(Spoilers For The Song Of Achilles)

(Spoilers for the Song of Achilles)

Someone’s probably already said this but in The Song Of Achilles, Achilles dies because of an arrow to the heart. And that one moment hit me like a truck because I’d always been taught that Achilles dies because of the wound in his heel, his one weakness on an otherwise invulnerable body.

But it made so much more sense when you think backwards. Achilles’ destiny is tied to the war. If he chooses to fight, he’ll have glory and honor but a short life and painful death. If he chooses to stand aside, he watches his people die but lives a long, peaceful life. And everything about the Iliad suggests that Achilles is perfectly fine with a slow, quiet life with Patroclus. Until Patroclus takes it into his own hands and chooses to fight in Achilles’ place, and dies. Then, and only then, does Achilles seize his destiny. And in that his fate is sealed.

Achilles is killed by his greatest weakness: his heart. He may have had a heartbeat for quite a long time after Patroclus died, but Achilles’ heart was broken the moment they brought his body home.

So it makes sense that his greatest weakness, perhaps his only weakness, was his love. And that ties back to what I said in my other post about Orpheus and Eurydice. Like so many others, maybe Achilles doesn’t want to be remembered for his glory in battle.

Let me be remembered for my love. (My lover, my art, my home, my life)

Still brewing on whether or not Odysseus falls into this category. We shall see.

"why are people who do cool things always so weird"

i have a startling truth to keep from you... about the relationship between cool and weird

Ok so many people are saying things like “this will make room for better science” and like, I agree, but

There’s something really essential and human about having a place in space where we go just to see what happens

There’s something really wonderful about people going up there and getting messages from earth and sending funny videos and over time we’ve seen so many people go up and come down

And it’s one thing to send people up on a little road trip but it’s quite another to say, this will be your home, and this will be your crew, they are from all different places, and the one thing you all have in common is that you looked up and said “someday that will be me” and then you all looked down and said “that is us, and I love it, and we are all nothing and we are all essential”

So yeah the world will get better science and we’ll have a spectacular crash to watch but I hope more than anything that we keep something of the gentle wonderment that came from just, having a place in space where we could all be. Just to watch the stars and grow plants in zero g and look down at the vastness and smallness of earth and love it.

I feel like nobody on Tumblr knows that the international space station is being discontinued.

Did you know that? In less than a decade it will be gone

CNN Link from above screenshot

More detailed article by Space.com

I grow a lot of trees in my brain which is good but also means there are lots of bees so I have to watch where I step

Be gentle with your brain bees, folks

It’s going okay

Objectively I have a great life: I am comfortable, loved, and have a job I enjoy. I am getting married. I am looking forward to the future.

Honestly all that is wonderful but it becomes part of a horrible spiral in my mind sometimes. I am not well. The anxious voices in my mind are debilitating at times. It’s better than it was, but it’s still there. And remembering how lucky I am should help but sometimes it just becomes guilt.

I am learning to accept that. I am feeling awful, and it is okay for me to feel awful, or is okay for me to lie down and cry even if there is nothing objectively wrong. My head is just a bad place to be at times.

It’s scarier to screw up something you’ve done a million times before than to screw up something new. Maybe that’s why I’ve been doing better lately. When stuff gets screwed up, it’s because I’m a baby adult who barely knows what to do. Because there’s still people saying “let me help you with that.” You’re new. Let me help carry the load. It makes some things easier. It makes standing on my own a little harder because I have trouble saying no.

I’m doing okay. I cried for half an hour tonight because I felt like my head was going to split open if I didn’t. I’m not even anxious about stuff, I’m just anxious.

I’m doing okay. I’ve got reassurance and safety and security. I’ve got someone to hold me when I cry.

Maybe some day I will be better. Maybe someday I won’t walk on eggshells in my own mind, won’t be scared of the little space between my ears where things get twisted til they’re unrecognizable.

Til then I’m doing okay. And that’s okay.

Things that made me happy today:

The girl with an uno reverse card in her lanyard

The mom reading storybooks to her kid on the train

The trees are finally turning green

My partner leaving trinkets and stuffed animals for me to find in the morning because they leave for work before I wake up

My favorite book in my backpack