#that's the last of April!!
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In the hallway after school on Tuesday, as I head to my locker to retrieve my gear bag, I spot Miss O’Reilly. She is locking up the art room, and gives me a big smile as I approach her. She’s always doing that, smiling at me, I mean, and it throws me off. It's usually not the expression teachers have when they see me coming.
I smile awkwardly in return and she turns her body towards me, takes a step, prompting me to halt beside her instead of barrelling past her like I would have, not enthused about facing the wrath of Doherty if I hit the rugby pitch even one minute late.
“Jude! I've been meaning to congratulate you.”
“Um, for what?”
She laughs as though I’m being dense deliberately, “I spoke to Eileen, the guidance counsellor last Friday and she told me about your offers.”
“Oh, for college.”
“Yes! How wonderful. I’m just so pleased for you that everything worked out the way that you hoped it would, after all of the hard work you put in this last year it’s just fantastic to hear it. And tell me, did you get accepted to every college you applied for?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow,” she takes a big pause, taking it in, “wow. You must be delighted. How does it feel?”
“I dunno, miss.”
“Hard to get your head around, I’m sure. Your parents must be proud too.”
“Mm.”
She’s determined to ignore our mismatched attitudes towards this news, taking a big, jubilant breath before launching into more affirmations, “well, what a confirmation of your talent and skill. I had a really good feeling about your work when you came to my class last year, and I’m just so pleased that you got the results you wanted. Have you decided which college to choose yet?”
I shift my weight from one foot to the other, “yeah I’m choosing NCAD.”
“Oh!” I can tell she’s trying to maintain her upbeat attitude, but eyebrows slowly draw together in confusion, “I hadn’t realised you changed your plan. When we last spoke about it in March you told me you were looking forward to attending universities abroad.”
I shrug, “Yeah, I, um, I changed my mind in the end. I’m going to stay in Dublin.”
“Hm, okay, I just… Jude, do you mind if I ask you why?”
“Yeah, you can ask,” I say, and am instantly horrified by the tremor in my voice. I fight it back with a hard swallow, “It’s just, like… um,” Oh God. What is happening to me? I’m conscious of the crowds of students milling through the hallway right behind me, and of the fact that I categorically cannot do this here. “Sorry…”
“Oh, come in,” she says in a low voice, jangling the keys in the art room door with an urgency that feels entirely necessary, and when she lets me into the room ahead of her I stand dumbly in the middle of it as she fumbles with the blind over the glass doors, tingling jolts of anxiety running down my arms and through the tips of my fingers.
“What is it, sweetheart?” She says, and simply that, the word she uses and the way she uses it makes me want to crumple onto the linoleum floor in front of her.
“You’re alright, you’re just…” she purses her lips, searching for the word, “overwhelmed, I’d say. College and all of that kind of thing, it can get on top of you at this time of year. I know it’s a lot to think about.”
I manage a grunt of vague agreement.
Miss O’Reilly drags a folding chair from the side of the room, “C’mere, sit down there and we’ll have a quick chat about it.”
“Um, Mr. Doherty…” I say, and she understands, “Don’t mind him. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
She settles into a seat across from me, and gives me an encouraging smile. As I search for the words I want to say I’m cognizant of how comforting this woman is, how unfazed she is by me and whatever it is that is happening to me in this room. She has a daughter, I know that, a daughter who goes to our school and for a moment I’m jealous of her, that fourteen year old girl who gets to have a mother like this one, that is soft and comforting in all the places where mine is sharp and disinterested in me and every feeling I have ever experienced.
I’m not convinced that I even know how to talk about things like this, afraid that I will try to and come across like the weirdest, most unhinged person on the planet. My thoughts and feelings will be so nonsensical that they will make everyone around me cringe with discomfort. “I’m trying to do the right things,” I attempt, “but somehow the right things feel very wrong to me.”
“When you say ‘the right things’, Jude, do you mean you want to choose the right college?”
I nod.
“And why does NCAD seem like the right choice?”
“Because of my girlfriend.”
“Michelle?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know you knew that to be honest.” I never thought that teachers noticed or cared about things that weren’t arbitrary uniform rules and homework assignments, but evidently I was wrong.
