angelic, docile, empty-eyed

this is how i will always remember you: trembling like an antelope brought down by arrows, asking the arrows if it's okay to bleed.

[insolot]

:)

There's a voice. Then a face, then a pair of eyes. Then a smile. Then the lack of a smile.

And suddenly he's too aware of his body. The sharp bones and abused nerve endings, each little molecule of what makes him a breathing being lit up in a screeching cacophony of pain. Everything is so unignorably alive and thus, in pain; even the wound long closed running its jagged edges down his chest springs back to life. A phantom ache---no, not phantom, and besides, ache's too kind a word. It is burning and screaming and horrific in its irrefutable presence as the experience of pain. It is much too much and too present and too overpowering and he wants to scream, so badly does he want to scream, but in lieu of it he offers a smile, half-turned, a weak broken wing yet fluttering.

"Theo... Ah, Theophilus," he begins, the tone of his voice entirely devoid of its natural upturned chime. He is not there yet remains present nonetheless. A great gloom has overtaken what was once a pair of warm eyes; they have grown beyond what a kind of hollow dull could entail. Empty. Dead. Unsmiling. "I suppose I should've expected to find you here."

He wants to be elsewhere. He wants to be nowhere but here. He wants to be in a different room, different building, outside, six feet underground. He wants to feel the weight of Theophilus' arms around him, the steady sound of his heartbeats each marking another second of his life as it lulls him into a comfortable numbness. He doesn't know what he wants. And none of it matters anyway. "I... I am glad, though. I am."

This could be the last time, after all.

He considers taking a step forward, then grounds the waning weight of his body into a single place, locking his joints as if they were made of cold stone. But the mask still slips---his feeble smile falters further.

Vincent is a statue of a quiet saint chipping away in the wind; he is glowing with the particular sheen of sickness or death. There's a faint bite lingering on the left side of his neck, left by a mouthful of teeth that had marked him, not quite out of love or passion but the need to possess. It itches terribly under the weight of those eyes.

A display of needless cruelty he is an unwilling perpetrator of, his skin a pale canvas upon which someone else writ a statement of their superiority. Their victory, ever present.

The guilt stings as it should.

He thinks of Lupin, and of Nero, and of Amos, and it is then that he notices the lack of a wedding band on Theophilus' fingers as he is overtaken by a borrowed yet strangely personal grief, something he has no right to internalize as his own but does nonetheless. Because he is selfish, broken, tired, incorrigible, so fallible, and walking forward, then, step by heavy step, towards what is now just a ghost of an almost-lover. He is walking without the faintest bit of consideration for what his next movement could cause, how much it will or will not hurt - not knowing even what it will be.

There are voices all around them, none of them clear in his ears. They grow quieter with each millimeter of distance closed until they turn unrecognizable, until it is hard to tell if they even existed at all. Someone exclaims his name in the distance, their patience wearing thin. He overpowers the body's urge to flinch.

Vincent buries his face in Theophilus' chest and it is a punishment. He wraps his shaky arms around him and it is an apology.

No sob to stifle, no tear to soak into the material. He no longer remembers how to cry.

"For old time's sake," he whispers softly and if it was anyone else, he would not bother to assume they could hear it. But it's Theophilus. And he knows he will. The knowledge alone leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. "As good a farewell as any."

The click of a heel. Absence of warmth. Vincent is steadily walking away from Theophilus, not daring to look back. He slithers past faces familiar and unknown, past people he has spoken to and those that never thought to spare him a glance. None of them offer him a word.

If anyone notices the way he digs his nails into the vein just underneath the skin of his wrist, they do so in stone cold silence.

[pathologized]

Ah, the poor thing is speaking nonsense again. The Doctor watches Vincent slump forward, murmuring laments for which no one else cares. Vincent is worse off than the Doctor had expected him to be—at this stage, this early into their reliably fruitful collaboration. It is a pitiful sight, one that might even spark a twinge in the Doctor's incorrigible heart. He takes off a glove and flexes his fingers, watching the creases in his palm darken, then lighten. A scalpel appears in his other hand. The silver blade gleams.

"Stay with me, now." The Doctor does not mind the blood splattering onto his shoe—worse things have stained it, after all. Tilting his head, he watches the dying man with a distant placidness. "Letting yourself go like this ... is quite selfish, is it not?" Lowering his voice, the Doctor offers one small incentive, "It would be terrible for your partner to return, only to find you dead." The incentive of hope—a cruel thing. Perhaps, a certain someone still lives. Has the Doctor seen him?

