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“Some people are like tumbleweeds—go where the wind shoves them.
Money might not buy happiness, but it sure helps with an escape route.”
Strength and vitality were lost on the young. They simply didn’t know what to do with it. They charged through doors and stuck people with knives and chased creatures with silver-tipped arrows, and at the end of it all, they didn’t learn a damned thing. Not one thing. Give all that strength and vitality to someone with intelligence and experience? Well. Now you had something.
If you’re not happy, figure out why and change it.”
“While you were paralyzed with fear, your happiness suffered. That’s a call to courage if I ever heard one.”
“Young people should have an off switch until they can prove they have something to give back to society,” I said.
“I’m crazy?” I asked. “You started it! You started it, and I plan on finishing it. That’s just responsible fighting. That’s what a mother does, finishes things. Then tidies up. Trash can, unmarked grave, whatever. Garbage goes where I put it, and that’s that.”
“What do you think it does to future men when you teach boys that being weak is being a pussy? Pussy meaning female, obviously. Or yelling at men who are doing poorly that they’re being girls? Or ladies? Had enough, ladies?” I squinted one eye at him. It was all my brain could muster for a glare. “Men are teaching boys that they are equivalent to ladies, to girls, when they’re at their worst. At their absolute weakest. And you wonder why we’re from different planets? You wonder why men so often disrespect women?”
I wanted to feel…normal. Accepted. But the truth was, I didn’t feel accepted. I didn’t feel acknowledged for my service in raising the next generation, for my active role in the community, or even for being human sometimes. I felt utterly ignored. I felt invisible or, worse, frowned upon. Most of the time, when I looked in the mirror, I saw only my flaws. I saw all the things that advertisements and social media said was wrong with me. I wanted to focus on what was right about this version of myself, like the way I’d learned to take life a little slower and enjoy each moment. Like my
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Raise your voice until you are heard. Look however you want, be whoever you want, and demand people pay attention to you. Stop taking what you’re given, and demand the space in life you want.”
“I think all kids secretly hope there’s some magic curling through reality,” I mused. “That if we look hard enough, one day we’ll find it. I haven’t ever grown out of that. And I did find it, in books mostly, as I said. In daydreams.”
Stop being ignored. Raise your voice until you are heard. Look however you want—be whoever you want—and demand people pay attention to you.
“You’re in the magical world, now. Things here aren’t daisies.”
