@anenlighteningellipsis / anenlighteningellipsis.tumblr.com
“Invisible Injuries,” e.r.m.
I don’t know what to do with my knowledge of her - my lexicon of her skin, my encyclopedia of her smiles.
The library is deserted.
I beg
I long
to teach.
left yesterday's therapy session elated, struggling to keep my feet rooted to the sodden verdent earth. i’m currently overflowing with clumsy words and messy emotions and am childishly effusive, overusing adjectives
is this what it feels like to cease grieving -- a tenuous brightness, a trembling wariness of the sun, of nature, beauty unmarred and soft singing. is this what it feels like to surface on a placid sea, without the impulse to gasp for air. no messy sputtering and cartoonish flailing. instead a calm, quiet inhale, as you open your eyes, blinking blearily... and as your vision adjusts, you see land on the horizon. there’s still a remnant of guilt, an enticing whisper; ‘mourn… still; continue. i am warm and safe. you know me, only me’ -- instead, a filling of lungs again; resigned, with love. they say your first loss is the worst, that it is impossible for you to feel a grief of that degree twice. i disagreed. i have cawed my ache into the deaf impenetrable darkness countless times, ruined myself on substances tangible and intangible, desperately seeking respite. pause. when the only resolution is complete immersion. irresolute catharsis. manageable continuation. then... unexpected opportunities and momentary forgettings [often caught red-handed by a self-conscious sentry, there to ensure continued entropy]. but, i now realise, each loss -- be it of a former self, of dreams crushed in youth, of dear dear dear inestimably loved irrevocable people -- each was imperceptibly easier to navigate than the last... i almost wish i could go back to the first; smother myself in the depths again, caress despair; oldest, most intimate friend. to reaffirm my knowledge of my own emotional depth and intensity, my loyalty and devotion -- to remind myself i am still capable of this intense feeling, of mourning them the way they each deserve to be mourned. of being overwhelmingly gloriously hellishly present in pain. there is a despicable element of selfishness in this. i know i can never sever this ability, nor succumb to a numb, subterranean half-life. the strongest tether, the fear, is that i don’t know myself outside of grief. it has scented and coloured all of my days for as long as i can remember. how awfully dull, how insipid, life would seem without this anguish. i can’t see a plausible, a positive and fulfilling and warm and sweet and loving and welcoming alternative. i am a coward, afraid of the unknown, distrustful of joy and happiness and love. i cannot see it with my naked eyes, but i sense it. it’s there, whispering, calling to me, intermingled with the voice of loss. can one ever truly be rid of grief. can one leave it behind... i doubt it, no. this is not a ceasing, but an ebbing; a reluctant acclimation; to no longer languish... i am surfacing and, with these bereaved limbs, it’s time to swim ashore.
The thing about Tumblr that probably makes me saddest is the underlying assumption that women past a certain age (which seems to be about 25?) stop having any sort of outside interests beyond family/career/kids. Like, y’all are always so shocked that grown women have lives and can fangirl as hard as we did as teenagers.
It makes me sad not because it makes me feel old (although it does), but because these younger women are constricting their own lives–they fully expect that this will happen to them someday. Y’all deserve better. Y’all deserve to EXPECT better.
And worse than that, the idea that there’s something WRONG with a grown woman who has other interests.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
One of the biggest things I realized growing up?
It doesn’t happen.
You expect somehow you will change when you are finally An Adult™. You’ll stop enjoying the things you enjoy now for something more “adult” or “mature.” You’ll FEEL like an adult and not like a child anymore. You’ll feel comfortable and secure and not scared and unsure and confused. You expect you will feel like you have your shit together.
But I can tell you that it doesn’t happen. You’ll still feel like the “you” you were at 15 or 17 or 19.
You just have these…things to deal with. Like rent. And insurance.
You have a job either because a) you like it or b) it keeps the lights and internet on.
You’ll look up from fangirling one day and realize “Shit. I am twenty eight years old. That’s almost 30!” Or maybe it will be that you look down at the small child clasped around your legs and realize “That is my child. I have a child. A human being child.” Or maybe it will be that you have to negotiate your budget around con tickets AND a mortgage payment.
Growing up isn’t a thing that happens.
It’s a realization that it doesn’t happen.
Holy shit, y’all. There are some AMAZING responses to this post. Yes, everything alwayshometomarvel says. All that.
Feeling like I wasn’t ‘adult’ enough fucked me up for years. I would cry at night and feel like a total piece of shit because I was married with a kid, and yet I still did ‘not adult’ things–I played MMOs, I cosplayed and went to conventions, I drew fan art and wrote fan fic. I kept waiting for the day that I would wake up and realize that what I really needed to be doing was the laundry, cleaning the house, making dinner every night, etc. Basically, be the ‘perfect’ wife and mother.
