Women and Madness

I recently started therapy – I’ve been saying it to everyone because I think it’s important to normalise it in all of my circles (my classes, my staffroom, my family). I’ve been shocked by the conservativism of some of the people I associate with; I thought we lived in a much more liberal world. A few of my nearest and dearest seem to have misinterpreted what I felt like was a sincere acknowledgement that I needed to do something to feel better as an admission that I’m crazy. As if I’ve said, “yeah I am a train wreck actually”.

It is known that women have been not only disadvantaged but failed by the field of psychology and psychotherapy through history. Women in the West were committed to asylums for defying their husbands, having sexual desires, speaking out of turn, witchcraft, having an affair, suffering a loss and feeling anxious and depressed as recently as the mid-1900s, when my grandparents were young.

Literature reflects this, as art imitates life, and portrayals of women have damaged society’s perception of femininity ever further. I teach my learners that female characters in classic fiction exist within three archetypes: the virgin, the whore and the mother. A ‘good woman’ who bends to the will of society, think Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, versus Fitzgerald’s Myrtle, Tom Buchanan’s poorer, sexier mistress. The doting, nurturing older woman who now lives for her children (or else risks being demonised as a mean old hag).

Beyond this, though, women are used as plot devices. They commit suicide or are murdered to build tension. They sometimes get naked and wander around being a perfect sexy, skinny, soft-breasted young maiden. They are also quite often debased by madness.

Which brings me back to my own story. I’m not sure if I’m ready to tell it yet because it’s still really confusing, but I’ve started talking about it more and some of it is becoming clearer. Frustratingly, the fact that I can’t think about what happened to me properly because of the confused haze falls in line with the mad woman trope. This bothers me because I started off being assured that I was mental, then I realised I was being deliberately gaslit which was making me mental, then I concluded it didn’t matter and I was now 100% fucking mental regardless. That sentence made me laugh. My therapist says I use humour to downplay trauma. Ha.

There are things and people that I cannot talk about here, which further clouds this account, but try to stay with me. My childhood has engendered the way I feel about myself, my boundaries and my understanding of love. I have learned to accept conditions on emotional support and barter for affection.

I give love so feverishly; my mind is full of poetry and whimsy and passion. I pour love on others even when they are too closed to accept it or if it’s a little too heavy for a light-hearted occasion. I know how much it means to me to feel love, so I don’t ever want the people I love to think I withhold it or to be confused about how I feel about them. But, to receive love, I know I have to try to be good enough. I have to jump as high as I can to reach the hoops. That’s how I envision it in my head, anyway, what I mean is, I have to try to meet that person’s needs, usually by betraying my own. I say ‘try’ because in the abusive dynamics in my life I never seemed to meet their expectations, but that’s because they weren’t designed to be met. They were designed to keep me jumping. This is a revelation to me that has come out of therapy but upon reflection is so obvious.

There are, of course, those who never expected me to jump at all and love me openly. These relationships are special to me. The person who offered me love first and most freely was grandad, and for that reason, what we had was sacred to me. I sometimes struggle with the healthy relationships because on some level I still feel like I need to try harder to provide value for them in order for them to still want to have me in their lives. I am unlearning this but it still makes me anxious. I quite often lie to my loved ones or just omit things that I think will make them angry or disappoint them. I’m sometimes worried that if I tell the truth they’ll shout at me or stop talking to me or bring it up again and again. It’s tiring. I can’t tell people how bad I feel sometimes because I think they want me to be happy and perfect and bring something positive to their lives, which means I suffer alone a lot. I cry in the car outside my house because I don’t even want Willow to see how much of a mess I can be. As you can imagine, in this constant state of tension, it is very easy to convince me that I’m crazy because it feels very plausible.

After growing up with these conditions, it felt very predictable and safe to continue to seek out these transactional relationships. I know how to jump really high, now, and that’s because I was with someone for a long time after I left home who made me keep jumping. I started to feel so exasperated. I knew something wasn’t right, I was hurting, but I was also reckless and flawed myself so I wondered whether he felt the same way as me and I was causing both of us to hurt. So, I kept jumping. Just as before, now and again I would claw my way through a hoop, but that never lasted and the next one would be far too high. But, the idea that if I tried really hard then sometimes I would make it kept me looking up at the hoops.

