Your wife changes her hair color every season and her personality adjusts slightly. You’re secretly only in love with Autumn wife. She just came home sporting her Winter color.
it’s my fault. it’s just that when we met it was autumn; her red-orange hair and crackling laughter. there’s a little spooky in her, a lot of play. and what a better time for falling?
i didn’t realize it for the first few years – something shifting, something so subtle. the winter makes us all cold, the summer makes us all a little out of our minds. i just loved her, because she was incredible, and i was the luckiest person alive.
it’s just that i realized that spring came with sudden bursts of cold. it’s just that summer frequently raged in with fire sprouting from her lips. it’s just that winter was the worst of all, her eyes dead. it’s just that autumn loves me different; throws herself into it without the clingy sweat of summer. i used to love that summer girl, you know? i loved how wild she was, the way in summer she took every risk she could. but i carried her home drunk one too many times, cleaned up one too many of the messes she made for no reason than to enjoy the sensation of burning. and winter was worse; the shutdown, the isolation. how she became distant, a blizzard, caught up in her own head, unable to tell me what was wrong and unable to think i actually wanted to listen.
she comes home, her hair bleached white. a dark smile on her lips. the shadowy parts of her are back. they loom like icicles overhead. she kisses me with her body held at a distance, a peck on my cheek that feels like an iceberg. she makes polite conversation and we go to bed early, our bodies untouching.
it is a lonely season, i think on the ninth day of this. winter is cold. winter is known for the death of things. when i look at her, i see the girl i fell for, inhabited by an alien. she was the first women i loved so much i felt it would kill me. i can’t leave. when i wake her up with my crying, she tells me to shush and go back to sleep. she’s different like this, quiet, doesn’t eat.
three days later i stare at myself in the mirror. i wonder if it’s me. if the fat on my body or something in my face or the wrinkles and she doesn’t love me. i try prettier lingerie, lean cuisine, i try different hair, more makeup, try harder. it doesn’t work. she looks at me the same; that empty gaze that neither loves nor condemns my actions.
somewhere in februrary i lose it. we’re fighting again, from car to restaurant to car to home again. we fight about stupid things, small things; i tell her i feel she doesn’t love me, she says i’m not listening. the circle goes around and around, old pain peeling back, new pain unhealing. i sleep on the couch.
i wake up when i hear her crying, white hair around her all messed up. the kind of sobbing that only comes at two in the morning, heavy and thick and hurting. my winter girl. my heart is breaking. she looks up at me like i’m her anchor. “i’m sorry i’m like this,” she says. and i start saying, it’s okay i’m here we’re married, but she just shakes her head and says, “I know this isn’t the real me.”
i hold her cold hand. she stares at the blankets. “i am different in winter,” she whispers, “i know i am and i’m sorry.” she looks at me. “why do you think i dye my hair? cut it off? get rid of the old me?”
i tell her it’s okay. we’re together and it’s okay, and then she whispers, “i’m sorry you married four of me.”
we lay there like that, her head on my chest. she falls asleep. i stare at the ceiling, thinking of the way she sounded when she was crying. how i helped put her in that pain. how i promised in sickness and in health and everything in between.
the next day i spend at the library. there aren’t enough books on how to love someone with seasonal affective disorder so i make my own, notes and pages and little ideas on post-its. and i take a deep breath and make myself a promise.
she comes home to her favorite dinner and we kiss and she’s uneasy but that’s okay. the next day i bring home flowers and the next day she finds little love notes in her pockets. i love her quiet, the way winter demands, understand her sex drive is faltering; spend more time just cuddling. we drink wine and we kiss and some part of her starts relaxing.
the truth is there is no loving someone out of their mental illness. the truth is that you can love someone in despite of it; love them loud enough to give them an excuse to believe they can make their way out of it.
and i learn. i remember the rebirth of spring, when she starts thawing. we kiss and have picnics in pretty dresses. i remember her joy at little birds and her rain dancing. i fall in love with the flowers in her cheeks and the little bursts of cleaning. i fall in love with summer’s slow walks and milkshakes and shouting to music playing too loud on the speakers. i fall in love with her dancing, with the sunfire energy. and when winter comes; i am ready. i remember that snow used to look pretty. i fall in love with the hearth of her, with the holiday, with the slow smile that spreads across her face so shyly. i fall in love with how she looks in boots and mittens and every day i find another reason to love her the way she deserves – they way i always should have.
