#breaking conditioning

[smlmsworld]

Chapters: 8/20 Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America - All Media Types

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Vasily Karpov, Peggy Carter/Gabe Jones, James "Bucky" Barnes & Howling Commandos Members Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan, Gabe Jones, Jim Morita, James Montgomery Falsworth, Jacques Dernier, Peggy Carter, Howard Stark, Arnim Zola, Vasily Karpov, Steve Rogers, Rebecca Barnes Proctor, Angie Martinelli, Chester Phillips, Winifred Barnes, Dottie Underwood, Johann Fennhoff Additional Tags: Howling Commandos Family (Marvel), Protective Howling Commandos (Marvel), Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Human Experimentation, Prisoner of War, Torture, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Inappropriate Humor, Everyone Is Unhinged, Body Horror, Panic Attacks, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, Winter Soldier Handler Vasily Karpov, Not Agent Carter (TV) Compliant, Cold War, Red Room (Marvel), Red Room

Series: Part 12 of The Man on the Bridge Summary:

The Howling Commandos can reluctantly, spitefully, and maliciously comply with most of SHIELD’s more questionable decisions, but the sudden appearance of Vasily Karpov on the scene lights a fire of vengeance that puts them on a collision course with the newly commissioned Winter Soldier.

Canon Divergence AU Set post-WWII.

Chapter 8

Snippet:

Dugan makes it as far as the guest bathroom before his control slips. He grips the edge of the sink, knuckles white, shoulders heaving with the effort of containing the sob that wants to tear its way out of his chest.

Damn Stark and his maps. Damn Zola and Karpov and everything that took Steve and left Bucky broken beyond recognition. And damn himself most of all for failing both of them when it mattered most.

The face in the mirror is a stranger's: haggard, hollow-eyed, beard growing in patchy around his usually meticulous mustache. Three days of minimal sleep and maximum stress have taken their toll. Morita was right; he needs a break before he collapses.

But the thought of leaving Bucky, even for a couple of hours, sends something like panic clawing up his throat. What if something happens? What if Bucky needs him? What if he finally speaks again and Dugan isn't there to hear it?

"Get a grip," he mutters to his reflection.

The words sound hollow even to his own ears. Because the truth is, Bucky is alone, trapped in whatever hell Zola and Karpov constructed for him, surrounded by the fragments of his former life but unable to reach them.

And there isn't a damn thing Dugan can do about it except sit there and watch, offering a steadiness he increasingly doesn't feel, a hope he can't fully embrace.

♥♥

[lh2020]

a moment of awareness: bus etiquette for the regretably subservient

today i realized another unexamined area of my life wear guilt and shame has guided my actions.  i had to consciously remind myself that just because the bus is full, i don't have to give up my seat just because i have one.  i always feel like i have to even if there are no immediate factors that would suggest it's the right thing to do (ie:  someone who has trouble walking/standing, someone has a baby with them).  today i sat in my seat and as the bus filled itself to capacity, i fought every instinct to give up my seat.  i worked a really long shift on my day off (this would have been my saturday) and i have been doing so with a severely painful back.  who's to say i don't deserve a seat right now?  no one.  it's not that i have to justify getting to be comfortable to anyone, but i always feel like i do.  as if to suggest, i'm not worth having around unless i'm suffering for the sake of someone else's comfort.  fuck that servitude bullshit.  i sat on the bus the whole ride home and i tried to enjoy it without feeling like i was a terrible person.

[lowkeylokitalks-blog]

Empty Fullness

Another floor of illusionary being gave out from under me yesterday while I attended a class on Buddhism. For the first time I realized that not only my personality, but my entire world of ideas was simply a manifestation of ego.

I have understood for a while that we as individuals can have two states of being. That which is unconscious and as such a slave to social conditions, self created habits and our unconscious longings and desires, typically manifested in response to our earlier lives and environmental conditionings.

This is where we find self proclaimed Republicans and Democrats, Conservative Christians, Atheists and Rationalists, it’s where Realism is born and Analytical philosophers find their identity. It’s where we convince ourselves that we aren’t a simple miracle of existence but rather Frat Boys, Politicians, Teachers, Criminals, or Psychologists, Liars, Haters, Lovers or Addicts. It’s where we forget what we are and convince ourselves that we are our thoughts, paradigms, emotions and actions.

Now I still believe this, but recognize now an in-between space. While one is striving to become that vision of what they wish to be, while one is erasing the myths of our culture and past, while one is reconditioning, they can still be conditioning a newly restricted being. They are still writing a new mythological system and they are still limiting themselves to a new vision.

This is where we find our Reformers and Activists, our Neo-Shamans and our self identified Artists.

I have been doing this for some time now, and while I enjoy it much more then the world of unconscious terror, I realize now why it wasn’t entirely fulfilling.

For no matter how ideal nor seemingly perfect the new self is supposed to be. No matter how glorious the myths or the results of the conditioning, it is still limited to this egocentric self-identity and it is still Empty. Empty that is in the Buddhist way, which is to say that seen existentially outside of time, these ideals and any sense of identity derived from them are transient. They are not stable, they can change and shape shift with emotion and newly presented logics, with a different environment or even a different operating chemistry, they have no eternal form. In this way the ego creates yet one more liminal stage, which while more aware of the unconscious is not yet free of the limitations of the psyche that the ego self inflicts.

So what now?

I’m not sure. Yet I think the answer is in the same Emptiness that has swallowed the idealist rug beneath my feat.

For while Empty, in the void there is potential for everything. As all existence came from that nothingness before the Big Ban, which the Greeks referred to as Nyx and the Buddhists as Nirvana. In this Emptiness, everything is possible.

So I suppose the answer is too see all as Empty, including oneself, and yet realize that this means all is infinitely full. Rather then locking oneself into the desire for a perfected or greater idealized person, one must instead throw away any concept of a constructed self and simply Be. From this then they will be presented with all the possibilities of the infinitely Empty life we find ourselves within and be free of the blinders of ideology, socially conditioned and self conditioned paradigms and the limits of human understanding.

How to do this?

I don’t entirely know, but suppose this is a start and so I proclaim that I am Nothing, and yet being Nothing, I am filled with the Everything spinning itself out into some epic tapestry of life, of which I am a part, and ever so glad for that.