Me reading dystopian fiction growing up and internalizing the message in the narrative: there’s no place for me in this world, I’d be dead the moment the regime took hold. I’m not strong enough. I couldn’t stand the suffering. Maybe the narrative is right. Maybe only the strong survive.
Me now as an adult getting ready to rip the pin from the grenade with my teeth and brandishing a molotov cocktail in the other hand: IF I GO DOWN I’M TAKING YOU MOTHER FUCKERS WITH ME, BRING IT ON IF YOU THINK YOUR HARD ENOUGH. YOU THINK YOU’RE SCARY? MY IMMUNE SYSTEM IS EATING ITSELF AND I HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE. COME GET SOME
“While the magical container is still intact, the bit of soul inside it can flit in and out of someone if they get too close to the object. I don’t mean holding it for too long–it’s nothing to do with touching it,” Hermione added before Ron could speak. “I mean close emotionally. Ginny poured her heart out into that diary. She made herself incredibly vulnerable. You’re in trouble if you get too fond of, or dependent on, the horcrux.”
- deathly hallows
Hermione’s different in the summers.
First comes the crash. She doesn’t know what it is, the exhaustion, the almost reptilian languor, but she always begins to feel it the instant she parts from Harry and Ron at King’s Cross. Those first few days of summer she’s always dangling off her bed in the midmornings and staring out the window of her parents’ house, eyes blank as rough garnet, lace coverlet thrown across her wrist, inside which her pulse is throbbing in something like a withdrawal symptom. For two days she can’t make herself touch books, or even food. Her mouth starts to taste like water.
But everything’s slow in summer, and she has time to adjust. It’s a process of kaleidoscopic reorientation, shifting the tube so that the crystals align just so, until they coalesce perfectly into a mirror and there–she can see herself again.
For my 3D production class I had to create a three shot short that was a remake of an existing movie scene- with muppets. I ran out of time to do the particle water effects, but this is basically Pacific Rim anyway.
We’re losing our collective shit laughing at this. Holy crap it’s so funny, please turn the sound on.
Media sometimes uses a snarky butler as a sign of a weak or ineffectual employer, but man, if I had that kind of money, I’d pay extra for a butler who was quick-witted enough to just burn me to the ground at a moment’s notice.
I want to tell y’all a story about supporting and loving your partner, starring my amazing wife.
I’ve mentioned before that I had an eating disorder for many years, and though I consider myself “recovered” there are aspects of my disorder that I still struggle with today — being quite a bit heavier than my wife is one of them.
When my wife and I moved in together back when we were still girlfriends, I was at my skinniest. She used to pick me up all the time and lift me off the ground, and I’d laugh and kick out my legs ‘cause I was just delighted to have her holding me.
But I started gaining weight as I went through recovery, and where once we were pretty close in size, I began to get bigger. And bigger. And bigger. And she remained her naturally petite self. I began to almost dread when she’d try to pick me up, sure that this time she wouldn’t be able to get me off the ground.
But every time, even if I protested, she’d lift me up and say something like: “See, you’re not so big that I can’t lift you!”
And one time I just blurted out: “But someday I’m going to be so fat you won’t be able to.”
She looked me dead in the eye and said: “No you won’t. Because if that ever happens, I’ll start working out.”
It was the best possible thing she could have said to me, because she wasn’t saying I wasn’t going to get fat
—
neither of us knew that for sure. She was just saying that I was never going to be “too fat” for her.
And every time I worry about getting bigger, I remember that I’ll never be so big that she can’t lift me, because baby knows how much I love being held, and she’ll change her own habits to ensure that I never feel “too big” or “too heavy” because in her eyes I’ll never be “too” anything.
Anyway, there’s a moral to this story: Find yourself a partner who will never consider you an excess. You should never be “too much” to someone who loves you — too big, too loud, too passionate, too awkward, whatever your “too” happens to be. And even as you change and grow (in my case, literally), the right person will be there through the changes, to tell you that you’re always just right for them.
My strongwoman, the wind beneath my wings, the arms under my ass. 😍😍 😍