she comes home with her white hair and dark smile and a package in her hands. i ask to see what it is and that small shy grin comes creeping out. it’s a sunlamp packed in with medication. she looks at me with those wide eyes and that beautiful winter blush. “i’m trying to get better,” she whispers, “i promise.”
recovery doesn’t look immediate. sometimes it isn’t neat. i can’t say we never fight or that we’re suddenly complete. but each day, that tiny girl’s strength gives me another reason. i love her. i love her while she tames the roller coaster of spring; i love her for reigning in the summer storms; i love her for taking her winter and trying to be warm. it is hard, because everything worth it is hard. she spreads out her autumn leaves; mixes the best parts of her into everything. learns to take winter’s silence for a moment before yelling in summer. learns to take autumn’s spice and give it to spring. we are both learning.
one day she comes home and her hair is different, but it’s a style i don’t know. i kiss it and tell her that she’s beautiful and the inside of me swells like a flood. i’m so glad that she’s mine. every part of her. the whole. i am the luckiest person on earth. and i always have been. but she’s hugging me and saying, “thank you for helping me,” and i can’t explain why i’m crying.
this is what love is; not always an emotion but rather your actions. the choices we make when we realize our lives would be empty if the other was absent. this is what love is: letting them grow, helping them find their way in out of the cold. this is what love is: sometimes it takes work to see how the thing you planted together actually grows.
this is what love looks like in an autumn girl: it is winter and she glows.
I’m actually sobbing jesus christ
my heart is aching??? this is gorgeous
Wow. Worth the read, don’t scroll.
This is everything.
Everything about how to love.
I was not prepared
Nor was I.
“this is what love is; not always an emotion but rather your actions. the choices we make when we realize our lives would be empty if the other was absent. this is what love is: letting them grow, helping them find their way in out of the cold. this is what love is: sometimes it takes work to see how the thing you planted together actually grows.”
Honestly, if you scrolled… Go back up and read it.
I’ve read this again and again, and it just wrecks me every time.
This is beyond beautiful. Thanks for doing this prompt @inkskinned
We can address this! First, friendly reminder – JSTOR is not a publisher and is a non-profit organization. We work with publishers to digitize and make searchable their copyrighted work, so we do not own any of the content that is on JSTOR. But! did you know that JSTOR has worked with our publishing partners to make that content available in a variety of ways for those not at higher ed institutions?
1. Graduated? Graduating? Check to see if your uni offers alumni access here.
2. We offer free online reading programs. Sign up for a MyJSTOR account and you can read up to three articles online every two weeks. More info on how to register here.
3. Open Access content – everything published prior to 1925 in the U.S. and 1870 abroad is free to read and download. Additionally, there are more than 500 open access ebooks and a number of open access journal articles that publishers have made available. You can find these by performing a search and then, on the results page, in the left-hand side bar, scroll down and click “Read and Download” while you are not logged in.
4. Many public libraries offer access to JSTOR – check with yours. NYPL and BPL are two that do off the top of my head.
5. JSTOR Daily is our online magazine – outside authors write articles on a number of topics but must cite their sources from articles on JSTOR! And we link to and open the articled that are cited in each story. So, you can read the short version and explore the research that supports it.
I hope this is helpful!
Heads up, kids
This is excellent information but I’m dying to know….
Why is @jstor better about responding to complaints than @staff?
OH HEY, THIS AGAIN.
Update! Tech recently made a change where ALL OF THE OPEN ACCESS CONTENT ON JSTOR IS SEARCHABLE WITHOUT A LOGIN.
This now includes 2,700 ebooks (up from 500 when we originally reblogged this) and something like 500,000 open articles (keep in mind though, most of these are published pre-1925). There are 19 open access journals that are still posting their work on JSTOR too.
Kara is in a bathroom stall trying to finish a particularly long rambling text when the two walk in. She doesn’t pay them much mind at first, but her ears perk up just a bit when she hears one of them say supergirl in a heavily accented, heavily vitriolic whisper.
She floats her legs up so they can’t be seen under the door.
“I know it is uncomfortable,” the other one is saying as the water turns on, “but it is the price we pay. With them here at least we know we’re safe.”
The first one laughs a throaty, obviously alien laugh, and says, “tell that to those who died in the attack. You know that would never have happened if they were not around.”
“Look, there’s nothing we can do. They’re friends with the owner. Besides, all my interactions with them have been pleasant.”
