FILL: Doctor, Detective and Sons (9/?)tawabidsJune 4 2011, 00:06:28 UTC
He heard the wolf pack head upstairs and cursed silently when he remembered that Murray still hadn’t had any dinner. Nothing he could do now. Murray had always been his own man, anyway: he would probably just come down and make himself a sandwich if he woke up hungry.
He listened to Sherlock bustling about in the kitchen. He was still there when John had finished packing his own clothes, along with spares, a blanket and toys for Hamish.
He put the two-year-old in a warmer coat and a woollen hat, heaved him onto his hip and put the case down while he opened the door. His shoulder was beginning to ache. Sherlock looked up from the kitchen table. He was reading emails about potential cases; John could see the reflection of the computer screen in the microwave. His brows came together in an expression that was more bemused than concerned.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to my sister’s,” John said quietly.
Sherlock stood up very quickly. “John.”
His voice was full of shock and disbelief. John had heard him speak like that only once before, almost fourteen years ago. It had been when John had stepped out of the stalls of a swimming pool, wearing a bomb Sherlock couldn’t yet see under a fur-hemmed jacket.
“I’m going,” John said quietly. “So don’t start. Just go to bed, and make sure the boys get to school on time.”
“You’re taking Hamish,” Sherlock said, breathy and low, and that same tone had not left his voice. John couldn’t understand how he, good old John Watson, patient and caring John Watson, had willingly done this to another person. To this person, of all people. But then he thought about it, and he could, he really could.
“I’d take them all, but I don’t want to uproot Murray and Geoff like that,” John said heavily. “Make sure they get to school.”
He picked up the case by its handle and went down the stairs, taking them one at a time. He made it as far as the front door and was unhooking his key to 221 from his keyring before he heard Sherlock’s footsteps barrelling down after him.
“Wait!”
“We’re not talking about this now,” John said. He put the key down on the table beside the door with Mrs Hudson’s dried herb arrangement. He did not look round at Sherlock. Hamish's head twisted back and forth between his parents' faces.
“No, I need to explain, you’re angry, I know, but-but you know me, you know I’m not always-John, listen to me before you-“
“Go to bed, Sherlock,” he still refused to look round. He opened the door and hefted the case.
“John, don’t-!”
John hooked the door with his foot as he went through it, pulling it shut with a snap. His breath poured steamy from his mouth as he went down the front steps, and Hamish made a small noise of complaint into his father’s shoulder.
John realised didn’t know the bus routes to Harry’s. He’d never even been to Harry’s new place, some nice digs in Dollis Hill, but he had the address in his phone somewhere. He’d have to catch a cab. He had some cash he’d got out at the shops today, so that’d be alright. It felt dishonest, somehow, to use the card linked to the shared account. That was just something that they would have to sort out, he supposed. Maybe with a lawyer.
“Daddy,” Hamish said, looking back at the door of 221b as John headed down the street, his eyes peeled for a glowing, yellow 'TAXI' in the darkness.
“I know, little man. I know,” John murmured to him.
Oh, this is just heartbreaking. I love how real and undramatic this is - sometimes things just spiral out of control until you can't take it anymore and you've portrayed John's emotional dilemma very well.
I can also see how hurt Sherlock is going to be when he realises how serious John is. Although he's being a bit of a prick and should put more effort into caring for his children, he's not very good at picking up on emotional signals. Because John has stayed silent, he believes everything has been fine.
FILL: Doctor, Detective and Sons (10/?)tawabidsJune 5 2011, 11:02:02 UTC
Sorry all, just a quick update with not much plot progress. P.S. OMFG HARRY IS SO MUCH FUN TO WRITE WHY HAVE I NEVER WRITTEN HER BEFORE NOW??
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It was near midnight on the crossover between Monday and Tuesday, and John was lying on his sister’s guest bed and crying about what he had done. Silently, of course, with his hand over his mouth to make absolutely sure. Hamish was asleep on the bed beside him, flat on his back on his favourite blanket with Harry’s orient-patterned duvet pulled over him. The room had blinds instead of curtains, and every now and then a car rolled past outside and cast bars of headlight across the ceiling.