The Doctor's mouth curves, a private smile—even if he is just a little disappointed with the state of Vincent's health. The sharp edge of the scalpel rests against the center of the Doctor's bare palm. It slides across so easily. For an instant, pale flesh peaks through the slitted skin—then a viscous red surfaces, filling in the gap, beading up. The pain is nothing. "Let me help you, Vincent." The name, inflected with a tenderness so terrible, is spoken softly—somewhere between reverent and mocking.

Vincent's question hangs unanswered in the air, where it will forever remain. The answer, of course, is never—it will never be enough. Not for the Doctor, whose inquisitiveness is bottomless, insatiable. Even after Vincent becomes a beast—and he will, but not yet—there will be endless more possibilities to explore.

The Doctor bends down, until his face is level with Vincent's own. The scalpel is abandoned carelessly, clattering on the floor. Brusquely, the Doctor tilts Vincent's chin upward with his gloved hand. "Open your mouth."

[insolot]

What a repulsive and sacred mess.

Vincent whimpers pitifully as his face is being yanked heavenward—it's more of a yowl, really, think less man and more old, dying dog. The force and sheer haste of the movement causes a mouthful of pure, acidic bile to rise to his throat and it is with the last remaining bit of his strength that he swallows it back, wincing terribly as it burns the lining of his esophagus. It isn't wrong, now that he thinks of it—he hasn't eaten anything in a long, long time. It must've been days, weeks...

But it's no matter. Vincent's ailing brain doesn't cling to the realization of his prolonged starvation, or the nausea, or the fact that his lungs and heart and stomach and every single bone in his twisted rotting body are currently burning, an unforgiving kind of pain, one that doesn't deter from its mission to fracture the remaining pieces of his sanity. No, no. It's something else - a quick little sentence thrown into the acrid air with the undeniable conviction that it will work.

Suddenly, Vincent is cognizant of the passage of time, of how long he must've spent there alone, twitching and turning by the waning fire in the dead of night - letting its warmth burn the skin of his arms to feel a pain he can still control.

A single tear sneaks its way past the lower eyelid of his right eye, mixing with a streak of blood still remaining bravely by his lip. The deep burgundy of what's half-rotted inside him grows pale, diluted by his sorrow, and unceremoniously meets the layers of dust and filth beneath.

It is not a long fall. It doesn't even get to make a sound.

The scalpel falls seconds after, its clatter ricocheting off the peeled walls of both his quarters and his mind it almost feels excessive, almost like a horrible, cruel statement. Although it was not a long fall.

“I—” I shouldn't, I should not, I will not - the words die, like embers, on the wetness of his disease-dampened tongue. I am not some beast, he wishes to say. Instead, he slowly unhooks his jaw, feels the bones grit from under-use. There's a certain shade of red in his eyes, of hunger, perhaps...

Maybe he has much less time than they originally assumed.

It doesn't taste of water, no. It is metallic... poisonous. It is sick. The flavor of death. At first, he merely lets it trickle into his mouth and slide down his throat, past the burns enacted by his body's own rebellion against itself—then, once it grants him the strength to as much as move of his own accord, something he has little control of guides his hand upwards, towards the Doctor's own. Vincent wraps his fingers around his wrist and holds it there—weakly, meekly, with barely enough strength to keep a flightless bird confined—and makes a sound somewhere in his chest that veers over the edge of a pathetic cry, his thumb twitching listlessly against Dottore's pulse.

He recognizes something inside himself—surprise. Surprise that he even has a pulse. He looks up towards Dottore, warm brown lashes clumped together with tears. “I hadn't... Never...” Vincent begins, but he isn't sure what he wants to say. He isn't sure whether the Doctor would care—no, he's sure he wouldn't. Streaks of tears glisten on his cheeks. Dottore remains reflected in the glossiness of his eyes as they slowly start to regain consciousness—but grow darker for it, stranger... “What will happen now? Do you think I...?”

[pathologized]

"Nonsense." Even a corpse has its uses.

The Doctor tries the door handle half-heartedly. It rattles limply, twitching against the lock. In his pocket, the key is cold and uninviting. He handles it delicately, like something fragile, his movements so subtle and gentle as he turns the key in the lock.

A click. The door opens.