While I was looking at them, I lost sight of how the cycle was changing me. I didn’t see the bruises on my body or the way I looked older or my bloodied fingernails. It wasn’t one moment in the past few years that made me look down. It was a stolen glance. A twinge in my calf that forced me inspect a bruise. A gradual thing.

Once, when he finally left me again (or put me through so much that I couldn’t take it anymore for a while and told him to leave, I can’t remember) I felt so worthless and numb that I dared myself to look up abuse. So much of it resonated with what had happened to me in that relationship and before. I still have screenshots of websites on my phone from this first time, which was years ago.

He quickly dispelled these thoughts by telling me I was doing something called projecting (I now know this to mean positing your own bad qualities or actions on to another person to exonerate yourself from blame) because I was abusive and a narcissist. This became his favourite thing to scream at me in an argument, after that. So, the next time he left, I looked up narcissism. I thought, I might’ve caused all of this because I’m a narcissist.

I felt even more crazy, then. Some of the traits and behaviours I looked at did seem to align with me. Or did they? He told me I didn’t know love, but is that true? Do I lack empathy? I mean, I cared for my grandad to the end, I cry when Megs cries, I would do anything for Dan and Britt if they needed me, no matter what. I can’t accept that as the truth. So, I began to question other things he’d said, and I noticed just how black and blue I was.

Projection is the most confusing trap because coupled with other manipulation tactics it can make you believe you are to blame for what happens to you. The biggest stab to my mental health through all of this has been feeling so awful about myself (he would call me names constantly, say no one else would want me, say I was stupid, ‘not as fit as I think I am’, emotional, ignorant, crazy…) and feeling like it was caused by my own actions. That he was just reacting to me being difficult. I’m still untangling that, honestly. It feels like bullshit when I say it out loud to people but there is also a deeper part of me that believes I am hard to love, so why wouldn’t being around me make someone lose their shit eventually?

And so, what am I but a real-life rendition of the women and madness trope? The patriarchy makes it so fucking easy for men to gaslight women in to thinking they’re crazy. Post-modern society should, in theory, be free from this gendered trap, but alas it is not. In some ways, it’s worse because now men can convince us that not only are we crazy, but the very idea of the modern woman and feminism is extreme and wrong. It literally altered my core beliefs for a while. I’m still piecing together who I really, truly am as a result.

The Wing'd Inner Child

 Once upon a time, a child,
with golden hair was told
she was too much but not enough:
"Little Miss Always Right," they said
Slapping her forehead with a paper crown.
As the body grew around her wings,
she found she could no longer fly
and as she flapped, her feathers
lacerated the walls of her hanging cage
rattling around, "you're not clever,
this is your own fault,
you'll never get any better"
On your grandad's life - 

Painful as it was, a wiser me,
through red mist I never did make out
picked up the feathers for that little girl.
She welded them to my aching ribs
encasing red vessels in molten metal 
bitter, vengeful and shouldering a massacre
she found she was practiced
at mopping up blood
spilled by others
with cutting looks
and fatal words
and head splitting caresses in the screaming dark

Sawdust

How do you get a ball of thoughts on to a piece of paper? Which thread do you pull out and stick down first? Especially when there are a lot of loose ends in that tight ball of chaos. I recall my creative writing workshops from university – Lania told us: “If you’re struggling to find an ‘in’, talk about the setting. The weather. Fixate on a character.”

The setting is an empty classroom in January. Sunlight streams through the windows I’ve just exposed, gently contracting the blinds to satisfy my craving for vitamin D that has intensified these past few rainy weeks. It’s cold outside but feels like June now on my back. I’ve been asked to cover I.T. this afternoon but they’re all ‘working from home’. And so, I am at a loose end.

Fixating on any given character in the narrative would lead to a rather depressing encapsulation of my childhood trauma, and anyway, besides that, my fixation on people always leads me back to grandad.

On Sunday the 14^th August, I told grandad to let go. I walked into his room at the care home that day with Willow in tow. She would barely be coaxed across the threshold. Willow has an especially emotive face and so I couldn’t ignore the bolt of horror stricken across her eyes as she became aware of the other figure in the room. Grandad lay on his side, unconscious but looking overall like he was sleeping. Until you really looked. His knee was poking out of the bed sheets and as I moved to cover it back up, I saw how exposed it really was, the fat and flesh having peeled back to reveal an almost spherical joint attaching his thigh to his calf. His thigh and his calf were the same thickness, his skin pale and sore. I covered it with the duvet slowly and deliberately.