John closed his eyes and tried to stop thinking. He couldn’t. He had lost that ability during his years with Sherlock Holmes, like he lost any chance of being a surgeon when the bullet dug deep through bone and snapped the subclavian artery like a pin through a water balloon. He was fifty-one years old now and he felt worn as stone steps. Had all the changes in his life been nothing but losses, here and there? Like chipping a sculpture out of the rock? His hair was going grey, his never-impressive height was dwindling, he had forgotten half of the medical training he received in his twenties.
Hamish snuffled in his sleep. No, it hadn’t always been losses. He had three children. He had learned how to burp a baby and all the scientific names of the dinosaurs. He could pick a lock like a champ, too, and was once given a pair of curly silver cufflinks by a woman whose husband was stabbed in their bed while she was at a conference (John was the one who promised her that Sherlock Holmes would solve the case, so somehow she gave John credit for it when Lestrade arrested a jealous neighbour).
Sherlock had rung twice in the taxi. John ignored the buzzing of his phone. Then had come the messages: “WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS - SH” and “YOU’RE NOT BEING FAIR - SH” and “I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT I’VE DONE - SH”. Incensed, John switched the phone off and stuffed it deep into the pocket of the travelling case.
Perhaps Sherlock was right. Perhaps John should have talked to him before he left, spelled out his grievances and given Sherlock a chance to defend himself. The problem was that if they were going to solve this by talking, John felt that Sherlock was at rather an unfair advantage. Sherlock was better at talking.
If John had stayed, he knew, Sherlock would have talked him around and then nothing would have changed.
Harry had let him in without hesitation, but a wee bit of a chiding. She lived alone (“Never getting married again, I swear,” she’d told John when she dropped into Baker St last Christmas, “Oh falling in love, sure, I can’t help doing that on occasion. But no way am I ever sharing my life with someone else, not again.”) But she was cheerful whenever John saw her. In the rusty-voiced, spray-haired, ripped-stockings way that Harry expressed cheer. Her clothes had cruised towards the professional over the years but had never been tasteful, and her salary had grown to a comfortable threshold that bought the house on Dollis Hill and all the luxuries a single lady desired. She always told John she was on the wagon still, but without meeting his eyes. He in turn told himself, ’She’s a big girl, she doesn’t appreciate me nagging’ and left it at that.
“I knew this would happen,” Harry said, marching around her orange-lino kitchen in a hot pink, satin dressing gown, making him a coffee from the retro-style grinder that must have cost a fortune even though he’d said he didn’t want any caffeine this late. “He’s such an arse, that man. And a face like your cum was lemon juice.”
“Don’t, Harry,” John said, massaging his temples. He would have added not in front of Hamish but last time he’d made that request, Geoff and Murray had come back from a trip with Auntie Harry with a nine new ways to say fellatio. “It’s too early for bitching.”
“It’s never too early for bitching, that’s something you never learned,” Harry plonked the unwanted coffee down in front of him, tightened the belt of her dressing gown and sat down in the closest chair.
FILL: Doctor, Detective and Sons (11/?)tawabidsJune 5 2011, 11:07:27 UTC
She swung her legs one across the other. Her toes were painted black, each with a neon-blue stripe down the centre, even though John was sure there were laws against painting your toenails over the age of forty-five. Sometimes he honestly wondered if he or Harry were adopted. She patted his knee, and took a sip of her own coffee. “You need to let the bitch out. You’re too nice, John.”
“I’m trained to shoot people for a living,” John frowned.
“But do you? No. You run around after Sherlock-Fucking-Holmes, doing Sherlock-Fucking-Holmes’ washing and raising Sherlock-Fucking-Homes’ sons and I’m bloody glad you’ve finally had enough of it.”
“Sherlock fucking,” Hamish said from the armchair in the corner (it was shaped like a giant V-sign, Harry had hung a large paper tongue between the first two fingers). He stuck his hand in his mouth and smiled at John, who felt too tired and beaten-down to scold him.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyeballs until he saw stars. “I think I’d better just go to bed and get some sleep, Harry.”