The Doctor's shadow stretches into the room, his silhouette outlined by the red glow of the distant bonfires. Cold air spills inside as he finally steps over the threshold, uninterested in casting judgment upon the state of @insolot's quarters. The parcel of materials is set aside, on top of spread out papers. The Doctor lingers over them, almost reverent. Then, as if reminded of the chill—

"You should have told me that you were feeling unwell. I recall asking you if you needed any medicine, the last time I was here."

The door closes. The Doctor makes his way toward Vincent, looming over him with an ugly indifference. He bends over for a closer look at Vincent, his mask concealing the dehumanizing incisiveness of his scrutiny. His spindly hand caresses the side of Vincent's face emotionlessly, his thumb and forefinger pressing gently into the flesh to allow an examination of Vincent's pupils. Then he pulls away, without warning or care, leaving Vincent to his agony again.

"Remain seated. I should have something that will help."

continued from here.

[insolot]

He recalls… a time, a different time. Different night, vision of a quarter past midnight in a distant world. At last, the staccato of death had fallen silent—the theater stood empty. Only the two remained, steeped to the last thread in blood or grief. Singing along, to the song of life. Dancing, still.

He recalls a pair of eyes piercing through the great empty, crimson, blood-drunk. Strange. Unknown; unknowable. They were staring at him, through the dark, through the hum of death, through the ghosts hanging heavy from the roof overhead; the souls that cannot, will not, escape. Never did. He remembers them so well, a moment past but ever so present…

No, no. That isn’t right. He is losing his grip.

It isn’t a half-digested paragraph penned by his failing mind. The presence that has found its way into his quarters is still there, exhaustingly so - another untended mouse scuttling around the piles of dust growing resiliently on top of pages of hectic, barely comprehensible notes. Another thing to torment him. 

Vincent looks off to the side, ashamed. 

And the Doctor is speaking to him, again. It hurts to focus. It hurts to be. His words are an alien language. It is his language, but spoken so far, far away, dampened by the humid air and so distorted by the workings of his fevered mind it has become twisted in his ears… Vincent's hair falls down onto his face like a curtain, the gaps through which he peers mere holes eaten through by a moth. The sudden touch is welcomed by a flinch — when did he get so close? — and the flinch itself followed by a raspy inhale, more akin to a whimper of a rusted machine than man. 

And once it is gone, his head follows down, down, down… 

“It should be enough …”

Vincent’s voice fights valiantly against his attempts to speak. It comes out scratchy, low and so very far from his own he can no longer recognize the sound in his mind. He wants to say much more; to scream and weep and beg. He wants to be elsewhere. He wants to be anything but alive. And none of it matters in the end.

He has lost all autonomy of his fate.

“When will it be enough?” When I, too, am a beast soothed only by the smell of death, singing still? “Oh, what more…” Oh, God, what more do you need from me?

But he cannot give his thoughts to the air — shape them into anything beyond a raggedy cough, thin frame wrecked by the effort to expel disease. It trickles out of him alongside uneven droplets of red, dripping, one by one, onto the tip of Dottore’s shoe. 

How unsightly.

[transgressed]

The new moon deprives the night sky, condemning Yharnam to the amorphous and fickle light of burning stakes and failing street-lamps. The Doctor, backlit by the red smoke of a distant bonfire, heads down an empty alleyway, his stretched shadow pulsing against the cobblestone with each click of his boots. Absentmindedly, he hums the tune of a hymn to himself, cruelly insouciant toward the dwindling world around him.

Eventually, the Doctor comes to a stop in front of a nondescript door. The pale lantern at the doorstep glows with misplaced warmth, and he doesn’t bother to spare it a glance. Extending a spidery, gloved hand, he knocks once, then twice against the sleek wood.

“You are still alive, I hope?”

The Doctor pitches his voice playfully, in an insufficient attempt to conceal his disproportionate eagerness—his crude persistence. The lilt of his voice jars with the morbidity of his remark. His hand twitches; impatient, he knocks again—a harsher, more grating sound. He adjusts his other arm, shifting the weight of a modest-sized package against his body.

“I have brought you some more materials, @insolot.”

