#raquel

inkskinned:

before all this, she and i were putting on makeup, sitting in the glow of my sunlamp. december 29th, 2019.

“it’s going to be my year of yes,” she said. she was putting powder on with a brush. “i’m going to be okay, god help me.”

before this, i was organized. i used to have 3 calendars, all synced to each other, all color coded. one was aspirational - what i would “like” to do. full of facebook events and friend meetups and hypotheticals.

today it sent me an alert from my past self: hi! it’s me. wherever we are, i hope we are happy.

before all of this, i braided her hair. i told her my new year’s resolution was to be a worrisome force of fury. an applied rage. i said: “picture a raccoon that’s seven feet tall and just learned how to operate heavy machinery.” 

before all of this, i was holding his hand in the hospital. “i couldn’t do it,” he said. “i failed even at dying.”

before all of this, the thing i was chronically, horribly, perpetually good at: surviving. every fucked up situation, i would cockroach my way out of, no matter how many times life tried to bowl me over. i was roadkill for so long i like the feeling of being sunburned. death couldn’t keep me so i kept myself. 

and i will be a meteor if i must. i will be the burning house. i will be the spat tooth. i will love you like before even if the sun is new tomorrow. what’s more, i will love you harder - i will love you like a bloodied lung. i will love you like scissors. i will love you like glass loves breaking and i will love you like throats love howling. i will love you like tremor and i will love you like sharpened knife.

i will love you like the only thing we are both good at is surviving, and we are both damn good at surviving. 

before all this, she was zipping up my dress for me. “that’s the thing about happy,” she said. “sometimes it takes a little fighting.”

inkskinned:

you didn’t say sorry, not really. you said sorry only when i pushed about it, you said it like an afterthought, like - oh fine, if this is what you want. the apology was already tearing itself apart in the air. you said sorry, but you caused this. you said sorry you feel that way, i guess. you said: what else do you want me to say? you’ve already made up your mind to be angry about this.

you’ve moved on since then. i hope you found a therapist. i am stuck with all of the hurt you caused but - you’ve been working on yourself, on your multiple projects, on that beautiful life you live. happy - you look happier, lighter, free of all of it. you take artsy videos of yourself dancing; caption it - a friend recently abandoned me.

nobody else knows how hard you pushed. nobody else knows what you did. i am sure you tell everyone a version of the truth that makes out the best of you; turns me into a cold unfeeling bitch who just “doesn’t understand” you. i am sure you leave out all the ways i gave you myself, over and over, for years. how many times before this you hurt me, crossed my boundaries, laid me bare - what you say to them about when i finally drew the line is - she is just being unfair.

sometimes i feel insane about it. i have to text my best friend, make sure that what-i-think-happened actually-happened. to double-check that i wasn’t being a bad person. maybe i’m misremembering it. she often has to guide me back to the same two facts: beyond what any one person could reasonably expect, i gave you everything, and you still wanted more of it.

it makes me angry, when it doesn’t make me sick. i force myself to journal about it. how fucked up it makes me, knowing your narrative will be the one that sticks - knowing you are out there, right now, making sure everyone listens. telling them how you are being targeted. how you, hurting me on purpose, making me feel small, ignoring my needs - how that was really my fault, in the end.

yesterday you made a post on instagram talking about how you used to feel guilty about something that had gone wrong in a relationship, but that you’ve freed yourself from those toxic idealisms. you said: i am not giving her the power to make me feel bad about my mistakes. i am just a human person - it’s up to her if she wants to be the bigger person and actually forgive.

and i just sat there and thought: you haven’t even actually apologized for it.

redrew one of my fav frames from dokidoki precure (2020)