We are starting to investigate if my son has austism spectrum disorder and looking for some knowledge and advice. He is now 9 years old and for the most part seems like a normal kid. He does pretty well in school as far as academics are concerned, he really love to read. Although, he has had behavioral issues since he was very young. We have constantly been in meeting with his teachers and school staff since kindergarten. Recently he got put on methylphenidate because they thought he might have adhd even though it doesn't seem to fit. It seems like the medicine has helped him at school he hasn't had an issue for months but had one recently.
The signs we have noticed that now have us on the path of autism spectrum disorder is he is very sensitive to loud sounds. Whenever we attend any performance or even movies at the movie theater he has to have his hands over his ears the whole time. He used to constantly chew on things like his shirt or toys to the point he would put holes in his shirts. He has issues with fine motor skills like cutting paper and handwriting. He has a hard time transitioning between activities. If he is quietly siting doing something it is very hard to get him to move on to something else. We typically compensate for this at home for example I warn him 15 minutes before we have to leave anywhere and that typically works. He is overly attached to a specific item that he has to find every night before he goes to bed. He gets very distraught if he can't find his thing. The biggest problem we have right now is he is having what I think is a meltdown at school. At home he very rarely has any issues but I suspect this is because of the low stimuli and he has time and areas he can go to calm down. When he gets upset about something he goes into a meltdown state and nothing can be done to calm him down. The school staff has sat with him for an hour while he wails at school. He has hit his teacher, classmates and anyone who tries to intervene. We could use some advice at what the school can do to prevent these meltdowns. Typically by the time they pull him out of the classroom it is already too late and when they put him in another room he will destroy things. We are now trying to get him on an IEP but I'm not sure what they could even do to help him. He has a hard time realizing before he is going to meltdown. I have seen him get upset and angry and calm himself down but when he is in these meltdown states we can't redirect him or get him to calm down. Do you have recommendations on accomadations at school?
Also I am curious what his life is going to be like if someone can share their perspective on what we can expect.

Been in my mind for weeks to make this but uh
Spanish 2: pretty easy, honestly a final might fuck me up a bit but I should be fine
Physics: I almost certainly fail last semester (haven't check but I was failing and I completely bombed a semester final so yesh ) and now definitely failing again, even just passing wouldn't be enough as I need to average both out and our teacher is either get everything 100% done or no grade at all and she doesn't teach well probably because she is more of a college teacher who only teaching high school for a few years for Some extra money who doesn't even know much about physics herself, also why she has higher standards thrn any of my honors or AP classes depsite not being wheighted any higher then regular). Now I did take high school credit honors biology in 8th grade so I would still be on track to graduate with 4 science credits even if I do fail so I really hope that prevents me from doing summer school as I don't think my mental health can survive it tbch.
AP computer science A: I don't understand coding st all, I haven't been able to do any of the work since like September, thid happened last year in principles but I thought I would be better this year but I'm not, I'm stuck on a similarish pathway because here you have to basically choose your career in 8th grade like I was in covid/online school in 7th grade and once we were returning the school system was like "choose what you want to do forever at 14" at least it will diverge to cybersecureity and video game design next year which should be different hopefully. As for grades we do other assignments so I should pass and I'm probably gonna skip the AP exam, sucks because my parents payed for it but I'm just gonna walk in not knowing how to do anything and probably be on the verge of crying the whole time.
Algebra 2 honors: fine I should past pretty well, definitely better then geometry
Outdoor recreation: kindergarteners can past this
English 2 honors: surprisingly doing not that bad, probably won't get a high grade but will pass.
AP World history: this is complicated, usually I'm very good in history like last year I got straight A's in honors World geography which even people most likely say smarter then me had a harder time and well I love social studies. This year started off fine with low A's but suddenly my teacher stop grading my SAQ's because they have bad handwriting she can't read even tho she graded them at first and last time I checked a few months ago I had a high C which really hurts. I also don't know how to write a DBQ, I didn't have a pen most the time we did practice on them and the teacher didn't have extra at the time so yeah I might be fucked there. Like I can do some parts of a DBQ like the essay but grouping still kinda confuses me and like it's requirements and that can really fuck me up since I know it's worth a shit ton of points. Also I do need to study and our teacher said we should not spend much time studying at home if at all and she will give us time in class but we been mostly doing stupid study group shit that takes days to make progress on not really even studying so I'm just probably gonna do shit at home I will read through book and watch that YouTuber everyone recommends for this class (forgot his name but I do have one of his videos on my watch later). Unlike AP computer science A I'm not DOA so I'm gonna attempt but I'm scared

