couldn’t face her at that moment. She didn’t even know what mushrooms were or that they were a drug, so trying to explain a full blown psychosis experience wasn’t going to happen. I texted Jay and I had no clue what to say, besides that I was sorry. There were no words I could say to him to even start to explain anything, I didn’t even know what I needed to explain so I just said that I couldn’t believe what just happened and that it was infinitely sorry. He didn’t reply. I slept for probably 6 hours and woke up actually feeling pretty normal, at which point I decided to go upstairs and talk to my parents.
I don’t remember much after that, but I know it sucked. I know it took Jay weeks to even speak to me like we had ever been friends, and months after that to repair our friendship. Yes, we did repair our friendship, and now 3 years later we simply don’t talk about it. I even see his mother occasionally out town and she’s very loving towards me and says hello. I don’t know how I got so lucky to have a friend like Jay and his family, because if it was nearly anyone else they probably would have called the police and had me thrown in jail instead of calling my parents. I’ll forever be thankful for them.
Be careful with your doses, people
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2023.06.03 01:31 iFoegot Is it “sanitary pad” or “sanctuary pad”? I did some search and the answer seems to be sanitary pad, but some other sources say both are correct.
2023.06.03 01:28 SevereContribution35 Game Matrix: Analysis of GDC 2017 "An Approach to Holistic Level Design"
| Source: An Approach to Holistic Level Design This article offers a comprehensive analysis of the source video. While it closely follows the video's content, it also includes my own interpretations and expansions on the concepts presented, providing a deeper exploration into the art of game design. The three key elements of the game and their connection 1. Introduction to Holistic Level Design Over the past decade, Lee has contributed to four games, starting with an open-world action driving game, and subsequently transitioning towards first-person games with a holistic approach to level design. 1.1 Holistic Level Design Holistic thinking, as defined in the dictionary, involves viewing every component of a design in relation to its impact on the whole, with the understanding that the whole can be significantly more impactful than its individual parts. This concept is beautifully encapsulated in a quote from the book '100 Things I Learned at Architecture School': 'beauty is due more to the harmonious relationship among the elements of a composition than to the elements themselves.' This principle is argued to hold true for level design. 1.2 Key Elements in Games The lecture identifies three key elements in games: presentation, gameplay, and story. These elements are considered the three main pillars of game design. Each of these elements is crucial in its own right and deserves individual discussions. However, the focus of this talk is specifically on how these elements work together. 1.3 Interrelationships Between Key Elements The talk the concepts of affordances and intentionality that emerge from the relationship between gameplay and presentation. The way things are presented and the story that emerges leads to the idea referred to as world building. The interaction between gameplay and story gives rise to the concept of interactive narrative. The aim is to highlight and summarize these concepts and provide insights on their application in level design. Affordances and Intentionality 2. Affordances and Intentionality The discourse commences with an elucidation of affordances, a term primarily associated with industrial design. A quintessential example of affordances in action is the design of door handles, where the form of the handle communicates its function. This principle is extrapolated to level design, arguing that the design of elements within the game environment should intuitively communicate their function to the player. 2.1 Affordances The most conspicuous affordances in first-person level design are visual 2.1.1 Affordances in Level Design In the milieu of immersive 3D games such as Dishonored, the most conspicuous affordances in first-person level design are visual, conveyed through elements like layout and lighting. These affordances present the player with navigation options in relation to their goals and obstacles. The design of the game environment, inclusive of specific interactive objects, affords particular gameplay opportunities. Consistency in these low-level game player forms is deemed crucial for clarity and player understanding. Arkane is strictly prohibited to use the same meshes for a non-interactive door as an interactive one 2.1.2 Visual Language in Level Design The talk underscores the importance of establishing a clear visual language in level design. For instance, at Arkane, it is strictly prohibited to use the same meshes for a non-interactive door as an interactive one. This is to ensure clarity for the players and avert confusion. The talk also discusses the use of world fiction to justify level design requirements. 2.1.3 Broad Affordances in Level Design Moving beyond low-level affordances, the talk discusses broader, higher-level affordances. These include communicating to the player the breadth of the possibility space and the extent of their agency. The talk uses the example of the Dust District mission in Dishonored 2 to illustrate how layout can reflect high-level affordances and present clear choices to the player. Intentionality is defined as making conscious choices with specific goals and expectations in mind 2.2 Intentionality The concept of intentionality in games was coined around 1997 by Doug Church. This concept has since been explored and expanded upon by various game designers and theorists. Intentionality is a critical aspect of gameplay as it directly influences the player's engagement and immersion in the game world. Intentionality is defined as making conscious choices with specific goals and expectations in mind. This involves the player actively making decisions based on their understanding of the game environment and mechanics, their objectives, and their desired outcomes. Examples of weak intentionality include being lost, doing something without knowing why, and twitch reacting to surprises. These situations often result from unclear or inconsistent affordances, lack of clear objectives, or sudden and unexpected game events. 2.2.1 The Importance of Player Intentionality Clear intentionality is at the heart of all the motor tuned gameplay. This type of gameplay emphasizes the player's active role in shaping their gaming experience through their decisions and actions. Gameplay mechanics and abilities revolve around giving the player unique and combinable powers. These powers provide the player with a range of options for interacting with the game environment and overcoming challenges. This, in turn, enhances the player's sense of agency and intentionality. Affordances present the player with information about the situation so they can understand their options and act with intentionality. This involves designing the game environment and mechanics in a way that clearly communicates the possible actions and outcomes to the player. 4 tips to enhance player intentionality 2.2.2 Facilitating Player Intentionality Players need choice, motivation, information from clear and consistent affordances, and time to process the information to act with intentionality. Providing players with a range of options, clear objectives, consistent and understandable affordances, and sufficient time to make decisions can significantly enhance their sense of intentionality. Ways to facilitate intentionality include clear and consistent affordances, presenting the player with higher-level and longer-term goals, and player-driven pacing and player-initiated action. These strategies aim to empower the player, giving them more control over their gaming experience and promoting a greater sense of engagement and immersion. The Gameplay Cycle 2.2.3 The Gameplay Cycle The gameplay cycle consists of observing, formulating a plan, executing the plan, and reacting. This cycle represents the continuous process of decision-making and action-taking that players go through during gameplay. Stealth gameplay emphasizes this loop, giving the player time to think, explore, analyze the situation, and formulate an intention before they reveal themselves. This type of gameplay promotes a high level of player intentionality by requiring careful planning and strategic decision-making. Examples of weak intentionality 2.2.4 The Effect of Intentionality on Linearity Perception Linearity feels bad when intentionality is lacking or weak. When players are forced to follow a predetermined path with little room for decision-making or exploration, they may feel less engaged and immersed in the game. Games like Half-Life 2 and Portal, despite being linear, feel less so due to strong intentionality. These games succeed in creating an engaging and immersive experience by aligning the player's goals and actions with the game's objectives and mechanics, thereby enhancing the player's sense of agency and intentionality. The more linear a game is, the more the level designer's job is to design situations that players will naturally want to do, making them feel that it was their idea all along. This involves creating a game environment and mechanics that align with the player's motivations and expectations, thereby promoting a greater sense of intentionality and engagement. World Building 3. World Building World building is a crucial aspect of game development, contributing significantly to the overall player experience. It involves creating a unique, cohesive, and meaningful environment that immerses players and enhances gameplay. This process is not just about designing landscapes and structures; it's about creating a living, breathing world that tells a story. 3 world building goals 3.1 Setting Goals for World Building The first step in world building is setting clear, specific goals. It's not enough to have a vague idea of the world you want to create. Instead, you need to be specific about the details and the ideas you're presenting. For instance, merely presenting a future with war and corporations might establish a genre, but it doesn't build a specific world. The more specific the ideas are to your game's world, the more unique and memorable the world becomes. However, specificity doesn't necessarily mean that everything has to be completely original. You can use well-known archetypes and add specific details to make them unique to your world. For instance, Harvey Smith, the creative director of Dishonored, used a well-known archetype, the crazy evil genius scientist, and added specific details to make the character unique and contribute to the world building. Black market and overseer outpost in Dishonored 3.2 The Use of Mission Weave Scenes Mission weave scenes are an effective tool for world building. These scenes, which are woven into the gameplay, help build the world and tell stories that are specific to the game's universe. For instance, in Dishonored, scenes inside a black market or an overseer outpost were used to convey information specific to the game's factions and district, thereby contributing to the world building. These scenes are not just for gameplay; they also serve to immerse the player in the world. They provide context and background, helping the player understand the world they're in and the characters they're interacting with. In Dishonored, even minor details were used to contribute to the world building 3.3 The Constant Need for World Building World building is not a one-time task; it's a continuous process. Every aspect of the game, from NPCs to objectives to loot, offers an opportunity for world building. As a game developer, you should always be looking for ways to add depth and detail to your world. For instance, in Dishonored, even minor details were used to contribute to the world building. A building that was initially just a facade was later opened up to provide more navigation options for the player. Instead of making it just another generic abandoned apartment, the developers added a note for the player to read, telling a story about someone who used to live there but got kicked out by the overseers. 3 world building tips 3.4 Deep Dive into World Building World building is not just about creating a physical environment; it's also about creating a society and a culture. It's about showing how the people in the world live, what they believe in, and how they interact with each other. For instance, in Bioshock, every part of its world supports the idea of how a society might crumble under relentless pursuit of progress. In Metro 2033, a child playing with a toy car symbolizes the future that the people are fighting for. In Dishonored, the world is about power relationships and corruption, and this is reflected in the world building. In conclusion, world building is a complex process that requires careful planning and continuous effort. It's about creating a world that is specific, continuous, and says things about the people in the world. With the right approach, you can create a game world that feels unique, cohesive, and meaningful. 4. Interactive Narrative Interactive narrative is a complex and expansive topic that arises from the intersection of interactivity and storytelling. While it's a vast subject that can't be fully covered in a brief period, it's essential to grasp its significance in the context of game design. The conventional wisdom of 'show, don't tell,' often borrowed from passive mediums like films and novels, isn't an adequate guiding principle for interactive narratives. These passive mediums don't need to consider the element of interactivity inherent in games. Thus, in the context of interactive narratives, we must go beyond merely showing and telling. The unique strength of interactive media is its interactivity. This interactivity can be leveraged to empower the player with narrative intentionality. This involves giving the player the information, time, and opportunity to make intentional choices with narrative goals in mind, not just gameplay goals. This approach is a potent way to engage the player in the story and make them feel a part of the game world. 4.1 Case Study: Narrative Intentionality in Dishonored In games like Dishonored, narrative intentionality is built into the game at a systems level. This means that the game's systems are designed to facilitate narrative intentionality. Every non-player character (NPC) in the game can be interacted with in various ways, and these interactions can alter the story and the world. This transforms what would otherwise be a simple gameplay choice into an opportunity to express narrative intentionality. Every time a player encounters an NPC, they are not just making a gameplay decision, but also a narrative one. This adds a layer of depth and complexity to the game, making it more engaging and immersive. 4.2 Case Study: Narrative Intentionality in Uncharted 2 Another method to create a sense of drama and emotional engagement in games is by aligning the player's emotions with those of the character in the game. This can be seen in Uncharted 2, where players are made to feel the same anxiety and tension as the protagonist during perilous situations. This is achieved by maintaining player control during these situations, rather than switching to a cutscene. This ensures that the player's emotional state aligns with that of the character, creating a more immersive and emotionally engaging experience. The 'pick up the can' tutorial in Half-Life 2 4.3 Case Study: Narrative Intentionality in Half-Life 2 and Heavy Rain The 'pick up the can' tutorial in Half-Life 2 is an excellent example of how games can evoke drama and story in the player's mind. In this tutorial, the player is presented with a choice that reflects the human condition of the game's characters. This choice is not just a gameplay decision, but also a narrative one, making the player relate to the game's characters on a deeper level. Heavy Rain is another game that effectively illustrates how even minor gameplay mechanics can be used to affirm or challenge a player's sense of morality and values. In one scene, the player is given the choice to play the role of a good father or a selfish one. This choice is not just about winning or losing a game sequence, but also about expressing the player's narrative intentionality. This scene resonates with the player because it reflects the fundamental nature of parenthood, where personal success is no longer the priority. 'Understanding Comics' 5. Conclusion The final segment of the talk delved into an intriguing comparison between the art of creating comics and the process of level design in video games. Lee drew upon insights from Scott McCloud's seminal work, 'Understanding Comics'. McCloud's central argument is that the allure of comics doesn't simply stem from the fusion of exceptional art and writing. Instead, it's the unique interplay between these elements that truly brings a comic to life. This concept finds a parallel in the realm of level design. The player's experience isn't solely defined by the individual elements of gameplay, graphics, and story. Rather, it's the synergistic relationship between these elements that shapes the gaming experience. Lee further posited that in the context of immersive games, these elements aren't merely supplementary features designed to enhance gameplay. They are, in fact, integral to the overall player experience. Lee urged level designers to embrace these insights as shared objectives. When collaborating with other disciplines, such as artists and writers, these shared objectives can serve as a guiding principle. The ultimate goal is to create games that are not only more engaging but also more interesting and captivating for the player. I will continue to delve into the fascinating world of game design in future articles. If you find this topic intriguing, please follow me for more insights. I also welcome your thoughts and suggestions on game design. Let's explore and learn together :) My discord server: discord.gg/cXTKubD7Zn submitted by SevereContribution35 to leveldesign [link] [comments] |
2023.06.03 01:23 Phallus_Maximus69E Hitman 2: Silent Assassin - Cementing Identity
Recommended. Hitman 2: Silent Assassin is the second game in the franchise and helped to establish many of the core aesthetics of the series. Addressing the biggest complaints about the first one, Silent Assassin is a solid and worthy sucessor. Controls are more solid and responsive, with better aiming, and wider options for the player to tackle the missions; and everything is bigger and better. The main new feature is the creation of the famous rating system, were the highest rank is Silent Assassin.
The briefing is now narrated by Diana, creating one of the most recognizable features in the Hitman series, which you can hear while watching the mission video (the first one, in St. Petersburg Stakeout, is glitched though, as it cannot transition to the second part of the video). Locations are more alive, more populated with NPCs and with more indirect approaches. The map is now more useful, showing real time positions of NPCs and critical elements like elevators and ICA caches. Albeit still mostly linear, Hitman 2: SA tries its best to give the player different options of approach and has more signature kills, with the most famous being the killing of Hayamoto Jr. with a badly prepared Fugu fish.
The story is a "back in the game" type, starting shortly after the first game with 47 peacefully tending the garden of a church in Sicily until being forced back into the killing business, in an epic adventure that will take our hero to exhotic locations such as a Japanese fortress and a rebel underground base in Afghanistan. Japan is by far the most epic in its visuals, soundtrack, design and plot; but also the most broken. The soundtrack by Jesper Kyd is amazing, superbly well syncronized with the atmospheres presented in the game. Characters will speak their native language, with Russians speaking Russian and Japanese yelling "Yame! Yame!" and shooting you for no reason.
Hitman 2: SA is noticeably much harder than all other games in the series, with trigger happy guards and inconsistent AI; plus longer missions containing more complex objectives. The gameplay is more slow-paced, with 47 now walking most of the time as running will attract suspicion; that you can manage through a suspicion metter that is somewhat useful but not much, especially because guards will now see through your disguise if you get too close, run or get caught doing something you shouldn't. But the AI is really underdeveloped and guards will spot you when they shouldn't and the frustration in this game is really present, worsening the trial and error basis of the gameplay. "A waiter running harmlessly far away in the distance? Not on my watch!"
Another bad decision is the painfully slow stealth mode. You cannot simply walk near people, they are going to hear you, so you need to go into stealth mode but it is soooooooooo slow as to be nerve wrecking. Enemies can simply turn back for no reason and now you are dead.
