We all have lines. Lines that trigger anger, outrage disgust, unexpected attraction, or unintended/surprised joy. Have you thought about your limits? Have you had someone you're angry with to something so sweet you just couldn't stay angry? Have you had someone to something that just made you want to walk away in disgust or read something that made you want to stop and not finish or throw up. This Challenge is about all those, pick one and go with it, it's your moment.
Originally I wrote a little story here about my past with an ex-girlfriend. It can be seen in the spoiler below. However, I feel like it didn't cover the topic in the way it's intended to be covered, so I'm just going to tell another! I'm leaving the original here because I'd have to look for a place to put it otherwise, and I'm feeling lazy. Too lazy to put 5 minutes of effort into moving something, not lazy enough to write another full story. Yeap.
I know that the challenge is to speak about an event where my emotions have flipped, where a line is crossed and I'm hit with a sudden change of feelings, but I cannot. I think of one situation where it happens, and my mind trails to another, and then another. Instead, I'm going to tell you about a person. This person is responsible for more of these situations than anyone in my life. And the sad part of this story is that she's no longer a steady part of it.
To protect her name, I'll call her Marlia. Marlia was a lover of mine a good two years ago. We'd been together for a year and three months. Such a short period of time in the long run, and yet she effected me so. While I was with her, I was lapsed in a stat of immaturity. Not physically, not mentally and certainly not sexually. It was an emotional immaturity that brought me down several levels, reducing me to tears and screams of confusion. Without her, I think I'd still be half stuck in that state, and I'd definitely not be past several problems I had after our break-up.
At one point, I was extremely happy with her. My dependency on others was satisfied, my desire to spoil someone special to me was sated. I was happy, and nothing could ruin my high! Or so I thought. She disappeared for a week. No word, no hints to where she might have gone, nothing. I was devastated. For the first day or so, I was just worried. The rest of the week, I was crying every night. I couldn't sleep right. I thought that I would die without her, and I didn't want to lose her.
And then she came back. I was so worried I called her immediately. She talked to me for an hour, and that's around when I asked her where she had gone. She told me she'd been there the whole time, she'd just been ignoring me. I didn't understand. She asked me how I felt when she was gone, and I told her I was miserable. She told me I had to learn to be happy without her or I could never be truly happy with her. I was so confused. I didn't understand. I didn't want to at the time.
And so she kept doing it. A week at a time, once every month or so. One week, I managed to be happy. I stopped worrying about her. I knew she'd be okay when she got back a week later. This time when she came back, she told me she had hurt her leg. I wasn't scared, though. I was still happy. I asked her if she was alright, and I was obviously worried. But I wasn't scared. And then I went to a government funded program called Job Corps.
While I was there, I was hanging around a good group of friends. Unfortunately, there is no escaping drama in Job Corps. There are many things they say about Job Corps, but one or two things are definitely true. Drama and bad crowds. It's a place for kids who didn't do their best in high school, or who may not have even made it to high school. Mostly problem children, some forced out by situations. But everybody had drama. I was caught up in some of the worst of it. Every night I went to bed afraid that somebody might beat me with a locker or something because of my sexuality. I just don't see any sex or gender as a restriction to my love is all. That fear of being hurt because of my sexuality, however, let me know that I wasn't sure of myself.
One day all hell broke loose. I won't go into any details, but I was left an emotional mess. I was falling apart. I was crying and talking to myself, holding myself, and the Residential Adviser actually called for the mental health doctor to try to calm me down. Marlia made it to me first. She actually called me to check up on me, and I answered. She took me from a total mess to fully functional. She talked me from laying in the fetal position in the hallway floor to my dorm room, where I fell asleep to the sound of her voice. This was much less sudden than the other event, but the fact that I went between the two so quickly was amazing to me afterwards.
A few months later we broke up. We broke up because I told her that I almost had a breakdown again but I talked myself out of it instead of further into it. She told me she was proud of me, and then told me we were breaking up. She told me I was fixed, and that she couldn't have loved me more at that point. Unfortunately, it had taken me too long and she wasn't interested in me anymore. I cried, it's to be expected. I was extremely sad about it. But I pulled myself out of it. Not only was she proud of me, but I was proud of me. I still am.
