Chương 696: Day Six Hundred And Ninety-Four

Dear Diary, I really gotta watch out for the Black Dog biting at me, what with going multiple days without sleep or Worship. That's one of those horrifying bits about chronic depression, not to mention some other disabling types of mental issues. They're mental conditions, but the mind isn't just some mystical piece of woo.

Even here and now, brain chemistry is a thing, and brain chemistry affects the mind, and that means that inasmuch as the body affects the brain, physical issues, including activity or lack thereof, can affect those issues. I remember one of my regular hookups back in the day had some serious manic depression going on.

Like, dude would act like he was capable of unassisted flight with the power of his mind and shit when manic, then spiral and crash and wind up screaming about taking an axe to all his belongings, and he included me, and then himself. I know, huge red flag, but back in the day I might as well have had a tee shirt that said, 'your red flags must be bigger than my ass if you want to ride it'.

Thing is, the few times dude had some medication to keep an even keel, he was witty and smart and holy fuck that boy was hot in a purely physical sense. Didn't hurt that his ex was a legit runway model; I think both of us fantasized about me being her while we were boning sometimes.

My point, though, was that he hooked up with a mentor at school, and old dude, who apparently had some Black Dog bites his own self, caught my guy once when he was spiraling and took the whole fuckin' class outside and did landscaping as a 'community service' project as part of the 'environmental science' course.

Apparently sweating his ass off doing something semi-productive left him feeling physically tired, but not super mentally depressed, and he had like zero rage; he'd worked it all out on some dead bushes that needed to be hauled away. I still wish I could have hooked up with him that night. Might have had some healthy adult fun times. Should have told me something that without the rage or depression or manic phase, he just... wasn't interested in me.

Still not sure if it should have told me something about him, me, or our relationship. But what I did take away from that was that some mental issues do respond to physical activity. Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely not one of those ignorant bitches who posts a picture of a tree and calls it an antidepressant. Look, Karen, I'm glad touching grass works for you, but all it ever got me was stains on my knees.

But while my steel ass is now iconic, my depression is still chronic, and it responds to physical activity. I can still feel rage, which is probably why so many depressed people become rage addicts. For a while after I got here, I didn't really have any spontaneous depressive episodes, because I was working my ass off two days a week. Seeing results from it, too, getting stronger, faster, harder. I mean, yeah, I had nightmares for a while, but that wasn't depression.

Shit, the fact that other than exhaustion I didn't have anything like a depressive episode really ought to tell me something. Like, 'I ought to get my ass back to the Practice Yard on the regular'. Or maybe I ought to go out and do some lumbering, or plow the fields. In the literal sense. The reason I'm talking about all that, by the way, is my more or less enforced wakefulness and inactivity down in Jackville.

Like, there's no rule that says I gotta sit around Jack's shack the whole time, but somehow that just feels right. Yeah, I could maybe patrol the border, but it's... it's really big, and I'm only one bitch. Yeah, I could Co-Locate, but Co-Locating enough of me to cover the border would leave each with possession of a single brain cell roughly once over the course of the time I'm gonna be watching. Not exactly useful for any kind of nuanced patrolling.

So instead I'm sitting around the shack, wandering around the waterways near it a little. Kinda wish I knew where Elmer or Wilmer were, because so far not even the old dudes have come back. Their dominoes are still sitting there; I covered them over with a cloth and a heavy plank of wood to make sure they didn't get moved around when the wind picked up. Added some fish to the stew, along with some herbs I found in the garden out back. No, I did not pluck random weeds. I asked Marie.

She taste tested them with my tongue, and while I didn't know any of the names, I liked the flavors, so into the pot they went. After over twenty four hours of slow burbling it's gotten pretty savory. Thinking I'm gonna ask Jack his opinion when he gets back. Maybe see if he knows of anything to kick it up a notch. Not gonna do it before then, though. After sleeping a whole assed day, he drug himself out of bed for dinner yesterday. He praised my cooking, and I don't think he was even being super ironic.

Okay, what he said was, "impressive, getting that many kids to eat with that much gusto." If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. I shrugged.

"It's a... Shit, I think it's a hobby now. My hobby. Like, I do it while Murder Mittens is on light duty because of her pre-maternal condition, but... I see why she enjoys it. I'm not sure if I'd be quite so into it if I were doing it for the Cadets for the foreseeable eternity, but filling in for her, or cooking for our kids? That's some really satisfying, cool shit right there."

