"If it's not happy, it isn't the end".
That's bullshit. It's not true for everyone. Sometimes it's just a random day when you get shot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Innocents die in wars that they did not want. Good people die protecting others. Not everyone is the main character that gets the happy ending. Some are the side characters that die, to give meaning to the main character's life. Where is their happy ending? Why does the girl, who has not even turned 18, have to die? Why do children who haven't known this place for long have to die? How do you live in a world so unfair?
3 notes
·
View notes
it is the first snow today. i think we should all have off work, even though it didn't stick. i think there should be 4 national holidays, one for each season. happy first snow, go home and make cookies. for spring it can be the first crocus. for summer the first lightning bug. for autumn, the first golden leaf. go home, kiss your dog, feed your cat (who is absolutely already-fed but somehow still starving.)
i think we should all take more showers together, but i mean that in the soft way. i mean it like taking a nap. two years ago i had 5 adult friends in my queen bed, all of us laying across each other, head over belly over thigh over hand. any time one of us would giggle, it would ripple over each of us, like pulling on a spiderweb. kim actually needed to nap and didn't get to sleep and i am still sorry for it even though this is one of my most precious memories.
i think we should all wash each other's hair, i mean. i walk my dog and i watch someone put up twinkle lights around their front porch. alex and i just moved, and i love the neighborhood. already so many of our new neighbors have stopped by to say hello. the nice lady downstairs also collects plants, like me. she gave us her number on a pink post-it note. i am trying to decide whether to make her cookies or brownies.
i am going through a very hard time. something bad happened this weekend that i do not wish to discuss. it is hanging over me. i think of the green ribbon, and the woman who had her throat cut. it feels like that sometimes, inside of my body. like i am walking and talking despite being half-corpsed. like i am hanging on by a ribbon, standing on some kind of cusp. i keep saying - at least it wasn't worse. we are so lucky it wasn't worse. the idea is river-rock smooth now, all the edges worried off.
in this very dark night - the sun sets by 3 now - people don't need to, but they try anyway. they paint the missing light into things. i have an embarrassing number of missed calls and texts, but i feel the love from them nevertheless - hey. if you need something, i'm here. i will bring you food/puzzles/anything. i got you.
i think we should all have a big group chat where we do errands with strangers. this week i got lost in a home depot, which is wild because i'm a lesbian and we are actually hatched in a lowe's lumber section. there were two other women in the whole store. we ended up shopping together, at first by accident (we all needed things in the same aisle), and then because, well, why not. one of the ladies was taller than me, so she pulled down the screws i needed. i am agile and have the personality of a raccoon, so they sent me after anything below 3 feet. we talked about holiday plans and never learned each other's names, but did learn all the drama about each other's families.
i am making you cupcakes, because i have so much affection i want to pour it into batter. you ask me if i am eating enough per meal. i wrap your gift twice, trying to do it prettily. i get excited to give it to you, just because i hope you'll be excited too.
my parents drive an hour just to see the new apartment and to do the parent thing; standing in the kitchen saying things like "oh you'll get so much use from this dishwasher" and "well, you could paint that" and "when your mother and i moved it was uphill both ways and in a snowstorm and of course your brother was an infant." my mother brought me a plant for housewarming. i always say i love you before she leaves.
i play dnd on tuesdays still, after all these years. we all keep that night free. at one point, between grad school and marriage and all of it, we had to have a serious discussion about how to keep it running. we will keep going, we decided eventually. just to see each other, even if we don't play - you are all important to me. sebastian is not prone to affection but last night he stole my usual sign off - i love you all, be good, he said. he was laughing.
i don't love the winter, actually. i like snow in theory, but i grew up in the north, and am too-familiar with the season of "mud and sludge". i don't like being cold. but i do love something kind of soft and rare: every year around this time, people remember oh yes. you and i are human together. and i have love to spare.
