PASSENGER X PRINCESS

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No other story ever has resonated with me as much as PASSENGER x PRINCESS does.

No other fiction character has made me feel as seen as Clover, and no other author has gotten to me as much as Lunaticker.

This game grabbed me by the guts.

DEPERSONALIZATION:DEREALIZATION

Are you actually yourself?
For the longest time, the best way I’ve had to describe this feeling is this:

Imagine you are in a pitch black, empty room. You are sitting down on one of those old, uncomfortable wooden and wicker chairs.

In front of you, at some distance, there is a tiny old CRT screen where you can just about make out what’s happening on it. The screen is also slightly tilted. Some days more than others.

This is your life.

Every day you experience everything through that screen in these conditions. This is you.

All the beauty and ugliness in life gets sort of blurred out. All the pain and pleasure dissolved into and oily mixture that turns black and thick and drowns your soul. Almost nothing quite gets to you.

You are miserable.

You are not able to leave either. You are not able to upgrade your screen. You are not able to even move closer to it. You can just sit down and watch every day/week/year unfold.
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Suddenly one day, while walking home after a party, a girl hits your head so hard she brings down the walls of the dark room, takes you out by the neck and says “Die with me”.

This is bliss.

You are here for the first time. You can feel the chilly air of the night. The moist dirt below you, the warm blood dripping down your skull, the adrenaline rushing through your system.

You aren’t given a choice, but you don’t really need one. How could you refuse? You’ve been waiting for this moment your whole life. For someone to come and save you.

“Does that scare you?” No.

LOTUS TAKES THE WHEEL

Quite literally. Your life is now in her hands.

She might be a mess, a psycho and a sadist. She might be taking you both to certain death, but she is also the first one to see you. To pull you out of that misery room and take a look at the real you. And for that, you owe her everything.
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This woman pledged to end your life but not even for a moment you think of fighting back or running away. Hell, death is a release you’ve long waited for. The thought of impending doom is the sole thing that makes you happy in this world.

She knows better. And the only thing you know is you’ve never been able to take the right choices and make anything good for yourself. That’s why you are miserable. That’s why you should be thanking her. And she reminds you of this.

“YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE ANYTHING. YOU JUST HAVE TO BE MINE”

She helps you embrace who you truly are.

Lotus touches you, uses you and abuses you. She makes you feel like a woman. She even gives you the courage and buys you the clothes you’ve always wanted to wear but have always been too scared to.

A very real, very tangible thing I took from this game, is precisely that. Courage.
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As a transgender woman, these lines hit me like a truck (in the good way).

I, like Clover, am afraid of going out in a skirt. Around 2 years ago was the first and last time I did so; I, again like Clover, went out at night to a club. Alone. On the way there I encountered a group of men that started harassing me. Nothing serious happened and, in the end, I made it safely to the club. But the mood was ruined. For the first time ever I couldn’t get into the music and left shortly after in a taxi.

That was the last time I went out in a skirt. Until I played this game.

“But you half-ass it and it pisses me off.” This line by itself filled me with such strength that shortly after reading the novel I put on the same skirt I did two years ago and went out.

I had a great time.

I am tired of half-assing it and I won’t do it anymore to accommodate the sensibilities of a society that despises me, what I am, and everything I stand for no matter what I do.

THE EXCLUSION ZONE

After having what is easy to think as the best night in all of Clover’s life in that motel room, comes the great paradox.

You are happier than ever.

In this toxic and abusive relationship, you have found feelings, sensations and colors you never thought were real from within the dark room you were in not long ago.

The very relationship that’s brought you happiness is going to destroy your life once and for all, but now you are too dependent on it and losing it is the single biggest fear in your mind.

In the game, you reach the exclusion zone, some unexplainable stuff happens and Lotus and Clover blow up as planned.
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Except it doesn’t happen like that.

At the last moment, Clover jumps away from the bomb, and the explosion only gets Lotus.

After the events, Clover’s self mixes with Lotus’ and they both get to live happily as one in this surreal and altered reality.

