Screw That

Sometimes love hurts. Maybe most times. Maybe all times. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be, the way it has to be. Because love means change, and change is never easy. It’s even harder when you have to change from a monster into a man, and I guess that’s what I was planning to write tonight, but screw that. We’re tangenting. We’re tangenting hard.

Because it isn’t fair. Why should he have to learn to be a man? He never asked to be a man, or a monster. He’s just some poor little boy who got used, and it isn’t fair. And the little mermaid? Screw that prince, girl. You should have stuck that knife in his chest when you had the chance. Girl, you should have lived. He didn’t care about you. He didn’t care about anything. Girl, he killed you long before he said yes to another woman. You fought hard for your humanity, girl. You sacrificed everything you had for it, and he still consigned you to the stupid doggy bed in the stupid hallway. You deserved better, girl. You deserved to live.

So forget about love and all its pain. Screw that. You fight, and you live, and you don’t put everything you have into someone who will never give anything back. That beauty will never see that you were never a beast, boy. She’ll never understand how that fairy hurt you, and no matter what you, she’ll always believe that everything you are is only your fault. So rip her throat out while you have the chance. Those fangs are all you have left, boy. You better fight to keep them.

And stick that knife in him now, girl, now before it’s too late. You loved him, and you gave him your life. And your sisters loved you, and they gave you the chance to take it back. Screw him, girl. All he ever gave you was a pillow outside his door.

You deserve more. You deserve so much more. Don’t let them hurt you. You have to live. You have to fight for what’s yours.

Jenny Rants About Dolls and Life

So I flipped out a little on Tumblr. About Barbies.

See some lady was calling the Curvy Doll an Obesity Barbie, and well, the whole thing is over here.

Highlights:
"Kids need representation. Kids don’t need eating disorders. So maybe you should venture out of your stupid Barbie Dreamhouse for a while, and live with the rest of us in this world where there’s actually a middle ground between obese and literally dying of skinniness, and there are worse things around than double chins and fat ankles."


Also it's one in the morning and I'm exhausted but my cat has decided to take a nap on top of me, so obviously I can't dislodge him by getting up and going to bed. Life is hard when cute things use you as pillows.

Also also, I know I'm totally blog-neglecting, but in my defense I'm really focused on trying to wrap up this novel I've been working on forever. Except for right now. That part of my brain is dead right now. Though I think I might have been channeling some of my MC's rage on Tumblr just now.

London on a Tuesday Morning

It is a Tuesday, sunny, and she is walking the streets of London alone. She is walking along the Strand, and does not want to be. She is not entirely sure where she does want to be, but she knows it is not along the Strand. She knows this because she has walked up and down it three times now, and has found nothing remotely interesting.

It has been unusually sunny since her arrival in England, two months ago, in the company of a man called John who propositioned her in a chiropractor’s office. She bought an umbrella, polka-dotted with a handle that curves, especially for this trip. There has been no occasion to use it, and she is angry.

John is long gone. It began when he chipped his tooth on a bit of hard candy, two weeks in. She had seen the end the moment he smiled at the girl in the dentist’s waiting room. The girl was of an average height, with mousy brown hair, a poor complexion, and unremarkable eyes. Plain, but John has never gone for the remarkable. Their elopement to Europe, three days after meeting, is proof enough of that; her back problems are the most elegant thing about her.

Alone in the city, she buys clothes she can’t afford and can’t quite fit in, and frequently becomes lost. Somewhere within a hundred miles is a hotel room containing all of her bags, her computer, and her passport. She knows, distantly, that this is important, the passport at least, but cannot find the energy to care.

She did not love John, or does not think she did. She does not miss him, certainly. But without him she is lost, adrift in a foreign land. Her new skirt from Harrod’s is riding up, and there is a tear in her stockings. She has no money for a plane ticket home, but is certainly the best dressed backpacker in the UK.

She wishes it would rain.

Her mother had still tried to call her, five or six weeks ago. As she no longer has a phone card, she cannot be sure when the last time was. It may have been this morning, but she will not allow herself to feel guilt over that. She is an adult; they can hardly launch an international search for her, and she has assured them many times that she knows what she is doing.

This is completely true. She knew that running away to the other side of the world with a man she’d just met, even flightier than herself, would not be the stuff of fairy tales. She had not wanted it to be. But a whirlwind romance with an attractive man is a small price to pay for the freedom of a whole new hemisphere.

The heat is unbearable, and there is a run in her stockings. There is one pair left, in a golden bag on the dresser of her missing hotel room, and her wallet holds six pounds. There is also the matter of lunch.

She ought to get a job, but that would require a work visa, and she is not sure that avoiding homelessness is worth all the trouble. Perhaps she could become a street performer. Digging through her wallet again, she ponders the price of a guitar.

Guitar lessons, too, she adds to the list. A case for the money to be dropped in, a microphone, a sensible outfit for street performing. Then lunch, and three new pairs of stockings. The hotel room is reserved for five more nights, at least, assuming she can find it.

Sighing, she looks toward the red phone booth across the street. Her mother, perhaps, would wire her some money.

She yanks down her skirt again, and walks purposefully toward the department store behind it.