Nowhere in the game is this AI problem more evident than in the utterly broken Japan missions. Not only the trucks in Mission 7 - The Hidden Valley are glitched, stopping for no reason and forcing the player to keep restarting until the game gets it together, the bloody ninjas always come for you to check your ID; an irrational design decision, given the game's concept of hiding in plain sight. And this happens at any distance, with the guards either following you or shooting you outright. Basically, the game throws away its own rules in Japan, making The Hidden Valley, easily, the worst mission in the entire Hitman series.
Graphics are a great step-up from the original game, with far better character models; starting with 47's suit, the snow suit used in Japan, with a white heavy smock and thick combat boots. Agent 47 also dresses as an Afghan.
NPCs and guards are really varied, from Russian soldiers to Sikh guards and Afghan guerrillas. The Japanese Yoyimbos can be said to be the coolest guards ever designed. Lei Ling is really hot in her short kimono, and she looks the best as she has ever looked in the series - albeit the heavily-accented voice is a step-down from the earlier game.
There are little nods to the first game, either by mention in the story or by means of easter eggs.
If you are a stealth fan, very stubborn and determined, and want to check the Hitman series before it became casual, this game is for you. This game is cinematic, with advanced narrative and an engaging story, but the main product is the gameplay. Despite it's flaws, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin can be easily considered the best of the first three games.
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2023.06.03 01:20 Snoo-93317 How to Deal With Awkward "Friendship" Between Young Woman (19f) and Me (33m) That's Causing Emotional Turmoil?
I (33m) asked out one of my college classmates (19f) for coffee. (Yes, I'm a much older student working on my degree. More on the age difference below.) She said she was busy, and I accepted her answer in a friendly way and moved on.
At the start of the next semester, she sat next to me in class, and we continued having pleasant brief chats. I thought, maybe she is trying to express some slight interest in me. Then, after several weeks, she casually alludes to her boyfriend during one of our chats. Ok, I thought, obviously she isn't interested. I was delusional. I continue to act respectfully towards her, the semester come to an end, and I expect to never hear from her again.
Then, after weeks pass, I receive an email from her out of the blue saying how lonely she feels on campus, and how she finds it difficult to make friends. She even wrote that she was planning on giving me her phone number one the last day of class, but she had to miss it because of an appointment. I tell her that I'm sorry she's feeling lonely, and we start texting each other. At this point, this has me thinking, maybe something has changed with her boyfriend (maybe they broke up), and she does have some slight interest in me. But yesterday, after texting a while, she casually alludes to her boyfriend again. Apparently, everything is good between them.
I know that some are going to focus on the age difference in this situation. Let me be clear, I don't have any particular desire to date young women: I asked this young woman out because I found her kind and intelligent. In fact, she's the only woman I've ever asked out. In all my interactions with her, I've never once made any sexual or flirtatious remarks. I'm not that type of person. I don't talk to anyone like that.
What I find puzzling about this situation is, Why doesn't she find friends her own age? I find it odd that she would write to me (a much older guy whom she rejected) out of the blue in order to keep in touch with me, only to periodically bring up her boyfriend. What makes it all the more strange is that she is extremely beautiful (one of the most beautiful in our entire university), and yet she says she can't make friends and feels lonely and chooses me (of all people) to reach out to.This whole thing has been an emotional rollercoaster to me. In effect, I'm being pursued (out of the blue) as a friend by someone who rejected me romantically, and who has a boyfriend. But it's more psychologically difficult for me because:
- I have never been in a relationship of any kind, or had any romantic connection with any one.
- I'm a very awkward and shy person and have difficulty forming any relationships; and therefore...
- I have no friends at all.
Having someone for whom you have (or had) real romantic feelings tell you about their significant other is agonizing, and it's all the more agonizing when you've been alone your whole life and dreamed of having a relationship. Every time she casually alludes to her boyfriend and their dates, it makes me feel stupid, embarrassed and ashamed that I ever thought she might be interested in me.Sometimes I feel like blocking her number because the pain of keeping in contact with her is unbearable. On the other hand, I feel sorry for her that she (apparently) has so few friendships and is lonely, and that makes me reticent to cut things off.
I'd like advice on how to deal with this situation and the ambivalent emotions of anxiety and sadness that it's causing me. Should I explain to her how I feel? I worry that that would be burdening her unjustifiably. Should I simply stop talking to her altogether without explaining? Should I keep it going and just try to get over how depressed it makes me? To be clear, at no point have I ever indicated to her that any of this upsets me.
TL;DR! A younger classmate who rejected me romantically keeps seeking me out for friendship. It's upsetting to me because I keep misinterpreting her actions, and hearing her talk about her current relationship is agonizing.
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2023.06.03 01:15 0000gullible0000 My (22F) boyfriend (25M) feels more like a dependent then a partner. How do I break up with someone that will become homeless?
This is my first time on Reddit so I am nervous about how this is gonna go. I’ll start by just spilling the beans and telling you guys the story. I met my now boyfriend 4 years ago when we were both at rock bottom of our lives. He was, and still is, my best friend and we kept each other happy and going when we didn’t have much to our names. Our relationship was solid and we worked as a team to take care of both of our needs by paying bills and figuring out what we wanted to do with our lives. He moved in with me shortly after we established that our relationship was serious. I am happy to say life picked up about two years ago and it became much easier to survive. I made great progress on my education, which came with a nice upgrade to my pay. I am still progressing to continue my education until I finish my degree. While I had all of this going on my boyfriend jumped around from job to job and tried his best to keep making money. He landed on taxi driving as being his main gig because he said it made the most money. After experiencing some car problems he began having difficulty keeping up with paying for repairs and continuing to make an income. At one point I had offered to buy him a car and he refused saying it was too much and he didn’t need it. Fast forward to a year ago and he lost his car after non payments and looked into getting a rental. I had seen how many hours he was working and the effort he was putting in so when he asked if he could put some weekly rental car charges on my credit card I didn’t mind helping. This turned into months of payments totaling $6,000+ I have asked to be repaid more times then I can count but he never has the money. Out of fear of damaging my credit I went ahead and made all monthly payments in full. This required me to pull money from my saving account designated for school. I started getting resentful of him because I pay all our monthly bills make less money then he claims he makes ( 2,000 weekly compared to my 1,500 bi weekly) but somehow I am always the only one that has money. It feels like the more successful and imbedded I have become in my life the less and less he does. I have asked for effort and support in our relationship in other ways likes helping around the house but his effort fizzles out a couple days after the conversations. Aside from the financial problems I have an issue with him making promises left and right but never following through on things, I am not sure if this is because he doesn’t actually give a shit or because he makes an effort to fulfill these promises but falls short. An example of this was when I had a appointment to get my car looked at and he became upset with me that I was gonna pay another man to help with something he was more then capable of doing, I was great full because this would save me so much money but here we are 7 months later and my car hasn’t been touched. I stopped asking about the repairs after I felt like a nagging bitch and he just kept saying “ ya I’ll take care of it this weekend”. From the smallest to the biggest things I feel like I can’t take his word at face value because I know I will either end up waiting or just having to do it myself if something had a deadline. These problem created distance between us, I went head first on working, picking up extra shifts and making money because this was causing me anxiety. I grew up poor and will claw my way out before ever letting myself go hungry again, so watching him make inconsiderate financial decisions has been driving me crazy. I found out that he was on dating apps talking to other women because I had been so busy and focused on our bare minimum needs for living, I wasn’t giving him enough attention. I know I am partially to blame for that but I don’t know how to get over the anxiety I get every time his phone buzzes. Now I am at a point where I am burnt out giving 90% and only reviewing 10% back. Reading back what I just wrote feels stupid because if I was an outsider looking in I would just say “girl kick that bum out” but I am in it and it feels very real. He would be homeless and wouldn’t be able to provide for himself without me. I have never given birth so I don’t know how I got guilted into taking care of a man whose in his mid twenties. I am really just trying to understand how all the effort got shifted on me. Emotionally it feels like I have been living life under a weighted blanket, in that I just feel heavy all the time. When I am home alone I feel like I can breathe and noticed that I tense up when I hear him unlocking the door, I just don’t know how to act when all these issues are on my mind 24/7 and he just cares about what tv show I wanna watch that night. He didn’t have an easy childhood growing up and I can see him putting in effort to get himself out of poverty but it’s like watching someone trying to bike a mile on an exercise bike that isn’t going anywhere, no matter how hard he tries to peddle he doesn’t move. I feel like I would be abandoning him but at the same time I don’t want to be dragged down with him. I just wanted some outside perspective on what I should do because I have no one else to talk to, I question myself all the time if I should stick it out and wait for his potential to blossom or realize it won’t and just take care of myself. I have tried to introduce the conversation of breaking up and him leaving and moving out many times but I swallow my words every time I realize he would be screwed over.
How do I rid myself of someone that feels like a leach without completely destroying any grounding they have under their feet?
Thank you to the internet strangers who took the time to read about my mess of a life.
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2023.06.03 01:14 Pyroski The War of 1839, Part IV Pine & Liberty
| Battle of Massachusetts Bay With the U.S. Navy strategically positioned in Narragansett Bay, Commanding General Winfield Scott collaborated with Rear Admiral Charles Stewart to implement an effective blockade strategy. The plan entailed Stewart undertaking a blockade of the Massachusetts Bay to sever the supply lines to Boston and Quincy. Scott and Stewart, both high-ranking military officials, believed that this tactic would not only diminish the morale of the opposing troops through deprivation but also establish a passage for the deployment of troops and vessels via the bay, facilitating a two-front invasion. On February 9th, Rear Admiral Stewart initiated an attack, marking the beginning of a relentless naval bombardment. The assault commenced with the arrival of a formidable U.S. Navy fleet led by Commodore Matthew C. Perry. This fleet consisted of several warships, including steam-powered vessels armed with heavy cannons, and had the objective to displace the existing Yankee presence patrolling the bay and establish their own presence in their place. The naval bombardment unleashed a relentless barrage of cannon fire and explosive shells upon the opposing ships and fortifications in the bay. The American warships strategically positioned themselves, utilizing their superior firepower and extended range to wreak havoc on the enemy's defenses. Under the command of Rear Admiral John C. Percival, the Yankee forces fiercely attempted to resist the onslaught, returning fire from their ship's cannons stationed along the coast. However, the overwhelming firepower and precision of the American navy proved to be a decisive advantage. The intense naval bombardment took a toll on the ships engaged in battle. After four days of relentless fighting, on February 13th, Rear Admiral Percival ordered a retreat as U.S. ships swiftly filled the void, effectively establishing a blockade of the Massachusetts Bay. The withdrawal was necessitated by the overwhelming presence and continued firepower of the American Navy, ensuring their control over the strategic waterway. Battle of Cambridge strategy and focused on capturing Cambridge as a means to take control of Boston, Massachusetts. Cambridge's strategic importance stemmed from its proximity to Boston and its position on the opposite side of the Charles River, making it a crucial gateway to the city. Gaining control of Cambridge would provide an invading force with a foothold on the eastern side of the river, potentially facilitating easier access to Boston itself. On Monday, February 20th, Winfield Scott began mobilizing troops along the borders of neighboring settlements, including Quincy, Watertown, and Allston. However, it wasn't until the 28th that Scott issued the order for troops to initiate an assault, once he had assembled a substantial force of 4,000 soldiers along the border. Meanwhile, armed with intelligence regarding the movements of the U.S. troops, Churchill anticipated an attack on either Cambridge or Boston and took defensive measures, including fortifications and deploying troops in both cities. On the 27th, Scott held consultations with John E. Wool and Thomas J. Worth, informing them of his intended timing for launching the offensive. He designated Wool to lead an attack from Quincy and Worth to lead from Watertown. Wool would assume the role of commanding general for the battle, while Scott and Rear Admiral Charles Stewart focused on developing the strategy for the subsequent phase of the plan—the capture of Boston. On the 28th, Major General Wool initiated his division's march towards Cambridge in an attempt to avoid detection by Sylvester Churchill's troops, whom he believed were deployed in the settlements between Quincy and Cambridge. To minimize the risk of exposure, Wool decided to commence the march early in the morning, navigating through rural and wooded areas to evade Yankee troops. Following the same tactics, Worth also set out towards Cambridge later as instructed. In the late morning, Worth launched the assault by mobilizing artillery to weaken the defenses. However, the Yankee forces were already prepared and swiftly retaliated with a relentless barrage of fire upon the advancing troops. This intense exchange of fire between Worth's army and the defending Yankee soldiers persisted for nearly an hour. Meanwhile, Wool's army continued its stealthy march through the woodlands and rural areas. Upon hearing the sound of gunfire in the distance, Wool deduced that the battle had begun prematurely and hastily directed the rest of his troops towards the source of the noise. Arriving nearly an hour into the battle, Wool's troops witnessed a fierce encounter between both sides, resulting in a stalemate. Nevertheless, Wool ordered his soldiers to target the Yankee soldiers with their rifles, creating space for Worth's men to fire artillery. As the relentless barrage of artillery took its toll on the city's defenses, Childs, the commanding officer, ordered troops to reposition themselves further away from the crumbling defenses in anticipation of their eventual collapse. The troops followed the orders accordingly. Finally, around 3:00 P.M., the defenses started to give way, prompting Wool to command his troops to rush into Cambridge. However, they were met with a defensive line of Yankee soldiers who unleashed a volley of fire as soon as the U.S. soldiers entered the city. Simultaneously, Childs instructed soldiers to inform Churchill that both major generals had attacked Cambridge and to relocate troops from Boston to reinforce the defense of Cambridge. Meanwhile, U.S. troops under the command of Major General Wool employed flanking maneuvers on both sides of the defensive line. Despite encountering difficulties in breaching the line, the U.S. troops persisted. After holding together for nearly two hours, the defensive line eventually collapsed under the pressure of the flanking maneuvers, leading to a breakthrough for the U.S. forces. Illustration depicting the Battle of Cambridge, a fierce encounter between American and Yankee troops. The artwork portrays American and Yankee soldiers engaged in a fierce firefight. With the significant breakthrough, U.S. forces swiftly advanced into Cambridge, pushing Yankee troops deeper into the settlement. Meanwhile, Childs made efforts to reorganize and create a diversion to buy enough time for Churchill's larger army to arrive. Eventually, as evening fell, Churchill appeared on the scene with the majority of his troops from Boston, adding 2,000 soldiers to their forces. This sudden increase in numbers enabled the Yankee forces to reclaim much of the territory in Cambridge that had been captured by the U.S. Army. Despite their success, the U.S. army's superior size and technological advancements prevented them from being entirely driven out of Cambridge. As dusk approached, the battle persisted through the night, resulting in significant casualties on both sides. However, with a larger army, the U.S. forces fared better than the Yankees in enduring the losses, allowing them to gradually advance into Cambridge and reclaim lost territory. Throughout the night and into the morning, the conflict continued, with the darkness posing challenges for troops to coordinate tactical maneuvers. Consequently, engaging in intense hand-to-hand combat, the U.S. forces successfully pushed the opposition off the streets and deeper into Cambridge. As the sun rose on the horizon, Sylvester Churchill made a bold move in an attempt to shift the course of the battle and thwart the advancing Americans from seizing what the commanding general deemed the final bastion of defense before they could effectively reach Boston. Determined to alter the tide of the conflict, Churchill issued orders for his troops to divide into smaller units, engaging in street fighting and employing guerrilla tactics. Churchill hoped that these strategic maneuvers would tip the scales of the battle in their favor. Despite Churchill's optimism, Yankee tactics proved ineffective in impeding the U.S. invasion. Under the command of Wool, American troops strategically focused on maintaining a strong and unified front and countering the units employed by Churchill. The ambush and guerrilla tactics employed by the Yankees failed to overcome the superior size and strength of Wool's forces, leading to their defeat. Eventually, in the evening, as the city neared complete capture by American forces, Churchill consulted with his top military officials, including Major Generals Thomas Childs, Joseph Gilbert Totten, and Gideon Johnson Pillow, to negotiate a treaty with Wool. This treaty became the most notable agreement signed on the Atlantic Coast since the Second Siege of New Haven, which had occurred nearly a year prior. During the negotiations, it was agreed that both armies would remain in a total armistice until a deal was reached. After intense discussions, the following terms were included in the final agreement: - Both armies agreed to refrain from engaging in any hostilities against each other in the region for a minimum of six weeks.