[insolot]

“ i am ... ” he begins, but his voice seems throttled, strangled; whatever sound comes out of him is certainly inaudible. vincent's eye twitches. even like this, debased, dying, rotting into the ground, he cannot quite find it in himself to express his shame. his exasperation. he wishes there were softer words for this torture; he wishes whatever god condemned him to this pain would just take him before his time. he wishes for many things. 

the skies remain silent.

vincent shifts in his seat. the pain that floods his senses is indescribable. his eyes have scanned millions of words, countless experiences --- to describe that, his mind falls short. he wishes there were softer words for this, something gentler than pain. there's an unpleasant sound of gritting bone and he can't quite discern whether it's a joint or a crown of teeth grinding against another. vincent is a man. vincent is a lamb. he is being gutted alive. for this carcass there is no emancipation. his fingers knock against the glass, unsteady. “ yes. ” it's simpler than a sentence.

he almost sounds alive.

“ what brings you... ” here. questions require too much energy, too much lucidity to be formed in his mouth. vincent's mind is being eaten alive; lulled into white noise by the transient hum of illness. have i not been --- no, he thinks, no --- there is work, my work --- he doesn’t remember what materials the voice speaks of, but it must be important. vincent is losing himself. vincent is hanging onto a thread. vincent is a thread, stretched thin. vincent is a lamb. he has long since lost count of the wolves. he takes an unsure breath; the rusty machinery of his lungs sounds atrocious, even in his own ears. “ i’m sorry, i--- i--- i’m afraid i’m of little use... ”

[insolot]

wtf

[phosphophy11ite]

living wild geese, mary oliver / life, charlotte brontë / tokyo ghoul:re, sui ishida / wisdom teeth, keaton st. james / princess mononoke / journal of solitude, may sarton / goodnight punpun, inio asano / blood on the tracks, shuzo oshimi / the way to keep going in antarctica, bernadette mayer

[luthienne]

“Your loneliness is precious to you, I know. Does it disturb you to know you are dear to me? Do not let it. It is such a quiet feeling. It is like the light coming into a room—moonlight—”

— Katherine Mansfield, in a letter to J.M. Murry, dated December 14, 1919

[withgrief]

@insolot, starter. | ❛ there are certain kinds of connections that are so deep that when broken you feel the snap of it inside you. ❜

❛ haha-ha — a snap inside…? ❜

satoru laughs: it isn’t a kind laugh. his face hurts. he tosses his head back, staring up at the ceiling through his bandages — not wanting to look at vincent, not wanting to see what expression vincent is making.

his laugh goes on longer than he intended. as it builds, each laugh sounds more & more like a sob. by the end, he’s half-breathless, each wheezing noise he makes — a full-body mutilation, shuddering through his heaving chest.

satoru drags a hand down the left side of his face, holding his burning cheek. his fingers brush the bandaged corner of his eye & come away damp.

❛ hey … vincent, did you know? i still haven’t felt it. i didn’t feel it when he left, & i don’t feel it, even now — even after i — ❜

even after i killed him.

his voice pretends to be blank — emotionless. to anyone else, it would’ve been a seamless performance, but the only occupied seat in the audience is the only person left who can see through it. 

his voice is trembling.

❛ … i used to think that i wouldn’t do it, that i couldn’t — ❜

he laughs again, as if his body doesn’t know what to do with his grief, with the ache, with the tears struggling & refusing to spill out — 

❛ haha … vincent — ❜

he smiles weakly at the ceiling, looking at nothing:

❛ do you hate me? ❜

[insolot]

the stone facade of his untouchable self shatters in an instant and suddenly, as if to materialize a badge of the boundless well that is his love, a tear escapes past the gate of his eye. then another, and another. plentiful harvest for the god of shame. vincent feels himself teetering over the brink of a terrible realization: the one i love hates me for how i love--- and he knows there is not enough time to tangle with the complex mess of the weeds of his lie, so instead, he speaks:

“ gojo. ”  vincent doesn’t dare look away, his eyes a pair of glistening jewels unmoving. he needs this answer like none ever before, perhaps more so than any that’ll come after.

coward that he is, he doesn’t run from this, not anymore.

“  look at me.  ”  he blurts out a request, but dares not raise his trembling hands, digging bittersweet half-moons on the cushion of his lap. there’s nowhere else for them to go, now, else the touch will burn. he remembers the kinds of touches that burned, memories of when he, too, lived in a hateful dream of a man asleep at the gates of hell, waiting. a concotion of fear and malice and the knowledge that he yearned for that kindness---and the repulsion that came from that knowledge, paradox of an uncauterized wound.  “  is that really what you think? that i hate you? after all this time...?  ” he tries to control it, but his voice is barely there---barely anything at all, an icicle at the edge of winter’s last heaving breath, damp with tears of regret.

