#chrisllamacolfer

[sanfrancrissco]

My review would be: Riker. Safety Dance. Mmm. Warblers. Mmm. Yeah. Final Thought? Riker. Safety Dance. Mmm.

My review of Glee The 3D Concert Movie found on my camera this morning. Suddenly everyone else's seems like sound, coherent and worthwhile journalism.

[sanfrancrissco]

I enjoyed Colfer, Colfer's arse, Colfer's legs, Colfer's face... I also enjoyed wait no, what I didn't enjoy was there was no single ladies and the lack of skit but I did enjoy Darren and... others... The puckerman bit that was favourite... well no Colfer was mainly. This has been my review. What's my final thought? I like Colfer

Holly's video review of Glee The 3D Concert Movie that I found on my camera this morning.

[sanfrancrissco]

Writing a list of stuff I need for the weekend and this is legit the top half of it

Make up, (Holly has my foundation)

Vodka (Holly has this)

THG (Holly's copy)

Plums (For Holly)

We're so co dependent.

[sanfrancrissco]

I've just realised how close this weekend is

and I can't wait to see my girls.

Although, I have just come up against a problem.

My bank account has 0.00 funds available.

And I only have £1.70 on my oyster card.

Crying to the parentals is going to required or I'm stuck in Kings Cross Station for t'weekend.

[sanfrancrissco]

Holly we should orchestrate it so that we see the hunger games together.

Mainly because I don't trust anyone else to not judge me when I inexplicably yell at the screen because Peeta.

And it's your fault I'm even interested.

[sanfrancrissco]

An Open Letter To Darren Criss

This is, in theory, under a read more. I've tried 3 times. Sorry if it's not cos its MEGA long.

Darren,

This has been sat, half finished, in my drafts for a while.  It's probably one of the hardest things I've ever written but at the same time, it was also very easy. Everything in this is aimed at you Darren, it's also all about you in one way or another but I don't actually ever expect you to read it. You're more just a point to concentrate on, and a good one because in many ways you're the only thing that ties all this together in a positive light. It's something someone important to me has pushing me to do for a long time because they thought it would help, now that it's done I think they were right.

I'm 23 right now, this July I'll be 24 but this story begins back in 2009 about two weeks before my 21st, I was working late at my summer job when a man was refused service because we had already closed. He wasn't happy and got angry very quickly and it resulted in me receiving a strike to the head with a metal canister as he continued to yell at my manager that we weren't serving him because we were racist. I honestly don't really remember much of it these days, I've blocked it out but I know I've never felt more terrified. If security hadn't stepped in when they did I think things would have been a lot worse. The next week or two are a bit of a blur to me, there was a lot of crying, a lot of jumping in fright when anyone even so much as hinted they were going to raise their voice. I flinched when all but a few very close friends touched or even tried to touch me and I spent countless hours having to re-watch footage of my attack while going over my statement until I was reliving it so vividly in my head I was having panic attacks. When they were finally happy with my statement things settled down, I started to get back into a routine and I honestly thought everything was going to be okay.

My 21st came and went, I had a wonderful party with my family and friends all around me and for about 24 hours I think I actually felt safe and okay and maybe even forgot about it for a while.

Three weeks later the man that assaulted me walked into my work bold as brass and strutted right up to the security guard who'd been on duty at the time. He moved quickly and he was arrested within minutes, unfortunately I was in the store at the time and before they could find me and get me out the way I was confronted with him being escorted out back to the police. I know my legs gave way, I know he laughed at me. I don't know much else, I blacked out. At 3am in the morning an officer called my house and insisted my dad wake me up to tell me they'd released him without charge. I didn't sleep for 3 days.

For those 3 restless nights I spent trawling the internet trying to distract myself from the fear. It was then, on that last night that I stumbled across Starkid on youtube. A Very Potter Musical certainly distracted me for an entire night and I felt better. It'd made me laugh, it'd made me forget and it reminded me that I'd get over it, that things would get better. It also gave me the strength to ask for help, I finally went to the Doctor the next day Darren, and yeah, I broke down. She made me fill out this questionnaire that compared how I was feeling to the incident. She said I was suffering from a bout of depression brought on by the fear and the stress of it all. She gave me a mild antidepressant to take and some sleeping pills. I was reluctant to take either but my mum convinced me to at least take the antidepressants, for nearly a month all they did was make me sick, but slowly I started to feel more human again. I filed the prescription for my sleeping pills but I didn't want to become reliant on them so I vowed to never take them unless I really needed to, the only time I ever did was the night before the court case.

