#yes I actually took busted out my Bible and and took a picture of that quote | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ohthatbunnygirl · 7 years

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Cheers Darlin’

A Reylo drabble about a bitter wedding toast inspired by @krystellbarraza , Damien Rice, and the joy of thinking about Rey saying Kylo Ren with a thick Southern accent,

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“Is there anybody else who’d like to toast the happy couple?”

A sudden hush descended upon the joy in the room when the man in black stepped up to the microphone.

Scooching up to the front of their seats, the wide-eyed crowd gawked at him. Panicking in silence, but giddy to witness what sort of hell he’d raise since everybody in the room knew who he was. After all, you don’t date the small town preacher’s daughter for five years without gaining some notice- especially if you happen to come from a long line of deadbeat Solos.

And Kylo Ren might have been the worst of the bunch.

All throughout his teenage years, the mechanic’s son ran the town ragged. Blowing through cars and girls faster than they could fix up again, and troubling everybody with his disarming smile. Some of even the most pious of church ladies gossiped that a flash of that famed toothy, dimpled grin could make one forget a lot of suffering, but he’d remind you soon enough. Yes, destruction had been the handsome boy’s specialty, patience never one of his attributes, and no matter how much he promised to avoid it, he couldn’t help but find trouble.

That’s why whenever he left town there wasn’t much of a parade of mourning.

It was good riddance and goodbye.

Heck, hardly anyone brought Kylo Ren up after a year, but there he stood where he was least desired.

Dark hair slicked back, tux sharp, and amber eyes intently fixed on the flushed bride who clutched her champagne glass as if she’d wield it as a weapon at any moment. Fuming at him, growing feistier by the moment. Knowing him well enough that she could already tell he’d ignore the startled fury lighting up her glare. Already distracted away from her new husband, she looked downright murderous as her old beau’s lip hitched up at the corner.

“My dear Rey,” Kylo began, staring only at her.“I apologize that my words will not be eloquent in comparison to what’s already been said about you and him. Although, Lord knows that I can’t speak flowery enough for what you deserve, and he likely wouldn’t consider it proper to hear what I could say about your apparent beloved. That’s why I’ll keep it brief, honest.”

“It’s no secret that there’s not a lot in the Bible that I agree with,” Kylo continued, shifting his smirk towards the table full of gasping old biddies that had run his family’s name down for years while conveniently forgetting about forgiveness. “I’ve never had much use for it, or it for me, but a girl once told me that ‘love is patient, love is kind’. Isn’t that just lovely? Yeah, that statement was a kind of peace that I’d actually started to accept before she proved how fickle her patience truly was.”

As his glass raised higher, Kylo’s smile dropped entirely. “She also quoted that ‘love does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.’"

“Man would that have been nice,” Kylo’s heavy sigh trailed into a mirthless chuckle. “But to be honest, our love sampled from all of the above on our worst days. I could be a proud son of a bitch, and she could be a right pig in the mud when it came to recording all my wrongs… Some might even say that we possessed a talent for easily angering, but lovin’ each other don’t come easily when you’re oil and water trying your best to stay yourselves while others don’t want you to mix. Some days we took it out on each other, but I’ll be damned if my love isn’t envious today.”

When Kylo’s gaze briefly shifted to the groom, Rey blanched.

“Now hold on, I think you need to stop right there-” the groom demanded, but Kylo held up a dismissive hand as he stubbornly pushed forward.

“The last thing she told me is that ‘love does not delight in evil but rejoices with truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres’. That’s what my former love use to claim on the days when we felt like everybody was against us. The days when we could only find joy with each other- and that’s why I thought I’d rejoice in the truth today.”

Sucking down a steadying inhale flared Kylo’s nostrils. A year’s worth of holding back his feelings falling apart then and there as he gifted Rey with the most bitterly tender smile in front of folks who’d always delighted in his failings. “Well, I always protected. I always trusted, and up until I saw her go up that aisle, I always hoped.”

Inclining his head towards the less than happy couple, Kylo drawled, “So cheers darlin’. May your new love remain a happy man so long as he only believes half of your promises.”

Before Rey could bolt out of her seat to throttle her ex, he’d turned around and left. Leaving nothing behind but scandalized murmurs that followed Rey’s quickened steps as she cut a path down the center of the tree covered reception. Simmering with indignation, only half realizing that she’d shook off her groom’s hold on her arm as all she could focus on was having her say.

