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Setting Boundaries With Expectations

Gaining Fresh Perspective

I was planning on checking in some days back. Had written the whole thing out, only to end up with another anaphylactic reaction and back to the ER. By the time I was out and looking at the submit button, the moment had passed.

So much keeps changing. The hardest thing to find is perspective right now, because of how this condition works. Anaphylactic reaction is your body basically killing itself to fight off whatever set off the reaction. It means that during those moments, the chemical cascade rushing through is defining everything.

Survival to the point of self destruction. It’s everything I know about living with PTSD since small, so maybe this was the illness that my brain is most willing to rationalize, possibly even set off because of such a difficult psyche. MCAS can be triggered through trauma, through other chronic illnesses too. There’s plenty to choose from.

Things keep changing so rapidly as I start to treat this condition in a way that’s actually working. The changes are so extreme on my body. I’ve regained circulation in my arms. My fingertips, which have been giving off electric shocks since the ER, now suddenly calmed. I regained circulation in my skin. The scratches and patches of scaly skin suddenly have color to them, like washes of sepia.

My executive functioning has changed completely — I can task switch with ease all of a sudden. I’m painting detailed work because my eyes aren’t bothering me anymore. My eyes aren’t bothering me anymore. The underlying condition is there, but it’s not being set off.

I’m not obsessing over anything — I just stop, now. It’s the most bizarre thing in the world to have found the kill switch that just wasn’t there for years.

And then I’ll eat the wrong thing, or smell the wrong scent, and it all unravels…

It’s life or death heart racing, throat swelling, mouth and stomach burning, chemical cascade of doom as all my lymph nodes swell up and my skin turns pale and papery and loses sensation.

It feels like zero to near death, just like that, except it’s not. I have no proper perspective on this illness because I have been in that stage I just describe practically 24-7, for years now, and it’s not near death. It was only near death when my tongue started swelling a little bit more and my chest didn’t want to open enough to breathe. (I mean, if you want to get technical and add in the adrenal insufficiency, it was already death…)

And that new stage where I’m not an anxiety riddled, neurotic, inflamed mess? I don’t know if that’s “zero”. I don’t know if that’s my default just forever out of reach. Or if it’s the stage where things are a little better than my previous default, and there’s something even better waiting.

I have no clue where I am in this process of healing, only that I’ve managed to get out of that previous default. And that my body is also now capable of experiencing that rushing toward not breathing stage. Two extremes that, with enough perspective, might actually be dots on top of each other on a chart for how much they are alike. I don’t know.

Remembering Me

What I do know is, as the inflammation lowers, and the chemicals that impact my neurology start to fade with fewer reactions, I am slowly coming back to me. I’ve found that a lot of the neurosis, anxiety, and inflexibility in living is coming from the immune response. In so many ways. There are levels to this.

Just the other night I was defining myself by the state I was in, remembering that version from before the really bad decade of illness, who would be manic every night, hyper-focused on a project to deal with the excess of agony being felt at an emotional level over absolutely nothing. Every night since I was a teenager living in a moldy basement, that’s the level of pain I had to endure, and I was suddenly feeling it all over again.

And then I realized, oh, mast cells are more active at night, which is why the meds are taken at bedtime. They have a circadian rhythm, which is probably why not only do I naturally fall asleep around dawn, but that habit of sleep came from following those disturbing, long nights of chemical distress. My bedtime is dawn; I need to take the meds at nightfall.

I cut out eating at night, to give the mast cells in the gut nothing to react to. And I make sure to avoid anything emotional or too energetic at night so the response can’t be triggered through stress. Sure enough, no mania, no physical/emotional agony over nothing. The problematic chemicals didn’t flow because the mast cells weren’t being triggered.

My mental distress is a response to physical illness, and good fucking luck trying to go through a pysch doctor to ever get to the solution for an immune disorder.

Self care has to come from a place of understanding the self. You can’t care for what you don’t understand. What this illness did to me removed me from my sense of self, and from my sense of being in my body. I have been burning my hands for weeks — possibly longer — and not knowing it. I only started noticing once I had gotten my inflammation down long enough for sensation to return to my hands. I thought I was “over” sensitive because everything was hurting. First the nerve pain and now suddenly I could see the rash on my hands and fingers, and everything felt like pain.

Because I was in pain.

The water temperature of our facet gets too hot, and I didn’t notice when rinsing the dishes and washing the cat plates multiple times a day. Every day. I had others test the temperature to confirm it wasn’t just a lack of perspective on my part — because that’s the thing: my perspective is warped by this illness. For so long.

Perspective is something always being built, adjusted by every change, big and small. It’s never final, never stagnant… except when our minds become small and shortsighted.

It’s like washes of paint, forever transforming something into clarity or revealing a lack of it, obscuring and removing, transforming and unveiling. And in there, somewhere, is the truth, but it will always be limited by the eyes looking and the mind perceiving. It just is.

This is the texture study I couldn’t start because of the neurosis. I was able to start working on it this week, around the time of the second anaphylactic emergency. How it started looks nothing like how it is now, and this moment — this snapshot — will be nothing of what its final form will be.

My eyes have been fucked for years, and I just started to come to terms with that, only to learn, hey, the eyes have mast cells in them too. The chemical cascade of the immune response was adding inflammation and strain, exhausting my eyes until the underlying Exotropia flared. But if that immune response isn’t happening, I don’t have a migraine 24-7 anymore. This week I finally remembered what a boring old headache feels like.

Writing what you know

Part of not getting back to writing is my acknowledgment that I can’t write people when I don’t feel like a person. I have been so out of touch with living for so long now, and after the last time the mold hit and I built the cleanroom, my brain changed drastically. So completely. I still haven’t recovered. I gained enough perspective this last week to remember more of what it was like to be whole, and to see how I am far from it.

My emotions are waking back up the same way the sensation in my hands did. I’m regaining memories — while also becoming aware that I keep forgetting what month it is, what I did yesterday, if I’m near the beginning or end of the month, etc. I can’t plot a timeline of what I’ve been through, and it’s scary to become so aware of a deficit I can’t even be sure isn’t new.

I want to believe the memory issues are a side effect of the bigger anaphylactic response, but I can’t know for sure. Not without more time.

I am returning to my body, and it is jolting. Remembering and navigating all these sensations and emotions is difficult, disorienting. And then adding all that intensity into the flares of the illness is, well, extra. Because it was bad enough being in this body when it couldn’t fully feel what was happening. Now it can feel more, and it’s something I need to learn to cope with.

Everything has changed

I am not driven to do anything but heal right now. I am not driven to prove I am alive by doing things, and that’s really the raw truth of what has been pushing me to get back to living while bombarded by the constant chemical cocktail of the anaphylactic immune response. I measured being alive by being able to get back to what I was doing, because I felt chronic illness was taking me away from that. Illness had interrupted my life, something that was holding me from doing what I love… and that was all I could define it as.

I didn’t measure it through feeling, because I wasn’t feeling much of anything. So there was never a rush to feel better physically once the nerve pain in the face stopped. I ignored my pain and discomfort; that is the fucking default to disability. Every moment is about enduring until you just stop looking at it, stop acknowledging it. And it’s shitty, and I can’t claim it’s the “wrong” way to go through chronic illness, because fuck, it got me through and it was all I could literally do when my nervous system couldn’t do anymore.

I wasn’t rushing to feel better emotionally, because it was the same damn thing. What was the point of having emotions over something completely beyond my ability to control? Emotions were better invested elsewhere, except mine had numbed so much, there was little to invest.

I don’t know if my nervous system was responding to the chronic chemicals, or trying to adapt to make things less painful. Either way, it resulted in my brain — the sharp teeth — deciding everything, driving everything. And when the logic part of the brain is coping, it’s with patterns, curiosity for distractions, games that become neurosis. Every thought is essential, and it won’t stop shouting those thoughts… to help me not feel what I was going through.

Boundaries with expectation

There is no point in having expectations when your perspective is a sliver wide. I have adapted down to this illness for the majority of my life — certainly since my teens — and I don’t know what being healthy is going to look like. I don’t know what I’m going to be able to handle to control this illness and prevent it from flaring up, while also living a full life. I just know that I’m not there yet. This silence I’ve been feeling lately is both full of so much possibility, and absolutely nothing at all, and I will not know who I can become until I am them.

For now, I need to take care of myself. Which means letting go of what I’ve already let go of this week when I wasn’t paying attention. I have no expectations of results on anything in regards to writing, coding — being. I have things I must do in regards to researching this illness and navigating diet changes and supplements, and everything else is just… being. Feeling. Remembering what it is like to be a living, breathing, empathetic being that feels.

I’m looking forward to it. Looking forward to remembering what it is I was writing that I couldn’t get back to because I had forgotten this part of existing. And that’s the thing; you can’t separate a creator from their experiences and expect them to be able to write something whole.

I was fighting this, knowing that I wasn’t ready to write because I couldn’t connect with the part of me that feels my writing. So the logical brain came in and said “fuck it, do it anyways.” Because that’s what the rational does. It talks about measurements of gains and loses. Money. It talks about no one being able to see through the facade. How there is value in going through the motions in the hopes of jump starting what isn’t flowing. There are so many reasons to just “do the thing” that I completely agree with. But creativity is a whole person experience. It requires the psyche to be there, adding important context. And mine just wasn’t showing up.

Be it physical malady or psychological side effect, I couldn’t connect and get into the state to understand what I was trying to write at the level it needed to be understood. Hence I couldn’t figure out how to edit it, because I didn’t know what exactly I was trying to say in the first place. So the neurosis stepped in, hoping to find a logical answer to the wrong problem.

Faking it doesn’t work, but it feels like doing something…

I wanted to be okay. And to prove I was okay, I wanted to do all the things I couldn’t do because illness kept getting in the way. So I wrapped everything about my ideals of getting better into getting back to writing, even as I promised myself I would be gentle with myself. But I wasn’t, because I couldn’t feel the pain I was inflicting to begin with.
I just wanted to be better so desperately, that I was forever looking at the goal I needed to reach to prove it. Never at myself. Never at the hurt, the illness, the pain of being left behind in life. The goal was far less painful to focus on.

Perspective frames everything

I can only understand this because the chemicals that were bombarding my body are doing it less now. There’s no point in me beating myself up over doing the only thing my brain chemistry would allow. And now that it’s shifted, it’s still the same lesson. There’s no point getting upset that I can’t hold onto the motivation to get back to writing to the point of self destruction. I’m not that person any longer (until another flare, I suppose.)

Things will happen in the time they take to happen, and it’s exactly enough. I feel so much pity for that other version of me who was desperately trying to prove everything was okay by neurotically going through the motions, unable to get out of the trap. Unable to feel how nothing was okay, and that trying harder at what wasn’t working wasn’t ever going to solve it.

Everything has shifted drastically, from health to perspective these last weeks, and I don’t know where it’s going to balance out. But I remember myself more, am more in this form, in this life, and I am better for it. The suffocating feeling that has been following me for so long… to realize that was real, that the anxiety and feelings of dread — like death was going to slam down at any moment — was part of the chemical cascade that goes along with your mast cells over reacting all the time… There’s peace in understanding that. More so once I was able to pull the reactions back more through eliminating histamines. Even as I observe the smallest things setting off the biggest reactions in this body, I still have that feeling of peace from this fresh perspective.

I have lost a lot of time to this illness. I’m probably going to continue to lose time to this illness. But trying to solve that by breaking myself — doing more and getting nowhere — doesn’t feel like a viable option anymore. I can feel things again; I want to enjoy the experience of living. I want this change to sink in and continue softening these straining muscles and anxious, rigid expectations until it all dissolves into soft foam. I’m tired of the only thing I feel being pain and anxiety and the forever hovering exhaustion. It’s time to experience more.

My allergic responses have actually managed to get more problematic

It’s been an interesting week. I was focused on the OCD, examining all the things I do, and trying to see what was working and why — like putting my thoughts through the language section of my brain to not reread the last post I did a million times seemed to have worked. It’s not just becoming aware of it; I need to either verbalize or write it down to really cement it in my head. Good.

I was also working with art — I’m arting! <3 The goal being to find a way to compromise with my neurotic, perfectionist default to create something. And yes, I did, I made a pretty I just adore. Used lots of paint splatters, acrylic ink, and acrylic paint pens, all on watercolor paper so I could really play around without destroying anything. It was a good time making something that I had no idea what it was going to be. It’s like a micro-scape of random, and I love it.

But I made this in response to the piece I couldn’t touch. I had sketched out a very fine detailed, lovely little bit of texture I want to bring to life, but I saw the trap once I was looking at my watercolors. Everything I own is too… refined. Too neat. They were like markers instead of watercolors, and I knew that once my brain saw the path to photorealism, that’s where it was going to force me to go. And I didn’t want that level of neurosis. I don’t want to be trapped, hating what I’m making because it’s not fitting some ideal my distressful brain has defined out of nowhere. Instead of just, I dunno, discovering something new and different and freeing on the page.

I still don’t know how to compromise with it. It’s avoidance. I see the trap is there, and I don’t know how to walk a safe path with it yet. But I’m going to have to try, all while acknowledging all the dangers. And eventually, it’s going to happen. It’s going to become normal.

 

Allergy attack

Right before I finished this little painting, I ended up in the ER. It’s a testament to me being completely unaware of my body when I’m hyperfocused on something, and also just how I’ve normalized my allergic reactions. I’m used to my pulse racing — it’s been happening constantly for over a week now. I ate something I shouldn’t have, wasn’t sure and blamed it on environmental stuff, and the day before last, I had a big helping of the thing.

When I took liquid benadryl that night and my face immediately broke out into scaly patches, I thought I was reacting to the dye free, everything free medicine, not the thing I had eaten that day. And the next day, when my hands were shaking at my allergists, and my brain was so damn slow, and I was so tired I wasn’t sure if I was going to make the drive home, I blamed it on the lack of sleep for nights on end because my cat’s blood glucose had been dropping into dangerous lows. Blamed it on the Benadryl — maybe I’m just one of those people who get bad reactions to everything.

Blamed it on forgetting my ADHD meds that usually wake me up shortly after — and they did, they woke me up when I got home and went back to painting. But my hands were still shaking, and my pulse was hovering in the mid 120’s and, although annoying, the tremor was a cool effect with the paint pens, so whatever. I’ve had a racing pulse before. At least I’m not in screaming pain.

When everything becomes compared to the intensity of that face nerve pain, do I even know what a reasonable perspective to pain is anymore? My tongue has been burning after eating for years now, and as long as it’s not screaming face pain, it doesn’t need my attention.

It wasn’t until my partner got home and pulled me away from arting, that I caught my reflection and paused. Something was off. I checked my tongue and it was the biggest it had ever been — and granted, it’s already too big. A year ago it swelled up and never went back down, and I assumed, I dunno, the pituitary cysts had fucked with the growth hormone or something for a second, then never reverted.

Last night it wasn’t just swollen, but oddly smooth. And I started to notice that my throat felt tight. And not much later, my chest started heaving at random intervals like I had forgotten to breathe — but I was breathing. It was like I needed a deep breath because my normal breaths weren’t doing anything.

My EpiPen was expired. I got a set in 2018, and had felt ridiculous at the time. A bee had stung me and it had welted up, and the welt remained for months until finally fading. But it wasn’t life or death — I’ve had allergies for decades now; it has never been life or death. Why would it change now?

Still, I made myself go to the ER, having to convince my partner that no, it’s actually a good reason, stop asking google over me (my fuck, I wish I was joking). By the time we got there, my chest felt tight, not wanting to open to let air in. But not deathly tight, not panic inducing tight. Just a promise in there that shit was going to go sideways pretty soon.

It was interesting, partially cuz through the whole thing I was still wondering if I was actually having an allergic reaction. Wasn’t this supposed to be the worst thing ever? This was slow, confusing, and certainly no pain. More numb than pain. Maybe I was just overreacting. Nope, I was under reacting. I have normalized too much with these allergies to know what’s going to kill me.

First time getting a shot of epinephrine — that felt like something. Thought I was going to shake away from shivers, teeth rattling — I have no clue why everything got so cold from it, but then suddenly heat roared in and I could feel my arms again, which had gone numb when they were looking for veins. And then it was fine. Like it didn’t happen. My pulse was flying, but not as bad as when I didn’t have the epinephrine, and I was toasty warm, alert, and ready to leave. After being politely reprimanded for not renewing my EpiPen prescription and using it.

5 years I didn’t need the damn thing. I honestly never thought it would be needed.

