Here you can praise the light, having so little of it: it's the death you carry in you, red and captured, that makes the world shine for you as it never did before. This is how you learn prayer. LOVE IS CHOOSING, the snake said. The kingdom of god is within you because you ate it.
☼
I don’t remember when it happened. I don’t even remember how.
I don’t think that there was a moment where I thought, all at once, that I was tired of – all of this. If anything, it was closer to a collection of moments, a cycle of one thing after another, one jabbing pain shifted into another into another. I carried ghosts. (I still do.) I couldn’t think of anything but all the ways I’d failed, and all the ways that I was failing in thinking so constantly of failure; and nothing much seemed to matter, but everything mattered too much. He brought me so low that there was nothing left to abandon or to save, you know? Him and him and him and him and him…
I couldn’t think of anything but that. When the children came – I still do not like to think of how I came to have them -, I told myself that I would live for him. I told myself that I would persist because I had to, because they needed me. (I have always been best at that. I have lived my life for Solterra, after all; nothing but Solterra, nothing.) And I would jolt into waking almost every night (and I think that I still do), and I would learn not to wake them, and I would do my best to love them, even though I could have sworn that I’d forgotten how to, or that I’d never loved anything the right way before, genuinely. I wanted to die. (Sometimes I think that I still do. Sometimes it is irrational, the smallest thing, and then I will find myself spiraling again, before I remind myself that I am being foolish, and terrible.) I don’t want to feel that way forever. I want to sleep through entire nights, and I want to love something without a single obligation to do it, and I want to remember what it means to be happy. I don’t think that I’ve felt that way in a very, very long time.
I wanted it for obligation, first. I wanted it when I saw the sun gleam off all the bits of Diana that are gold, when Ambrose first pressed himself into my side the day he was born. I wanted it because I wanted the best for them, and I know that I am not the best that they could have. I still want that for them; I still want to be better for them.
I would like to be better for myself, too. I think that I have finally realized that living for the dead is a useless endeavor; I do not think that it means anything to them, though I know that I cannot forgive myself. Still. I want to be better.
I do not look at him, but I listen. I listen when he speaks of becoming something else, and I listen to him when he says that he should have died, that he would rather have died. I listen to him, and I swallow a sigh like the ocean wind, and I listen and listen without saying a single word.
I wonder how much of my life I spent feeling the same way.
I don’t want to be her anymore. I don’t want to be like that anymore, or ever again – and I think that the one relief of all of this, of my disappearing, of the slipping away, of my death, of the crown fallen from my head, is that I don’t have to be her any longer. I don’t belong to anyone anymore. I can choose.
I do not know him. I do not even know his name.
I take a deep breath of the sea, and I roll my words over in my mouth. I am not sure that they are what he will want to hear. (I do not know if I would have wanted to hear them, when I was brought so low.) Still – I am trying, I am trying to be honest, and it would feel wrong to try to speak to him superficially.
“No,” I decide, finally, my voice low and quiet over the rushing lull of the waves, “you shouldn’t have died. I felt the same way for a…long time, but there is no such thing as should have died – you either live or you die. There is nothing else but that.” I could tell him what happened to me. I could tell him how my death was unworthy, how it made way for a monster, how I nearly died unburned and forgotten; I could tell him of my shame, and I could tell him how it ached, but I don’t want to make any part of this about me.
“I won’t tell you that you survived for a reason. I don’t believe in things like fate anymore – not in higher purpose, not that we suffer as a part of a greater plan. But I do know that we choose what we do with every terrible thing. What matters is the choosing.” I look at him again, finally, raising my chin in some quiet mimic of the dignity I used to maintain as a queen. I used to beg for my pain to feel like it had purpose, for there to be some reason why I suffered and why so many people suffered because of me.
I think that I know better now.
I am still looking at him – right in the eyes - when I say, “You’ve changed. Maybe you’ve even changed for the worse…but you still choose what you become.”
@Vercingtorix || <3 || atwood, "quattrocento"
Speech || Ereshkigal
☼
I don’t remember when it happened. I don’t even remember how.
I don’t think that there was a moment where I thought, all at once, that I was tired of – all of this. If anything, it was closer to a collection of moments, a cycle of one thing after another, one jabbing pain shifted into another into another. I carried ghosts. (I still do.) I couldn’t think of anything but all the ways I’d failed, and all the ways that I was failing in thinking so constantly of failure; and nothing much seemed to matter, but everything mattered too much. He brought me so low that there was nothing left to abandon or to save, you know? Him and him and him and him and him…
I couldn’t think of anything but that. When the children came – I still do not like to think of how I came to have them -, I told myself that I would live for him. I told myself that I would persist because I had to, because they needed me. (I have always been best at that. I have lived my life for Solterra, after all; nothing but Solterra, nothing.) And I would jolt into waking almost every night (and I think that I still do), and I would learn not to wake them, and I would do my best to love them, even though I could have sworn that I’d forgotten how to, or that I’d never loved anything the right way before, genuinely. I wanted to die. (Sometimes I think that I still do. Sometimes it is irrational, the smallest thing, and then I will find myself spiraling again, before I remind myself that I am being foolish, and terrible.) I don’t want to feel that way forever. I want to sleep through entire nights, and I want to love something without a single obligation to do it, and I want to remember what it means to be happy. I don’t think that I’ve felt that way in a very, very long time.
I wanted it for obligation, first. I wanted it when I saw the sun gleam off all the bits of Diana that are gold, when Ambrose first pressed himself into my side the day he was born. I wanted it because I wanted the best for them, and I know that I am not the best that they could have. I still want that for them; I still want to be better for them.
I would like to be better for myself, too. I think that I have finally realized that living for the dead is a useless endeavor; I do not think that it means anything to them, though I know that I cannot forgive myself. Still. I want to be better.
I do not look at him, but I listen. I listen when he speaks of becoming something else, and I listen to him when he says that he should have died, that he would rather have died. I listen to him, and I swallow a sigh like the ocean wind, and I listen and listen without saying a single word.
I wonder how much of my life I spent feeling the same way.
I don’t want to be her anymore. I don’t want to be like that anymore, or ever again – and I think that the one relief of all of this, of my disappearing, of the slipping away, of my death, of the crown fallen from my head, is that I don’t have to be her any longer. I don’t belong to anyone anymore. I can choose.
I do not know him. I do not even know his name.
I take a deep breath of the sea, and I roll my words over in my mouth. I am not sure that they are what he will want to hear. (I do not know if I would have wanted to hear them, when I was brought so low.) Still – I am trying, I am trying to be honest, and it would feel wrong to try to speak to him superficially.
“No,” I decide, finally, my voice low and quiet over the rushing lull of the waves, “you shouldn’t have died. I felt the same way for a…long time, but there is no such thing as should have died – you either live or you die. There is nothing else but that.” I could tell him what happened to me. I could tell him how my death was unworthy, how it made way for a monster, how I nearly died unburned and forgotten; I could tell him of my shame, and I could tell him how it ached, but I don’t want to make any part of this about me.
“I won’t tell you that you survived for a reason. I don’t believe in things like fate anymore – not in higher purpose, not that we suffer as a part of a greater plan. But I do know that we choose what we do with every terrible thing. What matters is the choosing.” I look at him again, finally, raising my chin in some quiet mimic of the dignity I used to maintain as a queen. I used to beg for my pain to feel like it had purpose, for there to be some reason why I suffered and why so many people suffered because of me.
I think that I know better now.
I am still looking at him – right in the eyes - when I say, “You’ve changed. Maybe you’ve even changed for the worse…but you still choose what you become.”
@
Speech || Ereshkigal
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