“My brother is still missing, you know that? Those pigs took him from our home four years ago without any warning and he’s still gone. No word if he is even alive. But now that they’ve got their little human looking poster child suddenly it’s okay to be extraterrestrial, it’s okay for them to come into our space and act like they are not our oppressors. Like they have not stolen our children away time and again. It sickens me.”
“I have heard of another place opening soon. less legitimate but a strict no human policy.”
The other one grunts, shutting the sink off. Kara can hear the sound of paper towels being used.
“And none of their little alien pets, either.”
The other laughs – a shrill groan that makes Kara’s insides feel like mush – and agrees.
“Of course. No supergirl.”
Kara waits nearly fifteen minutes after they leave to let her feet touch the ground again.
She walks slowly back to the table where her friends sit drunkenly arguing over a story from a few weeks ago. She sees Alex with her arm slung casually around Maggie, sees the hint of her sidearm under her jacket. Winn is loudly refuting James claim while munching away at the only bar food edible for humans. Kara lets her eyes wander over the rest of the bar and it feels like she’s really seeing it for the first time.
She sees how the other patrons huddle on the walls with at least two tables between them and her friends. She sees The tells of agitation, the side eye glare that flashes towards Winn when his excited yell results in spewed food crumbs all over the group. Everyone yells back, jumping up to try and escape his spray. Kara hears the grumbled mumblings of a large bug-like humanoid who tosses its money on the table and skitters out in a huff.
She’s brought back by a soft hand on her shoulder. Alex is giving her a concerned look.
“Hey,” Alex says quietly, “you okay?”
It feels like the walls are creeping in on her and her ears are ringing.
“No. I’m not.”
Kara starts the next morning.
She doesn’t actually wait until the sun has risen. She talked with Alex for an hour and formulated a plan. Alex isn’t entirely on board–yet–but she’s willing to give it a shot. And that’s a good enough place for Kara.
She has Vazquez teach her the last bits of the system she didn’t know and is halfway through the records before J’onn and Winn even get into work.
J’onn examines her work and just sighs. She glares. “You knew this was coming.“
“I did.”
“Times have changed, J’onn. We can’t do what we used to. We can do better. It’s time. It was time months ago, years ago. We can’t put this off.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
And they begin.
Kara speaks to everyone personally. They can’t put every alien through their rehabilitation program. But they have a relocation program for those who want it, and they move all but the most dangerous into better accommodations. Bigger, with more light. A comfortable bed and a stack of books and a window–reinforced bulletproof glass, but still.
About half their prisoners are released within six months. There are some that have been locked up for a while, for no particular reason. Many had minor misdemeanors. Lots just didn’t know how to deal with their abilities on earth, and weren’t given the same loving care Kara first had. Kara–and J’onn and Alex–work with them on controlling their abilities. And they’re let free, with only a little bit of oversight. Not parole, not a supervisor, just a sort of… someone looking out for them. Someone in their corner. A lot of DEO agents volunteer for the new mentorship program.
And slowly, so slowly, the DEO isn’t a prison. For the most part. They still have the most dangerous alien criminals locked up. The rehab program isn’t for everyone. Some aliens are just bad, the same way some people are just bad. Kara chats with Psi weekly. She flies to the old bunker and all their other facilities to help out with the program.
Some aliens are harder to rehabilitate than others. Some can’t speak English. Some are completely out of control with their powers. Some have been locked up in a fish tank in the dark since the real Hank Henshaw and now are so mad at the DEO they’d be a threat to public safety if they were let out. But Kara won’t give up. And pretty soon, there are a lot more people working on solutions with her.
Kara writes a hundred stories on the aliens now out in public. Lena works on tech to help suppress the powers of those who ask for help with it. Alex teaches them how to defend themselves without taking out a city block. Winn gets them ID’s and starts a weekend class so they can learn computer skills. James and Sam work to find them all jobs until they find something they want a career in.
J’onn’s still nervous about some of them. Kara finally rolls her eyes and fixes him with a stare. “Do you really think that I can’t track down anyone if I need to? Give them a chance, J’onn, the world is changing and they deserve a chance. We got one.”
J’onn finally wraps an arm around her. “I know you’re right. I trust you. Change can be hard, but you’re right, it’s worth it.”