it is the first snow, and something in my heart is finally warm again. i have spent what felt like the last 18 months just going-through-the-motions. it has felt blank and immediate, like i would never actually feel again. that sounds extremely trite and stupid - but that is the boring and familiar experience of depression. life just washes up against your windows, and you watch it happening. you see things that should be lovely and affecting, and it just whispers too-thin. i was desperately uncreative. uninterested in my hobbies. unimpressed by my writing. i told my therapist, often, i don't know how to find hope again.
almost sheepishly, something strange and lovely is burning in my chest. i keep not-looking at it, worried it will scamper back into the shadows again. it is skittish and wild, but it is so warm i want to sink my hands into its fur and feel it breathing. i love-hate it: if it's real, it can hurt me when it leaves again. but i am icarus-born, sun-lover and poet: i can't help myself. despite my best intentions, i am falling in love with life again.
i am planning to make cookies for my friends. alex and i are going to go christmas tree shopping. we picked out matching dish towels last night, and they have little mushrooms on them.
i love you. it does come back. yes, even after a long time. even for you. i promise. keep trying. you will wake up and it will be a day you can smile about.
write me when you get there. we will take the day off of work, and i will wash your hair, and we will both be laughing.
4K notes
·
View notes
@neilimfinejosten said coffee shop au last month so you’ll never guess what I’ve been thinking about
A few thoughts under the cut!
Andrew works at a coffee shop in a college town, so far with all the foxes except Aaron, and Neil’s been far away on the run. I’ve been putting Robin in this one and I bet Seth hangs around the shop for Allison. Aaron will pick up a shift or two but mostly he’s focusing on school.
Anyway one day in a cold winter a new guy comes into the shop looking to warm up, and Andrew just happens to be working the register (rare). It’s hard to tell with the mask, but this guy doesn’t seem to be much older than him or the team, and Andrew can catch glances of bandages and band-aids under his clothes.
He becomes a regular through winter, but none of the baristas can decide on his name because he gives a different one every time he comes in.
1K notes
·
View notes
The importance given to beauty is weird. It is almost like women need to be pretty. If someone does not have conventionally attractive features, people will still be like, 'oh she is beautiful in her own way' which means no matter what a woman needs to be beautiful. This level of importance is not given to intelligence, education, smartness or creativity. Nobody says 'oh don't believe what others are saying, I know you are creative." It would be wonderful if people actually made these characteristics mandatory but instead all a woman needs to be is pretty. There is no harm in that but it's just that it is a very superficial yardstick of measuring a person's worth.
557 notes
·
View notes
One thing that was very interesting to me in this episode is the way Eddie was just... not joking about Buck's love interests.
That stuck out.
Usually when Eddie talks to Buck about his love interests, it's with an edge of fond exasperation, teasing laced around his gently delivered truths, but there was none of that this episode. Buck told Eddie he went to see Natalia and it was like something switched. Eddie's entire affect changed when Buck started talking about Natalia. He went from being loose and easy (as loose and easy as one can get when standing at a grave) to being... not combative, necessarily, but visibly actively not wanting to engage in conversation about her either, and it's not...
It's not even jealousy!! We joke a lot about Eddie and jealousy, but it wasn't that at all. It was a fatigue that comes with silence, that comes with holding your tongue, that comes with keeping secrets. Especially when Buck said that he feels like Natalia sees him. That look Eddie gave him immediately after? That was pure hurt. That was him saying I see you too, I've always seen you. But he can't say that. He can't say that, because to say that would be to say so many other things about the way he sees Buck, and to say so many other things would mean to have to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth about the ONE thing he's been holding onto ever since he was shot.
I don't know. I don't know, but I think Eddie taking Buck on a date and I think about how Eddie left his son—his heart—in Buck's care so they could bake cookies together (which becomes profoundly more significant in an episode where Christopher was talking about baking smores with his mom), and I think about Kenny saying Ryan has been doing some very nuanced work in the back half of this season, I'm like
Oh. Oh. I see it, thank you. Loud and clear.
650 notes
·
View notes