It was bad enough to realise that your life is a work of fiction. But it was truly awful to realise that the author is 12.
That’s your first thought anyway. You watch the world bloom around you in short bursts and think that you’re fucked. You think that there’s no way that you’re going to be able to live the sort of life you always imagined for yourself. You think that this is all that there will ever be in your world; a decent setting, unsettling exclamations, and so many plot holes that you’ve been to a psychiatrist twice to get checked for memory problems. You think your life is going to be inconsistent, sloppy and incomprehensible.
You’re wrong.
After a year, you notice that there are more people in your life. Your job isn’t solely populated by your boss, the secretary and the janitor who killed your best friend five years ago (which you can’t remember). Now there’s a woman named Mary-lee in the cubicle next to yours and a man named Gonzalez who works in a whole other department. Your company only had one department last year. Now it’s got two.
You stop shouting quite so much and you stop feeling the need to smirk every time you see someone making a fool of themselves. Your words are more reasoned now, more natural, and you find your conversations lasting longer with your new coworkers and neighbors. Your city grows, suburbs springing up overnight. The trees start losing their leaves in the fall and it’s not always night time when bad news arrives.
Your eyes aren’t orbs anymore, they’re just eyes.
When you run into your estranged brother in the hall of your apartment building, you wait for the ridiculous explanation for why he’d move in with you. Maybe every other house in the city is full? Maybe he didn’t know you lived there? Maybe it just “be like that sometimes?”
Turns out he’s not moving in. The woman he’s dating lives two doors down and he’s just as surprised as you. Small world.
Yes, it’s a bit contrived. Yes, it’s a little out of the blue. But, you realize, that’s how stories go. Sometimes they’re out of the blue. Making the out of the blue seem normal? That’s the mark of a true storyteller.
They’re getting better, you realize, watching your brother walk away. A lot better.
They’ve been writing your life everyday. You don’t know why you didn’t think about that. Of course they’re getting better. Through plot struggles and unpleasant writer’s block, they’ve stuck with you and your story.
Through everything, every shred of doubt, every shiny new idea, every criticism, they’ve stuck with you. They’ve worked hard to build your life around you. They’ve put in the time to get better, to give you better dialogue and a brilliant place to live and an exciting life.
They’ve grown for you.
Thank the author that you were lucky enough to grow with them.
I just thought about this today and dug through my pictures to find it: a letter from a black soldier in the Civil War to the person who owns his daughter. “The longer you keep my child from me the longer you will have to burn in Hell and the quicker you will get there.“
photo text (with corrected spelling and broken into sentences, paragraphs):
Letter from a Black Soldier to the Owner of His Daughter
Spotswood Ric, a former slave, writes to Kittey Diggs, 1864:
I received a letter from Cariline telling me that you say I tried to steal, to plunder, my child away from you. Not I want you to understand that Mary is my Child and she is a God given rite of my own.
And you may hold on to her as long as you can. But I want you to remember this one thing, that the longer you keep my Child from me the longer you will have to burn in hell and the quicker you’ll get there.
For we are now making up about one thousand black troops to come up thorough, and want to come through, Glasgow. And when we come woe be to Copperhood rebels and to the Slaveholding rebels. For we don’t expect to leave them there. Root nor branch. But we think however that we (that have children in the hands of you devils), we will try your the day that we enter Glasgow.
I want you to understand Kittey Diggs that where ever you and I meet we are enemies to each other. I offered once to pay you forty dollars for my own Child but I am glad now that you did not accept it. Just hold on now as long as you can and the worse it will be for you.
You never in you life before I came down hear did you give children anything, not anything whatever, not even a dollars worth of expenses. Now you call my children your property. Not so with me.
My children is my own and I expect to get them. And when I get ready to come after Mary I will have both a power and authority to bring her away and to exact vengeances on them that holds my Child.
You will then know how to talk to me. I will assure that. And you will know how to talk right too. I want you now to just hold on; to hear if you want to. If your conscience tells that’s the road, go that road and what it will bring you to Kittey Diggs.
I have no fears about getting Mary out of your hands. This whole Government gives cheer to me and you cannot help yourself.
Source: Ira Berlin, ed. Freedom, A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1982, 690.
I wanted to find out what happened (DID HE GET HIS DAUGHTER BACK?) and the answer is that not only was he reunited with his family, but went on to be a successful minister and his daughter was interviewed in the 30s for the Slave Narratives Project.
After being hammered by hurricane Maria, the residents of the rural
Puerto Rican mountain town of Mariana got tired of waiting for the
bumbling, privatized, cash-starved power authority to reconnect them to
the grid, so the anarchist organizer Christine Nieves founded Proyecto
de Apoyo Mutuo, one of a dozen-odd cooperatives across the island to
create their own solar grid; by the time the The Puerto Rico Electric
Power Authority finally put in appearance, Mariana had had power for two
whole months.
After Maria, Puerto Rico suffered the second-longest blackout in world
history, ignored by both the federal government and the gutted, heavily
privatized local government. So community organizers like Nieves took
matters into their own hands.
Nieves’s group formed an alliance with the Katrina-inspired Mutual Aid
Disaster Relief, which fundraised to send gear to Puerto Rico.