The idea to tell this story was brought about by a trip to the counseling section of the forums. She's fresh on my mind right now. She may have been a bit abusive in ways, but she only did it to better me. I'm thankful for it. People talk down about her sometimes. Friends, close family. I have to correct them every time. She isn't a devil, she's a godsend. Hope you enjoyed my story, and I hope that if you need to learn the lessons I did, that you are only blessed to have someone there to help you learn.
I've always had anger problems. My anger is the thinnest, finest line that I have. Something so simply as a cough can set it off sometimes. Usually, however, it's something in the way of antagonizing me. This particular event happened while I was at Job Corps, and it scares me to this day. It's not the fact that I raged, I used to do that VERY often. It was my thought process while I was raging, and the fact that I even had a thought process.
I was sitting in lab. There was a guy beside me randomly poking me with a pencil. I asked him to quit. Being the clearly mature individual he was, of course he didn't stop. He continued to poke me with the pencil, and I started to get angry. I turned around and told him to stop or I'd tell the administrator of the class I was in. He didn't take to that very well, and called me a snitch. I didn't care, because I was going to handle the situation in a sensible manner. And then he pulled out a pair of scissors.
My hair at the time was long, down to my shoulders. I loved it, when it was straight. I liked it quite a bit when it was dry, too, because it curled up. What he did was like taking my beauty in my eyes at the time. He cut my curls off in the back. I felt it immediately. I put my hand on the back of my head to feel them missing, then turned to see him with a handful of my hair and a pair of scissors. I could see the look in his eyes, he was regretting it already.
I turned back to my computer. I had broken. My rage was spilling out of me it felt like. I picked up the mouse. No, it's connected. Picked up the monitor a little. No, I need that to do my research. I picked up a pen. Yes, I can always ask the administrator for another. I turned and stabbed him in the shoulder. Thankfully, I'm sort of a whimp, so it didn't do much damage. But I could see the look of fear in his eyes as I turned around and stared at him. I couldn't control my actions, it was like something was guiding them.
But for the first time in my life, I was consciously watching it happen. I looked down at him, and I remember very clearly what I said. "OH YOU DONE FUCKED UP!", and then I stabbed him in the shoulder. For a while after that, I couldn't think straight. The main thing going through my head was "That's what killers do. They think. Meditated harm. I could have stopped myself, I could watch it. Why couldn't I do anything about it?" - So much doubt. From that day on, I swore I wouldn't let me anger control me any more. I signed up for anger management classes.
I was probably more in control of my anger than anyone there. The biggest difference was the source of anger. Some let sadness or depression turn to anger. Some let their pride turn to anger, and then turn into a fight. I let something physically done against me anger me to no end. And my anger was the most dangerous. I could witness my anger, and think. It's like I was thinking for somebody else, though, and they were controlling my body. I've never had an outbreak like that before then, and I hope I never have one again.
Urban Fantasy, High Fantasy, Epic Quest, Sci-Fi, Time Travel and World Hopping, Steampunk, Action/Adventure, Modern Drama, Mystery, Slice of Life, Romance, and many more.
Once I lived calm and free
Keeping a mask of tranquility
Ignore I did, without much care
But soon I fell into the snare
The snare of fools who repress the pain
Those who smile and ignore the rain
I have dug this hole so deep
To fit all of the anger I keep
Hidden safe from everyone's eyes
It has led me to my demise
Many still think that I'm strong
But I'm sad to say that their wrong
I can be hurt and I can fall
But you will never see me bawl
Many hurt me, yet they'll never know
Because I won't tell nor let it show
So there is my issue. I would crumble if everyone learned how weak I really am. I keep a mask, a facade, of calmness and apathy, but I care. I care when I'm hurt. I care if I'm shoved down. The pain applies to both physical and mental pain that I try so hard to hide. I also have this thing of shutting off to the world if I'm hurt. If you flick the 'off' switch on your emotions, you won't be driven to tears, right? Then you won't look weak. You'll look like a heartless monster instead who doesn't care a cent about emotions and feeling.
Now I fall into this pit
Dark, gloomy, and dimly lit
Down, down, down I go
Who knows what it's like below. . .
