#but honestly? the way i lived it? quietly in love with life? the scho who came home from the war

[softschofield]

on this day, the 6th of april, 103 years ago, two things happen - one that will echo down through history, and one that will be forgotten. one that brushes against millions of lives, one that no one but three and a little nameless, nothing village will ever notice. one that is blinding in its importance, cheered for and wept over and reviled; one that is small, silent, insignificant. two things happen, and history won’t remember one: a country enters the war to end all wars, and a meaningless boy dies in the countryside.

it’s friday. blake is going home on monday.

in the early hours of the morning, when the world is still icy and black and lit stark by flares, german boys sit huddled in their trenches, murmuring and laughing and thinking of home - softly, gently. officers walk down the lines and tap men quietly on the shoulder: let’s go. and silently, in the pre-dawn cold, they do.

at the same time, in the empty darkness before sunrise, an orderly wakes general erinmore. he lights a candle, sits up in bed, wraps a dressing gown around himself; the room is dusty and close and dim. “sir, the planes have spotted something over the new german lines. it’s regarding the second devons.”

and in the hours before dawn, erinmore sits at his desk, with a map sprawled before him, and listens. “can we send them a message?” “they cut the phone lines, sir” “can we send a cavalry runner?” “the land is impassable, sir” “do any of the officers have a son? a nephew? a brother?” “there is one, sir”

across the channel, scho’s wife wakes up to gentle honey light in their bedroom. blake’s mother wakes up alone to the sound of birdsong and sheep. both of them imagine the morning across the channel, the morning in france - what it looks and smells and feels like. wonder at whether the sun shines, wonder at whether the flowere are starting to bloom, if there are any flowers left at all.

blake’s mother checks off another day - three to go, and her boy will be home. she smiles at the thought, and with the smile comes tears. three days and he’ll be back in her arms, drinking tea at the kitchen table. three days. she gets out of bed to clean the house; she wants it to look nice for him. she’s still smiling. blake smiles, too, as they finish their breakfast and wander over to doze against their tree. three days. he pulls his helmet over his face, still smiling.

it’s morning when they set off. it’s still morning when he dies. and it’s still morning, not even midday, when schofield begins to inch across the ruined bridge.

that night, and into the cold, black, rainy morning of april 7th, while schofield lies unconscious upon the steps of a lockhouse, blake’s body lies before the felled orchard with the stars and the moon above him. a breeze stirs the leaves of the cherry trees and makes them rustle. they’re already beginning to brown and wilt. soon the stones will rot into the soil. the night feels empty, quiet, lonesome. the grasses on the hillside whisper. it’s peaceful. cold. forgotten. ghosts haunt the still, silent orchard.

the family that lived there is long gone. the little girl who was born there, whose doll was abandoned in the chaos, lies in the lowest drawer of a dresser, in a warm cellar where a fire crackles soft and golden. another orphan murmurs to her through the night.

the next morning, at six o’clock, a boy with shellholes for eyes stops an attack and leans against a lonely tree before the rising sun. it’s peaceful. quiet. empty. warm. blake’s mother wakes up smiling and checks another day off. and blake’s body begins to rot with the cherry stones.

every year, the ghosts live it again, tread the ground where the trenches and the ruins used to be. they don’t know the world has changed; they don’t know that world is dead, and that at the end of it they will die as well. again. over and over and over. till their hearts have been broken for the thousandth time. and then next year, they live it all again.

#1917 #mine #april 6th was yesterday for me but shhh #i was fucked up all day about it #but honestly? the way i lived it? quietly in love with life? the scho who came home from the war #and healed in the sunshine would have been proud #and i am living my life for scho and scho ONLY #♡ ♡ ♡ #i love u all happy 1917 day and to anyone who’s replied to my posts #or added things in the tags or reblogs or sent me an ask: i see you. i adore you. i love you so much #all i could think after midday was ‘blake is dead by now’ #and i was trying to play the film in my head so i could know whereabouts scho was throughout the day #and right now bc it’s midday on the 7th where i am #scho is walking back to the east surreys #and i love them. and i weep #and also - with the whole three days thing - the convoy boys would start fighting #the battle of arras in three days as well

[mininky]

   I'm feeling a bizarre need to wax nostalgic after talking to a client today. This will be very long and smattered with details that might seem unnecessary but I feel are needed to paint an accurate picture. This is the story about how I learned that shitting on fandoms makes you worse than however shitty you think that fandom is. Also, this does go over sensitive topics such as abuse so please read at your own risk.

