in a ship of her own making

wynne. girl, 21. all of the writing posted here belongs to me, unless tagged "reblogged from other tumblr writers" or otherwise stated. [ask box]

[aseaofquotes]

William Faulkner, Soldiers’ Pay

[shipofherownmaking-blog]

When my sister walks into our shared bathroom, locks the door, and turns the shower on full blast, I know it’s my cue to crawl into bed and bury my head under the biggest pillow. She thinks I can’t hear her over the sound of running water. She’s wrong. I can still hear everything, just not as clearly. Muffled retching. Muted sobs. It drives me mad with fear and pity. All I want to do is stick my head in the sand until it goes away.

But sometimes hiding underneath the pillow only makes it worse. Alone in the suffocating darkness, I see the scene behind that locked door playing on the inside of my eyelids in lurid detail, like a horror movie I’m being forced to watch. I see my sister kowtowing at her porcelain altar, bony fingers shoved deep into her throat. Tears streak down her cheeks, leaving behind messy black trails of mascara and eyeliner. Her mouth, now dotted with specks of vomit, is still shiny with lipgloss.

Often, in the theater of my imagination, I envision a bolder, braver, better version of myself breaking down that locked door to confront my sister. She’s still kneeling in front of the toilet, too surprised by my intrusion to immediately react. She hurries to flush away the evidence, excuses already bubbling up like puke, but I stop her with a shake of my head. I yank her up by the elbow and pull her in front of the mirror above the sink, the protruding bones of her frail arm digging unpleasantly into the softness of my palm.

Look at yourself, I imagine myself saying. I point accusingly at our reflection. There’s me, looking the way I’ve always looked. And then there’s her. The birdlike shoulders. Collarbones as sharp and angry as weapons. That haunted face, simultaneously gaunt and puffy. Look at what you’ve become. You’re not okay. You’re killing yourself. You need to stop killing yourself.

Then she—

This is where the fantasy stops.

Because the truth is, I know it wouldn’t do any good. I know my sister would look into the same mirror, at the same reflection, and see something entirely different. Something that justifies the months of purging and crying and starving. Something that tells her, More.

[shipofherownmaking-blog]

girlvswhale replied to your post: Snow drifted past their window, white and feathery...

You just renamed the antagonist in my novel. Oh, thank you.

anytime :)

[the-peony-deactivated20130101]

I don’t like a lot of people. I don’t know if that is evident — but no, it’s not because I am insecure, or have social anxiety, it’s because I find them to be petty. I don’t have a lot of friends and that is for good reasons. Even those I want to get rid of sometimes.

But still, I am one of...

[shipofherownmaking-blog]

Snow drifted past their window, white and feathery and poetic. Three floors down, it met the dirty city streets, became gray slush. It was a cold November evening—a TV and hot chocolate, heater turned up high kind of evening. And that was precisely the kind of evening Anna and Noah were having. Here Comes Honey Boo Boo reruns. Hot chocolate with a splash of Kahlua. Heater on full blast.

On the new 50-inch Sony flat screen he’d bought her for their six-month anniversary last week, Honey Boo Boo’s mom did something in high-definition. Anna cracked a stupid joke about it, as she was wont to do. It made Noah laugh, which made her wonder if she should tweet it. Yes, she decided after two seconds of deliberation. Why not. She wiggled her phone out of her back pocket, unlocked the screen, tapped the Twitter icon. And that’s when it happened.

“I love you,” Noah said.

“I love you,” Noah said.

“I love you,” Noah said.

(Well, he only said it once. But it echoed in her mind, over and over. I love you, I love you, I love you. He said, I love you. I love you. I space love space you period.)

He’d never said those three words to her before, and she’d never said them to him. Not in the same sentence, in that order, one after another with no other words in between. Not until now.

Suddenly the room felt different. Suddenly the room felt too warm. Everything was still, still like a hummingbird. There was an expectant silence that, after ten too-quick heartbeats, grew awkward. On the TV, Honey Boo Boo’s life disappeared, replaced by a Geico commercial.

Anna and Noah were both silent. He was looking at her, bravely trying to catch her eye, but she was looking down at her knees. At the coffee stain on her rug. Wondering why she’d never noticed before how much it resembled a saggy ball sack.

Ball sack. Ball. The ball was in her court. Oh God, she had to say something. But what? How come there weren’t any socially acceptable responses to “I love you” aside from “I love you too”? How come it wasn’t okay to respond with “I don’t love you back but I like you well enough and I like what we have going on right now and I want it to continue even though we evidently don’t feel the same way about each other at the moment but hey, I might love you someday”? What was wrong with that?

Do something, she begged him in her head. It’s not too late to laugh it off. Change the subject. Get an urgent phone call from your boss. Drop dead. Something. Anything. Let me off the hook this time. Please.

