Hope Is A Skill

I... I don't know why not more people have reposted this. Because while I don't recognise the melody, the story, as my own, I recognise the beat. The rythm of finding out so many truths, so essential, in your life while elders tell you you're barely living. I beg to differ. These are my most vital years.

apparently teenagers don’t know a lot about life. I mean, its a fair argument. if I’m lucky I’ve still got a good 62 years left on this space rock. but just for shits and giggles, lets take a look at what i’ve learned so far.

when i was four, i learned that everyone does not, in fact, see blurry colors and shapes. i also learned that the level of fucked up my eyesight is can be measured in numbers. wicked.

when i was five, i went to kindergarten. in that first year of school, i learned that books are a way better way to spend my time than playdates.

when i was seven, i noticed that teachers really, really like me. and i really, really liked them too. turns out, elementary school teachers and i have a common love for whiteboard markers and “good job” stamps.

when i was eight, i learned that parents don’t always sleep in the same bed. I learned that sometimes dad’s voice gets really fucking loud and mom learned how to run when she was a kid too. i noticed that mom didn’t really get out of bed much anymore. she didn’t really do much of anything anymore. but she still let me sleep in her bed, so i didn’t really think about it anymore.

when i was nine, i learned that dogs have babies just like humans. i learned that puppies need more attention than even i did. i learned to love my puppies more than anyone else i was yet to meet. the runt of the litter died. by this, i was taught that the weak don’t make it far.

when i was nine, i learned that adults roughhouse too. but most of the time they aren’t joking. I learned that acrylic nails against a stubbly jaw ends with red and blue flashing lights and mom spending the night somewhere i couldn’t go.

when i was ten, i had to move from the only house i could remember. had to say goodbye to the room i painted into a blue sky. had to say goodbye to the pool in the backyard, where the first friend i made, had ever had learned my name.

when i was eleven, i met my first best friend. she was darker than me, but she held so much light. i remember talking on the swings and chasing boys through the multi-colored playground. i remember planning times to go to the bathroom so we could see each other between classes.

when i was twelve, my first best friend changed. she still had that light, but she used it to manipulate her way to the top of the popularity list. she wore too-tight shirts and white american eagle jeans. she made it clear that she wasn’t bringing a plus one to the top with her. she still came to my house, and when no one from school was around i could pretend that she hadn’t changed at all. that’s when i learned how to ignore the bad parts of people, even when they hurt you over and over again.

when i was twelve, i also learned that sometimes, people hate you for no good reason. after my first best friend, i met a girl. a-line blonde bob, jeans and tees just like me. she blended in, and i didn’t know who she really was until it was too late. i lost my phone in gym. my mom pinged the location and i heard it coming from a class down the hall. i opened the door, and there she was. my phone in her hand, her trying to turn it off. me biting my lip, running out to the bathroom to hide from my mom and her. she cut 6 inches of my hair off after we caught her. my mom got her expelled, and i learned one more thing that year. revenge isn’t sweet. it’s tasteless.

when i was thirteen, i learned that new situations are worse than the one you were trying to escape in the first place. I learned that the only time i felt safe was in the bathroom stall with my legs on the toilet seat. wanted so badly to be invisible. i learned that the only way to have a few minutes without anxiety, was to bleed. I learned to call the sting and the velvety warmth home, and since then i am uncomfortable without that burn.

when i was fourteen, i learned that writing is a better way to spend the time than much of anything else. with no direction i wrote short stories, bad poems, and journaled til i had a callus on my thumb. i smeared the pages with blood and never got more than halfway through a journal before getting bored of the cover. i learned to write and write and write until everything i had inside of me boiled down to hundreds of thousands of words.

when i was fifteen, i learned that no and maybe are synonyms to the wrong type of boy. i realized that even i wasn’t immune to the desperate persuasion that comes a guy who wants to get off. i started cussing a lot more. our movie dates ended with me crying myself to sleep, wondering why i didn’t say pull away when his hand found mine, why i let him use me like that, why i didn’t just walk out of the theater, why i didn’t fucking end it right there. i found the strength to later, and the revenge i got as tears streamed down his face was the same: tasteless.

when i was sixteen i learned that you can love so many people at once, all in different ways. a boy who led the group, kind when it matters and a great listener. a boy who made everyone laugh, with beautiful curls and honest hands. a girl who went to school in the town over, a voice that gets the birds harmonizing and me head over heels. a girl who supplies the music, mostly oldies she somehow got me to listen to and love. and this is how a romantic slowly meets their biggest weakness.

when I was seventeen I learned for the third time that you should walk away from experimental girls, girls who have a history of only being halfway interested, girls who say all the right things and give up when they win your heart. walk away from those girl friends that flirt when it’s fun. just because you give them everything they want doesn’t mean they will choose you when the dust settles.