Outside of the twinkling light lit barn, Rey kicked off her heels. Choosing to run on foot to catch up. Forgetting about rules of propriety when Kylo had the nerve to throw a leg around his motorcycle after wrecking her good enough dreams.

“How dare you!” she screamed, repeatedly smacking his arm. “How dare you come here, you ass! What in the hell is the matter with you? How dare you show up and say those things to me after not calling for a year!”

Silently taking the hits, Kylo offered up no apologies. He wasn’t sorry. He’d do it again and again if it meant shaking a lick of sense into the girl who looked more upset about him leaving than about consoling the man whose ring jammed into Kylo’s bicep.

“Why?” Rey sobbed, furiously shaking her head as mascara tears streaked down her cheeks. “Why did you do this?”

“You told me you’d wait.”

Five words had never been spoken more simply, but they knocked the fight right out of Rey. Dropping her fists to her side, she stammered, “I-I did wait.”

“Not long enough,”Kylo hissed, tossing down his helmet. “While I was busting my ass, you were courtin’ someone else! Hell, did you have him saving up for that house on Mulberry Street too?” he snapped, eyes flashing as he pictured it. “Did you also tell him that you wouldn’t accept his proposal if he couldn’t show you physical proof of his commitment? That you’d never loved anybody more, but that he had to be more first?”

Smearing a hand down her face, Rey lashed out. “You left!”

“I left to make enough money to buy your confidence in me!”

Staring up into his pained expression broke her more than any cutting words ever could. This was the cheeky boy next door who’d snuck wildflowers into her bedroom. This was the awed teen who’d whispered encouragements as he took her for the first time in tall summer grass. This was the grown man with sharp features tensed and feral, but so heartbreakingly beautiful at the same time. Dropping her gaze down to her shaking hands, Rey sorted through all the excuses that had never quite settled into her stomach. Clutching for strands of anything rational to explain all her rash actions after he’d left that lead to her standing outside in her wedding dress in front of the first person who’d asked. “I’m sorry. I-I didn’t hear from you. You didn’t email. You didn’t call. You just said that you’d come back, and I thought that you’d moved on. N-nobody else heard from you, I couldn’t get out of bed after crying myself dry every day, and folks started saying that you must have found someone else-”

Gritting his teeth, Kylo raked his hand through his hair. “I never realized that our bond stopped existing when you couldn’t see me!”

“It was a year-”

“A year that I spent on a damn boat earning money to buy you this.” Kylo swept a contemptuous stare down her rhinestone and lace littered body. “Christ, do you even see what you’re wearing? You look like every girl that we hate.”

For the first time since she’d laid eyes on him again, Rey laughed. Startled into a new emotion with Kylo yet again to blame, hating that he wasn’t entirely wrong. Only a fourth of July sparkler twinkled more than her gown, and as Rey gnawed on her lower lip, she hesitantly glanced over her shoulder towards the mess left behind.

“It was a gift from him.”

“Then I’m sure of it now- he doesn’t know you at all.” Kylo sneered, but instead of stalking away, his arm banded around her waist. Dragging her close enough that his rushed words fell heated upon her lips, “See my girl didn’t care for looking like some Hollywood manicured princess. She didn’t need all the bells and whistles; she didn’t want ‘em if it meant that she’d have more money to spend on scrap metal for sculpting. No, all my annoying, creative girl ever wanted was a house where she could grow things in the back with a garage to tinker around in. Someplace calm after the stress of her parents breathing down her neck- a cozy loved up place to be happy and naked while sucking at cooking. That was my girl. A girl that didn’t need baubles to outshine the whole damn town, that’s you, Rey.”

The fire that he kicked up inside of her smoldered after his words. It was everything she needed to hear and all of it one day too late. It was all the future she’d once dreamed about, but her present called out her name in the distance.

“Maybe you don’t know me anymore,” she murmured.

“Well, I know that I may be the atheist, but you’re the one who suffered from a lack of faith.”

“Kylo-”

Stroking a calloused thumb along her jaw, he tipped her chin up. “And I know that you haven’t pushed me away.”

