#also sry if it’s nonsense i came up with this while driving

[muzdiir]

sry i need to rant about my mother

i haven't spoken to my mother in 3 & 1/2 months, despite living in the same domicile, & her incessant & often petulant attempts to get me to talk to her. she just sent me an apology text, saying she doesn't know what she did wrong & that she misses me. idk how to/if i should respond lol.

i've always had a very wishy washy relationship with her (she ignored me my entire childhood until my brother became an adult, then i became the golden child while also still dealing with regular ridicule). she thrives off of using the people around her for personal gain. her favorite activity is putting loved ones in uncomfortable, fucked up situations, simply because it suits her. she does not care about anyone else.

back in may, i came home from 6 months abroad in the UK. i had just dropped out of my masters program. i was incredibly depressed & isolated, & i was hoping that i could try spending time with my mother, you know, to try to feel better/comforted?

we went for a random drive and the entire time, she was blitzed out of her damn gourd, just talking absolute nonsense. she kept spouting half-baked sentences before trailing off, or suddenly changing the subject. we went to a shoe store bc she wanted new slippers & the whole time, she acted like a literal toddler.

she later reveals that she had had an edible right before we left, which makes me very quickly decide to end our trip & go back home. (it's important to note that my mother is on a whole slew of various medications that clearly should not be mixed with marijuana.)

i am very stalwartly anti-drug/alcohol, y'all. like, do you, but don't involve me & especially don't waste my time with them. if i want to spend time with you, i want to be able to have real conversations & know that you are fully present when you spend time with me. being a little high/buzzed is totally fine, you're still there, you're just extra giggly. being blitzed, tho??? not cool.

my mother knows this about me; she said as much when we got home afterward. she gave some half-assed apology that immediately included a "don't be mad at me." she broke my trust & walked all over (at least) one of my boundaries, so i haven't spoken to her since.

there's also a bunch of other various dramas & personal slights that contribute to my general feelings towards her that i cannot fully put into words.

(thanks & sry if u read all that, ur a trooper)

[waveridden]

reply: i am coming up to you with a scientist's clipboard and asking you many questions about grad school dropout mira lemma you have the floor whenever you should want it

thank you! you have unlocked Lore In Progress. this is all rough but here it is! also for context: core, west virginia is a real town with about 1700 people, and it also happens to be about a dozen miles away from the west virginia university campus in morgantown.

mira lemma is not from core, and she is not from morgantown. she’s from some other tiny town in west virginia. she grew up in the mountains, knows a thing or two about nature. her parents moved here before she was born: they’re immigrants, here because her father got a job, and it doesn’t matter that the closest mosque is an hour away, and it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t get along with the other kids.

see, mira’s life has been laid out for her as long as she can remember. she’s going to go to wvu for pre-law and then one of half a dozen choices for law school. she has known this for years. she should not have anything to worry about. sure, she’s not a great negotiator, hates arguing, tries to do debate team in her local high school and there are only three other kids who care enough to try, but — she’s going to be a lawyer.

except then she gets to wvu and hates all her law classes. she takes an accounting class and it feels like the numbers are singing. she’s here on half a dozen scholarships, she’s hanging by a thread, she drives ninety minutes to visit her parents every weekend, she shouldn’t change her major, but. but.

it’s her senior year, on the way home from one of those visits home, when her car breaks down. it’s used, gotten from a neighbor’s family member’s neighbor, it’s a miracle that it survived as many trips up the mountain as it did but it didn’t survive this one. she calls for a tow and gets taken to the core auto mechanics garage. but everyone just calls it jo’s place.

and it’s fantastic. it’s the first place mira has been where people don’t give a shit about stuffy business stuff, don’t say anything about the parties she doesn’t go to. these are people like the ones she grew up with but better. jo willowtree greets mira himself with a firm handshake and a promise to get mira home soon. jasper, the receptionist, is doing homework under his desk: he’s in online school getting his associate’s because he can’t afford to leave core just yet. lady, the head mechanic, walks mira through all the repairs and doesn’t let her leave till she understands all of them.

it’s a total coincidence that jasper mentions that they don’t have great accounting, could use a little helping out. mira goes straight to jo and says that she’ll come in two afternoons a week to help with bookkeeping, if he pays well. she gets the job on the spot.

the next morning she gets accepted into the masters program for accounting. the next weekend she finally tells her parents and they say they won’t pay for a masters and they certainly won’t pay for a masters in accounting. she’s not cut off, not fully, not yet, but she’s also about to need funding. two afternoons a week becomes the whole summer working at jo’s, getting to know everyone. core’s cheaper living than morgantown, so mira graduates and moves in with jasper, and tully who works at the gas station across the street from the mechanic’s shop, and quinns who’s assistant manager at the grocery store. it’s the best summer of her life.

dropping out of school is what jasper calls a strategic move. she’s miserable, the scholarships and fellowships vanish and she’s buried up to her neck in loan debt, and her classes are all so theoretical and pointless compared to the actual work that she’s doing for jo’s. she makes it a semester before she quits school. she has other things to worry about anyways: she and quinns have been talking more, later at night, and that always means something. and on top of that jo’s has started a pickup blaseball team, just something to do, and since jo is pitching he insists he can’t be team manager. mira’s not an athlete but she’s good with a schedule, so she schedules practices and team meetings and tryouts for the league.

ultra league blaseball want the team to be from morgantown. mira, more than anyone, is the one who insists that they’re named after core. morgantown wasn’t good to her, but core was. even though core isn’t necessarily good on its own, too small and connected and strange and mean, core is what made them the mechanics. they’re a good team, good enough that the league takes them as a whole without extra tryouts. mira’s still not on the roster: manager and accountant, but not player. she’s happy supporting at a distance.

the core mechanics debut in the first season. tully’s incinerated four years later, and that’s the only reason mira picks up a bat for the first time. (but that’s a story for another time.)