   Years ago, in the olden days of myspace when only college students could use facebook and tumblr was most likely but a mere thought I had hit an odd time in my life. Puberty hit me like a freight train the summer before I was to start high school. I had always been a very, very small child. I was the runt of the litter, born barely over three pounds, and that continued most of my life. Until right before high school. Prior to the sudden thrust into young adulthood, I had been small enough to still fit into most of my kindergarten clothes, I was just that small. Also, most of my clothes were thrift finds that were slightly too big, so that did have a part to play in this. And then came that summer, the summer from hell. For the first time I weighed over 100 pounds, and I'm pretty sure my rapidly growing chest was honestly what helped tip that scale. I went from not needing a training bra (whatever the fuck those are for) to suddenly being a full C and still growing, grew about four inches over summer, and had old ladies telling me I had child birthing hips at church (which can I just add is really fucking creepy to say to a fucking child.) (Not to mention the sudden learning of catcalls and creepy adult men.)

   I can distinctly remember around the fourth time I told my mother in a period of about three months I didn't fit the bra she literally bought just the month prior her breaking down and saying that she couldn't afford to keep getting new ones. Luckily I worked at a used bookstore and while I was only paid in books (it was honestly a great deal for me) the owner felt so bad when I told her this she gave me a couple hundred bucks cash. That was when I first learned that tits are fucking expensive.

   As with all young teenagers entering into high school I was scared shitless. I had somehow managed to convince my parents to allow me to enroll in a small art school that was a serious commute from our house. Considering that the public school I was supposed to go to had serious gang violence issues as well as a few cops who had been killed there recently, for once in their terrible parenting career they agreed with me. So here I was on the first day of high school surrounded by a bunch of kids I'd never met before, with a new body that didn't even feel like mine, in a part of town that I'd never been to. Now, being the new kid wasn't new to me. I'd played my role as the new kid more than a dozen times at this point in my academic career, and I was usually able to just hide quietly in a corner and either be bullied or ignored by the world. But high school felt like a new chance. And an arts school at that. Until I realized that the office fucked up all of my classes and somehow, instead of being placed in creative writing I got placed in dance.

   Now let me explain a bit of background on this school. It was god awful in almost every way shape and form. Anarchy comes close to describing how this school ran. The principal snorted coke frequently throughout the day, most of the students would just leave classes to go hang out, drugs were a serious problem. And I'm not talking about kids coming in rolling or slightly high, no I mean you want it someone has it. Whatever you fancy. But the dance program? Best. In. The. State. Well known by scouts. I know people who went on to be in Cirque du Soleil and Julliard. That good. It was the only thing in this shithole of a school that brought in money and kept it running. Now there were other seriously amazing teachers, but they usually didn't last long because of Mr. snortsalotofwhitepowder.

   And here I was, with this awkward new body, riddled with anxiety, self-loathing, and teenage angst-fueled now stuck in this dance class with girls that had been dancing before they could fucking walk. Luckily there were two other girls who had never danced before. I was still the worst out of all of them. Now my dance teacher had a few rules. Anyone who wanted to dance could join her class, and everyone had to start from the beginning class no exceptions. There were no tryouts, no prior experience needed. The other rule? You never, ever, ever pressure someone into a weight range. Bodies can move in beautiful ways in all different forms was her philosophy.  And the last rule? No cussing. Which seemed like a lot of rules because, again, the school was verging on being run completely by drug-addled angst-filled teenagers.

   Now I hated this class before I ever stepped foot in it, at no fault of my teacher. I had always been horribly uncoordinated, and while some might have felt glee at rapid body changes I had found myself (like most young girls I think) incredibly uncomfortable at having to spend hours upon hours a week staring at this new form in freaking tights and a leotard in mirrors. I was also terrified of failing anything, and once again I seriously sucked at this class. I couldn't handle not being good at something when I thought I was finally going to a place where I could be...you know good and happy and accepted but the world had other cruel plans for me. But the biggest reason why I hated this class? My dance teacher, which again wasn’t really fair to her. To say I loathed her very existence that first quarter doesn't really begin to describe just how much I wanted to see her spontaneously burst into flames and be gone from my life. She ruled with an iron fist, which shouldn't be surprising considering that she was an award-winning ballerina and modern dancer who was Russian classically trained, had a six-pack on her six-pack and possibly ate nails for breakfast. (I would later find out that her eating habits were terrible and she rarely touched a vegetable.)  

   It wasn't unusual for there to be a lot of screaming from the dance teacher. One of my favorite lines to repeat from her is, "My dead grandmother can plie better than you from her coffin!" Lots of screaming, lots of failing, lots of crying from other girls. I was one of the few who never broke. I may have been a terrible dancer who looked like a newborn gazelle but I lived in a verbally and physically abusive home. Screaming was something I had learned to tune out by the time I was six. As long as there wasn't a phonebook near me I could hold my own. No, I hated her more because I was forced into her class and she couldn't let me slide just because I didn't want to be there. I mean, there was no slack at all for any of us, even the inexperienced.