“We need to talk, Ella.”
That was the last thing Alex ever said to me.
Five years ago, via text, before he cut me out of his life.
Now he wasn't answering his fucking phone.
“Hey, you've reached Alex!”
I met Alex Locke in the fifth grade.
I suffered from chronic headaches as a kid, and Alex lost time a lot, sometimes blanking out whole days. According to Alex, it was like being switched off.
Due to his condition, the boy fell asleep a lot, sometimes tumbling down the stairs during his episodes, which meant he was always in the nurse’s office with a head injury, or curled into a ball snoozing. I wasn't as sick as Alex, but I liked to sleep off my headaches in the nurse’s office and would wake to Alex playing Pokémon on the bed next to mine.
Other times, he would be sitting on the observation bed with his knees drawn to his chest. Alex wasn't a fan of shots.
I discovered that when I was torn from a headache induced sleep to his blood curdling wails.
I thought for sure he was dying, until I glimpsed the shot in Nurse Golding’s hand. Initially, I wasn't surprised the kid was screaming, she was trying to stab the thing into the back of his head.
Though, after reassuring me it was part of Alex’s treatment, she calmly told me to distract the boy while she administered his daily shot.
I panicked and attempted a puppet show with my hands. Alex was so confused by whatever I was trying to do, he stopped screaming, frowning at me like I had grown a second limb.
It worked! Kind of. Nurse Golding was ruffling his hair and calling him brave, when Alex’s eyes widened, his hand going to the back of his head. He started wailing again, but this time I was pretty sure it was for attention.
Alex definitely had his eyes on the tub of candy the nurse kept on her top shelf.
Alex made me feel better about my headaches. I found his company comforting, and we became sick-buddies. Sometimes, his other friends would slip into the nurse’s office to prod him and tease him, and I felt a little left out. The two of them paid no attention to me, focusing on annoying Alex.
Growing up, we both got progressively better. Alex’s episodes decreased to one a month, and my headaches were easier to tolerate. The two of us still ended up in the nurse’s office, but for different reasons. I accidentally shoved a needle through my finger during arts and crafts, and was too shocked to cry.
Alex had fallen over during gym, and had the tiniest scratch on his leg, which set off the waterworks.
When Nurse Golding was trying to rip the needle out of my finger with tweezers, Alex was demanding she replaced his bandaid.
Starting middle school, the two of us came face to face with Nurse Jane.
She was terrifying, as well as completely incompetent. There was no candy in her office, and her solution to a girl in my class breaking her arm, was “Put a wet piece of tissue paper on it”
Alex tried the, I'm sooo sick! thing, and Nurse Jane spent half an hour lecturing him about healthy food.
He returned to class miraculously cured, looking paler than he did before visiting her.
Neither of us dared enter Nurse Jane’s office, unless we were really sick.
We were ten when Alex threw a ball of paper at me, hitting me in the face.
I was about to throw it back, when the boy twisted around in his seat and motioned for me to unravel the paper.
He had scribbled a funny picture of Nurse Jane being blown up into a balloon.
Underneath, written in bright red crayon:
DO YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH US?
YES [ ]
NO [ ]
At first, I was hesitant.
I told him I'd think about it, so he came straight to my house himself.
I didn't even know he knew my address.
“Why don't you want to play?” Alex asked through a mouthful of chocolate chip cookies. Mom had given him a plate to take up to my room.
Hiding behind him were his two friends, Lucy Conrad, a curly haired brunette with ribbons in her pigtails, and Ki Jacobs, the foreign exchange kid from Australia. The three of them already seemed like a tight knit group in class, sending each other notes and giggling.
I wasn't sure I wanted to be the odd one out in their little gang.
Still though, Alex was insistent that I join them.
So, I did. The three invited me to the town’s summer festival, and I had so much fun I forgot why I was scared of ruining their friendship. Ki choked on his Coke float, which shouldn't have been funny, but it was his over-reaction that sold me. The rest was history.
Initially, I was kind of hesitant, only hanging out with them on select days, making sure not to be too invasive.
Mom warned me that joining an already established friendship group was dangerous, on account of me potentially being left out. She had horror stories from her own teenagehood, where she was the fourth member in a group of girls, who turned on her for their own entertainment, inviting her to slumber parties for the sole purpose of bullying her.
But that wasn't what we were. Mom’s warning scared me and I waited for Alex to start teasing me about my big nose, or my overly large front tooth.
He didn't even notice my tooth until I told him, so he opened his mouth and prodded at his own molars, teasingly calling them horse teeth. Alex said he didn't care what I looked like.
Eventually, the barriers I had built began to crumble, and I started to see these kids as real, proper friends.
I was invited to play every day, the four of us venturing across town to swim in the lake or hunt for buried treasure with a map Ki definitely didn't print off of Google. Mom was wrong.
I was never left out. If I didn't turn up to our secret spot in the forest, the three of them would walk straight through my front door— and when I was a little older, Alex grew brave, climbing through my bedroom window, dragging me out of bed himself. When I was sick with the flu, the three insisted on sitting with me (keeping a safe distance) and watching Disney movies with me all day.
They all got sick too, so eventually, the three crawled into bed with me.
With my Mom’s words still haunting the back of my mind, part of me expected them to blow me off one day.
In the summer before seventh grade, Ki invited me, along with the others, to his parent’s house in Thailand.
I think that is when it started to hit me.
The four of us getting stupidly drunk and lying on the beach, exchanging ghost stories that weren't remotely scary, sending us into fits of hysteria.
This wasn't whatever Mom talked about. I don't think Mom had friends.
This was best friends.
Entering teenagehood, we made that declaration, on my fifteenth birthday, drinking milkshakes at the diner and trying to hide our tipsy giggles from the booze Ki had taken from his father’s drinks cabinet. We went skinny dipping in the lake, and I had my first kiss.
I went to summer camp, returning to town three weeks later, not to my mother (who had forgotten I was coming home) but to my three idiot friends who made me promise I would never leave for camp ever again.
I wasn't planning on it. The other kids called me Wobbly Legs because I couldn't balance on the tree swing, and two campers were suspended for inappropriate behavior in the lake.
Mom and Dad treated the others like their own children, even giving them each a house key (so Alex didn't have to brave tumbling through my window).
He hit his head once, knocking the back of his skull on my new makeup table, and my Mother almost had a panic attack.
This didn't stop him, though.
I think my best friend had grown accustomed to slipping through my window at midnight, armed with a flashlight and my favorite candy bars.
I thought we were going to last forever, until we were old, reminiscing our childhoods under a late setting sun.
But that wasn't the real world.
Halfway through my senior year, I lost my parents to a seventeen year old drunk driver.
Jason Chatham, who already went to juvie for intentionally running over a cat, was the mayor’s son, so Jason got a reduced sentence and four weeks of community service. He gave me a bullshit ‘apology’ and was forced to beg for forgiveness, despite the fucker smirking through the whole court trial.
Jason was sent abroad to college, and my parents’ funeral wasn't even an open casket.
Apparently, there wasn't much left to bury. I couldn't even afford the fucking funeral, it was the town that paid.
I had no other relatives. There was just me, Mom, and Dad.
Alex, Lucy, and Ki stayed by my side the whole time, but I barely talked to them. I was numb, my body felt detached and wrong, like it didn't exist.
Time moved far too slowly. I was burying my parents, a shovel stuck in my clammy hands, and then it was pitch black, and I was sitting in a random alleyway, my head spinning, halfway through a bottle of whisky.
It tasted like poison, but it also stopped me thinking for a while.
Alex found me, still in his funeral attire. I wasn't sure why he had his tie wrapped around his head, though. He didn't hug me or tell me it was going to be okay.
Alex snatched the booze, took a long swig, and then threw it over his shoulder. I don't know why I found the sound of the bottle splintering on the ground so funny, but I burst into hysterical giggles that felt real and a relief. I didn't cry like I expected.
I stood up, throwing out my arms to keep my balance.
“You're a loser.” I told him, trying not to slur my words.
Alex nodded at my dress. Lit up in the glow of a nearby streetlight, I realized my best friend’s eyes were red from crying, his lip wobbling. The idiot was trying so fucking hard to pretend we were okay, and failing miserably.
His blondish brown curls were sticking up everywhere.
I could tell he had been running his hands through it.
Alex was far too empathetic, sucking up my emotions.
“And you're covered in barf.”
His voice was shaking, but Alex was still smiling.
He held his hand out for me to grab, and I hesitated, just like when I was a little kid. But I needed him. I knew that, even in my unstable mind full of black and white and a slowly spreading numbness threatening to swallow me whole. Mom and Dad were gone, and he was all I had.
The town would go back to their day-to-day lives, and I would break apart. I considered following them in a brief episode of psychosis. The only people who could pull my head from the fog were my friends. So, I grabbed Alex’s hand, clinging onto him for dear life like I was going to lose him too.
I expected the whole, I'm so sorry for your loss bullshit I had been suffocating in all day, but Alex talked about birds instead. I don't know why, and it's not like he was making any sense, trying to unsuccessfully name different kinds.
But it was enough.
Alex’s stupid rant about birds distracted me from drowning myself in poison.
He took me back to his place, ordered my favorite pizza, and pretended I didn't just lose my parents.
Ki and Lucy joined us, and at first it was awkward and I was still drunk, still demanding he give me back my whisky.
Then, though, the night devolved into our usual antics, and for the first time since my parent’s death, I was laughing.
That night ended however, and once the hysteria had died down and my hangover was gone, reality hit like a wave of ice water. The world bled into black and white, and not even pills could help, so shut myself away.
I finished my senior year with my diploma sitting in my mailbox with a letter from the school expressing how sorry they were for my loss. I tore it up, setting fire to the remnants. I was so fucking SICK of sorry. The word condolences didn't even sound real anymore.
Leaving town seemed like the best idea for a fresh start. The night before I left, I crept through Alex’s bedroom window.
I did tell him and the others I needed space, drunkenly shouting at them to leave me alone when they found me sleeping in our old childhood tree house. That night, I woke him up, wrapping my arms around him and thanking him for being my friend.
Alex was half asleep, mumbling at me to join him, and I did, keeping a tight hold of him all night.
It was supposed to be a goodbye. I wasn't planning on coming back to a town that had murdered my parents.
And protected their killer.
But it's hard to say a real goodbye.
When I left for college, Alex and the others promised they would text and call every day. Lucy expected daily updates, and Ki was obsessed with my roommate's secret hamster she was hiding under her bed.
We stayed in touch, initially.
I couldn't just let them go. I was planning on inviting them for drinks, and having one last memory.
I facetimed them during the campus tour, showing them my room and exploring the city.
I was waiting to declare some kind of friendship ending speech, but, I guess moving away was a natural killer.
I started ignoring calls, responding in one word answers to their texts.
Two months into college, I had new friends, new experiences, and I wasn't the girl who's parents died.
Alex proposed in a long paragraph text that they come visit and stay in my room, and I had to keep making excuses as to why it was a bad idea.
Listen, I was the bad friend.
I know that now. I don't blame them for being pissed, but ignoring me for five (5) years was taking it too far.
Presently, I had called Alex a grand total of 35 times.
He wasn't picking up the phone, and I was left to a robot voice telling me to leave a message, after Alex’s voice from five years ago called me a donut.
“Hey, you've reached Alex! Don't expect me to answer the phone. It's not 1993. Just text me!”
Which was ironic considering my texts weren't being delivered.
I had zero choice but to go down the boomer route.
Initially, I knew what I was going to say and how I was going to say it, but by the fifth attempt, my voice was shaking.
“Hey, me again.” I said through gritted teeth, kicking through leaves. “You probably didn't get my last, uh, thirty four calls, because you're busy, or…whatever…”
I trailed off, clenching my phone tighter.
“Anyway! How have you been? Uh, we’re both adults now, but I figured we should maybe, uhhh, talk… maybe?”
Alex was surely ignoring me.
Again, I didn't blame him. We were adults with our own lives. The problem was, I had zero idea what Alex had been doing the last five years because he was MIA. Alex’s social media hadn't been updated in years, and I was pretty sure he'd just made new ones.
The same went for Ki and Lucy.
His last text, (We need to talk) didn't even make sense without a follow up, and now I was back home in a town I didn't want to be in, stuck in a dead end job I hated, trying to pick up the splintered pieces.
I was aware of my colleague yelling my name, dropping my cigarette and stomping on the cinders. “I really need to talk to you,” I didn't realize I was crying until I was swiping at my eyes.
Sometimes, life doesn't always work out the way you planned it.
“I know it's been a while since you uh, stopped texting me or whatever…” I let out a choked cough. “Which is my fault, by the way,” my chest was aching,
“But I've actually come home!” I tried to laugh, but it was more of a sob. “Yeah, it turns out NY wasn't really my scene.”
That was a lie, though Alex was probably used to me lying.
Sometimes, life doesn't work out.
After graduating college, I was offered a job in New York, only for it all to fall through when depression hit. The world turned black and white, and I rotted in bed all day. I quit my part time job, packed up my stuff, and came home.
I had been staying in the motel on the edge of town for a while, planning to move back into my parents house.
But knowing my friends were still in town, and intentionally ignoring me, I was taking my time.
I wanted to hear his voice.
Five years was a long time.
“I'm staying at my parents' old house, so maybe come see me sometime?” I blurted out, studying the sky above me.
Cotton candy clouds we used to pretend to eat.
“You've still got the key my Mom gave you, right?”
It was unusually cold for April. I had to keep pulling my jacket around me.
“Alex, I really fucking miss you.” I whispered. I wanted to tell him that I needed him, just like when I was seventeen. That he was the only thing keeping me afloat. “I miss you, Ki, and Lucy, so call me, okay?” I paused. “I know you're mad, but we can talk it out, all right? Just text me, and I'll be there.”
“Eleanor.” My colleague was grumbling behind me, “Your break is over.”
I tapped my screen impatiently. “I’m coming,” I said, “Alex, I've got to go, all right? Call me when you get this.”
When the line went dead, I shoved my phone in my pocket and resumed selling coffee to dead eyed customers.
I recognised Mrs Morris, the lady who lived opposite Mom and Dad. She offered me a smile, but her eyes were so sad.
I could practically sense her knee-jerk reaction to say, I'm sorry for your loss.
I handed the woman her usual, a black coffee, trying to ignore the way she clasped her wrinkly hands around mine, squeezing for dear life.
Maybe her husband died….
“Have you seen Alex anywhere?” I asked, wiping down the counter.
The woman's expression crumpled. “I'm sorry, who, dear?”
“Alex.” I said, “Alex Locke? You used to give us candy when we were kids.”
Mes Morris inclined her head. There was something odd about her expression. “Oh, the Locke’s moved away a long time ago,” she hummed, “I haven't seen them in years, tweety pie.”
The nickname brought back memories. Mrs Morris used to call me Tweety Pie.
I nodded, pouring her a refill. “Is Alex still in town, though?”
“Hm?”
“Alex.” I said, growing slightly impatient, “Their son, Alex Locke?”
Her eyes darkened, suddenly hollow, like I was talking to a memory. She was looking straight through me like we were back at my parent’s funeral. Mrs Morris wore a rose in my Mom’s honor.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said softly, “It was… so terrible what happened,” her expression seemed to twitch, and a shiver creeped down my spine. “God rest their beautiful souls.”
I had grown accustomed to tuning out condolences.
“Yes, I miss them,” I said dismissively, leaning over the counter. “But have you seen Alex? What about Ki and Lucy? I've been in town for a while, but I can't get in touch with them.”
Instead of answering, the corners of her mouth curved into a small smile. “You look so much like your mother, Eleanor.”
“Thanks.” I gave up, forcing a smile.
“Eleanor.” her face crumpled, “Such a bright young girl.”
My stomach knotted. “No, Mrs Morris, you mean my Mom.”
She blinked, sipping her coffee. “Hm? Oh, yes, yes! My condolences!”
I got the same response from patrons I used to know.
Townspeople blatantly ignoring my question, throwing me a fucking pity party for a loss I hadn't exactly gotten over, but over time, the pain was getting easier to deal with.
Grief never leaves you, but time can force you to move forwards instead of dwelling on the past.
Halfway through my shift, my colleague plonked a basket of flowers on the counter, where I was trying and failing to perfect a foam heart for a teenage girl who was definitely judging my ‘art’ skills.
The basket of flowers was full of roses, my mother’s favorite.
Alex planted them in her yard when we were thirteen, surprising her for her birthday. There was a little card attached to the flowers, and I ripped it off, my heart beating out of my chest.
To my dismay, though, it wasn't Alex’s handwriting.
Unless Alex had taken up calligraphy in his five year absence.
Eleanor,
I'm so happy to see you again in town! I hope you like the flowers. I know they were your sweet late mother’s favorite. I have left a surprise for you inside your parents house. It's not a lot, of course, but I want you to know you are never alone, sweetheart. I will always be here.
Enjoy your surprise. You will never be alone again.
With so much love, and much needed hugs.
A friend.
“Who sent this?” I asked, re-reading the note. To my confusion, there was a box of headache pills. I hadn't suffered from headaches since I was a kid, but it was when I was sliding my fingers over the box, a dull thrum pounded across the back of my skull. I trashed the pills, dumping the basket in my work locker.
My colleague shrugged. “I dunno. Someone left it on one of the tables.”
“So, it wasn't a guy?” I said, gingerly rubbing my forehead.
He shrugged. “I don't know what they looked like, I didn't even see someone coming in.”
That night, following the note’s instructions, I returned home to an empty house, letters for repossession piled on the floor.
I broke down somewhere between walking into the kitchen and seeing five year old milk sitting on the counter, and exploring my childhood room, the marks I scratched into the wall to track my height progress. It was so cold.
So empty.
Without Mom and Dad, there was no light.
The house was just one dark, empty memory of what had been. Switching on the lights, I tried to make it at least a little homely. I ordered pizza and ate it staring at my phone, waiting for a text from Alex. When my phone did vibrate, I almost jumped out of my skin.
Just the Uber Eats guy requesting a tip, which I'm pretty sure wasn't allowed.
I was unpacking in my room when a voice came from downstairs.
“Ella! Holy shit, you didn't tell us you were coming home!”
Alex.
The crumpled pair of pants I had been folding slipped out of my hands.
I felt like I couldn't breathe, stumbling downstairs.
His voice sent pinpricks through me.
“Alex?”
The hallway was empty, a chill grazing my cheeks.
“Ella! I'm so glad you're home! Don't ever go away again!”
I froze.
“Where are you?” I managed to get out.
“We’re down here!”
The voice was coming from the basement.
It was when I was slowly making my way down the stairs, my phone vibrated with a text. I was reaching for it, when it vibrated again, and again, and again, buzzing in my pocket.
Pulling it out, I found myself staring at a multitude of text messages.
05/07/2019: We need to talk, Ella. Did you get my last text?
05/07/2019: I've been feeling weird lately. Like I did as a kid. I keep switching off, Ella. There's something wrong. I don't know what it is, but we need you here.
05/07/2019: Ella, please. The cops are brushing us off, but there's something going on. We need you here. NOW.
05/13/2019: Can you call your local sheriff department? Anyone?! STOP IGNORING MY CALLS!
05/16/2019: Ella, you're fucking killing me. Do you not care? Are you really going to abandon us?
05/16/2019: Ella, are you there? I'm really cold.
05/16/2019: It's dark.
05/16/2019: It's so dark, I can't see I don't understand what's happening Please can you come and help me? I'm so cold and it's dark and I can't can't I need you to take me home Ella please
06/05/2020: I like that you're so close to me. It's not cold when you're here.
06/05/2020: Sshshhh! She's coming! Act natural Sit up straight No, not like that Like this!
06/05/2020: wait where did you go? Ella where did you go Ella where did you go Ella where did you go Ella
For a moment, I was hypnotised by the texts, my hands trembling.
Alex did send follow up messages.
But I never got them.
“Ella, we’re wait... ING. Come on, we’ve missed you so much!”
Alex’s voice should have made me happy.
But I recognised it, phantom bugs creeping down the exposed flesh of my arms and filling my mouth.
Prom night, junior year.
He was standing at the bottom of my stairs wearing a suit and tie. Ella, we’re waiting!” was from that night.
When my phone flashed again, I ignored it, forcing my legs to move down the stairs.
My basement was exactly how I left it, a mess of boxes and my old bike.
Except, sitting in the corner were three figures drowned in shadow. There was a light, something illuminating the dim.
But I was already stumbling over to my friends, who looked exactly the way I left them, frozen at eighteen years old.
Their skin was pale, papery thin and wrong.
“There… you… are!”
Alex lifted his head, half lidded eyes finding mine. “Aren't… you… happy to see… us?”
His lips were barely moving. I glimpsed the start of decomposition melting into his face, eating away at his flesh, tiny holes where maggots had burrowed inside him. His hair was matted with old blood, where someone had tried and failed, and then tried again to violently force a device inside his head, long orange wires sticking from his spine.
I could see where he'd struggled, rusted handcuffs still coiled around his wrists, an unnatural light illuminating his iris.
Something warm crept up my throat.
The glow illuminating the room was emanating from his eyes. I could see straight through him, his body more of a science experiment where his skull had been forced open, an electronic device woven inside the dead flesh of his brain.
Whoever did this to him saw Alex as nothing more than arts and crafts, flesh and bone to cruelly mould.
I was too numb to scream, my body stiff.
He lifted his head, blinking at me, like he was still alive.
“Fi…nally,” he choked through a mouthful of oozing black, “You're…home.”
I knew his voice that had been cruelly stitched and knitted together.
He greeted me when I came back from summer camp with the exact words.
“Finally!” Alex had cried, wrapping his arms around me. “You're hOme!”
I could hear where his words had been cut and sliced, glued to each other to sound like a coherent fucking sentence.
“I've… been… wAiting for… you.”
The boy’s lips stretched into a grin. “For… you… tO see yoUR… big… sur…prise!”
Every word had been handpicked directly from his memories.
I took slow steps back, tripping over something on the ground.
A Macbook.
There was a sticky note attached.
Here's another surprise! There's a USB wire on the floor somewhere, sweetie! I forgot to update them, so feel free! I hope you enjoy your surprise as much as I enjoyed making them!
Feeling sick to my stomach, I switched the laptop on.
The USB was across the room. I could see the end stained vivid scarlet.
There were three folders.
2019.
2020.
2021.
There was another separate folder.
2007.
I clicked into it, a list of names coming up.
I was loading into Alex’s name, when Lucy spoke.
“What… are… you… waiting… for?”
Her giggle was half human, and half not, a crackle of laughter and static.
I knew her voice, and it fucking hurt.
My 12th birthday, Lucy stood at the table in front of a giant chocolate cake. “What are you waiting for?” she teased. “Blow out your candles!”
When she did lift her head, my best friend’s face was bruised and battered.
Ki’s grinning lips were skeletal, his head split in two, held together with duct tape. The way he was slumped, swaying back and forth, his head of thick curls glued to his head, made me sick to my stomach.
“UPDATE…us.”
Ki’s words had been ripped straight from years ago, when he yelled at me for annoying him to play Minecraft.
My computer is UPDATING! Jeez, be patient!”
Whoever did this to them made my friends suffer.
I cupped Alex’s cheeks, and his skin was ice-cold.
“Who did this to you?”
He responded with a smile.
“Not…telling...y–”
”I'm not telling you!” I remembered his tone from back in school. I begged him for answers to the chemistry test.
It was like talking to not just a corpse, but the corpse of a memory too.
I pulled out my phone to call the cops, when my phone flashed again.
Unknown number
Update them! I can assure you, if you don't, I will happily add you to my collection, Eleanor. This time I won't let you go. Check the second folder.
They were watching me.
I glimpsed a single red light blinking on the ceiling.
Taking the laptop, I left my friends, and called the cops.
“No, that's not how this is going to go.”
The voice was sugary sweet through my phone, intercepting the call.
I recognised her.
Nurse Golding, from Kindergarten.
“Update your friends,” she told me in a shrill laugh, “I made them very specially for you, Eleanor. I worked tirelessly, every day and night to make sure you came back to your friends.”
She paused.
“You're not lonely anymore, are you? Of course, if you don't want to be grateful, I can always revert you back–”
I ended the call, throwing up everywhere.
Somehow, I found myself back in the basement, my breaths heavy.
I planned to destroy the laptop, and set fire to the house, when something caught my eye.
I didn't notice until I was fully looking at my friends.
There were three of them, and four chairs against the wall.
Four rusted handcuffs.
I think I've been here before, but how? When?
How can I not remember it?
I keep thinking back to my childhood. Alex was losing time.
Is that what happened to me?
Edit: since writing the above, six townspeople have told me to update my friends. All of them are the older residents in the diner. I keep coming down here, but I can't fucking do it.
I can't do this.
The USB goes directly inside their heads. How does this thing even work?!
Please help me. Can this be reversed? What did Alex’s texts mean?
I don't know what to do!

