TRIGGER WARNING FOR SELF HARM, THOUGH IT IS UNINTENTIONAL I AM AWARE THAT SOME PEOPLE MAY FIND IT TRIGGERING

SO TAKE CARE IF YOURSELF, I PROMISE NOTHING TOO IMPORTANT HAPPENS IN THUS CHAPTER

I WILL HAVE A LONG DASHLINE FEATURING ANNOYING FANGIRL TALK WHEN IT IS OVER

When Jaz lost her five-dollar water bottle, she expected her life to be like this:

Jaz: looked around and then she found it and life was fine.

Instead, because fuck Jaz, she guessed, she got this:

Brain: And the Oscar for the most random trigger of a mental breakdown goes to... This dumb bitch!

Jaz: Wow! Thank you so much. I am truly honored to be here today. I would like to take a moment to thank all the shitty people in my life because I certainly wouldn't have gotten here without them! I'd like to thank God--that's right, sky daddy himself. He decided to make me live with a sexy, chemically imbalanced brain. He also made me a homosexual with homophobic parents. I also want to acknowledge those homophobic parents for making my childhood a hellscape. But I really want to hone in on my mother, who once berated me for losing a ten-dollar sweater at a Target. Apparently, she beat the shit out of me--she said it, like three years later, like, oh yeah, remember this silly thing?--and it must have been a good one because--you can insert the game show laugh here--I don't remember shit! I think that's where I got scared every time I lost something. I also want to thank the school system for making me physically unable to get anything below a B, and even that's toeing the line to insanity. I am grateful to be the dumb bitch who got triggered by dumb shit, and I hope to be here again. Because this sure as hell won't be the last time!

    And that was how she ended up in the bathroom with sticky floors for reasons Jaz did not want to know and clogged toilets due to food being dumped in them. She stood in front of the mirror for the entirety of lunch, bawling, digging her nails into her skin, then crying more as her nails drew blood, desperately trying to wipe it away. Her head raced with a single thought: Did you just do that?

    She ran into the largest stall and clamped her hand over her mouth, pinching her nose shut to stop any sounds from coming out of her throat. She couldn't breathe. She didn't care.

    Someone banged on the door. "Hurry up," said a deep voice. The cons of a unisex bathroom.

    How long had she been there? "Give me a second," Jaz said, feigning annoyance. She checked the time--lunch was almost over. Fuck.

    She used her foot to flush the toilet--a loud sound that could be heard outside--and turned on the water at the sink, letting it run while she scrambled to fix her smeared mascara. She looked down at her arm; it was still bleeding. She grabbed a paper towel, wiped away the blood, and crossed her arms. If more came gushing out, no one would see. All she had to do was make it to her bag. Jaz brought a cardigan.

    It was a shame. Jaz thought she looked pretty today. She was always insecure about her hair--the dirty blonde was light enough to be blonde and catch your attention but dark enough to look like a shitty wig next to her dark olive complexion. But she wore it down today, and her hair was long. She'd taken advantage of the cold weather and worn a white sweater with a square neckline and light-washed jeans. She really only brought the cardigan just in case it got too cold, and it didn't. It just got hotter, and putting on the cloud cardigan would make the heat unbearable. And her makeup. All of it was gone. Granted, she didn't put on much- concealer, blush, bronzer, and mascara. But she looked pretty.

    Jaz didn't think God--if there even is one--liked it when Jaz felt pretty.

    Jaz took a deep breath before opening the door.

    "Damn, what took you so long?" said the guy in front of her.

    "Why don't you try bleeding profusely out of your vagina?" Jaz snapped, just to shut him up.

    The boy cleared his throat. "Sorry," he muttered before shuffling into the bathroom.

    Jaz found her bag and threw on the cloud cardigan, revealing a Thermos. She knew that hergma was in there, and her stomach growled. But she didn't feel hungry.

    When Jasmine Maia Anderson was around 8, maybe 9, one of her various cousins went through a miscarriage. Then another. Then another. Then had a healthy baby, but not without heavy postpartum. Not to mention the poor girl had to deliver naturally.

    Her cousin, Ashley, had asked for support from her family. She couldn't afford to pay for childcare, therapy, and medical bills, but everyone refused to help her. She then became one of the few members of her white side to drink alcohol, and she never learned to control herself.

    She almost died when Jaz was 11 due to an overdose. Through the ancient art of eavesdropping, Jaz discovered that it was intentional.

    She also found out that Ashley had begged for help, but no one had given her any.

    She learned that day that you must struggle alone. That's just how life was. No one will keep supporting you; you need the strength to do that yourself.

    So stop crying, Jasmine Maia Anderson.

    Why are you crying, Jasmine Maia Anderson?

    You are pathetic, Jasmine Maia Anderson.

    Make yourself stop, Jasmine Maia Anderson.

    And how do you do that, Jasmine? You shove your nails into your skin, deal with the pain, and stop being so fucking weak.

    Was that a poem? Jaz wondered. Wow, are you really so fucking dense that you would think that and wonder if that could be a poem. Fucking idiot.

    It didn't matter; ignore it. But her inner demons were right. Her blood did stop her useless tears. Perhaps that would be something to think about.

