Isn't That The Million Dollar Question!

for #carryonanniversaryweek day 5: soulmates

It’s November and you’re four years old and your brother is only six months and you already know that if you lost him tomorrow you wouldn’t know who you are anymore. 

You kiss him on the forehead and tell him goodnight. 

You run out the front door with him only a few hours later.

It’s November and you’re twenty-six years old and your brother is only twenty-two and you’re staring up at his dorm complex with your hands stuffed into your pockets, shaking slightly, working up the courage to break in. 

It’s cold and your breath comes out in puffs and you know that if you don’t get the answer you want, you might just drive off a bridge.

You walk out the front door with him an hour later. 

Two days after that you’ll carry him out.

It’s May and you’re twenty-seven years old and your brother is only twenty-three and you’re running towards him as a knife is pulled from his back and he falls to his knees.

You catch the world in your arms and watch it fade away to nothing like sand slipping through your fingertips.

You’re pretty sure the whole world can hear your scream.

It’s February and you just turned twenty-eight and your brother isn’t yet twenty-four and you’re being held tight in his arms and you don’t fully understand why, only that he tells you he never wants to listen to Asia again. 

When he tells you the full story, you spend the night after the revelation awake and staring at the ceiling.

You try to imagine what Hell might be like. 

You see your brother dying over and over and over again with no way to ever stop it and almost throw up as fear eats away at your stomach.

It’s May and you’re still twenty-eight and your brother is only twenty-four and your chest is being shredded and your blood is flying in all directions and you can hear your brother screaming. Or is that you?

The world goes dark and comes back into focus in a world of darkness, pain, and loneliness. 

You scream your brother’s name. It’s the only prayer you know.

It’s September and you’re not yet twenty-nine and your brother is still only twenty-four and you see him for the first time in forty years and you smile for the first time in just as long. 

When he holds you, you nearly breakdown.

His arms feel exactly as you remember them. 

It’s May and you’re twenty-nine and your brother is only twenty-five and you’re calling to him, not sure he can hear you through the wood of the door, but that doesn’t matter. He needs to hear you.

He doesn’t. 

Your heart cracks in half.

It will never heal.

It’s May and you’re thirty and your brother is only twenty-six and you’re pressed up against your car, your face fucked to Hell and that’s what you’re staring at right now, a gaping maw to Hell, open in the earth before you.

Your brother stands on the edge of it with his arms spread wide.

For a moment it seems like he won’t fall in.

He does. 

This is the first time you think you’ve lost him forever.

It’s November and you’re forty-six and your little brother is only forty-two and a lot of time has passed. And this is the last time you’ll see him. So you make sure you’re looking at him when you tell him everything you never did.

You die in his arms and you’ve never felt so comfortable and warm in all of your life. 

There’s a smile on your face when your soul leaves your body. 

You never see the way your brother breaks apart once you’re gone.

It’s very warm out and you’re waiting for someone and then you turn and your little brother is beside you on a bridge in summer and you’re smiling. He smiles back and pulls you into his arms.

You’re crying, but it’s alright now. You both know it’s the last time you’ll ever do it and suddenly your sobs transform into peals of laughter.

Nothing has ever been so perfect.

It's in the distance shots with others where it is clear how huge he is.

half Christ, half cowboy

Why does Jared

always sit/stand to the left

of Jensen?

I mean, every time they appear together

Jared is ALWAYS on the Left

I don’t understand wh- OH.

Oh.

Life makes a bit more sense now.