A Rambling Theory

So… why now? Why big? I’ve been taking more anti-histamines, not less. I’ve been having less allergic reactions as I solved the biggest environmental problem: ammonia from the litter box. Why would I have such a big reaction now?

At first, I would have said my immune system must be feeling stronger from having a rest, and therefore reacting with more power. After today, I have another theory to go with that — and it’s just a theory. I’m not in medicine, not a scientist. Just like to ponder.

So I have adrenal insufficiency, which means when my body goes through stress, it can’t produce cortisol to protect me as part of a healthy stress response. But if cortisol gets too low, you can die, so the body has another stress chemical to help keep the heart pumping when cortisol is low: adrenaline.

Now cortisol is eaten up by stress — stress ranging from chronic low grade stuff, colds, physical injury, emotional reactions, and yes, allergic reactions. So if you’re someone like me, whose cortisol isn’t going to increase no matter how much adrenaline is rushing through the veins — I need to take meds to get cortisol — that adrenaline is going to keep flowing, making the heart pound, desperately trying to get the body to stay alive. But I’m on a schedule of cortisol, and there isn’t much room in that schedule for chronic allergic reactions, so I tend to ignore it and take my meds when I’m supposed to. Because my doctor gets pissed if I take too much. It can lower immunity (there’s some sort of irony in here…)

Anyways, the big point to all this is, another name for adrenaline is EPINEPHRINE.

Yup, every time my heart was pounding over the mere scent of ammonia, my body was being flooded with the anti-anaphylactic chemical they inject straight out of an EpiPen. It was daily, over years. I can’t remember a time not having cats where their litterbox didn’t make me ill. And now, suddenly the last couple weeks, it stops because we finally found a system that works to keep the scent contained. I was no longer being flooded with adrenaline on a daily basis.

When this latest allergic response hit, yeah, my pulse was speeding, my adrenaline was flowing, but it wasn’t enough. It was a week of eating something my body was reacting to that had cleared my system, and I just reintroduced it with nothing to contain it. My pulse got better about an hour after eating — it wasn’t doing a constant reaction even though ingested. No, my pulse only does that for environmental stuff.

The pulse only started up again with the Benadryl, a sometimes side effect of Benadryl being rapid pulse. It was like the Benadryl had woken up the reaction (or I really am allergic to it. I’m not touching it until I know for sure. I’ve cut off any possible suspect for now.) My immune system had had time to heal, and I had eaten something very stupid, and no longer had the daily flood of adrenaline to help combat it the way it did before.

At least, that’s my theory. It sounds like a good story, but who really knows. Maybe the adrenaline the body produces really can’t compete with the injectable stuff, and it’s all flawed from the start.

New med

They put me on Singular for now to try to stabalize the mast cell response, and it seems to be going well. My pulse finally calmed (until I forgot my hydrocortisone and started thinking about the adrenaline connection.) But taking the HC calmed it down again… then the fever showed up. My biggest concern is that, as good as Singular can be for this problem, the most dangerous side effect is psychosis. So, you know, I might have somebody check anything before I post for a while, just in case I’m losing my shit.

Adrenal insufficiency has dangers of psychosis, but the little I felt of that is, I’m fairly certain, nothing comparable to a drug induced psychosis. So here’s hoping I’m not the always gets the worst side effects person I usually am on this particular one.

As frustrating as needing to go to the ER was (I suppose, the frustration of my allergies hitting a going to kill me level), it was also, weirdly, validating. Because I’ve been to how many doctors? How many ERs? Mostly for my pulse flying while exposed to an allergen, and then being perfectly normal once in the wonderfully sterile, perfectly filtered air of the hospital. Same with my brain just checking out with inflammation, body slowing down to a crawl, losing so much of my life, and then hey, better environment, no more inflammation, you’re fine and full of shit. Where the face pain was written off as tooth pain, and me treated like someone looking for pain meds instead of looking for the screaming pain to stop. Medical gaslighting sucks, but hey, all that cured by me being so oblivious, I missed I was having a serious allergic reaction to the most delicious, keto friendly chocolate hazelnut butter spread ever.

I’m pissed that most healthy things are high histamine. Like, weight management is tough enough when you have immune issues, without adding on that the healthy stuff is going to kill me a little faster, somehow. I have to be so damn perfect with what goes into or around my body as a result of these allergies, and it only gets more limiting. It’s given me multiple eating disorders.

Fasting is so easy — and feels so safe — compared to having overwhelming decision fatigue, guilt and possibly horrible consequences by eating. And when everything you eat slows you down anyways, makes you dumb, digestion refuses to work, it just reinforces it. I can call it intermittent fasting to sound trendy and smart, but it’s just keeping the difficulty of digestion to a short amount of hours, and totally not getting enough calories (cuz people bullshit about eating enough while intermittent fasting. It takes time to eat that many calories, especially with “healthy” food.)

Anyways, I’m actually quite happy about things. It’s nice to art, nice to see a way through with this illness. Cuz hey, the ER doctor understood immediately; my mast cells are unstable and over reacting. I didn’t once bring it up. So if a visibly anaphylactic attack was what it was going to take to be noticed as actually having allergies when I don’t get a drippy nose or hives, but instead get zombie skin, racing pulse, low fever (writing this with a low fever right now) neurological issues, gut issues, and low blood pressure, then glad it finally happened so I can get the understanding and tools to prevent it happening again.

I really hope it doesn’t happen again. I had a bunch of different anti-histamine meds in me yesterday, yet still blew up. Maybe histamines really aren’t the issue for me (the rare hives thing.) Maybe allergies act in different ways and I’ve been unknowingly focused on the wrong way for me. No clue.

I’m tired of having to know so many things and rarely having it be useful to my situation. But maybe it’ll help someone else, so there’s that.

If you have allergies that don’t act like normal allergies, it could be MCAS, which is a blood disorder (so I’m told), and therefore will have the look of allergies as your immune system is the thing disordered, but won’t behave or be solved the same way. It’s not curable, but it is treatable, and that treatment can be everything.

I have hope because I was able to put my Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis into remission, and the meds work to supplement the damage done. Allergy shots worked and I’m no longer allergic to cats, even though dust mites and mold are currently still a nightmare. The immune system can be retrained, redirected, repaired. It’s just identifying where the problems really are happening to give yourself the best chance.

When you’re someone who would start a long ass game over if they realized they missed something they could only get earlier on, it can be hard to accept so many imperfections in living a life. I want things to follow logic, but that’s not the way life works. Life is chaos, and we have these stupid logic brains in our head insisting we can organize it, that it has to fit, has to make sense. But that’s just the unique madness of being human, and even in that, people really struggle to see the disconnect.

We build imperfect solutions to an imperfect existence, because it’s the best we got as self-aware beings that are destined to die. It’s not all curable. The right thing isn’t always the right answer. Repeating something over and over again does not, actually, make it true, no matter how persistent and willful. It just means some people need the lie to keep going, for whatever reason, because hey, imperfect AF and completely unaware of it.

I’m alive because I take my cortisol every day. I’m aging and wearing down because that’s what happens when you’re not dead yet; you age — not necessarily mature, but aging definitely happens. And there’s only so much one can do about it. I do my best to be healthy to contain my allergies, and that food is destructive to my immune system. So I guess it’s time to enjoy some junk food without the guilt?

Guilt, the true spice of life…

This fever is not budging, and this is going full ramble. I swear, if I’ve become allergic to the fever reducers at this point… >_>

It’s probably going to at least be a week to get through the full effects of this attack. It was ingested, and my body is not interested in eating to help expel it, and I’m sure it’s causing havoc on my gut. And there’s only so many meds I can take… cuz I don’t know if those meds that I were on the same time as I ate the thing, might actually be the culprit or contributing to the problem. There’s a worry that my system will over target, as it does, and knock out all my immune helpers. Dunno. Can’t predict, only overthink…

The Writing Process: A Rant

The Writing Process: A Rant

Today sucks

Today, I want to talk about the writing process and why it’s actually important. And I mainly want to talk about this because I am super frustrated. I feel like everything I’m doing is about trying to get back to writing, instead of just writing, and honestly, I’m not wrong. That’s the majority of what I’m doing right now. I am building a system instead of writing a story.

After years between now and publishing my last book, I just want to be at the end of this process where there’s a book to publish and I don’t feel like I’m fighting everything, including my very difficult brain and all my executive dysfunctions. But I’m not at the end of this process. I don’t have a book to publish. In some ways, even as I polish off the last of this current short story, I still feel like I haven’t started this process — mostly because I don’t see the story I’m writing as viable for publishing.

There’s a reason for that; it was to take a lot of pressure off of me as I get back into this writing journey. It was so I didn’t have to make a cover with my fucked-up eyes in pain all the time and having to face that aspect of what I’ve lost in such a short amount of time on top of getting back to writing. But because I’ve taken the “easy” way out, I’ve put a lot of work into something that’s going to be locked on my website (unless I add a fantasy element to it, and I don’t want to. It’s all fantasy, but somehow pretending it’s supernatural makes people who read understand words aren’t real? Like, dumb fuckery.) I don’t feel like I’ve succeeded in anything, and I think a part of me needs a win right now.

So, the writing process. The importance of doing all the busy work I’m doing now. A refresher to remind me why the fuck I’m here.

I can’t claim that a writing system is solely a good idea because of executive dysfunction. I think someone would need to have an amazing memory to write a series or serial without some sort of process in place. Even if it’s as basic as writing an outline, I genuinely don’t believe that writing a complex series can be done — done well — without a structure to keep focus and to juggle all the plot points and character arcs and background information that needs to be juggled.

I am a poor mental visualizer, which is why it’s essential for me to have reference for what I’m writing about. I need background images, and blocks of text describing setting and characters and clothing and items if I’m going to be capable of conveying visual information to readers.

Because I’m such a poor mental visualizer, this is obviously something important to me. It’s a void in my brain that I’m trying to fill for myself, not just the reader, and that can get difficult when addressing such a deficit. My neurosis can pop up, and I can put greater value on it than it needs to be, or I can feel frozen in my writing because I don’t have that image to convey. Having the database where I store the description of that image can help my brain disengage from the obsessive need to ensure that I’m conveying something that I’m struggling to visualize. In that regard, doing this background work is one of those steps that might look like busy work, but it’s actually allowing me to move forward instead of being stuck as a result of my very difficult personality.

But it’s boring.

Last night, after finally stealing enough time to get the manuscript into the editor I had created last week, I started the editing process. And I found myself hating it. Partially because I was exhausted; partially because I was holding a ton of expectations that were overwhelming my curiosity; partially because I’m still struggling with allergies and what they do to my cognition. And today I just feel frustrated. My brain is conceptualizing everything I’ve gone through, everything I’ve created to get me to this point, and all I’m seeing is the struggle without reward.

Somehow I thought creating the support tools would make this editing process easier. But there is only so much I can do that will actually get results at the end that are measurable. Everything else is just trying to create a little more ease, a little more convenience, but nothing of impact. Nothing is going to fill out this database for me — although I have made a way to link text into my reference forms so that it will auto populate, and I’m probably going to expand on that because it does seem the path of least resistance. But I still have to input the manuscript, and separate the text out and link it to the correct data file. I still have to battle with my many executive dysfunctions in regards to reading and focusing to get that done.

To make my life easier. But it doesn’t feel easy. I have to do all this very difficult — feeling near impossible — work, in the hopes that it’s going to make things easier in the future.

It sucks. I’m bored as fuck. Writing is fucking boring.

I just want to get to the end of this already. I want to get to the end, not because I’m avoiding hard work, but because my brain is not certain that I’m ever going to enjoy getting to the end of this process. I want something to prove that all these doubts and frustrations aren’t grounded in anything real. I want concrete proof that the work I’m putting in will guarantee results.

And maybe that’s just unrealistic. Maybe that’s a level of dumb fuck expectation that no one really has a right to put on themself. We cannot know the future. The whole point of experimentation is the understanding that failure is a part of that process.

But I don’t want to be understanding about the process right now; I want a fucking win.

Have I written multiple novels without this new process, without this structure I’m putting into place? Yes. And I would really love to default to that. It’s a place where I’m doing, completely ignoring the deficits, getting the writing done and over with. But it is always going to end with me back in this spot, where I see a new mountain I need to structure before I can climb if I want to move forward as a writer. I am at this place right now because I am well the fuck aware that there is no going forward if I don’t commit to some sort of structuring and reference with my writing.

My brain is not getting better — actually, that’s not right. My brain is not changing. This new system of support tools is designed to acknowledge the very real deficits my brain has in regards to working memory, long-term memory, visual conceptualization, and attention. But it’s not designed to make me feel good about this process, to help me cope with the frustrations I’m feeling as I have to force my brain to work with its very real deficits. That’s something I need to provide in a different context, and I’m doing a shit job of it today.

It has to become part of the process. Every time a block comes up, stopping, assessing, and naming has to be part of the process of getting back to writing. And not just getting back, but the process of writing. Because that distinction needs to become part of the definition of writing. What feels like busy work, be it research, building these structures and support tools, looking at the market that I’m creating the product for — in this case the book for — has to all be part of the process of self-publishing.

Every step taken is a step closer to the end result. And it can be difficult to conceptualize that when all I want to do is be at that end result.

I’m very funny with my conceptualizations. I have a brain that can conceptualize extremely complex structures, but not in a complex visual way. I have to create simple visuals to box a concept — and for some reason my brain needs that visual language when it comes to learning and expressing what it’s trying to say. It’s already doing the work in the background, but it needs a different language.

The structure I’ve created in regards to the outlines and the scene editor all utilize that visual language of mine. The notes I made as I was designing these elements also utilize the visual language in shorthand. It would look nonsensical to most people, just symbols on a page, mostly squares and rectangles much like a brainstorming cloud. But that’s all I need to see to create something complex in my head and then translate it into a project. I do these very basic notes when it comes to coding, understanding the nesting and order of operations of elements I learn how to use by seeing how they break. But if I didn’t take that step, if I didn’t know that about myself, I would not be able to move forward. I have to be honest with my weaknesses to be able to gain anything, and that has to be part of the process.

Blunt Honesty

So, today, my writing process is acknowledging how fucking shit it is to do all this difficult work only to feel like no product has been made. To know that I am going to push my brain to limits that it has in regards to editing. To overwhelm it. To make it ask what is the fucking point of any of this as I go through the decision fatigue of “What’s the best way to convey this concept to a reader that is both clear and also engaging, and why is every fucking choice wrong?” For every single sentence. For nearly every single word in that sentence. All while knowing this book isn’t publishable.

I’m going to commit time and energy into something because it’s important only because I say it’s important, even as it takes me away from putting that time and energy into a product that will make me money by the end — a product that will prove to myself that everything I’m doing is actually getting results, and not just me fucking around learning new things because doing the shit that requires me to focus is boring.

This is so fucking boring

That’s really it, at the end of the day. There are so many things my brain is good at — strike that. There are so many things that reward my brain with dopamine because my brain is actually quite bad at it in the right ways, and the challenge is addictive. But right now, writing is not that. I haven’t done the mental work to turn this project into that. I haven’t set the stakes. I haven’t built the game that will give my brain the dopamine to keep going as I do the arduous work it is normally willing to do when it feels rewarded.

Also, decision fatigue sucks

Decision fatigue doesn’t feel like a reward. My brain likes there to be one answer, the one answer it solves, just like a math problem or a script of code. There isn’t one answer with writing; if anything, writing is all the answers being whittled down into the path you end up on. And that path isn’t the right path, it’s just the one you ended up on. It’s a lot like life, and there is very little satisfaction to life. I’m never choosing the right words when writing; I’m just choosing words until my brain is tired enough to go, “Okay, fuck it, none of this matters, every options is shit; it’s good enough.”

There’s no dopamine reward in that, just letting go, and that is one of my greatest deficits. I don’t have a stop switch easily accessible. Once my brain has taken all the pieces in, turned sentences and concepts into a story to tell, and built the structure of thought — holding it all in my head — it needs to ensure that it’s translated properly. Well. Even as I see that there isn’t one solution, and that none of the solutions are wrong, my brain is still doing math, trying to solve the problem with one answer. And once it’s dedicated all that time into building that complex conceptualization, it doesn’t want to let go until the problem is solved.

The problem that doesn’t exist because none of it really actually fucking matters.

The real problem is my brain

You know that very wise advice of not trying to solve people? My brain doesn’t understand that. It takes complex data about a person, conceptualizes, and then tries to solve — even as it’s aware that isn’t how things work. Most social interactions are about disengaging my brain exactly for this reason. There’s a pattern of thought that comes naturally to this organic computer in my skull, and it is completely useless for the majority of things in life. It’s literally why I choose to write, choose to create anything, ever.