Instead of fighting his accusation, Rey gave in. Sealing their lips together with a gasping apology, startling him with a kiss that she didn’t deserve, but she couldn’t stop taking. Slipping her tongue between the seam of his lips, she silently begged him to return- to claim her back. Waiting for the longest second of her life before his eyes closed and his anger made way for passion. Holding her close, he met her intensity. Sparking alive every synapse in her body that was second nature in him to rile up, and Rey couldn’t have hated herself any more for convincing herself that he’d ever leave.

Not when he kissed her like this.

Curling her bare toes into the grass with every touch, and even as he took her breath away, she felt like she could inhale for the first time in months. Feeling whole and happy enough to regret the delusions that lead to her wearing a diamond choker around her throat that felt so impossibly heavy.

Pulling back, Rey sighed against his lips, “I’m already cheatin’, and I just got married.”

“Well, I already dated the good girl,” Kylo chuckled, roguishly tugging her lip.”Bout time I guess that I had a go with the new town trollop.”

“Kylo!”

Trailing his affections lower down her neck, he breathed her in. Luxuriating in the honeysuckle scent that had kept him company on rough nights. Underneath all the frills was the only sweetness that had ever mattered to him, and his chest squeezed when he pictured letting her walk away in order to be proper. “Tell me that you love me.”

Tipping back her head, Rey stared up at the stars. Watching the bursting white pulses as his mouth raced hers. “I never stopped,” she whispered.

“Tell me that you’re mine.”

“I’m married…”

Gently biting down on her shoulder, Kylo breathed out against the freckled skin he’d dreamed about, “Did the preacher sign the marriage license yet?”

“No,” Rey shivered, her lips fluttering. “I don’t think so.”

“Then you’re not married.”

“Kylo-”

Snapping his head up, he kept it simple. “Do you want to be married to him?”

“No,” she softly admitted, her insides twisting up into too many knots to count as it hurt to feel how far off the path she’d wandered. “But, can you ever forgive me?”

Up until that point, it was enough to be with her. To stare down into her luminous hazel eyes and fall right back into loving her- adoring her impetuous faults and all. But with an uncertain shake of his head, Kylo Ren released her.

Can I forgive her?

Watching the love of his life so easily walk away from him, and towards somebody else, wasn’t an image he’d likely forget anytime soon. Even if she tasted like home, there was a part of him that occasionally bought into all the talk that he’d never be good enough for anyone. Sometimes the negativity won, and Rey feared that was the case when that gorgeous face that she’d known as well as her own tightened with emotions.

After watching her go down that aisle, Rey accepted that he’d be well within his rights to wound her back. While his love had kept its value, her love had bargained. All the happiness that they should have shared flickered in front of Rey’s fears as he picked up his helmet from the ground, but a sliver of sunlight cracked through the darkness when he handed it over to her with a wink.

“How about you hop on the bike, come back to the motel, and we’ll find creative ways for you to make it up to me.”

#reylo #drabble #southern fried reylo #uninvited guest better pay for that champagne #thought i'd say that he deserves a cake slice or at least a little bit of rey's sweet cobbler ;)

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amyddaniels · 4 years

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On Being Badass—with Elizabeth Gilbert and Jen Pastiloff

Bestselling authors Elizabeth Gilbert and Jennifer Pastiloff have joined forces to bring enchantment and serious self-care to the women who need it most. Here, they teach us what it means to embrace creativity for embodied living beyond fear.

There’s a secret to making friends in adulthood, says author Elizabeth Gilbert—yes, of Eat Pray Love fame—and it doesn’t have to involve cocktails. The trick? Create something together. And bonus points if that something is also good for humanity or the planet. After all, it’s how her friendship with author Jennifer Pastiloff went from online to IRL.

Gilbert and Pastiloff have plenty of practice in this realm: Gilbert’s creativity bible Big Magic (2015) has made her something of an authority in the sphere, spawning speaking engagements and workshops in which the curious flock to find a little magic of their own. Pastiloff, meanwhile, has long been leading retreats and workshops to get people to lighten up and love themselves—a theme that culminated with the release of her memoir, On Being Human, last year.