- Prisoners of war from New England, captured during both the war and the previous Massachusetts campaign, were to be released and allowed to return to their homes. Wool advocated for similar conditions for American prisoners of war, but due to the presence of additional Yankee reinforcements in Boston and the Massachusetts militia, he ultimately withdrew his request, as he was concerned that these reinforcements could shift the balance of power in the Battle of Cambridge, should battle reignite.
- The American army were to occupy the City of Cambridge and its buildings, as the Yankee army would withdraw.
- That New England troops were allowed to withdraw from the city with their personal arms and equipment, including artillery and ammunition
- Residents of Cambridge were permitted to remain in their homes and continue their daily activities without interruption.
The Boston Address With the United Kingdom's agreement to join the war on February 6th, 1843, Samuel Cabot Jr. eagerly anticipated returning to New England to deliver the news. However, due to harsh weather conditions and ships already departing with letters and newspapers to inform Americans of this revelation, Cabot and his diplomats decided to postpone their voyage by a week, hoping for an improvement in the weather. Eventually, on February 13th, the diplomats set sail once again across the treacherous Atlantic Ocean, with Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer resuming command of their ship, the "Columbia." On Tuesday, March 21st, 1843, after several weeks at sea, the diplomats arrived at Massachusetts Bay, their intended docking destination since their departure. However, they were surprised to find foreign American ships occupying the bay, completely unaware of the ongoing armistice. Acting swiftly, the diplomats instructed Captain Palmer to redirect the vessels towards New Bedford, a port controlled by the Yankee navy. Previous attempts by U.S. forces, led by Admiral Mathew C. Perry to capture Buzzard's Bay had been unsuccessful. As a result, Rear Admiral Charles Stewart made the decision to modify the plan and forgo a coastal blockade of the region, as it was no longer deemed crucial. Thus, the diplomats successfully made an unplanned landing and found a secure harbor for their ship. Upon receiving news of their impending arrival, which quickly spread throughout New England, the diplomats would be swiftly escorted to Daniel Webster's presidential office at the Hartford Estate in Boston, Massachusetts. Traveling via a stagecoach, they would soon reach their destination. As they arrived, they would be promptly ushered into Webster's office. Despite being aware of Britain's entry into the war, Webster anxiously awaited the arrival of his diplomats, as they had not arrived at the expected time. The diplomats arrived to find Daniel Webster in an unexpectedly cheerful state, a stark contrast to his demeanor throughout his presidency. Webster had been burdened by a series of defeats in the War of 1839, Dorr's revolt, and the overall frustrations associated with his role as president. These hardships led Webster to seek solace in alcohol, resulting in alcoholism that became his coping mechanism for the grief caused by his presidential responsibilities. Furthermore, the weight of his challenges contributed to his depression, transforming him into a recluse who rarely ventured out of his office and spent a significant portion of his presidency consumed by excessive drinking. Nevertheless, upon hearing the news of Britain's involvement in the war, Webster's spirits were lifted, restoring a sense of optimism within him that had not been seen since his presidential campaign. He eagerly, yet somewhat intoxicated, welcomed the diplomats into his office to engage in discussions regarding the Downing Street Conference, the negotiations, and the developments involving George Hamilton-Gordon, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Prime Minister Robert Peel. Samuel Cabot Jr. relayed to Daniel Webster the concessions made on behalf of New England, which included a promise not to reinstate the Fugitive Acts, along with providing the intricate details of the conference(s). On March 23rd, 1843 at the Federal States Hotel, in the midst of a challenging period for his administration, Daniel Webster, in an effort to regain public trust and address the critical newspapers that had emerged throughout his term, delivered one of the rare public speeches of the War of 1839. Throughout his term, newspapers critical of the Webster administration had become prevalent across New England. However, due to the Sedition Acts, these newspapers were eventually shut down. Moreover, the Federalists suffered significant electoral defeats during Webster's tenure, aware of the need to restore faith among citizens regarding the war and his administration, Webster took the opportunity to speak directly to the public, using his speech as a means to provide reassurance and address the challenges his administration faced. Snippet of Webster's two-and-a-half-hour, "The Boston Address" speech: [1] "Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you today, filled with the spirit of liberty and the burning desire to protect our great New England from the encroachments of tyranny and oppression. We find ourselves embroiled in a conflict of great magnitude, a war that will determine the very course of our destiny. Let it be known that this is no ordinary war, for it is a war fought not only with steel and powder, but with the indomitable will and unwavering determination of Yankee troops. [2] My fellow countrymen, we gather here in the shadow of history, surrounded by the echoes of our forefathers who fought valiantly for the principles of freedom and justice. Today, we find ourselves faced with a foe whose arrogance knows no bounds, a foe that seeks to trample upon our liberties and extinguish the flame of independence that burns within every New Englander's heart. The United States of America, once our brethren, has once again forsaken the ideals of our Founding Fathers and has chosen to walk the path of oppression. [9] Yet, let it not be forgotten that our cause is just and our resolve unyielding. Weeks ago, on the fateful day of February 6th, the United Kingdom, recognizing the righteousness of our struggle, joined our noble cause. The world now watches as the might of the British Empire stands united with us, against the very nation from which we once sought solace and support. This alliance is a testament to the righteousness of our cause, for it is not merely a battle of arms, but a battle of principles and ideals. [15] This war is not just a struggle for independence; it is a fight against the abhorrent institution of slavery. The Fugitive Acts that have been passed by the United States have violated the very fabric of our moral conscience. They seek to rob men and women of their natural rights, to tear families apart, and to perpetuate an evil that stains the pages of our history. We, as New Englanders, must rise up against this injustice and prove to the world that we will not stand idly by while our fellow human beings suffer under the yoke of bondage. [17] It is a fight to prove that New England is truly independent from America. We have defeated the United States once, and we can do it again. The blood that flows through our veins is the blood of patriots, of those who dared to challenge the status quo and forge a new path. We stand upon the shoulders of giants, and it is our duty to honor their sacrifice by preserving the principles they held dear. As we march forward, let us remember the sacrifices of those who came before us, and let their legacy guide us through the darkest of times. [18] This war is not just about reclaiming our independence; it is a battle for the soul of our nation. It is a struggle to define the values and principles upon which our society is built. We fight for liberty, equality, and justice. We fight to ensure that the principles of our Founding Fathers are not trampled upon and forgotten. We fight to create a society where every person, regardless of their race or background, is treated with dignity and respect. [21] This is a fight against the remnants of oppression and injustice. The Fugitive Acts, once passed by both the United States and New England, were a stain on our collective conscience. They sought to deny individuals their natural rights, tear families apart, and perpetuate the abhorrent institution of slavery. Recognizing the moral imperative to rectify this injustice, New England took a bold step forward and repealed these acts, paving the way for a more equitable society. [22] Let us not forget the lessons of our past, for they shape the path we tread today. The New England Revolutionary War, fought with valor and determination, paved the way for our quest for independence. Our ancestors stood united against oppression, and their courage echoes in our hearts. And let us also remember the Hartford Convention, a pivotal moment in our history. It was there that our regional identity was forged, as we asserted our rights and voiced our grievances against unjust policies. From the fires of adversity, we emerged stronger, more resolute in our determination to protect our liberties and safeguard the interests of New England. [26] Like their forefathers, in the face of adversity, our Yankee troops have shown a courage and determination that is unparalleled. They have weathered the storm of American aggression and stood firm in their conviction. They fight not only for the land upon which they tread but for the principles that make New England unique and distinct. They fight for the freedom of every man, woman, and child who calls this great region home. [29] This war is not just a struggle for soveriegnity; it is a fight against the abhorrent institution of slavery. The Fugitive Acts that have been passed by the United States have violated the very fabric of our moral conscience. They seek to rob men of their natural rights, to tear families apart, and to perpetuate an evil that stains the pages of our history. We, as New Englanders, must rise up against this injustice and prove to the world that we will not stand idly by while our fellow human beings suffer under the yoke of bondage. [31] As we engage in this epic struggle, let us not forget the sacrifices that have been made. Our brave soldiers have left their homes and families behind to fight for a cause they hold dear. They have endured the harsh realities of war, facing danger and uncertainty at every turn. We must honor their sacrifices by supporting them in every way possible, by standing behind them and providing them with the resources and care they need. [34] This war is also a test of our unity and resilience as a people. We must put aside our differences and come together as one. We must recognize that the fight for freedom and justice knows no boundaries. It transcends political affiliations and personal interests. We must stand together, shoulder to shoulder, and show the world the strength and determination of the New England spirit. [37] In this war, we are not alone. The international community watches as our struggle unfolds. The United Kingdom has joined our cause, recognizing the importance of our fight. We stand together, united in our commitment to freedom and justice. Our alliance sends a powerful message to the world that New England will not be silenced, that we will fight for what is right and just. [41] We must also remember that the fight against slavery is central to this war. Slavery is a stain on the conscience of our nation. It is a practice that dehumanizes and oppresses our fellow human beings. We cannot and will not tolerate such an abomination. By fighting against slavery, we not only strike at the heart of injustice but also reaffirm our commitment to the principles of equality and freedom. [43] As we engage in this great struggle, let us draw inspiration from the heroes of our past. Let us remember the battles fought by our forefathers, the sacrifices they made, and the triumphs they achieved. Their legacy lives on in us, and it is our duty to carry their torch forward. [46] This war is not just about defeating the United States; it is about shaping the future of our region and our nation. It is about establishing New England as a beacon of liberty and progress. We have already demonstrated our ability to stand against the might of a powerful nation, and we can do it again. We have the strength, the courage, and the conviction to overcome any obstacle that stands in our way. [49] In conclusion, my fellow New Englanders, let us remember why we fight. Let us remember the principles that have guided us throughout our history. We fight for independence, for freedom, for justice, and for the eradication of slavery. We fight to prove that New England is truly independent from America, and we fight to demonstrate our unwavering commitment to the principles of liberty and equality. [51] As we march forward, let us do so with the knowledge that we are not alone. We are supported by the might of the British Empire, by the solidarity of our fellow New Englanders, and by the principles of justice and righteousness that guide our cause. Together, we will prevail. Together, we will overcome every challenge and obstacle that comes our way. [53] May the spirit of our forefathers guide us, and may the determination of our Yankee troops inspire us. Let us write the next chapter of our history with courage, resilience, and unwavering conviction. The future of New England is in our hands, and we will forge it with honor and integrity. God bless New England, and God bless the cause for which we fight!" President Daniel Webster addresses the citizens of Boston at the Federal States Hotel (United States Hotel) in an illustration capturing his lengthy two-and-a-half-hour \"The Boston Address\" speech. Standing atop a platform, Webster delivers his passionate speech, while the crowd erupts in cheers, energized by his fiery words. Meanwhile, within the hotel, the wives of soldiers protest the war's extension by throwing trash at Webster. submitted by Pyroski to Presidentialpoll [link] [comments] |
2023.06.03 01:10 tooka- comforting your dying friend
so, hey. this is a more rambling-esque post, and i’m still very emotional. I’ll give you a quick rundown on what’s happening.
I have a buddy who I see in the pub/gathering of friends often. He’s a great laugh, and a source of wisdom and he taught me a lot about getting women.
Today, we were having some drinks, and some friends of him came up to us, and told us that this friend, let’s call him B has cancer. Throat cancer, from heavy smoking.
I’m obviously very stunned. Okay sure, how long has he known?
Since december.
I begin to panic. I’ve dealt with cancer before, and I sure as shit know that 6 months is good enough time for that to spread.
I pull my other friends, who I’m closer with, aside, asking them what the fuck we should do.
They tell me I should talk to him.
I guess they’re right, I’ve also dealt with cancer before, I could be good help.
Coincidentally, we both take the last bus to around the same direction, so we have abit of time to talk honestly.
At the bus station I was blunt. I told him that it’s not a joke. This won’t go away.
The waterfall from his eyes errupted immediately.
he doesn’t want to live.
His relationship which went a few years ended for a second time. He loved her. He only thought of her.
Every single second, he suffered, knowing that he didn’t know if the girl he truly loved was ever safe.
He couldn’t wake up with her by his side. He couldn’t read her texts or listen to her voice.
He can’t see beyond her. Ever.
At this point, I was crying in a way which i never have.
I told him:
Do you have someone who you love getting messages from that isn’t her?
Someone who makes your day?
Someone you aren’t having sex with, but you can depend your life on them?
At this point, his shirt is soaking from the tesrs.
“Yeah, of course”
Or perhaps, someone who takes the same bus as you from the pub and accepts and loves you for what you are?(me)
“I guess so yeah”
your family (which he had a rock relationship with) found out they cried. (its true)
I lean in, and ask him for one thing.
Go in to the hospital tomorrow. For the great friend’s sake. For me and our group’s sake. For mom and dad’s sake.
Please. Don’t let us go to your funeral saying: “fuck he was so young”.
He cried and we hugged as he got off at his stop.
I’ve been crying since.
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2023.06.03 01:09 shewfbyy Period/birth control help!
25F, ~230lbs, 5’6, also on Lamotrigine, Prozac and Ozempic
I’ve been trying out Seasonique since the beginning of the year but unfortunately, I keep experiencing heavy breakthrough bleeding.
I have a trip planned from July 23rd-30th that I wanted to avoid having my period for because I have really heavy and painful periods.
I’m currently on Week 7 of my second pack of Seasonique and I am bleeding again. Should I try and book an appointment with my doctor and get on a new (probably a normal 28 day) birth control by next Sunday(?) or is that a bad idea with my trip coming up? I guess my thinking is that I’d be able to change my placebo pill week/period week away from my trip if I start a new birth control next Sunday.
My “scheduled” period on Seasonique is a week before my trip so I don’t think I’d have any bleeding on my trip but if the same thing happens as the first pack, I will be bleeding now until then. :/
I am waiting for a gyno referral so unfortunately, I don’t really have anyone to discuss this with and my doctor is not specialized in women’s health hahaha. Does anyone have any experiences with seasonique or a stubborn flow on birth control?
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2023.06.03 00:56 Snoo-93317 How Do I Deal with Awkward Friendship That's Causing Me Emotional Turmoil.
I (33m) asked out one of my college classmates (19f) for coffee. (Yes, I'm a much older student working on my degree. More on the age difference below.) She said she was busy, and I accepted her answer in a friendly way and moved on.
At the start of the next semester, she sat next to me in class, and we continued having pleasant brief chats. I thought, maybe she is trying to express some slight interest in me. Then, after several weeks, she casually alludes to her boyfriend during one of our chats. Ok, I thought, obviously she isn't interested. I was delusional. I continue to act respectfully towards her, the semester come to an end, and I expect to never hear from her again.
Then, after weeks pass, I receive an email from her out of the blue saying how lonely she feels on campus, and how she finds it difficult to make friends. She even wrote that she was planning on giving me her phone number one the last day of class, but she had to miss it because of an appointment. I tell her that I'm sorry she's feeling lonely, and we start texting each other. At this point, this has me thinking, maybe something has changed with her boyfriend (maybe they broke up), and she does have some slight interest in me. But yesterday, after texting a while, she casually alludes to her boyfriend again. Apparently, everything is good between them.