Looking for feedback from teachers and parents. Should kids be writing before kindergarten? Should they already be doing proper pencil placement? My son has no interest in writing. He will scribble color. He has been in OT for 6 months. He is also in Pre-K. He is above average in everything else.

My 8yo son has not been diagnosed as gifted but I thought I would ask here anyway because many of you have probably developed strategies to help deal with this issue.
Three examples, all similar. First. Chess he picked up in kindergarten and was obsessed with it - at first. Once he started getting good enough to beat us, we enrolled him in a community education class for grades k-2. He was only 5, afraid of going to class because he didn’t know anybody, and so we didn’t continue after the 8 week period was up. That was fine. Anyway, he wanted to do chess lessons again this year as a 2nd grader (thanks to a book character, Big Nate). He and his younger brother go. His little brother is able to focus and learn, but my 8yo has trouble focusing and is just so overactive, provoking his opponents, stimming (rocks his head back and forth), and just had a hard time sitting still. The teacher always says “He is good but has to work on his focus.”
Second example. Coding class. Once a week. He picked this one too, since his friend was in it. It is a 2 hour class and yesterday the teacher mentioned that he picks it up so fast and finishes the assignment first, gets it approved, and then spends one hour playing games. Oh, and that while he was finishing the assignment, he was “double tasking” and playing games in another window. He is not able to focus on work purely, he always has to be doing “something else.”
The third example was with singing. It was a few years ago, but when he was 6, we were in Carnatic (Indian classical music) lessons, and my son was the only one to have perfect pitch but he hated focusing; sitting and repeating the scales, always provoked the teacher, was so rude, and so we pulled him out. Our friends are still enrolled and the teacher still talks about him, how it was a shame someone with his voice quit.
The same thing at school with his teachers — when he sits and focuses, he does great. He works well and has beautiful handwriting. When he doesn’t focus, he makes so many careless mistakes. His writing turns to rapid scratching. Most of his school mistakes are seemingly just from lack of focus.
In sum, he seems to be a seeker of pleasure and stimulation; gets bored easily; can’t sit still; at the same time, gets easily overstimulated (his behavior is poorest and most impulsive when the environment is loud or distracting). He is so bright and so quick but his nervous system just seems like it’s not synchronized to his abilities. Don’t even ask about sports, he does not excel there - it’s still hard for him to catch a ball, he almost seems handicapped sometimes. I should mention physiologically that he is extraordinarily tall and lanky for his age (my great grandpa was 6’4”) and that maybe his rapid body growth is why he is not yet as coordinated as his peers.
We don’t do screentime during the week, only on weekends, and we try to get a lot of outdoor play time too, to help him stay healthy.
He seems to need something but I am not sure what. Strategies? Medication? Time to be a kid?
Any insights or tips on how to help him focus (as his teachers suggest)?

 So about 4 years ago I started reading psychology books almost daily for about an hour to try to figure myself out. I am definitely in a much better place than I was when I was younger. I've learned a lot about psychology in general, but also felt like I was going in circles. 

About two months ago a newer girl at work made a comment to me. Basically along the lines of "they aren't negative things, but I noticed some autistic traits in you that I also have." I didn't really think too much of it in the moment, or ask what she meant, but I thought about it later. I did a quick google search of autistic traits and recognized some.
I know someone whose children are autistic. I brought it up to her as she is well versed in the literature relating to autism. She asked if I wanted her opinion, and I told her I did. She said she suspected "autism spectrum disorder level 1" or 'high functioning'
I've heard of the term 'the spectrum' before, but wasn't familiar with what it really meant. My concept of autism was more so severe cases with people who are non-verbal with constant freakouts. . In the past 2 months I've read about 5 books on the subject, watched hours of youtube videos and have done a handful of reputable online tests. I'm about as sure as I can be that it is the case without getting an official stamp of approval from a doctor.
There's a lot of traits and behaviours I have that I didn't know were related to autism. big and small. Ones that are still there, stuff that was more so an issue when I was younger.
A big one for me is sound sensitivity. Particularly if I am in our break room with a decent amount of people in there and there are multiple conversations going on at once. It instantly causes chaos in my brain and makes me very irritable. . I feel like I can't filter it properly and it is one jumbled mess if there isn't cohesion or a flow in sounds I hear. It's hard for me to block out sounds and I feel like I pick up distant sounds more than I should.
I read about repetitive behaviours. I literally eat the same set of meals every day. Eventually (like 6 months+) there will be slight alterations like a ground beef tortilla to a hamburger, or sweet potato fries to regular fries.
Also, I'll have a song I really like and listen to it on repeat extensively. Close to a whole gym session, walking around work between calls all day listening to the same song. . Maybe a few weeks to a month or so I'll find a new song I like. I may throw in a random song here or there, but it will be back to the particular song I like at that period of time
I've recognized my need for structure and routine in my life and if I don't have it I kind of float by. If my routine is compromised I get worked up. . I must've told a co-worker I wake up early. She told me she told another porter I'd probably change 3 of my 11-7 shifts for her 8-4 and I got angry and said "thanks for putting words in my mouth" because of the panic of my routine being altered. I felt bad and apologized. . Also, very restrictive and limited activities. Every day is pretty much the same for me, but I've been trying to do a bit more with friends. I also find I am very rigid at times with my thinking. All or nothing/black and white.
I read change/transitions can be difficult. I'm pretty sure I tried to fail grade 8 to avoid going to high school. There was a meeting with the principal where I was told I'd be pushed to grade 9 and if I failed I would have a grade 7 education. I didn't go to college until 26, or move out until late 30's
If I'm standing in one spot I will sometimes sway from left to right. When I am at my place I often pace from my bedroom to the kitchen and think while listening to music, easily for 30+minutes. I've read these are called stimming
I learned about the concept of executive functioning. I know I'm not lazy or dumb but I struggle planning, making goals, basic life things that should come naturally.
I leaned about the concept of emotional regulation and recognize I struggle with this as well. I also am now able to put a name to two other things I experience. Autistic meltdown and autistic shutdown. . Sometimes I get so worked up in feels like my mind is in a blender I can hardly see straight and I feel like I turn from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde. I got sarcastic, stubborn, like an asshole and I end up very disappointed in myself. Afterwards it feels like my brain is a sponge that was rung out and I have brain fog. Then a shutdown where I get very quiet and withdrawal into myself.
I struggle to participate in a group conversation. I don't recognize when it is my turn to speak. I find myself interrupting, sometimes with something completely unrelated.
When I was younger I spoke monotone. I couldn't make any eye contact, just looked at people's shoes. Something I read is a higher risk with kids with autism and I completely forgot I experienced it in elementary school is alopecia. Basically bald patches in my hair. I remembered having to go to the doctor and get a steroidal cream. I also had to go to a speech therapist in elementary school
I checked out some of my old report cards, to see if there was anything that jumped out and definitely see some signs, but the concept of the spectrum wasn't understood at the time. I'l show you some excerpts from kindergarten to grade 3. There were other notable comments, but the handwriting was less legible.

