how to HEAL YOURSELF using FANDOM

Have you ever been obsessed with a series ? a character ? a story? that it not only makes you happy but disturbs you to your core and you don’t know why or what makes you keep going back and looking at fanart and browsing fanfiction, and being emotional and talking about it..

let me give you an idea:

your soul recongized a part of itself in the narrative and it’s trying to figure something out

Let me walk you through some examples..

 

1. FREE!’s Sousuke Yamazaki.

Feb 6 changed my life because I remember the date i marathoned the Free series and got hung up with the Ending of my boy Sousuke. To the people unfamiliar with the story, Free is a swimming sports anime centered around the drama of some highschool swimming kids. sousuke is this broody, loner type, national level butterfly swimmer who suffered a career ending injury and hid it from his best friend who went abroad for 5 years to train. As his final curtain call, his goodbye to competitive swimming, he reunites with said best friend to fulfill a long made promise to swim competitively together in a team relay. Best friend finds out about the botched shoulder in the series’ climax, and sousuke says some dumb heartbraking shit that his dream was just ‘to swim with you again’ and you know i damn well love that someone’s dream and last regret is just to accompany someone in their own dreams and aspirations. Like how humble is that??

ANYWAY. by the end of the series, the fandom was split into camps. Sousuke’s ending was as vague as you can get, you can easily argue him going through a full shoulder recovery and competing again OR never swimming again for his life and have 2 completely solid and opposing arguments. It was that evenly split and it bothered me like wood lodged in the heel of my foot, that i couldn’t decide which one was my version of the happy ending. how would i imagine sousuke happy ? healed? what version of events ? it bothered me to my very core and I kid you not. Sousuke was relatable to me in so many levels, of having your dreams snatched away from you from under your feet and me not wishing him to go to olympics- i don;’t know if i was a bitter sad bitch or i was arguing for something different.

i wrote fanfiction. Looking back the best alternate universes that i wrote Sousuke in would have him as a healer. As someone who still had a career debilitating injury but no had the authority to scold wreckless athletes as this badass Physical Therapist. I wrote him as someone who would meet someone living out his dream, and him being capable of being happy for them. That he’s not a sob story, that his shoulder could REMAIN broken and still be happy. And that the essence of sousuke as a character, as a story of all the athletes who had their careers cut short, to still be nothing short of amazing. I dreamt him- healed. but not just in the physical sense of that word.

 

I remember having a very vivid dream, almost lucid, where I had a dream puzzle. And there was this computer mainframe I could type into. The air was thick, I could barely move and I put in a lot of effort to type each letter. i entered “ sousuke’s shoudler is healed” and suddenly i felt my whole being lift and vibrate. (this occured probably on two other occasions in dreamland, 1 where i watched pestilence devour beyonce’s face and she told me, “i gave it my all each time i was on stage” and 2 when a waiter who was clearing out pizza and told me “you don’t have to be the best. you just have to do your best” and walked away.) Sousuke’s shoulder, and teal color became a shorthand for myself about going through , and passed injury. I have a very deep cut in my tongue and in traditional chinese medicine that means i’ve been deeply hurt before or in my past life. I’ve had two separate tarot readers say the same thing. Ate jammi says it was a past life that concerned me being sisters with my mom. She was mad about me ‘stealing’ something that she already gave up. It was a vacancy that needed to be filled, but she was still bitter about it.

i don’t know, but typing in that computer about sousuke’s shoulder lifted a heavy part of my being, and I don’t need to understand it to know it happened.

 

2 Roy and Riza giving me advice

Roy mustang and Riza hawkeye from Full Metal Alchemist : brotherhood was my first ship. A pairing you like seeing together even though in the original story (canon) they were never explicitly said to have been in a relationship…

This couple went through a lot in the series and I won’t even bother summarizing. Here’s a wikia. Anyway, my post-canon version of them is inspired by one fanart i can’t seem to find again. But it’s them going back to Ishval, rebuilding it, atoning for their sins in the land that they practically committed genocide in. I come from a military family and this act of rebuilding war torn areas from the ENEMY is one of the most evocative images in my mind. It’s one of the bravest things I can image, this apology. I imagine them growing old and wise together earning respect and power either ruling the whole of amestris or being this kind of faded legend that lives in the lost forrest edges of the town.

 

I’d write stories of them being interviewed by the press. I would get used to how they would answer and solve problems, and to first year college me they were my closest visceral experience of someone who has gone through shit and are still wise. So one day, i remember dwindling into a ball of anxiety about the future, and family problems and i just did a what would jesus do moment- and jumped into being a press guy with a problem and asked Royai – what should i do ? what can i do ?

and i waited for an answer.

I felt my mind simmer, and produce a believable answer from the couple.

