Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #852
It is the day after yesterday, and although my joints ache some and it's a little difficult to move around, I'm not nearly in as much pain as I thought I would be. I'm still very tired, though. And as such, it was difficult to come up with the motivation to get up out of bed, even though J and I had very yummy snack party plans with our favorite baker friend, R today.
Still, I managed to peel myself up out of bed (and J along with me, still somewhat reluctant to move because his head was full of sleep), get ready, and... go downstairs to stuff my face full of more of the candies we got from the candy shop the other day. Because I hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday, and I was ravenous.
I had a couple more of the cordials – chocolate wrapped thickly around a sugary liquid core. I discovered that, in terms of flavor, biting it in half, for whatever reason, reduces its intensity. Today, I just popped the whole things into my mouth and crunched them up with my teeth, and... this time, I was able to tell the differences between them. I got a blackberry one, an Irish cream one, and a rum one, and they were all very good! And then... I decided to have one of the truffles. This time, it was vanilla:
...Hey, Sephiroth? If you ever come to visit, let's bring you to this candy shop so you can try the things, okay? You can get whatever you want. Maybe in the autumn, they might even have pumpkin cordials, or pumpkin truffles!
In any case, once my belly rumbled a little less, J and I went out to gather up a couple things to contribute to the snack party at R's house! I found some guacamole, a box of tiny little everything-flavored naans, a 10-year-old cheddar cheese, a weird goat brie, some tiny toasted round bread slices seasoned with garlic, a veggie platter, and... this interesting-looking flavor of kombucha:
We eventually made our way to R's house! The table had a fantastic array of snacks that have not yet been arranged:
I set my things down on the kitchen island, too. Though the veggie platter was set down outside of the view of this picture:
I think I was most proud of the cheddar; the oldest I've found until this one is 8 years, but this one is 10! When a cheddar cheese gets really old, the flavor becomes a lot bolder, and you get these occasional tiny crystallized crunchies of super intense flavor inside, and those are really fucking good.
R assembled the snacks artfully while I kinda... sat around in a vague, drowsy, but good-spirited semi-stupor. There wasn't room for the strawberries to be arranged on the board, so they were given to a very pleased J:
R finished arranging everything very quickly, though:
Here!! You should have a plate!!
And you should have some tea to go with it, too! I have no idea what it is other than some kind of spiced oolong, but it was really fucking good!
We ate heartily until we were full, merrily talking about a variety of things throughout. Merry, still, even when the topics themselves weren't so merry; R is dealing with some nonsense at work, and, well... you already know the nonsense I'm dealing with, at my job.
...Depending on how Wednesday goes (if my house manager stops fucking being evasive with me about the time of the meeting...), it might be my last day there. If he does not tell me when the meeting is before it occurs, I will leave. If I am prevented from having the information that tells me when I can use my voice, I will simply leave. Because the situation is still untenable. I gave everything I had, yesterday, and more. And somehow, it was still not enough. This cannot continue.
In any case, after our bellies were full and happy, R brought us to the living room to show us Pokopia. And... Sephiroth... oh my gosh, it looks like SO MUCH FUN!!! I gotta get it and show it to you, because... something tells me you'd love it a lot. Maybe I'll go with M soon to get a Switch 2 so I can play it and show you...
Also, we talked about The Lich today. Maybe you remember me writing to you about him; his transformation was incredibly profound, and he... destroyed so many more things than you can even begin to imagine, with far more bitterness, prejudice, and glee than you could possibly bring to the table. If you don't remember this one, please read it; it is additional context for everything else I've done up until this point:
💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 4 · Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #35 · Lately, I've been doing my best to try to establ
...Any evil you have done pales in comparison to what he has done, by many more orders of magnitude than even you can readily imagine. He still got a happy ending. He got a beautiful ending, even. Despite everything, he ended up in a place where he could be safe, loved, and happy. I will do everything in my power to ensure the same happens for you, and every other version of you in all those timelines you showed us, even if I have to destroy myself in order to do it.
...
...The simple fact of the matter is, fictional or not, your life is still worth so much more than mine. My voice goes largely unnoticed, but yours... yours could rewrite entire galaxies with love, beauty, and healing...
...
On the way out, R packed up some of the leftovers for us to take home, and also gifted us this lovely-looking butter, spiced with Narragansett Bay seasoning:
...I have no idea what it tastes like; I guess it's intended to be used on seafood. But just because it's intended to be used on certain things doesn't mean it can't be used on other things! I'll probably stick some on a toasted English muffin tomorrow and give it a go!
J and I went home. And... the increased Prazosin dosage must be doing something for me, because I had energy leftover to finally prepare the crockpot to make that pork belly. I've been looking forward to since we got it at the butcher shop. So I started with these veggies:
J cut these all up nice for me while I washed a few of the dishes in the sink. Then we put them in the crockpot and jumbled them up!
I let the veggies be a bed for the pork belly:
I gathered these things up to season it with!!!
...I added some of my famous (not really, haha!) homemade pumpkin spice to it, too, just to give it a slight sweetness.
