swirlsofpurple

On Friday it’s slightly windy as I walk to work, and the rain is oddly violent considering there’s so little of it. The weather doesn’t seem unusual though, or even particularly bad. It’s February and torrential rain and howling wind is the norm in most months here. And so the assumption is that the storm is finding its feet elsewhere.

One of our co-workers doesn’t come in because of it and we think it must be bad where he is. There’s the occasional pondering of whether we will be able to get home again at the end of the day, but the tone is more joking than serious.

Intermittently throughout the day one of us looks out of the window and says: the lamp-post is swaying slightly again.

And then someone on their phone finds a picture.

Oh fuck. Definitely worse elsewhere then. A deep pit in our stomach as we stare at the phone. The chunk ripped out of the large dome of the arena.

Was anyone hurt?


*


I leave work, stepping outside tentatively. The sky is blue. The wind a mere whisper. And I think maybe it missed us almost entirely. And then I see the branches littering the ground.

The path I walk is lined with trees and I keep a wary eye out for if any might fall. I come across a wall, broken down, bricks strewn across the pavement.

As I near my road I come to a police line. I ask the officer if I can cross as I’m fairly nearby. She asks me to explain where and I do so.

She shakes her head, pointing at a tall, multi-story building. The scaffolding is coming down. Debris is flying everywhere.


*


I walk away, turning to go the long way around. I get closer from the other direction, but find another police line: from another point of damage. I don’t need to ask this time- I can see it right in front of me- the building yawning across the street.

I turn away again, walking to come at it from yet another direction. Trepidation sits unsettled in my bones as I consider all the damage near where I live. I wonder if my home is okay. I wonder if my neighbours are okay.

There’s no police line on my third try but there’s too much on the pavement to walk on it. I walk on the road instead.

I reach my home. It’s fine, my neighbours homes are also fine. I give a sigh of relief.


*


At times I think what really matters is different to us all. We all have different drives, passions, loves, the things we know- down to our marrow- that we live for.  But then comes a reminder like this, and I think: we are all just humans, wanting somewhere safe and secure, to live and love and be.

 

I started off reading Chandler/Monica fanfiction on fanfiction.net. By the time I’d started writing fanfic, in 2002, I’d moved on to the ‘Charmed’ fandom. My username on ff.net was blackhole116 because that was the sort of thing my fifteen year old self thought sounded cool.

To be honest I don’t remember what exactly I was looking for when I migrated over to Livejournal in 2006, but I think I found it. Community and friendship and weird pocket-universes where my strange tastes could live. I also don’t particularly remember the reasoning behind my ‘swirlsofblue’ username there beyond wanting a name that was non-fandom specific because I enjoyed multiple fandoms. By then I was writing House MD fic, I just went back and checked; it was actually a year and a half before I posted a non-fanfic post, which somehow isn’t surprising.

I didn’t know how to make icons. But I made a Daniel Jackson from Stargate icon, because Daniel Jackson is awesome, which is still my default icon on livejournal to this day.

I think I joined AO3 in 2010 or 2011, and then I just tagged my name onto the end of my LJ username and became SwirlsofblueJay.

I think House MD fandom and then Vampire Diaries fandom were the ones where I did the most stuff: challenges and big bangs and fic exchanges galore! I even created my own comm. for The Originals, called tvd_originals, which ambled by in an okay manner. TVD was also the fandom I created my tumblr account for, username chipmunksallshipklefan; which I still think is the most hilarious joke I’ve ever made up (particularly because it’s a terrible joke and is unforgivingly cheesy and a tad dark, and very me- which is why I haven’t changed it despite no longer really being in that fandom).

Does explaining a terrible joke still make it worse, can it get worse at this point? Thinking on it now, I don’t think it’s even structured enough to be a joke; it’s more of an idea. My sense of humour is weird. Okay so, Klefan is the ship of Stefan and Klaus. Stefan is a vampire who eats animals instead of people, eg chipmunks. Klaus came along and yeeted Stefan off the wagon and he started eating people instead of chipmunks- and that is the reason that the chipmunks all ship Klefan.

About five years ago I joined The RealLJIdol competition on LJ and started writing original fiction. And thus followed it over to dreamwidth, which wouldn’t let me use swirlsofblue, and thus that’s how I, swirlsofpurple, came to be here.