I need to make the game for my brain to solve, or there is no satisfaction or happiness in my life.

I am not writing a novel or series when I sit down to write. I am creating the data (all the shit I make up) and adding in the structure (the rules of writing, as well as the end goal of plot and character arcs) and giving my brain a problem to solve so that it will be happy in a way it cannot be happy any other time.

[data] + [structure] = [customized problem to solve (aka: game)]

I’m the kind of person who is looking for broken things to fix to find satisfaction in life. I fixed a trashcan the other day, solving the plastic mechanism to the lid that had broken years ago and no one had gotten around to dealing with it — and that brought me more satisfaction than the entire room I had also cleaned that day. It’s madness.

So this is also why I need the writing process. Because before, the structure I was building — the game I was creating so that I could then solve with writing — was too simple. It was designed for my brain when it was inflamed. Now the game needs to be more complex, or I can’t find a reason to come back to it. Because I’m not here to write a book. That would be too easy. My brain doesn’t get dopamine from that. I’m here to make such a complex problem for myself that I will feel satisfied once I solve it.

Self destructive by design? Maybe.

It’s not a choice. It’s my base chemical makeup. It’s a pattern of thought that I’ve had since small. It’s why books were so compelling to me as a kid, because I realized that everyone is searching for circumstances where they feel there talents are actually useful, and that’s what good books provided for the main characters. There was no point in having a character that was supposedly smart or talented or had some crazy magical power or difficult flaw, without having a challenge for them to overcome as a result. The strengths and weaknesses of the character would define the main plot points to come.

Books were wonderful like that, because unlike life, they always had a damn point. Someone was always trying to say something in a book, while with life it’s just chaos that we hope to organize in a way to cope with the complete lack of logic.

What I can control is in choice

The choice is that I keep coming back when my novelty seeking brain has decided there’s nothing left in the task of writing.

I don’t want to be a good writer. There’s nothing I want to master. I want to learn something. I want to be effective in what I do. I want to add data to my perceptions of the world and existence on a whole, and if the task I’m doing isn’t providing that, my brain checks the fuck out.

Really, how many times can you do the same damn task, sitting in a chair staring at the screen, hoping something different will happen? The choice is that I show up even though I know nothing different will happen. And then the next choice is to try and find a way to make it interesting enough so that it feels like something different is happening.

Why write?

I don’t really have a story to tell. When I first started writing, I was in the middle of PTSD therapy. I was trying to understand all the many things I needed to understand about the human animal and coping. That’s what drove me. The motivation isn’t there anymore. I understand enough. Now what.

[game] ?= [satisfaction]

Okay. So, it’s like, I’m here to make a game. I’m here to make something spectacular with all I’ve learned, so I’ll be engaged in the process. But how many times can you set up the dominoes and watch them tumble in glorious ways, until you become disinterested? When you know there’s only so many outcomes, none of them lasting; what drives you to create another pattern of the same?

People think it’s to move from pain, that the goal of money and getting out of a difficult situation is enough. But you know what you find in difficult situations that just so happens to fuel dopamine? Challenges that matter. In every direction. And isn’t that just so interesting for a brain that likes to problem solve?

One could contemplate, design, and make something absolutely unique and perfect for the space they’re in… Or they could buy something instead. When you don’t have money, you’re forced to dedicate the time and thought into a project, and my brain likes that. It wants an excuse to be creative in a way that matters, where there’s no guilt for ignoring the silly game it’s building for itself that makes an income.

That’s why building the game is far more interesting than playing the game I built. Building those support tools has value to me, measurable cause-and-effect to help me improve my existence in the world. Using the support tools to fuck around in a world of my own creation…?

Does it even matter? Does anything I do as a writer actually matter? And if it does, is it enough for my dopamine driven brain to grab on and keep going?

I think if I had the answer to this, I would already be writing (or I wouldn’t be trying to come back anymore.) And that’s the whole fucking problem. I know it doesn’t matter. And I know even if it did matter, my brain can’t conceptualize it as actually important enough right now to switch on and show up. Everything I do as a creative is an exercise in self indulgence, and my brain is bored by it.

Do other people deal with this?

There’s no way to really know myself without my deficits in executive function. When my brain was so inflamed from allergies that my OCD was everything, keeping me focused and driven, I thought that was my personality. It’s the same with ADHD; I don’t know if not having this fucked up dopamine system would mean I experience the world differently and wouldn’t be so driven by the novelty of learning to the point that everything that sparkles so quickly fades. I don’t know if having a different brain chemistry means I could be satisfied with doing the same thing again and again, and never once question — instead of always questioning — the path I find myself on.

This is my brain as I know it to be, with all its many flaws and difficulties within the current, severely flawed structure of the modern world. It is forever sharp teeth tearing into new concepts, slashing and dissecting, and then dismissing for the next meal. Never full, never satisfied. There is no plateau to rest, just the challenge of being trapped, fighting to get higher. And there’s not much I can do about it beyond live with my brain and pretend that with enough time these teeth might somehow soften, that it will eventually find whatever the fuck it’s looking for and be content.

Self destructive by design…?

This is not good content. This is not sellable as a product on a website. This is not a concept anyone seeking self-improvement wants to hear: desires in life are nothing more than chemistry and self indulgence, and we’re all puppets to our chemistry with no control in making the shit we do every day make sense or have actual value.

It’s certainly not information someone interested in growing a following as a writer for a consistent income would want to share with their readers. To know that the creative work one creates is boring to the creator? No one wants to know that. New writers don’t want to know that the creative process doesn’t fit into the mold of the capitalistic system that demands one create a product of similarity again and again and again, just so they be allowed to live on the income that’s returned. No, the reader is too caught up in the consumption. Because as my brain seeks novelty that it only feels capable of having exist if it designs it personally, their brains are seeking novelty without needing that frustrating step in between.

I miss those days of being a reader where shit was actually satisfying…

Does anyone really want to know that in the same way I create problems for my characters to solve to make an engaging story, I have to create challenges for me to solve so that I want to even show up to this gig? There’s nothing inspiring in the reality of this. But I’m not here to put a spin on it to make it inspiring. I’m here to cope with the shit-realities of it all.

Because I’m here, ready to write. And I’m so fucking bored. I’m so bored, I’m writing about why I’m bored, hoping that it will solve the problem of my boredom by pushing me further and further away from the actual writing/editing I’m supposed to do. And yeah, being self aware of it doesn’t solve shit. It’s part of the process.

Because part of the process of writing is not writing!

…See what I did there?

No, it’s not actually meaningful. It’s a fucking cop-out. But it’s the best I’ve got today as I hate on the hard truth that my brain is seeking something it is never going to have. Never. Yet it can’t fucking stop.

It’s an addict by nature. There’s no purpose in it, just coping. If I didn’t need my brain to write, shit would be so much simpler. But it can’t be simple. That’s boring to it. So here I am, ranting about shit I can’t change, before I go and do the boring shit I won’t have an excuse to avoid once I’m done writing this.

Fucking words.

mocha reading

DEMON BONDED: COVEN SAGA
null

EPISODE #12
ep 12: Scene 2 last updated 8/10/20

Whelp… found out why I’m so tired ⭐

Hey peeps,

So, this is a tough one, but I’m trying to not have it be a tough one because attitude is pretty much everything these days. There’s mold in my place. White mold– less toxic by default than the black stuff that took over my bedroom and living room a couple years ago. It’s in the basement this time around– we discovered it when some random ceiling tiles fell down. There’s a mini bathroom down there, unfinished, and the ceiling tiles suddenly fell and knocked a shelf sideways. And I guess there’s been moisture building, and mold growing for a while, and with the tiles down it’s all exposed to the air…

Teh landlord is working with us to ensure it all gets cleaned up, but it’s going to take some time. and I… well, I already broke. Let’s be real. The exhaustion of late from the mold growing under the floor was suddenly joined with brain sparking once the spores flooded the air, and I’m just struggling to pull myself back together. Dystonia has started up again, my limbs unbearably heavy, head hard to hold up, brain fucked– it doesn’t matter. It is what it is.
 

A break

I’ve stopped working on the books for now. I can’t do it– I can’t watch my brain slip away all over again after I fought so hard to get here. I can’t force myself to walk a path my body and brain can’t survive like this. I spent over two years pouring the little energy and focus I could muster into writing these books, only to get my brain back and rewrite them each in a month– its not fucking worth the effort to write when my brain is broken. I only exhaust myself while somehow feeling like a constant failure.

So this time I’m resting– I am bored out of my mind, but I refuse to contribute to the destruction of myself by trying to get this broken brain to do what it can’t do. Mold is tough enough on me without me being an unrealistic psycho as well.

Uh… but I decided on a project for the moment so the boredom and bitterness can’t creep in and overtake me. I had another reader approach me about the fact that they can’t use text to audio technology on my site to hear the books, and it got me thinking how hard it has been for me to read since my brain got scrambled with mold. So, while I’m waiting to get the mold removal peeps in to survey and figure out what’s going to happen next, I’m starting to make some basic audio books of the completed stories on the site. That way subscribers can choose to read or hear the words, and for those who struggle with reading a screen or wall of text (I get it, it swims after a while) will have an option that works for them.

It’s hard to stay awake. It’s hard to have my mind when I am awake. The world is filtered though inflammaiton right now and doesn’t fully make sense — and the fact that the most competent candidate for president in the US dropped out because America can’t see a woman as electable is just as insane. So fuck it all — gotta let the insanity play out as it will. I will survive this. I already have, and I damn well know the books will be awesome once my brain is in working order to finish writing them, and yeah, this is a break. A pause in the journey, and while on this pause I can create something useful for people who need better accessibility to my site.
 

… sorry in advance

I don’t know if I can handle whatever people want to say in response to all this, gonna be real. I definitely can’t handle pity, barely disappointment, well wishes– seriously, I feel like acknowledging the potential shittiness of mold over taking my house in the middle of winter when I should be safe is just too freaking hard right now. 2 months — I had two months of a working brain, wrote two books and it was stolen away just like that… >_> You guys are awesome and it’s totally not your fault I’m a psychological mess over all this, and I apologize now because I doubt I will respond to emails. I’m tired, and this has broken me in a way I don’t want to think about right now.

This will be easier to heal from — I know how, now. I know I can. I know this isn’t the end I feared it was each time it hit. But there is this frustration with realizing how damn fragile I am, where the other people in the house go through their days like nothing has happened while I once again am trapped in a body that doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to think. And it’s just the way this body is. Mold will alwasy be out there and my body is always going to react like this, no promise of any stability or ability to plan.

And currently, I can’t get a face mask to save my life with everyone buying them up with the coronavirus fear — face mask only theoretically prevent you from spreading the disease if you have it, btw, you can still catch it while wearing a mask. Coronavirus can survive outside the human body for up to 9 days, and in colder temperatures, up to a month. (Aka, practice good hygiene and don’t lick anyone.) And maybe get the facts straight on how to clean it up while you’re at it. And if you find yourself with sudden conjunctivitis, it could be coronavirus and it is contagious by eye.

So even though masks won’t save someone from getting coronavirus, proper masks prevent the brain sparking inhalation of mold spores for someone like me, and I am shit out of luck. I’m grateful this hasn’t turned into multiple chemical sensitivity like last time — a good sign the spores this current mold is releasing aren’t as bad as the previous one. But people who need those multiple chemical sensitivity masks to be able to not feel like they’re going to die in unbearable pain 24-7, I’m sure they’re struggling more than ever now because of this ignorance of others about face masks. Ignorance + panic rarely helps anyone. :/

Hope you’re all safe out there, and your week is going better than mine. There’s never a bad time to remember all the people you love and spend a little extra time with them, yeah? Even with the world gone mad, it’s good to remember what matters.

PATB Serial episode 1

PATB Serial: Episode #1

Dragon Shifting 101: Alpha Tendencies
The Paranormal Academy For Troubled Boys
$2.99

A gang initiation gone wrong.

Wylie’s demon arms have totally screwed him. He just wanted a chance—cash for college, a career. No one is going to hire a freak like him. But a deserted lab designed to cage werewolves? Anti paranormal tech with magical defenses? A gun? None of it should have been there.

If he were human, the cops wouldn’t want to throw him in prison without a trial. If he were human, sorcerers wouldn’t have come to kill him. But Wylie isn’t human, and the hunters will do everything to possess his dragon power.

Overnight, Wylie goes from teenage f-up to endangered species. One place can save him—the Academy—but only if he can win over their representative. Theodore Howld has a beast inside him full of deadly allure and bloodlust, bringing hunters to their knees to destroy them. He’s the perfect sorcerer, the perfect assassin, the perfect protector… but he might just be the worst person. Wylie’s life is in his hands; will Theodore crush him or save him?

80,500+ wrds, Published Jan 11, 2020.
Heat level: XX

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT PATB Serial #1

By Kathryn M on January 11, 2020.

By B. Hall on January 13, 2020.
This book started out with a bang and the action never stopped. Wylie is a complex character, fully fleshed out, just learning who and what he is. I truly got a sense of his inner turmoil without feeling like he was whining. Ok, so there was some whining, but as his story unfolds it’s really understandable. The secondary characters were incredible! Having figured out what Wylie is, they go all out to protect him and in doing so, we glimpse the unique and flawed world that Sadie Sins created. No punches were pulled. It’s as beautiful and flawed as our own world, especially poignant considering today’s political climate.
This was an epic adventure that I will gladly subscribe to. I’m really looking forward to reading more in this series. Her characters were amazing, fully fleshed out and three dimensional. Well worth reading!!

READ AN EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER ONE

Wylie’s fingers itched to turn into claws. He was ready to maul someone for a cigarette. His first burglary was off to a shit start, and given how their luck was going, they’d all be dead or in prison before the night was out.

They were a small crew—four in total—but the van felt filled to the brim with potential disaster. Wylie was in the back with his boyfriend, Beck, while the other two guys sat up front. Wylie was hunched on top of the wheel well, which gave him a clear view of the windshield and the gate blocking their way. His head brushed the roof and his back was cold against the wall, but he refused to move unless absolutely necessary. Every scrape of his sneakers on the grit covered metal floor made his teeth buzz and body tense.

What the fuck was taking so long? He wanted out of this damn tin can. Hell, he just wanted out: out of this night, out of this initiation, out of this stupid ass plan. The only thing keeping him from snapping was the cloak of darkness in the back. It was easier to keep it together when no one could see how close he was to losing his shit.

“Damn it. No,” Adam hissed from the passenger-side seat in front of Wylie. The teen clattered away on his mini keyboard while glaring at the small, burning screen in front of him. The self-proclaimed hacker was so short his head barely cleared the back of the seat, and the caustic, nervous tune he was humming did nothing to disguise his growing panic.

Wylie took a calming breath and tried to block out the electric scent of fear filling the confined space. The little tech-wiz was taking too long. Adam reeked of anxiety and showed no sign he was even close to breaking through the security system. For all they knew, the kid had turned chickenshit and was hoping to wait out the clock.

Ten minutes. Wylie’s eyes darted to the display on the dashboard when it flashed. Twelve minutes. The air grew heated the longer each second ticked and nothing changed. Wylie could smell the lingering scents of oil and stale blood beneath the annoying, fang twitching flood of testosterone in the enclosed space. Diego was flipping. Their asshole leader for the night hadn’t said a word since they parked, but Wylie’s nose revealed the rage building in the silent gangster.

This was a bad idea. A monumentally dumb fuck idea. He seriously should have taken that last smoke before they left.

“Is this happening?” Beck asked. A warm hand grasped his arm, and Wylie held still when his boyfriend pressed his chest up against his shoulder. Hair tickled his nose when Beck leaned across his chest and peered at the clock on the dash. “Shit, our timetable is going out the fucking window.”

Beck turned toward him but failed to find Wylie in the absolute black of the back of the van. The darkness didn’t stop Wylie’s supernatural vision. His pupils expanded, and shapes and colors began to appear out of the darkness. He focused on Beck and his gaze traced his boyfriend’s familiar, handsome features and slipped down to the smooth line of his throat.

This was a mistake. Beck was too idealistic, too sweet for this gang bullshit. He had never spent a day out on his own and didn’t know shit about the real world.

Wylie bent forward and brushed his lips to Beck’s ear. “We can still back out. No one needs to know we came out here.”

Beck shuddered, but it was only from the heat of Wylie’s breath on his skin. He turned his head and their noses bumped. It was surreal, and Wylie felt half a predator as he watched Beck’s useless human eyes blink in the dark. Beck fumbled and his palm found Wylie’s neck and moved up to his face. He rubbed along the peach fuzz of Wylie’s crew cut and inched forward, their mouths pressing close so they wouldn’t be overheard.

