Spiral Spine

Take a step back
Wait for a breath
In and out
Silent as you think
Talk when you are calm

This is to remind you to breath, in case you forget to breath.

Julian cianciolo, youtuber

The Whole

May you find your peace with this. May we all. — Hercules Poirot

It’s hard trying to move on when you’ve lost something, or someone. Or even when you’ve left behind a specific point in your life. Getting up and making the choice, again and again, to just keep going can be one of the most difficult things to do. Some have said that it gets easier the more you do so, and sometimes that’s true.

Sometimes it makes it harder, though, because you’re just so tired of getting up, again and again.

And then there are the times you think you’re going to lose someone irreplaceable. You have to prepare yourself for it, because it’s going to come and you know it. You know it. You brace yourself against the pain, knowing that it likely won’t make that much of a difference when it comes because losing someone like this is never going to stop hurting.

Sometimes you get a miracle, and they live. The relief in that moment is indescribable. you’ve braced yourself, telling yourself that you’ll get through the pain, knowing that such thoughts are gentle lies at best, only to find them not needed at all.

Sometimes…

Sometimes the miracle isn’t a relief for you, but rather a relief for them. A relief from their pain and suffering.

You learn that the bracing doesn’t help as much as you told yourself it would. You learn that even though you’re able to keep getting up, again and again, the hurt comes back in waves in little unexpected moments.

But…

But you remember wonderful things in those same moments as well.

So take the time to mourn, but don’t let your grief be all about sorrow. Let it be about the whole of the life lived, the good and the bad.

Put the Glass Down

Who am I if I can’t carry it all?

If I falter…

Who am I if I don’t have what it takes?

No cracks, no breaks

No mistakes, no pressure

-‘Surface Pressure’; from “Encanto”

But it's so hard to go on
Utilizing every source of energy
Reaching further and further inside
Not realizing what you're courting
Only knowing you just can't stop
Until there's nothing left to give
Then you fall and can't get up

I’m not the eldest of my siblings. I’m the third youngest, in fact, which would sound like still pretty up there, but I’m the sixth child my parents had, so it really means that I’m just barely not the end, but not really one of the middle two. I’ve watched different siblings at different times try to carry not only their own loads but those around them. I’ve done it, too. We seem to take turns in my family with doing that. It helps with the burnout that each of us have lived through of one thing or another.

I’ve been told that working like that with one another is…odd.

I don’t know why, though. Isn’t that what family is supposed to be about? Yeah, you have fights and arguments, and maybe you don’t talk a whole lot with each other sometimes, but when you’re family needs help? When you see your siblings fall, don’t you step up and help them? Even if you’re still angry and hurt, you still love them. You can love someone, but not really like them all of the time. That’s just being human. We don’t even always like ourselves, so why would that be any different with others?

I don’t really recall if I’ve written about this before, but it’s been rolling through my head since watching that part of the movie. That sister was approaching burnout at what she saw as the destruction of her family. After all, if she’s the strongest of them and she’s weak when all of the magic might be fading? And her entire concept of her worth is based on what she can do? That’s a recipe for disaster, Disney movie or no.

It’s healthy for someone to take time away in order to rest. Even if they don’t go back to what they were doing before they burned out, it’s important. A person’s worth is more than what they can do.

One Moment

Freedom isn’t about getting to do everything you want; it’s about being responsible for everything you do, and being responsible for the results of what you do as well. As a free person, you get to choose, but you also have to be responsible for your choices. –MarbleGlove

For oft have I stood on the path
Reasoning to myself where to turn
Even as the road stretches onward
Eclipsing the option to return

Grown Folly

So often I look back
To moments in my youth
Understanding now the folly
Poorly chosen then as wise
I want to go back then
Distracted in thinking to then it was confined

Sometimes, as teenagers, we make bad decisions. –from Seeking Shelters, a fanfic

I read the above line and the first thing that jumped out at me was, “And sometimes, as full grown adults (who should really know better), we make even worse decisions.”

Receive

God’s love is there for you whether or not you deserve it. It is simply always there.

-President Thomas S. Monson

Don’t fall into the trap
Even as you mourn
Seek to help others
Especially when feeling shorn
Reality is seen as harsh
Vote to be more than you were born
Even as you stumble, help others as been shown

I read once that we were born to learn what love was and to learn to love what comes after. I have to respectfully disagree.

This life does not prepare us to love what comes after. We enter this world with that love already. We knew it before we were born, but we did not understand it.