 

The pain begins suddenly, spiralling out from fingers to wrist, from elbow to shoulder. Like tree branches trying to grow, ripping through flesh and sinew and skin. There are tests and braces and painkillers. And the answer: it will fix itself; it’s a just a matter of physio and waiting. She has to wait, a long- drawn out- two years.

The pain ebbs relatively quickly, settling into a dull ache in the bones. But a glass of water trembles in her hand, straining muscles like she’s trying to lift a car. And her shoulder joint can barely move. She tries to put her arm behind her back but barely reaches her butt. She never realised how much she used her shoulder until she couldn’t.

Here’s the thing though, she never realised how much she could use an elbow until it’s the only working arm joint she has. It’s enough to move around, almost seamlessly, it’s enough to fake it. To pretend everything’s fine. She’s fine, she doesn’t need anyone’s help.

The door handle may be a herculean weight beneath her fingers, but she pauses, oh so casually, as though it’s just a bookend to the conversation, and braces herself for the task. She plants a smile on her face and yanks the door open like it’s nothing. And no one notices.

*

Getting undressed is difficult. But she soon finds a way to twist herself around, pushing and pulling until the clothes comply.

Standing in her underwear, failing to unhook her bra, is the moment the dam breaks. She’s never been particularly feminine, and yet somehow it feels like she’s been un-womanned; that she can no longer undo the clasp from behind her back feels like something has been taken from her. And she knows it’s ridiculous. The ability to remove a bra one-handed has nothing to do with how much of a woman a person is. But she can’t help the feelings. It’s a culmination, another loss on the pile. It’s all too much. It shouldn’t be; it’s not like she doesn’t still have workable functionality. And yet, it somehow is. She’s never been very good at adversity, if this can even be called that.

And all she fucking wants is a fucking bath. Just to sink down into the water and let everything melt away.

She doesn’t even remember how she used to get in and out of the tub. Surely three fully working limbs and a half-working one should be sufficient. Instead it’s an inexplicable melee of limbs and water.

 *

Someone asks if she can help with something and she follows to find a room full of chairs to be moved.

She mentions that she maybe shouldn’t help, she has an arm thing. But she doesn’t want it to be a big deal, she doesn’t want to seem like she’s making a fuss when she can move the chairs. And so she does. 

It’s not so painful anymore, which means there’s nothing to stop her. And if it means her arm works less later- well that’s just one of those things.

*

The progress is too slow and she knows she has to stop over-working the wretched limb.

But someone hands over a pile of plates; almost dropping them into her hands, like her taking them is expected, like there would be no reason to refuse. And she catches them because she must, because it’s the natural flow of things. It feels like there’s no air for argument, no breaths between the joined actions. And she doesn’t wince because it doesn’t really hurt. But she can feel months squandered with a handful of seconds and porcelain.

And she smiles anyway, like the weight she holds is normal, carefully careless.

But she’s angry.

*

Someone asks her to carry the bags of milk bottles to the fridges. And she says she has a bad arm.

They protest, thinking she’s being difficult and lazy. They’ve seen her carry things with it. They’ve seen her carry on.

She’s pretended too well.

They will think what they will.

She says, “No.”

I’m from a mother who hugged me every night before bed,
I’m from a mother who waved a knife at me and threatened to cut me to pieces,
I’m from a father who quit smoking when I was one,
I’m from a father who died of lung cancer when I was twenty three.

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At the moment I’m working part time and also doing two other volunteering jobs other than that. So I’m a bit short on time and energy. And also my anxiety issues are in a heightened state due to this. I think one thing that’s giving me unnecessary stress is writing, so I’ve decided there’s a lot of the writing I said I was going to do, that I’m just not going to do. Sorry about being rubbish. I’m not doing the hiatus thing; I just end up thinking about the things I’m going to do later. So there’s some things I’m just going to put on the permanent back burner until further notice, those are as follows:

·         Big Originals meta
·         Any anon requests
·         I am Neal fic
·         Pretty much anything that isn’t listed below in the things I’m planning to do section.

Of course my muse’s response to me deciding to not write for a while is to pour bucket-loads of inspiration on me and promise to keep niggling around my thoughts until I write, in part the fault of the lovely juicy idea-provoking shows I’m watching. These are the things I will be mainly doing:

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