“  do you really think---  “  his voice breaks, there, swallowed up by a startled sob. there are fingers rubbing at his face, drying the tears, movements near panicked but he does not allow himself that pause to last too long, to give himself this comfort--- “  that i could ever hate you?  ”

he hopes it’s not true.

[lifeinpoetry]

We love the wolf. We love the love of the wolf. We love the fear of the wolf. We’re afraid of the wolf: there is love in our fear. Fear is in love with the wolf. Fear loves. Or rather: we are afraid of the person we love. Love terrorizes us. Or else the person we love we call our wolf or our tiger, or our lamb in the manger. We are full of trembling and ready to wolf down.

— Hélène Cixous, from “Love of the Wolf,” Stigmata: Escaping Texts (via lifeinpoetry)

[withgrief]

@insolot, starter. | ❛ you cannot keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there. ❜

vincent’s voice is clear like spring water. for a brief and eternal moment, gojo satoru’s expression is frozen between panic and inanity. it is an idiotic expression — a half-fulfilled smile at the moment of its crumbling.

❛ eh? ❜

the world — his world threatens to cave in on itself. cracks form, like raindrops running across car windows. he knows, intuitively, what vincent means. 

satoru turns away — from himself, from vincent’s pitying gaze. if he cannot see it, it does not exist. he crouches down on the sidewalk, picking up a broken stick nested inside a crack in the concrete. he twirls it between his fingertips, standing back up, and holds the stick toward the pleasant sun.

he watches an ant crawl from one end to the other, then start over, repeating itself again, again—

playfully, satoru glances back at vincent. he acts dumb, pretending it isn’t a deflection he has used countless times before and will use countless times again:

❛ vincent, what are you talking about? ❜

[insolot]

it wasn’t intentional. really, it wasn’t---yet, an inkling of frustration seeped into his near-indestructible facet of self control. it’s a rare occurrence, rarer than the most precious gemstones in the world; his mask, cracking. the bandages over his fissured heart falling loose. 

it’s more frequent around gojo, he notices. his frustration attached by a yoke to love; not annoyance, not hatred, not chagrin, but hopelessness, and dejection, and at the brink of it all a silhouette in the shape of fear. he knows loss like no other, tasted its sweet poison on his tongue:   they both have. it was unearned and scalding. its shadow still haunts them in the halls of empty buildings, his shadow, a love now reduced to a burning memory. 

they share an illness. together, they make a wound in the earth. vincent feels as if he was the only half capable of seeing the roads of blood that trail in their wake; but in the end, he tries to understand. with all his heart, all his soul, everything in between he tries to understand---a part of him does, he knows, the other has long since failed. perhaps it is the latter that still believes satoru can be saved. 

vincent’s gaze hovers over satoru’s face for a second too long---then falls, suddenly skittish and embarrassed as he wraps his arms around his torso.  “ ah, i..”   he begins something, weighs his words. he doesn’t want it to turn ugly. not today. the sky overhead grows heavy, distant clouds hang pregnant with rain---as if they, too, were mourning---  “ i’m sorry, gojo---i have no right---i don’t know what i’m talking about. it’s---”  he stops himself there, gulps.  “  ...let’s just forget it.  ”

it’s no matter. his words may have been unintentional but he knows, hopes they were needed. one at a time, perhaps, until he can break through the wall. vincent knows not what true love looks like---had not tasted it, before---and so he hopes this, this is enough, hopes that the hoping is enough.

“  are you also cold...?  ”  he looks back up, offering a gentle smile. not a single crack shows itself across his mask, now. “ we should start heading back, i think. the sky is close to tears. ” 

[januaryhoney]

strawberry blond, mitski / long grass with butterflies, vincent van gogh / october, marry oliver

[lifeinpoetry]

At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? / And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?

Ilya Kaminsky, from “A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck,” Deaf Republic (via lifeinpoetry)

[lifeinpoetry]

I sit with my grief. I mother it. I hold its small, hot hand. I don’t say, shhh. I don’t say, it is okay. I wait until it is done having feelings. Then we stand and we go wash the dishes.

