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#the GRIEF on their faces end me now
khaoray · 2 years
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Do you also believe the Crown Prince was poisoned? No, Your Majesty. I hope that is not the case. That boy gave us so much joy. If it’s because we failed to protect him, it would torment me.
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vehemourn · 13 days
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went to post this on twitter but i didnt wanna get banned . crazy that u can scrape my entire lifes work and i cant even tell u to die over it <3
#im just so ........#grips fists#i feel Helpless#i hate feeling like the people i know are receding further and further Away from art communities and the public because its so#painful right now#to be posting art :(#it just IS.#and to the motherfuckers in Toyhouse doing this like... i cannot stress enough how much if u called me rn i would tell u to die 2 ur face#i just... cant pretend like im Okay with u being anywhere Near the same space as me anymore <3#there are people i Hate on an individual level and#i still want to see them eat. just not at my table#but to everyone who Scrapes Art. I want you to Die <3 ....#you value having pretty little image and serving yourself over the grief of millions of artists#to the point where you break into Our spaces where we trust that we're at least safe from *you* motherfuckers#and take Even More ...#youre fucking#selfish and greedy#truly an embodiment of every fucking sin#unable to fucking Help Yourself ?#imagine if all of these people were like. contributing to society.or. idk. DRAWING#the Waste it generates stresses me out to no fucking end too#like you will literally harm the entire human race for Yourself#i Hate you . I Hate you so Wholly#I hate Everything you are and Everything you have done to me and Everything you have done to my community and my peers#yeah. i want you to Die. The same way i want a politician to die.#no human Deserves death <3 but i still want you to <3#annnyyywaayyyyyss#i wont tag this as my art LMFAO its basically a fucking#vent post#i just HAD to get my feelings out cuz genuinely every time i talk about this with my friends it
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shannonsketches · 1 month
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something something foils moving in opposite directions Goku's always happy to seek and fight stronger opponents because he spent most of his life being the strongest guy in the room and Vegeta wants to be the strongest/is always exhausted to find stronger opponents because he spent most of his life having to navigate his survival around the whims of the strongest guy in the universe room and so Goku has a foundation of safety and stability and so spends his time craving challenge and adventure and Vegeta has a foundation of challenge and adventure and spends his time craving safety and stability and the overlaid section of their venn diagram is that the only way they know how acquire and maintain those things is through battle
#thank you this has been the laziest media analysis post of my career#dbtag#media analysis#something something a game to goku is a threat to vegeta etc#there's a pinned thought here about how Vegeta also didn't learn about the dragon balls until he was ?? 30?? and so all loss is permanent#and goku has been familiar since he was ~12 and hasn't faced a permanent consequence since he was 10 years old and even then he got closure#sometimes I think about how Vegeta saw Trunks die and how Krillin was mad at him for reacting since they could fix it with the dragon balls#but Vegeta has very limited experience with the dragon so to him in that moment that was permanent and Trunks was Dead. Forever.#And we talked before in a 2am post about Vegeta having never experienced grief born of love and I stand by it because his feelings then wer#still very new and very odd and not something he'd accepted until that moment so it was raw power but not as powerful as it could've been#all this to say in my heart of hearts I think Vegeta deserves to retire at the end of super (if super continues) -- not as a warrior#but as an infantryman. he's a prince and now he's got his domain and his family and his planet to look after and I think he deserves#to go home and stay home and help piccolo bully gohan into training more often when goku inevitably leaves to hop the multiverse#geets wanted to take a sabbatical when Bulla was born but didn't get the chance because Freeza coming back freaked him out too much#but whether freeza gets a redemption arc or gets defeated -- Granolah's arc seemed to shift his perspective on being the strongest#and I just grips fist I just think it would be a really nice full circle for Vegeta to inherit his throne in a way he never expected and#finally get his kingdom to look after and protect in the way that he was looking forward to being king of his own planet all those years ag#Goku's got Broly and Jiren and Hit and all the others to keep him busy and happy now -- and if Freeza gets a redemption arc he'll probably#continue playing slap-ass with Goku for the rest of his life -- and Vegeta's got Gohan and Piccolo and Goten and Trunks#I just think them getting a nice bittersweet 'This is where we part ways' would be really nice for both of them because !!#They couldn't have done this without each other. They couldn't have known this kind of life was possible without each other.#So they swap lots and live happier than they ever imagined they could be#especially since Vegeta has proved to himself that he can close any gap Goku creates in progress that's not a concern anymore#And obvs the door's always open!! There's no point closing it Vegeta's tried the locks they don't work on Goku#anyway here's me putting the whole essay in the tags again#this isn't an essay as much as it is stream of consciousness tag blogging#anyway i'm too lazy to write fic or draw comics so we get ramblings instead