“Course. Oh, this coffee was stupid of me, wasn’t it,” she picked up John’s cup, eyed it and then began to drink it. She got up and waved her finger. “I forgot, no caffeine for breastfeeding fathers,” she belted out a laugh that made John’s head throb.
“I never-“ oh, screw it, he wasn’t rising to her bait.
“I’ll rustle up some sheets for the guest room. Do you want flannelette? I bought them but I decided I hate them,” she picked up Hamish and held him above her head. “Do you like flannelette, Hammy? Do you? Oh, who’s my favourite nephew, you are,” Hamish giggled hysterically as she whirled him around and headed down the corridor without waiting for John’s answer.
He wanted to tell her to stop getting Hamish excited or he’d never go to sleep, but instead he put his arms on the table and rested his head on them. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was Sherlock.
And now he was lying awake and it was still all he could see. Sherlock mixing cocoa in their kitchen, brooding over the sight of London out the window while the spoon went clink-clink-clink around the rim of the mug. Sherlock’s face when he held Hamish for the first time, a face John had seen only twice before but each time was the most beautiful expression in the world. Sherlock in the bath, his elbows over the edge and a smirk on his face as John discarded his shirt and stuck his hand under the bubbles to the elbow, leaning down to kiss him. Sherlock pacing, furious because the school won’t put Geoffrey two years ahead, and refusing to calm down until John snatch his sleeve as he passes and tells him Geoffrey has friends in his class he will miss. Sherlock with buckshot in his ribs as a gift from the brother of that bastard he put away in ’08, bleeding onto the street and John wasn’t there because John is always at home with the boys, John didn’t even find out until an hour later when Lestrade finally called from the hospital. Sherlock in an incredibly well-cut, dove-grey suit, putting aside his sibling feud long enough to play Mycroft’s best man when his brother finally convinced his assistant to make him an honest man. Sherlock teaching Murray calculus, both of them lying on their stomachs with their shoes off and their ankles crossed behind them.
Sherlock going down on John on that rickety bed they kept meaning to replace. Sherlock telling Geoffrey not to listen to John because John wasn’t as clever as Daddy, the fucking sod. Sherlock promising John that when he went to Vegas one day to count cards he would bring back millions of American dollars in a suitcase and they would have a dozen more children and live in a mansion in Chelsea. Sherlock staring into the newly-stocked fridge and not taking back that word. Bore, Geoffrey could no doubt provide alternative meanings, ’to pierce‘ or ’to drill‘ and even ’Past tense: to support or endure’ and oh yes, John fitted that one to a tee. But that word was like a puncture in John’s lung with his hopes rushing out with the air, like a thousand holes in the foundations of Baker St until it crumbled beneath their feet.
John rolled onto his side and stared at Harry’s wallpaper, and tried to think wallpapery thoughts until he went to sleep.
Re: FILL: Doctor, Detective and Sons (11/?)tawabidsJune 5 2011, 15:23:19 UTC
So I'm very torn as I read this.
On the one hand, I feel like if you're unhappy and your life is unfulfilling you need to tell your partner and make changes as opposed to expecting your partner to read your mind. But I also feel like John is a helicopter parent who kind of needs a wake up call - if your 10 year old can't be left alone for an hour (and doesn't have the sense to microwave water for oatmeal or put some jam on toast) you need to step back and think about why your children have no life skills. (I'm aware that there are a lot of parents who disagree with me on this last point.)
But, on the other hand, it's Sherlock. A man like that isn't going to raise normal children, isn't going to respect social norms (much less teach his children to respect him) and he'd be a difficult partner.
Re: FILL: Doctor, Detective and Sons (11/?)tawabidsJune 5 2011, 15:29:58 UTC
Haha yes, I should have a disclaimer that I in no way mean to advertise this fic as good parenting skills (or good relationship advice!). Hell, I know if I had a two year old, that kid would've been in daycare waaaaay before now :/ I'd probably be working full-time and the kids would be cooking their own damn meals. AND YOU'RE COMING TO MY FRIEND'S DINNER PARTY TOO, DON'T GIVE ME THAT LOOK YOUNG MAN. GET IN THE CAR.
So don't worry, I'm very aware that there are straightforward solutions to some of John and Sherlock's problems here, and I intend to address that by the end.