— Callista Buchen, from “Taking Care,” published in Thrush

[insolot]

❛ the shame is too much. i’ve failed. ❜

in the fragmented future of etheirys there is a word for this. a word for the violence of abrupt, uncontrollable unmaking, the process of existence turning into a bleak memory aching at the edge of dawn; into emptiness---not even a soul left behind. half of their kind, gone. ( perhaps never there at all? perhaps just a dream? his sanity wanes, reflections of old turn to dust. ) half of their kind sacrificed in the name of all. in the name of a brighter future---but is there anything willing to light the morning dark apart from the fires of ruin, now?

is there hope? vesta clenches his fist, sighs. there's always been hope. there is hope in recollection, ironically---in the burden he's been made to carry. in secret, hope lives on. in reality, in truth, he offers a comforting smile. it's jagged at the edges, weighed down by the weight of grief. by fear? oh, there's so much he wishes he could say, so many tales he'd spun of a world in which all goes wrong so that everything could go right... of a world in which they fail. and fail again. and fail again, and fall apart, and walk different paths of destruction, and forget, and remember to forget again, and at the very end of the road a bird shrieks in a crescendo of eternal pain so that all can live again---but there is naught he could say, for naught does he know in truth. the duty he's been entrusted with is a lonesome one.

and hermes, beloved as he is, kind of heart, with a soul nearly rotten in sorrow is at the core of it, what brought upon them their terrible doom. there is no solace, there. not genuine, not in truth. and so he puts on a mask.

his eyes shine no longer. the glitters of old joys flutters alongside the ashes of creation's end. he offers no true comfort, although he tries. “ all of us are burdened by the weight of shame, but none of those we have lost chose to walk their path just to let us wallow in shame for a bit longer, don't you think? ”

exhaustion, although bone-deep, bears no meaning as he closes the distance between them, locks their eyes, places a trembling hand on top of hermes' shoulder---damp with tears unshed it weighs heavy, but serves as a steady reminder nonetheless. or so he hopes. “ rest your weary head. future is not a guarantee yet lost. there will be triumphs for us... there will be life. there has to be. i--- ” the mask slips, for just a second. the fear has taken root in his expression, in the furrow of his eyebrows. vesta gulps, his grip on hermes' shoulder growing tighter. “ we need you. we need you strong. we need you keen and with a heart unspoiled by doubt. there is a long road ahead. ”

i need your help. i need help. there is so much fear. so much failure ahead. please, please, please---

there is so much he wishes to say. but hope lives on in the secret. in the duty. in helplessness.

[heireating]

         MOVIE STARTERS VOL.13     THE FOUNTAIN     DARREN ARONOFSKY

❛ All these years, all these memories, there was you. You pulled me through time. ❜

❛ These times are dark, but every shadow, no matter how deep, is threatened by morning light. ❜

❛ There’s no hope for us here. There is only death. ❜

❛ Our bodies are prisons for our souls. Our skin and blood, the iron bars of confinement. But fear not. All flesh decays. Death turns all to ash. And thus, death frees every soul. ❜

❛ What do you want? Leave me, leave me alone! Please, please. ❜

❛ Death is a disease, it’s like any other. And there’s a cure. A cure - and I will find it. ❜

❛ Will you stay with me tonight? ❜

❛ I’m sorry, for you there is only death. But our destiny is life! ❜

❛ Together we will live forever. ❜

❛ Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. ❜

❛ I don’t know! I’m trying! I don’t know how! ❜

❛ Death as an act of creation. ❜

❛ Perhaps it is a trap. Then what do we do? ❜

❛ What if you could live forever? ❜

❛ I’m not afraid anymore. ❜

❛ You’ll make it. I won’t let you die. You’re strong enough. ❜

❛ It seems we struggle for a lifetime to become whole. Few of us ever do. ❜

❛ Most of us end up going out the same way we came in – kicking and screaming. Most of us don’t have the strength – or the conviction. Most of us don’t want to face our fears. ❜

❛ If we do nothing, he dies. ❜

❛ You’re reckless and you’re losing perspective. ❜

❛ I feel different. Every moment. Each one. ❜

❛ You won’t believe me. You’ve got to see for yourself. ❜

❛ Queen of nothing but her sins. ❜

❛ Soon they will be powerless against me. ❜

❛ Your queen seeks immortality on Earth - a false paradise. ❜

❛ All life must be judged. ❜

❛ The shame is too much. I’ve failed. ❜

❛ I, for one, am not ready to die yet. Are you? ❜

❛ This bravery of yours, it may save us yet. ❜

❛ There’s hope. There’s real hope. ❜

[weltenwellen]

Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score

[insolot]

hi.