See also The Unexpected Ways Yoga Stimulates Creative Thinking

After Gilbert and Pastiloff met online, following each other and messaging over Instagram, the women bonded over their “passion to be of service and being really big dorks,” Pastiloff says. Out of those conversations, their workshop series On Being Magic was born. These one-day creativity and personal development sessions for women bring to life the wisdom inside each of their books—and are completely free of charge. With just one On Being Magic workshop under their belt (the second, scheduled for April, was canceled due to COVID-19 at press time), the project is still in its infancy, ever-evolving—and best put into words by the makers in chief themselves.

How did the idea to combine your superpowers come up?

Elizabeth Gilbert: It came from Jen and I becoming friends and wanting to make something together. When we started having the conversation about it, I said, “I want to do something, but I want it to be free. I want the people who come to this to be the kinds of people who don’t typically get to go to yoga or art retreats.” We really wanted to take care of women who are struggling, or take care of the women who take care of women who are struggling—people at organizations doing work for women’s issues. Our goal is to give people a day where they are pampered and loved and seen. We tell them at the beginning, “You don’t even have to do anything. If you don’t want to do any yoga or introspective work, you can just take one of these yoga mats and lie in the corner and sleep for the entire day. We’ll bring your lunch at noon. You’re tired. You’re tired, and we want to help you, and we want to love you up.”

See also 5 Poses to Boost Creativity

Jennifer Pastiloff: Yes. The idea was to get a group of women and non-gender-conforming humans and provide them with a safe space to write and explore and move their bodies and share and listen—what I call “dorking it out.” We dance, and we sing, and we laugh, and we cry. It really is magic and vulnerable and intimate, even with 150 people. It inherently breeds creativity. And I think what really helps is that Liz and I are both so honest and open about ourselves that other people feel they can be that way too.

Elizabeth Gilbert and Jennifer Pastiloff

Creativity as a concept is so remarkably vast. How do you even start to define it?

JP: It’s hard for me to put it into words, because when you just asked, I wanted to get up and dance. I was like, “Wait, let me do it with my body!” Because to me, it’s about being awake and inspired. For a while, I was really getting in my own way. We all do that, right? I thought to myself: “Just make something. Make art. Write something. Make a cup of coffee.” This idea helps me feel alive. Because the truth is, it’s always within us. I think that’s what it means to be connected to Spirit. Now I’ll do my creative dance.

See also A 45-Minute Playlist to Revitalize Your Creative Spirit

EG: There’s an openness and a vulnerability to creativity as well. I recently posted on Instagram a picture of my stack of journals from last year. Then there were a million questions. Sometimes the questions people give me on Instagram make me want to weep. They were like, “How do you do it?” “What’s your system?” “Which kind of pens do you use?” I was like, “Oh my God, you guys, it’s a blank page! You get to do whatever you want with it!” But we cannot stop looking for the rules. We cannot stop wanting a tyrant to come around and tell us what we have to do in order to be OK. So instead of saying that, I opened up my journals and took some pictures of random pages. I put them on social media so that people could see what they look like because it's a mishmash: shopping lists, drawings, prayers, collage, other people's poetry. It’s a real creative gumbo on every page.

How do you tap into your own muse?

EG: I think that a good trick is to go back and figure out what you liked to do when you were eight and nine years old. Before we discovered sex and substances in our teens, most of us, we had other ways of feeling good, and they tended to be instinctively creative. If you’re like most humans, you were already anxious, because most of us grew up in imperfect families in an imperfect culture. Children create things to settle their nerves. My sister and I spent our entire childhood drawing and writing and putting on plays and making up stories. That’s what I do now to calm myself down. So let’s say that your dream is to be a great novelist, but when you were eight, the thing that settled you was coloring. Start coloring. It’ll lead you to your novel. Trust me. It’s like as soon as your neural pathways just go into that ease, the ideas will have an opportunity to come up. So do a different creative thing than the big dream if the big dream seems to be out of reach.

See also “How Yoga Helped Me Write a Novel—& Land My First Book Deal”

JP: When I feel like I’m the most uncreative human in the world, I stop and I look around for the five most beautiful things I can see in that moment. I call it Beauty Hunting. No matter where I am, I stop and look. I try to do it every hour. The more you begin to look around and pay attention—I mean, that’s all being creative is, right? We all have that divine creative spirit. We have to pay attention to notice it.

Why do so many people have a hard time believing they’re creative?