I know that some are going to focus on the age difference in this situation. Let me be clear, I don't have any particular desire to date young women: I asked this young woman out because I found her kind and intelligent. In fact, she's the only woman I've ever asked out. In all my interactions with her, I've never once made any sexual or flirtatious remarks. I'm not that type of person. I don't talk to anyone like that.
What I find puzzling about this situation is, Why doesn't she find friends her own age? I find it odd that she would write to me (a much older guy whom she rejected) out of the blue in order to keep in touch with me, only to periodically bring up her boyfriend. What makes it all the more strange is that she is extremely beautiful (one of the most beautiful in our entire university), and yet she says she can't make friends and feels lonely and chooses me (of all people) to reach out to. This whole thing has been an emotional rollercoaster to me. In effect, I'm being pursued (out of the blue) as a friend by someone who rejected me romantically, and who has a boyfriend. But it's more psychologically difficult for me because: 1. I have never been in a relationship of any kind, or had any romantic connection with any one. 2. I'm a very awkward and shy person and have difficulty forming any relationships. Therefore... 3. I have no friends at all. Having someone for whom you have (or had) real romantic feelings tell you about their significant other is agonizing, and it's all the more agonizing when you've been alone your whole life and dreamed of having a relationship. Every time she casually alludes to her boyfriend and their dates, it makes me feel stupid, embarrassed and ashamed that I ever thought she might be interested in me.
Sometimes I feel like blocking her number because the pain of keeping in contact with her is unbearable. On the other hand, I feel sorry for her that she (apparently) has so few friendships and is lonely, and that makes me reticent to cut things off. I'd like advice on how to deal with this situation and the ambivalent emotions of anxiety and sadness that it's causing me. Should I explain to her how I feel? I worry that that would be burdening her unjustifiably. Should I simply stop talking to her altogether without explaining? Should I keep it going and just try to get over how depressed it makes me? To be clear, at no point have I ever indicated to her that any of this upsets me.
TL;DR! A classmate who rejected me romantically keeps seeking me out for friendship. It's upsetting to me because I keep misinterpreting her actions, and hearing her talk about her current relationship is agonizing.
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2023.06.03 00:51 shewfbyy I need some advice :(
I’ve been trying out Seasonique since the beginning of the year but unfortunately, I keep experiencing heavy breakthrough bleeding.
I have a trip planned from July 23rd-30th that I wanted to avoid having my period for because I have really heavy and painful periods.
I’m currently on Week 7 of my second pack of Seasonique and I am bleeding again. Should I try and book an appointment with my doctor and get on a new (probably a normal 28 day) birth control by next Sunday(?) or is that a bad idea with my trip coming up? My thoughts are that I would change my period week away from my trip week since I would be starting the hormone pills next Sunday.
My “scheduled” period on Seasonique is a week before my trip so I don’t think I’d have any bleeding on my trip but if the same thing happens as the first pack, I will be bleeding now until then. :/
I am waiting for a gyno referral so unfortunately, I don’t really have anyone to discuss this with and my doctor is not specialized in women’s health hahaha. Does anyone have any experiences with seasonique or a stubborn flow on birth control?
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2023.06.03 00:50 VelikofVonk Written Fiction Book & Author Recommendations for Aphants
If you have aphantasia, please reply with books or authors you have read (not listened to) and enjoyed.
Here are some of mine, with brief descriptions cribbed from Wikipedia or Goodreads. These are mostly books & authors that I've read recently.
- Jorge Luis Borges: His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and El Aleph) (The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring themes of dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology.
- Haruki Murakami: Most of Haruki Murakami's works use first-person narrative in the tradition of the Japanese I-novel. He states that because family plays a significant role in traditional Japanese literature, any main character who is independent becomes a man who values freedom and solitude over intimacy. A notable feature of Murakami's stories are the comments that come from the main characters as to how strange the story presents itself. Murakami explains that his characters experience what he experiences as he writes, which could be compared to a movie set where the walls and props are all fake.[36] He has further compared the process of writing to movies: "That is one of the joys of writing fiction—I'm making my own film made just for myself."[57]
- R A Lafferty: Lafferty's quirky prose drew from traditional storytelling styles, largely from the Irish and Native American, and his shaggy-dog characters and tall tales are unique in science fiction. Little of Lafferty's writing is considered typical of the genre. His stories are closer to tall tales than traditional science fiction and are deeply influenced by his Catholic beliefs; Fourth Mansions, for example, draws on The Interior Mansions of Teresa of Avila.
- The Southern Reach Trilogy, by Jeff VanderMeer: Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.
- Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke: Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.
- Parables and Paradoxes, by Franz Kafka: The pieces here were posthumously gathered from Kafka's notebooks, diaries, letters, and short fictional works. Though generally short, they do seem to go remarkably well together. The pieces are arranged in 4 broad sections: the imperial area including the Great Wall and The Tower of Babel. ("If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted."). There is a section that is Midrashic on the Older testament ("We are fashioned to live in Paradise, and Paradise was destined to serve us)". A favorite of mine was "The Animal in the Synagogue", though what the animal may symbolize is open for discussion. The section on the Greeks, introduces Poseidon, who has become a bureaucrat, checking "the last row of figures." And "Leopards in the Temple" presents another animal in another temple ... and "becomes part of the ceremony". The final section includes unrelated fragments such as "The invention of the devil" and "The truth about Sancho Panza".
- Moby Dick, by Herman Melville: The book is the sailor Ishmael)'s narrative of the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod), for vengeance against Moby Dick), the giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg on the ship's previous voyage.
- I Who Have Never Known Men, by Jacqueline Harpman: Thirty-nine women and a girl are being held prisoner in a cage underground. The guards are all male, and never speak to them. The girl is the only one of the prisoners who has no memory of the outside world; none of them know why they are being held prisoner, or why there is one child among thirty-nine adults. One day, an alarm sounds, and the guards flee; the prisoners are subsequently able to escape. They find themselves on an immense barren plain, with no other people anywhere, and no clue as to what has happened to the world.
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2023.06.03 00:48 MrCandieBarz 24 M4F #Howell, Michigan It’s getting hot and it’s making me eager to breed!
I’m a 5’7”, 140 pound white male, with a 7” cock, massive loads, (who will provide pics and vids early on), looking to impregnate any willing people needing a NSA donor around me.
I’m not too picky on my type, but women with heavy asses, or straight up bbw women get extra points in my book. Age isn’t a problem either, my first impregnation was a woman in her forties!
I have two successful breedings under my belt, and am hoping to continue to build my successes as much as I can.
I cannot host, because of me never having time alone from my roommates usually.
If all of this sounds fine to you, please do drop a dm, so we can talk to make sure we’re both into each other, and get something planned out!
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2023.06.03 00:37 normancrane Don Whitman's Masterpiece
It was Danvers who finally pushed him in. We’d been feeding the fire with hardwood since the afternoon and it had gotten big as the wind picked up by nightfall, flickering cross our faces and warming our cheeks better than a gas heater. He didn’t even scream when he fell. The flames just swallowed him up—sparks shooting out like hot vomit. He knew what he’d done. He knew it was wrong. When he lifted himself up and came out of the fire he stood dead still, staring at us, smiling like we’d done him a favour. Maybe he thought he deserved to turn into ash. Maybe he did deserve it. I know I kept my fingers tight round the handle of the axe just the same till he keeled over and Cauley had touched the corpse with his foot and we knew he was dead. The three of us, we kept silent for a long while after that. There was just the sound of wood burning and it was better that way. None of us touched the body but none of us looked away, either: you could still make out his face, unmistakable, when the rest of him was dark and formless. He was a face on a pile. Then the wind started taking bits and pieces and carrying them away. Like I told the police, he didn’t touch me, but I knew some of the kids he’d done it to. He’d done it to Danvers. I remember once when all the other kids were gone, I’d stayed after class, Mr Gregor bent himself close to my ear and told me the real story. “You’re a wicked one,” he said when he was done, “just like Don Whitman.”
They used to scare us with Don Whitman, the adults: the other teachers, our parents, the priest. But no one ever explained it. They’d just say, “You better do what we want or else Don Whitman will come back and get you.” Mr Gregor was the only one ever to tell it to me with details. He told it different, too. He said he remembered because he was the same age as Don Whitman and they went to the same school. He said that what the others say they remember is like Cain and Abel or Little Red Riding Hood. Even the landscape tells the fairy tale. After it happened, Don Whitman’s school got torn down, then his house. And the bells in the Church got changed: the ones they rang after Elizabeth Cartwell had come back hysterical with the news.
You can’t tear down or change a man’s memory, Mr Gregor told me.
Once you see, it’s forever.
Elizabeth Cartwell’s parents moved away as soon as the police investigation finished. A lot of people moved away. But Mr Gregor showed me a newspaper from Hill City, North Dakota from some years later. The paper was yellow but you could read the black print fine. The story was about a girl who’d killed herself. The photo was of Elizabeth Cartwell. As he held it out for me to see, his hand shook and I felt his breath grow warmer against the skin around my neck. Nothing made him shake as much as what happened to Elizabeth Cartwell, not even the details.
Don Whitman was seventeen when he did it. He was handsome, with wide shoulders and played football. All the girls liked him. He was going to go to college. Maybe that’s why they thought he was ready: they thought he was a man. They thought he’d be with them. It was a school night when they woke him and drove out to the old pumping station, so that he could see everything for himself. They wanted to make him a part of it just like they were. If he saw, he would want it just like they did. I was always told that he drove out there by himself, but Mr Gregor told me that’s part of the lie. He said Don Whitman’s father was in the car with the mayor and the chief of police. He said, “How would he have found the place by himself—why would he have gone looking?”
The place is in a wood not far from the border. Of course, the whole underground is filled with cement now, but you can still see where the opening used to be: a fat tube sticking out of the ground, just big enough for a man to crawl down into. There was a hatch on it then, and thick locks. The hatch was sound-proof. If you stood right beside it, you couldn’t hear a thing, but as soon as you opened the hatch you could smell the insides and hear the moans start to drift upwards into the world. A steel ladder led down. Mr Gregor says they all knew about it, everyone: all the adults. They’d all been down that ladder. All of them had seen it.
Don Whitman went down the ladder, too. He must have smelled the insides grow stronger and heard the moaning echo louder with every rung but he kept going. On the ground above, his father spoke to the mayor and they both felt proud. Don Whitman must have been more scared of coming up and disappointing them than of not going down to the limit. But when he reached the bottom, the very bottom, and put his feet to the hard concrete and saw it before his own eyes, something inside of him must have broken—
“They sugarcoat it and they make a child’s game of it because they’re too scared to remember the truth,” Mr Gregor told me. “They can’t forget it, but it’s a stain to them, so they cover it up and pretend that everything’s clean.”
Don Whitman saw the vastness of the interlocking chambers and, within them, the writhing, ecstatic, swollen no-people of the underground, human-like but non-human, cross-bred mammals draped in plaster-white skin pinned to numb faces, men, women and children, male and female, naked, scared, dirty, with humans—humans Don Whitman knew and recognized—among them, on them and under them, hitting them, squeezing them, making them hurt, making monstrous sounds with them, all under slowly rotating heat lamps, all open and together, one before another, and then someone, someone Don Whitman knew, must have put a hand on Don Whitman’s shoulder and Don Whitman would have asked, “But what now, what am I supposed to do?” and then, from somewhere deep within the chambers, from a place not even Don Whitman would ever see, a voice answered:
“Anything.”
Mr Gregor pulled away from me and I felt my body turn cold. Icy sweat crawled under my collar and below my thighs.
I’d been told Don Whitman had found the old pumping station and lured the police to it, that they’d called others—including Don Whitman’s father—to talk him out of any violence, but that he’d snapped and murdered them all without firing a single shot, with his bare hands, and dumped the bodies into the metal pipe sticking out of the ground, the one just wide enough for a man to fit through. Then he’d disappeared. It wasn’t until days later that Elizabeth Cartwell found the bodies and there was never any sign of Don Whitman after that. The manhunt failed. So the church bells rang, the school was torn down, the pipe was filled in and, ever since, the adults scare their children with the story of the high school boy who’d done a terrible, sinful thing and vanished into thin air.
“And why would she decide to go out there?” Mr Gregor asked—meaning Elizabeth Cartwell—his eyes dead-set through a window at the raining world outside. “It’s as transparent as a sheet of the Bible, every word of it. They all pretend to believe because they’ve all made it up together. But the police reports, the testimony, the news stories, the court records, the verdict: a sham, a falsification made truth because a thousand people and a judge repeat it, word-for-word, every night before bed.”
I tried to stand but couldn’t. My heart was pounding me back into the chair. I was thinking about my mother and father. I had only enough courage for one question, so I asked, “What happened to the no-people?”
Mr Gregor turned suddenly and laughed so fierce the rain lashed the windows even harder. He came toward me. He put a delicate hand on each of my shoulders. He bent forward until his lips were almost touching mine and, his eyes staring at me like one stares at the Devil, said:
“Buried in the concrete. Buried alive, buried dead—”
I pushed him away.
He stumbled backward without losing his balance.
I forced myself off the chair, praying that my legs would keep. My knees shook but held. In front of me, Mr Gregor rasped for air. A few long strands of his thin hair had fallen across his forehead. He was sweating.
“He was a coward, that little boy, Don Whitman. Without him, we wouldn’t need to live under the whip of elaborate lies designed by weaker people turned away and shamed by the power of the natural order of things. They trusted him, and he betrayed us all. The fools! The weakling! Imagine,” Mr Gregor hissed, “just imagine what we could have had, what we could have experienced down there, at the very bottom, in the chambers...”
His eyes spun and his chest heaved as he grew excited, but soon he lost his venom and his voice returned to normal.
Finally, he said without any nastiness, “You’re a wicked one, just like Don Whitman.”
And I ran out.
Danvers prodded me awake. I must have fallen asleep during the night because when I opened my eyes it was morning already. The sun was up and the flames gone, but the fire was still warm. Mr Gregor’s dead face still rested atop a pile of ashes. Cauley was asleep on the dirt across from us. I could tell Danvers hadn’t slept at all. He said he’d been to a farmhouse and called the police. We woke up Cauley and talked over what we’d say when they got here. We decided on something close to the truth: Mr Gregor had taken the three of us camping and, when he tried to do a bad thing, we put up a fight and knocked him into the flames. Cauley said it might be suspicious because of how easily Mr Gregor had burned, but Danvers said that some people were like that—they burned quick and whole—so we needn’t say a word about the gasoline. When the police came, they were professional and treated us fair, but when they took me aside to talk to me about the accident, every time I tried to tell them about the bad things Mr Gregor had done, they wouldn’t hear it, they just said it was a shame there’d been an accident and someone had died.
At home, I asked my parents whether Mr Gregor was a bad person for what he’d done to Danvers and others. My mother didn’t say anything. My father looked at me like he was looking at the Devil himself and said morality was not so simple and that people had differing points of view and that, in the end, much depended not on what you did, but who you did it to—like during the war, for example. There were some who deserved to be done-to and others whose privilege it was to do. Then he picked up his magazine and told me it was best not to think about such things at all.
I did keep thinking about them, and about Don Whitman, too. When I got to high school, I was too old to scare with monsters, but once in a while I’d hear one of the adults tell a kid he better do as he’d been told or Don Whitman would come back and get him. I wondered if maybe people scare others with monsters they’re most scared of themselves. I even thought about investigating: taking a pick-axe to the pumping station and cracking through concrete or investigating records of how much of it had been poured in there. But I figured the records could have been fixed and one person with a pick-axe wouldn’t get far before the police came and I didn’t trust them anymore. I also had homework to worry about and I started seeing a girl.