“just take what’s right in front of you. one small step at a time”

instant, engulfing relief. i think my spirit guides talked through them because i was stunned. i lay there pondering that thought. weighing it in my head until it sunk into my skull. just one step. all my anxieties silenced instantly trying to absorb that idea. i just need to take one step at a time. and i frankly didn’t care then how weird this all sounds, taking advice from fictional character, but if it WORKS. IF this is how you heal, if this is the form this speaks to you ? then why shouldn’t it be valid ? I’ve never managed to have another eureka moment with Royai, but they definitely seeded the idea of me constantly talking to my current ship.

 

3 IWAOI. Iwaizumi and Oikawa from Haikyuu.

oh god this is embarrassing but I’m writing it anyway. because if there’s someone out there who gets the idea that hey this could work for me to access my inner guidance well then all of this has been worth it.

If Free! felt like an announcement of me being disturbed by sousuke’s ending, iwaoi is like a slow simmer that caught my back off guard. I grew into the whole haikyuu fandom liking everybody but the way the whole of fandom interpreted this particular couple drew me in, they were equals, supportive , invincible. Ever since i was a kid i would dream up stories of my original characters before going to sleep like a well oiled bed time story. I’d change parts of it each time, depending on the day I had and I’d do the same thing with iwaoi.

 

I would dream up a domestic AU (alternate universe) of them living together in an apartment. I would progressively calm down my body and imagine sinking into my subconscious and dreaming the apartment. I’d see oikawa go home and be welcomed by iwaizumi , and it would be so mundane. Like how was your day? and I’d make up a thinly veiled oikawa projection of my day and iwaizumi would just talk him through it, his troubles, the best parts and get ready to sleep. There was always this part where iwaizumi would say ‘take off your clothes’ and not necessarily in the sexual connotation. it was like a oikawa shedding his day, shedding his ouside outfit and finally signaling that he’s home, he’s safe, he’s okay. When oikawa sleeps in that bed, that’s the place where my conscious mind sleeps in that little bubble of safe apartment. It’s a very comforting image and i hold it dear to my heart. It’s almost automatic for me to go to see this apartment in my head, the layout of it as real to me as any space, more real even.

Anyway one day, i opened the door, and i didn’t see iwaizumi. Also for some reason, i stoppped being oikawa and it was me coming home to the apartment, and there was this dude – this being – this familiar comforting presence by the door going through the motions.

‘hi you, how’s your day?’

and it creeped me out. my initial panic even made me imagine what monster would infiltrate the apartment in my head but all of it dissolved and there was just this guy, who wanted to unpack my day with me and get me ready for bed. it was utterly relaxing, like butter. as if my mental images for the situation are more exact this time, and this is how we were, i have a perfect love and support somewhere in the firmament, and ofcourse they could help me go to sleep in my tiny apartment. I could get a reading of my day, just by the energy I got through the door or how he’d answer with me. He’d level with my rage if I was mad, he’d be funny if i felt like being silly. It felt supremely and impossibly comforting.

One time, the apartment disappeared and we were in a tropical house in an island beach and i was with a whole family,

Another I was in a library much like the photo that litters this blog. I saw a really tall being beside me. Ate jammi said i had a new guide. I messaged her – is he tall ?? and i had rain drops all over my legs. Um yup, nevermind, he said yeah. he’s doing it again while I’m typing this out.

So I’ve had some lowkey confirmation that these vivid imaginations , suggestions, scenarios aren’t entirely fiction. What is fiction but the art of the subconscious? I’ve gone through past life regression therapy hynosis videos and I saw me dying by being shot in the knee. I have a birthmark there. oikawa has a eerily similiar knee injury, i have a thing for injuries.

Metaphysically knees speak of freedom of movement and you could see from my previous blogs how true that has been for me. I’ve had ate jammi confirm (and yes you could argue she’s just saying what i want to hear, but she’s also saying you’re inner sight is growing. learn to trust it. and oh boy are my inner visions getting bigger and more vivid and specific.)

I joke about having a war room/board room/ helm of the ship, meeting room in my head where i command all my spirit guides higher selves, familiars angels, all for my best interest bomb ass individuals, flames soulmates WHAREVER show up and talk to me. I’d rant out all problems in that crowded room and hand out papers of problems like assignments. Like i’m worried about this THING that is out of my hands – i give you full authority to do this in the best way possible okay? And a weight would lift in me, as if that problem really has been taken away seeing an old forgetful lady take a piece of paper. My bestfriends jokes that I must have one crazy war room, but it really works for me.

 

It’s just like those wish trees or alter offerings but in a deeply personal level. My guide ? okay the guy who’s always closest to me and levels with me best, being the most human of them all, whoever he is I’m thankful.

And i can only call him Hajime, iwaizumi’s first name when I talked to him as oikawa.

Hope you guys got some ideas

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til next time

maalia