This app has done me so wonderfully while Iāve had it
In ways that I canāt even begin to talk about this app and reading fanfiction in general has saved my life
It singlehandedly resparked my imagination and creativity
Gave me a safe place to explore ideas, thoughts and concepts that I couldnāt get out of my head
Itās allowed me to decipher feelings that Iāve had hidden deep inside
Formulate them into something comprehensible
I donāt have any desire to read fanfiction any longer
While I always have and always will love reading, I finally want to be present
For the first time in my entire life, I finally want to be present
My love for attack on titan will never ever die. I may not be a diehard fan whoās entire life revolves around the show anymore, but I will never stop loving or rewatching my show.
I have been battered, assaulted, neglected and hurt throughout the entirety of my life, and in the absence of any form of socialization, friendship or real love, attack on titan and itās characters filled in the void that nothing else would.
With the endless philosophies and theories that are insinuated and portrayed within the show, I have learned so incredibly much about life and the way I viewed myself and the world around me.
Eren taught me to embrace myself and hold myself to a higher light, simply because I exist. He taught me to never look back. To STOP looking back. That your personal freedom was the ONLY thing to strive for, your only goal. Nothing else was, is, or will be more important. Move forward. Move forward and keep going, even when it hurts, you TAKE your freedom.
Mikasa taught me a devotion to hold for the ones you love like nobody else ever could.
āI don't like the terms "good person" or "bad person" because it is impossible to be entirely good to everyone. To some, you are a good person, while to others, you are a bad person.ā
That statement from Armin alone changed my entire perspective on life and what it means to truly be myself. As a character who was already relatable to my timid, fragile younger self, he opened my eyes up and taught me to accept that I couldnāt be perfect and that I was worth every ounce of love I deserve even if Iāve been ābadā. That my worth doesnt come solely for my actions and how proper I am. That even though I hold it together, I am still a wreck inside and it causes me to unintentionally hurt.
Armin made me conscious. He made me aware of the much bigger picture behind what it means to ābeā.
Watching Jean grow into a man as he was intended gave me hope for the world. Albeit slight, he brought me hope. Hope that more people would follow their own steps into blossoming into the man (or woman) that they felt as though they were meant to be. He embraced his flaws and discovered ways to turn them into his advantages.
Also he was such a classical hopeless romantic, I loved him so much. Heād paint portraits of beautiful women heād love to spoil and properly love. He spoke so softly and gently about women, offered his entirety to the one that would allow him, kept himself clean and graceful for himself and for them.
He taught me much about what qualities I wanted in a man. Someone full of pure genuine love and no hidden intents or malice. A man whoād see my beauty and want to praise it, not take. A man whoād be so enamored with me that he wouldnāt be able to keep himself away. Not in the way that Iād been used to.
Connie and Sasha. The bond that they shared. The laughter they kept up. The unbroken cheeriness in the face of constant adversity. That joy was everything Iāve ever wanted to have, and if they had it whilst going against a 60 meter monster hell bent on destroying them and their home, whoās to say I canāt do it despite having been torn to shreds from the inside out.
Levi. Oh Levi.
He warmed me the way a dad would. Strict, stern, unwavering and emotionless, not unlike my own, yet opposite to him in every other way. No matter how tall he felt as though he needed to stand to be taken seriously with such reverence, he showed such genuine care to his team. To Erwin, to Hange, to his partners and collaborators.
There was no longer an excuse. Stoicism is not an excuse for poor judgment and uncalled for meanness. He broke the excuse.
Behind that mask lay a beautiful man, mature and clear. Entirely fulfilling to those he loves and so tender with his touch.
I could envision him loving me. I could feel him laying me down gently, not for any sex. To massage me. To graze his fingers through my skin. To comb and brush my hair and give me little braids or styles. To put a light layer of makeup on me, only to enhance my features rather than slathering a full face on for a false sense of security. Heād be so attentive to me. Studying me to see where he could comfort and console me, and taking initiative to actually do so. Heād prepare me for any sexual encounter. Heād take his time. Heād let me take my time. Heād ask me questions and seek constant reassurance from me. Heād keep me safe. Remind me that Iām safe. Ensure that I knew that I was always ok under his grasp. And he would do this purely out of his heart. Solely because Iām the only person he had ever found any solace in. Because I allowed him the safety of letting that side of him out. As he did for me.
What Jean did to me emotionally, Levi did to me physically. He taught me how I wanted to be touched. Finally, something had taught me.
Grisha Jaeger. A terrible father to one son, and a spectacle of a father for his next.
I was the Zeke to my own father, and my siblings were four Erenās I had to swallow down and forcibly watch receive the love I so desperately wanted.
The memories viewed within the Paths, the realizations Zeke had to undergo, all of it was just so close to home.
Understanding that your parents are just two other hurt people in this life who were failed and forced to conform to parenthood and life is one thing. I swallowed that pill long ago, logic has always been something easy for me to grasp onto.
