Today, I'm doing the 2nd business' website so that I can start making Email Newsletters to be sent out to prospect clients.
For the Guitar Business, once I get home from school later, I will finish the layouts to be sent to the packaging supplier so that I can do the photoshoot sometime this week to next week and promote it on my video editing company.
I've been slacking on the magazine one since I am only human. Personally, I've stopped comparing myself to my classmates who have already made more profit than I within campus and sometimes within campus of their past educational institute. Another prominent classmate has events with major companies, but rather than being envious, I have set them as my "bar" to meet rather than a black and white way of thinking that they are my opponents.
Spiritually, with me being enrolled in a catholic university that has a rigid system built on traditionalism of religion which I appreciate honestly, due to the fact that my morality and conscience is constantly being poked. It makes me wonder why I am in a mathematic-oriented college, with me being more advanced and adept in ICT, Arts, Music, Writing, Sociology, Sciences, but not numbers--1 and 7 look the same to me, 3,6, 8 and 9 all look the same. 2 and 5 looks the same. I dont understand numbers and they add letters. I understand logic but why am I being forced to compute the same test as my other classmates with a time limit of an hour or sometimes with another half hour.
Then there is the philosophy. I come from an abused home, a constant battle i face everyday even if the last time I was beat up was at least a year ago--the trauma all feels like it was yesterday or just a few minutes ago. People dont understand that while im looking at them, running three one-man corporations, smiling, being creative, pretending, bending for my family to keep peace, hiding myself--my true self...
loneliness.
Despite this, there's a push I feel that I'm meant to do certain things. Even I cannot control myself sometimes. When will I die? When will the world stop? Life is all that there is and my making the "most" out of it is not socializing for fun--I find this most difficult as I lack the "nuance" certain children have faced in childhood--the envy, insecurity, or longing for something which made me struggle to fit in, but the urge to create, to put up businesses, to make money and innovate... it wins.
I want to say 'I hope this continues on' but I do not want to for the flow has not stopped.
I dont think it ever will.
Three – Phoenix Ikki and Smoker Before I ever met Yuri and Flynn and everyone else in Crystallis, there was a village inside a barrier known as Luceti. I was trapped inside a barrier in this place for three years of my reversed life. Everyone who lived there were brought in to be experimented on by an organization known as the Malnosso. We were given wings and barcodes on the backs of our necks.…
I often told myself in high school that things would get better after I graduated. I didn’t have a plan, but I had ideas. Goals, with no definite concept of how I would get there. I’ll be damned if I didn’t really want to follow through on it. There were many things I wasn’t expecting to happen.
Getting kicked out of my house and moving across the country to live with my father was definitely one of those things. A blessing in disguise, looking back. I hated it when it happened. I had to leave all of my friends, my girlfriend, my family that I had in my hometown. Any plans I had, thrown out the window. Forced to improvise. Think on my feet, to work with what limited resources I had. So I moved. I left everything to go live with my father, who I loved dearly.
My father and mother divorced in the beginning of high school. It was tough on the kids, but it didn’t really affect me. I suppose I saw it coming. That’s what I tell myself and my therapist. There’s a half truth to that. So throughout high school, I spent my summers in California away from any friends i had and I lived with my father for a quarter of the year. It was almost preparation for post-graduation.
Living in California full time changed me, for however short I had lived there. The first year I was there, I got a job. Shitty fast food job, but it was something. It got me money to do what I wanted, within reason. I joined a church youth group, which gave me something to look forward to every week. It was a measly hour and a half that I got to feel wanted, but I made it work. Even that faded with time. I grew distant, from both my family and my new friends. I hardly contacted my friends back in Michigan. I found myself alone most of the time, closed off to the world and living only with my video games.
The second year, I decided to go to school. College. I figured it was time. Problem was, I was lazy in doing everything needed. I only took one class. As soon as that was done, I left college and proceeded to work again. Changed jobs, doing work for a wedding planner. That was a pleasant gig, however short that was. My father urged me to continue school, so I decided to try again. In fall of 2014, I started the process of becoming a medical professional. I made it through the first semester. Second semester, I failed. Held back. That’s how the program worked. If you didn’t pass all of the courses for that semester, you had to repeat the class you failed while everyone else moved on.