I’m eighteen now. i’m learning that growth is something you have to work on every day, confrontation isn’t positive or negative, and not everyone is the enemy. i’m learning to love all over again (for the sixth time). it’s only been two months and i’ve already gained so much. here’s to the next ten.

For real same

Do y’all think that the local heroes would be like... offended? If I said Wonder Woman was my favorite hero?

They’re all super cool, don’t get me wrong! But I’ve just always looked up to her.

“X celebrity is the most beautiful woman in the world etc etc.” Uh no it’s my mom and also a random girl i saw while i was at work once

Day 2 in the Middle School Time Loop: you remember that last time, everyone ignored you at recess because they were talking about a TV show that you hadn’t watched. This time, you lie and say you’ve seen it. They ask you who your favorite character is, and you don’t know any of the characters, and so you’re tongue-tied. They think you’re weirder than ever, or maybe a liar, which is worse (and true).

Day 3 in the Middle School Time Loop: you tell your parents that you feel ill. They let you stay home while they’re at work. You spend the whole day watching past episodes of the TV Show.

Day 4 in the Middle School Time Loop: Recess again. The same person asks you who your favorite character is. This time, you're ready. You eagerly tell them, and supplement your reasons for liking them with solid evidence from all 4 seasons of the show. But! Tough luck: you’re now too invested. The atmosphere turns uncomfortable. They go back to ignoring you like they did on the Day 1 that you didn’t know was Day 1.

Day 5 in the Middle School Time Loop:

You decide to try a different approach and update your style. You've noticed that Ashleigh, who’s blonde and constantly surrounded by friends, always wears pink stripey sneakers. You try wearing a pink dress. Someone says it’s cute, but you know from how they say it that it isn’t the good cute.

“I thought that pink was cool,” you protest, more to the uncaring universe than to anyone in particular.

Your interlocutor shrugs. “Maybe on someone else.”

Day 6 in the Middle School Time Loop: You keep your head down, but still surprise the teachers by somehow knowing the correct answers to every spontaneous question they throw out to the class. You study the outfits of your classmates more closely. You realize that it wasn’t the color, so much as the brand that made the difference. It proves the shoes were expensive. You note down Ashleigh's sneaker brand in smudgy ink on the back of your hand, and then after school you take half a year's saved-up allowance and buy a matching pair at the mall. Your mom raises her eyebrows but doesn’t stop you.

Day 7 in the Middle School Time Loop: Today you make it to lunch before anything major goes wrong. You think that the sneakers have protected you, and stare down at them lovingly, watching the Barbie-pink plastic stripes reflect the tube lights on the ceiling as you turn your feet this way and that. But then at lunch, Ashleigh comes up, arm and arm with a friend. Her eyes are a little pink, but only a little.

“Ashleigh wanted me to tell you that she’s really hurt that you copied her sneakers,” the friend informs you, nobly, as if it would be too unpleasant for Ashleigh to have to say this herself. Her mouth is solemn but her eyes are gleeful.

“I didn’t…” You start to deny it automatically, even though it’s true. And yet, something won’t let you apologize. Doesn’t she see your imitation for what it is: the most sincere compliment you know how to bestow? This is your Hail Mary.

As you meet her eyes, you realize she does know, but this only makes her despise you more.

“I think a lot of people have these sneakers,” you stammer, in the end, and they just sniff and turn away. You go back to eating your lunch alone.

Day 8 of the Middle School Time Loop: even though you do well in every class, you must be so much more stupid than your classmates, to be missing whatever detail it is that they seem to have caught. How do they do it so quickly? Before recess, before the end of homeroom, even, they all just know. You’ve had endless chances to do this day over and yet you never seem to be able to catch up with them. Running to stand still, you’ve heard your mother say, when she’s busy at work. That’s you. Running to stand still.

Day 9 of the Middle School Time Loop: you pretend to be sick again, and you realize that if you want to, you can pretend to be sick every day. It's easy to convince your parents: you look tired and unhappy, your eyes small within their dark circles, like some underground creature. You stop watching that TV Show that you never really wanted to watch in the first place, and instead dream your way through all your favourite childhood movies. Disney, Pixar, Studio Ghibli. You retreat into jewel-colored landscapes, where everyone is magical or beautiful or at least funny, and the heroes always win in the end.

Day 10 of the Middle School Time Loop: You notice that most of the Pixar heroes, the Disney princesses look more like Ashleigh than you. Long hair. Pale eyes. Button noses. And all of them, so thin.

Day 11 of the Middle School Time Loop: you go to school, but you don’t talk to anyone. You don’t even answer your name at roll call. Your teacher asks you if anything is wrong at school, or at home perhaps. You shake your head, but that evening you hear your father taking a call. You shrug off his worry: it’ll be forgotten tomorrow anyway.