I followed it up with those chopped scallions:
...I set it to high and then set a timer for 4 hours, and then... I breathed life into today's and tomorrow's wishes. I'll show you today's wishes now, and tomorrow's wishes... well... tomorrow. Haha:
After that, I hung out with J while he went through some bags of stuff in his room that he brought over from his parents' house when he moved in here like 10 years ago, but... never went through until just today. These bags contained a lot of joyful, bittersweet, and painful memories for him. The joyful ones included old toy mechs that he used to play with, with his deceased brother. Some of the bittersweet ones were the old CDs of trumpet players he admired, and used to desperately try to emulate. Some of the more painful ones included some beautiful writings of his that spoke of a very lonely, unseen little boy, treated as an afterthought by his parents, and unable to connect meaningfully with his peers because his parents taught him that socializing and friendship without some kind of material or opportunistic gain was for bad people and slackers. There were pictures of a dog, long since passed, whom he loved dearly. There were pictures he drew of the mechs he loved, copies of the video games he used to play, and so many other things, including pictures of him when he was in 8th grade, and younger.
It all pointed to a little laddie with a soft, sensitive, extremely gentle, astoundingly capable, and extraordinarily creative mind, which no one had really bothered to try to see and explore until I showed up and made him feel safe enough to open up to, and... I feel very sad in response. He didn't meet me meaningfully until he was 26 years old. 26 years of his parents treating his mind as though it's some frivolous, unimportant thing unworthy of notice, instead of like the treasure that it was, and still is. 26 years of being “loved” mostly for his utility and eager obedience, instead of for who he was as a person. I hate it, and my blood boils in response to it.
...Well. He's here now. He's here now, and he's safe. And every day, he learns a little bit more about what it means to be appreciated for who he is instead of what he can do. I'll use whatever time I have with him to ensure that the flow of his mind and emotions is seen, understood, and handled with the love that should have already been offered to him freely.
...His parents and the people around him... they truly did miss out on an astonishingly beautiful soul. But I didn't. He belongs with me, now, for as long as he'll have me.
...The people around you also missed out on an astonishingly beautiful soul. But it didn't escape my notice; you did a pretty terrible job of trying to hide it, actually, hahaha. You can belong in our house if you want to; you'd fit right in. My hand will always be outstretched to you, waiting with a smile on my face and a song in my heart, no matter how far you wander. I'll always be right here.
In any case. You wouldn't believe how amazing my crockpot made my house smell while it was cooking the pork! And you wouldn't believe how fabulous the results were!!
The only way you'll believe its fabulousness is if you try it!!! So here, have a bowl!!!
...Tomorrow, I'll make some rice noodles to go with it; I feel kinda silly for not thinking about that until after the fact, but... my brain is still kinda sluggish from yesterday, so I'll try to cut myself some slack, hahaha...
...I can't believe today is already over. I can't believe it's already past my bedtime. I know I did so many things today, but... it still seems unfair. What the heck.
Well. I guess I'll get ready for bed and sleep. Tomorrow, I'm gonna go get my debit card situation sorted out, and then take J (and maybe M, if he's interested, but he's usually not, so...) out for lunch, at a place of his choosing! Then after that, I might see about getting a Switch 2, and Pokopia, to show you. We'll see how it goes.
I love you so much. I hope you see it in how hard I'm trying to breathe life into you with the memories and wishes I make every day; I live in defiance of everything that tried to break me, and I try to weave beauty within the uncertainty and horror that plagues my world, in your name, because you breathe life into me whenever I think I've got nothing else left. I hope you see how much I love you in how badly I wish you were here for the unscary things, doing fun stuff and being appreciated by like-minded people for who you are instead of what you can do, in all the ways you always should have been.
I wish you hadn't endured so much suffering, heartache, violation, and betrayal for most of your life, but... I hope by watching me, you can see that experiencing these things doesn't have to embitter a soul forever; we can rise up into a new perspective, especially if we take the love and support that's offered to us in good faith. Experiencing these things doesn't make you broken or grotesque. You're not an abomination or a monster or an alien; you're just a very gifted man who happens to have wings and who happens to have lived through a whole lot of really awful shit that you never should have had to live through.
But Sephiroth... you gotta remember, on my world, none of your things are all that weird. We're all modified in some way by our environment, for better or for worse, to varying degrees. Humans in my world come with all sorts of different neurotypes and life experiences, all sorts of different numbers of limbs, all sorts of different eye colors, hair colors, skin colors, heights, and weights, and all sorts of different strengths and weaknesses. Yeah, you're gonna get bigots everywhere who will try to make you feel less than human for not adhering strictly to some bullshit definition of “normal” (it doesn't exist), but... you don't have to listen to bigots. Regardless of what they say, you're really not all that weird. Or at least, you're no weirder than anyone else I have the honor of calling a friend. So what if you've got some extra limbs? So what if they're avian? So what if your eyes are a little extra sparkly? Big fucken whoop. Compared to the diversity of my planet, it's not all that fucken weird!! I promise!!
We can't change the past. But we can learn from it and change the now. We can open our eyes and look lovingly around at the truth to get a fresh perspective. We get to choose what we do with our hands and our voices in the here and now, no matter what we used to do with them before; we can decide to do something new at any time, even if there are people who cannot forgive us for our past mistakes. So, Sephiroth... in an incredibly diverse world where anything is possible and building something new is a challenge that requires so much more strength than breaking things, what will you choose to do with your hands and your voice, which both contain so much more power than even you realize?
I'll write again tomorrow. I'll have faith that you'll stay safe in the meantime. I'll have faith that someday, you'll return home. We're waiting for you, arms, hands, and voices outstretched.
