i fucking love washing the same load of laundry 3 times because i can't remember to put it in the dryer! i love hardly having literally any memories of highschool at 22 years old! i just adore how a scheduled visit with a friend that lasts a couple hours will make me anxious all day and take the rest of the day to recover from! it's so cool how at my last job and the one before that AND ALSO THE ONE BEFORE THAT i had a nervous breakdown and quit less than 3 shifts in! i fucking LOVE spending the majority of my life in bed for the last 5 years! i love getting exhausted from sitting upright. i love how brushing my hair is so overstimulating i avoid it a lot, making it a million times worse when it is eventually brushed because it gets tangled to shit. I LOVE THAT I CAN'T DO FUCKING ANYTHING MYSELF AND HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO BECOME A FUNCTIONAL ADULT!
Pregnant Kim anon here again, please know that after I sent that I decided to “warm up” by outlining an entire fic and didn’t get any novel writing done lol. I would love a snippet full of ANGST because I think Kim deserves it right now for what he’s done to my brain
asdfjhagsdjfh VALID! ALL OF THAT IS VALID!
Here is your angst, my darling. I realized I actually don't have a ton of the pregnancy itself written yet, so here's a little bit (lol. it's over 1k, I got carried away) that happens soon after the birth. Kim has horrible post-partum depression thanks to everything that happens in this fic. TW for graphic description of depression and implied suicidal ideation
Chay entered the bedroom to find Kim beneath the covers still, at nearly three in the afternoon. Curled up on his side, tears steadily leaking from the corner of his eye every time he blinked, making a wet spot on the pillow beneath his cheek. He wasn’t even really crying. His eyes were just wet, and that wetness was dripping, and Kim had long since given up on trying to stop it.
Chay didn’t ask, are you okay? Because he already knew what the answer would be. Instead he climbed onto the bed and spooned up behind Kim, and asked him, “What are you thinking about?”
“It’s not real.”
“What isn’t?”
“This. The depression. All of it. It feels real. It feels awful. But it isn’t. It’s just hormones and chemicals. It’s not me.” Kim didn’t sniffle, or sob, or sigh. His voice didn’t change from the even, monotonous quality it always had when he was trying not to feel. He just breathed. Closed his eyes against a fresh wave of tears, not that it did anything to halt their fall. “I thought once it was over, everything would be okay. I would be free. But it’s never going to stop, is it? There’s no normal for me to go back to. Just this.”
“P’Kim—” Chay’s voice cracked. He swallowed back what sounded like the beginnings of a sob and buried his face in the back of Kim’s neck. Weeks of exposure to Kim’s moods hasn’t made them any easy to handle, not least of all because he knew there’s nothing for him to do. He couldn’t take away this pain. “Please don’t talk like that. It is going to be okay. This isn’t forever. The doctor said it would take at least a month for your medicine to start working—it has to build up in your system, remember? Then everything will be okay.”
Kim didn’t say that the antidepressants only made him feel worse. Blunted him. Blurred any scrap of goodness he could cling too, until it was part of the same empty haze as everything else. He didn’t say that there was no drug strong enough to mask the bone-deep repulsion he felt every time he cradled his daughter to his breast to nurse. Nothing that could make him forget her conception when the pain of her birth was a constant reminder. He didn’t say anything at all.
Chay squeezed his arm around Kim’s middle, between his aching, swollen breasts, and his aching, swollen incision. Squeezed tight enough that it should have hurt if Kim were capable of feeling anything at all.
“You’re scaring me, P’Kim,” Chay whispered, holding Kim so tight he could hardly breathe. That was alright. He didn’t need to breathe.
“I love you, Chay. Thank you for staying with me. I… I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner. Or that I did, I shouldn’t have—right before—” Before he nearly died. He shouldn’t have said it then. In what he thought were his last moments, he needed Chay to know. But it was selfish to let those be his last words to the boy.
“Thank you for telling me. I’m glad you did. And I love you, too, P’Kim, so much. You are so, so loved, and someday soon, all of this is going to be better, okay? You just have to hold on until then.” Chay’s voice turned near-manic as it fully dawned on him just what he was bargaining for. “Promise me, Kim. Promise me you won’t leave again.”
“I promise.” A mechanical admission in that dull voice, but no less true. Kim found Chay’s hand where it was pressed over his beating heart and laced their fingers together.