Re: FILL: Doctor, Detective and Sons (11/?)tawabidsJune 5 2011, 15:38:16 UTC
Lol, no I understand - fiction is fiction - it's just a little hard to sympathize with John on some level because, looking at his life from the outside in, it's easy to say, "but you did that to yourself, also: they're called condoms", and he's a white male with a doctorate - it's not like there are social taboos keeping him at home. He doesn't trust his husband (?), doesn't trust his kids, and hates the world for things he's done to himself. (But I'm sure a lot of people would say the same about my own life - my religiously and socially conservative family constrain my day-to-day life in ways I find acceptable, and yet instead of just walking away, I stay.)
Re: FILL: Doctor, Detective and Sons (11/?)tawabidsJune 5 2011, 15:57:22 UTC
"but you did that to yourself, also: they're called condoms"
LMAO! XD
I think it's easy to look at anyone's life from the outside and start backseat driving. But most of our decisions aren't rational at the time, so why be ashamed of past mistakes?
I hope if you're not all happy with your situation, things get better one way or another :) if it helps, when I was at a low point last year, a friend happened to link me to this Simon Amstell sketch and that really boosted me (a warning that he does mock religion a tiny bit).
He listened to Sherlock bustling about in the kitchen. He was still there when John had finished packing his own clothes, along with spares, a blanket and toys for Hamish.
He put the two-year-old in a warmer coat and a woollen hat, heaved him onto his hip and put the case down while he opened the door. His shoulder was beginning to ache. Sherlock looked up from the kitchen table. He was reading emails about potential cases; John could see the reflection of the computer screen in the microwave. His brows came together in an expression that was more bemused than concerned.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to my sister’s,” John said quietly.
Sherlock stood up very quickly. “John.”
His voice was full of shock and disbelief. John had heard him speak like that only once before, almost fourteen years ago. It had been when John had stepped out of the stalls of a swimming pool, wearing a bomb Sherlock couldn’t yet see under a fur-hemmed jacket.
“I’m going,” John said quietly. “So don’t start. Just go to bed, and make sure the boys get to school on time.”
“You’re taking Hamish,” Sherlock said, breathy and low, and that same tone had not left his voice. John couldn’t understand how he, good old John Watson, patient and caring John Watson, had willingly done this to another person. To this person, of all people. But then he thought about it, and he could, he really could.
“I’d take them all, but I don’t want to uproot Murray and Geoff like that,” John said heavily. “Make sure they get to school.”
He picked up the case by its handle and went down the stairs, taking them one at a time. He made it as far as the front door and was unhooking his key to 221 from his keyring before he heard Sherlock’s footsteps barrelling down after him.
“Wait!”
“We’re not talking about this now,” John said. He put the key down on the table beside the door with Mrs Hudson’s dried herb arrangement. He did not look round at Sherlock. Hamish's head twisted back and forth between his parents' faces.
“No, I need to explain, you’re angry, I know, but-but you know me, you know I’m not always-John, listen to me before you-“
“Go to bed, Sherlock,” he still refused to look round. He opened the door and hefted the case.
“John, don’t-!”
John hooked the door with his foot as he went through it, pulling it shut with a snap. His breath poured steamy from his mouth as he went down the front steps, and Hamish made a small noise of complaint into his father’s shoulder.
John realised didn’t know the bus routes to Harry’s. He’d never even been to Harry’s new place, some nice digs in Dollis Hill, but he had the address in his phone somewhere. He’d have to catch a cab. He had some cash he’d got out at the shops today, so that’d be alright. It felt dishonest, somehow, to use the card linked to the shared account. That was just something that they would have to sort out, he supposed. Maybe with a lawyer.
“Daddy,” Hamish said, looking back at the door of 221b as John headed down the street, his eyes peeled for a glowing, yellow 'TAXI' in the darkness.
“I know, little man. I know,” John murmured to him.
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Sherlock, you prat, did you even hear what you just said?!?!?!
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omg, this was so painful! Mostly because it feels real, and no-one is over-reacting, and sometimes things just don't work right.
More soon, pretty please! I need you to put my heart back in!!!