“Don’t be dumb, baby.” Beck’s lips teased over Wylie’s, and his fingers tugged at the strands of his blond hair. “This is our ticket out of all the bullshit. Once we make this score, we’re in and everything is going to change.”

“B, getting into the gang is only going to lead to more…” Wylie trailed off when an angry growl tore from the driver’s seat.

“Come on, you little fuck. Hurry up!” Diego slammed his fist on the dashboard, and everyone jumped.

Adam’s incessant humming silenced with his yelp, as did the keyboard clicking. He tried to steady his shaking hands beneath his armpits. Adam’s voice was timid and faint once he finally spoke. “I’m almost—”

“I thought you were a genius? This was going to take five minutes, tops,” Diego snarled accusingly. The seat squeaked when Diego turned and towered over Adam’s diminutive form. “Hurry the fuck up, you little shit! Or I’m dumping you in a dark alley full of flesh-eating freaks like the guy in the back. Crack the gate!”

Wylie gritted his teeth. He wasn’t a freak, and he sure as fuck wasn’t a cannibal.

“It’s not the same system Roth gave me the plans for,” Adam whispered from where he was cowering. “There’s another element I’ve never seen before. I’ve almost hacked it.” His narrow shoulders scrunched as he bent over his small computer and avoided Diego’s glare. His lips pursed tight, Adam ducked beneath his mouse brown hair and refocused on the screen.

“Hey, freak, you paying attention back there?” Diego threw his heavily tattooed arm over the seat and turned his aggressive stare to the back of the van.

“Yeah,” Wylie said through gritted teeth.

Diego’s hard, black eyes tried to find him in the dark. The gangster was as mean as a junkyard dog and twice as foul. Wylie might have been the only one in the crew who could transform, but Diego was all human and still managed to be as despicable as it got. Everything about the situation was setting Wylie on edge. It started all the way back when Diego showed up half an hour late to the heist and labeled him a freak. After an hour trapped in a van with the bad-tempered asshole, he was ready to smash the gangster’s face in.

Diego’s expression was brutal as he glanced at Adam a moment, then to the back of the van. “You’re going to break us through the gate if the kid fucks this up, freak. You might also need to beat the shit out of the little bitch if it turns out he’s screwing us over.”

“Yeah, none of that’s happening,” Wylie said with far less emotion than he felt. “Unless the alarms are down, we’re not leaving this van. We signed up for a robbery, not a fucking suicide mission.”

“You little shit!” Diego’s tanned features flushed red, and his chest puffed like a jacked up frog about to explode. His hand gripped the top of the dividing seat and the vinyl creaked in his powerful grip.

Wylie silently unwound from Beck and nudged him to the other side of his muscular form. He didn’t trust Diego not to lose his shit and start punching. Being saddled with three nervous, untested teenagers for a gang initiation probably wasn’t Diego’s high point of the night, either. It didn’t mean Wylie was about to throw his life away over the gangster’s explosive temper. He’d rather fuck it up in the driveway before they committed a crime, than have it turn to shit when they were balls deep in the mansion.

“Listen here, you fucking freakshow.” Diego stabbed a finger in Wylie’s direction, but had enough self-control to stop there. He wasn’t angry enough to reach into the dark and risk losing an arm. “If you don’t want to end up dead tonight, you do as I fucking say. That goes for all of you. This isn’t some pussy high school playtime, and I’m not going back to prison over you dumb fuck kids. If any of you—”

There was a loud rattle of metal, and Diego whirled in his seat to peer through the windshield. Adam beamed when the wrought iron gate blocking the driveway shuddered and glided open on motorized tracks.

“Halle-fucking-lujah,” Diego growled in relief and jammed the key forward in the ignition. The van sputtered, then roared to life. Diego showed thin restraint as he put the vehicle in gear, hit the gas, and they sped through the gate opening.

Wylie took a steadying breath as his gut clenched. There was no backing out. Whatever happened, they were in it now.

“We’re in,” Beck gasped in excitement. He fell against Wylie’s chest and peered ahead through the windshield. The sprawling mansion came into view, and Beck’s breath heated his cheek when he sought out his mouth. If Wylie’s response was more tepid than usual, Beck didn’t mention it.

“This is it, baby. This is our fucking future,” Beck whispered between quick, hungry kisses. “We’re finally going to be free.”

Wylie quickly sealed their lips together to silence Beck’s optimistic words. Running with Roth’s gang wasn’t going to be freedom the way his idealistic boyfriend envisioned. It was just another bunch of fucked up, hypocritical adults who used kids while calling it family. Doing illegal shit didn’t make it any better than all the other bullshit families Wylie had been through. It would be money, though, serious money that could buy him the future his fucked up arms stole.

Beck’s hand drifted down, and Wylie jolted when fingers fumbled for his zipper. “B,” he groaned, trying to keep from responding. He pulled Beck’s arm up and shot his boyfriend a smoldering look he couldn’t see in the dark. “Quit being a pervy kink. Focus.”

Beck rolled his eyes, and with a wicked grin, threw himself into Wylie’s lap. He wrapped around his boyfriend’s muscular form and kissed roughly up Wylie’s neck and jaw. “Don’t be that way, baby. We’re going to finally fuck tonight. We’re going to ace this shit, and you’re going to come over to my place and fuck me with your studly arms out.”

Beck rocked his hips against him seductively, and Wylie growled when his erection ground against his. Damn it, his dick dragged him into all kinds of trouble when it involved a tight piece of ass like Beck.

“B, you gotta take this seriously.” Wylie peeked an eye to the front of the van as Beck’s lips slid a hot path along his throat. “You know my arms are dangerous. With one wrong move, my scales could slice the flesh from your bones.”

“I don’t care. Your arms are crazy hot, and we’re totally doing it,” Beck whispered breathlessly. “Tomorrow morning, I’m telling my parents to go fuck themselves. No more evangelical school, no more sick fuck Reverend Clark, and no more pretending I hate dick. You’re going to move out of that shitty detention house where they treat you like a monster, and life is going to be fucking perfect.” Beck’s lips found Wylie’s in the dark and crushed him in a desperate kiss.

Beck was fucked up, and Wylie wasn’t complaining. He wrapped his arms tight around Beck’s narrow hips, squeezed his ass hard, and pulled him up into a deep kiss. Sneakers scraped the metal floor when Beck straddled his thighs, and his palms slid hot paths over Wylie’s chest and back.

“Damn it, Wy, you get me so fucking hot.” Beck shifted his hips, groaning into Wylie’s open mouth when his dick ground against his hard abs. “Tell me you want me…”

“B.” Wylie broke from the kiss and grabbed the hand trying to get under his sweatshirt and into his pants. He pulled Beck tight against him and pressed his mouth to his ear. “Promise me you’ll watch your back tonight. If you get even a whiff of the cops, you run.”

Beck stilled, glanced toward the front of the van, and turned back to whisper against Wylie’s cheek. “Dude, I’m the freaking lookout. I can’t run.”

He was so fucking naive. “B, you don’t owe these crazy fucks any—” Wylie fell silent as the darkness flashed and light dazzled his night vision. He hissed and covered his face with his arms. “Shit.”

Wylie stayed hunched until the blinding pain throbbing behind his eyes began to fade. An outdoor lamp illuminated the driveway where the van rolled to a stop in front of a large, multi-car garage. Diego cut the engine and silence descended. Wylie squinted up to the front once his eyes adjusted, and met Diego’s dark glare.

Wylie bristled and pushed back from Beck. He didn’t like Diego, he didn’t trust him, and he sure as fuck didn’t want his eyes on him when he was sucking face with his boyfriend.

Diego didn’t say anything as he watched Beck try to arrange his shirt to hide his obvious hard on. Beck was wearing skinny, black skater jeans that left nothing to the imagination as he tried to pull his already too tight shirt down his front. It merely lifted the fabric up his back, revealing the top of his ass where his jeans hung low on his hips. The gangster’s dark stare drifted down Beck’s body in a way that had Wylie growling in warning. Diego shrugged and pulled a packet from his pocket and jammed a piece of gum into his mouth. Wylie gritted his teeth when he realized it was nicotine gum. The fucker.

“Alright, kiddies,” Diego drawled. His gaze moved from Adam’s pale, anxious face, to Beck’s excited smile, to Wylie’s defensive glare. “Remember, the owner flew south to some fucking island, and we’re the professionals called in to check on a busted pipe. Easy.”

Wylie pursed his lips. They didn’t have a toolbox or even a sign on the side of the rusted-out van painted in matte black finish. They looked like three wannabe thug teenagers and a career criminal, not plumbers.

Diego didn’t seem concerned about the logistics of his plan as he pointed his finger at Beck. “B, you’re on lookout. I want you at the door with your ear on the scanner for signs of the cops. No matter what we’re lugging, you don’t leave that post until it’s time to go. As for you, you stupid shit.” He grabbed Adam roughly by the head and shoved him toward the door. “Get your scrawny ass out. We need someone to tag the stuff worth grabbing. Don’t fuck it up.”

Adam scrambled to keep his computer from falling while wrenching away from Diego’s touch. He didn’t dare look up as he shouldered the door open and slid down the seat until his sneakers reached the pavement.

Diego’s dark eyes burned with hostility when he turned to Wylie, who hadn’t moved yet. “Freakshow, you’re with me. Alright, you stupid fucks, let’s rob this shit.”

***

The night air outside was cooler than when they left the city, and held the distinct bite of autumn. Wylie lingered at the open back of the van to get used to the smells and sounds of the area. They had parked in a spot sheltered from view, where large willow trees and gardens of sculpted bushes blocked them from being seen by anyone on the road. Lights were on outside the mansion, and the trees cast long, black shadows in all directions.

Diego didn’t want them wearing masks, said it would ruin the illusion of being plumbers, but Wylie wasn’t sweating it. Adam had taken the surveillance system down before he cracked the gate, and the kid was confident it worked. And really, it wasn’t like anyone actually cared they were there.

Wylie’s pale blue eyes narrowed as he peered at the surrounding manors and mansions on the other side of the gate. The neighborhood was unnaturally silent compared to the city, but that was the rich for you. They went to bed on time, didn’t look out windows, didn’t think anything could touch them. They were the kind of people who kept all the lights on and thought that was enough to keep thieves away.

Wylie scoffed under his breath. When you had enough money to keep the monsters out, anyone could be dumb enough to sleep at night.

Wylie braced himself as he headed to the front of the van where the others had gathered. This was money, real money. A future. He was an eighteen-year-old freak who was never going to have a shot at a job with his fucked up arms. He needed to get this initiation right and prove to Roth he was useful, even if it meant stealing and thuggin for a living. Shit, he had to be good for something.

“How’s it look?” Beck asked as he came up beside him.

“It’s all quiet.” Wylie’s gaze drifted to his boyfriend and the excited flush to his cheeks. He gripped Beck’s shoulder and leaned down to whisper. “Don’t forget what I said. If things go wrong, you run.”

Beck’s smile was guarded when he pulled away. Wylie could tell from the sparkle in his eyes that he was loving every moment of the heist so far. Beck wasn’t fearless, but he got off on adrenaline, and it made him reckless. Wylie had his own ass to worry about, though, and he took a slow breath as he eyed the door he was there to break through.

There was only one entrance on this side of the mansion, a small, black door in the side of the wall, like an afterthought for servants who ended up on the wrong end of the building. The place was weird looking compared to any house Wylie had been in before. The downstairs looked like it was buried underground, the wall either built into the side of a mountain or someone had dumped dirt over it once the building was complete. A hill reached up on both sides of the flat, white expanse, and above was a glittering, beautiful house that looked like it sprouted organically from the gardens around it.

Wylie hesitated when he saw Adam hovering in front of the door, the kid hunched over a keypad to the right.

“Let’s go,” Diego hissed. He grabbed the black gate protecting the door after the keypad flashed and dimmed. Adam took a shaking step back when Diego swung the gate open wide. “Freak, we’re losing minutes,” Diego called impatiently. The gangster was too loud. Wylie looked around, but the yard they were in was so large, it could have been the size of a mall. No one was going to hear them out there.

“You can do this, yeah?” Beck took Wylie’s black sweatshirt when he shrugged out of it. “I mean, it’s just a door. You can cut that.”

Wylie smiled grimly. “Yeah. Easy.” Out of all the uncertainties the night presented, his abilities didn’t factor in.

Wylie raised his muscular arms and focused on his hands. As he concentrated, the pale pigment began to darken and his skin hardened. Starting at his fingers, black scales erupted from his flesh in a bloodless rush and moved up his forearms. Wylie hissed sharply and took a step from Beck, who was edging over to watch. His scales grew longer and pointed out from his arms at jagged angles. They were beautiful, like a dark, ruffled bird, but each oil slick blade had a razor-sharp edge. If not careful, his scales would ruthlessly slice through whatever they touched, be it metal or flesh.

Wylie had no clue what the hell he was. A paranormal, definitely. A shifter, probably, but his demon arms didn’t look like any animal out there. Most days he felt like a monster, but tonight he might actually be useful.

Wylie held his arms up over his head and let Beck tie his sweatshirt around his waist so it wouldn’t get shredded. “For good luck,” Beck whispered and leaned close to peck a kiss to his lips. Wylie had no defense against the wicked hand that suddenly reached between them and cupped his dick. “In less than an hour, I’m going to be deep throating this huge cock of yours while we’re surrounded by a pile of money. This is the ultimate score, baby. Everything changes tonight.”

Wylie didn’t argue as Beck’s lips heated along his cheek and he squeezed him through his jeans, his breath stuck in his chest. He was too aware of how easily his scales could slice Beck’s flesh to be able to enjoy the moment. Yeah, there was no way they’d be fucking with his arms out. No matter how sexy Beck looked when he grinned up at him like that.

“Freak!” Diego snapped, his patience running out as Beck continued to press kisses to Wylie’s tense jaw.

“I’ll be right back,” Wylie said once Beck stepped away, his eyes sliding down his boyfriend’s tight form flushed with arousal. “Try not to start without me,” Wylie added, only half teasing when Beck reached down to adjust his pants that were caught too tight around his erection. It didn’t seem to matter what the fuck they were doing, Beck was always ready to get off whenever they were together.

“All the more reason to hurry.” Beck’s smirk was shameless as Wylie turned away.

Adam gasped and threw himself back when Wylie stalked toward him. His eyes were wide as he stared at Wylie’s jagged scaled arms like he was a bloodthirsty demon there to murder him. “I got… I got the…” Adam flustered. Wylie stepped right past him, his gaze glued on Diego, whose expression was twisted with undisguised malice.

“Hustle the fuck up, freakshow.” Diego pointed to the door just in case he was too retarded to figure out why he was there. Wylie’s nostrils flared as he watched Diego chew his gum. The no smoking policy was total bullshit. If they could grab DNA off a cigarette, the cops could do the same for a piece of gum.

“Alarm dead?” Wylie grunted as he looked at the back door. The keypad no longer glowed with light, and the protective grate was pushed to the side to keep it from locking. Even at a distance, he could feel a strange sensation, like cold electricity was lingering in the metal of the grate.

“Of course it’s fucking dead,” Diego snapped. “Open the shit up and shut your freak mouth.”

Wylie ran his tongue along the edge of his teeth, his fangs itching to bite the aggressive fucker on the face. Money, he reminded himself. He needed the fucking money more than he needed stupid drama.

The door was black walnut with a gleaming finish varnished to perfection. It was misleading, made to look like every other pretty door on the rich houses in the area. The difference was that on this house, the wood was hiding a solid steel security door beneath.

Wylie drew a long, black talon down between the seam of the door and reinforced metal molding. He found the bolts, four in all, and scratched the surface to mark their placement. “Stand back.” He shot a glare over his shoulder when he found Diego hovering. “Unless you’re looking to eat metal.”

Diego grunted defiantly, but moved a few steps away. Wylie didn’t care if the guy ended up with an elbow in the face just so long as he had enough space to work. He ran his palm along where the door met the molding over the alignment of bolts, and braced his other hand to help muffle what he was about to do.

His first slam was experimental to give him an idea of what kind of force he needed. The door yielded beneath his palm, and the solid bolts were a soft bulge in the covering wood. Wylie abruptly clawed down the surface and scraped the glued on wood away to get a better look.

“Seriously?” Wylie muttered when he saw how close together the bolts were. Too easy. The pieces of metal couldn’t be more than three inches into the reinforced molding.