   But one day, my hatred for my dance teacher morphed into a surge of platonic love/idolization. And my hatred for dance would suddenly turn into this need to turn it (and my new awkward body) into my bitch. I had left my script in the changing room and needed to get it before practice started. My teacher had her own performance coming up and was practicing to Radiohead's 'exit music.' I had never seen anything like this. It was a story written by a body. One of pain and love and misery. One that spoke to my angsty soul. This was the first time that I cried in public. I mean it was really just her and I, but it was at school so I think it counts. I will still swear up and down to this day that there is no greater dancer than her. When she moves it's like you have to listen, not watch, listen. I wanted that, I wanted to be able to turn my stories into dances. If I couldn't have my creative writing class I'd turn dance into a new form of writing.

   After that, I started spending all of my free time in that room. I was constantly practicing. I didn't care how badly bruised or bloody I was, I kept going. Dislocated my shoulder? Pop it in and keep moving, take some Advil later. But the real moment I knew that my dance teacher deserved all of my respect and idolization was a few things that would follow. When she realized that I was spending most of my time crashing on friends couches and didn't have money for lunch she would stash food for me. When she realized that I had horrible periods and would go through boxes each cycle she kept extra pads and tampons in the locker room for anyone along with a giant bottle of Midol. When I had been out for about two weeks because my father beat the shit out of me and nearly killed me and a teacher threatened to not allow makeup exams because 'it was my choice to not be in school' she must have realized something was up in my home because I'm not sure what was said or even how she knew but I've heard from various sources and all I can say is that in the middle of a class my dance teacher burst in and threatened that teacher into allowing me my makeup exams.

   She might have ruled with an iron fist and spent most of time in class screaming AGAIN, MY GOD JUST DO WHAT I SHOWED YOU, AGAIN but she was most certainly the best adult I had ever known at that point. On some days after class, she would even listen to songs I was choosing to choreograph to and we would spend time talking about bands that she used to see and her favorite music. She had seen Type O and Nirvana live, she actually liked WhiteChapel and Tupac and she had all these really bizarre tastes in music just like me and my little weird goth girl who grew up in underprivileged neighborhood heart sang each time we made a musical match because no one listened to both metal and rap at that time and holy cow someone else thinks that Bone Thugs is great but also really digs Dolly Parton and MCR? I was sure that nothing could knock her off the pedestal in my heart I had made for her. Not even when I found out she smoked, or ate McDonalds constantly, or actually cussed like a sailor outside of school. No that just made her cooler and more human to me. That is...until I found out that she loved Twilight.

   Now I had tried reading Twilight and I thought that comparing it to a flaming pile of garbage would be an insult to all landfills. I could see my world shatter around me. I had felt betrayed. Until later that night when I lay on yet another friend's couch recalling that moment. She had overheard me making a comment about how disgusting the book was. "Can you believe they're turning that shitshow into a movie?" Probably something about how the total audience IQ was lower than average combined and some other very very meanspirited bitchy stuff that still causes me pain today. And then swooped in my dance teacher from nowhere, "I like the books. I can't wait for the movie. Things don't always have to be good, or what you like. They can just be fun. You don't have to ruin it for others." Hours later I would realize that I had betrayed my dance teacher, not the other way around. I had done the very thing most people did to me, I shit all over one of the things she loved. And I felt sick. I actually went to class early with her favorite soda to awkwardly mumble out an apology and she just laughed and said not to worry, but I realized then that she was right.

   Shitting all over a fandom makes you far, far shittier than however shitty you think the fandom is. Now listen, there are plenty of fandoms that I still internally go 'holy shit woah' but I will never, ever verbally say it. Because life is really short, and whatever you want to like, whatever gives you a second of joy even if it's the butt of every joke then who fucking cares? As long as no one else is being hurt because of it, then I say go for it. Listen, the older I've gotten the more I've realized that life just generally sucks. For the most part. That isn't the angsty teenager in me talking, that's the honest adult. It honestly does. But whatever small little thing that makes the cesspool of life seem interesting and it isn't hurting others in the process of enjoying it? Fucking awesome man! I'm happy for you! I'm glad you found something you like! And if someone shits all over whatever fandom you're in? Well, they're an asshole, and I hope that somehow they get stuck in my old dance class with my teacher so maybe at the very least she can scream in their face until they break.  

#trigger warning #fandoms #wow this is really fucking long