She smiles kindly, “So Michelle is going to NCAD?”
“Yeah if she gets the points in her leaving. She applied for all the same colleges as me but got none and now I feel sort of... like I have to stay for her.”
“Is that the right decision for you?”
“I dunno, miss.”
She hums contemplatively, “I’m sure you’re tired of hearing this kind of thing, but it’s not always the best choice to base big life choices on your girlfriend when you’re only eighteen years old. Especially one as important as your university.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s never an easy choice to make. I really empathise with you here, because when you’re in love with a person, you-”
“I don’t even know if I love her.”
There’s a pause, she looks surprised, and so am I. I'm stunned that I told her that, this thought that I've never dared to utter before.
And then everything comes spilling out of me. “Look, it’s just that I feel very trapped,” I say, “Sometimes I think there’s something abnormal about my brain, because I make decisions that even I don’t understand, like with Michelle... when I think about us being together and our relationship I can hardly remember anything good that’s happened between us for a long time, the last fun thing we did or the last time I felt happy. I can’t even remember what I was thinking when we got together. I feel like I’m on autopilot, or like things are just happening to me without me having a hand in it.
“Somehow I’ve just, like, ended up here and I’m making plans with her and promising her things that I haven’t even decided if I want yet. I thought that I wanted to move away, but maybe I don’t anymore. Maybe it’s wrong of me to do that, because what if I go away and then I realise that what I actually wanted was to be with Michelle?”
I breathe in, knowing that I have probably been talking too much, but now I am unwilling to stop, “My parents, they’re fighting a lot at home. Something happened a few months ago and it's just been a battlefield ever since. I know that if I go away I’ll leave my sister alone to deal with all of it. She’s only nine, and the constant tension upsets her so much, she goes into a spin about it and starts fantasising about all of these awful scenarios, and see, my parents don’t know how to deal with her, they don’t really like it when kids act like kids. Or at least they’re not that interested in them��� in her. I keep imagining this future where I’m gone, I’ve left home and I’m hundreds of miles away and she’s all on her own with them, and there’s nobody to really look after her because I can’t get home so easily, and when I think like that, even the thought of going away, even wanting it a little bit makes me feel like the most selfish boy on earth…”
Miss O’Reilly produces a tissue and holds it out to me. I stare at it for several seconds before I realise she is offering it because I have started to cry. My face is somehow wet with tears. “Oh,” I say, hoarsely and take it.
“Jude, you’re still a teenager.” She says gently, “You can’t possibly be responsible for the emotions of every other person around you. It’s too much.”
“Yeah.”
“When you’re young you have to make selfish decisions, ones meant for yourself and yourself only. Nobody else is going to make them for you. You have to really ask yourself what the right choice is for you, whether you’ll be able to be truly happy in your current circumstance where nothing may change or will you be better off on your own, doing something you love and experiencing real freedom in spite of how others may feel about it.”
I wipe my eyes and nod, staring down at my lap, still in a state of shame and disbelief that I have allowed myself to sob like this in front of my teacher, though if she is bothered she doesn’t show it.
“When you imagine your ideal life,” she urges, “where none of these things are a factor, not the things you promised to Michelle, not what's going on at home, what does it look like?”
“God,” I breathe, almost chuckling because the answer is so easy, “I’m gone. I’m not here. I’m just miles away and I’m making art and hanging out and doing what I like.” It sounds so simple when I say it out loud, yet for the longest time now I’ve felt like a criminal for wanting these things.
“And where do you see yourself?”
“Berlin,” I say, surprising myself. It’s not like I’ve put real time into thinking about this, visualised myself walking those streets, in fact I don’t even know what Berlin looks like, but it feels right to say it, as though there is some cosmic reason for me to go there. Perhaps only because it’s the furthest from home.