Wylie sank claws into the door with his braced hand, pulled his right back, and punched forward with an open palm. The metal buckled from the blow, and there was a shearing sound under the loud slam. Wylie kept pushing forward, and the door bent and warped from the molding around his hand. With a final slam, the mechanism holding the bolts tore through the other side of the door and clattered to the floor.

“Fuck, yeah.” A smug smile split Wylie’s face, and he turned the broken handle to loud protests from the metal, wrenching forward. Wylie pushed the door open wide with a flourish and waved the scowling Diego in. His gaze fell to Adam, whose chest was heaving and face pale as he stared at Wylie’s impossibly strong arms.

“Hurry the fuck up, you little bitch,” Diego snapped when he saw Adam frozen in fear. Adam jolted, and his eyes flew to Wylie’s face. Without a word, he scurried past and darted inside the dark room after Diego.

Wylie shook his head, his expression grim. He had only met Adam once before, and he reeked of so much fear it was hard to understand what the hell he was doing running with Roth. Maybe Adam was one of those types who didn’t want to be afraid anymore. Wylie sure as fuck didn’t have that problem. He stopped being afraid once he realized no matter how many foster families treated him like shit, he could still survive on his own. Even if he didn’t get into the gang tonight, Wylie knew he’d be fine.

“Baby, you got this,” Beck said excitedly as he stepped up beside Wylie, careful to avoid his scales. “Fuck college; you could be robbing banks! You’re made for this.”

Wylie pasted on a smile he didn’t feel. “Yeah, sure.” His boyfriend wanted him to be a career criminal. Great.

Lights flickered on inside, and Wylie eyed the gaping door where the other two had disappeared. Adam’s fear scent made the hair stand up on the back of his neck, and Wylie suppressed an annoyed sigh. None of this felt right. Adam was too waif-limbed to carry shit and too skittish to trust not to bolt if things got tough. Beck was at least a sweet talker. If some nosy biddy stuck her head over the fence, Beck could come up with a lie and a smile on his pretty face in a second flat.

It didn’t matter, not really. Beck shouldn’t have been there. Neither teen had the judgment or nerves suited to rob the place, and Wylie was left wondering once again why they brought four guys for this job.

He was in it now. Breaking and entering, trespassing, burglary, and damage to private property. Shit, Beck might have a point about this being a career.

Wylie squared his shoulders and stalked toward the door. “Watch your ass, B.”

“Yours and mine both, babe,” Beck replied with a wink as he whirled and sauntered back to the van.

Wylie paused as he stepped inside. He was expecting a great room, something relaxed with a television and couch. What he found was a space clinical and cold in both style and temperature, one with a purpose he couldn’t quite place. The floor was a hard tile, and the walls stripped of any personal touches or embellishments. It was a flat, white room all around, and Wylie’s ice blue eyes narrowed on the strange, bulky machinery made of glittering chrome and sleek plastic. The advanced looking equipment dotted the large space in an obvious grid pattern.

It could have been storage or even a weird art installation. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it.

“Start tagging anything that looks worthwhile,” Diego ordered Adam, who was trembling where he stood.

The air was stale and void of natural scents, which only made Adam’s fear scent all the more intense. Wylie’s gaze darted to the wall of electronics, paused on a dividing curtain of plastic to the right, and landed on Adam’s diminutive form and hunched shoulders. Wylie didn’t know shit about tech outside of email and phone calls, but there was a lot of big equipment. If he judged by Adam’s expression, none of this was the run of the mill stuff you’d find in just any rich fuck’s house.

“This is military grade,” Adam whispered as he hovered next to a metal contraption that looked heavy enough to crush him. The machine he was fiddling with flickered and buzzed, and a thin light glowed between metal plates, producing a laser. Wylie’s scales puffed up as a chill zapped down his spine. The sooner they got out of there, the better.

“The door!” Diego snarled to Adam and pointed to a large, open doorway that led to the rest of the downstairs. “We’ve got one more keypad to get through to get into the upstairs house.”

“R-Right!” Adam flinched at Diego’s aggressive tone and nodded rapidly. Clutching his laptop to his chest, he quickly scurried in the direction of the hall.

“I thought you said the security was all down?” Wylie asked suspiciously.

“Subsystems. Simple shit,” Diego grunted. “Come on, freak. The safe is upstairs.”

Wylie followed after Diego’s retreating back with his lips pursed tight. No one had mentioned anything about keypads and internal locks. Had Adam been briefed on things the rest of them hadn’t?

Wylie wasn’t sure if he had good reason to feel paranoid or if the downstairs was just creeping him out. The place felt like an underground laboratory, and it got worse as he followed Diego down the unadorned hallway tiled in white.

Lights connected to motion sensors clicked on as they passed. On either side of the hallway were floor to ceiling windows that looked into large rooms. Inside were desks and more equipment, the spaces filled with the shiny, chrome stuff. But the instruments didn’t look like displays here; they were being used for something. Well, had been used, at least.

Everything was covered in plastic drop cloths to keep dust from getting into whatever was hidden underneath. Wylie wasn’t particularly interested in learning just what was under the plastic. What he could see was creepy enough, from empty vats and cages large enough to fit people, to examination rooms that looked both high tech and intimidating. Through one set of windows was a room that looked so dungeon like, Wylie stopped to peer silently for a long minute.

There were metal restraints, a metal cage that fit across an entire wall, and a metal grid on every surface. On the back wall was a large image of the inside of a human mouth. Except it wasn’t a human mouth, not a proper one. There were two rows of razor-sharp teeth belonging to a fully infected werewolf.

‘Howlers…’

“Shit.” Wylie’s scales ruffled, and he blinked rapidly as a strange wave of dizziness hit him. He turned from the image of the werewolf and forged ahead. He didn’t look into the rooms after that. He didn’t want to see any of it, didn’t want to know. The stuff looked like it was sitting there, untouched for years, and that was consolation enough.

“Figure out what’s important, and we’ll be down to move what you can’t lift.” Up ahead, Diego shoved Adam back the way they just came. “Don’t fuck it up.”

Wylie could see the fear in Adam’s eyes as the teen came his way. Adam stayed close to the side of the hall to avoid getting too close as he passed by him, his only acknowledgment that he was there. Wylie shook his head grimly and forged forward.

Too young. They were all too fucking young for this shit.

“Stairs,” Diego grunted and pulled open the door he was standing next to. Wylie saw the dead keypad on the wall and the metal grate that was once blocking the door now hooked to the side. It looked just like the metal used for the werewolf cage.

“What is this place?” Wylie asked as he entered the stairwell made of concrete steps that led up.

“None of your fucking business,” Diego snapped. “Less talking, more paying the fuck attention, freakshow.”

Wylie gritted his teeth and stomped up the stairs after Diego. He slowed once they reached the upstairs door and waited for Diego to open it, the gangster taking care to push another black metal grate aside before stepping through.

Wylie held his breath when he stepped out into the upstairs mansion. The lights were dim, but his eyes caught every detail as he looked around. Everything was different compared to the sterile lab area they left downstairs, and it felt like he was stepping out into another world.

The stairway door was tucked in a corner that opened out into a hallway, and directly to his left was a large, gleaming kitchen with expansive counter tops and state of the art equipment. Wylie fleetingly remembered what he last ate that day. It had been a bag of potato chips Beck grabbed him from his house. Before then, a piece of bread smeared with butter and nothing else. Wylie had never seen a kitchen so large before, and he had to force his feet from wandering in search for food. He was sure whatever was in the giant, stainless steel fridge was of a better caliber than anything that was back at his detention house.

Wylie followed Diego down the unfamiliar hall, his gaze darting to every shadowed room and new luxury. At the corner, he found a giant family room with a television big enough to hide inside. He passed a decadent dining room, the walls dripping in luscious drapes, the space filled with gleaming wooden furniture carved with elegant curves and whorls. Chandeliers dazzled above their heads in the low lighting, glowing with a faint magic that turned the crystals into prisms lit from within.

Diego didn’t seem interested in any of the opulence as he stalked through the long maze of hallways with complete confidence. It made Wylie wonder if the gang had gotten the house plans in advance, or if maybe Diego had been there before. It was hard to believe someone as coarse and crude as Diego had convinced a maid to let him see the place, but the gangster moved like he knew exactly where he was going, and didn’t bother to turn on the lights even in the dark hallways. Wylie admitted a mild appreciation that Diego wasn’t bumbling around like an idiot. He could put up with the asshole just so long as he didn’t get them thrown into jail.

The hallway suddenly branched out in four directions, and Wylie stopped short, his mouth agape as he turned and took it all in.

On one side was a curved music room with no doorways to block the sight of the ornate instruments. Gilded and ancient looking, each musical instrument was meticulously preserved and cared for, arranged to be seen more than played. Behind the wall where a harp arched like a giant platinum swan, floor to ceiling windows looked out onto the courtyard. Through the glass was a tall gate blocking the courtyard in, one that ran above like a cage so that nothing human sized could get out.

Wylie turned slowly, barely seeing the dual sweeping staircases that led to the second floor of the grand foyer. He zeroed in on the dark door on the other side of the foyer as his stomach bubbled with nerves. He had severely underestimated the security. The little door downstairs with the wimpy bolts he punched through was nothing compared to the mammoth door and extensive security that encased the front entrance of the mansion. Even from the distance, he could see electricity arcing from the metal door to a switch connected to a generator below.

Wylie started putting it all together: the lack of windows, the metal gates on every door, around the courtyard and the lawn, and now the only other door he’d found literally made out of anti-paranormal technology. The mansion hadn’t just been designed to cage werewolves downstairs; it was made to keep them out of the building.

It was a level of wealth he couldn’t fathom, and Wylie looked around the foyer like a starstruck tourist. What it would cost to power the gate, the doors, the fences… It was the kind of thing only cities could afford, yet here it was in a house built for one family.

Wylie tilted his head back and peered at the ceiling that arched above with geometric patterns carved in relief on the white surface. The marble tile below reflected the shapes in its sleek, shiny surface. All around him from the walls, to the statues, to the paintings, and lighting spoke of a luxury he had only ever glimpsed in the pages of magazines or flashes on television. He had thought it had to be an illusion, just media magic—or even plain old magic—but somehow there were people who actually lived like this.

“Freak!” Diego snapped his fingers sharply. “Pay the fuck attention!”

Wylie blinked and lowered his gaze, his expression impassive as he stared back at Diego’s scowling face. If the fucker whistled at him like a dog, Wylie wasn’t sure just what he’d do, but he doubted anyone would blame him.

Wylie turned his feet in Diego’s direction and returned to the path, this time with his senses expanded to take everything in. Diego’s voice was a low, angry rant far ahead of him. “…saddled with a bunch of snot-nosed, piss for brains, fucktard kids.” Wylie tuned it out, more interested in the many extravagances and flashes of treasure found everywhere he looked. In the study, a grandfather clock ticked from its tall, cherry wood case. It had a mother of pearl face that gleamed in the luminous tint of magic from the pillar lamps. Everything in the mansion felt larger than life, created to impress instead of just exist.

Warning prickled through him as he passed the study, and Wylie stopped short. He tilted his head, and his scales ruffled and nostrils flared as he attempted to sense it out. Wylie breathed in deep and turned his head when he caught the scent of flowers. Down a connecting hall was a sleek, mahogany table with a vase sitting in the center. Wylie’s scales ruffled again, and without a word, he turned to investigate.

They were daffodils mixed with small, white daisies in a classic vase. The flowers were fresh, free of droopage or spots of brown on the perfect petals, and Wylie’s stomach churned with the realization.

Diego glanced behind him and snarled when he discovered Wylie wasn’t following. When he caught sight of him, he stomped over to where Wylie was glaring at the flowers. “What the fuck are you doing?” Diego demanded.

“Fresh flowers,” Wylie said through clenched teeth. He rolled his eyes when Diego inhaled, moments from flipping out at him for wasting time. “They’re not even wilted,” Wylie stressed as he plucked one of the petals free with his dark claws. “Who the hell puts flowers out in an empty house?”

Diego’s eyes narrowed, and he stepped forward to briefly sniff the flowers to see if they were real. He straightened, and with a shrug, waved to the elegant hallways. “Look at this fucking place. Do you really think someone this rich does normal shit? Maybe the fucking maid puts them out to look nice in case they get robbed. Stop thinking and hurry the fuck up.”

“This is totally fucked,” Wylie muttered under his breath as Diego stalk back to the main hall.

The downstairs was full of military tech and werewolf cages, the outside gate had a code they barely got through, and the place was designed to withstand a siege of howlers. Who the fuck knew what else they might have missed? It was the middle of the night and whoever might be there—maid, butler, guest—could be in bed in one of the many rooms in the giant mansion. Wylie had no issue with stealing shit from someone who had more than enough, but he drew the line at terrorizing people.

“Psst!” Diego turned and waved his hand in an exaggerated motion to get him the fuck over there.

“Damn it. Fucking damn it,” Wylie growled under his breath and forced his reluctant feet forward. His scales were twitching so much, it felt like a bug was digging beneath his skin as he followed after Diego.

For all he knew, the fucking rich put flowers out every damn day even when no one was home. Rich people were fucking crazy. Money lifted them beyond reality the same way drugs did for a strung out crackwhore. Whoever lived there had rooms for their stuff, not for people. It’s not like he had found any photos in the giant place or anything. Who the hell was he to say what went on in the minds of the ultra-rich?

Wylie kept close this time as Diego led them surefooted down a branching corridor. He wanted this heist over with already so he could get the fuck out. They followed around a curved wall and passed an elaborate gym with equipment that looked too expensive to belong in anyone’s house. There was nothing normal about the mansion, and Wylie felt more and more out of place when they passed a library inside a study large enough to be a house all by itself.

The wealth was no longer impressive. Every new thing just reminded him of the anti-paranormal tech on the doors and windows. He might not know what his demon arms were, but Wylie was well aware they marked him as a paranormal. This was not a place he was supposed to be.

Wylie’s unease grew with every tap of prison tattooed fingers to the doors as they passed. Diego finally stopped at a dark wooden door where dim light greeted through a narrow gap.

“The office,” Diego announced when Wylie met him at the doorway. “There are jewels and bonds in here, plus some cash.” He pulled a black rectangle from inside his leather coat and unfolded it into a large canvas duffel bag. “The safe is on the far wall past the windows and desk. A bunch of books open up like a door.”

Diego glared into Wylie’s eyes as he placed the strap of the bag into his smooth palm, careful to avoid his talons. “Empty the shit and meet me down the hall. The clock is running down, so don’t fuck around. Don’t touch anything that’s not in that safe, and don’t run off. Just empty it and meet me five doors that way, left side.”

Wylie nodded and tried not to wonder what Diego was going for alone. If the asshole was stealing shit without Roth knowing, he sure as hell didn’t want to be the guy to snitch. Wylie knew why he was there: to follow orders so he could get in with Roth. If Diego wanted to screw himself with the boss, that was his death wish.

Wylie kept his mouth shut and waited for Diego to disappear down the hall before he pushed the office door open. He paused on the threshold and his gaze darted around the lush, sophisticated study. The room brimmed with expensive sculptures and artwork from all over the world. A single table lamp shone a warm glow from a solid wood desk in the middle of the room. It illuminated the warm brown tones of leather furniture and deep red walls. Wylie glared at his ratty sneakers, half afraid to step on the rich oriental rug and dirty it.

The room could have been two with the way bookcases dominated the far side of the space. The wealth was overwhelming, and all Wylie could think about were the shitholes he spent most of his time in. Each room of the mansion felt like new worlds, and this one was no different. Wylie pursed his lips and slipped through the door, careful to tread as lightly as possible on the rug.

Wylie grew tense with each wrong step. He didn’t belong here. He had spent years in foster care, living in houses where he wasn’t welcome, borrowing what was lent and rarely given. This time he was in a house to steal, not borrow. No one had invited him in; he had broken through the door. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. As much as he tried to brush it off, Wylie’s chest was tight as he walked the length of the room.

Scents tickled at his nose, and Wylie did his best to ignore the signs of recent life around him. The stale scent of human flesh was on the air. An older male… cigar smoker… “The butler,” Wylie whispered and took brisk steps to the bookcase on the far wall. Whoever left those flowers probably checked the rooms during the day to dust or some shit. He wasn’t sure exactly what it took to keep a mansion this size clean, but staff probably came by daily.

The false wall of books was easy to find. The hinges hadn’t been hidden, and although the books were real, they were placed as if in afterthought over the swinging door. Wylie’s pierced eyebrow raised at the ridiculousness of it all. The house screamed money, and anyone looking would know the place was full of cash. The owner must have really thought no one would ever get through the door.