I’d almost forgotten about Don Whitman by the time my mother sent me out one evening with my dad’s rifle to hunt down a coyote she said had been attacking her hens. I took a bike, because it was quiet, and was roaming just beyond town when I saw something kick up dust in a field. I shot at it, missed and it scurried off. I pedaled after it until it seemingly disappeared into nowhere. I kept my eye firm on the spot I saw it last and when I got close enough, I saw there was a small hole in the ground there. I stuck the rifle in and the hole felt bigger on the inside, so I stomped all around till the hole caved and where there’d been a mouse-sized hole now there was an opening a grown man could fit through. It seemed deep, which made me curious, because there aren’t many caves around here, so I stuck my feet in but still couldn’t feel the bottom. I slid in a little further, and further still, and soon the opening was above my head and I was inside with my whole body.
It was dark but I could feel the ground sloping. When my eyes accustomed to the gloom, I saw enough to tell there was a tunnel leading into the depths and that it was big enough for me to crawl through. I didn’t have a light but I knew it was important to try the hole. Maybe there were no-people at the bottom. Mostly, though, I didn’t think—I expected: that every time I poked ahead with the rifle, I’d hit earth and the tunnel would be done.
That never happened. I descended for hours. The tunnel grew narrower and the slope sharpened. Fear tightened around my chest. I lost track of time. There wasn’t enough space to turn my body around and I’d been descending for so long it was foolish to backtrack. Surely, the tunnel led somewhere. It was not a natural tunnel, I told myself, it must lead somewhere. I should continue until I reached the end, turn around and return to the surface. The trick was to keep calm and keep moving forward.
And I was right. Several hours later the tunnel ended and I crawled out through a hollow in the wall of a huge grotto.
I stood, stretched my limbs and squinted through the dimness. I couldn’t see the other end of the grotto but the wall curved so I thought that maybe if I went along I might get to the other end. My plan of an immediate return to the surface was on hold. I had to see what lived here. Images of no-people raced through my head. I readied my rifle and proceeded, slowly at first. Where the tunnel had been packed dirt and clay, the walls and floor of the grotto were solid rock. There was moisture, too. It flowed down the walls and gathered in depressions on the floor.
Although at first the wall felt smooth, soon I began to feel a texture to it—like a washboard. The ceiling faded into view. The grotto was getting smaller. And the texture was becoming rougher, more violent. I was thinking about the texture and Mr Gregor’s burnt body when a sound sent me sprawling. My elbow banged against the rock and I nearly cried out. My heart was beating like it had beaten me into my chair in the classroom. The sound was real: faint but clear and echoing. It was the sound of continuous and rhythmic scratching.
I crawled forward, holding the rifle in front. The scratching grew louder. I thought about calling out, but suddenly felt foolish to believe in no-people or anything of that kind. It seemed more sensible to believe in large rodents or coyotes with sharp teeth. I could have turned back, but the only thing more frightening than a monster in front is a monster behind, so I pulled myself on.
In fact, I was crawling up a small hill and, when I had reached the top, I looked down and there it was:
His was a human body. Though hunched, he stood on human legs and scratched with human hands. His movements were also clearly a man’s movements. There was nothing feminine about them. His half-translucent skin was grey, almost white, and taut; and if he had any hair, I didn’t see it. His naked body was completely smooth. I looked at him for a long time with dread and disgust. His arms didn’t stop moving. Whatever they were scratching, they kept scratching. Even when he turned and his head looked at me, even as I—stunned—frozen in terror, recoiled against the wall, still his arms kept moving and his hands clawing.
For a few seconds, I thought he’d seen me, that I was done for.
I gripped the rifle tight.
But as I focused on his face, I realized he hadn’t seen me at all. He couldn’t see me. His face, so much like a colourless swollen skull, was punctuated by two black and empty eye sockets.
He turned back to face the wall he was scratching. I turned my face, too. The texture on the wall was his. The deeper the grooves, the newer the work. I put down the rifle and put my hand on the wall, letting my fingers trace the contours of the texture. It wasn’t simple lines. The scratching wasn’t meaningless. These were two words repeated over and over, sometimes on top of each other, sometimes backwards, sometimes small, sometimes each letter as big as a person, and they were all around this vast underground lair, everywhere you looked—
Two words: Don Whitman.
He’d made this grotto. I felt feverish. The sheer greatness, the determination needed to scratch out such a place with one’s bare hands. Or perhaps the insanity—the punishment. If I hadn’t been sitting, a wave of empathy would have knocked me to the wet, rocky floor. I picked up the rifle. I could put Don Whitman out of his misery. I lifted the rifle and pointed it at the distant figure writing his name pointlessly into the wall. With one pull of the trigger, I could show him infinite mercy. I steadied myself. I said a prayer.
Don Whitman stopped scratching and wailed.
I bit down on my teeth.
I hadn’t fired yet.
He grabbed his head and fell to his knees. The high-pitched sound coming from his throat was unbearable. I felt like my mind was being ripped apart. I dropped the rifle and covered my ears. Again, Don Whitman turned. This time with his entire body. He crawled a few steps toward me—still wailing—before stopping and falling silent. He raised his head. Where before had been just eye sockets now there were eyes. White, with irises. Somehow, they’d grown.
He got to his feet and I was sure that he could see me now. He was staring at me. I called his name:
“Don Whitman!”
He didn’t react. Thoughts raced through my mind: what should I do once he comes toward me? Should I defend myself or should I embrace him?
But he didn’t step forward.
He took one step back and lifted his long fingers to his face. His nails, I now saw, were thick and curved as a bird’s talons. He moved them softly from his forehead, down his cheeks and up to his eyes, into which, without warning, he pressed them so painfully that I felt my own eyes burn. When he brought his fingers back out, in each hand he held a mashed and bleeding eyeball. These he put almost greedily into his mouth, one after the other, then chewed, and swallowed.
Having nourished his body, he returned to the wall and began scratching again.
As I watched the movements of his arms, able to follow the pattern of the letters they were carving, I no longer felt like killing him. If he wanted to die, he could die: he could forego water, he could refuse to eat. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to keep scratching his name into the walls of this grotto: Don Whitman, Don Whitman, Don Whitman…
I watched him for a long time before I realized that I would have to get to the surface soon. People would begin to worry. They might start looking for me. And as much as I needed to know the logic behind Don Whitman’s grotto, I also needed food. I couldn’t live down here. I couldn’t eat my own eyes and expect them to grow back. Eventually, I would either have to return to the world above or die.
I put my hand on the grotto wall and began to mentally retrace my steps. A return would not be difficult. All I would need to do was follow—
That’s when I knew.
The geography of it hit me.
The hole I’d entered was on the outskirts of town. The tunnel sloped toward the town. That meant this grotto was below the town. The town hall, the bank, the police station, the school—all of it was lying unknowingly on top of a giant expanding cavity. One day, this cavity would be too large, the town would be too heavy, and everything would collapse into a deep and permanent handmade abyss. Don Whitman would bury the town just as the town had buried the no-people. Everything would be destroyed. Everyone would die. That was Don Whitman’s genius. That was his life’s work.
I picked up the rifle and faced Don Whitman for the final time.
He must have known that I was there. He’d heard me and had probably seen me before he pulled out his eyes, yet he just continued to scratch. Faced with death, he kept working.
As I stood there, I had no doubt that, left in peace, Don Whitman would finish his project. His will was too powerful. The result would be catastrophic. It was under these assumptions that I made the most moral and important decision of my life:
I walked away.
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2023.06.03 00:36 normancrane Don Whitman's Masterpiece
| It was Danvers who finally pushed him in. We’d been feeding the fire with hardwood since the afternoon and it had gotten big as the wind picked up by nightfall, flickering cross our faces and warming our cheeks better than a gas heater. He didn’t even scream when he fell. The flames just swallowed him up—sparks shooting out like hot vomit. He knew what he’d done. He knew it was wrong. When he lifted himself up and came out of the fire he stood dead still, staring at us, smiling like we’d done him a favour. Maybe he thought he deserved to turn into ash. Maybe he did deserve it. I know I kept my fingers tight round the handle of the axe just the same till he keeled over and Cauley had touched the corpse with his foot and we knew he was dead. The three of us, we kept silent for a long while after that. There was just the sound of wood burning and it was better that way. None of us touched the body but none of us looked away, either: you could still make out his face, unmistakable, when the rest of him was dark and formless. He was a face on a pile. Then the wind started taking bits and pieces and carrying them away. Like I told the police, he didn’t touch me, but I knew some of the kids he’d done it to. He’d done it to Danvers. I remember once when all the other kids were gone, I’d stayed after class, Mr Gregor bent himself close to my ear and told me the real story. “You’re a wicked one,” he said when he was done, “just like Don Whitman.” They used to scare us with Don Whitman, the adults: the other teachers, our parents, the priest. But no one ever explained it. They’d just say, “You better do what we want or else Don Whitman will come back and get you.” Mr Gregor was the only one ever to tell it to me with details. He told it different, too. He said he remembered because he was the same age as Don Whitman and they went to the same school. He said that what the others say they remember is like Cain and Abel or Little Red Riding Hood. Even the landscape tells the fairy tale. After it happened, Don Whitman’s school got torn down, then his house. And the bells in the Church got changed: the ones they rang after Elizabeth Cartwell had come back hysterical with the news. You can’t tear down or change a man’s memory, Mr Gregor told me. Once you see, it’s forever. Elizabeth Cartwell’s parents moved away as soon as the police investigation finished. A lot of people moved away. But Mr Gregor showed me a newspaper from Hill City, North Dakota from some years later. The paper was yellow but you could read the black print fine. The story was about a girl who’d killed herself. The photo was of Elizabeth Cartwell. As he held it out for me to see, his hand shook and I felt his breath grow warmer against the skin around my neck. Nothing made him shake as much as what happened to Elizabeth Cartwell, not even the details. Don Whitman was seventeen when he did it. He was handsome, with wide shoulders and played football. All the girls liked him. He was going to go to college. Maybe that’s why they thought he was ready: they thought he was a man. They thought he’d be with them. It was a school night when they woke him and drove out to the old pumping station, so that he could see everything for himself. They wanted to make him a part of it just like they were. If he saw, he would want it just like they did. I was always told that he drove out there by himself, but Mr Gregor told me that’s part of the lie. He said Don Whitman’s father was in the car with the mayor and the chief of police. He said, “How would he have found the place by himself—why would he have gone looking?” The place is in a wood not far from the border. Of course, the whole underground is filled with cement now, but you can still see where the opening used to be: a fat tube sticking out of the ground, just big enough for a man to crawl down into. There was a hatch on it then, and thick locks. The hatch was sound-proof. If you stood right beside it, you couldn’t hear a thing, but as soon as you opened the hatch you could smell the insides and hear the moans start to drift upwards into the world. A steel ladder led down. Mr Gregor says they all knew about it, everyone: all the adults. They’d all been down that ladder. All of them had seen it. Don Whitman went down the ladder, too. He must have smelled the insides grow stronger and heard the moaning echo louder with every rung but he kept going. On the ground above, his father spoke to the mayor and they both felt proud. Don Whitman must have been more scared of coming up and disappointing them than of not going down to the limit. But when he reached the bottom, the very bottom, and put his feet to the hard concrete and saw it before his own eyes, something inside of him must have broken— “They sugarcoat it and they make a child’s game of it because they’re too scared to remember the truth,” Mr Gregor told me. “They can’t forget it, but it’s a stain to them, so they cover it up and pretend that everything’s clean.” Don Whitman saw the vastness of the interlocking chambers and, within them, the writhing, ecstatic, swollen no-people of the underground, human-like but non-human, cross-bred mammals draped in plaster-white skin pinned to numb faces, men, women and children, male and female, naked, scared, dirty, with humans—humans Don Whitman knew and recognized—among them, on them and under them, hitting them, squeezing them, making them hurt, making monstrous sounds with them, all under slowly rotating heat lamps, all open and together, one before another, and then someone, someone Don Whitman knew, must have put a hand on Don Whitman’s shoulder and Don Whitman would have asked, “But what now, what am I supposed to do?” and then, from somewhere deep within the chambers, from a place not even Don Whitman would ever see, a voice answered: “Anything.” Mr Gregor pulled away from me and I felt my body turn cold. Icy sweat crawled under my collar and below my thighs. I’d been told Don Whitman had found the old pumping station and lured the police to it, that they’d called others—including Don Whitman’s father—to talk him out of any violence, but that he’d snapped and murdered them all without firing a single shot, with his bare hands, and dumped the bodies into the metal pipe sticking out of the ground, the one just wide enough for a man to fit through. Then he’d disappeared. It wasn’t until days later that Elizabeth Cartwell found the bodies and there was never any sign of Don Whitman after that. The manhunt failed. So the church bells rang, the school was torn down, the pipe was filled in and, ever since, the adults scare their children with the story of the high school boy who’d done a terrible, sinful thing and vanished into thin air. “And why would she decide to go out there?” Mr Gregor asked—meaning Elizabeth Cartwell—his eyes dead-set through a window at the raining world outside. “It’s as transparent as a sheet of the Bible, every word of it. They all pretend to believe because they’ve all made it up together. But the police reports, the testimony, the news stories, the court records, the verdict: a sham, a falsification made truth because a thousand people and a judge repeat it, word-for-word, every night before bed.” I tried to stand but couldn’t. My heart was pounding me back into the chair. I was thinking about my mother and father. I had only enough courage for one question, so I asked, “What happened to the no-people?” Mr Gregor turned suddenly and laughed so fierce the rain lashed the windows even harder. He came toward me. He put a delicate hand on each of my shoulders. He bent forward until his lips were almost touching mine and, his eyes staring at me like one stares at the Devil, said: “Buried in the concrete. Buried alive, buried dead—” I pushed him away. He stumbled backward without losing his balance. I forced myself off the chair, praying that my legs would keep. My knees shook but held. In front of me, Mr Gregor rasped for air. A few long strands of his thin hair had fallen across his forehead. He was sweating. “He was a coward, that little boy, Don Whitman. Without him, we wouldn’t need to live under the whip of elaborate lies designed by weaker people turned away and shamed by the power of the natural order of things. They trusted him, and he betrayed us all. The fools! The weakling! Imagine,” Mr Gregor hissed, “just imagine what we could have had, what we could have experienced down there, at the very bottom, in the chambers...” His eyes spun and his chest heaved as he grew excited, but soon he lost his venom and his voice returned to normal. Finally, he said without any nastiness, “You’re a wicked one, just like Don Whitman.” And I ran out. Danvers prodded me awake. I must have fallen asleep during the night because when I opened my eyes it was morning already. The sun was up and the flames gone, but the fire was still warm. Mr Gregor’s dead face still rested atop a pile of ashes. Cauley was asleep on the dirt across from us. I could tell Danvers hadn’t slept at all. He said he’d been to a farmhouse and called the police. We woke up Cauley and talked over what we’d say when they got here. We decided on something close to the truth: Mr Gregor had taken the three of us camping and, when he tried to do a bad thing, we put up a fight and knocked him into the flames. Cauley said it might be suspicious because of how easily Mr Gregor had burned, but Danvers said that some people were like that—they burned quick and whole—so we needn’t say a word about the gasoline. When the police came, they were professional and treated us fair, but when they took me aside to talk to me about the accident, every time I tried to tell them about the bad things Mr Gregor had done, they wouldn’t hear it, they just said it was a shame there’d been an accident and someone had died. At home, I asked my parents whether Mr Gregor was a bad person for what he’d done to Danvers and others. My mother didn’t say anything. My father looked at me like he was looking at the Devil himself and said morality was not so simple and that people had differing points of view and that, in the end, much depended not on what you did, but who you did it to—like during the war, for example. There were some who deserved to be done-to and others whose privilege it was to do. Then he picked up his magazine and told me it was best not to think about such things at all. I did keep thinking about them, and about Don Whitman, too. When I got to high school, I was too old to scare with