#I'M SO FUCKING IN LOVE WITH HER

[fantasykim]

Writing sprint

“Hey, can I ask a weird question?” she asked, I nodded for her to continue. “Did you ever have a crush on me? Ya know, back in highschool?” 

I looked down at my hands, picking at the last bits of nail polish and chewing the inside of my cheek. I wonder if I had been obvious about it, or if she was only realizing in hindsight. Or maybe she was just curious. I had always been out and proud since before we met. And she only just came out to me. Makes sense she might ask a question like this.

I took in a deep breath and held it in for a moment before responding with a small, sheepish smile. “Yeah… I did.” 

At first I had just thought she was the coolest person I’d ever met. I traded in my leggings and skirts for jeans after a few months of knowing her. When she wore a bandana in her hair, so did I. Sometimes we would match colors by accident. Those days made me smile brighter.

I watched every show she mentioned, and listened to every song she quoted. Just to understand her better. So I could relate, and talk about whatever she wanted to talk about. 

She cared about me in a way no one ever had before, and it touched me in ways I’d never understood until meeting her. And I fell for her. Hard and fast. She was my everything. I couldn’t go a day without talking about her, to her, thinking about her. 

Her arsenal of bracelets and rings made me look into jewelry. And I bought her a necklace. One day I asked her what piece of her jewelry she loved most, and I prayed she would say the yin that hung around her neck, that matched the yang hanging from mine. And when she did I had to hide my smile.

I told her secrets I’d never shared before. She didn’t judge me on my low days, instead she lifted me up. And I did the same for her. We made sure we had at least half of the same classes each year of highschool. And her mother never asked if I was coming over anymore because she knew the answer was yes.

I was so in love with her. 

But she was straight. So I dated other girls, tried to pretend I wasn’t. But I only got hurt in the process.

Maybe I hid behind those relationships, for fear of her realizing I loved her.  Had it not worked? Had she seen through it all? The only problem was even though she wasn’t straight anymore, I still couldn’t have her.

“When did you stop?” she asked with a smug smile. “Having a crush on me, I mean.” she knew she was beautiful. She was the most confident girl I’d ever met. And I’m so lucky it rubbed off on me in our highschool years.

When I got too low and it started to drag her down, I thought I had lost her as a friend. But I didn’t stop loving her then. When we got into a huge fight junior year, and didn’t talk for a month. I thought it was all over. But my heart still ached for her then. When I tried a little to hard to get her to be around me and she was annoyed, I feared I had scared her away. But we stayed best friends.

When she called her other good friend a ‘best friend’ it sent a dagger through my heart. But I know more than most people that you can have more than one best friend. But sometimes I stayed awake at night, wondering if she thought of me as a best friend, or if it was only one sided like my love. I simply couldn’t stand the thought.

I wrote essays on how much she meant to me, letters she would never read. Epic poems of how deep my love ran through my veins, all of it for her, but she would never know. Because what if it was too much. What if that was what made her turn her back on me?

What if offering to turn out friendship into a relationship was the straw that broke the camel's back. Something we could never come back from.

I couldn’t take that chance.

I opened our texts and typed it out hundreds of times, only to abuse the backspace key into wanting a divorce with me. When I ever did say something sweet to her, she would always laugh it off and brush it aside. So instead of letting each other know we valued the other, we called each other names with big smiles.

I still tell her basically everything. But I have a feeling it’s not the same for her. And I wonder when the rift between us came to be. Are we more fragile now? Were we stronger before?

I’m scared of what my words can do, and how I can never take them back. But i’ve waited long enough. I’ve waisted so much time already. I’ll never move on if I don't know how she feels about me in return.

When did I stop liking her?

I chuckled softly and bit my lip. Then slowly lift my eyes to meet hers.

“I never did.”

[graveyarrdshift]

I'M SO GAY FOR ANNE HATHAWAY!!!! FUUUUUCK!!!!!!

