one of the most challenging skills i’ve had to learn as an adult is the art of figuring out whether i’m proportionally annoyed with someone or just tired and overstimulated and looking for reasons to be pissed off
you say it’s my villain era and what you mean is that when you were six you panicked about wearing the right thing to kindergarten, what you mean is that in middle school nobody was eating, what you mean is that you spent high school prepping for college and college prepping for adulthood and adulthood fucking lost in the system.
what you mean is that you’ve been good. you were a good team player. you would have never considered yourself perfectionist - those are people more popular, prettier, more successful - but you carry any flaw like a secret in you, terrified someone will desert you for the simple reality of your personhood.
if you were good you could be loved. you could be loved if you were selfless and thoughtful and caring. if you bent over for every person, if you went above-and-beyond, it would absolve you of who you actually were. deep down, how horrible that you had needs. that you had boundaries, that you had desires. you learned young that you cannot afford to cut people out of your life - you would have nothing left. it is better to live in the service of others, to supplicate. to worship. you weren’t exceptional, you had to make up for it in some way. to prove to others you were worthy.
if they need you, it’s the same thing as loving you. if you are always-there, always-listening, always-friendly, you are filling a role. you have a purpose. you are living correctly.
villain era, you repeat. you mean: yesterday you finally told a man no. for hours afterwards, you couldn’t control your heartbeat. you mean: you’ve been saying positive affirmations on repeat, trying to teach yourself any new thing about how self care is necessary. you mean: three weeks ago, due to a scheduling conflict, you finally told a coworker that no, you couldn’t do them a “quick favor”. you have felt bad about that ever since. sure, it would have made you work late and it would have been extra stress - but you feel bad about it nevertheless.
you tell your therapist you have been leaning into evil. she asks what that means. when you tell her: sometimes i prioritize my own needs, she doesn’t find it funny. she looks at you a long time.
i. angels must think that love is one sided. angels do not understand love like we do, their languages are too dissimilar from our own. how can something with so many eyes only see forward. i think they like that we try, though. i mean, we do send them little gifts. poems and prayers and lonely mornings. they send us back coffee and cupcakes and a little hope under our tongue. in this way, we are both parts of the universe, trying to care for each other.
ii. i tell my dad i think angels are probably made from flowers. there’s an angel in charge of every petal. angels are in toast. angels are in gasoline; it’s why they burn with holy fire and why motor oil smells so good.
iii. to my dog i am an angel. he tells me he loves me in the language we have both decided is our code - he presses his head against mine, and we both sigh. i cannot love like an animal, which would be better for me - the unname love, without speech.
iv. i think my angel is plucking her feathers from stress. it must be very hard, to love something that is intent on destroying itself.
v. sometimes it is enough to love something, i mean. pressing our fingers to the mirror and breathing our little lives into the fog. today is a hard one, though. maybe tomorrow you and i can be an angel for the bird outside, and watch it take flight. we’ll both know we love it, in our own private language - and give our heart into it. i’ll be the angel of daybreak. you can be the angel of dawn. we can both collect the spray of the world and spin it into yarn.