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tarantula-hawk-wasp · 3 months
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forcing myself to function through anxiety feels like im piloting an animatronic of myself
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xray-vex · 7 months
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HOW YOUR EMAIL FINDS ME
#literally. re: email from my ex this morning#every day it takes every ounce of mental and emotional strength i have to get my ass out of bed and face the day#today i begin packing to move the fuck out of here#everything fucking hurts and i hate this so much#i'm not feeling brave about any of this#one of the worst things about a breakup is that it damages you for any potential future relationships#in the sense that “how can i ever trust anyone with my heart and my love ever again?”#as if it's not bad enough losing someone you thought would be in your life forever#but the deeply cutting betrayal of finding out that this person you actually trusted with your literal life had led you on FOR YEARS#ESPECIALLY in the sense that this whole scenario is giving me intense flashbacks to the ending of another relationship#that broke me so bad it almost killed me#and it's easy for them to say “i hope you find someone who makes you happy” when they have someone new in their life#if i believed i had prospects for a new romantic relationship then it would be a little easier for me to collect myself & regroup & move on#but i don't think i have it in me to go thru any of this again#and that gives me even more layers of anger and rage and grief#as if it wasn't enough to betray me and break my fucking heart#but it broke me FOR ANY FUTURE LOVE AND HAPPINESS TOO#i know it's not productive for me to think that way#but right now i am fucking drowning in my fucking pain and fucking grief and fucking rage#i wanted stability and love and trust and someone to come home to every night and someone to come home to me every night#i just wanted to love and be loved#i wanted someone who i could call home#I JUST WANTED TO BE LOVED#rage#grief#trauma#edward teach#our flag means death#ofmd
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angorwhosebabyisthis · 8 months
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i think one of the things that upsets me the most about velma and shaggy's relationship in sdmi--and boy there is a lot--is that not only is her constantly ''correcting'' him for minor, harmless, and usually completely reasonable things with physical and emotional abuse, well. abusive by itself. but so many of the things he does that she treats him that way over are very autistic things, and what she subjects him to is textbook abuse aimed at autistics in particular. (including the part where she gets more and more pissed whenever attempts at said emotional abuse fly over his head, because he's too bad at picking up cues for them to land fully.)
[cws: anti-autistic ableism, ABA, self-harm, physical and emotional IPV, victim-blaming, and abuse apologism. it's a lot and it's really fucking bad lmao]
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like. there's a lot of examples there; shaggy's behavior coming across as autistic is worth a whole post of its own, and a lot of media depicts abuse targeted at autistic traits because ✨️hooray ableism.✨️but she straight up tries to Fix Him (read: force him to perform a Presentable Personality) by forcing him to wear clothes that are sensory hell, and trying to condition him to self-harm every time he does some small harmless, reflexive thing she thinks is Poor Socialization until he stops. and to catch himself doing it, and punish himself, without being prompted. i cannot fucking overstate how fucked up that is.
they even got down the fun little aspect of ABA where the methods of conditioning-through-pain are presented as toys and kiddish things: she gives him a rubber band to wear on his wrist, and tells him to snap it as hard as he can every time he says 'like.' 🙃🙃🙃🙃
like. this does not begin to scratch the surface of the abuse she puts him through in general. and again, characters being abused for autistic traits with the approval of the narrative is a common thing in media, which sucks. but holy fucking shit! they really took the 'violent ableism that is done to autistics irl' to the next fucking level here!
.......and it's portrayed as kind of cringey, immature teen drama on both sides. the self-harm, his dread over how much he knows it'll hurt, and the extreme pain it causes him to the point of screaming are all supposed to be funny. and her arc is all about learning to accept that she deserves better, because she was repressed and had low self-esteem and therefore putting him through fucking DIY ABA didn't make her happy.
🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃
anyway if you couldn't tell i can't fucking stand sdmi velma and i have a lot of words in me about it. when one of your main heroes would have made a way more compelling villain as they are, on a more mundane level compared to all the wild fantastical shit they go up against, holy shit go back to the drawing board you have fucked up. she could have been genuinely good representation of a marginalized person dealing with the trauma of her experiences in some shitty ways she has to grow past, and an interesting flawed character, without being absolutely despicable--hell, she'd have made a great foil to pericles if they'd handled him decently too. they have a lot of parallels, which only gain more depth when you add their respective parallels with cassidy into the mix. and it really fucking sucks that we got this instead.
