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It’s simply everywhere, gritty beachfront glitter that never truly leaves—only finds someplace else to hide. I’ll be discovering sand between my toes until the day I die, and after that it will pool in the corners of my coffin.
hence why I couldn't live in a coastal town lol
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Christy
there are just some lengths I will not go to to survive. If it involves drinking my own bodily fluids or eating my friends, I am not interested.
oh mood
I’m sure I’ll still have moments of panic, because deep down in my soul, I am a panicker. But I am also a grown woman who can identify multiple different kinds of eighteenth-century navigation devices. Plus I’m really good at sudoku, and at paying bills, and my therapist said I was making real progress before I quit on account of the LARPing thing.
Didn’t I just tell myself I was done crying? Didn’t I say that this morning? Get it together, Clementine.
current mood
“I like ugly things. I like to treat them well so that they don’t feel left out.” “I can’t say I understand,” he says, and he looks confused now. “But I suppose I don’t need to.” “No,” I say comfortably, swinging our linked hands back and forth. “You don’t need to.”
Empathy is human. Understanding how others feel is human. But caring about what others feel—” I pause, turning my body to face his, our hands still clasped loosely together in between. “Caring is humane. There’s a difference. It’s not enough to understand how other people feel. You have to care. And when it’s possible—when it’s safe—that care should lead to action. Do you understand?”
and most horrible actions have consequences that can’t be undone with regret. What about those things? What happens to them? Do they just rattle around in our souls, making noise, keeping us awake, long after our knees have grown bloody from kneeling in sorrow? Maybe at some point we simply have to stand up, bloody knees and all, and move forward anyway—step after step after step with our rattling souls, until time dulls the painful edges like glass tumbled smooth in the ocean.
I’m trying to act normal. Failing, but definitely trying. And what does normal mean, anyway? I have lots of different kinds of normal. I have anxious normal and grumpy normal and happy normal and tired normal. Aren’t we all multifaceted, prisms that shine different colors depending on where the light hits?
“Yes,” Flossie says, her voice grim. “That blabbermouth Beatrice—” “You’re friends with Beatrice,” Clementine reminds her. “She can be a blabbermouth and still be my friend,” Flossie says with a sniff. “At my age you can’t afford to be picky. Everyone else is dead.”
So fragile, so human, but so strong. And in that moment, the briefest flash of understanding hits me. They’re magical, these humans, because they have no magic to use. Everything they do, they create themselves; they rise themselves, they shatter themselves, and they have nothing to fall back on. They don’t use magic only when they really need it, like I was trying to do. They are their own magic.
My month here has been bright and shining and devastatingly precious. How do humans manage all these feelings—wonder and unfurling joy, fear of loss shadowed beneath? Every time the heart makes space for something beautiful, it also makes space for the loss of that beauty. How do humans carry such weight?
“I’m allowed to prefer a quiet life!” I say loudly. “Yes, you are!” they say together, their voices matching mine. “I’m allowed to be brave in little ways instead of saving the world all the time!” “Yes, you are!” And finally, the crowning achievement of my realization: “I”—I stomp my foot—“am allowed”—another foot stomp, because I can’t help it—“to be boring!” They cheer, and I love them for it. “Yes, you are! You’re not boring,” Sophie adds as an aside. “But you could be if you wanted to!” Willa shouts.
HUZZAH