"I like the part where one thing goes in, and something almost unrecognizable comes out."

"Like bread?" He nodded.

"Yeah. Bread's good." I plated up an eggy grilled cheese and held it out to him.

"Marie and I made the bread for that. I mean, we made the sandwich, too, but we didn't make the cheese or the eggs or anything. We cooked them." He snorted, picked up the sandwich, took a bite, and froze. After a moment he chewed, swallowed, and said, "Really simple. Kinda on the bland side. But the flavors are good. Really good." He glanced around the room.

"Your kids like spicy stuff?"

"They liked the gumbo. Not, like, as much as I did. But spice isn't a deal breaker for most of them. They're just kids though." He hummed and tilted his head.

"Eggs and cheese and bread and they're set." I paused.

"Okay, some of mine like vegetables, which is weird as fuck, but other than that." He sighed.

"I never had kids. I..." He trailed off, staring as he took another bite of his sandwich. When dinner finished up, as the kids herded Adrienne up to the Bath, I pulled him aside.

"You up for a mixed bath?" He looked thoughtful, then shook his head.

"Nah. Let Adrienne have the time with her sister. And her mom, I guess. If the two of them can somehow get past their past." I held out a hand.

"C'mon up to my office, then?" He gave me all the side eye, but he took my hand, and a moment later we arrived up in my office. I gave him the chair and leaned back against my desk, trying my best not to loom. After a second I pushed myself all the way up onto the desk and sat there tailor fashion.

"The two of you an item?" He sighed sadly.

"It's... complicated." I barked out a laugh, and held up a hand for patience when he shot me a booger look.

"No, no, not really laughing at you. People back where I'm from used to say that about relationships a lot. Like, sometimes they'd say it because their thing didn't fit in nice neat boxes like 'wife' or 'girlfriend' or shit like that, sometimes they'd say it when they didn't want to look too close at what they had, or it might go away, sometimes they'd say it when they and their significant other disagreed about what they were to each other.

Shit, I think the least common thing people would use it for were actual complicated relationships."

"What would you call an actual complicated relationship, if not one of those?" I snorted.

"The one I'm in now?" At his raised eyebrow, I said, "no, really, I'm married to two women, the three of us have a fourth partner who is officially a 'Concubine', but that's just a title, she's really our girlfriend and almost a third wife for all of us, we've got like five or six friends with benefits situations going on simultaneously, plus I'm intimate with half a dozen people every few days at Temple Revels."

I thought for a second, then turned and pulled up my sleeve to show him my shoulder scarification; I had to trace it by feel to tell exactly where it was.

"It's like, Saffron put this on me back when the two of us got married, and it encompasses Marie as well, but if she tried to do something like this now? It'd be a whole fuckin' back piece." He chuckled, snorted, then laughed out loud at me. Like, clearly one of those 'held stress in too long' laughs. After a while he settled down, wiped his eyes a little, then said, "No, nothing like that, I guess. Only the two... well, three of us. Assuming..."

"Assuming what?" He'd clammed up though. I tried asking, "who's the third?" He just shook his head, thanked me for dinner, and headed down the Bore. I followed him down, more out of a sense of being a good hostess than anything, but he just walked out onto the roof, lay down, and stared at the stars.

"Let me know if you need anything, okay?" He turned just the tiniest bit.

"Careful. You'll have your Overlord in conniptions making offers like that." I shrugged.

"Convince Adrienne to maybe give her mom a real chance to reconnect, let her come visit them on the regular, there's not much I wouldn't do for somebody who did all that." He just grunted and went back to stargazing. I went walking in the dark again, because I am an idiot. Added a solid chunk of a big fish, plus a handful of little crabs to the pot. In the morning today the girls took Adrienne down to the stables.

Then, after introducing her to Baby, the eight of them went for a quick ride out to Lindsey's campsite. Adrienne did some work on the treehouse, then they spent the afternoon fishing. Half of the fish went straight down the Nightmares' gullets. They brought the rest back and begged Marie and I to make fried fish. I didn't have the heart to tell them that that much fish wouldn't really stretch to feed all of them, so I padded it out with the rest of the big fuckin' catfish I'd caught the night before.

Not like you can tell once it's been filleted down to sandwich size, breaded, and deep fried.