And somewhere between then and now, I somehow managed to tell myself…fuck it. I AM an adult. I go to work every day and pay the bills and help raise my son and take care of the house. I do legit adult things. AND I play MMOs, go to conventions, and participate in fandom. And THAT’S OKAY. I’m 32 years old now and finally at peace with that part of myself. (Having a supportive husband and kid doesn’t hurt either!)
All of this is such truth. Believing these things about growing up, and especially about being over 25? Really made it hard for me when I turned 30.
I was literally suicidal on my 30th birthday. I spent the whole day in tears. I felt like I had died and my life was now worthless and small and never going to be hopeful or full of promise or fun again. I felt like killing myself on my birthday because I bought into this lie that somewhere after your mid-twenties, you diminish as a woman because the only thing that made you alive and shiny was your youth.
I’m 31 now and I’m done with that shit. I’m over it. I don’t care if you think I’m too old for something. If I’m an old lady in Tumblr terms, then I’m past the legal age where I’m obligated to care what you think.
So, I’m telling you girls out there right now who are in your teens and twenties, get rid of this idea of what older women are “supposed” to look like. Get rid of this idea that “soccer moms” don’t play video games or that all women over 25 should be married and contemplating kids. Get rid of the idea that fanfic and fandom and fun things are for “kids.”
Mostly, get rid of this notion that the only thing really valuable about you is your youth. Youth is part of life, but it’s not the most valuable or beautiful or exciting time of your life. I like my life at 30 about 1000% than I did at 15, 18, 20, even 25.
on her deathbed, my grandmother pulled my mom close to her and said, “i don’t feel old. i don’t know how i’m supposed to feel. but inside, i still feel seventeen.” when I was a teenager, I used to think that story was sad; sad and strange somehow, like she’d been frozen in time. but now that i am a woman in my thirties, I understand. I understand her. I am a grown woman in the ways that matter. I listen to myself more, trust my experience more. but inside? I still feel the joy and rage and mess; I am still changing. we’re not frozen in time. we are just still growing.
the more we acknowledge that modern “adulthood” is largely a concept designed to sell vacuums and sedans, and not an arbitrary total overhaul of self at age 35, the more we can admit our ongoing capacity– no, our ongoing NEED for play and playfulness and exploration. those are childish things we should never have to put away.
bless this post, i needed to hear this so badly. i so often tear myself down with negative self talk, thinking i’m a failure before i’ve even really begun, because it has taken me ‘so long’ [i.e. just longer than some] to begin. when, realistically, i’m only in my mid twenties, and i have time. and in a sense i have already begun; albeit on a different path than i, or anyone else in my life, expected to take. i am allowed to be whoever and whatever i happen to be at whatever stage of life i happen to be without the pressure to attain certain socially expected and imposed goals and honorifics. on my 23rd birthday i sat sobbing on my bathroom floor with a bottle of cheap wine, alone, grieving for the years, the opportunities, i had ‘lost’ to my chronic pain, my mental illness, and my ptsd. when again, realistically, these years have been periods of tremendous growth, transformation, catharsis, and introspection. these have been integral to the makeup of my character as it is today, and i know that if it were possible i wouldn’t alter them to meet a standard. i am where i need to be, i am enough. i do have contradictory, warring voices in my head, and sometimes the disparaging one wins the argument that day, and sometimes it doesn’t. but, the more positive affirming messages i read, the more i repeat them to myself, the harder it is for the negative ones, the FALSE ones, to be heard over the cacophonous bolstering positivity, over the love and acceptance i am learning to have for myself... i digress. i just wanted to add my textual hug to this beautiful post of textual supportive hugs/spiels. you are all lovely ever-evolving creatures xx
first day on my finally reacquired psych/anxiety meds; calmly meandering through street markets, second-hand bookshops and cherry blossomed park meadows in the warm sunshine. i don’t know if i believe in the concept of progress, but i feel a thawing of my heart. i see the world through a slightly different lense; one that is cleaner, crisper, more vibrant, more welcoming. i remember how it felt to walk through a crowd with my head held defiantly, radically high, with confidence running through my veins, i remember not wishing to disappear into the pavement. i remember how it felt to look friendly strangers in the eye and smile ‘good morning’ without suffocating flutters in the pit of my stomach. and i did it again. light has often been a source of utter insufferable oppression, inescapable judgment. but now... i lift my face toward heaven for the first time in months, smell jasmine in the air, and bask in a renewed capability, a sense of balanced control, sans social anxiety. playing in labyrinthine hedges again [without anxiously looking over my shoulder], pressing hyacinths in the pages of ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’... doing things i haven’t done since i was a whimsical rambunctious child. wondering at the world. soaking in my long dormant curiosity, revelling in nature, wrapping myself in tenacity. reaquainting myself with the desires of my soul. all through this miraculous, most basic functionality... now, tonight; jameson, craft ale and fresh fried seafood. it’s a beautiful day xx