Day 12 of the Middle School Time Loop: an unexpected development: your apathy almost seems to make your classmates like you more. When you say, truthfully, that you don’t care much for the TV Show that eternally dominates the recess chatter, some people look impressed. They ask you what you think is better. But you’re wise and don’t admit to liking anything. "Mysterious," someone says appreciatively.

At the end of recess, the girl who told you off for copying Ashleigh nudges you. “Hey. Look, Robert has an Up shirt. Kind of cute, that he’s still into that stuff, right?”

You know that it’s not the good cute.

You stare at her coldly. “The shirt just has a dog on it. It doesn't say he's from Up. So you must have liked the movie enough to remember him.”

She flushes scarlet, and hurries to catch up with Ashleigh, throwing you a dirty look. Robert glances at you gratefully but you don’t return his smile. He won’t remember that you did this for him. Anyway, you didn't, really. Do it for him, that is.

Day 13 of the Middle School Time Loop: You tell your parents you’re sick again. Today, you watch the second tier of Studio Ghibli movies, the ones that your parents always say, self-consciously, that you’ll find dull. Only Yesterday, Princess Kaguya, When Marnie Was There. You’re only a few minutes into Marnie when there’s a line that pulls you up short:

“In this world, there’s an invisible magic circle. There’s inside and outside. These people are inside. And I’m outside.”

The relief that washes over you is so profound that you almost cry, and then, when the movie's over, you do cry. Ugly sobs that make you sound like a toddler throwing a tantrum at the mall, that make your head pound with a dehydration headache. But behind the tears, there's relief. There it is, the truth that you were searching for, through all these do-overs. There’s an invisible magic circle. Of course there is.

But here’s the thing about circles: the inside is small. The outside is scary, and lonely, but it’s huge: huger than you could ever have imagined before you turned around and looked.

When your dad gets home, he asks if you’re feeling better. “Much,” you say, and it’s true.

Day ?? of the Middle School Time Loop: Sometimes you go to school, but ditch class and go to the library or the playground and do your own thing even if teachers yell at you. Sometimes you wander around the neighborhood. Sometimes you ask your parents crazy things, like to take you to work with them, or to the beach, or to DisneyWorld. Sometimes they say no. A surprising amount of times, they say yes. You wonder if maybe they’re trapped in a time loop too.

Sometimes you sit quietly in other classrooms than the one you’re meant to be in, until they shoo you out or even send you to the principal. (He finds you baffling. You feel a deep, slightly mournful affection for him, like you would for an very old and tired dog). It’s surprising, the amount of different things that are getting taught in one school in one day. It takes you a long time to work your way through them all.

You watch a frog getting dissected a few times before you start to feel bad and don’t go back to that classroom again. Your favorite class to crash is art, because the teacher always clocks that you’re not meant to be there but smiles and lets you stay anyway. When you meet her eyes, it feels like you’re sharing a secret.

Day One-Hundred And Something of the Middle School ...Wait.

At some point, time started moving again, and you didn’t even realize it.

For so long, the reprimands you received about your future seemed so empty, so laughable. There was no future. Only a more- or less-bearable present. But now, your classmates remember the unhinged things that you do; now, your teachers’ and parents’ worries about the future have the full juggernaut weight of reality behind them.

You thought that you’d be more terrified. For so long, you’ve dreaded this forward momentum. No loading screen, no mini-games, just one single, awful, pulsating life. But things are different now. Time’s moving again, and here you are, so far outside the invisible magic circle that you’re not even sure that you'd be able to see it any more. You can still feel its power, but faintly, like the pull between two magnets when they're an arm's length apart. Easy to ignore.

“Are you ready?” Robert says, catching your eye over the kitchen table. He comes here first thing so you can get the bus together. At some point, during the time loop, you started to seek him out. He was outside the circle, too, you realized. But even more importantly, not once, on any of those grimly looping days, did you see him try and push someone else out to make a space for himself. In this crab bucket, that’s something that counts for a lot.

“Our final day of middle school,” he sighs, half to himself. “Never thought I’d see it.”

"Me either," you reply, getting up to put on your talismanic pink sneakers. They’re scuffed and dirty after years of wear, and certainly Ashley would never be caught dead in them these days. Maybe that’s what you should have told her, all those loops ago: that no imitation, let alone one as unskilled as yours, can ever be perfect, and that indeed the very imperfection renders it an original work in its own right. Time and thought and human care transforms even the most diligent copy into something else entirely.

But you’ve been through enough time loops to know that that sort of explanation wouldn’t go over very well.

In the future, children will think our ways are strange. "Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?" they'll say. "Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?"

We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people's yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines

“Calm and queenly, comes the summer nymph, July—crowned with azure, clothed with splendour,”

— John Critchley Prince, from Dreams & Realities In Verse and Prose; “July,”

he's got a sadness about him you only see in catholic stained glass windows

Save me warm toned lit windows of tenement blocks on a winters evening save me