Wylie clicked a claw into the wooden groove and nudged the false door open. The bookcase swung wide, and he eyed the matte black safe critically. It was more a vault than what he expected to find. Encased in cement, the safe was almost as tall as him. In the center was a dial waiting for a combination, and beneath that, a handle. Wylie considered the metal contraption in silence for long moments.

The downstairs door had taught him a lot for his first break in, and he didn’t bother trying to finesse this time. He punched his scaled fist into the safe door and ground his knuckles in hard until the metal ripped. He slammed his other hand down just as hard and slipped his claws between the jagged edges of torn metal. Wylie gripped tight and grinned as he curled and bent the thick, heavy door down. Even though it was made of steel, the door twisted like a thin tin cover of spam beneath his palms.

Shit, he really was made for this.

The darkness within the vault hid nothing from Wylie’s night vision. He couldn’t say what bonds were exactly, but he guessed the large, colorful pieces of paper kept in neat piles on the top shelf were them. There were flat boxes on the shelf beneath he figured must be the jewelry Diego mentioned. All the other shelves held cash separated into bundles and kept in tidy piles. It was the most money he’d ever seen in his life, and Wylie didn’t have to count it to know it was an absolute fortune.

Wylie wrenched the door with a final motion until the opening was as low as his knees, then he reached in to sweep the lowest shelf into the duffel. The scales on his wrist caught and tore right through a metal shelf and shredded half a bundle of cash.

“Fuck!” Wylie froze as ripped twenty-dollar bills fluttered down to his sneakers. Any sudden movement could end with all the money shredded. On the best of days, his palms were the only safe part of his hands when his scales were out. When he was shaking, his demon arms became even more of a hazard—not that he would admit to the adrenaline coursing through him.

Wylie took a steadying breath and glared down at his hands. His scales ruffled but refused to retract. “Come on, you fuckers,” he demanded in a harsh whisper. Everything about his arms pissed him off, including how temperamental they were. He was pretty sure the demonic things hated him back just as much, seeing as they made his life hell. “The claws, then,” Wylie pleaded and wiggled his fingers. “I need a damn hand!” His scales refused to relent, and Wylie growled in frustration. He peered into the paper treasure pile waiting in the safe as his mind raced.

Fear was starting to itch up his spine. Wylie couldn’t actually remember the last time he had let his arms out this long. Usually it was short stuff, quick moments where he would break something that needed breaking, or threaten someone who was giving him shit. He always shifted back right after, afraid of what might happen. His demon arms never felt like they were a part of him, but more that someone else was in there, controlling the terrifying things…

‘Hurry…’

Wylie grimaced as darkness throbbed for a moment behind his eyes. He didn’t have time for this. There was no fucking time.

“Fuck it.” Wylie gave up on his hands, and his eyes lit on a thick, hardcover encyclopedia on the bookcase shelves. It didn’t matter if his claws shredded the book just so long as they didn’t touch the money. Wylie pulled the encyclopedia down and used a sweeping motion to clear half of the first shelf into the duffel bag. “Yes. Fucking winning,” he cheered triumphantly.

He held the bag gingerly by the strap with his knee raised to brace the bottom. With the book, Wylie knocked the rest of the contents from the shelf into the waiting bag. Things went faster after that, and it was difficult to truly understand the stacks of money sailing past him.

Seriously, rich people were fucking crazy. Who needed this much cash at home? If they put their money in a bank, no one would be walking into their house to steal their shit. But then, what the fuck did he know? Wylie snorted under his breath as one of the flat boxes knocked open and a glittering necklace tumbled out, only to be covered by a half dozen bundles of cash. Maybe the thousands flipping past his view were the same as spare change in the couch for normal people? Giant mansions, giant tech, giant amounts of dough: the rich were too fucking large to comprehend.

It was a good thing Beck was stuck playing lookout; he would have been writhing in the vault like it was an orgy. Beck had big dreams he was looking to buy if he could only get enough cash. Wylie tried to understand it, but he stopped dreaming a long time ago. There was no point. Freaks didn’t get to reach their dreams. No, they were stuck doing the grunt work behind the scenes while ambitious crooks like Roth were safe at home making a fortune.

The seams of the bag were stretching by the time the safe was empty. Wylie tossed the now shredded hardcover book aside and flexed his shoulders to coax his scales further up his arms. His demon arms had weird limitations he didn’t fully understand. His muscles and bones changed to beyond human, but only where the scales reached. It didn’t matter how killer his arms were if he couldn’t lug the weight of a bag full of twenties.

Wylie held still as his biceps bulged and more scales erupted through his flesh. The edges of his tank top shredded from the sharp scales. Sight, sound, and scent flooded him all at once when Wylie’s senses responded to the transformation, and a vibrant rush of information greeted him with his next breath.

Yeah, there had been a man in the office recently. Very recent. Wylie could smell the molecules of sweat in the air. He carried the bag one handed and wandered to a stand of glittering liquor bottles where a discarded glass of brandy rested. He sniffed and picked up the sour hint of clinging saliva and bacteria off the rim. If it was the butler, he sure as fuck wasn’t afraid to leave his booze stealing ways out for all to see…

Wylie didn’t need his scales to twitch this time as his heart pounded with understanding. He smelled someone.

He had slammed through that downstairs door, and the sound of shearing metal when he tore through the safe wasn’t fucking quiet. Fuck. They could have already called the cops. Wylie grimaced as a snarl tore from his throat. Fucking whore, the cops could already be on their way! What if they missed something? There had been codes on the inside—what if Adam missed something? The cops could be sneaking up the driveway even now!

Wylie didn’t bother to count the doors as he booked it from the office and dashed into the hall. He followed Diego’s scent down the hallway while he swallowed down his anxiety. There was no watch his scales wouldn’t destroy, but he knew they couldn’t have been in the house for more than ten minutes. Wylie winced when he thought about how long it took to get through the downstairs with all the weird labs. Shit, it might have been fifteen. Even twenty minutes—the hallways were so damn long in the place. Fuck, they needed to fucking fly.

“Diego!” Wylie palmed the door handle to the room the gangster had disappeared into and used his knee to push it open. He stopped short with a sharp inhale when scent and sight revealed an absolute shit storm.

 

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?Women Matter. Babies Matter. Stop Killing Us.?

Hey babes,

I’ve been reeling a bit. Writing and cleaning up Episode #1 of the PATB Serial. Some random, insignificant health stuff, but nothing worth talking about. There have been a lot of things I just don’t feel like talking about lately. I don’t like drama, I don’t like spreading needless pain. I don’t like having to hear the news and being pissed off and then making others pissed off. But fuck it. Let’s call this cathartic because I gotta talk about this shit.

I want to warn in advance… I’m probably going to say some offensive shit. It may seem like I hate men. I don’t, but I am angry. When you’re trapped in a system where you’re on the side being oppressed, it’s very hard not to yell about the side that’s not being oppressed the same way, the side that appears to have the power to change things if they would only try. I understand all too well that men are allies—I have amazing men, women, and non-binary individuals in my life who are freaking amazing and understand all too well the struggle we are facing.

But I also know not all men are allies. That there are individuals in this fucked up system who are more than happy to crush anyone with a uterus down, and some of those individuals have a uterus too. My anger is directed toward these individuals, but I get it. I cannot speak properly when I’m pissed off. I accept now I will say something wrong, many things, and I apologize to those who think I’m intentionally being insensitive. I am too sensitive right now, I care too much, and I’m being real to that.

I’m going to add some self care links and how to help links at the bottom of this. Check it if you’re not dealing well with the stress or are looking for ways to be proactive during this really shitty time. I feel shitty and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

As for those who are tired of hearing women rant about equal rights because they think everything is ‘perfectly fine:’ too fucking bad. Suck it up, buttercup.

 

Ready for a long rant?

Anti-women bills

If you haven’t read the details, here’s an article by Vox. (ref #AntiAbortionBillsExplained) It was written the 10th and since then, Alabama’s bill has passed with no exceptions for rape or incest. (ref #UpdatesOnReproductiveRights)

Anti abortion laws are sweeping the US state to state in a planned attack to overturn Roe v. Wade and take away a woman’s right to her body. I knew it was going to happen. We all fucking knew. If you were a women in the US when we watched an alleged serial sexual assaulter get elected into the Supreme Court, you knew this was the next war. And hey, the extreme, religious right knew too and didn’t disappoint.

I mean, if they were coming after our GUNS it would be a different story, right? Every ‘red blooded American’ would be screaming about their constitutional rights being stolen away. We have a right to GUNS! But a women’s constitutional right to own her own body? Crickets. Gas lighting. Bullshit pseudo science. We laugh at flat-earthers being out of touch with reality, but apparently lawmakers still can’t figure out how the hell a uterus works. No, we force our women to leave their jobs and have their bodies change in alarming, dangerous ways (ref #PregnancyChanges) so that they’re punished for having a dick in them. Not only can a man force a dick in a woman, but then she has to be forced to have her entire life and body change because of these bullshit laws.

So here we are with laws in place to imprison a doctor for 99 years if caught giving an abortion. Where the only way you’re allowed to have an abortion is if you don’t know you’re pregnant. Some laws are set to conception as a fetus being ‘alive’ and having a ‘right to live’ over a woman’s right to chose. And the six week mark of a heartbeat (of which it is not an actual heartbeat because a heart has not developed — come on you stupid fucks, open a biology book) is measured not by conception, but through a woman’s last period, so even there, no fairness.

For those who don’t understand basic female anatomy (ref #Ovulation), a woman must be ovulating to become pregnant. Ovulation happens before menstruation, 14 days, approx., meaning if you menstruate after sex, you have no possibility of being pregnant. (Some women experience spotting or a lighter period when first pregnant, meaning they may not even realize they’re pregnant till far later.) But for the majority of women, if she becomes pregnant on the day of ovulation (an egg is only viable 12-24 hours after it leaves the ovary, so the day,) that means she won’t have a period following. She will be measured by her previous period, which was 2 weeks before ovulation and conception. Sometimes women are late on their periods, or lose track of time (cuz hey, busy,) meaning the menstrual cycle she missed is already 4 weeks after her previous cycle. This gives her two weeks to realize she may be pregnant and decide on an abortion before the heartbeat law says she’s out of time.

I don’t know about you, but that’s a pretty short timeline to figure out if you want to have a financial, emotional, physical, and social burden that will last for the next 18 years of your life, or if you want to get an expensive abortion (@$350 – $950 for a first trimester abortion) just because a condom may have been faulty. I had to wait 4 months just to get enough money together to pay for car repairs. That is a lot of pressure on an already stressful situation, especially if you’re not financially stable.

Not a lot of banks giving out loans for abortions. Note: If you need funding in the US for an abortion, check here. It was written in 2016, so a possibly outdated. (ref #AbortionFundingByState)

Forcing a serious decision like starting a family into a matter of days is irresponsible for all parties involved. The US has the highest infant and maternal mortality rate of any developed country. Mothers and born babies need help now, but these anti-abortion bills do nothing to address that. Because women don’t matter to pro-lifers. Babies don’t matter to pro-lifers. They don’t care about human lives. They just care about stealing control of a woman’s body while repeating the same old drone bullshit of ‘right to life.’ (ref #JudgeRulesGasLighting) Actions and where they send their money speak truth, and the ProLife movement has shown they’re only about forcing birth.

The blunt reality of the world is not all babies are wanted. Not all humans are suitable parents. Not all women consent to being impregnated. Nothing is sacred, not even life, and overpopulation during an environmental crisis is a shit show. There is no value to preventing abortion, only economic harm and the dehumanization of women into baby makers. So let’s jump into the consequences and realities.

 

How are women killed from criminalizing abortions?

Illegal Abortions

Women seek unsafe abortions which can lead to their death. In parts of the world where abortion is illegal, botched abortions still cause about 8 to 11 percent of all maternal deaths, or about 30,000 each year. (ref #IllegalAbortionDeaths)

 

No Medical Help

Women avoid doctors while they’re pregnant, putting themselves in jeopardy if the pregnancy goes wrong. When you fear being forced to follow through with pregnancy or being imprisoned over a miscarriage, you don’t tell anyone you’re pregnant. Plain and simple logic. Doctors are not an ally, but an informant for the government in such a situation.

In a life and death situation where a woman might be mid miscarriage, perhaps through a fall she had no control over, she won’t seek help because she won’t want to go to jail for a miscarriage. And yes, women have gone to jail in the US for miscarriage. (ref #AntiAbortionJailed)

Women may refuse to seek medical help at all if they have received an abortion in the past or miscarried for the same reason. One of the biggest problems in states that restrict abortion is how they also restrict education and support of women’s health. Without knowledge of what a doctor can tell when examining women, or how much you’re allowed to let them examine you, an uniformed woman will avoid it all to protect herself.

Some are only taught about abstinence and have little idea about their bodies and how they work, how to have sex safely, and how to not get pregnant when having sex. (ref #TeenEducationDrop) Few women even know that they don’t pee out of their vaginas! (ref #ThreeHoles) They are kept ignorant of their own bodies, safety, of STIs which they can spread blindly, and of their power to not be pregnant.

When a doctor is the authority of if you’re going to go to jail, you don’t seek medical help, which is exactly what these bills will result in. (ref #PoliticsAndMiscarriage)

 

Silencing Victims

Let’s not forget the silence around sexual abuse in families.

There are teenage girls being raped by members of their family, by adults, by men in positions of power over them be it financially or materially. These young girls are already at risk of being harmed or killed by their assailant. Now they have to fear being prosecuted if they seek help if they become pregnant, have had a miscarriage in the past, or are in the process of having a miscarriage because they were harmed while pregnant.

What if in being examined for sexual assault, they’re discovered to have miscarried in the past? No police reports would have been filed, and it’s unlikely any teen would dare name her assailant if it’s a family member and, bluntly, even less likely she would be believed because no one believes women when it comes to sexual assault.

These are at risk women who haven’t even gained enough self awareness to understand their situation, now learning that there are laws in place to help keep them silent about the abuse they’re enduring. After her right to say no is stolen from her, her freedom can be too by being imprisoned for feticide for not seeking proper treatment when pregnant. Because, yes, when they suspect a woman lost a fetus from neglect, they have thrown her in prison in the US. (ref #Feticide) (ref #SuicideInPregnancy) This puts these women in a particularly dangerous situations where suicide is the only option left. (ref #SuicideWithoutAbortion)

 

How are babies killed from criminalizing abortions?

High Infant Mortality

States with the worst anti-abortion laws have the worst infant mortality rates. (ref #InfantMortality)

So for clarification, we’re talking about babies, not fetuses. What is a baby? For starters, it’s born. Babies cannot exist in the uterus (unless one crawls back in. O_O)
(ref #Infant) Newborn infants are the youngest form of life outside of the womb, and if not for a mammalian mother or replacement, that infant will die from lack of nourishment or protection. Without a mother, a newborn will die without intervention.

Without a mother, a fetus will die. It cannot sustain itself.
(ref #Fetus) Nonviable fetuses cannot live outside the womb, and few viable fetuses are ever intentionally aborted unless to save a mother’s life. (ref #AbortionMyths) Viable fetuses who can survive out of the womb can be as young as 24 weeks, but even then, their survival rate is low even with medical intervention. They cannot seek food, can’t protect themselves; they need intervention to live. Many premature births lead to long term health problems for the resulting baby if they manage to survive. (ref #FetalViability)

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (ref #SIDS) is when an infant suddenly dies without explanation, but not necessarily without natural cause. Not all born infants will pass this stage. We have amazing medical technology, but some life just cannot sustain itself. Not all life lives.

 

Infanticide

“Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunter gatherers to high civilizations, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule.” (ref #Infanticide)

Women who don’t want to be mothers, and don’t have access to contraceptives or abortions, abandon their newborns. Men who don’t want to be fathers, or family members who don’t want the women to be a mother, may take her baby away and abandon it to prevent social and financial strain. Instead of aborting a fetus, a newborn is left to die.

 

Child Abandonment

65% of abandoned children (who are recovered) are newborns. (ref #AbandonedKids) We have no idea how many newborns are actually abandoned in the US. The statistics is no better once we started the Safe Haven law because reporting numbers can lead to fear of legislative interference. (ref #AbandonedNewborns)

No one knows how many abandoned babies are unaccounted for. And to put it bluntly, when it’s a crime to have a miscarriage, women are going to stop reporting they’re pregnant at all. They’re going to stop going to doctors to seek help. They’re not going to be abandoning their babies in places where anyone could find out they were pregnant in the first place. Those babies won’t end up in a Safe Haven; they’ll be buried to prevent a woman from having to go to jail.