Miss O’Reilly nods, “NCAD is a fine college, Jude, but your talent is wasted in a place where you don’t want to be. You could do anything you want. You have incredible potential and I’d be very sad to see it wasted. Life passes you by very quickly, you know, and these kinds of opportunities don’t present themselves as often as you think. It may seem obvious, but you only have one life to live.”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t tell you what to do. I can’t make a decision for you, but all I want you to do is really think about this. Put a good amount of thought into what you really want when you remove everyone else from the equation, then, once you know, you can decide what's worth sacrificing. Do you think you can do that?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Good, then that's your homework,” She smiles and reaches to squeeze my hand, which I am embarrassed about because my skin is clammy, but just like everything else about this moment that is humiliating to me, it doesn't appear to faze her.
“Thank you,” I say, and she nods. “I hope you’re not in a hurry to get to your rugby practice.”
“No,” I sniff, and let out a thick laugh, “No miss, I think I’ll skip it today.”
“Good,” she says, “That’s a good start, see? Here you are, doing exactly as you wish.”
She smiles at me, once again, that bright, warm smile, and I give her one in return because maybe it's just me, my weird brain and the things it invents, but the feeling of hope that rises in me in that moment feels very real.
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#lucky boy 2010#that's the last of April!!#i'm so exicted to move on from this#and say goodbye to this cursed school
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i'll give you a boop, anywhere you wanna go.
#good omens#boop#boop o meter#boop omens#ineffable husbands#sorry djhfdjh#aziracrow#good omens shitpost#good omens memes#good omemes#THIS IS THE LAST ONE I PROMISE#aziraphale#crowley#april fool's day#april fools 2024#my edits#btw i wanted to do “received ;_;” but i couldn't find it anywhere. too bad. get booped crowley#ineffable boop#gos1#good omens s1#i need you to know i consider this my magnum opus
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Aspec men deserve much more respect and recognition in the aspec community than they receive. They often face a different form of aphobia specific to them ("men are naturally sexual they can't be ace" "all men are unromantic that's not unique") this rhetoric is spouted by many, even members of our own community and I hope for a day where that is no longer the case. As an ace and demiro woman (demigirl but that's beside the point) I want to encourage folks to take the time to give the aspec men in their lives support and to the aspec men reading, you are who you say you are no matter what people say and you deserve the world. I'm sorry for the ways in which toxic masculinity has harmed you. You are a valued member of the aspec community and the queer community as a whole. No ace or aro person is broken and neither are you. I'm sorry if anyone has ever told you otherwise.
#asexual#asexuality#ace stuff#actually ace#ace culture#acespec#ace men#aromantic#aro#aro stuff#aro community#arospec#aro men#aspec#aspec stuff#aspec community#aspec culture#ace pride#aro pride#aspec pride#lgbtq+#lgbtpride#lgbtq rights#lgbtqia#I make a post about this annually on april fifteenth#why you ask?#a couple years back I'd come across some people saying the type of things I mentioned about aspec men#the hateful monstrousness of what they'd said pissed me off and I wrote a rant about it#I've since gone on to make a post once a year on the day I'd made the first#btw last year's really gained quite the traction I still get notifs about it! I'm glad this message has reached so many people this year
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Okay, so April have found themselves in quite the pickle, good thing they have an ally that can teleport them to safety! .....Hey wait actually where is Mayhem anyway-
Yeah okay no he got captured. Well maybe April can-!
OKAY now April and Donnie are also captured shit man this really isn't going well. Also Draxum tries to parent Donnie... it's not very effective.
And as if things aren't bad enough, Donnie activated Draxum's Speech Mode so he of course starts monologuing! UGH! 🙄 (heehee donnie and draxum parallells heeheehee)
...Mmmh I'm sure that's not gonna lead to any destructive consequences!