------------------- (hIs NaMe Is BoB *sTaRtS cRyInG iN fAnGiRl* hAhAhA iM sO EviL rhjdglirdflkt;ldrhdsfiskbr)

Nico found geometry to be hell. He remembered back in the day (read: last week), trig was easy. Sin, Cos, and Tan were just lovely little angles and cute little equations like this: 15/3xSin. All he had to do was put that adorably simple equation into his calculator, and the magical box would solve it for him.

    And then Mrs. Dodds, destroyer of any form of hope and joy, squashed all of his dreams by introducing the wretched unit circle. But it would have been okay; he had the power to defeat that fiendish being with the art of kahooting that shit so hard. But Mrs. Dodds saw that Nico had prevailed and unleashed his nemesis: finding the area of the shaded region.

    Nico stared down at his paper, sweat beading on his forehead and drenching his binder as he stared at the two circles, the radii connecting to make the hypotenuse of a triangle that had literally no reason to be there. He then looked at the extension out of the circles into a right angle, where between the two arcs lay a shaded region. Only one of the units was marked. Nico took a deep breath before beginning his quest to solve the unnecessarily long problem.

    He spent the entire fucking period finding the arc length, then the midpoint, then the equation of the circle, then finding the center, then doing the distance formula, then finding the arc length, finding the second arc length, going the Pythagorean theorem to find the missing side, finding the area of the triangle, the area of the arc, the area of the other arc, and subtracted it.

    He got the answer wrong. Naturally, he slammed his head on his desk, but the bell rang, and Nico had to deal with his pad. However, that wasn't an option at school, and the sensation of needing a restroom for his bleeding vagina made him want to somehow tighten his binder. He didn't care for his potentially broken ribcage.

    Dysphoria remained prominent. No year on T, binder, sweater, broader shoulders, or slightly defined jawline will ever change that fact. He would forever bleed and forever be reminded by assholes that Nico was trans.

    Just like the writing on his locker did last year. He just stared at the black text. You will never be a real man. No shit, that's why he's trans. But it still hurt. Still, he didn't do anything, not even cry. He just blankly stared.

    They'd tracked it down to some guy, Matt Sloane. In the end, nothing serious happened to him. Nico had to use his privilege as the child of a millionaire and sued him for emotional distress and vandalism of property, as the locker was his for the year. He rented it with money Nico himself earned. Thanks to the magical world of having a social media presence as well as photographic evidence of transphobia, there was no excessive backlash.

    It had almost been a year, but it still stung. And his periods, though they now lay 3 months apart, reminded him of that fact. The same with the fact that he was required to change in the women's locker room, lest his binder and breasts be a distraction to prepubescent boys who pretend to understand reality. Then, he'd be seen as a predator in the locker room.

    It's impossible to win.

    He was entirely about to risk TSS, but then he saw it, like seeing God himself because the author can't think of any other metaphor at the moment: the gender-neutral bathroom is unlocked.

-

Sadie dramatically splayed herself atop Shel's lap. "I'm tired."

    "Welcome to the club," Shel said monotonously.

hi my violation beans

welcome to me having writers block, the subplot of random tangents with gabby

like, i am aware of the fact that none of this chapter was necessary

however i haven't updated in almost a month and i felt like shit

so

here ya go ig

i published another chapter of chaotic college children

and you know what i did with the shelper one shot after it was 15,000 words long????

I STARTED IT OVER BECAUSE I HATE MYSELF

like... uggggh

like i know why i started it over, i made a whole rant about it, but stillllll

and now i have no fucking plot and i have to redevelop my characters and make an actual plot map to make sure i get it right this time—

and i changed shel from musical theatre gay to a sassy and judgmental cosmetologist with 6 siblings

and i love it????

i don't think i realized i had done singer shel 3 times in 3 different fics

so it'll be a fun change

still have no idea what i'm doing with piper, but you've read this

when have i ever known what to do with piper??

also, this fic is very quickly coming to an end, i knooow i will also cry

it will take much longer for it to ACTUALLY be done, but all i have to do is give the characters i neglected an arc and finish the arcs i started

then you'll get a chapter of pure fluff at homecoming and maybe hadestown depending on if i want to touch hadestown after the shit with the captioning device

listen, i'm aware that it was one actor and it's a HUGE production

but at the same time, wtf???

broadway needs to be accessible to all, and it ISNT

and it should be fixed, but it's assholes, like that asshole, who make it impossible to do so!

so, as much as i love hadestown, i am taking a break from it because the deaf community does not deserve this shit

anyway, my depression is popping off

my writing ability is doing the exact opposite!!

and i know this chapter was short as fuck, i'm sorry

i haven't written a 1,000 word chapter in a while and it seems so small?

i've just been working on 4 fics at once and also adding on my creative writing class and writing much more personal things i hadn't written before

along with various essays for my women's studies class

and text analyses for my english lang class

and papers about the french revolution (crazy shit, btw) and then immediately getting something more boring, the industrial revolution.

but hey, in a few weeks i'm getting russian history, which will be a WILD ride

all of which from my euro history class

not to mention i actually did that problem nico did and it took up a page and a half to complete

AND I GOT IT WRONG

and also chemistry is so fun but so confusing!!

thankfully it is thanksgiving break, and while i don't really like how whitewashed this holiday is, i will take a week off of school

anyway, my note just made this chapter 2,000 words which means half of it is my bullshit

so adios

love y'all!