And if one day, Kara hears that voice from the bathroom again, but this time it’s to her face, somewhat mumbled, and thanking her for her efforts, well… she’ll know she’s on the right track.
talk to me more about how Kara’s “sweet” and “sunny” disposition, as well as her tendency to let her feelings get walked all over, is explicitly tied (in season 1) to her experiences of loss. Talk to me about the psychology of that. ‘Cause I’m skeptical of any review or “fan” who makes a lot of Kara’s “sunny” and “hopeful” exterior, but…
gifted student™ brains are about as functional as horses when you get right down to it
which sounds like a shit post but consider: horses? hypothetically MADE for running. look at this magnificent muscle beasts. look at those legs. they must be so good at running, right? wrong. horses are fragile as fuck. horses break their gotdamn legs so so easily, and if they break their legs you just have to fucking shoot them. if they run, the thing they are MADE FOR, too fast their lungs will start bleeding. I just googled horses to see if I was missing anything and apparently if they lie down for a day their organs start collapsing or something so they can’t rest from their One Horse Purpose even when they’re hurt. they’re made to do one thing but they can only do it under Very Specific Conditions and if a single thing changes they just die.
which, you know. gifted students™ get applauded for being naturally smart when we’re five or whatever and then develop a terrible inflated sense of self that makes us highly averse to anything we’re not naturally good at, because it challenges our fragile childbrain egos and if we wait too long we’ll develop mental fences around entire subjects and skillsets (mine are math and studying) because we think we’re Bad at them, when in reality we just need to practice but are frustrated by that because it’s harder than being ~naturally talented~ was. we get applauded for doing One Thing but the second we run into slightly different things that our brains don’t comprehend as readily? it’s a Bad Time. I still have so much anxiety over things I don’t feel Naturally Talented at that I’ve been sitting here writing this post for like 10 minutes rather than read the feedback on my religion paper. I got a 100% on it, but I’m still That Scared of anything other than straight heaps of praise because that’s what my childbrain was acclimated to. just send me to the glue factory already.
Its important to note that a lot of horse problems are because of how they are exploited by people, pushed too hard and made beasts of burden that they were never meant to be. I think this strengthens the analogy
“Cat Grant is arguably the only character who captured the essence of feminism in everything she did, and the advice she gave to Kara was always so empowering, thoughtful, and was really for empowering the fans and women everywhere. Without her, there was really no filling the void because no character could have ever lived up to Cat, but the writers didn’t even attempt to”
I just heard this woman say “you procrastinate because you are afraid of rejection. It’s a defense mechanism, you are trying to protect yourself without even trying.” and I think I just realized what was wrong with me.
Yep, this is a very, very common reason for procrastinating. It’s also why procrastination, even though it’s often associated with laziness, is a fairly common trait in a lot of people with anxiety and perfectionism issues.
This idea – You’re not lazy, you’re protecting yourself – hit me really hard while reading, of all things, Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are, which turns out to be as much about how brains work and how relationships work as how orgasms work.
In an early part of the book she talks about Fight/Flight/Freeze responses to threats–the example she uses is being attacked by a lion. You fight, if you think you can defeat the lion; you run away, if you think you can escape the lion; and when you think there’s nothing you can do, when you feel the lion’s jaws closing on your neck, you freeze, because dying will hurt less that way. You just stop and go numb and wait for it to be over, because that is the last way to protect any scrap of yourself.
Later in the book, she talks about the brain process that motivates you to pursue incentives, describing it as a little monitor that gauges your progress toward a goal versus the effort you’re expending. If it feels like too little progress is being made you get frustrated, get angry, and, eventually, you… despair. You stop trying.
You go numb and wait for it to be over, because that’s the only way left to protect yourself.
So it occurred to me that these are basically the same thing–when facing a difficult task, where failure feels like a Threat, you can get frustrated and fight it out–INCREASE DOING THE THING until you get where you’re going. Or you can flee–try to solve the problem some other way than straight on, changing your goal, changing your approach, whatever. Fight or flight.
But both of those only apply when you think the problem is solvable, right? If the problem isn’t solvable, then you freeze. You despair.
And if you’re one of those Smart Kids (Smart Girls, especially) who was praised for being smart so that all tasks in the world came to be divided between Ooh This Is Easy and I DON’T KNOW IF I CAN DO THAT AND IF I FUCK UP I WILL DIE, then… it’s pretty easy to see how you lose the frustration/anger stage of working toward a goal, because your brain goes straight to freeze/despair every time. Things are easy and routine or they are straight up impossible.
