hey my paper friend

turns out: i wasn’t right back

sorry i took a while, life happened, i’m still getting sued by the professor, and i also had a lot of sex, and lots of food, and a lot of sleep.

it took a few weeks but i’m back now.

by the way, sorry if my grammar and punctation is shit right now, i’m writing this outside of the court room so i’m kind of stressed and not paying attention haha help

yeah

anyway

i think i seriously needed some real downtime, where i wasn’t constantly feeling like shit, and guilty for whatever was happening around me. it’s not like i wanted anything that’s going down right now. i just wanted to chill man.

i also realized i was being kind of stupid by not talking to Alex, so eventually after posting that essay i was working on, when Alex finally had a day off and we were playing video games together, i ended up telling him about how i’d been feeling.

you can probably imagine, but it was a bit of a heavy talk. i cried a lot. Alex cried a little.

we stopped crying to take a shower together, but then we both broke down together under the water, and held each other for a while, as Alex whispered in my ear that it was going to be okay.

“Even if it’s not fine now, one day, you’ll be okay,” he said, and that was nice, because even if he wasn’t a genie with a magical crystal ball that could predict the future, it sounded like he knew what he was talking about, and i found it comforting, and i cried some more, until i couldn’t really cry any longer and my eyes felt as dry as a cactus.

i slept for what felt like the longest time after that. i think it was almost 15 hours? man, can you believe that! i didn’t realize i was that tired for real, it was an absolute beast of a shock haha

once i was awake it was already afternoon on a weekend, Nora and Alex were both home and cuddling on the couch. i probably looked miserable enough for them to offer me a place next to them, because they did.

my eyes felt really puffy like they weren’t a cactus anymore but the victim of a bad fall on a cactus… okay sorry maybe that’s a little too gory of an image, but i don’t know how else to describe it, they were stinging real bad and i could feel the skin around my eyes close whenever i blinked it was fucking weird aaaAAAHHHH

i’ve never cried so hard in my life, my manatee, and for a moment i was scared that i had somehow broken my eyes

but

i’m getting distracted here

so i’m going to move on

the hug.

yeah: the hug.

Alex and Nora group hugged me.

and i cried again man. honestly fuck this i’m cringing just thinking about it

like it was super nice (especially Nora, i know she doesn’t want to get close to me because dicks) but like i thought i’d be okay, but then i got so emotional again, and my body was just like ‘OKAY DAVID!!! WE DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO RIGHT NOW SO IT’S TIME TO HAVE A GOOD CRY!!!’ but it’s like bro i’ve already had five good cries in the span of a few hours can we stop with the good cries please?

man

okay

yeah so they hugged me.

and i felt loved.

and i didn’t feel like a failure.

i felt like i was enough.

and that even if i was failing so hard in my studies, and at work, and in my social life, i wasn’t failing at being alive, because i still existed, and maybe that mattered, and it meant something, that i was still here, breathing the same air as Alex, and Nora, and all my friends and the people i’d meet one day.

i don’t know man, i just felt like Alex was right and that it would all be okay. hope i won’t come to regret those words haha

yeahhh… after the group hug, we all went to a family diner, and i ordered a fat stack of fries. Alex ate a salad and Nora asked for an ice cream cone, only to eat the ice cream with a spoon out of the cone (???), i want to know what goes through her mind sometimes, but i can only think like David, so this is all i’ll ever know.

honestly now that i think about it, i don’t know why we went to a diner if we didn’t order an actual meal lol we could have just gotten take-out or something but whatever. during our short hang out i learned Nora was getting hardcore into voice acting, Alex was really excited about his audition even though he still couldn’t tell us much (seriously, his eyes were sparkling when he was talking about it, what the fuck is this role lmao i’m so curious my paper friend, i know i’ll find out eventually but he’s been in such a good mood lately it’s wild), and i… actually, i thought i wouldn’t have a lot to tell them, but i told them about my essays and my blog. it felt kind of small in comparison, but something nice had happened recently. one of my readers said something i wrote had really touched him, and he wanted to support me because he hoped i’d continue writing.

