hi! your blog is one of my favourites and i absolutely adore reading your thoughts. my grandfather recently passed away and it feels like i lost myself with him. how do i continue living after this? there is this constant weight on my chest and it feels like an emptiness has made a home inside of me. how do i go on when it feels like the world crashed on my shoulders?
hello, love! this is so very sweet and kind of you, and i hope you're treating yourself gently and kindly right now - there aren't words for a loss like this. that heaviness is difficult, and hard, and painful. it's okay if things don't feel okay, right now, or even soon - i think that's something that a lot of the people i know that have gone through similar grief feel: like they should be able to get back to a relative 'normal' in a [insert far too short period of time].
but it's okay if it hurts. that's where i'd like to start. you're allowed to feel that emptiness, that world-crashed feeling that goes beyond words, beyond time. don't feel like you have to rush this to feel some sort of better. things get easier with time, i promise you this, but sometimes painful feelings are important to feel, too. cry, scream, feel your emotions. they're a part of you. grieve.
it's perhaps a little silly, but when i think about death i always think about a couple of space songs: mainly drops of jupiter by train and saturn by sleeping at last. there are perhaps others that speak to the emotions better, but these two have always hit something a little deeper for me, and are popular for a wide-reaching reason.
and while personally i don't know much about grief like this, i do know a lot about love; and i think they're a lot of the same thing.
the people we love are a part of us, and this is why it takes from us so deeply when we lose them, because it does feel like we've lost a part of ourselves in the wake of it. but it's because they were so central to our experiences of living - our lives, that the separation introduces a hollowness - a place where they used to be. a home that now goes unlived in.
an emptiness, like you said.
but just because they're not here physically, doesn't mean he's not still there, in your heart, in your life, your memory. you can hold him close in smaller ways, as well: steal a sweater, or cologne/scent for something a little more physical and long lasting for remembering. hold onto the memories you cherish, the things that made you laugh, the ease of slow mornings and gentle nights. write them all down, slide a few photographs in there, go through it and add more when you miss him. keep them all close, keep them in your heart.
you're not alone, in this. he's still there, with you, it's just - in the little things.
he's with you in the way you see and go about your daily life, in doing what he liked to do, in the ways he interacted with the world that you shared with him. the memories you recall fondly when the night is late or the moment is right and something calls it into you like a melody, an old bell, laughter you'd recognize anywhere.
but i think, perhaps most importantly above all others - talk about him. with your family, your friends, his friends, strangers; stories are how we keep the people we love alive. the connections they've made, the legacies and experiences they've left behind, and so, so many stories.
how lucky, we are - to love so much it takes a piece of us when they go. grief is the other side of the coin, but it does not mean our love goes away. it lives in you. it lives in everyone who knew him, in the smallest pieces of our lives.
the people we love never really leave us, like this: they're in how we cook and the way we fold our newspapers, our laundry, in the radio stations we tune in to and the way we decorate our walls, our photo albums. they're in the way we store our mail, organize our closets, the scribbled notes in the indexes of our books. the meals we love and the drinks we mix, the way we spend time with one another. they've been passed down for generations, for longer than history - and we are all the luckier for it.
think about what you shared with him, and do it intentionally. bring him into your life, like this, again. whether it's crosswords or poetry or sports or anything else. if one doesn't help, try another. something might click.
i hope things feel a little easier for you, as they tend to do only with time. i hope you find joy in your grief, even if it is small and hard to grasp at first. know that your hurt stems from so much love that there isn't a place to put it properly, and that it is something so meaningful and hurting poets and storytellers have been struggling to put it into words and sounds that feel like the fit right for eons, and that it is also just simply yours. sometimes things don't have to make sense. sometimes they just are - unable to be put into words or neat little sentiments, as unfair and tragic as they come.
but i promise it will not feel like this forever. your love is real. and perhaps, on where to begin on from here - i think it's less on finding where to begin and just beginning. and you've already started. you've taken the most important and crucial step: the first one.
wherever you go, after that, from here? you'll figure it out. you always have, and you always do. it'll come, as things always do. love leads us, as does light - and you're never alone in your hurt. in your grief, your missing something dear to you. i think if you talk about it with others, you'll find they have ways of helping you cope as well - and they have so much love of their own to spare, too.
as an aside, here is the song (northern star by dom fera) i was listening to when i wrote this, for no other reason more than it makes me think of connections, and love, and how we hold onto the people we love and how they change us, wonderfully and intrinsically. it's a little more joyous than the others i've mentioned, and plays like a story, and it made me think of what is at the core of this, love and stories and i am here with you, and maybe it'll bring you some joy, if you'd like it. wishing you all my love and ease 💛
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Red lips and rosy cheeks (even if it's just in your wildest dreams) [Shuggy fanfic]
I wrote this thing:
But gonna put the plot here anyway:
Shanks doesn’t fight against this odd obsession. Could he call it a kink? Not really, right? It doesn’t have to be sexual. He pretty much thinks it’s not sexual. Has never been. A preference? It’s just a liking. Something he appreciates in somebody. An overwhelming sensation that takes over his body every time he finds someone putting on makeup.