The carer offered me some time alone with him. I could feel the implication of her words but was numbed by the trauma of his repeated NDEs. I struggled to convince myself that it was actually a goodbye that was warranted instead of a ‘get up you lazy bugger’. Willow was pulling her lead tight, now, in an attempt to leave the room, alerting me to her fear with a low cry which always puts me on edge. I tried to blank her out as I took the situation in. He was murmuring in his sleep.

“Grandad?” I tried after a moment. The invitation hung in the air, crisp and clear against the backdrop of death. I stroked the side of his head, along the dip of his temple, just as I had a million times before, noticing how the dip had deepened and turned every shade of blue. “What you doing you silly goose, get up.” My voice cracked this time. I surprised myself. Maybe I was starting to see the severity of the situation. Or, more likely, maybe I’d never truly become immune to the pain. And maybe every time the big drops and the upside-downs came around on this ride, my heart raced all the same. My heart has become a significant problem, these days. As if every time his would dip out, mine tried to compensate by beating like utter fury, making me sick to my stomach and fragmenting my thoughts. Now that he’s gone, it’s still subconsciously trying to revive him by flooding my body with adrenaline constantly.

I had started to panic, granted, but I am very good at coping with panic. I have seen her before. I continued to stroke his head, and said gently in his ear, “Eeeee god you lazy bugger,” to which he fluttered his eyes and murmured a wordless complaint. This made me smile. I knew his blood pressure had dropped again. I knew he hadn’t eaten or drank for days. But he could hear me. He knew I was there. I thought on this for a second, Willow’s crying intensifying my heartbeat all the while, then I said, “You have to stop now please”. He made an indignant noise. A year ago that dry, gasping mouth would have been tickled by a smile as it formed the words, “You’re bloody cheeky, Charley”. “Grandad. I love you so much, but you need to stop, this isn’t right anymore. I’m ok. You have to go now. You have to stop.” It felt like pushing sand out of my mouth, gritty and uncomfortable across my tongue, but I kept going, with such dulcet Mackem tones that he couldn’t possibly mishear. Then, riddled with memories of his confusion, his growing anger and his emaciated body, I whispered, “you can’t get better from this.” It was the first time I had admitted this.

And so, I told him to go. By the time I straightened up, relenting to Willow’s desperation to leave the death room, I was stiff. I moved like I was in a dream, towards the door. I looked back one last time and I said as loud as I could (he was deaf as a post) “I’ll always love you,” and again he murmured something, and I know he knew I did.

People were crying, then, as I walked out of the care home. Some of them wanted to hug me. Alas, the numbness had sealed my heart once more and all I said was, “Don’t call me. Please, I can’t take it. Call someone else.”

I didn’t cry for hours, until I was sitting in the bath later that night, my phone a bomb once again, waiting, waiting, my heart rushing the seconds as it raced. Then, I fucking screamed. I choked on my grief and my panic, begging God to let my grandad die while already falling into the void his soul was leaving in its wake.

The next day, nothing happened, and the next, nothing. He was dying now of thirst, fitting from dehydration. Give him the fucking morphine, we said.

Then, on the morning of 17^th of August, I was dreaming I was flying. Over the park and Ashbury Drive and Hillside School. I awoke suddenly to the slamming of my bedroom door. It has never done this before, and my anxiety was now so bad that I was immediately in fight or flight. I think, now, that he had come to tell me himself that he had done as I’d said was best, and to check on me one last time on his way to Nannie. Minutes later, Auntie Dawn called me. The words “he’s gone, Charlotte” barely even registered at the time but now they are like a brain worm eating away at me every day.

You see, I didn’t even know what I was going to write about this afternoon, only that I wanted to write, and yet here we are. This brain worm masquerading as a thread is the one I have pulled out. Hopefully things will get easier, now.

Love,

Char

xxx

Beginnings and Boundaries

On the eve of a new year, we all share a feeling of mutual glee – the childish innocence left in all of us which we call hope. That it’ll be full of good things like money and cute puppies and love. The truth is, though, a year is a long time and it will inevitably be a mixed bag. Here are some of the cards I was dealt this year:

-         I bought a beautiful house which is so perfect I cannot describe… I have spent a lot of years treading on eggshells, living on other people’s watch, with no choice but to live how they live. Not anymore. This time last year, I didn’t even know I’d be sitting in my living room right now, so the experience has taught me to hang in there.