so i just said ‘thanks, this comment is a nice way of supporting me’, it’s hard to know what people think about what i write sometimes because i just post it and then it’s just there, so it’s nice to know he liked the essay.

but then he insisted and he was like ‘no like i want to donate to your blog where can i do that? your essay changed my life and i want to show my support!’

and i kind of read the message in shock because… like man what? why? why would you give me money? i’m just some guy.

but also i’m bad with peer pressure, and i didn’t want to say no again because he seemed like he really wanted to give me a few cents and i figured okay, what the hell, maybe i should open some type of donation page, it’s not like it could hurt, and i would really like to stop relying on Alex to buy my dinner every night.

so i did it.

i opened a donation page.

and the guy who commented… didn’t donate. actually, i’m pretty sure he forgot about me, because he never came back to my blog. at least i haven’t seen him around.

which is fine, to be honest, there’s a lot of times where i tell myself i want to do something, or read something, or watch something but then i totally forget because life just happens lol but not going to lie, i felt kind of silly because now i had this donation page, and it was empty, and suddenly this wasn’t really only about views and likes and comments anymore, but about whether my blog was worth anything.

and it’s kind of scary how fast my mindset changed, because now it felt like the stakes were higher, and like i had to write better essays: not because i wanted money. but because i felt like i’d look pretentious if my blog was trash and i had opened donations anyway.

‘Who does this guy think he is?’

‘I don’t like him anymore, his ego’s gotten way too big.’

‘He let a few thousand reads get to his head!’

you know? what if they thought that, and me opening donations just killed the vibe?

i wanted this to be a fun welcoming place where everyone could just chill, and money always makes things too real, and complicated, so honestly i stared at the donation page for a few minutes, and i considered closing it. ‘maybe this was a mistake,’ i told myself.

‘but maybe it wasn’t too late to turn back before too many people saw what i had done.’

it was too late.

i got a notification: my first donation.

my eyes widened. my heart started beating really fast. i couldn’t believe it, to be honest, i was afraid, and excited, and shocked that someone actually thought the work i had put into this little baby of a blog was worth actual money.

someone gave me ten dollars. TEN DOLLARS!!!!!!! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT, MY PAPER FRIEND? I COULD BUY FIVE OF YOU WITH THAT!!! OR MAYBE EVEN MORE??? AND FOOD, AND WATER, AND COFFEE!!!

TEN

FUCKING

DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!

so yeah, i left the donations open. and even though that one guy never came back, i’m honestly really grateful he left that comment, because if he hadn’t, i wouldn’t be here right now, freaking out about a ten dollar donation: so wherever he is, i wish him the best, he changed my life, too.

i uh… used some of the money to buy myself a fresh pair of socks and a sandwich, i know it’s not much, but Alex had been helping me out recently, and it was nice to feel independent again. ahhh… fuck, man, life is fucking weird. what is happening right now?

well, anyway, they’re calling me in court, so i gotta go

writing this to you had calmed my nerves because i forgot where i was for a second but uhh…. now that i’ve remembered again i have a stomach ache and i want to cry, soo uhh yeahh HAHA :’)

SEE YOU LATER

WISH ME LUCK :’)

Author's Note: Fellow readers! I hope you're all having an awesome day! We reached our Tapas ink goal today, which allowed me to take some time off to write this chapter and post it, thank you so much for your ink donations everyone and for helping keep this web-serial alive, I'm very grateful for your support!! 🥺🙏💖

A new ink goal to fund the next chapter has officially been added - the next chapter will be uploaded when we reach it! ✨

In other news, I also released a new M/M/M Romance Drama book last week, so if that sounds like your cup of tea, you can read it using the link in the description below (just like Warrior Of Hearts' first book, this new book is free-to-read on Kindle Unlimited!) 💕

Thank you again for your support and readership, fellow readers, I hope you've been all well! I'm so excited for the next updates in the story, a lot will happen, I'm grateful that you've given me the opportunity to continue writing Alexander's and David's adventures thanks to your amazing support! Stay safe and take care everyone, wishing you all a wonderful week, cheers! 💕💕