monsters, but once in a while I’d hear one of the adults tell a kid he better do as he’d been told or Don Whitman would come back and get him. I wondered if maybe people scare others with monsters they’re most scared of themselves. I even thought about investigating: taking a pick-axe to the pumping station and cracking through concrete or investigating records of how much of it had been poured in there. But I figured the records could have been fixed and one person with a pick-axe wouldn’t get far before the police came and I didn’t trust them anymore. I also had homework to worry about and I started seeing a girl. I’d almost forgotten about Don Whitman by the time my mother sent me out one evening with my dad’s rifle to hunt down a coyote she said had been attacking her hens. I took a bike, because it was quiet, and was roaming just beyond town when I saw something kick up dust in a field. I shot at it, missed and it scurried off. I pedaled after it until it seemingly disappeared into nowhere. I kept my eye firm on the spot I saw it last and when I got close enough, I saw there was a small hole in the ground there. I stuck the rifle in and the hole felt bigger on the inside, so I stomped all around till the hole caved and where there’d been a mouse-sized hole now there was an opening a grown man could fit through. It seemed deep, which made me curious, because there aren’t many caves around here, so I stuck my feet in but still couldn’t feel the bottom. I slid in a little further, and further still, and soon the opening was above my head and I was inside with my whole body. It was dark but I could feel the ground sloping. When my eyes accustomed to the gloom, I saw enough to tell there was a tunnel leading into the depths and that it was big enough for me to crawl through. I didn’t have a light but I knew it was important to try the hole. Maybe there were no-people at the bottom. Mostly, though, I didn’t think—I expected: that every time I poked ahead with the rifle, I’d hit earth and the tunnel would be done. That never happened. I descended for hours. The tunnel grew narrower and the slope sharpened. Fear tightened around my chest. I lost track of time. There wasn’t enough space to turn my body around and I’d been descending for so long it was foolish to backtrack. Surely, the tunnel led somewhere. It was not a natural tunnel, I told myself, it must lead somewhere. I should continue until I reached the end, turn around and return to the surface. The trick was to keep calm and keep moving forward. And I was right. Several hours later the tunnel ended and I crawled out through a hollow in the wall of a huge grotto. I stood, stretched my limbs and squinted through the dimness. I couldn’t see the other end of the grotto but the wall curved so I thought that maybe if I went along I might get to the other end. My plan of an immediate return to the surface was on hold. I had to see what lived here. Images of no-people raced through my head. I readied my rifle and proceeded, slowly at first. Where the tunnel had been packed dirt and clay, the walls and floor of the grotto were solid rock. There was moisture, too. It flowed down the walls and gathered in depressions on the floor. Although at first the wall felt smooth, soon I began to feel a texture to it—like a washboard. The ceiling faded into view. The grotto was getting smaller. And the texture was becoming rougher, more violent. I was thinking about the texture and Mr Gregor’s burnt body when a sound sent me sprawling. My elbow banged against the rock and I nearly cried out. My heart was beating like it had beaten me into my chair in the classroom. The sound was real: faint but clear and echoing. It was the sound of continuous and rhythmic scratching. I crawled forward, holding the rifle in front. The scratching grew louder. I thought about calling out, but suddenly felt foolish to believe in no-people or anything of that kind. It seemed more sensible to believe in large rodents or coyotes with sharp teeth. I could have turned back, but the only thing more frightening than a monster in front is a monster behind, so I pulled myself on. In fact, I was crawling up a small hill and, when I had reached the top, I looked down and there it was: His was a human body. Though hunched, he stood on human legs and scratched with human hands. His movements were also clearly a man’s movements. There was nothing feminine about them. His half-translucent skin was grey, almost white, and taut; and if he had any hair, I didn’t see it. His naked body was completely smooth. I looked at him for a long time with dread and disgust. His arms didn’t stop moving. Whatever they were scratching, they kept scratching. Even when he turned and his head looked at me, even as I—stunned—frozen in terror, recoiled against the wall, still his arms kept moving and his hands clawing. For a few seconds, I thought he’d seen me, that I was done for. I gripped the rifle tight. But as I focused on his face, I realized he hadn’t seen me at all. He couldn’t see me. His face, so much like a colourless swollen skull, was punctuated by two black and empty eye sockets. He turned back to face the wall he was scratching. I turned my face, too. The texture on the wall was his. The deeper the grooves, the newer the work. I put down the rifle and put my hand on the wall, letting my fingers trace the contours of the texture. It wasn’t simple lines. The scratching wasn’t meaningless. These were two words repeated over and over, sometimes on top of each other, sometimes backwards, sometimes small, sometimes each letter as big as a person, and they were all around this vast underground lair, everywhere you looked— Two words: Don Whitman. He’d made this grotto. I felt feverish. The sheer greatness, the determination needed to scratch out such a place with one’s bare hands. Or perhaps the insanity—the punishment. If I hadn’t been sitting, a wave of empathy would have knocked me to the wet, rocky floor. I picked up the rifle. I could put Don Whitman out of his misery. I lifted the rifle and pointed it at the distant figure writing his name pointlessly into the wall. With one pull of the trigger, I could show him infinite mercy. I steadied myself. I said a prayer. Don Whitman stopped scratching and wailed. I bit down on my teeth. I hadn’t fired yet. He grabbed his head and fell to his knees. The high-pitched sound coming from his throat was unbearable. I felt like my mind was being ripped apart. I dropped the rifle and covered my ears. Again, Don Whitman turned. This time with his entire body. He crawled a few steps toward me—still wailing—before stopping and falling silent. He raised his head. Where before had been just eye sockets now there were eyes. White, with irises. Somehow, they’d grown. He got to his feet and I was sure that he could see me now. He was staring at me. I called his name: “Don Whitman!” He didn’t react. Thoughts raced through my mind: what should I do once he comes toward me? Should I defend myself or should I embrace him? But he didn’t step forward. He took one step back and lifted his long fingers to his face. His nails, I now saw, were thick and curved as a bird’s talons. He moved them softly from his forehead, down his cheeks and up to his eyes, into which, without warning, he pressed them so painfully that I felt my own eyes burn. When he brought his fingers back out, in each hand he held a mashed and bleeding eyeball. These he put almost greedily into his mouth, one after the other, then chewed, and swallowed. Having nourished his body, he returned to the wall and began scratching again. As I watched the movements of his arms, able to follow the pattern of the letters they were carving, I no longer felt like killing him. If he wanted to die, he could die: he could forego water, he could refuse to eat. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to keep scratching his name into the walls of this grotto: Don Whitman, Don Whitman, Don Whitman… I watched him for a long time before I realized that I would have to get to the surface soon. People would begin to worry. They might start looking for me. And as much as I needed to know the logic behind Don Whitman’s grotto, I also needed food. I couldn’t live down here. I couldn’t eat my own eyes and expect them to grow back. Eventually, I would either have to return to the world above or die. I put my hand on the grotto wall and began to mentally retrace my steps. A return would not be difficult. All I would need to do was follow— That’s when I knew. The geography of it hit me. The hole I’d entered was on the outskirts of town. The tunnel sloped toward the town. That meant this grotto was below the town. The town hall, the bank, the police station, the school—all of it was lying unknowingly on top of a giant expanding cavity. One day, this cavity would be too large, the town would be too heavy, and everything would collapse into a deep and permanent handmade abyss. Don Whitman would bury the town just as the town had buried the no-people. Everything would be destroyed. Everyone would die. That was Don Whitman’s genius. That was his life’s work. I picked up the rifle and faced Don Whitman for the final time. He must have known that I was there. He’d heard me and had probably seen me before he pulled out his eyes, yet he just continued to scratch. Faced with death, he kept working. As I stood there, I had no doubt that, left in peace, Don Whitman would finish his project. His will was too powerful. The result would be catastrophic. It was under these assumptions that I made the most moral and important decision of my life: I walked away. submitted by normancrane to scaryshortstories [link] [comments] |
2023.06.03 00:34 normancrane Don Whitman's Masterpiece
| It was Danvers who finally pushed him in. We’d been feeding the fire with hardwood since the afternoon and it had gotten big as the wind picked up by nightfall, flickering cross our faces and warming our cheeks better than a gas heater. He didn’t even scream when he fell. The flames just swallowed him up—sparks shooting out like hot vomit. He knew what he’d done. He knew it was wrong. When he lifted himself up and came out of the fire he stood dead still, staring at us, smiling like we’d done him a favour. Maybe he thought he deserved to turn into ash. Maybe he did deserve it. I know I kept my fingers tight round the handle of the axe just the same till he keeled over and Cauley had touched the corpse with his foot and we knew he was dead. The three of us, we kept silent for a long while after that. There was just the sound of wood burning and it was better that way. None of us touched the body but none of us looked away, either: you could still make out his face, unmistakable, when the rest of him was dark and formless. He was a face on a pile. Then the wind started taking bits and pieces and carrying them away. Like I told the police, he didn’t touch me, but I knew some of the kids he’d done it to. He’d done it to Danvers. I remember once when all the other kids were gone, I’d stayed after class, Mr Gregor bent himself close to my ear and told me the real story. “You’re a wicked one,” he said when he was done, “just like Don Whitman.” They used to scare us with Don Whitman, the adults: the other teachers, our parents, the priest. But no one ever explained it. They’d just say, “You better do what we want or else Don Whitman will come back and get you.” Mr Gregor was the only one ever to tell it to me with details. He told it different, too. He said he remembered because he was the same age as Don Whitman and they went to the same school. He said that what the others say they remember is like Cain and Abel or Little Red Riding Hood. Even the landscape tells the fairy tale. After it happened, Don Whitman’s school got torn down, then his house. And the bells in the Church got changed: the ones they rang after Elizabeth Cartwell had come back hysterical with the news. You can’t tear down or change a man’s memory, Mr Gregor told me. Once you see, it’s forever. Elizabeth Cartwell’s parents moved away as soon as the police investigation finished. A lot of people moved away. But Mr Gregor showed me a newspaper from Hill City, North Dakota from some years later. The paper was yellow but you could read the black print fine. The story was about a girl who’d killed herself. The photo was of Elizabeth Cartwell. As he held it out for me to see, his hand shook and I felt his breath grow warmer against the skin around my neck. Nothing made him shake as much as what happened to Elizabeth Cartwell, not even the details. Don Whitman was seventeen when he did it. He was handsome, with wide shoulders and played football. All the girls liked him. He was going to go to college. Maybe that’s why they thought he was ready: they thought he was a man. They thought he’d be with them. It was a school night when they woke him and drove out to the old pumping station, so that he could see everything for himself. They wanted to make him a part of it just like they were. If he saw, he would want it just like they did. I was always told that he drove out there by himself, but Mr Gregor told me that’s part of the lie. He said Don Whitman’s father was in the car with the mayor and the chief of police. He said, “How would he have found the place by himself—why would he have gone looking?” The place is in a wood not far from the border. Of course, the whole underground is filled with cement now, but you can still see where the opening used to be: a fat tube sticking out of the ground, just big enough for a man to crawl down into. There was a hatch on it then, and thick locks. The hatch was sound-proof. If you stood right beside it, you couldn’t hear a thing, but as soon as you opened the hatch you could smell the insides and hear the moans start to drift upwards into the world. A steel ladder led down. Mr Gregor says they all knew about it, everyone: all the adults. They’d all been down that ladder. All of them had seen it. Don Whitman went down the ladder, too. He must have smelled the insides grow stronger and heard the moaning echo louder with every rung but he kept going. On the ground above, his father spoke to the mayor and they both felt proud. Don Whitman must have been more scared of coming up and disappointing them than of not going down to the limit. But when he reached the bottom, the very bottom, and put his feet to the hard concrete and saw it before his own eyes, something inside of him must have broken— “They sugarcoat it and they make a child’s game of it because they’re too scared to remember the truth,” Mr Gregor told me. “They can’t forget it, but it’s a stain to them, so they cover it up and pretend that everything’s clean.” Don Whitman saw the vastness of the interlocking chambers and, within them, the writhing, ecstatic, swollen no-people of the underground, human-like but non-human, cross-bred mammals draped in plaster-white skin pinned to numb faces, men, women and children, male and female, naked, scared, dirty, with humans—humans Don Whitman knew and recognized—among them, on them and under them, hitting them, squeezing them, making them hurt, making monstrous sounds with them, all under slowly rotating heat lamps, all open and together, one before another, and then someone, someone Don Whitman knew, must have put a hand on Don Whitman’s shoulder and Don Whitman would have asked, “But what now, what am I supposed to do?” and then, from somewhere deep within the chambers, from a place not even Don Whitman would ever see, a voice answered: “Anything.” Mr Gregor pulled away from me and I felt my body turn cold. Icy sweat crawled under my collar and below my thighs. I’d been told Don Whitman had found the old pumping station and lured the police to it, that they’d called others—including Don Whitman’s father—to talk him out of any violence, but that he’d snapped and murdered them all without firing a single shot, with his bare hands, and dumped the bodies into the metal pipe sticking out of the ground, the one just wide enough for a man to fit through. Then he’d disappeared. It wasn’t until days later that Elizabeth Cartwell found the bodies and there was never any sign of Don Whitman after that. The manhunt failed. So the church bells rang, the school was torn down, the pipe was filled in and, ever since, the adults scare their children with the story of the high school boy who’d done a terrible, sinful thing and vanished into thin air. “And why would she decide to go out there?” Mr Gregor asked—meaning Elizabeth Cartwell—his eyes dead-set through a window at the raining world outside. “It’s as transparent as a sheet of the Bible, every word of it. They all pretend to believe because they’ve all made it up together. But the police reports, the testimony, the news stories, the court records, the verdict: a sham, a falsification made truth because a thousand people and a judge repeat it, word-for-word, every night before bed.” I tried to stand but couldn’t. My heart was pounding me back into the chair. I was thinking about my mother and father. I had only enough courage for one question, so I asked, “What happened to the no-people?” Mr Gregor turned suddenly and laughed so fierce the rain lashed the windows even harder. He came toward me. He put a delicate hand on each of my shoulders. He bent forward until his lips were almost touching mine and, his eyes staring at me like one stares at the Devil, said: “Buried in the concrete. Buried alive, buried dead—” I pushed him away. He stumbled backward without losing his balance. I forced myself off the chair, praying that my legs would keep. My knees shook but held. In front of me, Mr Gregor rasped for air. A few long strands of his thin hair had fallen across his forehead. He was sweating. “He was a coward, that little boy, Don Whitman. Without him, we wouldn’t need to live under the whip of elaborate lies designed by weaker people turned away and shamed by the power of the natural order of things. They trusted him, and he betrayed us all. The fools! The weakling! Imagine,” Mr Gregor hissed, “just imagine what we could have had, what we could have experienced down there, at the very bottom, in the chambers...” His eyes spun and his chest heaved as he grew excited, but soon he lost his venom and his voice returned to normal. Finally, he said without any nastiness, “You’re a wicked one, just like Don Whitman.” And I ran out. Danvers prodded me awake. I must have fallen asleep during the night because when I opened my eyes it was morning already. The sun was up and the flames gone, but the fire was still warm. Mr Gregor’s dead face still rested atop a pile of ashes. Cauley was asleep on the dirt across from us. I could tell Danvers hadn’t slept at all. He said he’d been to a farmhouse and called the police. We woke up Cauley and talked over what we’d say when they got here. We decided on something close to the truth: Mr Gregor had taken the three of us camping and, when he tried to do a bad thing, we put up a fight and knocked him into the flames. Cauley said it might be suspicious because of how easily Mr Gregor had burned, but Danvers said that some people were like that—they burned quick and whole—so we needn’t say a word about the gasoline. When the police came, they were professional and treated us fair, but when they took me aside to talk to me about the accident, every time I tried to tell them about the bad things Mr Gregor had done, they wouldn’t hear it, they just said it was a shame there’d been an accident and someone had died. At home, I asked my parents whether Mr Gregor