-          A promotion, meaning the money I budgeted to live here alone (aka all of my money) has just gone up hundreds. I will be able to do more lovely things now and work less which is such a relief. I also now teach at the sixth form two days a week, talking about books and poetry and beautiful magical language.

-          My brother and my gorgeous Britt got married! It was flawless and we all smiled from our souls for days.

…and so much more. Reuben was born, I spent endless hours walking and cuddling with Willow and did I mention I bought a house…!?

The Struggle of this year was to be grandad’s fall. I have written on this before so won’t go into much detail about that event itself, but the aftermath was and still is quite devastating. When grandad broke his hip, as we waited for the ambulance, I lay on his stomach and cried. I knew his dementia was on a knife edge. I knew he couldn’t withstand a stay in hospital. My heart was breaking for what we were about to lose.

I remember so clearly how he stroked my hair and said, “it’ll be alright pet.” Imagine! He was lying there with a broken hip and he was reassuring ME. He is not a brave man, quite the contrary. He’s actually scared of things like splinters and the wind. But if ever there has been a selfless love in this world, it is ours.

On the topic of new year’s resolutions, it has been the intention of many to keep me out of the hospital and many care homes since this day. I have been defiant to the point of screaming at times. Towards everyone. Carers, the council, even my nearest loved ones who told me to stop. NO. I sat there night after night, new year after new year, promising him that NOTHING would keep me from him when the time came. I will defy all of them before I break that promise. Nobody but grandad has shown me the meaning of ‘unconditional’.

As others who stopped me from getting to him have faded away, no longer bothering with grandad as his dementia takes him, my commitment to him is unwavering. He has spent my whole life stroking my hair and telling me everything is going to be ok. Now it is my turn to take his hand and create beauty from his fear.

Losing someone to dementia feels like grief sometimes, especially when they fail to remember the things they always used to say, the big details. Sometimes it will hit me so hard I almost feel winded. I never stopped to think about it as I fought to stay by his side, but I see it now. This year has robbed me of the soulmate bond, bit by bit. Some days I am glad he is still here but others I feel like I’m bleeding out all over the floor just like his memories.

My new year’s resolution for this year stems from this. It’s about boundaries. I will live in my truth unapologetically in 2022 and beyond. Those who kept me from grandad stood tall in theirs and yet they were wrong. I will say yes when I mean yes and NO when I mean NO. I will say these words with conviction, and I will say them with pride.

Happy new year to everyone who has walked beside me this year. I want to express my gratitude for how you have validated me, given me confidence and made me feel at home.

Here’s to shuffling the deck and picking a new hand.

My love and luck for 2022,

Char
xxx

Home Sweet House

Unbelievably, I am writing this sitting in my very own living room. If I dangle my fingers over the edge of the sofa, I can stroke little pupper. We’re just sitting, breathing in the quiet; it’s an October evening and so the dull orange glow coming from the candles is our only light. My bank account is well and truly empty, but my heart is full of a peace I have not felt before and cannot describe. The feeling of freedom and safety and sanctity.

It was a rough road to get here, but I’d ride it again a million times. I wanted to share some things I’ve learned as I completed the purchase of my first home.

1.       Solicitors are rude and useless

I hope your estate agent is as lovely as mine, that’s all I can say! The sellers were using Mayfair and the lady who works there who dealt with the sale of No. 17 was proactive and kind. She gave me so much emotional support as well as chasing our solicitors daily. I remember once, after another hurdle cropped up with my mortgage, I called her crying and saying I couldn’t live at home anymore and I wanted the house so badly and she was so understanding and supportive. I’ll always remember that.

2.       Getting a mortgage alone is nigh on impossible – but not actually impossible

Without my brother being a big time baller, I would’ve had a very steep monthly payment to meet with one of my parents as a guarantor. There are ways around the 4.5x income cap, even on your own. During the process, you’ll learn about guarantor mortgages, joint borrower sole proprietor mortgages, and Generation Home. Try them – it’s all online and it’s one way to go about getting your own home by yourself. Or, put a parent or family member you can trust on the deeds and get them to sign a bare trust to avoid second home stamp duty. This is another way. Do your research. I swear to you as I sit here in my cocoon of peace – IT IS FUCKING POSSIBLE.