I had no idea I was talking to a dead body.
Jasper Carrington was the type of guy I thought I’d never meet. His grin was sweet and a little crooked, a mop of brown curls he kept playing with, and eyes I swore were filled with fireflies.
Dressed in a long trench coat, his style was endearing, a short sleeved shirt and skinny jeans. I wondered if this guy was trying to cosplay Sherlock Holmes.
I was trying to drown my thoughts of bad test scores and a barista job I hated, when he popped out of nowhere, plonking down a fresh drink in front of me. I did see him a little before when I was heading to the bathroom. Pushing through the crowd, I was scanning for the ladies, when I saw him. He was sitting with two others, their heads pressed together in deep conversation.
His companions looked like they were close to him. The girl was a willowy brunette hiding under a straw hat, while the guy reminded me of a grown up Percy Jackson, a scowling freckly blonde who kept snapping at him to pay attention.
I caught his wandering gaze, mid eye roll, and the crowd around me seemed to disappear, the 80’s ballad I had been swaying to dulling to a low murmur.
Maybe I had been drugged, I thought, dizzily.
The world wasn't supposed to stop, reality coming to a halt. It was like being plunged underwater. For a moment, there was just me and the boy with fireflies in his eyes. I thought I was seeing things, caught in a dizzying lull of post-reality.
I was transfixed, my body still swaying back and forth.
I was seeing things, surely.
Nope.
This guy had fireflies dancing in his pupils, tiny balls of yellow light, almost like fairy dust.
I tried to look away. I mean, I did, and the world resumed around me.
The song had changed, a loud thrum of drum and bass rattling my ears.
I risked another look, and this time Firefly was staring at me, his lips pricking into a smile. The sandy blonde noticed, grumbling something, and he twisted back around, downing his drink so fast the girl hit him playfully.
I watched the three of them, intrigued by their dynamic.
They acted like siblings, shoving each other and arguing over who was getting the next drinks. But they seemed close. Closer than friends.
When Firefly leaned his head into the sandy blonde guy, comfortably burying his face in his friend’s shoulder, I half wondered if they were something more.
I lost interest when my mind started getting a little foggy.
Fast forward an hour, and he was slumping into the seat opposite me, sliding over a fresh drink. I twisted around to see his friend's reaction, but they seemed to be having a drinking competition. From the look of it, the girl was winning. Firefly didn't even introduce himself, instead leaning forward, a playful quirk in his brow.
“Did you know I used to solve mysteries?”
His words immediately intrigued me, pulling me from suffocating brain fog.
I found myself transfixed by the lights in his eyes, tiny golden fireflies dancing around his iris. Maybe they were contacts, I thought. He definitely seemed like the type of guy who wanted attention. I wouldn't put it past this Sherlock wannabe to be wearing funky contacts that automatically caught eyes.
Still though, his odd way of sliding into my life was endearing.
I took the drink, coasting the glass across the table with my index.
“Oh, yeah?” In the corner of my eye, Firefly’s friends were definitely watching us– or watching him. “What kind of mysteries?”
He opened his mouth, before I cut him off.
“You have glowing dots in your eyes.” I said. “Is that like… a condition?”
“Jaz.” his smile widened, and I found myself liking it.
“Huh?”
“My name.” He offered his hand. “Jasper Carrington. Also Jaz.”
Instead of shaking his hand, I gave him an awkward high five.
“Freddie.” I said. “You didn't answer my question. What kind of mysteries?”
Jaz shrugged, his chin coming to lazily rest on his fist. “I dunno. I've been solving mysteries since I was a little kid.” he offered me a shoulder shake.
“All kinds, I guess. We actually saved our town when we were fifth graders.”
Nodding along, I took another drink, wincing at the burn at the back of my throat. I wasn't expecting vodka.
Leaning forward, I sucked my teeth. “Soo, you were like a wannabe Nancy Drew?”
Jaz scoffed. “More like Scooby Doo.”
I twisted behind me, eyeing his friends.
Sandy Hair was trying to get up to stretch, and the girl was snoozing in his lap. The two were bickering, the girl mumbling something about her body getting tired, and him calling her a lightweight.
When he hovered his drink over her head, she squeaked, rolling off of his knees. “I'm up!” she shrieked behind me, her voice caught in a giggle. “Why do you have to resort to violence?”
His laugh was light. I caught the tinge of a British accent. “Mate, you were the one who fell asleep in my lap.” he downed the rest of his drink, almost dropping it when she shoved him. Hard.
“That's not an excuse to pour a drink on me!”
“Okay, yeah. But did I actually pour a drink on you?”
“That doesn't matter! You were going to.”
“Exactly.” The guy said. “I rest my case.”
Jaz groaned when the girl shoved Sandy Hair (again) hard enough to knock him off his chair.
“You're insufferable.” the Brit grumbled, stumbling to his feet.
The girl laughed, offering him a hand. “And you're not?!”
Turning away from their back and forth, I couldn't resist a smile. Jaz looked done with both of them, hiding behind his own drink like they were embarrassing him. “I’m guessing those two are your mystery solving pals?”
“Peter and Sunny?” He pulled a face. “More like my Shaggy and Scooby.”
He made me laugh again. “And… your Daphne?”
His expression crumpled. There were rare moments when the real him started to bleed through. I noticed his fingers tightening around his drink, eyes suddenly distant, like he was searching for their missing member. “I don't know,” he said, “I can't really find her.”
“Find her?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. She left us a long time ago. We haven't seen her since.”
It was getting harder to take this guy seriously. “And you guys caught bad guys?”
Jaz’s expression brightened. “Eh. Sort of, I guess?” he winked. “We started solving mysteries as kids. Small things, like… finding lost cats and missing vegetables. It was fun! We took down our druggie janitor, and even found a baby.”
He leaned back, “Then we grew up, and the world got darker, less of a playground. When we started high school, it became evident we had pissed off a lot of people. Our kindergarten janitor tried to kill us after we put him in jail when we were six, and Peter and Eve were almost butchered in his basement."
He scrunched up his nose.
"We were thirteen, already solving murders and finding kidnapped kids. It started to hit us that the town we wanted to protect was trying to kill us.”
Once again, the music and the chatter around me dulled to a low murmur, lights blurring together. It was just me and him.
Jaz slid his glass up and down the table, his mind clearly elsewhere.
“We were just kids. We thought we were doing good, you know? Helping catch bad guys. We had our own little gang. The four of us thought we were untouchable, that nobody could hurt us because we were young.” He caught my eye, his expression darkening.
It was only for a second, and I was still a little drunk, but I could have sworn his eyes were hollow, and I was staring directly into oblivion itself. Jaz sighed, tracing the rim of his glass with his index. His laugh was cold, like splintered ice.
“You’d be surprised how many townspeople would murder a group of kids to hide their corruption.”
I nodded, fully embroiled in his story. “Wait, so did the psychos in this town try to kill you?”
Jaz’s gaze wandered again. “Well, when we were kids, no. No matter how close we were to unravelling their corruption, they couldn't just kill a group of kids.” he tipped his head back, blowing a raspberry, “So, being a kid kind of protected us. I think the worst thing that happened to me as a child was being held hostage by a crazy old woman.”
I sputtered out a laugh. “You're not serious.”
His expression told me otherwise, scarlet cheeks and eyes that refused to meet mine. “Let me explain,” he said, quickly, motioning for me to stop choking. “So, we were eight years old investigating a case of missing carrots, and I decided to sneak into her house–”
I cut him off. “Did you just say missing carrots?”
Jaz wasn't laughing. “It's not funny.” He folded his arms, almost mimicking his little self, scrunching up his nose. “This old woman was a psycho. She meant business. I was dragged into her house and threatened with a World War Two grenade. I was just a kid, so I happily ate the cookies she offered me, but she was definitely a psychopath.”
I was in awe, trying to hold in my giggles. “Over carrots?!”
He nodded solemnly. “Award winning carrots.”
I don't think he realized how unintentionally hilarious he was being.
Jaz downed half of his drink. “But, like I said, nobody in our town was going to touch us when we were little kids. We could technically do what we wanted, and we did. The worst that could happen was being grounded.” he studied his glass, swirling the dregs around.
“When we grew up, it was a different story.” the guy leaned back with a sigh. “By the fifth grade, we were dipping our toes in crazier shit.”
“Like?” I prompted.
He avoided my gaze. “Uh, well, we were kidnapped a few times.”
“A few?” I teased him, and he rolled his eyes.
“Several times.” he coughed, awkwardly, running his hands through his hair.
“Several hundred times.” Peter corrected behind us, shooting me a grin.
“You're kidding.” I said.
Jaz pouted. “I actually learned the art of speaking through a gag.”
I was suddenly giddy, high on the idea of him as a little teen detective. “That's adorable!”
Jaz inched away from me like I was going to tug at his cheeks. “They captured me a lot,” he grumbled. “Sure, they liked terrorising us as a four, but I was always the damsel in distress who was dragged to secondary locations.”
Jaz caught my eye, scrunching his nose. “I know you want to laugh, but I was almost killed, like, multiple times.”
He was right, I was already choking on my drink.
“Those bastards really liked stringing me up in the sawmill,” he shooed away my hands when I teasingly grabbed him. “It's not funny! I'd get snatched by some freak on my way to school, and then I'd wake up hanging upside down.”
I couldn't help it. “Did all the blood go to your head?”
He stuck out his tongue, mimicking his younger self. “Maybe.”
This time, I laughed out loud, surprised by my own giggles.
Jaz curled his lip. “I’m struggling to find what you find so funny, Freddie. I was hanging upside down for hours.”
He raised his voice. “Thanks to someone!”
Peter twisted around, shooting him the finger. “We did come eventually!”
“Yeah, like five hours later!” Jaz shot back. He tutted. “Honestly. They're the worst. I would be ten seconds from being gutted, and those guys were sharing milkshakes in the coffee shop.”
“Ouch,” I said, trying to sound serious. “Any other mysteries you solved?”
He scoffed, his lips pricking into a smirk. “Oh, I'm sorry, is my childhood trauma not horrifying enough for you?”
I gave a shoulder shrug. “It's PG13 Stephen King at best.”
Jaz raised a brow. “I mean, it was,” he said, “Until our cases went from identifying vegetables, to identifying bodies.” His sudden change in tone snapped something inside my mind.
I was keenly aware of my drink creeping its way back up my throat in a sour paste.
“In the space of a year, townspeople were going missing, being brutally murdered, and our sheriff was an incompetent buffoon.” his eyes turned dark, “The first case that sent us to therapy was the case of bodies being found positioned like they were flying.”
The faraway look in his eyes sobered me up.
Fuck.
So, this guy wasn't kidding about his weird childhood.
I straightened up. “Flying?”
Jaz nodded. “Yeah. We called them angels.” he shook his head with a sigh, raking his fingers down his face.
“We were only thirteen! Like, dude, we were still in middle school. You can imagine what that does to a thirteen year old. There were three bodies, and all of them were little kids. We didn't know what we were doing, because this was adult crime now. We weren't investigating petty crimes anymore. I already knew we were out of our depth, that we were going to get ourselves killed.” Jaz’s eyes rolled over to his friend's, the two of them talking quietly.
“So, did you quit?” I asked.
“Quit?” he spluttered. “When a whole town expected us to save them from bad people?”
“That's a lot of weight on a kid.”
He laughed bitterly. “You think?”
“So, what you're saying is you were stubborn.” I said.
“Very.” Jaz winked, “Nah, we were scared, duh. But we thought that's what the town wanted. For us to save them.”
He sighed.
“We became… targets, I guess? The bad guys we caught when we were children wanted our heads on silver platters, and the corrupt townspeople we managed to expose, like our greedy money laundering sheriff for example, wanted to seal our mouths for good.”
Something ice cold prickled down my spine.
I could tell this wasn't Jaz’s story anymore. This had really happened, and from the vacant look in his eyes, it hurt him to recall it. I thought he was a stranger with an imagination. I thought he was cosplaying as an eccentric detective. Instead, this boy was trauma dumping. I felt bad for laughing earlier.
“You had a fucked up town, Jaz Carrington.” I said, stealing some of his drink.
“And a fucked up dad,” he muttered. “My stepdad was the Mayor, the king of corruption and master manipulator. Dad was the one pulling strings from the start. He drove my Mom to hang herself and then had the audacity to demand I call him my father. He controlled everything. So, it's not like I could run away.” Jaz’s smile was sickly.
“After I exposed him at our winter festival with the others, he locked me in my room for almost a week.” his gaze flicked behind me.
“Luckily, Peter came to my rescue, and I started sleeping in the back of his Dad’s van. It wasn't ideal,” he murmured, “It was freezing cold at night and sometimes the door would blow open. I had one blanket, and I couldn't warm myself up no matter how hard I tried. But hey, it was better than being stuck at home.”
I wasn't sure what to say. Part of me wanted to hug him.
“That's child abuse.” I whispered. “You were fifteen.”
“Mm.” he mumbled into his glass. “Not in our town.”
I tightened my fingers around my own drink. “And what town was this?”
Jaz didn't look at me, glaring down his glass. “I dunno. It was just a…town.”
“Uh-huh,” I nodded, “You don't even know the name of the place you grew up in?”
The boy rolled his eyes. “Does the phrase childhood trauma mean nothing to you?”
“Your dad was a monster, dude,” I said, leaning across the table.
He burped. “Indeed.”
“But…”
He made a pfft noise. “There's always a but.”
Ignoring him, I prodded the table. “You can't just forget the name of your town.”
“Chesterville.” he said, his frown deepening. “Wait, no, it was Middleview.”
“Those are two different towns.”
He shrugged. “Well, I remember two different names.”
Jaz prodded the table, tracing the grains. I found myself lost in the way he lost himself, his thoughts wandering, reliving his early teenage years. “Anyway, my dad sucked, sure. But that wasn't even our most fucked up case. By the time we were sixteen, our town was actively trying to kill us. We saved a little girl, only to find out her kidnapper was the son of our middle school janitor.” he sighed.
“It's almost like, the moment we stopped being kids, the floodgates opened and strangers were trying to murder us. Peter was drugged and thrown in the back of an Uber. He only got away because he managed to call me before he passed out. Sunny and Eve were almost butchered, and I narrowly missed getting my brains carved out.”
“How….?” I didn't even get to finish.
“Wood chipper.” Jaz’s mouth curled. “Did I mention we had a cannibalistic cult after us too?”
“You…didn't.”
I needed another drink.
I was starting to feel kind of nauseous.
“Yeah…” the boy groaned, tipping his head back. “So, this cult believed that we were the ones who fucked up the town by trying to save it, so they were convinced if they purify the four of us, then the town would be saved.”
He quoted the air, rolling his eyes. “Saved.”
I swallowed. “And by… purify...?“
“They had separate rituals planned for us,” Jaz said, his voice breaking a little.
“Eve and Sunny were supposed to be gutted, their entrails fed to the earth, like a sacrifice or a gift,” his gaze fell on the table, “Peter was planned to be fed through a wood chipper, and me?”
He slid over his empty glass.
“Guess.”
I caught it with my index. I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
“Uh… tied to a tree and stoned.”
“Worse.” Jaz’s grin was starting to unnerve me.
“They wanted me as a King.”
I must have looked horrified, because he made it worse.
“Well, they wanted my dead body as a King.” he leaned his chin on his fist.
“Apparently, they believed keeping my body intact was for the good of the town. Which is a whole other level of messed up.” he laughed. “We were just kids trying to fight corruption and this gang of eleven year olds were planning our final destination style deaths.”
I almost spat out my drink. “The cannibal cult was eleven years old?!”
He pulled a face. “Well, that's what we concluded. Peter found blood on a spoon when we broke into their tree house, so yeah. Definitely cannibals.”
I saluted him with my drink, too baffled to speak.
Jaz played with his glass, “Our worst case was probably the string murders. People were being found dead in piles of thread, like puppets cut from strings.” His eyes darkened, and I could see something inside, what he was trying to hide. “That was our last mystery, and we didn't even solve it.”
Jaz’s eyes flicked to his friends. He almost looked lost, tracing the rim of his glass. “It's not like we could continue.” he paused, his eyes flickering. “Our most valuable member left us. We were just kind of… stuck.”
He tapped the table in a slow beat.
“Stuck.” Jaz mumbled, staring straight through me. I’m not sure how to describe how truly helpless he looked, like he was still stuck, trapped with his abusive father. “With no… way out.”
Tap, tap, tap went his fingers on the table.
He slowly inclined his head, his eyes lost in oblivion. “I can't remember where she went,” Jaz whispered, “She was there, and then she was… gone.”
I reached for his hand, but he tugged away. “The other member?”
Jaz didn't respond, and it was like I was talking to a memory.
“I try to reach her, but she's too far away,” Jaz whispered, his voice breaking. “She… left us.” I noticed his hands clenched into fists. I had no idea how much this lost member meant to him. Maybe this person protected him from his father. “She left us alone, and it was so…” his head twitched suddenly, lips curling into a scowl.
“So fucking…dark.”
His eyes were lost, hollow caverns I couldn't find.
“So… cold.”
“Jaz.” I reached across the table, entangling my fingers with his.
Your town tried to kill you multiple times,” I said, gently nudging him. “They didn't deserve to be saved.”
His gaze snapped to me, suddenly, frightened.
“What did I say the name of my town was again?”
“Chesterville.”