Once I got help my life started to feel a little more normal, stable. I still had bad days for a while but about a week after I finally went to the see a doctor I got a phone call from the police, they'd arrested him again and charged him this time. I had a court date, for November. It was nearly September by now and I was getting ready to go back to University, I made a promise to myself to concentrate on my studies and not dwell on the court case. Things got a bit harder back at uni, I didn't have my parents or any of the people that had become my support network close by. My housemates were fantastic and very understanding about it all which is just as well because I'd stopped being able to cope on my own. I remember one day in mid October I dropped a bowl of hot soup in the hallway and I just burst into tears. I was home alone and I couldn't even think how to clean it up, I called my housemate home from a party and she found me still sat, crying by the soup like I was devastated. That was the first night of many when I went back to watching AVPM to lift myself up again.

The court case was probably the hardest day of my life. I felt humiliated as his defense lawyer tore me apart and called me a liar and showed me the same 30 seconds of footage so often even the Magistrates were confused. I collapsed twice in the court room but as court adjourned at the end of the day the prosecution lawyer found me to tell me and I'd be fantastic and he was optimistic of a conviction. I slept the best I had since July. He was wrong though, he was found Not Guilty because they didn't think he'd meant to hit me. I will never understand how they reached that conclusion. But I needed to move on, I couldn't let him win by dwelling on it. So I cried that night but the next day I went back to university determined to enjoy my final year and to not let him beat me.

Until March I was doing fine, then out of nowhere I suffered from insomnia for 5 weeks straight. I occasionally managed to fall asleep during the day on the sofa but my dreams were often filled with nightmares from the assault. Lesson's weren't helping, I studied law and human rights and in one of my classes we spent 3 weeks discussing how traumatic giving evidence was to a witness. I stopped going to the class because I couldn't take it, by this point everyone knew about the assault and the court case and I could feel them watching, waiting for my next breakdown. I caught up on the notes from my housemate and submitted all my work online. My grade dropped slightly, but I felt better and my health was more important. During those 5 weeks of sleep deprivation I wrote 10,000 words of my 12,500 word dissertation, watched all 10 seasons of Friends, countless movies and AVPM at least 3 times. In some ways I made the most of a bad situation.

Now Darren you're probably thinking my whining is going to be done with now right? I got my coursework handed in, I went away on holiday over Easter with my best friend and I was ready to enjoy my last term at university revising in the sun, drinking cocktails at midday and doing the odd exam between social events. And that plan was going pretty damn well actually, in the final two weeks of exams when people were finding it harder to find time to eat, never mind see each other we made a pact that whoever didn't have an exam the next day cooked for everyone else. It became a bit of a competition, each night was themed and we scored each other's cooking, entertainment and decorations. It lightened the mood a little but it was on one of these nights that my degree went from fabulous to catastrophe.

I started blacking out for short amounts of time with no warning. I'd be upright one moment and unresponsive on the floor seconds later. I would come around unaware I'd even blacked out, I just didn't understand why I was on the floor. The first trip to the hospital they sent me home because I'd had one glass of wine with my dinner 5 hours ago so clearly I was drunk. I slept on the sofa with my housemates taking shifts in the chair in case anything happened to me. I seemed okay in the morning, then at lunchtime my friend Rob came over, letting himself in as he always did, and found me unconscious in the kitchen. I continued to black out all day, right through dinner. After dinner my temperature suddenly shot through the roof and it was decided to take me back to hospital. They took me seriously this time and kept me in overnight, I was sent for a C.T scan but they found nothing and my blood tests were all clear, so once again I was sent home with no answer. It was Monday now and my final exam was Tuesday morning. My housemates contacted the Law Faculty and explained was happening I was told to turn up for the exam no matter how ill I felt because it'd look better if I'd at least tried. I was so dizzy I could barely sit up on Tuesday morning but with a lot of help I got into my exam room and I stayed conscious for a grand total of 35 minutes. With my loss of consciousness went any chance of a decent degree grade.

The Doctor's finally agreed to put me forward for more testing but my first appointment with the consultant wasn't until June and it was September before I actually had any tests done. In the meantime I wasn't allowed to do anything; I was medically banned from driving, heavy lifting, standing too long, sitting too long, lying still too long, exercise, drinking and excessive changes in core temperature. In short I pretty much had to stop having a life and just exist, with nearly everything being done for me. I grew frustrated pretty quickly because it wasn't even as if it was making me feel any better. I was still passing out all the time.