As surreal as it might seem though, this reality is not too dissimilar to my own experience.

GETTING BETTER

I’ve been in this relationship. Arguably more than once.

I’ve given myself the value of an earth worm. I’ve been picked up by someone that wasn’t quite right in the head either, and I’ve been used and abused into misery and happiness.

I’ve followed the whole thing through and I’ve seen my Lotus blow up brutally turning into human paste.

Everyone that passes through your life, especially Lotus, leaves a mark. A little bit of themselves becomes you, and you become more like them.

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This is the question you get asked at the beginning of the game.

Yes, I’m happy.

After all I’ve been through and against all odds, I’ve reached a state of well being and relative normalcy that, for the longest time, didn’t seem possible even in dreams.

I’m currently living with my wife, which for the first time is someone who actually cares about me and proves it every day and is the best thing to ever happen to me.
She’s also the person I’m looking forward the most to read this post. I love you.

I have an okay job that I only hate at times.

Life’s not perfect, but I treasure it and I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

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If you’ve seen yourself in this game and have lost all hope, know this:

It takes work but It does get better. And it’s better than you could’ve ever imagined.

For real, don’t kill yourself.

Thank you.

Signs You Are in a Toxic Relationship and Don’t Know It

Most people who are in a toxic relationship do not know it. That is not stupidity. That is just how it works.

The signs do not announce themselves. They creep in slowly, so gradually that by the time you notice something is wrong, you have already normalized things that would have horrified the version of you from three years ago.

I have been there. Men who spent years in relationships that were quietly destroying them while they told themselves everything was fine. Here is what to actually look for.

You Walk on Eggshells Without Realizing It

One of the clearest signs of a toxic relationship is this: you have stopped saying what you actually think. Not because you do not have opinions. But because you have learned, through trial and error, that certain things you say will trigger a reaction that is not worth dealing with.

So you edit yourself. You filter before you speak. You think about how what you are about to say will land before you say it. You have become, without ever consciously deciding to, a person who manages another person’s emotions at the expense of your own honesty.

That is not a relationship. That is a performance.

Everything Somehow Becomes Your Fault

In a healthy relationship, both people take responsibility for their part in conflicts. In a toxic one, accountability is one-sided. When something goes wrong, the narrative always finds a way back to something you did, something you said, something you should have known, something you failed to do.

Over time, this erodes your sense of reality. You start genuinely believing you are the problem. You apologize for things that are not your fault. You spend enormous energy trying to be better, more understanding, more patient, while the other person never examines their own behaviour at all.

This is one of the most insidious things a toxic relationship does. It does not just hurt you. It makes you doubt your own perception of what is happening.

You Feel Drained After Time Together

Pay attention to how you feel after spending time with your partner. Not during, after. Do you feel energized, connected, like yourself? Or do you feel exhausted, anxious, vaguely unsettled in a way you cannot quite name?

The people in our lives should generally leave us feeling better than they found us. Not every time, life is complicated and everyone has hard days. But as a general pattern, the relationship should be a source of something good in your life, not something you need to recover from.

If you feel relieved when your partner is not around, that is information worth taking seriously.

Your World Has Gotten Smaller

Toxic relationships are often quietly isolating. It does not usually look like someone forbidding you from seeing your friends. It looks like their mood being bad every time you make plans without them. It looks like the argument that happens when you spend time with your family. It looks like subtle digs at the people you care about until you start seeing them less, just to keep the peace.

Look back over the past year. Are you closer to the people who matter to you or further away? Has your world expanded or contracted? Isolation is not always imposed. Sometimes you do it to yourself, one compromise at a time, because it is easier than the alternative.

You Do Not Recognize Yourself Anymore

This one is the hardest to see until you are out of it. But many people who leave toxic relationships say the same thing: they got out and realized how much of themselves they had given up. The interests they had quietly dropped. The parts of their personality they had suppressed. The ambitions they had set aside.

A good relationship should make you more of who you are, not less. If you feel like a diminished version of yourself, smaller, less confident, less certain about your own value, that is not a relationship problem. That is a you problem that the relationship created.