Amends

I don't usually dip my toe in the drama pool. At least not too deeply. But what's going on in fandom this week, the revelations, were extreme. The people who have come forward... they were in a cult. I am not being overdramatic about this. Gamifying harassment, forcing disconnections like Scientology, needing everyone to observe the same talking points or risk ostracism, leadership using it for money, criminal behavior towards those The Guru has deemed the Out-Group including members who don't conform heavily enough... That's a cult. The internet has made cult behavior REALLY easy. Likes and engagement make you suddenly aware of which direction your circle is leaning. If you agree, YOU TOO GET POINTS. You too will experience that sense of belonging, and that's what it's all about. So if your circle is being outright mean... if you don't want to be cast off as "not one of them"... maybe you say the mean thing too, even if it's a lie, even if you're not really sure why you're saying it. That approval feels SUPER GOOD and is addictive. And your circle amps each other up, gets meaner and meaner. The only people who stay in the in-group are those who don't speak up about the bad behavior and are willing to keep going along with it. Those aren't friendships. It's a pack of hungry carnivores. It's the same behaviors police gangs use on cops who speak up. I do have some sympathy, especially for the younger people who were still forming their identities. They were victims of indoctrination and criminal harassment. That said, they have to own their own behavior. I hope they learn and grow. They're going to have to have some self-reflection on what they've done, the lies told, the hate, the virulent -isms that were expressed, and literal crimes that were performed in the name of fitting in and winning some points with the clique. They're also going to have to reassess who their out-group is, why they even NEED an out-group over fandom things, and if there are still people in their schema who they have an impulse to hate for no reason.... because of a ship or actor preference. They're going to have to question all the lies they were told and if they are still holding onto hate based on that. That's hard if they aren't even sure what the lies were. It's going to be a process for them. We should give people the space and grace to get better. To deprogram themselves. But this does not mean there needs to be automatic forgiveness. Nobody needs to like anyone. But nobody needs to hate anyone either. Maybe the middle ground is we can grow some indifference or the ability to say, "I'm letting it go, this person is in progress, I can't control their journey, the ball is in their court."

If you were behaving badly, you've earned the suspicion of the people you hurt. A few of you are expressing amends, which is wonderful. But part of the thing with making amends is that you don't get to control the outcome. You make a genuine apology for EXACTLY what you've done, you own your part in it, and you don't make excuses... and from there, people may accept what you've said and they may not. They may forgive you immediately, they may take time, they may never forgive you. You have to learn to be good with that. It can be uncomfortable, to feel disliked, ESPECIALLY if the reason you got into the cult was because of that sense of belonging. Your impulse may be to keep giving explanations of how the group influenced you, to distance yourself. You may tell yourself, "I'm not that person, this isn't really me, it was the group." You want to be seen as CHANGED - virginal and new because you made the hard choice to finally leave the cult. ...It isn't that easy. You want the space and grace and you should get that. But guess what? You need to give that to others, too. You need to understand that people have real reasons to distrust you if you were exhibiting cruelty. And part of doing the work to make amends is the actual work. If you're serious about it, it means a lot of difficult self-reflection. You need to take an unflinching look at WHY you could ignore or participate in racism and lord knows plenty of other -isms, why outright defamation and death threats to actors and other fans were okay, why doxing people and trying to get them fired was seen as fair game, why trying to make someone feel hated and terrible about themselves was your impulse, why you were giggling and congratulating yourself for leaning into your worst impulses...until the group turned on you. Because that's the truth of the situation. You now have that self-knowledge of what you're willing to participate in. The question now is what are you going to do with that? I hope it includes therapy and I don't mean that glibly. I think it's possible there are some internet addictions going on where people crave the rush of getting Likes and engagement... and ragefarming is the best way to get engagement. If that's true... it will be EXTREMELY easy to move from the space of performing FOR the cult to performing AGAINST them, so that you can maintain your hit of Likes. And that is just sitting in the same behaviors. But if you're serious about getting better, if you're serious about being honest with yourself, you're going to need to fight against those inclinations. Please ask yourselves if you truly feel your apologies and want to change...or if maybe some part of you is just posting your attempt at amends because you want to fit in with those leaving or because you're craving that approval. Leaving is great! But are you getting the same psychological hit from your posts now? Are you trying to collect a new group that will lovebomb you because you're seeking self-esteem and miss the people who used to give it to you? I'm not saying this in judgment, I'm saying it because many people go from one cult or MLM to another, seeking that same sense of belonging. That's not my wish for you.