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I can also see how hurt Sherlock is going to be when he realises how serious John is. Although he's being a bit of a prick and should put more effort into caring for his children, he's not very good at picking up on emotional signals. Because John has stayed silent, he believes everything has been fine.
I feel for both of them in a way.
I can't wait for the next part!!!!!!! :D
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---
It was near midnight on the crossover between Monday and Tuesday, and John was lying on his sister’s guest bed and crying about what he had done. Silently, of course, with his hand over his mouth to make absolutely sure. Hamish was asleep on the bed beside him, flat on his back on his favourite blanket with Harry’s orient-patterned duvet pulled over him. The room had blinds instead of curtains, and every now and then a car rolled past outside and cast bars of headlight across the ceiling.
John closed his eyes and tried to stop thinking. He couldn’t. He had lost that ability during his years with Sherlock Holmes, like he lost any chance of being a surgeon when the bullet dug deep through bone and snapped the subclavian artery like a pin through a water balloon. He was fifty-one years old now and he felt worn as stone steps. Had all the changes in his life been nothing but losses, here and there? Like chipping a sculpture out of the rock? His hair was going grey, his never-impressive height was dwindling, he had forgotten half of the medical training he received in his twenties.
Hamish snuffled in his sleep. No, it hadn’t always been losses. He had three children. He had learned how to burp a baby and all the scientific names of the dinosaurs. He could pick a lock like a champ, too, and was once given a pair of curly silver cufflinks by a woman whose husband was stabbed in their bed while she was at a conference (John was the one who promised her that Sherlock Holmes would solve the case, so somehow she gave John credit for it when Lestrade arrested a jealous neighbour).
Sherlock had rung twice in the taxi. John ignored the buzzing of his phone. Then had come the messages: “WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS - SH” and “YOU’RE NOT BEING FAIR - SH” and “I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT I’VE DONE - SH”. Incensed, John switched the phone off and stuffed it deep into the pocket of the travelling case.
Perhaps Sherlock was right. Perhaps John should have talked to him before he left, spelled out his grievances and given Sherlock a chance to defend himself. The problem was that if they were going to solve this by talking, John felt that Sherlock was at rather an unfair advantage. Sherlock was better at talking.
If John had stayed, he knew, Sherlock would have talked him around and then nothing would have changed.
Harry had let him in without hesitation, but a wee bit of a chiding. She lived alone (“Never getting married again, I swear,” she’d told John when she dropped into Baker St last Christmas, “Oh falling in love, sure, I can’t help doing that on occasion. But no way am I ever sharing my life with someone else, not again.”) But she was cheerful whenever John saw her. In the rusty-voiced, spray-haired, ripped-stockings way that Harry expressed cheer. Her clothes had cruised towards the professional over the years but had never been tasteful, and her salary had grown to a comfortable threshold that bought the house on Dollis Hill and all the luxuries a single lady desired. She always told John she was on the wagon still, but without meeting his eyes. He in turn told himself, ’She’s a big girl, she doesn’t appreciate me nagging’ and left it at that.
“I knew this would happen,” Harry said, marching around her orange-lino kitchen in a hot pink, satin dressing gown, making him a coffee from the retro-style grinder that must have cost a fortune even though he’d said he didn’t want any caffeine this late. “He’s such an arse, that man. And a face like your cum was lemon juice.”
“Don’t, Harry,” John said, massaging his temples. He would have added not in front of Hamish but last time he’d made that request, Geoff and Murray had come back from a trip with Auntie Harry with a nine new ways to say fellatio. “It’s too early for bitching.”
“It’s never too early for bitching, that’s something you never learned,” Harry plonked the unwanted coffee down in front of him, tightened the belt of her dressing gown and sat down in the closest chair.
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“I’m trained to shoot people for a living,” John frowned.
“But do you? No. You run around after Sherlock-Fucking-Holmes, doing Sherlock-Fucking-Holmes’ washing and raising Sherlock-Fucking-Homes’ sons and I’m bloody glad you’ve finally had enough of it.”