3.       Being alone isn’t scary, it’s glorious (when you find the right place)

Me and my mum looked at lots and lots of houses before we settled on No. 17. I knew the moment I saw it from the outside that it was my house. I saw the stylish grey door, the quirky brickwork, the fields and fields of dog walking out back and I was already saying to mum that we should cancel our other viewings. The house is only a two bed, but uses space so well. Seeing the spacious kitchen diner and big garden for our Willow and the cats … it nearly made me jump up and down there and then!

I also looked at some shit holes. I was so lucky to get my house as cheap as it was – I think if I had taken one of the properties that were just ‘ok’, I would’ve felt less settled than I do right now. In the night, I pad around on these spongey new carets for a drink or a wee and I feel like it’s my home. Plus, I am a busy person! I’ve got two jobs and a vibrant life and so I never feel lonely, in fact, it’s nice to retreat to my little house with Willow in my free time. I can cook whatever food I want, get up and go to bed whenever I want, watch WHATEVER I want on Netflix (a personal highlight). I don’t think I could go back to living with another adult again, which is mildly concerning. Only mildly. I largely don’t care!

4.       Don’t wait around for no fucking man – all you need is a dog and a good family

This one speaks for itself. Although I saved and saved and saved for the deposit for my house, in other ways, my family have enabled this for me and I am acutely aware of their blessing. If you think your family might be willing to help, have the conversation with them. You don't know what could be possible. They love you and I'm sure they'll help where they can. Also, as a side note, get the dog. They make everything even more glowy around the edges.

A caveat of course is that not everyone will be from a background which facilitates buying their own home at 25, and for that I am truly sorry. As you know from my previous posts, I believe that this world is in a sorry state – it should be guaranteed that a working young person can procure a place to feel safe and call their own. But it isn’t. I know my stress and 50 hour weeks and tears to get here are a blessing too, and I thank god for my champagne problems every day.

As a final note, I have been helped by so many of you, so thank you. For your signatures, your extra shifts, your presents. I am lost for words at your generosity during this monumental event in my life. Thank you for your love. I feel it in my soul. Thank you, thank you.

Char and Willow @ No. 17 (finally)

x

'Home sweet house' is a quote from the King and I, and all Granda has been saying since I told him I was getting one!

"Let me off, I'm gonna be sick"

 At some point, we’ve all felt like life is just too much. Too ruthless. Too busy. Like a carousel which started out full of laughter and light but is now a roundabout that’s going oh-too-fast. I can hear myself as a child, starting to cry, “Dan this is not really funny anymore please let me off Dan I’m gonna be sick…”

As adults, we have to learn to ride it out. When we realise that the roundabout is going too fast, we console ourselves with the knowledge that it has to slow down again. That it will eventually stop. We grit our teeth and we ride it out. At least, most of us do. Some of us vomit, making a mess of things again and again. Some of us just can’t wait, so we jump.

It’s hard to talk about mental health without examining the society which has decayed it. We live in a social-media addicted, capitalist nightmare fuelled by sugary drinks and casual sex. A society that was once spiritual and (perhaps as a result?) community-centred has become strictly ‘smash and grab’.

I would say that ever since we had widespread access to the internet, we have been presented with overwhelming choice – of information, of products, even over our physical bodies. We get filler and dye our hair to look like people who are digitally enhanced. People have come to believe that, just like our old iPhones, people are disposable; that there will always be something bigger and better on the horizon.

Moreover, jobs have disappeared and the housing market crashed due to mistakes made by powerful people who have never even spoken to a homeless person… and very subtly, over the course of a lifetime (maybe our parents’ lifetime?), we stopped caring. As long as we are lucky enough to have what we want, those in poverty are not our problem. Worse – they are the problem. We began constructing a narrative in which people who are poor or different are to blame for their own misfortune. We brand them ‘non-contributors’; druggies and drains on a system which, let’s be honest, is fucking you over as well.

My brother earns a fair bit, over 4x my teaching salary, and he’s worked damn hard to build a business from nothing. Still, the tax man takes half of it. He is not truly benefitting from the system despite having a 6-figure income. He grafts for his money. He is still sad a lot of the time.