The island-wide efforts are rare bright spots in a year-long crisis with
no end in sight. Naturally, they’ve faced police harassment and raids
looking for “antifa.”
“I’ve NEVER. Eaten a DONUT. In my ENTIRE LIFE. And I’mNOT. About to start NOW.”
-Crazy customer I had today, upon being offered a complimentary donut
Why is this a real thing that happened in the real world what’s the meaning of this
I’m just gonna copy paste the story here from discord because honestly the whole story is worth hearing
so lady comes through drive thru. “Hi what can I get for you?” “A sesame bagel with extra cream cheese.” “A sesame bagel with extra cream cheese, sure no problem, can I get you anything else today?” “No” “Alright, you can pull up” and I just hear this quiet disgrunted “ ‘Please’ ?”
I’m like uhhhhh, was that even directed at me, I don’t know, I don’t know how to respond to that so I just ignore it like I didn’t hear it. I go up to the window and see this woman, which she honestly looked like a tomato with messy gray hair. Before I have the window halfway open I see her roll her eyes at me so I’m like oh boy here we go, time to put on the stupid sweet customer voice
“Hi how are you today?”
She hands me the money for her bagel and goes “Just a tip. It’s ‘Please pull up to the window.’ not ‘pull up.’ I found that incredibly rude.”
I go “I’m sorry about that, I didn’t intend for that to be rude, I just meant that it was okay to pull up to the window now.” “I know what you meant. But it was rude.” “Well, I apologize. Here’s your bagel, have a great day.” She goes “I’m a MYSTERY SHOPPER.” (If you don’t have Mystery shoppers where you are, it’s kind of like undercover boss where the store owner hires someone through the Mystery shopper program and they place a regular order just to make sure people are following policy) I’m like “… ok”
So I’m about to tell my boss and coworker what just happened when she comes in. And I jump to the front counter because no way I’m letting her talk to my boss before I do.
“Hi, can I help you?” “Yes. This bagel was supposed to be NOT toasted. You toasted it.” “Ohh, I’m so sorry about that! I didn’t hear that. I’ll make you a new one right now.” Coworker beats me to the bagel and I say “A little extra cream cheese on that.” She looks at my boss “She just said a LITTLE cream cheese. I wanted EXTRA cream cheese.” Boss goes “Oh, she said a little extra cream cheese.” “Oh”
Boss goes into kiss ass mode as well and says, “I’m sorry about the mistake, would you like a donut?” Lady goes “I’ve never. Eaten a donut. In my ENTIRE LIFE. and I’m NOT. About to start NOW.” Boss is like “… ok” and we’re all internally going sdhakgsdgkja?
So we get the bagel out and she says to my boss “And I have one more thing to say.” She leans in with a sneer. “Mystery shopper.” boss goes “We don’t do that here.” “yea you do.” “No we don’t.” “yea you do.” “Have a good day.”
Basically we’re pretty sure the lady was crazy and she was absolutely lying because Mystery shoppers are not allowed to tell you that they’re mystery shoppers, and they aren’t allowed to coach you. And even if she was, “please” is not one of the things they look for. They look for a Greeting, whether or not you repeated the order and the price back, and whether or not you upsold. We haven’t participated in the program in over 7 years.
This is probably not what I need to take along on shopping trips, tempting as it might be sometimes. But, I’m almost sorry this one is a custom job and already sold, though I probably couldn’t afford that kind of work anyway.
Reminded of this with the shillelagh mention, with at least some styles of those just straight up looking like plainer ball-headed clubs. Often with the head adapted slightly so it can double bette as a walking stick knob handle.
(The added spike in the OP really wouldn’t help much with that, either. Bit of a shame.)
Struck again by how not normal it really is that I’ve needed to purposely stick with a flimsy folding cane, because I really do not trust myself out in public otherwise. Given the level of casual shoving that’s socially acceptable where I’m living now, and my PTSD. (And it happens at least 3x as much when I am using a cane 😈) Haven’t hit anybody yet, but it’s been close.
As tempting as it may be to carry something sturdier and capable of doing more damage in case I actually need it, that really doesn’t seem wise under the circumstances. Know thyself…
Oh, those things are so cool! Unfortunately, because of my cocktail of issues, I need something with an adjustable height so that I can hold my shoulder differently depending on the current state of my scar tissue.
That said, my SO uses a set height cane and will probably be very interested! I will let them know!
For my followers: shillelaghs (sometimes called Irish canes or Irish clubs) can be made out of any dense wood. Blackthorn is traditional, but hard to find. In the US, maple and hickory are widely available and widely used. Anything you can make a baseball bat out of will do nicely.
If you’re like me and need something more adjustable or lighter weight, you can always get a standard tube style cane with an ice pick on one end and a hammer head for a handle. Not nearly as durable or as beautiful as solid wood construction, but easier to manipulate, in my opinion.
If you’re interested in learning more about weaponizable canes, there’s a whole marketplace for “self defense canes.”
would anyone who is nb and has chronic health conditions for which they seek medical care be willing to talk to me?
trying to figure out how to explain various things in ways that will hopefully mitigate the likelihood of medical discrimination as much as possible… not sure how to find people with comparable experiences to discuss this stuff with
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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