That devastated me. My self esteem, already in the shitter, took a massive hit. I tried to kill myself. It was not a proud moment, but it was ultimately a very private one. My family doesn’t know.
I only had to attend class twice a week, for a few hours. It was a drastic change from the full-time schedule I was used to. Especially since the first five weeks, I didn’t have to attend at all. So I went home. I took some time to visit my mother and the rest of my family. Soul searching, I suppose. I reconnected with old friends, met with the ex-girlfriend, and kind of found some purpose. I told myself, that when I graduated from the program, I would move back to help my family. To help my brothers. One of them had just left for college, while the other was still in middle school. I didn’t want him to be the only brother left while the other two disappeared. I couldn’t do that to him. So I told myself to keep going.
Third year in California, I found myself trudging through school and fighting every day to stay alive. I broke up with the ex, because that was a thing. I met another girl. She was certainly one of the most powerful loves of my life, if not the love of my life. She got me through the last few months of school, honest. If not for her, I would have quit. Or worse, I would have killed myself. I pushed on for her and my plans changed. I would move to the east coast to help her and to help myself. I was going to make a life for myself and make things better for both of us.
I graduated, took my boards, passed and got licensed. I visited her just after thanksgiving. It was mystical. Best week of my life. Until I visited her again the next month, celebrating new years with her. I made a new years resolution to make things better. To be a better person. I came to visit once again in february for a convention in DC, where I came upon an opportunity to live closer to her. I took the opportunity, leaving DC to go back to Michigan, where I picked up my things and left several days later.
Things were great. For a while anyway. I came upon problem after problem, but I fought through it and solved them as they came. We did, together. There were some rough times, but that was expected. Life loved to throw curveballs at people, but we held steadfast. So I thought. Plans changed. The person I was house sitting for had changed their own plans repeatedly, finally settling on a return date that didn’t leave much room for error. I had to think on my feet. With the help of my love, I found a place for cheap and started living there.
From that point, things started going downhill. Maybe they were gone far before and I just hadn’t noticed. We were struggling, but we still tried. Tension grew, fights became more frequent. We were sharing a car and it seemed alright, but she eventually stopped talking to me. I stopped feeling like I was her boyfriend, or even liked. I imagine that it might have been my fault somehow, and turns out I was part of the problem. But that’s what communication is for. I don’t like that I had found out so late, after everything was said and done. Alas.
Eventually, she stopped talking to me altogether. Responses became short, even over text. There was no connection anymore, but I refused to believe it. I had plans to fix things, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to fix. Didn’t know how to. One night, she told me she couldn’t do it anymore. Said she had a ton of stuff going on and that the relationship wasn’t helping. I fought against it, but I relented. I wasn’t going to fight for something that had been lost long before the conversation.
I went back to my friends house that night, I cried on their couch like a helpless child. Just as I cried when I got kicked out, or when I failed college. Life was constantly throwing curveballs at me, after being so consistent. Weeks later, I got the feeling that she wasn’t being honest with me. Since we were still sharing her car, I was forced to see her day after day. I came upon the knowledge that she was so suddenly close to another guy. My gut told me what I always feared, and my gut is never wrong. Of course the signs became clear. People always seem to underestimate my ability to read faces and pick up on subtle cues. I was a theatre kid for 5 years and I’m a writer. You have to be observant to be decent at any of those.
Vehemently denying everything, I let it lie. I know the truth. I always have, I just refused to believe it. She would say she wasn’t angry with me, but I could see the brief flash of disgust/contempt. She would say she was fine, when I could see the despair/pensive idlen in her eyes. Its the first thing people underestimate in me.