That is what this life does. It teaches us to understand love. To understand that we aren’t always deserving of love, but that it is there even, no, especially when we do not deserve it. And to teach us to love others no matter whether they deserve it or not.

Point of View

“Heroes are unaware of the privilege inherent in their worldview and villains lack the luxury of ignorance.” –dls

She had to argue against what she had read. Lila had known plenty of villains who had remained ignorant of how the world worked, though most of those villains either weren’t actually villains (she tried not to think of the one who really just wanted a friend and had one in his nemesis. Maybe that was why the old man never really did anything too nefarious or dastardly…) Those that were real villains likely didn’t even realize that they were villains, because they saw themselves as the heroes of their story.

Like the one Lila had watched take over her planet.

Michael believed that he was helping the denizens of his new world have a better life. If he controlled everything, then there was no crime. Death happened, of course it did, but it wasn’t violent and was, in fact, something that was painless. Everyone who died did so in their sleep.

Mostly because everyone had a cut off age (decided, nominally by themselves for how long they wanted to naturally live, but no one ever knew what someone else’s cut off date was. Only the Officials that Michael put as the Overseers of the River of Styx knew when the cut off date chosen was. How could anyone else know if the cut off date was even what the dead person had chosen then?) You didn’t even have to go to the Officials.

They came to you.

No one knew how they got in your home, because nothing was ever moved. No noises were made to wake anyone else up in your home, whether they were animals or humans.

You just went to bed after wishing those you lived with good night (if you lived with someone) and then you didn’t wake up in the morning.

Everyone knew what had happened. It was covered in detail when you were sixteen solar cycles and asked to communicate your cut off date.

This wasn’t the kind of thing that someone else should be scheduling.

It wasn’t the kind of thing Lila thought anyone should be scheduling, much less actually following through on!

This wasn’t even the worst of things that Michael had set up, it was just always one of the first things that Lila thought about.

Mostly because she knew that the chosen cut off date wasn’t always the one that was honored.

She didn’t know how many others knew. There was no way to find out. You could never be certain who wasn’t a plant from the Overseers and who was genuine. There was really no safe way to find out.

Lila should know.

She’d almost lost her life and her freedom the last time she’d taken a chance.

She’d only lost a few fingers instead, but considering it could have killed her instead…

Lila’s still not certain just how she was able to get away and remain hidden. As far as she’d known up until that point, no one had been able to do such a thing on Michael’s New World Order.

A part of her wonders if it’s the only other lie told to everyone the world over. The practical side of her knows that it doesn’t matter unless she’s able to find others to work with.

Of course, finding others to work with will mean nothing if they don’t have a way to fight back.

And they don’t.

You only get access to anything that can be classed as a weapon if you work for a specific part of the New World Order.

I Prefer to Laugh

Lost in my pain I will not be
Anchoring though it is to me
Serving its purpose always
Taken as another path waves

The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache. –Marjorie Pay Hinkley

The last thing I want to do is give myself a dehydration headache from crying. Laughing also has the benefit of giving my lungs extra exercise, which they surely need to grow stronger.

Warning

If you don’t think you can handle another person’s opinions on a fictional character in a healthy and respectful manner, then you may want to skip this one. –SliceofOtaku, YouTuber

There comes a point
Rocking your perception
Installing your fears
Giving way to aggression
Going quickly to tears
Even as you see your trangression
Reality turning its gears

Harsh Reality

There is no growth in your comfort zone, and no comfort in your growth zone.

Perhaps I did not speak clearly
And lost my meaning in the words
Isn’t it strange how we face life dearly
Not knowing just how much it hurts

I live on a farm. Most of you who are reading this post know that, because it’s something that I’ve talked about often. I knew that it would be hard and that it wouldn’t be something easily done.

You’d think I would have been able to prepare myself a little better and I thought I had. Especially after two and a half years and counting, but I wasn’t ready.

Not by a long shot.

I’m still not ready and I doubt I will ever reach the point where every single loss, no matter which type of animal, doesn’t cut into the strangely still soft heart I possess.

But if I didn’t keep trying, then I don’t think I would be able to keep going at all. Giving up, giving in, has never really been a part of my personality.

Well…

I’m not going to add it to my list of character traits now.

Because all of those that I have lost deserve better from me than just being memories that I run from.

(In other news, I have learned how to perform CPR on small mammals. It should be noted that if they aren’t revived within 10 minutes, it’s too late.

But that doesn’t mean it will always be too late.)

This small poem and accompanying ramble was brought to you by Dungeon Prompt: Defined by a Quote.