What to Do If You Recognize These Signs

First: do not panic. Recognizing the pattern is actually the most important step. Most people stay confused for years because they keep trying to make sense of specific incidents rather than stepping back and seeing the overall pattern.

Second: talk to someone outside the relationship. Not to trash your partner, but to get a reality check from someone who can see what you cannot. Isolation is a feature of toxic relationships, which means you probably have not talked honestly with anyone about what is actually going on.

Third: start paying attention to what you want. Not what you want for the relationship. What do you want for your life? What kind of person do you want to be? Toxic relationships work by making your entire focus the relationship itself, and you forget to ask whether this is even the life you chose.

You are allowed to want something better. And better exists.

Recognizing the signs is one thing. Knowing what to do next is another. Download the free guide, The 7 Things No One Tells Men About Starting Over, and get clarity on the path forward. Get the free guide here.

How to Leave a Toxic Relationship When You Have Kids

The kids are the reason most men stay too long.

Not because they are using the kids as an excuse. But because they genuinely, desperately do not want to hurt them. They do not want to be the person who broke the family apart. They do not want their children to grow up in a split household, to spend weekends shuttling between two homes, to have parents who cannot be in the same room without the temperature dropping.

So they stay. And staying means the kids grow up watching something else entirely: a relationship built on tension, on managed silences, on two people performing a version of okayness that everyone in the house can see through.

Here is the thing nobody says clearly enough: your kids are not protected by you staying in a toxic relationship. They are damaged by it.

What Your Kids Are Actually Learning

Children learn what relationships look like by watching the one in front of them. If what they are watching is two people who are unhappy, who communicate through tension or silence or conflict, who clearly do not like each other very much — that becomes their template for what love looks like.

Research on this is consistent: children who grow up in high-conflict households, even intact ones, show worse outcomes than children whose parents separated but went on to have calm, cooperative co-parenting relationships.

Staying for the kids only makes sense if staying actually makes things better for the kids. In a toxic relationship, it usually does not.

Getting Clear Before You Move

Before anything practical, you need to be genuinely certain about what you are dealing with. Not every difficult relationship is toxic. Not every hard patch is grounds for leaving. If there is a chance things could meaningfully improve, through honest conversation, through couples counselling, through some real change on both sides, that is worth exploring first.

But if the pattern is consistent, if you have tried and it has not changed, if you recognize the signs — the control, the criticism, the erosion of who you are, then getting clear that this is what it is matters. Because you will need that clarity in the months ahead when it gets hard and doubt creeps in.

The Practical Steps

Get legal advice before you say anything. Know your rights, know the likely custody arrangements, and understand the financial picture before the conversation happens. This is not about being aggressive. It is about not making decisions from a position of complete uncertainty.

Plan your housing situation. Where will you go? Where will the kids go? Having a clear answer to this before you have the conversation removes some of the chaos from what is already going to be a chaotic period.

Tell the kids age-appropriately and together if possible. Simple, honest, not blaming either parent. “Mum and Dad have decided we are going to live in separate homes. You are loved by both of us and that will never change.” That is the message. Keep it that message.

Commit to co-parenting well from day one. The standard of your co-parenting relationship is set early. How you communicate in the first weeks after separation tends to become the pattern. Start as you mean to go on.

What Your Kids Need From You Now

They need stability. Routine. To know both parents still love them and that the separation was not their fault. They need to see you doing okay, not performing happiness, but genuinely functioning.

They do not need you to martyr yourself to a relationship that is making everyone miserable. They need you to model what it looks like to make a hard decision, handle it with integrity, and build something better.

That is a more valuable thing to teach them than anything you could do by staying.

Trying to figure out your next move while keeping your kids okay through it? I work with men who are in exactly this situation. Book a free 30-minute call and let’s talk it through.

Nice talk of Sammy Obeid, math comic!
How true that US and Isr@el have a toxic relationship!🤦

https://youtu.be/6kEuC72EEF8?si=ivnc7vOM-vgljte-

#satire
#USpolitics
#toxicrelationship