That was less than a month ago. I’m typing this now because I feel there’s a lesson to be learned somewhere in all this. A few lessons. Probably more than a few. Regardless, I’ve found myself returning to the same place I was with each and every time life decided it was going to crush me. And in each of those times, I found something else to fight for. I found new purpose each of those times, and I hope that this time is the same. I hope that I find something else to fight for. A new light, a new reason to keep on going on. Sure, there’s family and friends and new loves to be hand, but a real purpose. Something to light the fire under my ass, to inspire me to take the steps I need to become better.
Each time, I’ve grown and learned from my mistakes. I feel I’ve become a better person for it. No matter how much it’s hurt me before, no matter how much I wanted to end it all...i found something to pull me out of the abyss. So I type this now, as much as a reflection as it is a reminder. That in all things, no matter how desperate...no matter how bleak and terrifying and absolutely devastating...there is something to be gained from it. It might be cynicism. Optimism. It might make us worse, it might make us better. There is still something to be had from it. If life really wanted to end us, it would have. There are so many things that can go wrong in a blink of an eye that would completely destroy us and leave us with nothing, not even a lesson. But if it doesn’t, there’s a reason for it. I don’t really believe in fate, or a higher power. I just believe that life is a cruel mistress, that finds enjoyment in toying with our lives. Seeing how we deal with certain situations, certain circumstances that reveal themselves after a sickening chain of events. Sometimes the result is pleasant and eye-opening. Sometimes the result is disheartening and corrupting. Sometimes, it’s benign.
Regardless, there’s something there. Spend time with your loved ones if you can. Cherish the time you have. Live life, but not like you’re going to die tomorrow. Take what you have in stride, learn to make things better or more wholesome for you and the people you love. And if you can’t, then fight to keep it satisfactory. If you have something you love, you fight for it. How hard you fight for something is almost akin to how much you love that thing. And when the time comes, when life decides that it can’t be, you either continue fighting the tides or you let it loose. Sometimes you can fight the wave, pushing harder than it pushes you. All the more power to you. But if it doesn’t? If you can’t beat the power of whatever is taking the thing you love away? Let it. Otherwise, you might end up drowning chasing it. Then all the other things you have, the other things you love will have to fight for you as the ocean drags you under.
Life teaches us by the most cruel method possible. Experience.
I’m rambling. Nevertheless. Love and be loved. Live and let live. Let life carry you through its waters, keeping yourself afloat with all the things and people that lift you up. You can’t avoid every storm, nor can you keep from losing everything. That doesn’t mean you should just let it take you. The trip is yours to make. The experience yours to shape, the lessons to take from it yours.
At thirteen, everything was confusing. My mind was abuzz with hormones and thoughts and homework. Hands wandering as minds did too. A blind sighted moment where death glares were just another expression and soon enough my palms were straight on the ass of my best friend. Her disappointment and my painful apathy lead to an awkward twenty seconds of eye contact while my hands stayed firmly where they were.
That evening, I told my girlfriend about it and she wouldn’t stop laughing despite my pleas for her to stop.
Thirteen was an awkward time of sexual exploration. In my bedroom. Alone. At three in the morning, when the only other person awake was my sister, cackling evilly from far down the hall. When the glow of my computer screen kept me company, I scrolled through fowl tags of smut on tumblr, sometimes transferring to AO3 before I could shout at my slimy fingers to stop typing. I took notes on what was the hottest. Lazy role plays on my favorite website always playing it’s role.
And through most of my summer break, I learned a few things. Terrified myself with “Go Fish” and learned how to touch. Gained my fascination with skin. During cold hours of the night, I would let my fingertips drag over everything. Smoothing down bed covers with magically calloused hands, imagining a warm character’s clean ski instead, where I could touch every inch, show love with fingerprints admiring fiery flory and soft chubby stomachs. My dream was sensual and sweet, with dim lighting like shitty romantic movies.