#sdmi#scooby doo mystery incorporated#velma dinkley#shaggy rogers#SDMItag#cws in post#sdmi velma lies at the intersection of A Lot of Hard Feelings for me; in ways both inherent and personal#so she is viscerally upsetting to me in a lot of ways mostly re: framing; and that makes it difficult to analyze her in a sympathetic light#even though i recognize she is very much a depiction of a hurting; traumatized person lashing out in nasty and interesting ways#but the older i get and the more perspective i gain; and the more i unpack and understand about my own experiences#the more important it feels to me to talk about this stuff#i still want to try writing fic sometime about newniverse velma and how she ends up being a non-abusive; less shitty person#without just *being* a completely different person who's All Nice Sweet Sunshine with No Hard Feelings About What She's Been Through#and about the confusion and grief newniverse marcie goes through when one day her loving girlfriend is gone#and in her place is someone who is so much like her and has clearly been through a lot; but is Different in ways that hurt more and more#that marcie keeps trying to justify and make excuses for; and sits in the pot and slowly boils#until she finally has to face that this isn't the girl she fell in love with; that that girl will never come back; that this is velma now#i'm totally not working through anything here lmao#and a nasty; pretentious; controlling; insecure young adult who's up their own ass about Being Super Intellectual and Telling It Like Is#abusing a teenager to make them stop saying 'like' because it's Annoying and What Stupid People Say and Not Gramatically Correct(tm)(tm)(tm#definitely does not hit dead on some very specific 'hi that scarred me for life and i don't think it's particularly fucking funny' buttons!#anyway. protect shaggy and marcie and daphne while we're at it#SDMIcrit tag#the crit files
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quietwingsinthesky · 7 months
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im thinking about clara’s ending, though. like, on a very self-indulgent level, i do enjoy that she gets to live (kind of) and time travel and get an immortal girlfriend to do it with. but on another level, i’m kind of curious… why? given how much emphasis this episode and the last put on how clara herself made her choice and didn’t want the doctor to go through all of this to bring her back, i mean she’s horrified by it, both for his sake but also for the sake of her own memory that was used to bring him to this point. and then, of course, the exchange at the end with Me and the Doctor, “summer can’t last forever” “it can if you have a time machine”, that is so obviously meant to be this desperate, denying plea from the doctor to a universe that can’t care about the time he wants because it doesn’t even have enough for itself to keep living, and an immortal who has all the time in the world and can’t even remember all of it, even remember herself most of the time.
which. it’s just odd, then. that the episode ends with clara getting to have that forever summer. you’d think it goes both ways, not just that the doctor can’t run forever but neither can clara. she says they’ll be going back to gallifrey eventually, but words are a bit cheap against her literally running away with the last second of her life in a time machine. (and uh. given what eventually happens to gallifrey. lol. lmao. girl no one is putting u back there ever.)
i don’t think i’d call this a criticism exactly. just a strange choice to make, that the ending there seems completely at odds with everything else Heaven Sent/Hell Bent have been about. that this grief and denial are so destructive, and to no one more than themselves. but then clara escapes through a loophole anyway.
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insecateur · 11 months
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it's funny bc on the one hand i genuinely don't really care if people dislike me or find me off-putting, but on the other hand i am very well attuned to people disliking me or finding me off-putting, which means i'm constantly in this weird position of like. i can tell you don't like me for whatever reason, and i don't really care that much about it, but also this is kind of making things awkward for everybody else and i wish there was a way to stop it that wasn't just me fucking off somewhere else.
ah well.
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Hozier is so insane for Through Me (The Flood)
Idk about y'all and i feel cheesy for this but i never feared grief or death until i got into a relationship (loved someone so deeply of my own accord) and realized there's grief at the end of the road. One way or another. Even if we stay happily together all our lives, there's grief at the end of the road. Choosing to love someone is signing up for that grief. Realizing that felt like looking into an immeasurable pit - one i hadn't contemplated before. Is love worth it when there's so much grief at the end? That fear has settled in the pit of my stomach and sometimes it makes an appearance to color my days with desperation to soak it all in and remember it and enjoy it. Since marrying him I've experienced other losses that have lent weight to the inevitable ultimate loss. It makes me tremble.
Like that man,
I looked down into the depths when i met you.
I couldn't measure it.