“Sherlock fucking,” Hamish said from the armchair in the corner (it was shaped like a giant V-sign, Harry had hung a large paper tongue between the first two fingers). He stuck his hand in his mouth and smiled at John, who felt too tired and beaten-down to scold him.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyeballs until he saw stars. “I think I’d better just go to bed and get some sleep, Harry.”
“Course. Oh, this coffee was stupid of me, wasn’t it,” she picked up John’s cup, eyed it and then began to drink it. She got up and waved her finger. “I forgot, no caffeine for breastfeeding fathers,” she belted out a laugh that made John’s head throb.
“I never-“ oh, screw it, he wasn’t rising to her bait.
“I’ll rustle up some sheets for the guest room. Do you want flannelette? I bought them but I decided I hate them,” she picked up Hamish and held him above her head. “Do you like flannelette, Hammy? Do you? Oh, who’s my favourite nephew, you are,” Hamish giggled hysterically as she whirled him around and headed down the corridor without waiting for John’s answer.
He wanted to tell her to stop getting Hamish excited or he’d never go to sleep, but instead he put his arms on the table and rested his head on them. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was Sherlock.
And now he was lying awake and it was still all he could see. Sherlock mixing cocoa in their kitchen, brooding over the sight of London out the window while the spoon went clink-clink-clink around the rim of the mug. Sherlock’s face when he held Hamish for the first time, a face John had seen only twice before but each time was the most beautiful expression in the world. Sherlock in the bath, his elbows over the edge and a smirk on his face as John discarded his shirt and stuck his hand under the bubbles to the elbow, leaning down to kiss him. Sherlock pacing, furious because the school won’t put Geoffrey two years ahead, and refusing to calm down until John snatch his sleeve as he passes and tells him Geoffrey has friends in his class he will miss. Sherlock with buckshot in his ribs as a gift from the brother of that bastard he put away in ’08, bleeding onto the street and John wasn’t there because John is always at home with the boys, John didn’t even find out until an hour later when Lestrade finally called from the hospital. Sherlock in an incredibly well-cut, dove-grey suit, putting aside his sibling feud long enough to play Mycroft’s best man when his brother finally convinced his assistant to make him an honest man. Sherlock teaching Murray calculus, both of them lying on their stomachs with their shoes off and their ankles crossed behind them.
Sherlock going down on John on that rickety bed they kept meaning to replace. Sherlock telling Geoffrey not to listen to John because John wasn’t as clever as Daddy, the fucking sod. Sherlock promising John that when he went to Vegas one day to count cards he would bring back millions of American dollars in a suitcase and they would have a dozen more children and live in a mansion in Chelsea. Sherlock staring into the newly-stocked fridge and not taking back that word. Bore, Geoffrey could no doubt provide alternative meanings, ’to pierce‘ or ’to drill‘ and even ’Past tense: to support or endure’ and oh yes, John fitted that one to a tee. But that word was like a puncture in John’s lung with his hopes rushing out with the air, like a thousand holes in the foundations of Baker St until it crumbled beneath their feet.
John rolled onto his side and stared at Harry’s wallpaper, and tried to think wallpapery thoughts until he went to sleep.
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On the one hand, I feel like if you're unhappy and your life is unfulfilling you need to tell your partner and make changes as opposed to expecting your partner to read your mind. But I also feel like John is a helicopter parent who kind of needs a wake up call - if your 10 year old can't be left alone for an hour (and doesn't have the sense to microwave water for oatmeal or put some jam on toast) you need to step back and think about why your children have no life skills. (I'm aware that there are a lot of parents who disagree with me on this last point.)
But, on the other hand, it's Sherlock. A man like that isn't going to raise normal children, isn't going to respect social norms (much less teach his children to respect him) and he'd be a difficult partner.
Torn.
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So don't worry, I'm very aware that there are straightforward solutions to some of John and Sherlock's problems here, and I intend to address that by the end.
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LMAO! XD
I think it's easy to look at anyone's life from the outside and start backseat driving. But most of our decisions aren't rational at the time, so why be ashamed of past mistakes?
I hope if you're not all happy with your situation, things get better one way or another :) if it helps, when I was at a low point last year, a friend happened to link me to this Simon Amstell sketch and that really boosted me (a warning that he does mock religion a tiny bit).
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