so this afternoon i went into trader joe’s to pick up a few things for dinner and at the register i noticed the price jacking up waaay too high, much higher than expected, so to avoid going into debt i politely asked the cashier, a kind-eyed middle aged guy named brian, if he would mind voiding a few items. he said sure, that would be fine, but he was so sorry i had to do that. i suppose i’m so accustomed to my [relatively recent] poverty and most people’s complete indifference to it that this little comment, and his tone of genuine concern and empathy, took me by surprise. i just smiled and said ‘oh it’s fine, really, thanks for your patience’ and he set the voided items aside. after a minute or so i got the total down to a reasonable amount and started bagging up my groceries. they wouldn’t all fit in one bag, so he grabbed a bag and finished packing the rest. i looked down for a moment to fiddle with my purse, and as he handed me my receipt along with the second bag he gave me a little smile and a quiet ‘these are on the house, don’t worry about it. my name’s brian, if you ever need anything’ then turned to the next person in line and started swiping their items intently. he had snuck the voided items back into the bag while i wasn’t looking. i kind of breathed a thank youuu in his direction, wandered blindly out the doors, and was on the sidewalk before i knew it. i was just dumbfounded, fumbling, so stunned i nearly cried. this dear heart made my night/week, single-handedly reaffirming my waning belief in humanity’s capacity for compassion, in little unconditional acts of kindness. he deserves all the positive vibes/karma/energy inevitably coming to him. just... bless brian xx
a small, superficially insignificant moment. a jeer and a smattering of ‘applause’ from a group of white boys walking next to my car as i backed out of the fresh market parking lot. this brief moment of harassment, of violence, derailed me. knocked me off kilter. if i hadn’t caught it in my well-practiced patriarchal shite fishing net it would’ve ruined my day. 3 seconds and i was almost felled. my self confidence undermined, jolted. which is precisely the point of it. to erode my sense of safety, to remind me where my place is; ostensibly, that my 'place’ is not in public [is not in this world, period], or if in public then only as an object, their possession. a minuscule act of oppression, yet fueled by an insidious, a goddamn PERNICIOUS toxicity. 'you have no right to exist in this world unmolested’ - there’s the common lie that there is some way to behave that will enable you to avoid harassment, that you can arm yourself against it, keep your head down, cover up your beautiful skin, be exhaustively vigilant. as if the vigilant don’t get harassed, as if they have any control whatsoever over their own oppression. as if they are obligated to prevent their own goddamn oppression, their own harassment. bull. shit. i’m just disgusted. at those sickeningly smug skeevy boys, but also with myself. because i allowed them to make me feel inferior, even if for a fleeting moment. me, this queer girl with eyes of fire and the heart of a fathomless ocean. this girl who has beat boys bloody with nothing but her bare fists. who has stared down whole swarms of entitled white boys, until their eyes burned holes in their sperry’s and they wandered away silently. this petty shite unmoored ME. my face flushed, my heart sped up. i lit a cigarette and stomped the gas peddle. there’s no introspective, tidy conclusion to this post, i’m just spouting off. i’m seething. i’m disgusted by this self-blame. but most of all i’m disgusted by their contemptible sense of entitlement. they’re not entitled to anything. and they sure as hell aren’t entitled to my precious time, so i’m ending this here.
does anyone else have certain words or phrases in their vocabulary that are forever coloured in a particular person’s tones ? that you read in your head and hear in their voice, speaking as audibly and viscerally as the very first time, when that person unwittingly marked them, words that will forever be associated with now absent people ??
excruciatingly alive- chest so tight you could beat percussive on my lungs. then rebel rebel, two timing hermetic angel, pummeling contagious; tiny, keen reminder you’re no longer here to hear it; how muffled and mellow the world must sound from six feet down. walking to the corner store for smokes- five layer indiscernible bobbing bundle in snow. next, collapsed between looming sentinels of evergreen. hollow blackness consumes my faltering steps. it’s cresting again; obligingly, melodically, i must ride it, ride it. this grief comes in waves.
Someone come cry unexpected tears with me over Manhattan Melodrama.
It’s been on my watchlist for years now and today I finally decided to pop it in, for some ‘lighter’ fare. Hardcore cinephiles, scoff away. I’d read next to nothing about it prior to this viewing and somewhat subconsciously judged it based on its title. Given the substantial cast Gabe & The Powells, I assumed it would go over well with me as a slightly saccharine, albeit glib dialogue rich, rom-com. What a naive little fool I was. This ménage à trois has thoroughly, gloriously wrecked me, and I can honestly say that I am a better human being for it. For being opened up by it, for not allowing my jadedness to cloud my deep innate desire to see humanity’s complexity explored and revealed by William Powell’s fucking phenomenal face with entertaining storytelling.