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mechieonu · 9 months
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that part in bounding through time where the song slows and winds down music box style to the very first melody that played when timpani and blumiere first met, & tippi and bleck are @ the altar and when she asks, he says "I love you. Hundreds of thousands of years from now, that fact will not have changed." yeah
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transjohnnycash · 9 months
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Ah. The grieving
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ryeonah · 1 year
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tag dump
#✖plotted starter║with a candle through time i could still see your ghost but i can't close my eyes for it is there where you haunt me most#✖mobile post║& i sat in regret of all the things i've done for all that i've blessed & all that i've wronged#✖psa║a reaper's guarantee of responsibility#✖music║again this evening ancient rain is singing the same ancient song#✖saved║those painful memories are what help us make it to tomorrow & become stronger#✖wishlist║you don't have to be a ghost here amongst the living#✖open starter║how can i blame the cherry blossoms for rejecting this floating world & drifting away as the wind calls them?#✖dash games║i liked the bittersweet taste of danger touching my lips#✖dash commentary║so how do i apologize & put the tears back in your eyes?#✖meta║the glass of my intentions turns to sand & shatters in my hand#✖character study║the last person I have to save is me & in the end we are the only ones who can save ourselves#✖headcanon║death & i have been scandalously intimate for some time now#✖hae dae-soo║there’s a black bird perched outside my window he burns me with his eyes of gold to embers he sees all my sins he reads my sou#✖gop-dan║others may forget you but i am haunted by your beautiful ghost#✖the jade emperor║there was something beautiful & tragic in the way that she waged war#✖lim ryung-gu║i know the pain that you hide behind the smile on your face#✖park joong-gil║solace lies in the ritual of remembering the dead & yet he cannot find solace in his rotted ribcage made of anger & grief#✖choi joon-woong║does it make me unique to hold hands with the grim reaper rather than go to the angel?#✖koo ryeon║how many nights does it take to count the stars? that's the time it would take to fix my heart
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bilal-salah0 · 2 months
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Our lives before the genocide were not perfect, to say the least, but we were happy and hopeful. Our dreams were and are still bigger than the walls, barbed wire, and tanks surrounding us but today we find ourselves in a situation where hope keeps being dimmed by constant humiliation and unprecedented injustice. The adults in my family are barely holding on.
They're doing their best but what is our children's fault? What did they do to deserve such unbearable suffering at a very young age? When will this nightmare end? Will I be able to see them all someday safe, sound, happy and thriving like all children should? Such cruel neverending questions keep haunting me night and day. What we seek, above all, is not only to live in safety but also with dignity which is a basic human right we have always been denied.
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whenever I see Omar and Salah's pictures in our beautiful home that was leveled to the ground, I can't help but compare them to the state they're in now; struggling to survive in a flimsy, airless makeshift tent surrounded by rubble, all sorts of disease-carrying insects, the stench of sewage floods and garbage, and the smell of death everywhere only made worse by the sweltering summer heat. The newborns' and the children's innocent faces amidst such misery won't leave my thoughts. They fill me with grief and rage because of how helpless I am. Seeing the kids smile and hold their heads up high, despite all the suffering and fear their little hearts have to go through every single day, is pure torture. Their childhood games have been replaced by waiting in long lines for food and water and carrying containers, sometimes heavier than their fargile malnourished bodies. Most of their playgrounds, kindergartens and schools have been reduced to dust and rubble, and the ones left are still being bombed allowing them no respite or refuge from
the horrors of the war.
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For almost ten months now, our little angels have been enduring hardships beyond their years; ripped from the safety and warmth of their home and everything they knew and loved and forced into a life of pain and peril where only the unknown awaits them. Your support is our only ray of hope amidst such a dire and bleak situation. My family and especially our children need you now more than ever as the airstrikes, starvation, and water and health crises are only intensifying and we are being further humiliated and annihilated. I never wanted it to come to this. I used to think I could handle everything myself but I truly have no choice but to ask for help now. Please help me protect my family and bring them closer to the life of safety and dignity they deserve as all humans do, wherever they are.
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Verify by :
@nabulsi @el-shab-hussein
‏The fundraiser has been vetted here, Line 132
‏My campaing
‼️‏Nearly 80% Funded ‼️
‏Please continue to donate and share to save my family's life
‏Even if it's just $1, or just one reblog, all of these small actions add up to make a huge difference in my family's life
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islamgazaaccount3 · 1 month
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Islam Al-Najjar I hesitated and delayed for a long time in writing these words and creating an account on GoFundMe, but the need has become very urgent because of what I see of the approaching death of myself and my family. I insisted on detailing and explaining more and more about my family in order to show you the whole picture and for you to know the extent of my suffering and need.