You might think you have it good because you have a nice house and a nice car and daytrips at weekends, but are you happy? Is it enough? I am not sure. I have no time. I run around like an idiot, late to everything, working 2 jobs to try to buy my own home and feed myself. "Champagne problems," you might say, but when did a safe place to call your own and healthy food become a luxury?

Is it any wonder society is sick? Sick of not being good enough compared with the Instagram famous, sick of struggling every day just to keep their head above water.

The other day, after a few bad things I don’t want to talk about, while I was driving 40 minutes to Nailsea after a day’s work to see my grandad who’s in a care home (a whole trauma in itself), I asked God to just let me die. I don’t have the bollocks, I said, so please can you do it? Just roll the car. 

Moments later, I drove past a bad accident and someone was being carried away from their (totalled) Vectra on a stretcher, covered in blood. Are you sure? He said, and I wasn’t, so here I still am.

Anyway, I am feeling better today. I realise that all I can do is embody positivity and love in all that I do and believe that the universe will reciprocate. I can only imagine what it must be like to feel as low as that constantly. If you feel shit all time time or even just today, please message. I might not be able to fix it, but I care and we can try.

Love, Char. x

 

Sawdust Confetti

 I still don’t really know what to say, but I wanted to express my gratitude.

Many weeks ago, I pulled up at grandad’s like I do every day, dressed for the gym, his dinner in my hand. I opened the front door and I could hear him moaning away but this is not unusual so I shouted, “What you doing man!?”. By the time he replied I was inside the second door, so I could hear the shrill terror in his voice.

“Charlie? Don’t let the dog in chuck! Charlie I’ve fell.” My stomach constricted all the way up to my throat. He was in his bedroom and the door was shut.

“Ok granda, don’t worry, I’m going to open the door is that ok?” I forced my voice to be as level as possible but it was definitely a few decibels higher than usual.

“Yes, yes pet,” he cried, and I held my breath and opened the door.

His head was bleeding, but not badly. I scanned his body in half a second and knelt beside him where he lay. “It’s ok sweetheart, you’re ok.”

“I’ve broke my leg, I’ve been crying Charlie, I’ve been here for hours," he panted.

“Ok, I’m here now, you’re ok.” I looked up at my mum who had just now followed me into the house. My body was shrouding him, comforting him but my eyes were screaming the emotion I couldn’t let out.

As grandad was taken into the back of an ambulance and away from our Ashbury Drive, I was told not to worry. Lots of people recover from a broken hip. You’ll see him in the next few days. I didn’t believe them. I don’t really know why; I just had a bad feeling about it all. Whirring around in my mind was Grandad’s dementia can’t take another stay in hospital.

They operated on his hip and it went well, but after his operation, something even worse happened and his vitals dropped dangerously low. I had phoned the hospital just to speak to him, to see how he was doing after his op, and they told me he was extremely poorly. I hung the phone up. I found myself driving to Weston General as if in the throes of a nightmare, then the next thing I knew I was running through the halls, flooding the corridors with my pain and panic, bursting through the doors of the ward as if his life depended on it. “Where is my grandad?” I managed. The nurse read my aura in an instant.

“You’re Charlie”. A statement, not a question.

“Yes.”

I will cut that night out of the story because it was the worst of my life. That night, the doctor told me my grandad might not make it. I vomited the three mouthfuls of tea I managed. I lay awake til the morning. My heart didn’t stop choking me until they told me at 10am that he was alive.

It’s been a month since that day. I haven’t seen his gorgeous face or heard his naughty laugh for weeks. My heart isn’t panicking anymore but it aches from missing him. Yesterday we found out that he will be moved to respite care in the next few days, about half an hour’s drive away. I couldn’t care. I’d drive to Europe right now to hold his hand.

This sad affair is the reason why I have leaned on some of my loved ones and hid away from others... But I just want to thank every single one of you.

Those of you who’ve messaged with nothing but love and got nothing but silence from me. Those of you who have had me turn up at your door hyperventilating (Dan and Britt, I love you both more than you know). The members of this family I never thought I’d speak to again who have supported me. I’m touched to the point of tears most days. My best friend has been missing for a little while, but you know, in many ways I’ve never felt so loved. Thank you for seeing me, and, fuck, thank you for loving him with me.