To the people on the other side of this... I'm not saying not to speak up if you see people slipping or people whose apologies are revealed as false words. I'm not trying to tone police people getting angry. There have been real reasons to be angry. HOWEVER... please be aware that if we want people to actually learn and grow we need to give them room to do that. There's nothing wrong with a really direct "This is really shitty and unkind behavior." Going scorched earth every time isn't the way. Is it our responsibility to motivate them to change, is it on us? Absolutely not. But are our actions going to unintentionally make them more likely to try and find a gang again because they're feeling defensive? If we also truly want to make things better, we have to ask ourselves what our goal is. Do we just want to give a tongue-lashing because we're angry? We might. And that can be justified sometimes in life. But cornered people don't often make great decisions. If what we want out of this is for people to be less terrible - there are ways to call people in and out, firmly and not sugarcoated, while still not going on the attack.

To the people who finally spoke up, you should be proud of yourselves for that. You took the first step. I hope you keep walking forward.

If you actually read to here... holy crap, I apologize. Many, many words, but I wanted to put them all down somewhere instead of continuing to overthink it at 3:30am. I do want to say... this is just my perspective. If it came off as trying to tell you how to do or feel, or like I think I'm perfect? Nah, kids. I'm a fallible screw-up, too, who is often "cringe," as the children say. We can all work on ourselves. At least that's the hope. If we're open to it.

Anyway. Love y'all, TGC

Dean + smirks (requested by daniela)

Another day, another school, where the kids all have different names but are all the same. The teacher, also different and also the same, asks her class if anyone collects things. Sam frowns. If he was old enough to know better, he’d say he collects sorrows.

Kids raise their hands and talk excitedly about stamps, flowers drying between book pages, dead butterflies pinned like trophies in transparent showcases, Yo-Yos. Sam raises tentatively his hand, because he wants to melt in this classroom, wants to be just a name, to have a bedroom, a favorite crosswalk, and the luxury to collect things. So he says the one and only thing he can think of: “motel rooms”. Because this is true, somehow. An eclectic collection of dusk in nowhere towns and first days everywhere.

She tries to explain to him that it isn’t the same, because Sam can’t carry motel rooms with him, doesn’t even own them. She sees the light dim in his eyes, as kids start to giggle around him, glancing at him like he just said something hilarious. There’s nothing funny about this. She asks him if there is anything else that he keeps somewhere safe, anything that makes him happy and that he carries with him everywhere, that he can’t get enough of, and Sam thinks about it long and hard, makes a list of everything that fits the description. 

In the end there is just one thing, but the moment he thinks it, Sam’s heart swells in his chest and the kids’ mocking gazes fade in the classroom’s background, because his collection is the coolest in the entire goddamn universe. And none of the kids here can claim to have something as great as him. They can keep their lifeless butterfly wings.

“Sammys, I collect Sammys”, he says with a big grin, and she ask “What are Sammys?” but Sam just laughs. No one in this school deserves to know. No one in the entire town deserves to see his collection. So Sam just laughs and when the bell rings, he leaves with his bag on his shoulders and his teacher’s eyes on his back. 

She’s walking to her car, thinking about dinner and going for a jog maybe, when she hears a loud and boisterous “Sammy!” behind her. There’s so much unfiltered joy and love in those five letters that she feels a half second of jealousy before she can stop herself. She looks around and sees a boy, sun bleached hair and vibrant green eyes, who must be 8 at most, waving at little Sam who is running toward him at full speed, a private smile she’s almost ashamed to be a witness of spreading on his cheeks. 

That’s when she gets it, and as she watches Sam throw himself at the other boy, who just laughs and hugs Sam just as hard, she hopes Sam’s collection will never end collecting dust on the shelves of his memories.

realmarksheppard: You’re not going to believe this! Was on my way to an appointment yesterday when I collapsed in my kitchen. Six massive heart attacks later, and being brought back from dead 4 times I apparently had a 100% blockage in my LAD. The Widowmaker. If not for my wife, the @losangelesfiredepartment at mullholland and the incredible staff @providencecalifornia St Joseph’s - I wouldn’t be writing this. My chances of survival were virtually nil. I feel great. Humbled once more. Home tomorrow! #spnfamily

Posted on Instagram on Saturday, Dec 2 ~5pm EST

DEAN WINCHESTER in one random episode per day ‣ 287/327 11.05 THIN LIZZIE

Jensen Ackles | Toronto Convention (July 31, 2022)  [ x | x | x | x ]