His eyes saw right through me, lost, swimming in nothing.
“Right,” he breathed. “Chesterville.”
His fingers continued, tap, tap, tapping.
“What did I say my… name was?”
His eyes were suddenly wide, almost childlike.
The kid was frowning at me like I was a stranger.
“Jaz Carrington.” I spoke softly, resisting the urge to squeeze his hand.
The boy nodded, blinking slowly.
“Yeah. That's my… that's my name.”
“Are you okay?” I whispered, “Whatever happened back then wasn't your fault, Jaz. You were just a kid.”
Jaz snapped out of it, blinking rapidly, and I caught them again, the golden blur of fireflies swimming in his pupils.
The corners of his mouth twitched, like reality had hit him. He wasn't stuck anymore, he was in the present, moving forward. It was almost like he'd woken up from a long dream, his gaze lazily drinking me in, as if for the first time.
“Yeah,” his tone was surprisingly cold. “My town sucked.”
Leaning back, I held my breath. “Please tell me you got away from that place.”
He raised a brow. “I'm sitting here, aren't I?”
I wasn't sure all of him was.
With the night winding down, I took the opportunity to make a swift getaway.
His life was interesting, sure, but this boy needed a licensed therapist.
I served coffee for a living, and I was failing my classes.
Not exactly the best person to go to.
“It was nice meeting you, Jaz,” I said, my voice shaking. I moved to get up, only for him to pull me back down.
“Wait, you're leaving?”
“It's late. I should get home.”
His lips curved into a smirk. “Okay, but before you go…” He leaned forward, his breath surprisingly cold, tickling my ear. “Do you want to see my party trick?”
“Sure.” I said dryly, shoving him away.
He stood up, spreading his arms out like fucking Peter Pan.
“Watch!”
I don't know what I expected. This guy seemed pretty unhinged, but it's not like it was his fault. He was an adult man dwelling on some seriously messed up childhood trauma. I figured his party trick was a card game, or a stray pigeon flying out of his coat. When the warm glow of fireflies, that light I had somehow gotten used to, fizzled out suddenly, his eyes rolling to the back of his head, I realized he wasn't screwing around.
Jaz’s body flopped down, his head hitting the table with a thunk.
Like a puppet cut from its strings.
A hysterical screech started to build in my throat.
When I tried to pull his head up, I glimpsed pooling black stemming across the table, leaking from his nose.
Blood.
Blood, that was thick and congealing, a thick black paste oozing from every orifice.
By the time I was screaming, so was everybody else.
Panicking, I looked for Jaz’s friends, but they were gone.
The emergency services were called, and I stayed with his body, trying to ignore how wrong it felt in my hands.
His fingers felt rubbery, like his skin had been dead for days– not minutes.
A grey looking paramedic told me Jaz had died two days earlier from a suspected brain haemorrhage, and his name was not Jasper Carrington, or even Jaz. He was called Kai Bellows.
Which was impossible.
I felt numb.
Standing outside my car, my keys clenched in my hands, I was trembling.
When warm hands landed on my shoulder, I found myself face to face with a younger college guy with reddish brown hair, a letterman jacket hanging off his shoulder. I opened my mouth to cry out for help, before the kid broke out into a grin, rivulets of red pooling from his mouth. His grin didn't match the boy. This kid wasn't used to smiling, the skin of his face stretching, like he was made of plastic.
I lost my breath, my gaze finding tiny specks of golden light ignited around his iris.
Fireflies.
“What do ya think?” The boy’s voice was deeper. “Fucking cool, right?”
It took me a moment to realize the tiny specks of light inside his eyes was Jaz.
And the college boy was nothing more than his flesh puppet.
Every fibre of my being was telling me to run, and yet I was frozen.
Hypnotised by the fireflies.
Footsteps sounded, and I glimpsed his friends standing several feet away.
Sunny’s head was comfortably sandwiched in Peter’s shoulder.
Instead of responding to Jaz, I nodded to them.
“Are they like you?”
Jaz’s smile dimmed. “You’d be surprised how many townspeople would happily murder a group of kids.”
I dazedly watched my breath hit the air in clouds of white.
“They did kill you.”
He shrugged. “That's what we’re guessing.”
“Guessing?!”
“Yeah.” Jaz prodded his temple, “Like I said, we kinda have fucked memories.”
I watched Sunny wrap her arms around Peter, nuzzling her face in his neck.
“And… what exactly are you?” I risked a step closer to him, prodding his eye.
“A wanderer,” he said, “We’re just trying to find out what happened to us.”
I let my fingertips tiptoe across his cheek.
He was so cold, buzzing with electricity.
“But he is dead,” I said, stepping back. “The body you're inhabiting.”
Jaz chuckled, prodding me in the cheek.
“Jeez. You're making me sound like a body snatcher. I'm just a floater, dude.”
When I didn't respond, he sighed, tipping his head back, firefly eyes finding the sky.
“When we find out what happened to us, we'll leave.” His gaze tracked a star. “You know, find peace, or whatever.”
The first night I met Jaz, I saw him as nothing more than a lost soul.
Jaz was a Drifter, a being who failed to pass on with the ability to jump through others. He followed me home that night, and I woke to him making breakfast in my kitchen. Sunny was snoozing on my bedroom floor like a cat, and Peter was flipping through news channels trying to find evidence of their murders. The problem was, neither of them knew the exact name of the town.
Jaz didn't know who he was or why he was. All he knew was that he and his friends were murdered.
The three of them attached themselves to me.
Like parasites, but they didn't take over my body.
Instead, they kind of became housemates.
I didn't agree with their proposal at first, until Jaz suggested they take up chores while I was in class. In exchange for my hospitality and resources in helping them find their killers, the three of them cleaned up my mess of an apartment.
And they did a damn good job.
Sunny baked cupcakes and was obsessed with Netflix, while the boys set up their own mini detective office in my lounge, covering my walls with notes, scribbles depicting what they remembered. I would get home late, immediately tripping over whatever ‘evidence’ they managed to find.
The facts were:
1). Their fourth member was NOT dead.
2). They were murdered after they graduated high school.
3). Their murderer was definitely someone in town who they knew.
4). The three’s memories had been tinkered with. (example: Jaz’s inability to remember the name of the town, as well as confusion when they died. Sunny was insistent they were fifteen, while the boys were sure they were eighteen, after graduating high school).
Peter was sure the town was Middleview.
Jaz and Sunny were insistent on Chesterville.
It was almost as if they were remembering (or misremembering) two separate lives.
As days and weeks grew into months, I found myself getting closer to these wandering souls. They became less of a burden and more like genuine friends.
Peter stayed up most nights, glaring at the murder board.
I offered him coffee, and he accepted with a grateful nod. His eyes were a lot more prominent in the dark, brighter than the others. When he got bored with their mini investigation, he opened up about his own life. Peter was the fourth member of their detective gang, an ex private school kid, joining them in the fourth grade.
“I kind of forced myself into their group,” Peter admitted with a laugh.
I was intrigued. “Forced?”
“Yeah,” he sipped his coffee, resting his feet on the coffee table, “I heard about these kid detectives, and I wanted to join.” his lips curled into a frown, “I had no idea how psycho our town was.”
I nodded slowly. “But you don't…”
I trailed off, and he sat up with a sigh.
“Nope.” Peter set his coffee on the floor, the fireflies in his eyes dimming.
“I have no idea what happened to us,” he cocked his head. “Well, there is one thing.”
He stood up warily, striding over to the wall.
Peter prodded at their notes scrawled on the board, specifically where he'd written: STRING FACTORY.
“You think you died in a string factory?” I asked.
“No, that would be stupid,” he turned to me, rolling his eyes. “But I do think something definitely happened inside the string factory.”
I followed his gaze. “Do you have memories?”
“Nah.” Peter laughed, slumping back onto the couch. “Just a feeling.”
Sunny would sneak into my room during the night, hanging upside from the bottom of my bed. She would talk for hours about their childhood, the cases they used to solve. I learned more about their missing member. Eve.
The girl’s grin splintered when she mentioned Eve, before quickly changing the subject.
Sunny’s beaming was sweet, and in the pitch dark, the fireflies in her eyes ignited.
She flopped onto my bed, burying her head in a pillow. “Ooh! Can I tell you about the time I single handedly saved Noah on my very first day?”
Sitting up in bed, I peered at the girl.
“Noah?”
She lifted her head, warm eyes finding mine. I was still getting used to the whole, taking over a dead body thing.
“Hm?”
Did I hear her wrong?
“You said Noah.” I mumbled, half asleep.
Sunny chuckled. “Did I? Huh!” she tipped into her side. “Well, I meant Jaz.”
The girl did say it was an accident, and I believed her.
Slip ups happened all the time, especially with recently dead souls with scattered memories.
But then it happened again.
Subtle, but I heard it.
“Noah!” Peter was in the shower, shouting to his friend.
“Dude, you used all the shampoo!”
And then again.
Sunny, sitting in my car, nodding her head to music. The boys were grabbing food. I had found an unlikely best friend who was Sunny the wanderer.
She nudged me playfully, that name leaving her lips so effortlessly.
“Noah hates this song,” Sunny laughed, “Crank it up when he gets back in the car.”
Noah.
There it was again.
They told me it was insignificant, that it didn't mean anything.
However, I couldn't get this name out of my head.
Until I was standing in front of the boy’s murder board, a perma marker in my hand.
I added the name at the top with various townspeople and potential suspects.
NOAH (?)
I don't know why I thought this situationship would last forever.
Part of me forgot, or just suppressed what they really were.
Half a year after we started living together, I returned home from class to find them gone. They left everything, their mounting pile of evidence, as well as three dead bodies crumpled on my carpet. These people had been dead for months, their skin already rotting away.
The college boy who Jaz had taken over was already decomposing.
I had no idea how the drifters used human bodies, and I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
I called the police, insisting they just dropped dead.
Again, I was informed these people had been deceased for months. I was almost taken in for questioning, before a woman stepped inside my house and calmly told them I was telling the truth.
The woman didn't say anything, only slipping a scrap of paper in my hand.
On it, a number.
Written underneath in red pen: “Are you having problems with Strays?”
Strays.
I preferred to call them Drifters, not dogs.
Jeez.
Dumping the note in the trash, I tried to forget about the three wandering souls.
But I found myself standing in front of their murder board every night.
Why did they leave? Did they pass on finally?
Did they find their killer? And if they did, why didn't they tell me before leaving?
There was one name, apart from Noah, that continued to pop up in their notes. I don't even think they noticed.
Middleview.
There it was, in plain sight, highlighted in red and green, taped to each clipping.
Middleview High School.
Middleview Elementary School.
Middleview Mayor (Step-dad, also the devil.)
It was the last mention that sent shivers skittering down my spine.
Right at the bottom, scrawled in block capitals:
MIDDLEVIEW FOUR.
That was the last thing Jaz had written before they left.
I recognised his scrappy handwriting.
Middleview was definitely their mysterious town.
But no such town exists.
I should know, I searched for it until my eyes hurt.
And even if it did, wouldn't these murders make national news?
The String Murders.
Angel murders.
The beauty pageant contestants attacked with sulphuric acid.
Even the small cases from their childhood.
The crazy woman with the WW2 two grenade.
Their drug dealing janitor.
Even the missing baby.
I scoured the internet for hours, every online article I could find.
Nothing.
Not one mention on the news, no coverage whatsoever.
I spent days, and then WEEKS trying to figure this thing out.
Then it started to drive me crazy. When I threw a marker pen at my laptop, I knew it was time to get rid of it all.
So, I trashed everything, and went back to normal life.
All of my days blurred into one. I was sitting in class trying to concentrate, when the girl sitting next to me went limp, her head dropping. Then the guy sitting in the front row, his head slamming onto his desk. I was leaning over in my seat to see if they were okay, when warm hands rested on my shoulders.
He was gentle at first, swaying me back and forth, before wrenching my head back.
Liam Carlisle had been sitting behind me. Now, he was dead, his eyes lit up with fireflies. Jaz’s expression was different. Darker. His eyes were hollow.
“I've found my killer.” he said, before Liam’s body tipped off of his chair.
Cassie Eaton jumped up, her lips stretched into a maniacal cry.
“It was my dad!” she shrieked, blood pooling down her chin.
Cassie dropped, and Ryan Porter spun around, golden eyes burning.
“Can you believe it?” he whispered, spluttering through a sob.
“My fucking dad, dude! I mean, I knew he hated us, but murdering us?”
I was frozen, watching this thing tear his way through my class, student after student.
I watched their eyes light up, before fizzling out, their limbs twitching.
“Signing us over to a psychopath who turned us into… into…”
Ten students were on the ground, and Jaz was stumbling, struggling in a brunette’s body. He was crying, clawing at her hair.
“I was seventeen, man! Fucking seventeen!”
He was panicking, his breath coming out in sharp pants.
“My dad… he did this to us.” his lips split into a cry, “To protect himself.”
Jaz didn't leave me alone.
He jumped into random people passing by.
“And do you want to know the best part?” he choked out, following me, staggering in an old woman's body.
The old woman was too weak, crumpling to the ground.
When I got home, a little boy with golden eyes was leaning against my door.
“Don't ignore me.” he snapped.
Jaz’s eyes were twisted, riddled with insanity.
“I can't find myself,” the kid whispered, tugging on my shirt. “I can't find my body, Freddie. I can't find Eve. I can't find my fucking psycho dad– or even the town! I… try, and it's like I'm stuck!”
The words were leaving my mouth before I could stop them. “You're stuck?”
The boy nodded, sniffling. “Yeah. I can feel it sometimes. It's cold.” he shivered. I forgot he was just a fucking kid. “I'm so cold, and…and it's dark.”
“Describe it to me.” I told him.
The little boy cocked his head.
“Strings.” Jaz whispered, “I can just see… strings.”
I wanted to help him, but there was only so much I could do.
The boy’s town did not exist, and his murder was one giant question mark.
He was sure his father had killed him and his friends, but now, and why?
When I turned to walk away, he grabbed my hand.
“Peter.” Jaz said. “He says he's in the back of a car. But the car never stops.”
I held my breath, my eyes filling with tears.
“Can you help us?” Jaz’s voice broke. “Something bad happened to us, but I…”
He drifted off, thankfully leaving the kid with nothing but a nosebleed.
He wouldn't leave me alone, recklessly jumping from body to body to spite me.
Some of them survived, like my classmates.
He only took control for a little over a minute.
But it was with the ones he wanted to kill, tearing through people like they were puppets.
When he appeared in my mother’s body, purposely haemorrhaging her brain right in front of me because I wouldn't FUCKING LISTEN TO HIM, I went right back to that scrap of paper.
You might think I was being cruel, but this kid had murdered at least 8 people.
I watched him take over my mother, blood seeping down her chin, her skin paling.
Only to dive out of her like she was nothing.
A puppet.
I had to get away from him.
Officially, Jaz and his friends were called Strays. I called the number on the scrap of paper, and within ten minutes, men and women in white were crowding my house. I didn't watch them extract him from the body he was currently in. His screams of terror, of pure, childlike fright, were enough.
The process took fifteen minutes.
When they were finished, the body was carted away, and a man was holding a bell jar in front of my face. There he was.
Jaz Carrington was nothing but a single spark of golden light, a firefly.
“What do you do to them?” I asked a woman, before they left.
She answered me cryptically, reassuring me the recent Stray possession’s were being covered up by their service.
“Okay, but what do you do to them?” I demanded.
The door slammed in my face, and I was left feeling sick to my stomach.
A year went by, and I stopped fearing wanderers, or Strays. Life seemed to pick up. I found a boyfriend, and found myself pregnant, giving birth to a beautiful baby girl I named Carmella.
I was singing to my daughter one night, when she stopped crying abruptly, and I heard the sickening sound of her neck snapping, rivulets of red seeping through her lips. I felt my body freeze, before Carmella’s lips formed a smile.
“They take me apart,” my baby's babble twisted into something inhuman, something fucking terrifying. Carmella’s eyes shining with fireflies found mine, my baby's blood staining my hands. “They take me apart, and put me together, take me apart and put me together, take me apart and put me…”
I dropped my baby, but she was already dead.
“To… gether.“
My boyfriend was behind me, his breath grazing my neck.
“Do you know how painful it is?”
I was already fucking screaming, wailing for my baby.
“I spoke to her,” Jaz choked out a laugh, “And she didn't even know my name.”
The crunch of his neck snapping, his body flopping against mine, paralysed me.
“Noah.” his teeth gritted against my flesh, spitting venom. “Who the fuck is Noah? Why did she keep calling me that?”
He let me stumble forwards, before freezing in place.
There was so much blood. So much fucking blood.
I couldn't move.
“She plays with us,” Jaz’s voice was a soft whine, “Her Middleview Four.”
I started towards my baby, but he was already grabbing me, yanking me to him.
“I know who I am,” he said. “And I know where I am. I'm…somewhere.”
Dark.
Cold.
Alive.
“I think… “ he sputtered out a laugh, “I think I'm on strings.”
I was staring at a monster, a boy driven insane by what had happened to him.
My dead boyfriend's face contorted into his doll when I twisted around to stare at him, held in place by fireflies.
And you're going to help me find my body.”
…
edit: my baby is dead, my boyfriend is possessed by a psychopath, and I'm on the road searching for a town that does not fucking exist.
Please, for the love of god, help me.