Babies will not be saved when women are forced to stay pregnant. They will be erased. (ref #ChildAbandonment)

 

The Cost To Care

Not all families can afford children.

16 million kids in the US are hungry. (ref #ChildHunger) 18 million kids live in single parent households. (ref #SingleParent) This suggests a financial instability that could be obtained with two parents— but not a judgment of if a single parent can raise a kid, just to be clear. Some can and they kick ass at it. Some can’t because of economic and financial realities that can lead to neglect.

Child neglect is a serious problem, one that could be easily avoided if women weren’t forced to have children they don’t want or can’t afford.

 

What is neglect?

‘Failure to meet a child’s basic needs may take any of the following forms:

  • Physical or medical neglect. This is the most common type. It includes failing to seek appropriate and timely medical care for your child, failing to provide adequate nutrition, abandoning your child, and leaving him unsupervised at too young an age.
  • Educational neglect. Allowing your child to skip school frequently is another sort of neglect. Also, if you don’t enroll your child in school when he’s reached the mandatory age, or you don’t seek special educational help if your child needs it, this may be considered neglectful.
  • Psychological or emotional neglect. Harder to recognize, this type occurs when, for example, parents withhold affection from their children or ignore them. Occasionally, parents withhold affection as a form of discipline, but when indifference and inattention become the norm, over an extended period of time, then it is considered neglect.’ (ref #ChildNeglect)

Are foster care and adoption a solution?

Not really

I’ve been through the foster care system back in the 80’s. I was adopted. To the best of my young, traumatized memory, I was never harmed in foster care. I am very grateful to have been removed from my negligent, abusive biological home where all six of us were abused and starved (you could count the ribs of my brother, who had pulled the majority of his hair out in patches before he was five.) That said, foster care hasn’t really gained much ground.

Funding hasn’t increased to meet the demand of the society, and case workers are overworked and understaffed. Children aren’t being saved, they’re being neglected, tortured, and suffering needlessly. They’re not being removed from unsafe households, and some are dying right under the noses of the case workers. (ref #DhhsReform) Some are placed in dangerous group homes and dying there instead. (ref #FosterDeaths)

The number of foster care cases has increased every year since 2012, a large reason stated being the opioid crisis that has turned parents into addicts. (ref #OpioidCrisis) Most kids with autism will be thrown into the foster care system. (ref #AutismFosters) Same with down syndrome. Up to 80% of kids in foster care have mental health problems. (ref #MentalHealthFosters) 30-40% are in special education or special needs. (ref #SpecialFosters)

I know foster kids who never survived foster care. They died there. I know kids who have never gotten away from their abusive caretakers. Kids go missing from foster care and never found again, sold into sex trafficking or just outright killed. (ref #LostFosterKids) This is not new news; it’s just not talked about.

We like to think there is a net in place, that society has a place for lost children, that people care even if it’s not specifically us. We’re too big. We aren’t villages or families catching those extra mouths to feed. We are a society of millions too large to conceptualize saving everyone.

 

People may love, but they don’t care

To be painfully blunt, people don’t care. (ref #ApathyInSociety) They don’t care about suffering children. We have children caged at our border, and although we can write a hashtag about it, we don’t act, we don’t do, we don’t care. We have already given up feeling for those we can’t see because we know there is no obvious answer. We are looking at the bystander effect on a society of millions. (ref #BystanderEffect)

We can care about our immediate family, our immediate neighbors and city, but anything more is a stretch on the human psyche. The stress is too much. It’s ugly, but it is real. When we force children to be born to a society that doesn’t care, they will find little empathy or love.

The system is broken, and expecting it to pick up the pieces of shrapnel these anti-abortion bills create is unrealistic. The system can’t support the current population and there is no extra funding/support going into foster care with these bills. These bills don’t care about children, they don’t care about unwanted children, and they don’t care that these kids suffer without love and family and security. They don’t care.

This is not a healthy, caring existence for a human being. It wasn’t until I reached my mid 30’s, crippled with health problems that were exacerbated by the PTSD from my abusive household that I got appropriate therapy and eventual freedom from that child abuse. That’s 30 years of not living but being a creature of fear, reliving a monstrous moment that could have been avoided. As a self aware being now, I enjoy my life, I enjoy being alive, but I can honestly tell you I thought of killing myself many times before healing my PTSD because of that neglect, that lack of love, that failure of my parents to be loving people responsible for the kids they brought into this world.

There was no system in place to catch me, even though I was adopted, one of the ‘lucky’ ones. No psychological healing, no treatment that understood the scope of what was required when the very beginning years of my life were abuse, neglect, and detachment. Even with our knowledge, no system is being built to save and heal children who endured that kind of upbringing.

We are not a compassionate society, and that reality has to be acknowledged when it comes to forcing unwanted pregnancies to term. There is no magic wand to make someone into a good parent, or more, a willing parent. If they don’t want the job, they aren’t going to do it, or they’ll half ass it, leaving children to suffer. This is abuse that can be avoided.

 

How do women lose their freedom and rights from criminalizing abortions?

Bodily Autonomy

Women lose the right to their bodily autonomy. Their anatomy too, but let’s break it down.

‘Bodily autonomy is defined as the right to self governance over one’s own body without external influence or coercion. It is generally considered to be a fundamental human right.’ (ref #BodilyAutonomy)

When someone — anyone — makes a decision for a person’s body, unless consent is given, that is a breach of bodily autonomy. This goes from rape, to abortion, to forced marriages, to getting a tattoo, piercing, haircut, etc. This is what it means to be free. When you can make choices for yourself, you are free. When the government makes choices over your body, you are not free.

Anti-abortion bills, forced sterilization (ref #Eugenics), rape while under anesthesia in a doctor’s office (ref #DrRape), being imprisoned in asylums for hysteria (ref #Hysteria), forced to marry (ref #ForcedMarriage), date raped where men lie about wearing condoms during intercourse (ref #Stealthing), and child brides being married off to grown men (ref #ChildMarriage) are all ways women have lost their bodily autonomy throughout the years in the US, and this shit is still happening.

It has happened so much throughout our history, we don’t even know where the hell the line is to say THIS BODY IS MINE.

This is a wonderful article (ref #DefenseOfAutonomy) that sums it up well when it comes to bodily autonomy for a mother versus for a fetus. A fetus cannot exist without the host it is being created in. A woman is creating that fetus out of the resources her body takes in, and with pieces of her body. I can’t steal someone’s kidney to live; consent must be given. I can’t hook myself up to another person’s bloodstream to keep me alive; consent must be given. A fetus cannot grow in someone else’s uterus; consent must be given. That fetus is a non entity there on behalf of the woman, and yes, a woman gets to choose if that fetus can stay.

Even dead people have more rights to their body than a woman does when it comes to anti-abortion bills. You can’t legally take the organs of a dead person for transplants, but legislators would give a fetus more rights to a living woman’s uterus than that woman.

 

Baby Factories

Women are reduced to baby factories by these bills

Women have to have a baby ordered by law once pregnant, and they are penalized if they fail. And once the government has that right, where does it stop? They’re saying a women’s uterus isn’t hers, that someone else gets to decide what happens in her body. Will they outlaw hysterectomies? What about birth control because both will prevent pregnancy? Will they force women to have abortion, because maybe they don’t like the race or the gender of the baby who might to be born? Don’t think for a moment any of these examples haven’t already happened throughout the human race. Once this precedent is set, it opens up all kinds of bodily autonomy violations because a women’s autonomy has been legislated away.

This is the intent of focusing on the ‘right to life’ of a fetus. They are intentionally trying to steal a woman’s right away while pointing in a different direction. While they cry for ‘free speech’ they lie and steal choices away from women. (ref #ProTactics)

 

This is not about life

This is about restricting women’s rights

‘When Alabama Senator Bobby Singleton, a Democrat, pointed out that Alabama’s new anti-abortion law could punish those who dispose of fertilized eggs at an IVF clinic, Chambliss responded, “The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant.”’ (ref #ChamblissIsSexist)

They admitted it themselves; they don’t care about anything like ‘right to life,’ they care about punishing women, controlling their uteruses and forcing them to bear babies. If they cared about fertilized embryos, they’d be trying to protect them. It’s not about life. It’s about control.

When a woman’s legal existence is about her ability to produce children or not, she loses the right to her reproductive organs and to her freedom to not be pregnant. Men aren’t legislated down to their penises, so why should women be treated as walking uteruses? (uteri???) We’re not throwing men in jail for masturbating and ‘wasting’ their semen. They’re not being penalized for having vasectomies because they’re ‘preventing life.’ Who’s to say those little sperms don’t have more rights to stay viable in a man’s body than a man has to not ejaculate? Should we start writing some laws about how masturbation is killing God’s children?

Women are more than a uterus; ask any transwoman, any woman who is sterile, any women who has reached menopause, any women before she hits puberty, any woman with a freaking brain. We Are More.

 

Gaslighting Women

‘…women’s everyday experiences—and demands that we “prove” these experiences—have shown us the gendered nature of credibility.’ (ref #GasLightingKillsWomen)

Gaslighting is probably the most frustrating part of this situation and our current culture, one that is seen over and over and over and over again when someone who is not a woman thinks they can explain what women really want, what they really mean, what’s good for them, what they feel, how they think, who they are.

This is all the time. Since we have parents who ‘keep girls safe’ by preventing them from living full lives, or making choices, or experimenting and making mistakes, to when we’re adults and we’re still seen as little girls who don’t know how to think. Who need priests or doctors or professors to speak for us. Who can’t walk down a street without a man to protect us. Who can’t get married without daddy’s permission as he gives the bride away, handing her off to another owner. Where the father of the bride pays for the wedding because dowries are passe but we’re still about handing off our women with a price tag to ensure they know they’re a burden on society. We can’t even have sex without someone freaking the fuck out that we’re going to fuck it up somehow. (ref #CulturalSuppressionOfFemaleSexuality)

Why do these people believe women can’t think? Do our vaginas get in the way? For some reason our brains can’t function fully because we have uteruses? The old joke that a guy’s penis ruins his thinking is just that, a joke, while for women, we are legislated around our uteruses.

Women are not being listened to from doctor’s offices to government building to the workplace to the bedroom. And if you’re a woman of color? Forget about. What about a transwoman or lesbian? You already know. We all already know, no matter how much bullshit is said we’re just ‘sensitive’ and ‘imagining things.’ Just walk into an auto body repair shop, ladies. Step into any place where trade is apprenticed to the next generation of men, and you will know 100% that this problem has not gone away. Plumbers, electricians, HVAC, the post office. I have had professional business women looking to throw down money hit a wall the second they stepped into the ‘male’ industry sector.

This shit just doesn’t die. It doesn’t matter how educated we are, how successful, how strong, how supposed ‘equal’ the country has gotten, we are talked down to like foolish little girls who can’t string a sentence together.

Women are talked over and told our opinions don’t matter. That we’re just looking for attention or a payout. That when we’re raped, we don’t matter. That we our the fault of our marginalization because we don’t ‘speak up’ when oppressed, harassed, assaulted, and ignored. And that’s the thing: when the law ignores you, when every seemingly competent, intelligent person ignores you because of your gender in a society used to female marginalization, you don’t speak up. You know it’s a lost cause. Because that’s what being born a woman is. Less than. Nothing. An accessory depending on how pretty your face and body is. We can’t get the same jobs as men, and when we do, we’re paid less for the same (and better) quality of work. Women are still prizes to be won and targets of indignation when we’re not nice, or smiling, or playing mommy for every rando who looks our way.

Women keep having to prove their worth, prove their pain, prove their right to bodily autonomy. No one is asking men to prove rape, but they do of women. I knew a young woman who was told by a cop she wasn’t raped because she let the guy who drugged and raped her into her apartment. The guy was a friend from work who didn’t mention he was going to drug and rape her when he came over, but somehow it was her fault for being in a position where her power was stolen from her. She was supposed to be a mind reader, to assume that every man she knows is going to rape her, to be a victim her entire life because men aren’t held accountable for the things they do with their dicks. She must be accountable because men are never accountable in this society (unless they’re black, then suddenly black men are accountable for the irrational fear in total strangers heads.)

To be a women is to be in a place where you always have to prove your have a right to live. And when you get exhausted, screaming the truth again and again until you’re sobbing at the struggle, you’re called a manipulative bitch for having emotions and showing them.

We shouldn’t have to prove that our bodies are our own, but we do. These laws force us to have to fight to have our own uteruses, while condescending lawmakers shrug about not being doctors while passing bills based on medical lies and bullshit morality.

Being forced to carry a fetus to term is a punishment being placed on women for having sex. In a modern society where contraceptives are prevalent but not covered by insurance, where a male birth control has been made with great success but will likely never make it to the US, the burden is on the woman to not get pregnant, not be raped, not make a mistake with her birth control or have a condom break. And also, when it fails, it’s her burden to ‘be responsible and good’ and have that baby because society says that’s a women’s duty. To sacrifice herself, her body, her future for everyone who has an opinion on how she should live her life. She isn’t allowed to make that choice. No, they literally write laws to take her right to choose away.

 

You want to know about the power of the uterus?

A story that could easily be reality

So here’s a somewhat wild, totally empowering, absolutely chilling story of possibility. A power only those with a uterus have. What is the quickest, easiest solution women can take everywhere to solve this gender oppression problem? Stop bearing males. Yeah, you heard me. It’s not the close your legs and stop enjoying sex spiel. It’s stop giving birth to boys.

If even half the population stopped birthing males for 20 years, women won’t have to fight to vote for anything. One, because men would get the point by then, and two because there won’t be enough men to stop women in the upcoming generation. It would have no negative effect on future birthrate or our ability to have a stable economy because women can do the same jobs men can. Seriously, name a job only a man can do.

Pee standing up? There’s a tool for that. (ref #GoGirl) Grueling manual labor? Robots already do it better. (ref #DisplacedJobs) Marginalize women and mansplain? AI bots do it better. (ref #TrollBotArmy) Think? Ha. Good try. Really, you wish. Women’s brains are evolutionarily superior to lead. (ref #WebThinking)

And if this seems crazy extreme… eh. It’s a woman’s right to choose. Literally, it’s her uterus. It is her right to decide if she wants to make things ‘fair,’ by continuing a population of oppression where her voice is drowned out by a bunch of out of touch men who are legislating to take away control of her body. Or she could choose a change and see what happens in a women majority world. In a world where women exercise their right to choose, and they choose women first.

This is the power of having a uterus. Without a uterus, an army cannot be created. Without a uterus, population numbers can’t be grown so that states get representation in the government. An economy fails when there aren’t enough bodies to support it. Religions disappear when there is no one to throw money in the coffers— Oh, you were confused as to why religions hate contraceptives and abortion? This is why. Religion ceases to exist if they can’t force women to have kids. They need numbers because indoctrination is easiest when someone is born into it.

Women are essential to the balance of power because women have the power to create humans. With 1000 women and 1 sperm bank, you could have an army, but 1 women and 1000 men is a pathetic birth rate. You need a womb to have a baby, and more importantly, you need eggs. We can clone women, not men. Out of the two, eggs have the power. Something a woman doesn’t ever have to give away in the case of an artificial womb. (ref #ArtificialWomb)

Women have the power, and men don’t, and that’s why they keep trying to convince women to be weak, silent, marginalized, because that’s the only way a man can get any power. They have to crush women down so they forget their uteruses were how men came to exist in the first place.

 

It doesn’t even have to be bloody

The gene called TDF, aka SRY, is required to have a male human. It’s found on the Y chromosome in Y chromosome carrying sperm. (ref #TDF)

We already know the answer to prevent the birth of males without abortion or murder or anything quite so ugly. It’s basic selective breeding in choice of sperm. That’s it. XY males produce sperm that either have the X chromosome or the Y. Don’t impregnate with the Y chromosome carrying sperm, and you have no fear of having a male child. (ref #ChromosomalSex) Although, to the best of my knowledge, science has yet to be able to identify with much accuracy either type of sperm, I’m sure we’re not far behind on it. All it would take is identifying one male on the planet whose sperm fails to have the TDF on their Y chromosome sperm, and it’s game over.

Welcome to the modern world (or soon to be) of genetic manipulation and selective breeding. The natural genetic mutation already exists; it’s just a matter of if someone is willing to exploit it. Our technology is already here. The question will be how desperate women become when their bodies are taken away from them.