But I hated being touched. At thirteen, I was sensitive and ticklish. A nightmare meant someone’s fingers grazing over my skin, causing goosebumps all over me. Yet I still dreamed of running my hands over pale and dark arms, cupping their cheeks as our lips just barely brush against each other’s. I was so scared of being touched, but all I wished to do was touch. And at thirteen, I didn’t dare tell my girlfriend of 2,000 miles away. Her love of bondage drowning out my wish for oddly passionate one-sided feeling up. Though, at thirteen, her role play kink sparked the interest of my disassociation, suddenly making my self-loathing easy to bypass.
though, at thirteen, with no money or means of transportation, 2,000 miles was about 1,999 miles too far to satisfy my need for validation. Though if I had a plane ticket to Seattle, my emotionless heart would feel more than ever. A willingness to travel that I didn’t have before would suddenly appear. Even at thirteen, when I struggled to have feelings, I longed for someone to tell me that everything about me was okay. Without touching me.
I was still sensitive. Sensitive of everything. From what they all said to the way they all touched me. They had to ask first before even wrapping an arm around my shoulders. A hug could be off limits at any point, but before thirteen, that didn’t seem to be the case. Childhood friends would approach and lay their hands upon my skin before I had the chance to tell them not to. At thirteen, I wanted to throw the same kind of fits I would as a child about my belongings being confiscated. It felt violating, unconsensual, even with the most platonic touch to my arm. I just couldn’t do it. Something had snapped at Summer’s turn, and it hurt. Because at thirteen, all I wanted to do was touch.
As if I didn’t feel like a hypocrite about enough things. Expecting so much from everyone and wondering why they got so disappointed when I fell short. Asking favors from friends but never giving any back. At thirteen, I was starting to realize how exactly I fit the definition of “asshole”. And immediately, at thirteen, I painted myself as the victim of my own actions.
Pretending as if I wasn’t causing harm while throwing insults left and right. At thirteen, so insecure about everything that a single word couldn’t escape my mouth without the room gasping nervously, as if my never intentional insults were bad enough to convince a handful of friends and acquaintances that it was their last breath. Trying so desperately to convince myself that I had some redeeming qualities despite a vaguely attractive face. In the process dragging motionless bodies down with me. A dropping self-esteem dwindling to a thread with the knowledge of the stupid friends jumping a grade ahead, despite her year on me. The pant to my heart given by the knowledge that I was no longer the highest of my peers.
It was hard to be supportive when it made me fall through. Difficult to congratulate success when I was painted as the victim of an innocent action. When a smiling best friend casually passed on the news, unaware of my formidable lump inhabiting my caved in stomach. It was my mob to make up for the previous months fuck ups, and I tried to by keeping my mouth shut. After her admitting to me the other horrible ways I was straining our friendship by letting my lips part and my vocal chords vibrate harmonically in my throat the way they were built to do. So for the rest of the evening, I tried to talk about other people’s boobs.
My anger fluctuated as the sky grew dim, and my heart pounded while fireworks blew in the night sky. I tried to keep my mouth shut, though it was difficult, because at thirteen all I wanted to do was talk, even while plummeting on rollercoasters. I’d be gone soon enough and I wouldn’t have to deal with the small amount of guilt I felt when telling her not to touch me. Thirteen-year-old me had to suppress the little emotion I had left when seeing her disappointed expression, and when I heard the exasperated sigh scrape her lungs.
It seemed I wasn’t the only one that needed to keep my mouth shut after all.
At thirteen, I could have used to calm down, but I could never seem to get a grip. Grasping onto false lifelines to try and save myself before the rope broke and I fell back into depression and disinterest, where writing scribbled on grid paper was no longer appealing. Where I never felt good enough because my vocabulary of expletives and common language always fell short, close behind the failure of staying in the technically correct grade with slippery C’s to follow suite. At thirteen, I was sensitive and couldn’t be touched.