My birthday came around again and with it a lot of itunes vouchers, your EP came out 5 days before my birthday along with AVPS and, after my friends stopped visiting because there's only so many times you can make small talk that has to pause every so often while the other person regains consciousness, they both ended up on repeat for longer than I'd care to admit. I wasn't really listening to them, not really, I just knew the sounds somewhat up lifted me a little bit. 

It carried on like this well into August, most people didn't really notice, I got good at hiding how I was really feeling but by the time my exam results came and I realised that although they were allowing me to pass that's all they were allowing me to do, it was the worst grade possible. Suddenly, even if they did find out what was wrong with me and I did get better I would have no prospects. What good was a mediocre law degree? They're going to want the best in law. I might as well of failed. My mood dropped dramatically at this point, I wouldn't leave my room, I rarely turned on the lights. I went back to work, but I wouldn't speak to anyone and I spent my days consumed by the thoughts of the failure I'd become. I couldn't see a way it was going to get better anymore Darren, there was no sunshine on the horizon, just more disappointment. I never thought I'd get like this Darren, I always tried to find something good in things you know? No matter how trivial, with my assault I guess that was Starkid but I stopped listening to music, I stopped looking for the light because I'd convinced myself it wasn't there anymore.

At this point Darren you have to understand, I didn't want to die. But I honestly, truly (and it scares me so damn much that my mind was capable of this) thought it was the only option, that my life had reached the natural ending point and all that was left was for me to do the deed. It scares me now how much of my day was spent thinking of how to do it. I didn't see it as suicide, because as I said I didn't feel that I wanted to die, just that I needed to so I was determined it look like an accident. It's making my skin crawl to admit this but I spent days working out where I'd need to land when I fell down the stairs for it to work. I was going to do it and I owe you so damn much that I didn't.

I'd decided that the next day was the day and for some reason (and I'm SO thankful for it) I chose to finally turn my itunes back on before I did it. I hit play not really noticing what was currently selected and started to rearrange things in my room, just passing the time. It was your EP that started playing and for the first time (and I thank everything that's good in the world for this) I was actually listening to the lyrics. Human made me see sense Darren, the words of that song reminded me why I'd gone to uni to study Law and Human Rights in the first place, reminded me that yes I hadn't done as well as I'd hoped but I could still help people liked I'd wanted. And as I realised that I realised that maybe I would be sick for life (and as it turns out I will be, but its controllable) it didn't mean I couldn't achieve my dreams and enjoy life. I'm not going to dramatise this and claim it only took one listen to save me, it really didn't, it took weeks to put myself back together properly, hell it's been nearly two years and I'm still not totally there. But your song still helped, still helps even. I listen to it at least once everyday, to give myself perspective. I don't know what made me turn my music back on that day Darren, maybe I was just hoping I'd find something to latch onto and stop myself but what if I hadn't found it Darren? It actually terrifies me that if something else had been playing and it didn't resonate like human did that I might not be here today.

And if I wasn't here today I wouldn't have added seeing the Glee tour in 3 cities to my memories, I wouldn't have added Mcfly in PARIS to them either and most importantly, all things considered I wouldn't have heard you perform Human live (twice!) in London. Which leads me to the final thing I want to say (other than thank you a million damn times). When I was finally diagnosed with my condition I was warned that excessive stress/excitement combined with heat would probably still make me collapse even with medication. I doubt you remember this yourself but some people reading this may remember at your evening gig at The Borderline a girl collapsed midway through your set, I came home to tumblr making a lot of comments that were along the lines of "Okay Darren's good but fainting omg?! Too far". That girl was me, I didn't faint at your obscene amount of talent or your good looks (sorry) I fainted because I'd literally that morning got off a 12 hour coach ride back from the Glee tour in Dublin and it was excessively hot in that club. I felt like a tool that day when I came around midway through Human (of all songs) but you know what? I don't think I've EVER been so grateful about collapsing because if it wasn't for that song I wouldn't have even been there anymore to collapse.

So you didn't even know you did it Darren but thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for saving my life, for saving me from myself and continuing to do so, everyday.

Sheryl

x

[sanfrancrissco]

chrisllamacolfer liked your post: Dad just made me watch Earthflight.

WHY? WHY WOULD YOU LIKE THIS?!

WHY

[sanfrancrissco]

He could turn up at my door in crocs and I'd fuck him

Holly on how far Darren could push socially acceptable dressing before she'd reject him.