alright, I wanna talk about it:

recently I've been dealing with stuff that happened and that I was experiencing when I was in my mid- to late teens

all of this has been feeding into my writing, because that's how I process things

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I was lucky: I had an awesome childhood and my parents are amazing, but because my parents encouraged me to stay true to myself and ecouraged all my interests, fleeting or not, topped with both of them being HUGE geeks which made me one too... I was bullied, a lot

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but, again, I was lucky, because it was just people talking behind my back, there were never any physical altercations

I was pretty sheltered in that regard, also I grew up in the Netherlands, which makes everything that much easier

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I was therefore more affected by negativity tho

it started with 9/11, but I didn't quite understand that, I just knew the adults were scared, it was too far away and I was young, but then the tsunamis happened, and family was affected, it was a huge deal and I became scared

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I was brave before that, nothing held me back, but after learning everything about the tsunamis, and also having seen all the docus about 9/11 which were on tv every September... I closed off, I escaped into fiction

and music

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I was recommended Tokio Hotel and they swiftly became my favourite band, I was a stan!

my mom found this forum, a Belgium forum, all about Tokio Hotel! and these were all older women who had real jobs and tattoos and piercings and I thought they were The Best

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and they wrote fanfiction, my mom and I started reading several stories and I was hooked, because I needed an escape, I was feeling like shit due to hormones (fuck being a teenager) and I was repressing all these horrible things I had learned about

I also started writing

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I had always written poetry and short stories, boasting to my primary school teachers that I was gonna be a writer and an archeologist "Just you wait!" and now I had a way to escape from reality, focus on the band I adored, and do something I loved

it was amazing

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fast-forward two years and I traumatized myself by reading a story that was far too muh for me, heavy body horror in there that fucked me up, it was tagged properly, but I was a cocky 14yo who thought I could handle it, I couldn't

I stopped reading and writing fanfics

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instead I focused on reality a bit more, I felt a bit more secure, made some friends, and real life felt less daunting, I wrote a movie script and started writing an original novel, I was exploring my writing! and making friends!

but that wasn't necessarily better

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three of my new friends were arranged to be married

THREE OF THEM

about to be married off at 17/18 to a random man of their parents' choosing

one of them was my best friend, who had many issues at home to begin with

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she told me, in explicit detail, everything that happened to her

there weren't bad things happening to her then, she just couldn't deal with a lot of things, but I did learn about her soon-to-be husband

and the first time she and him had sex

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the way she talked about it, because she had been raised with certain beliefs and morals, it fucked me up

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she didn't say exactly what they did, but focused on hoe glad she was she still bled after first penetration because, surprise! she had been raped a couple years prior

I was 16 and didn't understand AT ALL, it terrified me (and I was jealous because I had a crush on her, shh)

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I never realized how much this affected me, how I never processed it, because soon after, we graduated, I stayed at hs and moved to a higher grade, she got married and went off to college, we lost contact

I did meet her again while I was in college, and she had a whole child

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that also fucked me up, but college was fucking stressful, so I continued on not processing things and instead running blindly towards the finish line that was my bachelor's degree diploma

which I then got

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I got more depressed, because I couldn't get a job or a place to live, so I was forced to live with my parents again and got a job in logistics

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fast forward to 2019: worst day of my life, I had a horrible breakdown, my brain gave up and broke the fuck down, I almost didn't survive myself that day, but I got out of bed and my mom saved my life by forcing me to go outside

yikes

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and naturally that's when I rediscovered mcr, a couple weeks later

I was never a fan before (I just knew they were the best band in the universe cuz mama and wttbp), and I realised I hadn't listened to much of their stuff before, so I looked em up

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it was because of brad's reaction videos that I did btw, lol, thanks brad!

anyway, tbp was very cathartic in my vulnerable state and then they reunited and I panicked (I thought I had all the time in the world to learn their songs AND THEN THEY REUNITE, ASSHOLES)

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eventually, in 2020, I worked from home, knew I was gonna be unemployed and suddenly in the midst of that a global pandemic happened and I sat down on my balcony with my laptop and wrote a danger days fanfic

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many things happened throughout 2020, the pandemic, blm protests, lgbt protests, and the world basically losing their shit and me actually being able to perceive all of that again

it messed with me and I felt awful, but, I wasn't depressed (thanks return show & unus annus)

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only in september did all these events really start bleeding into my writing, and I learned how to manage social media & the news to stay sane

and then my grandma passed away on december 30

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it threw me for a loop, I knew she was gonna die, and I had grieved her already, etc. but it was my first personal death I experienced, it was weird

and suddenly I felt myself regress

I started thinking and acting like 15yo me again

that was odd

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I accepted it and let myself observe life from that young perspective

I was horrified being alone in an apartment and working a full-time job, I felt irresponsible and couldn't believe people let me live by myself

this is where it started

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after I had gotten through the couple of days where I felt like a 15yo I became more reflective, I started remembering more things from back then, the things mentioned in this thread rose to the foreground

I started processing things

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and so I started writing, one day

I started writing in an impossible universe (omegaverse) for safety, and put all my teenage angst into teen!frank, I out all my current knowledge and experience into adult!gerard

and so The End. was written over the course of about 3 weeks

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it's still the best thing I've ever written, and I'm damn proud of it, and it helped me deal with all these things I had repressed throughout my teenage years

there's still more to go through and it will remain something I can tap into, the series is far from done!

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I didn't make this thread as an excuse, it's not, I just wanted to write the things I have realised and learned throughout my life, and share how important this fic is to me

so thank you to everyone who is able to read it and who have given me kudos and commented

Thank You