There’s not an air conditioning unit on the market that can actually stand up against this unwarranted mid-June Georgia heat wave. At 97 degrees, 104 with the heat index, and 80% humidity, It’s easy to forget the way spring felt when even your hair is sweating before you step over the threshold to the front porch. Even at 28 years old, having dealt with this universal sweat pool since the beginning of your existence, it’s all brand new and disgusting and- fucking shit, you need a shower. Mama follows you out, screaming about “the god damn cigarette butts everywhere, and ew, Jimmy, what is that smell?” Your inner voice retaliates with "It’s me, mom. Shut the fuck up. Thyroid issues really thrive in this eternal heat, and my prescription can only go up so far. Why can’t you just stay inside and agree loudly with bible belt racism like every other southern mother? Get out of my face. I can’t deal with your grimacing self-righteousness today.” You wouldn’t dare say these things, but your smirk makes her shout something else that makes you wish you hadn’t come to visit. You faded out as soon as you heard her use that ridiculous name she chose for you, so many summers ago. Insensitive ignorance, still alive and well. Grab another cigarette, kiddo. The shower can wait.
This is something I'm working on outside of fanfiction. If anyone wants to beta I'd be more than interested, but...it's not a happy, sunny story and is based on events that happened way back a long time ago.
......
Children were a dreary business. Always wanting something. Selfish little things, never leaving her time for herself. From morning till evening she spent the entire day cooking, fetching, cleaning, bandaging up scrapes, and ending arguments.
Helen hadn’t paid attention to how much time she wasted on them until her husband was gone. Not dead, but enlisted and really he might as well have been dead for all the time he was gone. It didn’t matter to her that there was a war going on. What mattered was that he only came home once every few months. It wasn’t as if he were overseas with the rest of them. He was stationed in the states at one of those camps. He ought to be able to come home more often instead of just sending money, although the money was helpful, not helpful enough though. Not with four children, a house to run and now an infant.
She stared into the baby’s blue eyes. Joanie. That was the name Daniel chose. Honestly, it didn’t matter what the girl was called. Helen hadn’t wanted another one, but he insisted. Of course he insisted. It wasn’t as if he was there to take up any responsibility. Well, she wasn’t about to be tied down by another one.
Her friend Abby told her about an opening at the airport in the bar. She knew Daniel wouldn’t be happy with her working, but at that moment she really didn’t care what he thought. She needed to get out of that house, have some time for herself for once. Hell, she deserved it after everything she put up with.
“Here you are ma’am,” a nurse said, pushing a wheelchair into the room.
As if she couldn’t manage to walk out of the hospital on her own, but they insisted. She sat down in the chair and allowed the nurse to push her out of the room and down the hall. They were there of course. All four of them. Anna, Penny, Danny, and Laura.
“Are you all right?” Anna was the first to ask.
“Is that the baby?” Penny inquired.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” Danny interjected.
Helen rolled her eyes wishing they would shut up and stop looking like lost puppies. All she wanted was the get the hell out of there and grab a drink with Abby.
“Your mother’s fine,” the nurse replied in a sweet voice that told Helen the woman was probably smiling.
As soon as they reached the outside she stood up, wanting to get as far away from the hospital as possible. The nurse retreated back through the doors after repeating the instructions the doctor left her with. As if Helen was an idiot and couldn’t remember the first time he went over them.
She walked to the waiting cab with her four children trailing, but before opening the door she turned to Anna, already having decided exactly how she was going to handle this situation.
“Here,” she said, shoving the baby into her daughter’s arms. “This is yours. Not mine. Yours.” She caught Anna’s gaze to make sure the girl understood. “You take care of it.”
Anna’s face went blank, which told her the girl understood, wasn’t happy about it, but then that didn’t really matter. Helen put up with years of not being happy, better if the girl learned early how life really worked.
“Mine?” Anna asked, not really a question, more of a resignation.
“You’re eight years old, Anna. You’re the grown up when I’m not around. You might as well start acting like it.”
Helen opened the door and slid into the cab, waiting as the children joined her. The ride back home was quiet, which was what she wanted. She hated it when they asked stupid questions. Something they always had a stock of. She needed a shower and then a change of clothes before ringing Abby for a drink.
Daniel would likely hear about Joanie’s birth, but it would take him a day or two to get leave. When he returned she would have the house in order, scrub the kids, and put on the pretense of happy housewife. The kids knew better than to say anything. Daniel might be their father, but she was the one they lived with, which put her in charge.