But actually feeling it. Understanding it in your heart, not just your mind. That was something only the Jaeger family managed to do. How deeply rooted that pain from your childhood self truly is. How far it affects the rest of your life. The views you hold of the world. Of authority. Of people. I refused to see all of it until I was inadvertently forced to. Through their lens.
Grisha was a victim of his own child/livelihood. Another product of his environment and the authority that was held over him.
Nothing would ever be able to excuse his treatment of Zeke, especially when compared to how well he was able to parent Eren, but to see his actions having changed as a direct result of his previous failures, to see him realize how terrible of a husband and father he truly was, to see him accept this fact and repent. Repent endlessly for years for the family the lost, to see him actually grieve and mourn their absence and desperately wish that he could change it, ensuring that his current actions reflected what he desperately wanted to change it to
I just wanted my father to do the same.
Maybe the cycle was broken a little too late, but he broke it. He changed himself.
And in the end it made all the difference.
I donāt yet know what life has in store for me and my own dad, but if thereās a chance that I can one day receive a hug that heartfelt by my father. If thereās a chance that I can one day hear how sorry he felt for his own transgressions against me. If I can one day be told how much he loves me and genuinely feel it, I will live. Because the hurt that weāve experienced from our familial loved ones is unjustifiable, but if the reasonings understood to have caused that behavior are, there is always something worth hoping in. Those wounds are in fact healable, and through the work, youāll find such solace in the newfound relationship that is born.
Zeke Jaeger
Zeke
I canāt tell you how much I love you. Not in a romantic way, I donāt think it ever truly was. You are me.
Youāre all of my childhood expectations. My childhood hopes and dreams. My childhood actions and repercussions.
You are all of my repressed teenage anger and angst. All of my isolated youth despite showing no open signs of it.
You are my discarded feelings. My denial. My refusal to truly understand my father, my refusal to understand and accept how it all has affected my personality and behavior towards others.
You are secretive, as I once was. You hide your insecurities and shame through a veil of a falsely mysterious and serious facade, as I once did.
You are cautious and weary. Expertly mastered how to conceal your true self, true feelings, and true intentions. Expertly mastered exactly how to speak and act to get people to like you. To respect you. Expertly mastered how to curate an existence that was entirely separate to your own, sharing your body with another entity. All as I once did.
You let yourself slip into darkness and unintentionally allowed your demons to turn your passion into hatred, hatred that scarred other people as a casualty. As happened to me.
At such a young age your experiences shaped you into a āmatureā soul. Capable of everything your superiors are, capable of taking and withholding pain and pressure without a sound. As happened to me.
The constant weight of stress and pressure turned you nihilistic. As it did to me.
And despite the hurt and constant pressure, you worked so hard. You studied hard and trained diligently every single day. Preparing yourself for the life that had already been planned out for you, even if it wasnāt exactly what you wanted. You arrived to achieve these dreams and make the best of it, even if none of it was yours. As I once did.
And in the end, right before the finish line, everything was crushed. Your plan was destroyed by forces beyond your control. Your life turned into complete disarray and turmoil, all by forces beyond your control. As it happened to me.
You lost yourself completely. As I once did.
Behind all of this, behind all of the appearances and secrets, there was always the true you.
The you that was goofy and actually quite aloof. The you that was snarky and sarcastic, witty with your smarts rather than using it for pretension. The you that was as sensitive as you were afraid to accept. The one that loved so deeply and so desperately missed the childlike wonder in our eyes that was stolen from us. And that childlike wonder too, still remained. The you that yearned to find and see the good and beauty in life. The one that longed to experience it, unlike the front you adorned that was deeply afraid to.
As everything broke apart, you were forced to look at the shattered fragments and thoroughly examine them. This was your puzzle to solve, and with every piece that you picked up came new revelations. Things throughout your life that explained current behaviors and feelings. Things that you noticed you completely missed out on due to that pessimism. Colors and vibrancies that stood so tall before you that you were forced to see were left unnoticed by you, again due to that pessimism. All of those mistakes, those failures, those errors in trial, the true pain of life. All that you buried in the name of āself sufficiencyā, only to be thrown directly into your face so that you could no longer ignore and deny it.
To sit with the ultimate loss. To sit with every single thing in your life taken and stripped away from you. To accept this loss and finally admit that you fumbled. That youāre gravely hurt. That youāre insufferably alone. That you are in fact real, alive, and just afraid to truly live.
All of that pain we avoided, only to see that when itās finally brought to the light we can learn so much about ourselves. Our past selves and our present.
And once this release is formed, weāre reborn.
We look up to the sky and see the sky as we do everyday, except this time,
Itās seen.
You see the sun for the first time since you were five. You see its brightness that hurts your eyes when you gleam. You see itās color soaring through the sky, painting the clouds as it rises and departs.
You see how beautifully the trees sway against the business of the human world. How delicately the ocean waves in accordance to the tune of the moon.
How the moon itself is a goddess. The most beautiful natural phenomena of our world. How she never ignores you. Never defies you. She looks at you directly into your eyes with her own, and theyāre so tender.