Kim knew Chay would no doubt tell their brothers about his alarming mood, and they would no doubt take him back to the doctor. He knew about the lists Chay had printed out and hidden away in his desk, spread across three pages and outlining the symptoms of baby blues, postpartum depression, and psychosis, with little checked boxes to track him. He’d filled out nearly half the page for depression before ever leaving the hospital.
Kim wondered how many ticks he got on the last page before they took him away for good. Before they took his daughter away. Maybe they should; she would no doubt be better off without him. He hadn’t even wanted to keep her. Had nearly bled out moments after meeting her. Maybe it was a sign he wasn’t meant to have her at all.
“Make sure Kiah’s taken care of,” Kim said softly, his face half-buried in the pillows. “I can’t—I’m not good for her. If I can’t take care of her, you’ll find someone who will, won’t you?” Kim went through too much to bring her into this world, he wouldn’t let her suffer for his own unwillingness to give her up, if that’s what it took to offer a better life.
Behind him, Chay swallowed thickly.
“Of course, P’Kim. I’ll make sure she’s always safe and loved.”
The weight that’s been hung around Kim’s shoulders since he made the decision to bring Kiah home finally lifted, a relief he didn’t know he needed. He sighed and sank back into Chay’s warm embrace, the tension finally melting out of his body, and squeezed the hand still lying over his heart.
“You’re safe and loved, too,” Chay said. “You have me, and Porsche, and your brothers, and P’Pol, and P’Arm, and P’Big. We’re all going to make sure both of you are safe and loved and taken care of. I won’t leave you alone again, P’Kim. Not ever.”
Kim didn’t doubt it. He never had. All this time, Chay’s love—the love of his family—has been an unwavering presence, cutting through the misery that’s cloaked him these last nine months. Kim didn’t know how to express that to Chay. That there was nothing to worry about. Kim wouldn’t hurt himself, with or without their constant supervision. He didn’t want to. He was only acknowledging the unrelenting misery he felt every waking moment, and accepting that it would likely follow him for the rest of his life. He didn’t prefer it, but he knew it was inevitable that these feelings would continue to be his constant companions.
However he may feel, Kim knew he owed it to his daughter to be the best father he could be for her. And if his best wasn’t good enough, he would find someone that could give her what she deserved. Even still, Kim appreciated the reassurance. Appreciated Chay, for the way the younger boy has stayed at his side for so long, seen him through so much horror and heartbreak, and would show that appreciation however he could. Even if the most he could do was hold his hand and promise not to leave.
so far at work i have:
- fixed a handful of bugs
- added functionality for webcams to have archive groups and different archive intervals, added UI for it.
- created a page that displays all streaming webcams from a project at once (wip sorta)
- added a cover to streams to allow pan, tilt, and zoom controls by clicking the video or dragging a box to zoom to.
my boss has tested my webcam archiving and it’s gonna be live soon! when i make these new functions, they bring over this guy i assume is like, head of dealing with client relations or something. “check this out” “COOOOL. people have been asking for this!” idk it feels really awesome
So I sort of think I'm emotionally capable of devoting time to someone else.
I was thinking about it tonight. Last night I was talking about past "obsessions" I had in high school with a friend of mine and realized how much I've matured and changed my way of thinking.
In a way, I was Tom Hansen from 500DoS in every aspect. I took one similar interest and blew it into thinking we were meant for each other based on that one single thing. Looking back now, that's just so unhealthy and I was in love with the idea of a person rather than the person themselves. I admitted this and didn't get defensive, which is a great sign, I think.
My way of testing this was from the intro activity we did in my Interpersonal Comm class last Monday. We had to go around and survey other students on questions we were provided. I went and introduced myself to this girl named Rachel. I decided to ask if she had a tattoo, and she said yes. I thought that was cool but completely spaced to ask what it was, etc, etc. She asked me if I had read a book for fun in the last three months, which I responded with a yes. She said that she has too and that people find her weird for that. I went away thinking it was awesome we had a couple things in common and it might prove to be good conversation starters.
No obsessed thinking, no talk of soulmates. Nothing. I'm just genuinely interested in getting to know this girl. Well, the fact she's cute and shit helps too, but I digress.
I'm not going in hopeful, just optimistic that maybe I can prove to myself that I'm mature enough for an adult relationship, should something come from this.