This is going to sound terribly cheesy, but I don’t give a damn; the energy between Powell and Gable is palpable, I have seldom seen such desperate an undercurrent of unconditional love portrayed on film. Agape? Philia? Eros? A combination of all three? We don’t know for sure, but Powell’s mercurial expressions and emotional honesty leave this question open ended... also, take into account this film is pre-code, whatever connotations that may have, feel free to let your minds roam. I completely bought this relationship. I would throw my money at it. I wanted a comedic spin-off wherein they are two bisexual Bruce Willis and Billie Bob Thornton types [Bandit fans, stand up] who both end up married to Minnie, and each other [!! SOMEONE WRITE THIS AU !!]. Don’t get me wrong, there is some light-hearted comedy in the film, but it’s the emotional intensity of devotion and self-sacrifice that I’m a complete sucker for. The scene that illustrates this best is towards the end of the film, when the two disparate men are in a death row jail cell. There’s a moment where Powell looks at his lifelong friend [honestly it’s like he’s seeing him naked, vulnerable, knowing him entirely *smashes their faces together* KISS NOW !!], conveying a silent, pleading request, begging him not to do this, not to make him do this, begging him to let him commute his sentence, while knowing that this story couldn’t end any other way, that this was always in the cards... just rip my fucking heart out, William Powell, and trample it under your impeccably shined oxfords.
Yes, there are flaws, there are tropes and contrivances and a few stilted lines. There are racist and sexist stereotypes [and a prepubescent Mickey Rooney... blech] and I’m not discounting any of this or chucking it up to being ‘a product of its time.’ I’m just saying that, dammit people, there is so. much. H E A R T. here. So much genuine trust between these actors, especially between Minnie and Bill [in their first pairing !! which I haven’t even gone into at all !!!!!!!], such natural comradeship and familiar chemistry and charm and wit and a deep underpinning of affection between these three people, it catches you up and makes damn sure you’re emotionally invested. And I damn sure was.
Maybe I’m especially emotionally unstable and raw lately [I am], maybe this movie found me when I needed it [as movies/books/music tend to do], maybe I’m more of a sentimentalist than I’d like to admit [*cough*], maybe I saw my own interpersonal dynamics and heartbreaks reflected back at me [*ugly sobbing*]. Probably a messy combination of all four. But none of that really matters. All that matters is William Powell’s eyes .... idk man. life. death. love. the inevitability of mortality. humanity’s myriad emotional variations. Stop rolling your eyes when you hear ‘melodrama’ and go give your emotional intelligence a little TLC.
So, as this has turned into more of an effusive review than was ever intended and has gotten away from me, I’ll wrap it up with a verdict. No letter or number rating, I hate that shite. Just open your heart, go grab a box of tissues, and watch this movie. And, if you want, come dish in my inbox afterwards.
xx
i feel very small and vulnerable. a little cracked-shell bivalve. sloughing off multiple layers of this rigid hard-won exterior. raw cold little clammy creature. in need of comfort, warmth and light. i’m unlearning coping mechanisms, internalised shame. unpacking toxic victim-blaming, deconstructing “survival techniques” that were slowly killing me. hugging myself when no one else will. snailing towards acceptance of this tender body. destroying myself is no longer my favourite pastime. wrap me up in soft blankets, feed me turkish delight. have patience with me.
I don’t know what to do with my knowledge of her my lexicon of her skin my encyclopedia of her smiles
the library is deserted I beg to teach.
that fleeting moment of cognitive clarity, that complete presence you experience after the sleepless, shattering catharsis, after having broken through a concrete dam, fueled by an incendiary righteous fury, and clawed your way out with your own bloody bare hands...
anenlighteningellipses, “no histrionics, please”
my soul is smothered under the weight of pauses hesitations silences impediments and unexpressions onslaughts of trouble and shite and dysphoria anxiety evasive delirious vodka deluges and crawl-in-a-hole depressions bereavements suppressed wounds cauterised and so many conversations alone with my mind and never enough with others’ and yet never enough solitude. displacement and ratty leather ‘70s suitcase hauled around cheap hotels and cheap seafood strangers’ eyes salty bitter bock and Brits in colonial Virginia and everywhere i find myself i find myself wondering where to go next instead of breathing, in and out, because my chest cavity is made of sugar glass and oxygen is john wayne in a barfight
and failures… so many fearful failures to accept the challenge the blank beguiling page presents: be truthful and accept fear of vulnerability as natural, spill it out all over me
i need to find a way to write again.
i need to find a way to fight again.
OH my goodness, i’m so honoured, thank you! xx
[though admittedly a bit confounded as to when/what you read of my scribbles, it’s such a rare occasion that i post them...]