To begin our story, it is important for me to know my family, which is the core of my existence and the source of my strength during these difficult times: We are a family of six people who have been suffering for more than 10 months from a brutal war that does not spare people or stones.
We were living quietly in our wonderful and humble house with trees and nature around us. However, the war destroyed everything and we have nothing left. Unfortunately, we are still searching for a suitable shelter to continue living
A picture of our house before and after the war
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Mother: The heart of our home My mother
embodies generosity and kindness as a devoted housewife, and always gives priority to the well-being of her family. My mother was a school teacher who did what she had to produce an educated generation. She is now unable to continue her work due to the war
Father: Pillar of strength My father, Marwan, faced the real pain of being the first responsible for protecting us, but there is no protection in light of this war. He lost more than 35 kilograms due to grief, oppression, and lack of food.
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This is a picture of my family- my mother, father and sisters
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The only brother: Aser My brother Aser, an engineer, graduated from the university a few days before the war and was not happy about his graduation because the war ended his dreams that he had and was in the process of building. He cannot work now because of the war.
My picture with my brother Aser
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As for myself,
I am Islam As for me, the eldest of my sisters, I was on the cusp of a new beginning after I finished university, majoring in physical therapy. I obtained an honors degree, as a 27-year-old person looking forward to independence and work to continue my career in physical therapy. After I graduated from university, I worked specifically to help people with disabilities who needed a physical therapist, and I had the tools in the picture before you. The war came and destroyed all of these tools. It not only destroyed my professional dreams, it destroyed my home, which I was trying to beautify. The war consumed everything I had collected. I saved it from my work. I dreamed of traveling abroad and developing myself in the field of physical therapy, but unfortunately this has not happened yet.
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This is my picture before and after the war
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This is my grandfather. He was injured by the occupation many years ago and is still suffering from this injury. We are taking care of him because he cannot carry out his duties alone.
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Now we hope to escape death, we hope the war will end, we hope to leave the Gaza Strip to continue our lives in all calm and peace, we hope to live a decent life away from bombing, occupation and destruction.
Today, my family and I are suffering from a lack of medicine, food, and health care. We are losing a lot of weight due to the lack of food. Everything here is expensive and we cannot buy it. Other than that, we are now homeless and without a place to shelter us. Insects are everywhere and rodents are too. This is very terrible.
The cost of rebuilding the house requires ,It costs a lotand the eviction fees are expensive, especially since I do not have any source of income. Once we are able to evacuate, your donations will cover the construction of our home,  our travel expenses and help us get immediate support Within the GoFoundMe link are details of expenses there will be meal expenses, wardrobe expenses, emergency expenses, etc., but no generous contribution will go to waste.
Those who have the authority to add my family names to the list for travel abroad are asking for astronomical amounts per person! They will not add names until we can prove that we have the funds ready
I ask for your help because this is not only my battle alone, but a battle in which we ask for your help in order to survive and preserve my families. Any donation, big or small, will make a huge impact on my life and the lives of my family. I am grateful to everyone who donated, and I will forever be grateful for giving me and my family hope and the opportunity to survive and build a better future.
Thanks for reading my story. To share my story with your friends and family. I hope there will be a ceasefire, and we can get the comfort and security we deserve to build our lives again. My hope is in all of you, without exception, who can help me with all of this
Thank you for reading what I wrote with my mind, and thank you again for your support and participation
This campaign is verified by people, and the link is here
here
here
here
here
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blackpearlblast · 10 months
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[ID: drawings of a golem animated by a palestinian flag painted on its forehead. it is seen: holding out its arms protectively in front of a crowd of children, the children also hold each other supportively; catching an air strike missile from the air and throwing it away or crushing it in its fist; turning its back so that a child can warm her hands by the earth oven built into its back, food in a pot is cooking on the fire and a boy holds a cup of steaming tea to his face and enjoys the aroma; clearing away rubble so a man can help up his wife who was buried underneath, she is clutching a baby to her chest; stooping down to look at a kitten a young boy is holding up to show it; and dissolving small flakes of clay from its finger into a glass of water, purifying it. end ID]
@fairuzfan asked people to create and share art for the strike. i wrote an artist statement and then set about trying to draw what i envisioned. artist statement below.