was a bad person for what he’d done to Danvers and others. My mother didn’t say anything. My father looked at me like he was looking at the Devil himself and said morality was not so simple and that people had differing points of view and that, in the end, much depended not on what you did, but who you did it to—like during the war, for example. There were some who deserved to be done-to and others whose privilege it was to do. Then he picked up his magazine and told me it was best not to think about such things at all. I did keep thinking about them, and about Don Whitman, too. When I got to high school, I was too old to scare with monsters, but once in a while I’d hear one of the adults tell a kid he better do as he’d been told or Don Whitman would come back and get him. I wondered if maybe people scare others with monsters they’re most scared of themselves. I even thought about investigating: taking a pick-axe to the pumping station and cracking through concrete or investigating records of how much of it had been poured in there. But I figured the records could have been fixed and one person with a pick-axe wouldn’t get far before the police came and I didn’t trust them anymore. I also had homework to worry about and I started seeing a girl. I’d almost forgotten about Don Whitman by the time my mother sent me out one evening with my dad’s rifle to hunt down a coyote she said had been attacking her hens. I took a bike, because it was quiet, and was roaming just beyond town when I saw something kick up dust in a field. I shot at it, missed and it scurried off. I pedaled after it until it seemingly disappeared into nowhere. I kept my eye firm on the spot I saw it last and when I got close enough, I saw there was a small hole in the ground there. I stuck the rifle in and the hole felt bigger on the inside, so I stomped all around till the hole caved and where there’d been a mouse-sized hole now there was an opening a grown man could fit through. It seemed deep, which made me curious, because there aren’t many caves around here, so I stuck my feet in but still couldn’t feel the bottom. I slid in a little further, and further still, and soon the opening was above my head and I was inside with my whole body. It was dark but I could feel the ground sloping. When my eyes accustomed to the gloom, I saw enough to tell there was a tunnel leading into the depths and that it was big enough for me to crawl through. I didn’t have a light but I knew it was important to try the hole. Maybe there were no-people at the bottom. Mostly, though, I didn’t think—I expected: that every time I poked ahead with the rifle, I’d hit earth and the tunnel would be done. That never happened. I descended for hours. The tunnel grew narrower and the slope sharpened. Fear tightened around my chest. I lost track of time. There wasn’t enough space to turn my body around and I’d been descending for so long it was foolish to backtrack. Surely, the tunnel led somewhere. It was not a natural tunnel, I told myself, it must lead somewhere. I should continue until I reached the end, turn around and return to the surface. The trick was to keep calm and keep moving forward. And I was right. Several hours later the tunnel ended and I crawled out through a hollow in the wall of a huge grotto. I stood, stretched my limbs and squinted through the dimness. I couldn’t see the other end of the grotto but the wall curved so I thought that maybe if I went along I might get to the other end. My plan of an immediate return to the surface was on hold. I had to see what lived here. Images of no-people raced through my head. I readied my rifle and proceeded, slowly at first. Where the tunnel had been packed dirt and clay, the walls and floor of the grotto were solid rock. There was moisture, too. It flowed down the walls and gathered in depressions on the floor. Although at first the wall felt smooth, soon I began to feel a texture to it—like a washboard. The ceiling faded into view. The grotto was getting smaller. And the texture was becoming rougher, more violent. I was thinking about the texture and Mr Gregor’s burnt body when a sound sent me sprawling. My elbow banged against the rock and I nearly cried out. My heart was beating like it had beaten me into my chair in the classroom. The sound was real: faint but clear and echoing. It was the sound of continuous and rhythmic scratching. I crawled forward, holding the rifle in front. The scratching grew louder. I thought about calling out, but suddenly felt foolish to believe in no-people or anything of that kind. It seemed more sensible to believe in large rodents or coyotes with sharp teeth. I could have turned back, but the only thing more frightening than a monster in front is a monster behind, so I pulled myself on. In fact, I was crawling up a small hill and, when I had reached the top, I looked down and there it was: His was a human body. Though hunched, he stood on human legs and scratched with human hands. His movements were also clearly a man’s movements. There was nothing feminine about them. His half-translucent skin was grey, almost white, and taut; and if he had any hair, I didn’t see it. His naked body was completely smooth. I looked at him for a long time with dread and disgust. His arms didn’t stop moving. Whatever they were scratching, they kept scratching. Even when he turned and his head looked at me, even as I—stunned—frozen in terror, recoiled against the wall, still his arms kept moving and his hands clawing. For a few seconds, I thought he’d seen me, that I was done for. I gripped the rifle tight. But as I focused on his face, I realized he hadn’t seen me at all. He couldn’t see me. His face, so much like a colourless swollen skull, was punctuated by two black and empty eye sockets. He turned back to face the wall he was scratching. I turned my face, too. The texture on the wall was his. The deeper the grooves, the newer the work. I put down the rifle and put my hand on the wall, letting my fingers trace the contours of the texture. It wasn’t simple lines. The scratching wasn’t meaningless. These were two words repeated over and over, sometimes on top of each other, sometimes backwards, sometimes small, sometimes each letter as big as a person, and they were all around this vast underground lair, everywhere you looked— Two words: Don Whitman. He’d made this grotto. I felt feverish. The sheer greatness, the determination needed to scratch out such a place with one’s bare hands. Or perhaps the insanity—the punishment. If I hadn’t been sitting, a wave of empathy would have knocked me to the wet, rocky floor. I picked up the rifle. I could put Don Whitman out of his misery. I lifted the rifle and pointed it at the distant figure writing his name pointlessly into the wall. With one pull of the trigger, I could show him infinite mercy. I steadied myself. I said a prayer. Don Whitman stopped scratching and wailed. I bit down on my teeth. I hadn’t fired yet. He grabbed his head and fell to his knees. The high-pitched sound coming from his throat was unbearable. I felt like my mind was being ripped apart. I dropped the rifle and covered my ears. Again, Don Whitman turned. This time with his entire body. He crawled a few steps toward me—still wailing—before stopping and falling silent. He raised his head. Where before had been just eye sockets now there were eyes. White, with irises. Somehow, they’d grown. He got to his feet and I was sure that he could see me now. He was staring at me. I called his name: “Don Whitman!” He didn’t react. Thoughts raced through my mind: what should I do once he comes toward me? Should I defend myself or should I embrace him? But he didn’t step forward. He took one step back and lifted his long fingers to his face. His nails, I now saw, were thick and curved as a bird’s talons. He moved them softly from his forehead, down his cheeks and up to his eyes, into which, without warning, he pressed them so painfully that I felt my own eyes burn. When he brought his fingers back out, in each hand he held a mashed and bleeding eyeball. These he put almost greedily into his mouth, one after the other, then chewed, and swallowed. Having nourished his body, he returned to the wall and began scratching again. As I watched the movements of his arms, able to follow the pattern of the letters they were carving, I no longer felt like killing him. If he wanted to die, he could die: he could forego water, he could refuse to eat. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to keep scratching his name into the walls of this grotto: Don Whitman, Don Whitman, Don Whitman… I watched him for a long time before I realized that I would have to get to the surface soon. People would begin to worry. They might start looking for me. And as much as I needed to know the logic behind Don Whitman’s grotto, I also needed food. I couldn’t live down here. I couldn’t eat my own eyes and expect them to grow back. Eventually, I would either have to return to the world above or die. I put my hand on the grotto wall and began to mentally retrace my steps. A return would not be difficult. All I would need to do was follow— That’s when I knew. The geography of it hit me. The hole I’d entered was on the outskirts of town. The tunnel sloped toward the town. That meant this grotto was below the town. The town hall, the bank, the police station, the school—all of it was lying unknowingly on top of a giant expanding cavity. One day, this cavity would be too large, the town would be too heavy, and everything would collapse into a deep and permanent handmade abyss. Don Whitman would bury the town just as the town had buried the no-people. Everything would be destroyed. Everyone would die. That was Don Whitman’s genius. That was his life’s work. I picked up the rifle and faced Don Whitman for the final time. He must have known that I was there. He’d heard me and had probably seen me before he pulled out his eyes, yet he just continued to scratch. Faced with death, he kept working. As I stood there, I had no doubt that, left in peace, Don Whitman would finish his project. His will was too powerful. The result would be catastrophic. It was under these assumptions that I made the most moral and important decision of my life: I walked away. submitted by normancrane to normancrane [link] [comments] |
2023.06.03 00:24 Cold-Connection-2349 The moment I even hear his voice my anxiety goes into overdrive
I'm working toward no contact. I drove more than 1,500 miles away to get away from him. Well, I had to come back because of a family death.
Of course, my codependent ass had ideas of us going back to our friendship and doing some hiking, etc while I was in town. Why?
He got custody of his son about 7mts ago and that's when the romance and weirdness started. I can't go back to being friends. He says he can but that's not how he behaves.
I (we both) made a bunch of promises to his 10yr old son. I don't want his son to feel abandoned by me. Plus, his life with his father is pretty rough.
I also am a plant fanatic and had left all my plants with him to care for with the idea that he could mail me cuttings late on once I found a place to settle.
While I was gone (only a month) he would act super interested in connecting with me a day here and there but mostly he acted disinterested and would talk at length about his favorite person.
I'm discarded, I get it. But the pain is unreal. I was getting to the point, while I was gone, to where I wasn't obsessively thinking about him and his son every day. Progress.
As soon as I started the trek home the anxiety started.
I stopped by to get pics of my plants as I've initiated the process of rehoming them. I brought a friend with me so I didn't cave into whatever BS he was going to throw at me that day.
Just seeing him sent my anxiety so far over the edge that I forgot my dog (my bff and travel companion).
My plan was to get my plants out of there ASAP and honor one of my promises to his son and take him camping. I'm not sure how I was going to explain to the 10yr old that we wouldn't be keeping in contact. But then, block all and be done.
Why? Why did I think anything would be without huge anxiety for me and megga drama!
Apparently, now I am branded as an unsafe person to be around his son. I'm just floored and shaking I'm so upset.
I knew that even before I left he started telling people what a monster I am and how I was the cause of all his issues. We all know that I was theoat amazing person in the world just a few brief weeks before that.
His son also had started acting strange towards me. I watched my friend tell his son "you can talk to your mother anytime you want" but manipulate him into not calling her. The poor boy did finally call his mother one day and my friend then decided to tell his kid, "since you don't care about your future anymore than I don't " He changed all their "future" plans, stopped doing anything to take care of the kid and told he that he's replaceable.
Idk why I care what he's telling people. They're not in my circle. The kid thing is devastating because I'm the one who helped him get custody. He was always so good to me and I thought, idk what I thought but it wasn't based on reality.
I've seen the way he talks about his son's mother, most women actually. I know that's the kind of stuff he's saying about me. To his circle and to his son.
Sorry for the rant but my nervous system is going crazy. I want it to be over. I want to leave the state again RIGHT NOW!! I promised a friend I'd house sit the last week of June so I'm kind of stuck in the area for now. But being here justakes me rehash everything.
My plant thing....I was starting to sell cuttings, etc and I hate to lose my stock. It's my dream to derive my income from my love of plants and I have a nice stock of unique plants.
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Cold-Connection-2349 to
BPDlovedones [link] [comments]
2023.06.03 00:23 Born_Department_707 Ways to pass Thc Test
First of all, take a deep breath. This document is very long. So take your time and read carefully. All of the information listed here is from personal experience or a/drug test help
Keep in mind info may vary based on your location, age, height, weight, form of cannabis (dabs, carts, vapes, edibles etc) level of cannabis use, and reason for getting clean.
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Explanations: (optional to read)
If you don’t care about explanations on why these specifics matter you can skip over this section.
Bio specifics matter, because they help gauge things, like how fast your natural metabolism is and how long the THC will stay in your system. For example, a younger person may have a naturally fast metabolism helping them cleanse their system faster.
And certain specifics help determine your situation. For example, females may be asked to lift or shake their bras to see if u have anything in there (even if it’s for work). Or males may not have the opportunity to have a private bathroom. (U can still go in the stalls tho).
Your reason for getting tested matters as well. For example, if you’re getting tested for work, you will not be watched, which gives you the opportunity to cheat by using someone else’s urine or a synthetic kind.
However, someone getting tested for reason of suspicion, rehab, or a personal reason may not have the same opportunity to cheat as easily. Luckily, this isn’t the majority.
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Level of use:
Your level of use matters as it can determine how long the THC will stay in your system. Use the chart provided by the pinned post on r\drugtesthelp to determine your level of use.
(I suggest doing additional research on what kind of THC you smoked)
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My personal situation (optional to read)
Reason for getting tested: Work (lifeguard)-(Not watched)
5’4 - Height -
Young- Age -
123 Lb - Weight -
Female - Bio Gender -
Heavy D8 cart smoker for about a year-(raw hemp) I only smoked occasionally
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Generally, there are three paths you can take to get clean or pass a drug test
- Naturally, a lot of hard work and patience.
- Fake/Clean urine
- Certo (natural, but a bit risky)
(The reason I’m not including detox kits is because a lot of them are scams or only seem to work for certain people)
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First The Natural Method (I suggest doing this anyways)
Gole: The goal with the natural method is to cleanse your system as fast as possible without cheating. This is achieved by speeding up your metabolism.
Drink a ton of supplements, especially charcoal ones, make sure to have a snack handy. As you shouldn’t take these on an empty stomach as that can cause nausea.
Drink a lot of lemon water. You can mix it with sparkling water to make the flavor taste better (make sure not to overdo this as you can kill your stomach acid severely harming your body) . Cranberry juice works as well, however, I don’t use it because of the sugar. Sugar can build up fat.
Drink a lot of water. I drank up to 2 gallons a day for over 10 days and it still wasn’t enough. (please don’t do what I did because you can develop hypothermia, so make sure to take it easy) I suggest drinking around a gallon a day, spacing it out in between.
Make sure to avoid fatty foods as this can slow down your metabolism. Your goal is to eat healthy.
Workout many suggest keto as this burns fat and it makes you sweat getting rid of toxins.
Next, be patient with yourself. When starting to do all this, you may notice some changes in your body and don’t be dumb and regulate it.
Finally around 3 to 2 days before your drug test, eat a lot of fatty foods. I also suggested drinking Gatorade. This will help your electrolyte levels.
⚠️Please make sure to do an at home drug test before you take the official one as this method can take MONTHS if you smoke heavily like me!!!!⚠️
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Next is the synthetic method.
First, you will need either synthetic or a clean sample of urine. I personally used my little brothers. Make sure whoever you are taking the urine from is clean. This is very important.
⚠️Some synthetic urine are reliable. However, many of them are not. Please do your own research and determine which is best for you
⚠️ I personally didn’t use synthetic urine, so I cannot back it up. I based them off of others' suggestions.
drug test help
Make sure that the urine stays between 90-100° range. As to not raise suspicion. This is the most important part. You can use heating pads if the urine is not touching the skin or in case it’s not hot enough.
⚠️ I suggest practicing with either of these methods. As to not raise suspicion you will need to know how to comfortably sit down and walk around. ⚠️ Women maybe asked to lift or shake their bras as well as an empty their pockets the pockets applies to men as well ofc.
First method : Take 2 eye drop bottles and tape them to the side of your legs. Keep them warm, by squeezing your thighs together, heating them up. Then simply pour the urine into the given cup. (you can also compare the temperature with your natural urine)
The second method is for females however, it can be adjusted for males:
For the second method, you will need a condom. And multiple pairs of underwear. Place the urine in the condom. I suggest double bagging it, then place it in your underwear touching your skin. This will keep it body temperature. Then when you’re in the bathroom, take it out and simply poke a hole.