EG: I don’t have a tormented relationship with creativity, and I never have—and that makes me a unicorn. I’ve had a tormented relationship with everything else. Every single other thing that you can have a relationship with is complicated for me, except this. And I don’t know why I was given this clarity that says that this does not have to be a path of suffering. It’s a gift. Creativity itself is a gift of love for you. It loves you, and it wants to play with you, and it wants to communicate with you, and it wants you to be happy, and it will make you happy. We live in a culture that fetishizes the dark aspect of creativity and loves the story of the artist dying for their work. I never experienced it that way in my bones, and [with Big Magic] I wanted to show people what I know, what I just know in my sternum to be true, which is that torment is not the intended purpose of this relationship between humans and inspiration.

See also 12 Yoga Poses to Spark Creativity

JP: It comes back to what I call the Just-A-Box in On Being Human. We think we have to fit inside a box, all the corners neatly tucked in. Just a mom. Just a waitress. Just a yoga teacher. Just an accountant. We think we can’t spill out into the miraculous and often unknown Something Else, because who are we to be different? To bust out of the Just-A-Box?

We are what we repeat, and so many of us stop being playful once we are adults. We struggle with believing it’s inside of us because we forget. So we must do whatever we need to in order to remember who we really are. We stop repeating what brings us joy because someone, somewhere, told us we weren’t very good at that thing. As someone who has struggled with depression since early childhood, I used to think I had to be in the throes of heartbreak or depression to create something meaningful. Now that I’m on antidepressants—although I do have rare days where I think I have zero creative bones in my body and I should just watch Netflix all day (and sometimes I do)—I also realize that all we need to be creative is to create. Being creative does not mean being the best or even good. It means doing it. Make things and art and love and hugs and coffee. Small things. Big things. Things that can’t be called things or don’t fit inside the box. Create magic. Create it all.

Behind the Scenes: The Creativity Issue (; 0:18)

Both books, Big Magic and On Being Human, talk about living beyond fear. How does one take the first step?

JP: I realize the more honest statement for me is that I’m fearless-ish. I don't think I’ve ever been fearless. Instead, I’m afraid and I do it anyway. I was scared to come here, and here I am. So for me, when I wake up, I really work on my mantra or prayer—“Today may I not let fear be the boss of me.” A big part of it is acknowledging it and just not letting it be so loud. Just letting it coexist without letting it ruin my life.

See also This Month’s Home Practice: 16 Poses to Spark Inspiration

EG: Here’s the great paradox. You leave it behind by bringing it closer. The closer I bring my fear into the warmth of the center of myself and into the embrace of my love, the quieter it gets. The farther that I push it away, the louder it screams, the more that I want to orphan it, disown it, hate it, punch it, kick it in the ass, show it who’s boss. I mean, that’s all really violent language about something that’s an aspect of myself and that actually belongs to me, was born into me, and is part of my internal family. Right? So I’m really gentle with myself about fear. If I were going to coach somebody on how to get over their fear, the first step is to drop the idea that you’re ever going to get over it. Instead, pull up a chair for it. My fear sits right next to me with every book that I write. I don’t like to keep it far from me. I once heard someone say, “Your trauma is not the wound. Your trauma is the distance between you and the wound.” So when you bring it in, where it can be loved and taken care of, it’s much better than pushing it away, where it’s going to cause you problems. The farther away fear gets, the more trouble it’s going to bring to you.

And remember that everybody’s fear is exactly the same. But everybody’s curiosity is different. That’s what makes you unique. Your fear is the least interesting thing about you, because it’s exactly like mine. Guaranteed. In my workshops, I have people write letters from their fear to themselves, where their fear says what it’s afraid of. People weep as they’re writing it. It’s so vulnerable. And yet, every single one of those letters is exactly the f—ing same. Literally, I could write everybody’s fear letter for them, because there’s just one fear. But then when I have people write letters to themselves from their sense of enchantment, where their sense of enchantment gets to say what it loves, who turns it on, what’s exciting? Those letters just make me weep because every single one of them is completely different. So once you’ve started to follow your enchantment, which is sort of the same thing as your curiosity, you’re going to start to lead a life that doesn’t look like other people’s lives. If you follow your fear, your life will look like a lot of other people’s lives, because it’s just going to be a big no.

Do you ever get imposter syndrome when you are trying to create?

JP: Hi, I’m having it right now. I’m sitting next to someone who sold 13 million books.

EG: I’m having it. I sold 13 million books.