So, you know, any time you manage to pull yourself up and give that lion a smack on the nose, or go stumbling away from it instead of just falling down like a fainting goat as soon as you spot it on the horizon, give yourself a gold star from me. Because this is some deeply wired survival-brain stuff. Even if logically you know that that term paper is not a lion, it really is like that sometimes.
Yes! We actually had a perfectionism group in treatment and one of the things they taught us was how perfectionism can actually lead to avoiding stuff & doing less. It’s definitely important to understand this.
One long term strategy I’ve heard is to promise yourself you’ll only work for a smallish period of time (at a date before it’s last min of course). Do you work for that time, and then you congratulate yourself for what you accomplished even if it’s not as much as you wanted, and then no matter what you actually stop. Your brain realizes that doing work can actually be a manageable experience & it starts breaking the association between doing work and stress/sadness/guilt etc. *Lowering* your standards & working before it gets super bad can help with this
can i just say that i’m a slut for supergirl angst? like, kara zor-el remembers krypton. she’s not removed from it, like clark. every person she ever knew, everyone she ever passed on the street, went to school with is dead. the first boy she had a crush on in school- dead. the first girl she kissed, red-faced and young and embarrassed- dead. yorin, a student in her father’s lab who would keep sweets for her in his pockets.
dead
(she spends 3 months doing the calculations; her birthday is september 22 in earth time. this is what she tells her foster-parents when they ask why she’s holed up in her room, doing complex astrophysics.
krypton was destroyed in february and she mourns silently and alone)
the culture, too. she tries to teach clark kryptonese but he can’t buzz the words correctly in his throat, he can’t twist his tongue around the syllables all the way and he sounds wrong. she tells him the name Rao with reverence and he repeats it with flat incomprehension and she wants to cry and rage because she was supposed to teach him these things. she was supposed to pass krypton on to clark, but she’s twenty years too late.
her angst about not protecting her cousin is valid, but it makes more sense that she’d feel more about not being able to teach clark his heritage. clark may be superman, but kara is the last daughter of krypton.
Bonus:
Not even the sky is the same here on Earth. Everything is too yellow and blindingly bright. Her eyes have grown accustomed to the light, but there is a reason she like sunsets and sunrises the best.
She doesn’t know how to explain the animals that existed on Krypton. Oh, she tries, but there are just no words. None that can describe the breadth of diversity that was Kryptonese flora and the fauna because they’re too different, too alien to truly understand their beauty without experiencing it.
(”No, it was more like…It’s so…”
“I guess you kinda had to be there, huh?”
“Yeah. I guess.”)
Even the landscapes are beyond description. She tried painting a few a couple times, but the closest she got was only an echo of the real thing. A child’s memory that faded along the edges before her talent could catch up.
And even if she could draw the sharpest image of her planet, it would still be missing the sound and touch of the place. The way the air tasted and the feel of the dirt between her fingers. She doesn’t know how to capture the way the rain trickled down in a storm or how the winds sang against the spires of Argo and Kandor. And then there was the hum. Everywhere on the planet, there was always this slight vibration that she can’t quite describe, like a constant heartbeat thrumming from the ground all the way to her fingertips.
It’s not just the people, but the physical place that Kara misses. The one place that Kara will always belong to without question, where she doesn’t have to fight for the right to exist or justify her place in that world. It was her birthright. Her home.
Krypton.
She says the word as if doing so would breathe life back into it, as if her repeating it is the only way it can stay alive. It only exists now in softened images in her mind, in poisoned fragments of rock that are lethal to touch, and in the broken family links of the House of El.
Kara Zor-El, last true child of Krypton. There will be no one else after she is gone.
no one asked you kay
what the fuck no why get these feelings away from me
Interesting thing to note: of the times we’ve heard Kryptonian on this show, it’s always been Kara or J’onn speaking it. Clark understands but is never shown to speak it (which is a typical language thing with 2nd gen bi-cultural kids).
Just more things to think about in fannish spaces, since the show seems to have abandoned Kara’s Kryptonian backstory and how it informs her character in the narrative these days.
“imagine meeting someone who wanted to learn your past not to punish you, but to learn how you needed to be loved. Be inspired by people who don’t run away when they locate the darkness in you; who instead lean in & ask where the darkness stems from & how they can love you in the midst of it.”
Question of Smoke 