He did nothing. He just sat there and waited with earnest basset hound eyes that were starting to drive her up the wall. She was panicking. She wanted to laugh and she wanted to cry but most of all she wanted him to stop looking at her like that.

So she did the adult thing. She lied.

“I love you too,” she said. And she smiled at him.

The smile was not a lie. The smile was real. The smile was a smile of relief.

[shipofherownmaking-blog]

Me: That guy from Kick-Ass was woefully miscast as Vronsky. He ruined Anna Karenina for me.

N: Who, Nicolas Cage?

Me: I wish.

[silver-tongue-bastard-deactivat]

It was an early Saturday morning, still dark out, a little cold. I pumped my gas, cigarette in my mouth, unlit since the sign said no smoking. I leaned back on my black Chevy. It was an old pickup, nothing special, but it had a...

[silver-tongue-bastard-deactivat]

Because I fucking liked the piece.

[shipofherownmaking-blog]

It's always been that way.

Great piece, especially the last paragraph.

[shipofherownmaking-blog]

I used to think that love was grand gestures and emotional thunderstorms and the constant threat of heartbreak. Beauty and pain. Drama and seduction. Metaphors, metaphors, metaphors. The stuff of Moleskine masterpieces—part fairy tale, part Lana Del Rey song.

Now I think love is knowing that he’s unclogged a toilet for you and still thinks you’re hot as fuck. Now I think love is cuddling on the couch on a Friday night, an eight-limbed tangle of greasy hair and hideous sweatpants and bloated bellies full of too much Chinese takeout.

Now I think love is prose, not poetry.

[flightedd]

Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos.

Pablo Neruda (via flightedd) I want to do to you what the spring does to the cherry trees.

[ianbrooks]

Quotable Arts by Evan Robertson / Obvious State

High quality giclée prints available at etsy. Distilling literary quotes from a handful of the masters down to a single graphic representation, Evan captures the raw concept of the sentence and makes it damn purty to look at as well.

(via: fab)

[lbardugo-deactivated20210617]

Love this. Still can’t help but notice: no ladies :(

[jayarrarr]

I can call you that, I hope, because that’s what I see in you. A brutal burning passion rising from the ashes of childhood innocence to be reborn into a boundless beautiful bohemian. I realize people are pushing you towards practicality, towards a suited existence with all its hushed and mundane...

[aseaofquotes]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories

[syntaxandsemantics]

Sometimes people come into your life, and stay. Sometimes they don’t.

Some relationships, for whatever reason, are merely a fleeting moment that stopped at the fingertips of your experience long enough for a soft brush, a glance, a glimpse, a taste of what could have been, what might have been,...

[shipofherownmaking-blog]

<3

[shipofherownmaking-blog]

Morning air, cool and damp and heavy against her skin. The smell of wet grass. Fog so thick she could barely see six feet in any direction. And silence, blessed silence. Complete silence—almost. The only sound was the rhythmic squelch, squelch of her boots against the mud as she walked.

She took these walks alone every day, soon after sunrise. Like clockwork. She had to. It was the only time she could stand this place. When all she could see was the pale grayness around her and the vibrant greenness beneath her, when all she could hear was the sound of her own footsteps carrying her farther and farther away from the manor, she could pretend she was somewhere else. Somewhere better. Somewhere she wanted to be.

In half an hour the fog would lift and the sun would shine, illuminating the ugly truth of her situation. She’d brace herself as she stepped through the servants’ entrance, slightly out of breath after running the last quarter mile to make it back on time. The housekeeper would frown at her in greeting and say “Go change your uniform, your skirts are muddy again” and she would bow her head and say “Yes ma’am, sorry ma’am.” Most of the other maids would be awake by then, hurrying this way and that to begin their morning chores. A few of them might nod at her but not one of them would say hello or good morning, because idle chatter was not allowed on their employer’s dime.

She would climb up a flight of rickety stairs and make her way down a narrow, badly lit hallway to the bare, cramped room she shared with three other girls. She would change into her one other skirt. It would also have mud caking the hem, but it would be yesterday’s mud, so maybe it’d be less noticeable.

She’d look at her reflection in the tiny, grimy mirror that had been installed in the room last Christmas, a token of their employer’s generosity. And she’d say to herself out loud, “This is your life.”

[shipofherownmaking-blog]

Hi there. I've been reading your work and wanted to say that I find it very moving. Thank you for sharing your talent.

!

i actually gasped out loud when i saw this message. i appreciate all the feedback that i get, but coming from a writer whose work i enjoy so much (seriously, i'm a big fan :)) it means even more. so flattered - thank you!

[thekhooll-deactivated20210705]

Green Waves

By Boguslaw Strempel

[shipofherownmaking-blog]

The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it.

Ernest Hemingway