Ophelia After All

by Racquel Marie

Dad vigorously seasons the food behind her back.

THATS TRUE LOVE RIGHT HERE

denim shorts with daisies embroidered on the cuffs and a lacy white tank top.

OPHELIA A IS SO CUTEEEE

Like, they’re a huge symbol of romance, and a contradictory cliché because they’re seen as a special sign of affection but also as this overrated capitalist representation of love.

Write a per on this

Basically, I’m seventeen with no license and the inability to cook anything more advanced than a quesadilla, so it’s a nice change of pace to know that without me, they would die. So I spend three long hours every Sunday feeling needed by something beautiful. I don’t think that’s so strange.

Im relating too hard over here

“But sometimes, when you’ve known someone for years and they build up this image of you, it’s hard to talk about things that mess with that image. It feels like you’d be breaking some bond of trust between you and that person by being different than you were before. I don’t just mean subtle, slow changes. I mean, like, the big things that they never saw coming.”

Mostly, I want to ask if it was worth it. If that small moment between her and a girl who she shared beds and rings and nightmares with was worth losing the version of herself that her family had in mind from the time she was young, to let who she really was breathe for a minute or two.

What happens when you tell the girls who trust and love you that you realized you sometimes look at them the way they expect boys to? Does everything—every borrowed lipstick and shared dressing room and innocent cheek kiss—become suspect, corrupted by some illusion of straightness?

“Not necessarily. It’s not that we like the pain of not having something; it’s more that the act of wanting gives us more satisfaction than the actual thing ever will. Less masochistic and more like we’re all Goldilocks, getting off on constantly searching for the perfect whatever. But we’ll never find it.”

I don’t want to be defined right now, especially not by a plastic tiara that’ll probably have fucking seahorses on it.”

“It means those who love are always waiting. Waiting to be seen, waiting to be understood. Waiting to be loved back.” She sighs. “‘The lover is the one who waits.’”

Waiting for someone to love you back seems beautiful in a miserable way when you’re young. No offense.” She smiles. “But a life spent waiting is not a life spent loving. It’s a life spent wasting away on the promise of something you’re not guaranteed.”

“Liking one girl and countless boys doesn’t make you less queer than if it were half and half. Or if you liked countless girls and a couple of nonbinary people, or people of all kinds of genders in any assortment of percentages,”

That is the legacy I want for you, not to be the girl who loves too much, but to be the girl who is loved more than enough.”