You notice how the way you love animals is the way you should love yourself. The way you should love those closest to you if you can.
You realize just how connected everything is. How harmonious the vast number of cycles of life present actually are. How nothing matters and everything matters at the same time. How the world is incomprehensible large yet minuscule all at once. How you are the only certainty that exists.
We can learn the roots of all of our problems and stumble to find the solutions. We can take it day by day and learn how to change.
And as the days go by, learning turns into understanding. Stumbling turns into running. Taking it day by day turns into enjoying things day by day.
We relearn ourselves. Relearn our concept of existence. And only one thing remains constant.
And that one thing is love.
I have covered the trueness of what you give me with a false recognition of my love for you as lust. A product of what has been done to me over and over again. From childhood up until now.
I have spent years picturing us fucking from night to dawn. Picturing a healthy relationship built off of sex, one that was unfair of me to do to you.
I spent so much time meaninglessly finding solace in your body, escaping my misery through your hands and your privates. I spent so much time wondering why it was nothing more than a temporary reprieve.
It took me far too long to realize that it didnāt feel like true relief, because it wasnāt.
I had been doing to you what every man in my life up until this point has done to me. I had been repeating the cycle. Continuing the abuse of person through the use and āappreciationā of their vessel.
You are me. I am you.
When my brother put his hands to me, I lost every ounce of faith I had in a man.
And without realizing what I had been doing to you was a form of abuse in its own right, I had been punished in real life for it.
That slap in the face woke me up.
I stopped desiring sex as a whole.
I could no longer stand to picture sex, even if it was with you.
I couldnāt stand to picture what you looked like unclothed anymore.
I couldnāt stand to imagine a rowdy night with you. An unspecified scenario that led to the āgreatest fuckā our lives. I couldnāt stand picturing an empty relationship that resembled nothing of either of us just because I wanted one without truly realizing what one consisted of in the first place any longer.
My hatred for men fully rising to the surface allowed me to truly exercise it from inside of me.
I no longer felt the need to scratch and pick at my skin in hopes that all that was contained within it could finally spill out.
I was still lonely. Desperately desiring the touch of another person.
But it wasnāt sex.
It finally wasnāt sex.
Sex never did anything good for me, and it absolutely was not going to cure me.
I love you so much I couldnāt stop picturing you altogether. Besides my family you were all I had. You were my best friend. You were my lover. You were my mentor. You were all I had left to hang onto.
I started imagining the real you. Imagining how you would truly see me. The real me. Not the fabricated character I would invent to try to appease you. You treated her humanely. You were playful and at times a little assholey, but you treated her like a true person. You spoke to her clearly and engaged her oddness. You were mesmerized by her vessel but that wasnāt what drove you to her. By any means. You enjoyed her presence alone. The love that vibrated through her. You enjoyed her conversation, her depth, her love, everything that she radiated and put out into the world and into you.
You made the realize that this was what I craved my entire life all along.
It wasnāt a boyfriend, it wasnāt to experience āgoodā sex, it wasnāt to become a different person in the name of not being ābetterā than me.
It was to finally be seen, no matter how uncomfortable that vulnerability felt, and to be loved unconditionally throughout all that was seen.
You were my practice. My simulation. The only person and thing that allowed me to truly lay myself completely out in the open for.
You were always me all along. And once I realized I couldnāt treat you that way anymore, I realized that I had to do the same for myself.
If I couldnāt be loved the way you would love me, or the way Jean or Levi would the way it was presented in my head, I would no longer settle.
There is no acceptance for anything less.
I have so incredibly much left to learn and heal and level up from. So much more to look forward to and experience in this life that has been so limited.
With 100% certainty, for the first time in my entire life,
I really am ready.
Thank you Hajime Isayama for creating a show that is so vibrant and so deeply woven in storyline. I loved it from a pure watching experience alone, but as a DELULU ass bitch who was genuinely stripped down to nothing, this story was a manual that I followed.
I couldnāt have asked for a better one.
Thank you for all of the tears, joyful and otherwise. Thank you for all of the lessons learned. For all of the concepts explored. For all of the feelings you have helped me release. Thank you for the dreams and the visuals. Thank you for readying me for the world in ways that everything else failed to do.
I donāt yet know if I will delete this app or not
I have zero desire to read fanfiction again, and truthfully I want it to permanently stay that way.
Regardless, some of my best memories have been made here and I appreciate those memories with all of my heart. Tumblr has been nothing but good to me, and to any of you who for whatever reason are still here on my shitty small ass account, I hope that it helps you too.
Stay safe and heal those wounds, please donāt lose yourself in the mess of the real world and the false safety of the false world
You are all very very loved and are capable of being free, only if you believe so (even if you have to force it for years on end, fake it till you make it)
Iāll probably never open this app again even if I do keep it installed, but either way if anyone sees this, I still love you fr
Iām still goofy and out of pocket and full of love and sexy and amazing yāall š Iām just more serious now, and thatās so much more than ok





