So, I work in a school (elementary 2-4) . I also frequent teachers.
I know the whole "kids today are worse/dumbeetc" has happened repeatedly through generations.
But, something really does feel different. Kids seem incapable of being calm in silence. Their attention span is just shot, and they can't even get through a movie without talking/coloring/whatever.
I absolutely noticed a difference after COVID. Kids who were in kindergarten back in 2020 have poorer motor skills/handwriting, are immature and impulsive, and just do not have the skills our curriculum assumes they should.
But teachers are saying this was starting way before COVID. It just accelerated it. I was floored last year when I had to teach a second grader how to hold scissors properly.
So, I guess my question is this: Is there any research to suggest that kids are really different (emotionally, developmentally, etc)?

This poem is INSANE.
SOME VERY POPULAR SONGS
for example cows beneath the moon, peaceful souls, ruminating, Buddha-guts in the high grass, hidden between small trees and
clumps of brush in the constant greenness, a practical black-and-white- spotted metaphysics, tormented by summer flies which stick to their
saliva. The space hangs inside their eyes like a gong, which beckons to the slaughterhouse. Or a blue rain barrel in the south, where
the sky is an endless continuation of blue, hallucinated spaces during the day, but real. The tricks of the Rolling Stones are over.
I listen to Leonard Cohen singing, there is a war between the men and the women, why don’t you come on back to the war, it’s just be-
ginning. Various grasses grow along the edges, enchanted green. The grass is moved, moves itself, and all the years came, like
always, one after the other: good- bye, fast cloud, goodbye blue sky in the window frames, good- bye, dried grass,
naked in the first twilight, goodbye. A wet barbed wire fence stands there, crooked posts, goodbye, suburbs, as though
no one lives there, fragments of biographies and newspapers, the senseless waving. Some lines are like the waving of children from a
train window while passing through strange cities in the afternoon, passing the rows of low-rent apartments with the single faces at the windows:
if all the confessions in the world that were ever given and written down in the courts of the world were put together and
dragged by one after the other, what an endless misery it would be to be in the world. Someone calls, dials any old
number, and I hear only their breath, and there again is the distance, the soft crackling noise of the
confusion in another place, and otherwise nothing there in the afternoon. And in the morning, when you get up and stare at the hotel
breakfast and you don’t understand why you’re in this hotel room, where you actually are, and you think about what you can do at eight in the morning
after an almost sleepless night, and nothing else comes to mind except to take the three dirty shirts to the laundry, having already
showered at seven, do you embrace the morning light at nine? Or do you say, goodbye, morning light? And then you hear the rush
of a flushing toilet while you walk along a long hallway and what do you feel then? That everything is in order? At ten someone calls and
talks about death, and you make a joke about the film projectionist with cancer who’s been with the company for 25 years, and whoever else is in the room
laughs as well. Who goes through the rooms, unfamiliar, and remembers the lines from the song: Green leaves, how are you alone? What sort of damned lonely
business letters are being written. The signatures don’t matter at all. And you sing your song, “Lady, I’m out of here!” That also belongs to the popular
songs. The peaceful Buddha-souls lie spotted black-and-white in the greenness. They chew beneath the same light the soft green grass again.

1. (for H.S.)

Where the ruble disintegrates into single kopecks, or the dollar into cents, or the D-mark into pfennigs like guilders, where the lira disintegrates
like the franc into centimes and the English pound into the cheap tobacco of Spanish coins, where the ostmark breaks into eye-wrinkles and a
tractor stands in the candlelight, where the Swedish öre disintegrates into insurance like world empires, where the sturgeon dies in the rivers and the herring
in the North Sea, where the distances between the cities grow like the disintegration among the single cities, where the yen is changed into the cruzeiro,
where too much is invested in soap, where the Bulgarian tin cans are converted into Argentinean bank drafts, disintegrating like the Finnish
currency, where forests are rafted down the rivers, where bone meal becomes plastic, where sums are copied, where the geese become zlotys
and are frozen in black aspic, where the dinar drives the camel, the corn rots in the fields, decaying like teeth which will be exchanged, where the
peso dies miserably, the black underwear rises, disintegrating like revenue stamps into whichever sort of coins the faces may disintegrate, into whatever bodily needs, piss, dirt paths, rest
rooms and bed sheets, where the army is financing the study of poetry, where the technical institutes explain the world, the twitching heart of a turtle
hanging from a thread for all to see, where the licenses set the limits, decomposing into animal-pictures, where signatures are needed, testaments, accounts, where the bank
holidays are there for a sigh of relief, to hang out the flags and decorate the day, where the carbide stank, where the bottles burst, where the rubble lay strewn and the tattoos,
the companies proliferate like the mass media, the chunks of stone and rubble have been cleared aside, the pain and the sorrow sold off, decomposed into monthly wages,
where there is still something to do, the specter of unemployment drives them together, the ghosts of the owners, the ghosts of the employees, where all of them are busy
administering this world, or what they consider to be this world, traps, driven together in the offices, but the offices disintegrate, where the rooms have many doors and glass
walls, the elevator shafts disintegrate, the arcades disintegrate, smashed store windows, mold spores, wild vegetation, in between store-window
mannequins, rats scurrying through long ruined arcades, rats in the pale empty corridors of the skyscrapers, where the last cripples are still being
driven together, everyone driven together to administrate this world, these walls, cyclone fences, entrances, the class- rooms like ruined swimming pools,
like signatures which disintegrate, where nights the children scream in the apartment towers, dismally bound to the silence, where the children throw up
their baby food again, where the bodies lie next to each other in the darkness and masturbate in order to go to sleep, finally exhausted and empty, decomposing
like the face of a television announcer in the half-insane dream, who makes new announcements in different voices like on scratched records, disintegrating
like shillings, where the twisted pain becomes jokes in a dialect, applauded by the ranks, where the ranks finally disintegrate, where a radio announcer
pulls her tampon out of the hairy hole between her legs on the toilet in the office of the National Public Radio during a pause in which poems are read, where the
Sundays are endless, decayed like sick lungs, where it is said, that is not your face, that is not your face, where the coins disintegrate into faces, old
faces, dead faces, grieved and hideous on the banknotes which disintegrate, where we go, simple daylight sparkles in the rain puddles, sparkles in the
dripping trees, pleasure, the astonishment of the eyes, when you laughed as you saw your trailer, the beautiful laughter of a total lack of understanding as you opened
the car door, where the checks corroded the surroundings, paper disintegrated into nickel, decayed like a currency made from black dream-slag, which crumbles at the
next touch, where a woman has no other chance than forward through the bushes, like Bolivar disintegrating into centimos, where maybe you’re in a dream,
it’s time that we tell each other more stories, where one doesn’t stand with their back to the wall, but rather in an open door, in the daylight, which doesn’t disintegrate like the
wavy plateau with the lethargic chicken hawks circling above, quiet black movements, clear in the air, where the sky no longer fits in the picture and together with the clouds
passes by in the window. Who’s calling through the frozen forests? Who’s wandering through the snowed-in halls? Who’s freezing and huddled together in the endless
transfer station, where the rupees disintegrate, changed into dirhams, faces upon them, theories of probability, dog bones, death a white apparition in a
white invisible tent, Jeep tracks with dust clouds trailing behind, death is a dried-up camel skeleton by the wayside, death is a
dead skunk on the highway, death is a dead cat on an empty parking lot, death is the long rows of suits on the chromed
rack in the next men’s department, death is a chopped down tree, where the shadow-shoes lie, worn out, where the houses have no
walls anymore, where the electric lights wander about in the rooms, nuclear decay, multiplication, optical lenses, behind the frost patterns on the window the book is shut
and a face cries, a brain is opened, the exhilaration of a dark, clear winter night is illuminated by constellations and does not fall, where death is a dried-
up river bed, white gravel and the plateaus fly by, you see that, we saw them spread out, the plateaus, flying by white in the headlights,
I went back into the hastily constructed apartment, the dreams continuing, the plateau white, I stared into the aluminum pot, at the rest of the broccoli under the light,
the plateau passing by, white, with the slight indication that we make, where a dirty, rickety claw is a clean hand stroking a mahogany
table, having plundered the many daydreams, now it lies rickety and crooked on the clean surface, where the Luxembourgean francs become Malian
dollars, which disintegrate into Cuban pesos, who is it who shits out money and lets a forest die so that he can appear in the comics, massaged on the beach, he with the mantraps
and self-inflicted gunshots, observed by helicopters, a marked man, who is it who drags their suitcase through the bus station, who is it who drops a coin into the TV automat, who is it who skims the
psychoanalytical journals in order to solve a case, who is it who interprets the world, who is it who interprets the next construction- site fence, who is it who interprets the apartment,
shadows of people burned into the asphalt, stones with human shadows on exhibit, aerial photographs of the landscape allowed for postcard greetings
by the Minister of War, he who allows, believes he has the rights for fencing in, where the piastres are scrap, poetry is not a waiting room where one stays overnight, tired,
behind a newspaper opened to the swarming masses of war, every word is war, scrap-words like death, driven together in herds, without differences,
should I have slept with your wife, should I have had more magazines, should I have used the dish- washer, should I have followed the movie
posters, filigree-gray hypothetical questions, tendrils, cement ornamentation, where the dreams die off like plateaus, a canister on the shark, the daily view out the
window into this side street, which you don’t know, where the dollar disintegrates into kopecks and the ruble into cents, where pesetas are wrung from the bones,
but the pleasure is greater than the sorrow, the drachma is smaller than the lust, reduced to a hundred lepta, which disappear at the next opportunity,
where the Turkish pounds are extracted from the tendons, decayed, decayed in the buildings of the 19th & 20th centuries in West Germany, extensions, bills, obligations, everything
the same, pawned off, worn out, trashed, pawned off again on television, from the serial, from the jukebox. Gentle face, in the middle of the crowd you’ve seen
the twitching body, suddenly the concert was over, did you stammer, did you cry, where the corridors are cement, where the speaker boxes boomed, where the faces
broke into dream-wrinkles, where the city maps have white spots, where the color white in no way means death, where the dog fur fails to warm, where the ways end, Ivory Coast is a
fantastic name, tattoos, scars, moving in, moving out, many thanks.

1. (History)

