Drustan: You can not fix me.
The army approaching in the distance made of literal strangers and chance meetings that have shown him kindness and are determined.
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something bad happened to you, and you died, and you came back wrong.
not wrong all the way. the little ways. you forget important dates, stopped going out with friends. it's harder to make you smile. you're apathetic towards things you used to love, afraid of places you used to go to cheer up. quieter. flinching. different.
you came back for love. you're still here for love. what pulled you back was a brightness so loud that even death couldn't outshout it. death heard the call and smiled at you and said okay. go home. somebody is waiting for you.
but you came back different. like lot's wife; you've turned into salt. you used to chirp through life in hops and skips; but now you lose skin just standing up. you have to move slower, skimming across this world without-touching-it. most things feel dull - until they're suddenly all-too-much. life, and being alive just rushes up and over you and you get hopelessly crushed.
you try to explain it to them: it is ugly, but this is what you are, now. the huge golden hoop of your halo now a little bronze ring. you are still watering your plants and wearing the same clothes. after all, you worked hard to come home. this life; so odd and off-color, now that you are wrong.
but they waited for you - it's just that they wanted the "you" that happened before this. the "you" that could sing in the show and hug people tight and look at a blade without breaking down to cry. the you with a smile in pictures. god, holyshit, it's like looking at a completely different person, isn't it. that other-you; the one they actually wanted.
you are the consolation prize. you are the body that forgot the ghost. you are the memory of the bad thing, and the death after; like you are wearing that memory as a banner. you are a fragment, an assembly. simulacrum. you don't make eye contact in mirrors, afraid the light will glance off and your true nature will flash back at you.
you hear them talk about it in their hushed, desperate whispers. sometimes they even admit it to your face; harsh and violent, acid thrown at christmas dinner. god, can you just fucking be normal again. you do not remember what normal is. you had to climb so far to get back here; you are far too exhausted. you want to open the glass door of your heart and show all the gears. can you help resolve whatever got messed up?
you try so, so hard. you came back for them. because you believed they would love you, even when you were so horribly broken. because you believed they would be patient. because you believed unconditional meant "without exception." you cannot do things the same way. you just get tired too quickly these days.
you want to put them on a couch and pour them the tea with hands that shake more than they remember. you want to line them up and draw them a map of where you have had to wander. you want to show every bruise in a backsplash; the little helpless ant of your soul carrying all that weight, over and over. you want to say: yes! it is different! but i did it for love!
you want to say: "i'm not the same, but i'm yours and i'm here. can that be enough?"
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For small, frequent doses of serotonin, consider falling in love with specific flora and/or fauna local to you.
Source: I get a brief jolt of happiness every time I see a crow. Every. Time.
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Forgive me for making yet another post about the French Revolution but one small detail that makes me laugh is when, as things started to go seriously wrong, one of Louis XVI's advisers tried to persuade him & Marie-Antoinette to get away from Paris and wait for things to calm down (the idea was "if you lay low and wait, the newly-created National Assembly will vote something stupid and lose popular support" which was a solid plan honestly.) But he was also like "whatever you do, DO NOT go East or South or people will think you'll get help from other monarchies to restore your power and that won't calm things down"
So the King was advised to flee to Normandy, which... is just a short ferry ride away from another monarchy. But that's completely different since it's England. To be fair to the English, the French monarchy had basically bankrupted itself a few years back to send millions in support of the American revolutionaries because it would be a shame not to take advantage of "perhaps the best opportunity for centuries to come to put England in its place" (actual quote by France's minister of Foreign Affairs in 1777)
—still I love the realistic approach of the King's adviser telling him, Sire you can't go near any of our borders rn, it'll escalate the situation, Parisians will know you're trying to get another country to help. Obviously you can go set up camp right across the sea from England though, that's fine since everyone knows the English wouldn't piss on us if we were on fire¹
¹ Perfidious Albion was like "aw no France is in turmoil and possibly weakened :) a shame :)" exactly like France re: them at the start of the US independence war
² they also thought well these backward french are finally following our glorious example and entering civilisation (parliamentary monarchy)
³ and only when the Girondins started being like "let's spread the French Revolution to the whole universe!!! or at least Belgium" did England finally decide "it's been a while since we last declared war on France actually" (but it was too late for Louis XVI)
⁴ That's not how footnotes work sorry. Trying to make my post look fancier
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The thing about TMA is that if I think about Sasha James too much I will cry and if I think about Michael Shelley too much I will cry and if I think about Agnes Montegue too much I will cry and if I think about Jonathan Sims too much I will cry and if I think about Naomi Herne too much I will cry and if I think about Gerry Keay too much I will cry and if I think about Tim Stoker too much I will cry and if I think about Jane Prentiss too much I will cry and if I think about Martin Blackwood too much I will cry and—
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