If you are in a one person bathroom, you can run it under hot water, hoping to regulate the temperature. I suggest actually using the bathroom and measuring the heat. Yes, you will have to touch piss.
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The final method is the Certo method:
First, what is Certo? Certo is a kind of gelatin that can be used as a disguiser for toxins.
Certo can be found in the gelatin section of any Walmart. It usually comes with two packs most say to use one pack, however, all recommendations that I have found have suggested better results with two.
Next what you should do is get a cranberry, or Gatorade, drink. Drink a little bit from the bottle until you can pour both Certo packs into the drink. This helps disguise the disgusting taste. As well as replenishing your electrolytes.
Next drink 1 gallon of water.⚠️Be careful and make sure to have jackets and winter coats ready as you will most likely be experiencing chills because you will have to chug that shit. Right after you drink all of the Certo.
The most important thing to note about this method is the timing and the amount of times you have Peed.
Your urine will only test clean for around 4 to 5 hours after you drink this concoction. This is because between those 4-5 hours the gallon of water is working its way through your body so your next pee or even the one after that will most likely not test clean however, because it will most likely be the result of whatever you drank before the Certo.
However, the third one will most likely be the result of the Certo drink, and not any of your previous drinks before it.
Please make sure to read carefully and time this correctly
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My personal situation update:
I will be using the second method to see if I pass my drug test and a friend is using the Certo method so I will also see if that one works. I will keep this updated. And finally good luck!!!
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2023.06.03 00:22 MouniaDeMa 24(f) broke up emotional abusive relationship, ADHD, low self worth; how did you find love for yourself even though you think less of yourself?
I am not a native english speaker, apologies in advance!
I am sorry i believe this communtiy is great!! always brings a smile on my face. This is an impulsive post haha i will probably delete it later. i typed this in one go, a bit impulsive and i am sorry if I come off wrong.
It is a really long text so I am already grateful for just posting it here. It is almost impossible to go through this illeterate english bible chapter haha so i understand.
Thanks again this forum is great! You guys are my inspiration; being proud of who you are, and seeing ADHD as something to embrace.
Well, The relationship lasted six years from ages 19 24. Despite his flaws, my partner was kind, patient, and loving when he didn't have anger issues.It was my first relationship, and I had never been in love or had sex before.
I always knew deep down that his actions were not okay, but he would confuse me with moments of kindness.
Now, in a moment of clarity, I realize how easily he made me feel like I was wrong and how it affected my self-esteem.I feel weak, embarrassed, and insecure after years of being with him. At the same time, I am really grateful for all the happy moments, and there is a part of me that feels like i am wrong for saying these things, as it is not "truly" him. I feel so weak, i tried therapy, but even my cogntive behavioral therapist literal words were "you have no identity" during hard topics you switch the subject, ask for validation. I spoke later with a counselor from school, who told me it is unproffesional and therapy can take a long time, so I should not be disencouraged.
However, I blocked out many negative moments because of the positive ones and realizing now so much more, such as these examples:
- He sometimes displayed anger issues, including pushing me against a wall, mimicking me when I cried, breaking objects, and verbally abusing me.
- He often blamed me for his anger that "I made him do that" or "if you werent like this/or forgot that than I woudlnt have.." .for even small things like leaving cabinets open or misplacing items, calling me "a child" "dumb" "dramatic" , or to expressing my feelings, as he called it "complantingand i was pretending to be sad/ ADHD is a choice. I am aware it is not an excuse! It is an explenetation. i am just hurt that he would call me lazy, dumb, unwilling, careless, a child, stupid that i decide to feel like i do. he waited for me after i got diagnosed that day.. he held my hand, we sat at the table watching my results with my mom, holding my hand.
- There were instances where he embarrassed me in front of others, from screaming in public or when I was having a night with my girlfriedns at home, when he visited his family abroad, we had bottle of wine food, just moved into a new neighbourhood and our numbers got added to the neighborhood WhatsApp group: he called my up angry, claimed after leaving the house for one week, i am already busy with boys... i did not understand; he knew some people in the group, we had dinner with one neighbour before, I cried and felt embarrased in front of my friends, especially since i had not seen them for months and we had such a great time; these things happened more often when I would go out.
- or while shopping with my mom (he said he wanted to come) there was an irritation and he walked away in front of us
- He sometimes made hurtful comments and engaged in aggressive behavior, including suggesting I deserve to be fucked by other men, telling me I would regret everything, and speeding up the car during arguments. that he regrets ever talking to me, i am not worth it, i am never there for him, he will never talk to me again. At the same time he told me to believe in myself, supported me with my studies (while also telling me to drop out). He is verbally really strong and I am just confused. I was just happy when things were good, cause I loved him and wanted to hold on to that; without the anger i could have not wished for more.
- He broke up with me many times, told me afterwards he just said it out of anger did not mean anythinh.
- Last argument when my mom and sister went on a holiday (i have a thesis to write right now) he told me: no one wants you, even your family doesnt want you on a holiday with you. We facetimed a lot during that trip, they even bought gifts for my boyfriend and I. I just think right now it is so cruel that he said that.... cause it made me feel acutally at one point that it is true. actually somehow i still do that their life would be better without me in it.
- He would often leave me alone during arguments, even when we were abroad visiting his home country, leaving me feeling scared and isolated.
- screaming at me in public
- left me many time abroad alone; throwing a bike at me and telling me to get the fuck out, i was alone, no idea where to go, used google maps to find the nearest beach and bawled my eyes out at the shore. one time he even left me when my battery was low, so i had to wait for him to come back and i felt so weak.
- The last incident involved him leaving me alone in a restaurant while intoxicated, causing a scene, , i had to sit down and expressed that i wasnt feeling good, he screamed at me to stand the fuck up, and left me for a while. two women asked to help me and stayed next to me. He walked towards me and said in his native language to them that i am just crazy. I followed him home, he was marching in front of me saying it was over; i told him after all those years, how can we treat each other like that? He pushed me away and told me to go, and at home pack my bags. In panic, crying , searching a flight i stood at the door; he cried and asked to come back.
- There were still TWO DAYS to go; i stayed, even went to a museum with him, bought a book as a gift. my heart was broken; he said that he wanted to respect me as when he felt that we hugged i needed time, I was just relieved somehow that it was over; it wasnt. When i didnt want to have sex that night..we argued again and the broke a chair
- The next morning he walked out of the door and did not say a word when i tried to talk( in the meantime when he left, i walked to the kitchen and talked to his roommate, a girl that offered me her number in case i need help, hit up if she is in my home coutnry, just i thought). i saw it as a nice gesture, girl talk.
- when he came home with the flowers in his hand, and he knew that i talked to his roommate, he gave me the flowers angry; he asked me to not engage with "these people" but i told him it is nothing. Later i was unappreciated cause i was confused about the flowers and his anger. He told me 'i wanted to give you flowers and have sex' you disrespect me, you do not have to be kind to her, but to me'. i was utterly confused and sad. he screamed, (threw something again everybody heard and i felt embarrased). when i walked into the kitchen again i did not even dare to look at her when he was making sandwiches.
- That day i had to fly home, i brought the flowers, even held his hand in the buss, he made me a sandwhich for on the way which i thought was nice. I was still incredibly sad about everything that happened; but i felt bad for him somehow. I even send him a pic of the flower in the plane, i bought his favorite comic book at the airport so he could read it when he visits me next time. Now i feel so stupid, i dont know how to feel about it.
- One time he stepped out of the car in front of a traffic light, i had no drivers license, i pulled him back,
- I am really embarrased for thine one ... that same day of the traffic light, he caught me at my collar and grabbed me shaking, i was so scared i statched his neck and pushed him off me. he walked out of the car, the alarm went off, no idea how to close it, had no keys, i looking for him around at night crying. I hated myself seeing the scratches in his neck, i still feel so bad for this day. I remember every time i saw it i cried, walked out of the room, i felt so sad for him, when he smiled at me the next moring at the breakfast table, he was calm, holding my hand. we did not talk about it, never
- Now i realize: why did he touch me? Why dont i stand stiill with why I felt unsafe? I know it is no exccuse what i did. but i feel weak for never bringing it up once again. I suffer from heavy eczema since a child, scratching myself at night. These motngs are worse and i somehow think i deserve it cause of what i did to him
He had many good qualities and gestures, such as driving long distances to see me, planning romantic outings, being great with children and animals, and cooking for me every single day cause he liked to do so, plannign surprise birthdays for my mom, driving my mom to the hospital, he could be very positive overall and joyful; people, everyone around me loved him and would say; it is easy to love him
Now lisrening back to the voice messages i send (yes he gave me the world he did a lot what i am not mentioning here) but i notice once i brought up the fact that the arguments were not okay, he told me he doesnt deserve that, i should find somebody else, that i cannot reapeat this a thousand times it is not true. I supported him throughout the years, i told him that he doesnt deserve to feel this way in his anger and I am sorry for him and with help we can overcome this. He ironically joked"youre gonna pay for my sessions"?. He spends 400 euros in the month on weed (i am cool with smoking, i do it too sometimes, but than i am a bit sad that he does not want to (as he has the money) and never saw the point.
At the same time, he told me during the break up that i can call him, i should date other people (after one week), and he was serious since he wanted to build a future with me, house, baby and all. He even gave me a diamond ring, which could be symboliic seen he said as a step he said.
I dont think he has any idea......
I am angry at myself for tolerating this behavior and not recognizing the signs earlier.
I always felt guilty for small mistakes and felt like something was wrong with me.
The relationship had a negative impact on my mental health at the same time i never felt so happy in those good moments, so loved, , and I now question if he played a role in my increased sadness and depression.He made me feel like I was on top of the world while kicking me down, and I feel like a failure.
I have a study delay and an unfinished thesis. he graudated before me and found a job in the meantime, drove every weekend two hours to see me. he wanted to move abroad with me.
i was not feeling so great in my skin, and i expressed that i wanted to be more strong, independent, before moving together abroad; i always ignored that deep down I was afraid of not having enough backbone in arguments, and i was afraid abroad in case if i would be alone, plus somehow i still feel like i am not good enough. I am still not graduated (thesis in two weeks to deliver help and i am typing this impulsive text).
Despite his claims of putting more effort into the relationship I realize that I never felt safe enough and always wanted to proof myself. Hoenstly I still want to, for my fam, for him, myself. I just want to be worth.
I apologized repeatedly in voice messages, reminiscing about the good times and questioning what I could have done differently.
I tried to talk about with my mom before about this topic, we never talked about feelings growing up, she had her past too. But I see from her face that I upset her, I ask her for advice, she was watching a show she asked me to put if off cause and she was going upstairs. I apolgized a lot and said i was sorry again, that she could keep watching i ran upstairs and now I am here. it feels wrong to talk. And in an impulsive moment that I do open up, i always regret it.
Before bed she came to my room and wished me goodnight. both laying in bed in another room, i tild her i was sorry that i talked about it and i should have not done that, she had a nice glass of wine, watched a show, i was not considerate to talk about these things. she replied that she is the one that needs to apoligezed cause i havent talked about it with anyone and she is a bad mom. of course i said it is not the case, she is an amazing mom and i love her more than anything. Now i feel even worse, knowing that she feels bad. it reminds me again that talking does no good somehow, although i want to, doesnt mean other people want to talk about it or listen, it can make them upset. so here I am haha . i regret it deeply.
I don't know what to feel. I cannot name one single positive thing about myself. I feel like a failure really. When i look in the mirror i dont like what i see. throughout life i always stumbled, with no explaination why. i have alwats felt like i was not good enough, and probably because i think so, nobody will ever feel that.
I remember growing I up, i could not remember something someone said to me "i was a liar" or "i am not willing to listen" , I forgot my keys "You are stupid" , my dad throwing my clothes on the street in front of the whole neighbourhead because my room was a mess again, or got hit. these years, going though a divorce of my partents, living in an isolated trailer park for a bit with my mom and no drivers license made it hard to go out as there was nothing nearby, (my mom is amazing and worked her ass of to have a home now, i am super proud of her)i had no drivers license, heightened my loan and rented an appartment with my boyfriend together during covid (great times but lots of downs too), now i am failing myself, relationship, school, no job experience besides an internship. i am literally a failure
(this story is going to sound like bullshit maybe but i want to express confusion)
My sister and I also had a difficult time. The last argument i had with her is once she moved back after her studies failed (she is starting again she is really strong and resilient!) I visited new schools with her to check them out. while she stayed here, we argued about literally a pair of pants; i could borrow pants one day, the next morning i wore them too to go to visit the shop (she is really invested in clothes/ huge warderobe) and she got so angry, i apologized but she claimed i had no respect for her that she told me, things got heated, i cried and i walked to my room to sit on my bad, she stood in the doorway and told me "i should take more ADHD pill cause I am obviously crazy and she would rather live with my (ex-abusive) dad than with me". I yalled how can you say such thing, you dont mean it. she literally packed her suitcase and got out. My mom told me it was my fault because i wore this pants that morning.. my mom of course being sad, i tried to talk about it , i felt so alone.
I know it is wrong of me, the pants are her boundaries, she told me i could wear them the day before, without thinking i stood up the next morning, picked them up from my chair, and moved without thinking. i tried to bring up why it made me feel so sad and i believe the actions/words are maybe a bit drastic what she said: "please are you gonna use this against me for how long". I still feel upset about it till this day. After she moved, she would still come home to watch tv during the day and acted like nothing happened. of course we never talked, i stayed in my room, went to the library or took a walk.
My sister broke up with her boyfriend right now and therefore we of course immediately forgot about any past tensions. I also wanted to make it alright for my mom, always. i smile, but it never felt the same, i am still upset. Luckily now things are a bit better. i love her a lot, i just hope she is happy.
Espeically now with the study delay of two years, i feel like i am not going anywhere.
i was trying to be hopeful looking for jobs with no experience needed, to give myself some hope. i know it is stupid, i have to weeks to deliver my thesis and with everything going on i cannot seem to focus, i will try my best, My fam told me that "which job are you gonna do actually , is there something that you can do ". I laughed it away as a joke, i thought it was funny, but actually hurted me deeply because it wasnt a joke. They expressed it before.
Why does it always feel like i have to take ten extra steps to each a destination?
I recently reached out to my school counselor again: we used to talk more at school but i dissapeared for a year. i reached out, we talked for more than one hour on teams, crying my eyes and it was okay, she is amazing. she could remember what i said the first year of school walking through her doors. She told me that she never forgot about me especially since she opened up her personal life (we went through similar things in life) and she saw herself in me. Now she emails me with positive messages, always expressing that if i need to talk, even after i finish school she is there! I am really grateful for her in my life actually. I want to stay in touch i have to try my best. Even though it are small moments, they mean everything to me,This has really been a light point recently, it hit me when she told me that i need to stop thinking as she used to say to herself, that I don't matter, that there is no space for you, that i can say how i feel, i can say no, that i am worth to exist.
Anyways i dont want to self pitty myself, i am grateful to have a roof on top of my head, a family that loves me, food on the table, i am healthy, there are so many blessings.
I am sorry if i come off like i am not grateful. i am sorry if i come off unconsiderable.
I just dont know what to do, what to feel, what to think.
It feels like i am standing still for so long... It is my fault cause i allowed all these things.
I havent seen my friends for more than a year. One week ago a friend came for dinner , this already makes me happy that it is a step in the right direction !
I really dont like who i am. why cant i be more strong?
honestly it feels that i am doing something wrong, speaking so badly about him. I feel guilty and embarassed of myself. He was really kind and loving. I wonder if I would have been more strong, maybe he wouldnt disrespect me like that. Maybe I allowed him too, and I did. So it is my fault.
Still doesnt make it alright.
I hope one day to love myself. Especially before a raise a daughter of my own, Maybe if I ever did, this wouldnt have happened. I am so sad
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