Last night I was thinking about the love story of Adolf Hitler. I saw the permanent waves in the hair of Eva Braun. How many German women
today look like the smile of Eva Braun. The photos reproduce themselves. I was not, I know, born in a photograph. Snow fell in April,
as I was born, shrouded in the ornamental cloth of the baptism ritual. The war, I don’t understand what that is, which language is where? Eva Braun
smiled at Adolf Hitler, that was in Berlin. What did Adolf Hitler first say to Eva Braun? Which distances exist between the permanent waves on the
photo and the old fashioned curling iron for permanent waves which I saw later on a windowsill? As I slept in the Academy of Art in Berlin, I thought about
this curling iron for permanent waves. The photo was a memory which I looked at. Twenty years later I looked at a fat face in the daily
paper, which drank ersatz coffee in a Berlin hotel from a hotel coffee cup, the title was Professor, the title was not to be identi- fied. Eva Braun, was your neck shaved?
Eva Braun, what did you think about the Sarotti chocolates? Adolf Hitler, as you went through Munich with your Pelikan watercolors, what did you see? The Sütterlin script ruined the
handwriting. From the handwriting I was supposed to learn. Adolf Hitler skimmed over the city maps. Eva Braun looked in the crystal mirror at her cunt. Which size
did your thighs have, Eva Braun? I know girls who look exactly like the Eva Braun who looks like Eva Braun in the photo. I grew up, considered my pubic hairs, considered
nipples, considered the reeds, years later I considered the picture of Eva Braun. In the same month a breast of the wife of the American president would be
cut off, in another historical photo old men polished their assholes on brocade-lined armchairs after the conference, the southern afternoon is full of
junk, dust, crumbling constructions. What was with the intestinal worms which Adolf Hitler’s German shepherd had? What was with Eva Braun? A storybook story which one suppressed
like years later the interpretations, ended. Half of Austria arrived in a train, kissed Eva Braun’s hand, looked at her tits, sealed with permanent waves. Adolf Hitler
passed out postcards. I saw my mother in a photo in a long row sitting and laughing, I saw my father in a photo going along a tree-lined avenue,
naive in uniform like an avenue tree, what were they playing as they were photographed? I saw the creases in the pants of Adolf Hitler in a photo, I saw, four years
old, a dark train station passing by in 1944, I saw an enameled sign with blue and yellow wool and knitting needles on the red brick wall of a train station,
Eva Braun, did Adolf Hitler tenderly stroke your pussy with his tongue? Adolf Hitler, did Eva tenderly suck your cock? Or was that taboo thanks to
the state and politics? Come stains on the winter coat, a couple of generals in the toilet, they drew battle plans on the shitty wall, named names, heights, deployments,
Eva Braun, what did you feel when you got the capsule? Did you simply think you’d had your chance? Did you think, now I’ve had it? And the teeth of the German shepherd
fell out of his jaw after the strong injection. The orgasm of death is cheaper than the orgasm of life, although it’s questionable whether the orgasm of death isn’t simply pent up
life that explodes. Why isn’t life in the multitudes every day? Why permanent waves, Eva Braun? Why are you smiling, Eva Braun? Why
do you take cough syrup, Eva Braun? Didn’t Adolf Hitler know that the Austrian psychoanalysis, lying in the sentences, lies? I was never at the river Inn, also
have no desire to look at the water, also have no desire to look at the water in Cologne, dead water, full of dead fish and plants, dead water, which they fought over, borders,
coals, fires for the industry, furnaces, embers in the night, dancing figures before the open fires of the industrial complexes, no holy saint swims in these dead waters, no holy saint spits
out the apartment window, the crude passing through is better than taking pills, the patents, Eva Braun, how was it for you under the shower, German charcoal, flamingo flowers, Spanish irises
and pails? Adolf Hitler in a nightshirt, in the cement, under the earth’s surface, sparkle of nerves, dancing over the files, he dreamed madly in the cement bunker,
supposedly never hit anyone personally, he had others enough to do his hitting, there are always others who sign, hit, hang, indeed there are
always others, employees, secretaries, office boys, insanity, Eva Braun, you straw puppet, smoke, cyanide, trace elements, signatures, which suddenly become single living
persons, things, the shabby things, they’re standing in the room. Did Adolf Hitler stand before you in the room with a stiff cock, Eva Braun? Who washed your bra, Eva Braun? Did you think about
Persil laundry soap? World history in the form of industrial comics, Eva Braun, a lace dress in the large hall, among the human voices, shoulders lifted high, did you see them? What’s with
the dyed hair? What’s with that old high German? What’s with the fossilized love stories? Word-ghosts, dirty bastards of history, stumbling through the rhymes,
between the film-shadows of Berlin, shadow gestures, projection-screen-shadows, shadow-screams, collapsing shadows, later accompanied by a soundtrack, synchronised
lip movements, Eva Braun, in which magazines were you reading? I have to remember: my mother loved airplanes and ghosts, which reappeared, phantoms, she dreamed of them,
even before she cooked for the men at the airfield, in her odd French, my father borrowed a car in his school-English, the top rolled back, they
stopped in the countryside, they fucked at the edge of a warm yellow wheat field in July. My mother loved cheap paperbacks, she looked to see if the seam in her stockings was straight, she went
across the meadow in a silky shimmering dress. The father-in-law left his library to the state of Israel for a sentimental reason, and what happened before, that these forms
developed, more sentimental than the memory of house-corners and street names? More sentimental than permanent waves in a photo? I have to remember the pale suburban settlement, I
have to think about the truck that suddenly stopped in front of the house, packed with people and their belongings, billets to make the foreignness even foreigner, checked off
the lists, bedpans, briefcases, pomaded and parted, they had nothing, owned the in- sanity of never-owned imaginary goods, if they spoke, from where they came, the biographies ruined
by dead Austria, old myths, fallow fields, the opposite is not the industry, the oppo- site disappears in the old photos, in which history disintegrated all around, Eva Braun, opaque
window glass, portals, coma in a Swedish hotel room, shots in the leg above the stocking garter. Now the computers are tossing bones in the air, Stanley Kubrick, the film trick
is revealed, despite four-channel-stereo in the red-plush cinemas of Soho, where I am one rainy evening, walking through London alone, quiet, collected, in the light gray, windy
February evening, decaying London, elegiac West End streets, elegiac advertisements, elegiac theater buildings and striptease clubs, elegiac filthy book stores under aged,
murky dust, rusted leaky water pipes along the house fronts, a senselessly ringing alarm on a house wall, dismally yellowed paint, entrances with the names of bodily flesh,
which for a few moments can be bought, contact between a lonely cock and a cold cunt before the weak gas heater of the rented room, miserable and lost in the
maze of numbers, bleak and frozen in the money. Eva Braun, who wrote you postcards? Eva Braun, have you ever stood freezing in Piccadilly? Eva Braun, what did you say in the moment
when that photo was taken? After the movie I crawl shivering under the thin blanket of a cheap hotel in Bayswater, Odeon station, the monster quarter of London, crumbling courtyards, buried
bodies, the gas-fired fireplace doesn’t heat, the wallpaper is stained, I read a few more poems by Frank O’Hara and W.C. Williams, I drink the rest of some cold coffee out of
the paper cup that stands on the marble mantle over the fireplace, I’m alone in these American poems and see myself in them in the middle of this London night, yellow fog lights along the
streets, Victorian monster-columns and portals the whole street long, windows patched with cardboard, curtain-scraps, and suddenly, in the silence, completely crazy, I remember the call sign
of the BBC radio one morning during the war. I remember the after-the-war-chocolate of the English soldiers, blue plums on a cart, which was being pushed through a courtyard,
Strauss waltzes, a dark movie theater and war. A bone tossed in the air, a killer’s tool on the white screen of the memory, a flickering shadow, hidden behind ornamental flowers,
together with the shadow-noises from the stereo speakers is nothing but a shadow in the eerie, insane ballroom of Death, which is the air, Death blows bubbles in the air, it’s much better to relax
peacefully with a liverwurst sandwich during the lunch break, better to eat the plums out of the icebox without saying you’re sorry, better to drink cold coffee from a paper cup
in a hotel room at night, better than moving pictures, aerial photographs, Eva Braun, I’m thinking here in this Cologne night, stuffy and dismal, while I look at a photo, which tells of the love
story, kitschy and hand-colored, Eva Braun, little monster among the decor, smiling stupid and sad in the photo, and before the photo was taken,
really. The eyebrows are touched up, your mouth is open, lipstick on the lips, are the stocking seams straight? Are you wearing a flowered dress? Has someone
messed up your hair? What’s with the accent? Did someone give you a horny look, your slightly fat baby face? Have you forgotten your cunt? Did your cunt dry up out of fear as the war began?
Berlin sky, as I flew in with a Pan Am plane, I first saw a cemetery between the houses, the gentlemen laid their newspapers on the empty seats,
the taxi driver swore about the passers-by as the lights went on. In the subway hall someone held their bloody, dripping face between their hands and turned toward the tiled wall
as the automatic doors slammed shut. Did you mend your stockings with Güterman’s silk thread? How did you look in a swimsuit? Did you shave your armpits?
Shaved armpits always look like soap and deodorant, stubbly and slick. Fantasy has taken over the industry with its employees.
Did you eat a liverwurst sandwich? Did the liverwurst sandwich taste good? Did Adolf Hitler have sweaty feet? Did he kiss your hand? Did he talk in his sleep? What did you take
against the headaches? What did you think as you were chauffeured along the Kurfürstendamm? In the fading shadows of 5 in the morning I sit there between the folded up,
locked up patio chairs and tables, smoke kif in the shadow of the Café Kranzler awning and walk through the tear gas clouds and shards of glass from the shattered storefront windows, the whores
having hastily retreated as the street battle began a few hours ago, then I take the first subway train to the Wannsee, where a couple of swans are rocking between the garbage along the shore, a lifeless pier,
a weak dawn, light gray. What kind of fur coat did you wear? What kind of toothpaste did you use? I tremble in the first dawn in Berlin, take the socks from the radiator,
let down the shades. It’s a pity that you didn’t invent love, Eva Braun. I write this rock ‘n’ roll song about your terrible insanity, Eva Braun. Would you have
liked this song? Would you have sweated as you danced? What did you talk about as you were alone in the cement bunker? Why the color brown? What did the tongue demand? No one loved Adolf Hitler, and that was why he
had to win the war? Did you see the bodies? Did you see the hand-to-hand combat? Did you see the flame-throwers? Did you see the burned faces? Did you see the gas-cripples? Did you
see the killer-virus spores? Did you see the flower-shadows? Did you look out the window? Did you turn off the nightstand lamp? The permanent waves of
order on your head, your fat, bare shoulder, your underwear from the department store, your pierced ear lobe for the jewel, your handkerchief with the mucous, the camellia
between the legs, your ass-shapes in the garter belt, your nipples, will they remain a secret? In the middle of the historical showplaces of the war, the war is a showplace, who even
looks? Is a love story necessary that needs so many questions? Now you’ve disappeared in the historical photo. Now the disguises are going around. Now the story is broken down and over.

1. (D-Train)

: letting the newspaper flutter out the rolled down window, a child’s hand, with the
shreds of paper against it,
the misery (foreign countries), which invests in this country, sits on every furtively glanced-at
street corner, sad, tired faces, without expression, bags under the eyes, lines around the tight-lipped mouth,
a young woman cries from exhaustion in a two-and-a-half room apartment, in the unfolded architecture of geometry, it’s night and the heating pipes are ticking,
Quote: “The most dangerous animal that exists is the architect. He has destroyed more than the war.”
Hair loss following birth, fear on the street, in the middle of the day, if one stands still, surrounded by the multitudes, the absent
glances, waking up, coughing & spitting
in the sink, postponed material circumstances, the delicate bodies pushed up against the walls by the cars, the same rows of suburban streets
all the way into the inner city,
single, running bodies between the
convoys of the auto industry, blurred figures
behind the dirt-flecked security glass windows, smaller than their own bodies in the industrial shells,
the newspaper rips in the headwind,
shreds of paper drift over the narrow gardens along the tracks, kites made of stinky printer’s ink, collages of the daily gradual madness,
frozen swirls of words: brand names,
reptile brains, hate, slander, semantics, the
big families continue on. In the streets the skinny girls’ bodies, bones with a little skin over them, in colorful rags from the second-hand store,
“when the music’s over” between the rain-
faded old advertisements, (neon-light extinguished curiosity to live, calligraphy)
extinguished poetry. The dawns
are damp and impassable, masses of bent-over figures, they disappear in the offices, they go into the stores, they have to go to schools, kindergartens,
their ways of life distinctive between
rows of products and shelves, in the pestilent-light-flicker of the TV at night the faces of the politicians appear and discuss, in the pestilent-light-flicker
of the TV the strange faces appear on the wall of the room: do you remember
“until the end” the dark house entrances, in which we stood together,
do you remember your own kisses in the stairwell, do you remember kisses
at all? (Or what
you felt?) Submerged in the glowing grass along the paths, seen from the open train window, we let the newspaper shreds fly.
Yellow afternoon light reflects in the windows which we pass by, September-yellow
and what kind of country is this,
what kind of thoughts are
thought to the finish here, finally to the end,
the end “the aristocracy
of feelings,” hahahaha, that’s
not to my taste,
if anyone should have anything to do with that at all, IBM-typewriter-feelings and kisses,
I stretch out my feet, how does that one over the other, in this fit together? compartment, the white Converse All
Star basketball shoes, 12 dollars, on the red plastic seat, and once again the piece of newspaper torn for the child at the open
train window: how the words fly (masks),
the fragments, it’s one of those gentle afternoons that we rarely have, light over the pale, monotone cities, soft afternoon light
on the crumbling facades of the suburbs
and tract homes, soft September-afternoon-light
on the faces in the open windows which we pass by, gentle human-faces in September,
the hate of the newspapers rips, flutters as paper in the hand, that cheerful sound in the moving
D-Train: it brings us from the northwest regions of West Germany through the zones of industry and profit,
dead, abandoned winding-towers, black wheels in the air, slag heaps, dead roads, black, sooty steam locomotives on a dead
track, rusted railway lines
& dust-coated Scotch broom along the embankment, do you really remember your own kisses?
And when the West (“Oh to be out of here, German industry here where everything went collapses? as wished except for the new”)
“Here in this land I live!”: do you really live? (“To be far away and in a foreign No, not this country.” E.P.) sensation.
Until now this was a foreign country, wherever you look,
Memory: I hear the shaky The chestnut voice of the poet on a record tree in the in an apartment, evening, lightless sinister hallways narrow courtyard, and without voices, maybe 60 names on the nameplate in the entryway still-standing by the glass door, locked early, elevators, the stairwell light out, a red glowing light switch at the end of the hall, the calendar and then in the midst of the lifelessness picture television film sounds behind a door on a as I walk along there / the voice of the office wall, poet stuttering in on a Sunday morning, and sun now, after the hallways, in this blinds, West German apartment years later suddenly again)
Prone Venus and Coca Cola 1974, verbs in a continuous chronology, “this Coca Cola of the entire world”
why do you want to speak nicely?
“Must we be idiots and dream in the partial obscurities of a dubious mood in order to be poets?“ (W.C.W.)
Burned out in a beautiful September light, the personal economy: a total disaster,
is the economy a personal feeling? Contradictions because I speak, contradictions because I think
about it: notes in the newspaper margin, being torn to shreds. The few friends scattered about the suburbs, the new friends strewn singly across the country-
side. Different voices, different biographies,
deviations, “good so.”
Discussion: Where everything is forced to connect…
What did you feel as you touched the naked body with your lips, what did you
feel in the middle of the trashed
landscape, word-gods, side-street-sex, under the arranged machines? Let me remember, you say, let me remember, leave me
alone, you say, leave me, gentle face
in a soft September light, like now: answer softly
answer, “in the midst of the daily plundering, or?”
Like the faces in the open afternoon-windows don’t answer. There is a sheet-metal field, dented,
“valse d’autumn” or how such a feeling is called,
not the clarity of looking out a D-Train window, gentle, gentle rhythm here now,
let me, let me remember, you say. Small train stations appear and remain behind,
meaningless structures, : remain behind? meaningless stops : meaningless?
yellow-red fire in a scrap yard,
gentle, gentle woods, last remains of forests in which the thin morning fog still hangs, traces of dampness, not
bent over, small peaceful ponds, forgotten
at the edge of an estate (:“we’re coming back,” in that house, we’re coming home, home?) for the eyes a fugitive rest, from the train window
looking out, the long, slow
even view across this country. There is a hunkered-down green, fantastic green, which passes by, and a child’s hand stretched out the train
window.
Why sadness? All: you gentle
faces in the afternoon light (no faces : you gentle faces between for the coins) the billboards, you gentle
faces in the window frames,
you gentle faces in the September light, you gentle faces of West Germany, tired and sad, you gentle faces, hungry for cunt, cock, tits, hungry for an exotic everyday
life, hungry for a kiss, hungry to feel your own kiss between the walls,
hungry between the advertisements, hungry between the classified ads, hungry between the pictures,
the advertising sales department closes at nine in the evening the movie theaters are darkened, to show a
little more life, the box offices close a quarter-hour after the main feature begins,
the television station broadcasts until shortly after midnight, hungry in the narrow
gardens, hungry for a gentle embrace,
what do you give your selves? What kind of a horror is that, when one stops in the middle of the street, standing among the passers-by,
& each for everyone a passer-by.

