I am just saying that I have a small army of well-fed young adults at my beck and call and you should watch your step. And keep telling me how good at grading I am because I just held my office hours and I could use the testimonials.
[Betty's days are packed. She's looser now with the passage of time, more accustomed to the reality where Leonard is an absence and Bruce is a few lines of text at irregular intervals, also an absence. There are fewer challahs, more fruit cakes, because she doesn't need to punch things quite as much anymore and then she just fills the new void with sugar. She patrons the student-run shows and tries a Latin dance class and wears sandals through the icy mud because open-toed shoes are a revelation.
Even to someone who knows her, it could look a lot like happiness. If her walls are still half-painted and most of her effects buried under greenery, that just means things are in progress, that there's still some place to go. She desperately needs to believe that, because the truth is... The truth is she's not present for most of it. Sometimes she's eighteen years old again and her feelings aren't real. Sometimes, a stray thought will send her spiraling down a pit of helplessness, and this isn't her first rodeo, she's worked through these episodes before, but they come when she's in company and when she's alone, and the truth is that emotional hijacking is the least of it. When she can feel anything at all, it isn't happiness.
But she can still work, teach, nurture, bake, dance, and pack her days to the brim with sugar.]
no subject
[Betty's days are packed. She's looser now with the passage of time, more accustomed to the reality where Leonard is an absence and Bruce is a few lines of text at irregular intervals, also an absence. There are fewer challahs, more fruit cakes, because she doesn't need to punch things quite as much anymore and then she just fills the new void with sugar. She patrons the student-run shows and tries a Latin dance class and wears sandals through the icy mud because open-toed shoes are a revelation.
Even to someone who knows her, it could look a lot like happiness. If her walls are still half-painted and most of her effects buried under greenery, that just means things are in progress, that there's still some place to go. She desperately needs to believe that, because the truth is... The truth is she's not present for most of it. Sometimes she's eighteen years old again and her feelings aren't real. Sometimes, a stray thought will send her spiraling down a pit of helplessness, and this isn't her first rodeo, she's worked through these episodes before, but they come when she's in company and when she's alone, and the truth is that emotional hijacking is the least of it. When she can feel anything at all, it isn't happiness.
But she can still work, teach, nurture, bake, dance, and pack her days to the brim with sugar.]