 

This probably sounds crazy

But isn’t it also just brilliantly delightful? Just a little thrilling? Girls, have you ever honestly realized how powerful your uterus is? We literally have the power to decide if the human race will continue on or stop in extinction. Just with our choices. You wouldn’t need war, wouldn’t need to nod your head at another fucking stupid thing some dumb as fuck old man says about ‘knowing your place.’ The female gender can continue on forever through basic cloning, and men could be left in the evolutionary dumpster because they refused to get their shit together.

This looks like a story of ignoring human morality to choose a gender. Except humans aren’t moral; they are irrational animals like every other mammalian species, and they do things all the time in self serving ways that are just as, if not far more, barbaric. You know why the stop bearing males solution is a wonderfully terrifying option? Because we tried it before in reverse.

China killed all their baby girls and is now at the brink of economic collapse. They now have too many men who have no opportunity to ever find love or have a traditional household. China is importing women in as brides, not caring if these women are willingly there or not, to try to keep from the economic cliff they’re heading for. China’s population when those men die — that big army and workforce they’re so proud of — is going to drop from the face of the planet with no one to replace them. But not before bankrupting the next generation as they age and their health care weighs on China’s economy of far fewer numbers. They better win the AI race, cuz they’re going to need robots to take care of all their elderly.

Men can’t create life — Poof. No power. Game over. Bigotry towards women led China right to that cliff, then pushed them over it because they didn’t respect the value of the uterus. (ref #ChinaFemaleInfantcide)

 

How to live in an unfair world without getting rid of all the men

Maybe we compromise and learn

If you’re not a fan of deciding which gender should be born, or you’re an individual who doesn’t have a viable uterus or are uninterested in birthing, a less drastic measure would be to vote. Vote for candidates who support women equality and reproductive rights. Protest. Be a voice that is heard until someone listens. Know your line, your body, and don’t let anyone cross it, and speak up when you see someone cross someone else’s.

This goes for everyone. We should all understand bodily autonomy and state our boundaries, that way there is no confusion of who has a right to your body. This oppression has been a part of society just as much as focused on gender. Children are raised extensions of parents, not being allowed to set their boundaries, not being allowed to make choices that reflect them instead of their parents. When a child is crying from being tickled, that’s an infringement of their bodily autonomy, the same as when they’re screaming and kicking to be placed down. (ref #MyBodyMyDecision)

At the earliest stages of life, we are already ignoring that everyone is an individual, and it’s one of the most obvious reasons our society then grows to think a woman is forever a daughter/wife/mother instead of an individual. Men face this same problem, forced into gender roles, expectation of financial success and appearance, all because we fail to see each individual and place nonsense societal standards on people. And everyone in between? Society tries to erase them. You can’t be disabled or elderly without someone somewhere thinking it’s perfectly fine to take away your bodily autonomy. It is not, and we as a society need to address this already.

This is a problem with every person, even if not every person is to blame for how we got here. This is a lesson we as a society are struggling to learn, but it is so important! We are all impacted by others not acknowledging bodily autonomy. When women demand to be treated as equals, it’s a demand that everyone is treated as an equal no matter their gender, social status, race, sexual orientation, ability, religion, culture, etc. This is about everyone even when the focus is on women.

 

Be genuine, loudly

No one thinks twice about women’s rights when women are silent. And how obnoxious people are in how they try to silence women when we speak up. Telling us our anger is unsightly, that we’re hysterical for caring about the rights to our bodies. How our emotions don’t matter, or are a weakness, or a weapon. Their discomfort in how a woman reacts is their way of shaming us into repressing our natural selves to fit their expectations that we’re supposed to be silent robots who just take abuse. They want us to be meek and polite and ask permission for the rights of our own bodies.

And the gas lighting! The gas lighting bs of how we don’t understand that every human life is precious while our lives are completely disregarded and trampled over and over is infuriating. How they tell us we should listen to those imbecilic tyrants who are trying to steal our rights away—Oh, yeah, I had a man tell me that recently. That I was supposed to listen to a total stranger about who should have rights to my uterus. That I should listen because men are the gatekeepers to work and I can’t make money without making sure I’m likable to men. Seriously, FUCK OFF!

Everybody owns their body. This is no different for women. No legislation has a right to own us, to turn us into slaves of the government and religious extremists who think their religion should be forced onto women’s bodies. (ref #ReligionOnAbortion) This ideology being sold as pseudo science, twisted to pull on your heartstrings, is all about religious based gender oppression forced on our bodies. Church and State are supposed to be separated. Bodily autonomy doesn’t bend to religious ideology, yet here we are seeing legislation being written to do just that. We have a right to be free of religious doctrine— a right to be free! —while they are writing laws oppressing women with someone else’s religion.

An interesting Jewish perspective of a woman who sees her religious freedom infringed by these bills. (ref #AntiJewishWomenBill) A pro-choice, choose-life Christian view, compassionate and educated. (ref #MoreHarmThanGood) Plus an absolutely in depth look at abortion rights in the US. (ref #HistoryProLife) When women had the right to abortion up to 1840, then had the rights taken away, only to have them restored with Roe v Wade in 1973. Then the Catholic led charge ever since to take those rights away, including their strategies to twist science and focus on the fetus’s rights while ignoring the women. How they created a movement of hate that made pregnant women into villains who were slacking their ‘responsibilities’ for daring to have sex, and nurses/doctors were turned into targets of threats and violence and death. Also, so much gas lighting. Telling women they were ‘traumatized’ from having an abortion and didn’t know their own minds, their own will, their own choices. Always, they speak for us while ignoring what we say.

Also, a long, extensive list of all the ways women are treated like imbeciles, and laws are subverted so someone else can tell a woman how to use her body. (ref #23Ways) This shit is so frustrating.

 

What is reality, and what is the story of reality?

A reality check

This is the main problem with this fight, one that is ignored or exaggerated by those trying to steal rights away from women. This is the problem with pretty much every aspect of the human world. People place concepts of reality over actual reality. Worse, they create ideologies and then twist scientific data to ‘prove’ those ideologies.

‘This can have a particularly pernicious effect when the ideologies that make their way into the science are then claimed to be results derived from the science. Those ideologies, now “naturalized,” have sometimes been granted added credibility because of their supposedly scientific derivation.’ (ref #ScienceAndIdeology)

Some people don’t understand evolution. Some people think we are designed instead of evolved. They force ideas like meaning onto our existence. They think women exist to have babies and to give life. They think women should give up their bodily autonomy to serve this supposed created purpose. They think humans exist to raise families, and that sex exists only to bring forth children. The big fight against LGBTQ(QIAAP) is because some people think our bodies are here to have sex for the purpose to create life, and that anything that goes against that story is an abomination.

This narrative is a fallacy, a fiction, a dream from an imaginative mind that conceptualized reality after observing a pattern and told a story of it. It is not real, and we have to stop making laws based off of these lies.

Human beings are killed every single day because of these backward, painful ideologies that look at a perfectly healthy individual and tell them they are a sin, that they’re destined to burn in Hell, that their very existence means some god in the sky hates them or they’re a crime against nature, and their only way to solve it is to die or never act the very way their bodies were evolved to act. Women are oppressed, marginalized, enslaved in abusive marriages, and castrated because some psycho told the men of their culture that women existed to give them pleasure, bear their children, and serve them on this earth.

This insanity has to stop. When lies take away human freedom, they need to be called out for the harm they cause and our laws need to step in and protect the citizens.

 

Humans are real, beliefs are not

Humans need to be protected from irrational belief.

We exist because we exist. We have sex because we find it pleasurable. If we didn’t find it pleasurable, we wouldn’t do it. Ask anyone who is asexual— when you don’t enjoy sex, you don’t have it, and it’s perfectly natural. (It you don’t enjoy it, it is fucking NATURAL not to do it! Duh, world. Really.)

Why should an asexual women have to give up the right to her uterus over someone’s belief that she’s supposed to be pregnant and bear children? Why should an asexual man or a gay man breed with a woman because someone said they’re supposed to raise a family? Why should any free thinking woman or man do anything they don’t want to do with their bodies?

We have babies because fertile men and women who have sex together either don’t have birth control, or make a choice to have kids, or aren’t being as safe as they thought and mistakes happened and abortions weren’t available. Or a woman went to a sperm bank, or entered into an agreement for in-vitro insemination. Just because our bodies can be joined to create life does not mean in any way we are obligated to do so.

It is a fantasy to see a uterus and assume it must produce a baby at some point in its existence. Just because an embryo can attach to the uterine wall and eventually develop into a fetus that may or may not turn into a viable infant does not mean a woman is obligated to see that process through. It doesn’t matter if a total stranger who is not that woman has a different opinion; it’s none of their business. That is that woman’s body, her uterus, her egg, her embryo, her fetus, and it’s her choice.

 

We are headed for an environmental nightmare

In a conscious, self aware society we are painfully failing to reach even in 2019, it makes more sense to not have children as we head toward an environmental crisis that will potentially lead to the extinction of the human race, if not many of the current species on the planet. (ref #It’sHot!) The amount of suffering humanity is headed toward with no stop in sight is so devastating, it would be irresponsible to bring more life into this mess until we clean it up first.

It is only through the advancement and equality of women that the human race can see a stabilization of population in the future as we work to repair the damage humanity has done to the planet. (ref #WomenAndClimate) If we can’t stop overpopulation, there will just be more people to starve, suffer, and die during the ecological nightmare that’s going to hit.

The unborn feel no pain; they do not suffer. It’s a different reality for those who live and gain self awareness. This idea of counting ‘potential’ life while ignoring actual life is offensive to those who have to navigate the trials of existence. No one is obligated/designed/required to create life. No one is even obligated to breathe! We do so because our bodies automatically do, but many have suffocated to death when they have taken means to stop it. Within the lie that we are designed to give life—the story that all life has a right to usurp a woman’s— our freedoms are stolen away to fit the ideologies of those who refuse to see reality.

I don’t bow to someone else’s irrational view of the world. No one should. I’m so tired of dumb, irrational people trying to tell me how to live my life when they can’t even see how much they’re messing up their own.

 

I’m angry and I’m tired, but I’m not silent

The thing about laws is they only work if society agrees. Society doesn’t agree on this (ref #AbortionPolls) and we won’t be silenced. It’s sickening enough the atrocities happening with the Trump administration and partisanship eroding our democracy at every turn. We’re in the middle of an ethnic cleansing in the US while people squabble over a border wall next to children in cages (because we care so much about life that we cage it and watch it die.) But if we lose the rights to our bodies, it’s game over for freedom.

Women aren’t going back. We have spent centuries being demoralized, fighting for a vote, a wage, for financial independence, to be seen as a person and not a wife or a daughter or an economic burden—for our voices to be heard. There is no going back, not when women all over this globe haven’t gained the rights we are losing now.

We’re done being grabbed, marginalized, and legislated by our pussies. While the zealot Republicans think they have a win, we have corporations who are run by women, who hire women, who survive off the money women spend on products. Events that require celebrity (many who are women) to bring in tourism. (ref #CorporationsReproductiveRights) This can be an economic war as well as a war on women. This can be a population war if it comes to that where women refuse to continue the human race if the human race refuses to treat women as equals.

This is the power of creating life; we don’t have to provide the bodies for another self destructive war. We don’t have to do anything. A sit in for peace can = a sex off for humanity. (I don’t know how to break it to you all but masturbation is awesome. Multiple orgasms without waiting for your partner to figure it all out is super nice. Women don’t need dick to enjoy sex.)

We have a choice no matter what any unconstitutional law states, and I choose to not be silent. Not now, not ever. This country is for all of us, not just an extremist few who would put us back in the dark ages with their draconian, oppressive laws. There is no love of life in these bills, only punishment of women and the babies who are born into a society who can’t see the consequences of their actions, be it in family planning or environmental stewardship.

I get it. Women have evolved to just grin and bear every horrendous atrocity committed against them, to put society first, to make everyone ‘feel good’ about how shitty women are treated. We have been told to utilize the power of our uterus is immoral, unkind, unloving (unless a man tells us to do it. Then it’s ‘God’s will.’) While we can be raped and silenced, we’re taught that fighting back is ‘wrong.’

I’m am sick and tired of being told society must come before my needs when I am part of over 50% of society whose needs are forever ignored. We still can’t get equal pay! How many years do we have to fight just to get an equal paycheck? Fucking seriously, it’s 2019! We are going to be seeing our jobs replaced by automation before we get equal fucking pay between genders.

Fuck society. Fuck being ‘fair.’ Fuck making everyone happy while women have to take a back seat once again. Fuck it all. Until society can see women as equal, women need to put women first. No one else will.

 

Self care when in a society that doesn’t care enough

Practicing Compassion

For those who are freaking out and need something to do instead of just vent at how fucking stupid the world is, I have a few links you may find useful. I have pointed out some seemingly grim, really terrible things about the world, but I need you all to remember, this too is just a story, a narrative made up of my fear, my anger as I take in information and let my mind and emotions respond.

As much as there is an apathy in humanity, there is a brimming of compassion as well. For as many Pro-Lifers who want to restrict and oppress women, there are those who truly, genuinely love the very first spark of life in a womb and they want to honor and protect it above all else. For those who weaponize their religion against others, there are far more who use their belief to bring their communities together. These are all truths, and as such, there is both so much beauty and pain in these human experiences as a result.

It can be hard to look past our emotions—as someone who had PTSD for 30 years, it can feel completely impossible. But it’s essential if we are going to make important decisions and be the best, intentioned people we can be. To look past, we must first embrace all the feelings that well inside us, every contradiction, every irrationality, every cry and kick of ego.

There is so much pain here, so much oppression. When you see what it is to be a woman, to be a woman of color, to be a woman born with a Y chromosome, to love a woman and to feel her pain and know there is nothing you can do alone to change this unfair world: there is pain. This anger and outrage and fear would not be here if not for all the pain these laws have weighed us down with.

 

Mindfulness

My way of dealing with pain and anxiety is through mindfulness. It was the bridge that stepped me out of a PTSD narrative and into reality. I truly don’t know any better tool a person can use to help get past huge emotional and psychological pain, and stop the fight or flight stress response.

‘Mindfulness allows us to interrupt automatic, reflexive fight, flight, or freeze reactions—reactions that can lead to anxiety, fear, foreboding, and worry.’ (ref #10Mindful)

(ref #MindfulnessForStress)

‘The essential cause of our suffering and anxiety is ignorance of the nature of reality.’ (ref #HowToCopeWithFear)

 

Steps you can take to help

For those who want to help, these are recent blogs I found with links to protests and funding sites.

(ref #HelpProtestAbortionBans)

(ref #HelpWomenInStatesBanningAbortion)

I don’t have links for this last one, but my fuck, I gotta mention it. Foster care. Seriously, these kids need help. I don’t have enough knowledge to know what is a reputable funding site at this time—honestly, I’m not even sure if funding is the problem. The whole system is messed up.

All I can say is listen to kids. Help them understand and acknowledge their pain by listening. You may never truly understand what it is like to be discarded for not being whatever ideal of perfect your parents wanted, but you can listen and show that even flawed human beings are worth everything.

My adoptive dad had this cute poster in the garage when he was alive. It was this little saying, and I remember every time I read it how totally wrong the grammar was. (Yeah, my nerdness started early. XD)

This poster wasn’t there for me and my brother, the foster kids in the house. It was there long before us, yellowed and aged, a poster for my dad. My dad wasn’t a foster kid, although my adoptive mom was until she aged out, and she was horribly abused during that time. When you grow up in a society that throws away people like they do trash, it can be hard to find self esteem in all that. My dad knew it personally because he was dyslexic, tormented and abused by the nuns because of it (it was not a compassionate time for learning disabilities,) and didn’t learn to read until late in life through comic books.

Society decides if people are ‘junk’ or not through their disregard and irrational ideas of what a person is supposed to be. We have to be better. In accepting our flaws, we accept us as whole, and it gives us a chance to move forward better, with compassion (and hopefully some wisdom.

 

There’s hope

A bill in Congress was introduced on the 23rd of May. I’m afraid I can’t trust the government to follow through, but I still hope.

‘The Women’s Health Protection Act: Equal Abortion Access, Everywhere’ (ref #ReproductiveRights)

As insane and intense as this all seems, it’s the same old story we’ve been dealing with since humanity dawned. We seek balance while others seek power. We seek freedom while others seek to use us. Nothing has changed. It doesn’t matter how much our numbers grow or our technology advances; we are still just manifestations of our biology and experiences. Until we can truly break free, the tide of power will keep pushing back and forth, or our lack of foresight will wipe us from the planet completely.

Still, as long as we can tell a story of the future that is worth working toward, there is always hope.