i am begging you all to stop treating this site like instagram if you dont want it to be content free by next year
I've been doing a lot of research recently into Cinderella as a cross-cultural tale and can't stop thinking about writing my own version. The story and the film has always been something close to me growing up, especially as somebody who also grew up in an abusive home environment. And it was also something I had in common with my mother. She had gone through the same but ended up hating the story. She rarely uses that word and only does so because she saw the story as a wish fulfillment, something that never comes true like a dream or fantasy. Her reality never turned out like that and as a historian who loves loves the early modern period, I can't help but agree. Marriage was a way out but that never turned out well for my mother. Reality is lost in the tale - maybe because there is a magic godmother with fairy powers, who knew - but it stood out to me because it was a story of a strong woman knowing her situation and looking out for the friends that she loved. The romance meant nothing to me when I was younger and still doesn't. But at the end of the day, it is a story that speaks of hope and wish fulfillment that, departing from various historical contexts, is contradictory of everyday life for the majority of modern people.
Wednesday, 7th July 2021
As the thunder roars in such tumultuous pain, the sun singes the rim of every cloud until the whole sky is cloaked in a brightened sadness, a softening grey. And the world will sit in shallow wine while the teardrops of the encroaching night play in ripples across the sun's sleeping face, waiting for the moon blank and ghostly behind the starless sky. It is new tonight but hidden from sight, it bows in heavenly patience.
I was diagnosed with dyspraxia. A lot of people know it as the “clumsy disorder” but it’s a lot more and I think it has a lot to do with my speech.
It’s more then just the “clumsy disorder”. I’m more then clumsy. I have weak core muscles, I’m weak, I’m uncoordinated, I’m constantly running into things, I can’t grip a fork right, I spill food and get it all over myself
Yes, I’m clumsy, I drop things, spill things, etc. But it’s more then that. It affects me greatly and I think when people mark it just as “being clumsy” they are undermining a disorder that affects people greatly.
With my speech, I talk in a monotone, which is easier for me. I talk in simplified language and don’t use big words. I slur and stutter my words aswell,
I just realized this when I was talking about dyspraxia and I thought it’d be important to discuss.
Monday, 19th July 2021
I have scars on my knees from when I was six, hopeful of the days that I could run free from the tangled branches enclosing my mind. They wrapped me in with faces whose eyes always slipped across mine. And then they found my legs and let me slip, numb again from yesterday's wound. I would run, all limitations abandoned, chasing the friends I wasn't close to, always branches apart from the world I was already consumed by. But I was happy. And then I would fall. It happened again and again until I saw the danger in falling, now white stretching marks across the bottom of my knees. I saw the danger in everything.
Why do I keep myself hidden in layers of self-control
Afraid of the dark whilst summer lines my curtains
Choking back these haunting fears, and numb
Is the only feeling that's certain
What joy can be felt today? Frozen yet
In feigned sensibility, I ask myself...
You storm away without a backward glance
only troubled minds seek paradise
an escape to a better world
far from circumstance
you whisper to yourself at night
clearing tear-tracked eyes, a haunted sight
I see you now through the mirror glass
cursing what blocks your well-trodden path
Historian, writer, and poet | proofreader and tarot card lover | Virgo and INTJ | dyspraxic and hypermobile | You'll find my poetry and other creative outlets stored here. Read my Substack newsletter Hidden Within These Walls. Copyright © 2016 Ruth Karan.
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