This golem is a protector that I wish I could gift to the children and adults in Gaza. The flag on its forehead is to show that love for the Palestinian people is an animating force for people fighting for a free Palestine all over the world, especially for those in Palestine who are trying to free themselves and their people. Love is the motivation for the call for a free Palestine, not hatred like people try to claim. It is very strong and fast and can catch air strikes out of midair and crush them to dust or throw them back in the direction they came from. It can lift all the rubble of a collapsed building very quickly so nobody can get trapped underneath. It has an earth oven in its back with an ever-burning flame that people can use to warm themselves and cook food and heat water to use to bathe themselves or make tea. Pieces of its clay can be crumbled up and mixed into water to make even the most brackish and unclean water pure and safe to drink.
The golem is always a bit of a tragic figure so I don't imagine it staying around forever once Palestine is free and it is no longer needed. I think it would use its great strength to help rebuild the destroyed houses, churches, schools, universities, hospitals, and mosques and then dive into the Jordan river and dissolve. It would clean the river of all pollution and make the water splash up over all the newly replanted fruit trees, causing them to grow big and strong. Its love for Palestine and its people can be tasted in the fruit they grow for generations.
I choose a specifically Jewish icon of protection because of how it feels to witness such horrors done in the supposed name of Judaism and the Jewish people. For many anti-zionist Jews, we feel like we are acting directly within the teachings of our stories and communities by opposing this genocide. It is difficult to understand how the very people and institutions who taught us these values now fight against them so fiercely. While obviously I would still oppose Israel were I not Jewish, the way I oppose Israel is directly informed by my Jewishness. I hope that someday, somehow, Judaism can bring as much joy and support to the Palestinian people as it has brought grief and destruction. That Jewish symbols used in the name of love and justice will bear more significance than the ones used in shows of hatred. Knowing the depth of the harm caused, I do not know if this is possible. But this artwork and everything I have dedicated myself to these past few months and continue to dedicate myself to in the future is born from this hope. I love you. Thank you for being on this planet with me. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! And it will be beautiful.
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foldingfittedsheets · 4 months
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My paternal grandmother was a librarian. I only got to see that set of grandparents once a year as they lived out of state. I fondly remember summers spent at their house watching That Darn Cat and The King and I on loop, hunting for water skippers in the back creek, and reading the entirety of the Peanuts comics.
Because my grandma was a librarian she was delighted to foster my love of reading. We made trips to the library every week. One summer when I was seven or so I got really into this kids series about princesses all named after gemstones, each had a unique magic power.
At the end of each book was a puzzle or some extra bit of lore to decode. All of them were easily copied down in some way. Until I got to Sapphire’s book. At the end of the story Princess Sapphire was in peril! She needed a hero to come save her from a terrible fate. And there, on the last page, was a decoder device. It needed to be cut out and assembled.
I had to help save the Princess!!! In the iron grip of a fever of imagination I immediately found scissors and started carefully cutting the page. The page warned only to use scissors with an adult present and I scoffed to think I needed supervision just for scissors! I was a hero!Her plight called to me from the pages, imaginings of how I would daringly rescue the beautiful sweet Princess Sapphire ran through my little brain-
And about halfway up the page toward my goal I froze. This was a library book. I couldn’t cut a library book! What was I doing?! Even now in my memory it stands as a glaring example of the first time I mastered impulse control. Tragically, too late.
I was distraught. My grandma had a sacred duty to books and I, villain that I was, had defiled a precious tome! I wallowed for some time in abject misery, experiencing the greatest amount of guilt my tiny body had ever previously held. I’d probably go to jail. For a crime as monumental as wielding scissors against a book I wouldn’t even get dessert in jail.
Gradually, I processed my way through the grief of my vile deeds. I couldn’t have the decoder, I slowly accepted. That might be punishment enough. And I had only cut the page halfway. So it was only half a crime... It wasn’t illegal to lie when you’d aborted an evil act, right?
I didn’t know but I didn’t want to face my grandma’s potential wrath. I have no memory of my grandma ever yelling at me. I waited until the next day to approach her.
“Grandma? I finished my book and when I got to the end I saw someone had cut the page! They probably wanted the decoder because I also want that but it was very bad to cut a book, wasn’t it?”
My grandma regarded me benignly. She carefully took the book to observe it and nodded. “It’s good to see that they stopped before they cut it all the way out. Let’s go tape this together, and then I can photocopy the page and we can make you a decoder.”
I was ecstatic. Rewarded for my honesty! I created and cracked codes for the rest of summer with the flimsy paper creation we’d made. I genuinely doubt my grandma believed that I wasn’t the perpetrator, but I loved that she acknowledged that the person responsible stopped.
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