[noperopesaredope]

I wish we had more female characters like Eleanor Shellstrop. One of the most unlikable people you've ever met. Read a Buzzfeed article on most rude things you can do on a daily basis and decided to use that as a list of goals. Makes everyone's day worse just by being there. Dropped a margarita mix on the ground and tried to pick it up, only to get hit by a row of shopping carts which pushed her into the road where she was hit by a boner pill delivery truck, killing her instantly. Cannot keep a romantic partner despite being bisexual. Had a terrible childhood but will die before she gets therapy. Best employee at a scam company. Just the worst but also can't help but root for her to improve.

Absolute loser. Girl-failure. Bad at almost everything. Literally perfect female character.

[inkskinned]

okay is she being actually immature or is it just a woman over 30 expressing a human experience you find to be immature.

like yeah. at certain ages... let shit go. im not defending the real immature shit. im not defending the karen you're picturing. i worked in retail i hate those people too. (once somebody got mad at me because she didn't like how our winter window decor was a snowman smoking a pipe. i wish i was joking).

but men at 57 will write books about how 17 year old girls are soooo sexy. they will invent worlds where women have to be naked for "armor reasons." they will write songs that treat women as objects. people rush to defend them. meanwhile a woman at 35 will be like "heartbreak is hard, actually" or "i feel betrayed by a friend" or "i am struggling with something emotionally." immediately people will say stuff like this woman is 35 by the way. by the way this woman is SO OLD to be experiencing this. BY THE WAY.

im 31, almost 32. the other day a poet was blasted online because at her "big age", she had written a poem about feeling unloved. top comment was "this woman is 29 by the way." this woman is too old to still be useful, by the way. she has to behave better . maybe if she was a good wife and mother she could stop existing loudly, and the story could continue on without her. this woman has served her purpose, by the way. she's so cringe, by the way. at 29 - so old! - she still hasn't figured out that her existence should be one of shame.

[demigods-posts]

i'm one hundred percent certain that after percy and annabeth made out underwater. and he wanted to make their relationship official. the question was not "will you be my girlfriend?" but "can i be your boyfriend?" i don't care what the canon says. percy gave annabeth the space to take the lead in the relationship. because after a lifetime of being abandoned by everyone she dared to care for. and then watching her on the brink of a panic attack at the thought of losing him the last four years. he wanted to honor a new beginning between them by follow her lead and moving at her pace.

[tapeworrmart]

What if James was always onimously soaked through as a nod to his ending

[vaguely-concerned]

are. are you telling me that if the romanced mage warden dies and alistair is king, he deadass stares greagoir down over her dead body and grants the circle of ferelden its autonomy after ordering it rebuilt somewhere safer. first you have to deliberately leave him behind so he won't die for you and then he does that for you once you're gone, even when you're broken up??? absolute and literal king behaviour of the highest order????? the actions speak louder than words of it all??????? I think I hauve covid

[lazylittledragon]

did somebody say dadkarios

[polinsated]

[micamone]

hewwo

[m4rs-ex3]

2x02 // 7x05

hey so this is actually my favorite thing ever actually

[hazel-callahan]

ruby cruz's different takes on hazel's introduction <33

[jksreilly]

"I'm gettin' happy."

[jpg-of-dorian-slay]

no bc jackie wanted to be loved so badly and she cared so much for everyone on her team, she did their face paint and misty's makeup and tried to boost morale and she loves shauna so fucking much and they exiled her and they left her outside and she froze to death. they literally froze her out. i'm genuinely never getting over her death bc she did not deserve that and all they would have had to do was ask her to come inside and if shauna was just like "hey i love you i'm sorry" she would have come inside. SHE WOULD HAVE COME INSIDE GUYS.

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[violent138]

I feel like the Robins probably watched horror movies to really up their game, taking notes on the gestures and body language that would creep you out. "Criminals are a superstitious lot", so yeah the guy in full body armour that could beat you up would suck, but a small child, somewhere in the dark, with an echoing laugh all around you as you fire off a hail of bullets, somehow dodging everything and gleefully messing you up. That's psychological warfare.