It’s not the makeup itself. It’s not even the act of wearing it. It’s just the process of putting it on. He finds it rather comforting, but it’s not just that. It’s this deep, uncontrollable urge to do something with it. Whether it’s sex, physical affection, or just kind words. He feels the need to hold onto the feeling for a long while and express it in the loudest ways because he can’t keep it inside of his chest. Most of the time he holds back, of course, but fuck if he doesn’t want to scream into the void every time he watches somebody doing this.
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some short lestappen angst with mentally unstable charles (tw: implied suicidal ideation)
i dont know if i want to continue and make it a bigger fic, but im pretty proud of this silly thing so ill just post the little prologue here :)
Charles had hoped that it would get easier. How foolish of him to imagine a reality where it doesn't get harder with every passing day.
Everything is unbearable. Everything makes his skin itch and itch, until he feels like he could rip it off.
More than ever Charles appreciates the kind eyes of Pierre. Wonderful Pierre, who consoles him every night. Holds him gently in his strong arms, rocks him back and forth as if it will soothe the ache.
It all makes him feel like he's five, in the loving embrace of his mother. A scared, pathetically shaken child. It's all Charles feels like these days, a child.
Pierre looks at him with love. Like brothers who had just escaped the dark, dirty jaws of death. His eyes scream ‘I’m glad you're here. With me.’
But Charles does not want to be here. And it feels selfish. To leave Pierre on his own, after everything. Charles doesn't dare to tell him so much.
Because he knows that Pierre wouldn't lie to him. Pierre would grip him tighter against his chest and whisper ‘You’re hurting me.’ His tears would soak the top of Charles' head. He would feel the way Pierre is trembling against him.
He would never forgive himself for hurting Pierre. Hurting the only person who has stayed with him through everything. Through every single night of punching walls and sweeping things off tables. Through every morning when he wakes up with his face swollen from crying, eyelids heavy and puffy. The only comfort – Pierre's arms around him, keeping him from slipping into madness.
But he knows that he's already hurt him. Can see it in the way that Pierre looks at him sadly whenever they pass each other in the paddock with no time to stop.
Pierre knows how much he's hurting inside. He feels it almost like it's his own pain. Has spent way too many nights listening to Charles sob and wail.
He knows that Charles longs for blue eyes and full lips. Yearns for the beautiful face that lights up with a straight-toothed grin at the mention of his cats. How endearing. How utterly stupid of him to wish for the smile to be directed at him.
Pierre shakes his head ‘You are so blind, Calamar.’ Charles cannot see that the much softer, fonder smiles of Max are always directed at him. Some full of worry and anxiousness, always full of longing.
But why would Charles deserve the smiles? What good has he done to be deserving of Max's love? No. It can't be.
Charles is not good enough for Max. If he was, he would be fighting for P1 with him. Wheel to wheel. Now Max is in front. Just like all their lives Max is always in front.
Always faster, always smarter, always better. First to progress, to win, to break records. So much better than Charles.
Sometimes on yet another tear-soaked night, Charles asks Pierre to wrap him up in his arms and briefly tries to imagine that it's Max holding him. But it's so different. Max's chest is wide, measuring by eye, definitely bigger than Pierre's.
Then it hits him again that Pierre is not Max. It's low and disrespectful to use his friend like that. So he focuses on Pierre, his soft breaths and gentle hands. His pure love. Charles loves Pierre. Pierre loves Charles.
But their love is not the same that Charles feels for Max. Not the love that Pierre feels for Yuki.
Pierre feels doomed to watch it all from the sidelines. His heart breaks to see his friend so defeated. If only Charles would listen to him, would look around and think before being so sure. Pierre is worried. So worried that one day soon Charles is not going to be here. All because of this irrational insecurity.
But he watches Max too. Watches the distress storming in his blue eyes when he sees Charles. The change of his posture when he tries to strike up a conversation with Charles. The yearning is not lost on him. Even a blind man could see it.
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