<- Previous I Next ->
#okay the next part is probably gonna be the last part...... PROBABLY#who knows at this point#Tiz Sep AU#tizel art#my art#digital art#rottmnt au#tmnt#rottmnt#teenage mutant ninja turtles#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#rottmnt donnie#rottmnt april#rottmnt draxum#rottmnt huginn#rottmnt muninn#rottmnt mayhem
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thankfully, he didn't get it [id in alt]
#zukka#zukka fanart#zukka comic#zuko#sokka#zuko fanart#sokka fanart#atla#avatar the last airbender#atla fanart#this has been in my wips since like APRIL and before i started the new year i wanted it DONE lol#i have no many more projects to work on for the next year#and im so excited to share them!#thank you all so much for your kind words and support this year <3#myart
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this is the greatest april fools to ever april fools
#april fools#april fools day#especially with smallishbeans title it's so funny#episode 1 and finale#oh finally an smp where solidaritygaming lasts till the finale episode#life series smp#life series april fools#real life smp#minecraft vr#traffic smp#trafficblr#grian#rendog#pearlescentmoon#zombiecleo#skizzleman#geminitay#impulsesv#smallishbeans#minecraft smp#martyn inthelittlewood#inthelittlewood#the title of his is so funny u KNOW it's gona be good#even if it's an april fools joke#life series#gtwscar#goodtimeswithscar
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irma and april :P girls bein giirls 📹
irma loves to talk about her fictional character boyfriends and april is always there to listen
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EGO DEATH
#metal gear#metal gear solid#mg#mgs#mgs2#raiden#my art#HAPPY APRIL 30THHH#(WHICH I HAD TO CRAM FOR BECAUSE I FORGOOOOT)#my love for raiden has lasted 4 years and is going strong <3#i hope next year will FINALLY be the year where i dont have to rush something#everything was going perfect for that to happen this year#but i forgor#*pensive face*#also. please forgive the edgy caption but i had had it in mind since before i even began the drawing lol#and also please excuse the jpg format#*praying hands*#the file was to big as a png for some unknown reason#hopefully the quality doesnt suffer for it#anyways. enough rambling.#no thoughts only raiden <3
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This spring 🌷🌱🫶
#Claiming this energy on the last day of February#April will be a month of celebration & joy#Notice I didn’t say HEALING* bc not everything is about healing#This spring I will keep it pure and enjoy it all with reckless abandon#I just wanna marinate in the sun and vibe
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HAPPY TRANS DAY OF VISIBILITY😼🏳️⚧️‼️
#by the time I’ll post this it’ll b april 1 😭 close enough ig#had this as a wip since pride month last year and finally finished it up. I haven’t drawn them in so long…#t4t renga my beloved 🫶 to me they’re nb and transmasc#reki kyan#langa hasegawa#langa x reki#sk8 the infinity#sk8 fanart#certifiedlesbianvampire’s og art
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„And that‘s your grammy April and gruncle Mike when they were young!“
#this will hopefully end up being a comic.. it will just take some time! until then i just really liked how it turned out so far#and it kinda works on its own#i also have another idea for the portal tf2 au… so many ideas so little time#tmnt#the last ronin#casey marie jones#april o'neil#uno tmnt#yi tmnt#odyn tmnt#moja tmnt#michelangelo tmnt#laughs nervously as i pick mikeys colours from my 03 turtle pallet#red does art#fanart
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Woah!?
#charlie day#iasip#april fools#hehe#we like to have fun here#ok just saying.#last year my april fools joke was that sunny 16 was a summer season.#and then...#im kidding ik this wont happen just having fun#OC
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If only.
Happy April Fool's Day everyone.
Also say hi to my little old cat lady sona I made recently on discord.
#It's still April Fool's here at least#sucks being in the last of the time zones#replica#rottmnt#rottmnt replica#kathaynesart#save rottmnt#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#unpause rise of the tmnt#tmnt#april fools#april fool's day#boop
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I learned how to Evil Boop friends 😈
#this is my last boop shitpost I swear#boop#homura akemi#madoka kaname#puella magi madoka magica#pmmm#madoka magica#april fools#boop o meter#april fools day#funny#meme#evil boop#devil homura#madokami#1k
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*Boops Ingo* 🐾
With no warning, the weird teenager runs up to you at the training grounds while holding up her baggy polecat so it can boop you on the nose with its paw. What do you do?
#wayward’s asks#submas#ingo#warden ingo#Akari#pokemon akari#quilava#pokemon legends arceus#pokemon legends#PLA#waywardstationart#I’m going to do my best to catch up on asks and do some doodles for them#I fell behind as these last two weeks have been really rough and I’ve spent all my time managing that#had no time for art or tumblr really :(#but this was for April fools day!!#I got booped a ton and I booped a ton of people back haha
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