That means, drink water or something with electrolytes to keep your body functioning.
Also, eat, when you can.
The most lasting, compounding damage to the body from drug use comes from crossing the line from recreational usage into a ravenous abuse spiral. Someone who frequently forgets to eat or forgoes nutrition, sleep, or self-care in favor of continuing to get high has a very serious problem with addiction. This not only hurts this person and their loved ones in the present moments but also in the future since the body will take on damage from constant neglect.
Keep it real.
Remember to bathe regularly, and take tolerance breaks from anything you use to avoid overspending or overconsumption.
A little drugs on a special occasion might be fine.
It depends on you.
You have to know yourself. Are you the type to get addicted and go through a whole spiral?
Think again about that. Check your answer twice. You have to be honest with yourself before you make a very serious decision about a powerful substance having the potential to alter the course of the future you face.
I say that I think it's a good idea to wait for yourself to turn about 26 before attempting any substances, or at least, that's the average age when the human liver and brain fully mature. Really, people shouldn't even drink til around age 26. I know, wet blanket. I don't hang out with anybody underage. But if I did, I would tell them to stay in school and avoid unnecessary (not prescribed by your doctor) substances, including nicotine.
It took me a long minute to just be "okay" when I ran out of nicotine. I used to flip everloving shit, tearing the house apart for a drop of my sweet, sweet nic or scrounging in the detritus on the floor for half a bowl of already-slightly-burned tobacco.
Now that I'm 28, my temper has calmed down, or at least, it has been more easily under control.
While I continue getting to know myself, rerouting my rage back through my processing system helps me churn that same rage into aggression towards my ambitions, helping me perform constructive activity, like writing, exercising, cooking, working, or studying.
(I bake with hatred — not love. And it tastes better, too).
Think about who you are. What do you value in life? In what ways do your actions align with your intentions? In which ways could these actions use improvement? Be precise.
Ask yourself who you are and what makes you happy. Ask yourself what makes you sad, and what makes you angry. Have ongoing conversations with yourself. Reflect on your recent past social interactions and attempts at getting stuff done. How did these go? What kinds of things did you say or do well, and what could you say or do better for next time?
Don't be too hard on yourself.
Coach yourself up, if anything. Put yourself through training to be the person you thought you'd be by now back when you were in kindergarten. Are you a superhero with butterfly wings (my childhood fantasy)? Well, why not? 😁 🦋
Remember that hydration and nutrition can make a huge impact on how productive you can be within a day, so pay attention to your body's ways of telling you when it needs attention. For example, sometimes when I'm dehydrated, I first notice when I get a headache. Tylenol or ibuprofen won't help, either. In this case, I would just need to chug a liter of water.
Dehydration can make me bitchy or clumsy, too, because I'm in pain and not feeling right nor thinking clearly about the situation at hand due to that pain. Excessive hunger is pretty much the same way. It's perfectly acceptable to feel hunger for a couple to a few hours. The feeling of hunger means the human body is healthy and processing everything correctly as it should.
Pain can be a difficult thing to talk about sometimes.
A lot of times, I think people who act very grumpy or irritable in person have hidden pain that they keep secret from the world, back pain or tooth pain being some of the worst feelings on Earth that many individuals struggle with in silence. Financial concerns or other rock/hard place issues can prevent their pain from ever being addressed, so the individual in a lot of pain simply retreats from the world or makes the world retreat from them with a prickly personality on the exterior.
Drug abuse CAN put you in serious, life-altering pain for The Remainder Of Your Life On Earth.
Remember three things:

1. Hydration.
   
2. Nutrition.
   
3. Sleep.
   

I am not a doctor but would recommend as a friend that anybody who feels like they may have trouble getting all their macro- and micronutrients from their usual daily eating plan can purchase some multivitamins at the grocery store. I like One-A-Day Women's or a similar store brand. The multivitamin keeps my hair shiny, my nails hard, and my energy levels stable throughout the day.
Also, sleep!
Yes, when you stay up past day 6, then the shadow people come out to play.
One time, I stayed up til day 6.5 handwriting over 100 front and back pages of notes on the basics of like half a dozen different programming languages.
That stunt could have kilt me. I could be ded. I passed out for 16 hours on the 7th day awake, and then my energy levels took at least 3 weeks to fully feel like they bounced back.
Be careful!

My Kindergartener is really struggling working on new skills if they don’t get it right away or aren’t “perfect”, even worse if they see someone else they perceive is doing something bettefaster. I need help.
For example, handwriting, I think they’re doing great but practicing will often lead to an explosion (I see it slowly building).
I ask calmly trying to understand why they’re getting frustrated and intervene early, trying to explore the feelings with them - whether it’s hard because it’s new, because they can’t focus (loud distracting noises), but usually the answer comes down to feeling like it’s not right nor perfect. Wobbly lines when writing, not exactly matching up with the guide lines or shadows. They are using some regulating skills taught, taking breaths on their own when frustrated, but they won’t let me even talk when it’s building and I try to encourage them. We take breaks whenever needed.
I’ve never put any pressure on them. I try to keep in fun and light-hearted. But, this need for perfect leaks into a lot of areas. My husband and I are the least competitive people, we never compare them to others, and I’m so stumped about this. Is this personality? Is this…something we’ve done or not done?
Even at soccer, it often ends with BIG emotions if things don’t go they’re way. Not the color scrimmage jersey, not getting a goal, other team wins.
Is there language or phrases I could build in to help them understand that they are just practicing and learning, even songs? Should I be more encouraging or should I not comment at all (not praise?) Do I need to do more working on their inner self-talk, positive self-talk?
I don’t want learning to be stressful. I don’t want them feeling like they always have to be perfect or win.
How would you handle this as a teacher? If a child starting slamming their fist in frustration on the table, or saying they are going to quit…

Hi there! I'm wondering if any Kindergarten teachers or experienced parents would have some advice for me. My son just turned 6 and he's halfway through kindergarten. He is at a charter Waldorf school. He knows the sounds of the letters. I don't think they teach sound blending or CVC words until first grade. We have done some of this at home.
Nevertheless, he is behind with his fine motor skills. He can write all of his capital and lowercase letters, but its hard for him. He doesn't grasp a pencil very well. He can't write his numbers for some reason. The other kids seem to be way ahead of him.
He has a very limited attention span for his school work and can be disruptive. He doesn't put much effort in. He apparently is the only one in the class who consistently does not complete his tasks. The assistant teacher does 1 on 1 time with him when she can. His behavior at home can be challenging at times, but with a lot of effort on our part (additional structure, visual schedules) he is improving.
Socially, he is outgoing and the other kids love him. Constant requests from other parents for playdates. His speech/language skills are excellent, he's very chatty and talks about complex things, seems reasonably bright.
At home we practice handwriting once per week for 10 minutes (he hates it). We will try to increase this. He has been on a waitlist for Occupational Therapy for 1 year. We have thought he might have ADHD but also it feels like he's a bit young for that.
Here are my questions:

1. How worried should I be?
2. Should I get him a tutor?
3. Should the school be providing him extra services?
4. Should I just chill out?

Thanks!

My handwriting is a mix of print and cursive to compensate for being left handed, but the letter R sucks no matter how I write it, and it's ubiquitous in the English language. Since I'm in my 50s and spent the majority of my life writing vs. typing my anger toward the letter R is very deep seated. I also couldn't pronounce it until kindergarten, so there's that.

Top Manga of this week

Rank	Upvotes	Manga
1	6233	A Failure of a Familiar and the Mage - Oneshot by @araidokagiri
2	4114	Oshi No Ko - Chapter 143
3	3984	Damedol: The Useless Idol and Her Only Fan in the World Ch.22 - A Good Deed
4	3775	- My friend of 3 years from an online game is a very beautiful woman. - Oneshot
5	3394	- I'm worried about my girlfriend, who used to be covered in bruises. - Oneshot by Kuga Tsuniya
6	3242	The Lecture You Would Never Want Your Parents To Give You - Ch. 27
7	3224	Chainsaw Man - Chapter 158
8	3011	RuriDragon - Chapter 8
9	2780	The Masked Girl - Chapter 2
10	2729	Frieren at the Funeral :: Chapter 127 :: Kirei Cake
11	2571	- The Journey of a Weakling Hero and a Monster - Ch. 6 [END]
12	2358	Akanabe-sensei Doesn't Know about Embarrassment -Ch.4
13	2371	- I'm worried about my girlfriend, who used to be covered in bruises. (By Kuga Tsuniya) - Ch. 2
14	2319	- I bought a Medusa slave. (by Kuga Tsuniya) - Ch. 18
15	2287	Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru My Dress-Up Darling - Ch. 102
16	2123	The secret of Miss Hero and the Armored Warrior revealed before the final boss battle - Oneshot by @ayumuhotaka
17	2055	- The Sister with Strength - Ch. 34
18	1835	Akanabe-sensei Doesn't Know about Embarrassment -Ch3
19	1751	The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy at All - Chapter 77 - I'm Just Being Half-Assed Though
20	1742	- I am a cat. - Oneshot
21	1730	Your Boyfriend (by @senukin69)
22	1735	Jujutsu Kaisen - Chapter 253
23	1670	- When you befriend with a cold dentist - Oneshot by @shirox_em
24	1627	- A Parallel World With a 1:39 Male to Female Ratio is Unexpectedly Normal - Ch. 134 (By きっさー)
25	1546	Dandadan - Chapter 143
26	1516	After Beating a Noob in an FPS, He Wanted to Fight Me in Real Life LOL (Chapter 26)
27	1515	Kagurabachi - Chapter 24
28	1494	Ri-Chan Ch 163-167.5 [END]
29	1435	My Dog Becomes A Human (Outing Part 1) - 18
30	1464	I Like My Crushes Handwriting (Oneshot)
31	1376	Even a Cat's Paw can be Useful (Nekotete) - Chapter 103
32	1170	- The day a boy joined the 100% all-girls drama club. - Oneshot
33	1149	One Punch Man - Chapter 195 [Revised]
34	1093	The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You - Chapter 168
35	1098	My Hero Academia - Chapter 416
36	1096	Even a Cat's Paw can be Useful (Nekotete) - Chapter 104
37	1027	SAKAMOTO DAYS - Chapter 158
38	992	- Getsuyoubi no Tawawa - Ep. 473
39	968	- Childhood friend and Valentine's chocolate. - Oneshot
40	1014	- A story about being trapped in an elevator with a black gyaru. - Oneshot
41	821	Please Go Home, Akutsu-san! - Chapter 170.5
42	819	Koroshiya no Oshi - Ch. 1
43	812	Blue Box - Chapter 140
44	804	Mairimashita! Iruma-kun - Ch. 340 - Before Anyone Else
45	804	Senpai ga Uzai Kouhai no Hanashi (My Senpai is Annoying) - Ch 229 by @shiromanta1020
46	748	Ogami Tsumiki to Kinichijou. Ch. 17 - Studying with Tsumiki-san
47	712	Akane-banashi - Chapter 101
48	684	Blooming Love - Chapter 25
49	659	Kanan-sama Is Easy as Hell! -- Chapter 87 (KananScans)
50	642	Dungeon no Osananajimi - 31.5
51	609	- Can't win against cuteness. - Oneshot
52	606	Kimi wa Kawaii Reptile - Chapter 4.2
53	610	UNDEAD UNLUCK - Chapter 198
54	585	Torima Minshuku Yadori-teki na! Ch. 7 - What is a Gyaruo?
55	581	Kindergarten WARS - Chapter 69
56	577	Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint Chapter 202
57	562	A B-Rank Adventurer With an Evil Face Becomes a Father for the Hero and His Childhood Friends Ch. 7.1 - War Begins (1)
58	600	Uzaki-chan wa Asobitai! Ch. 108
59	518	When Trying to Get Back at the Hometown Bullies, Another Battle Began. - Ch 32 (part 1)
60	515	Noa-senpai wa Tomodachi. Ch. 15 - Noa-Senpai and the Sleepover
61	506	MARRIAGETOXIN - Chapter 80
62	497	Koroshiya no Oshi Ch.2
63	488	The Grim Reaper Falls in Love With a Human (ch 37)
64	489	Training Slaves to Make a Harem / Dorei wo Choukyoushite Harem Tsukuru (Chapter 49)
65	476	Mushoku Tensei: Isekai Ittara Honki Dasu - Ch. 98
66	466	Choujin X - Chapter 50-2
67	448	I Became Friends with the Second Cutest Girl in My Class - Ch. 21.1
68	408	- Kimi no Kokoro wo Kanjitai - Ch. 1
69	407	I Thought She Was A Yandere, But Apparently She's Even Worse / Yandere Ka To Omottara Motto Yabe Onna Datta - Ch. 48 - MangaDex - Ecchi No Doujinshi Scans
70	401	Boy's Abyss Ch. 168-169