I just really need to get this off my chest because it’s making me angry.
Chapter XVIII, Annabeth, Mark of Athena
This chapter is in Annabeth’s POV. Meaning it’s what she thinks/thought. Meaning it was her interpretation of what he said in TLO. Meaning there could’ve been other ways to interpret it, but she chose to interpret it romantically.
Maybe it’s due to the time he came to her house, saying to her that he wanted to run away with her, just like old times. Meaning as a family, because in the old times, they were a family. That should be simple to understand.
I (and others) interpreted Luke’s ‘question to Annabeth’ line in TLO as him saying that he could’ve just wanted to know if she liked him, as he couldn’t have know if she didn’t tell him. He was just wondering.
Another interpretation is that he asked that question in a platonic way or in a family-way sense. Not romantically. The line could’ve been another way of saying, “Are we still a family?” Or something similar to that.
Riordan could’ve made it clearer in TLO in which way Luke meant it— maybe leave us more information for a clearer inference?
A lot of things are going through my mind right now, sorry. If you read through all of this and made it to the end, thank you?
82 notes
·
View notes
next // previous
august 17, 2021
4:00 a.m.
paradise hotel
three hours later
[grant] you know, i didn’t get a good start to dealing with the whole “my body is broken” thing.
[henry] huh? oh, sorry, i'm awake and heard you; i was just surprised.
[grant] the first time that, um, i got really sick after my sister died, everyone just thought i was mcfucking mentally losing it. i mean, i was, but also i could not get out of bed, could not walk, couldn’t hold a toothbrush even because my hands wouldn’t move…
[grant] and my parents, who are medical professionals, wouldn’t take me to any doctor because they thought i was melodramatic.
[henry] you missed two months of school. we went different schools but i remember that. i didn’t see you for that two months either.
[grant] they only ever took me because they got tired of dealing with me, and they were getting in trouble for me being truant. and what do you know? like every other kid with something wrong, the answer was growing pains. you're tall for your age, so that's it!
[henry] doctors are stupid sometimes.
[grant] tell me about it. i lived with two idiot doctors for eighteen years. the proof is in the pudding.
[grant] and then, uhh, there’s the whole…
[grant] the whole college thing.
[grant] did i ever tell you how i became an addict, bud?
[henry] you’ve never wanted to.
[henry] i assumed it was because people try to numb childhood trauma. and i could tell something was not right with the college hockey team situation, but i didn’t know what or if that was connected at all.
[henry] it could have come from anywhere. most everyone in college does drugs. i smoked a lot of weed.
[grant] it’s both of your assumptions. there were a lot of things i needed to suppress, and i didn’t know how to control myself after tasting the slightest bit of freedom from my parents. but also…
[grant] the dudes on the hockey team hated me except sebastian. i just didn’t click. i wasn’t the right kind of person to fit in that very dudebro jock locker room.
[grant] so, on one hand, i started on a bunch of party drugs and alcohol because i figured out that when i got fucked up out of my mind, they finally found me funny, and you know how i am.
[henry] you are really desperate for people to like you and for you to not feel like you're imposing.
[grant] it’s totally true. i need to be liked. and need is the right word. it’s not as bad now, i've grown out of it a bit, but still, the feeling is there. i need to be liked and to not be anyone's burden.
[grant] yet that’s not the whole story.
[grant] i was, um, well, also illegally prescribed a lot of painkillers.
[grant] by the team's medical people.
[grant] my health issues were already there, but playing a contact sport made it worse. i'm gonna be honest, i don’t remember what happened, but i got some kind of back injury, and i went right back to that state i was in after my sister died.
[grant] seriously, same stuff. couldn’t really get out of bed, couldn’t function. at least not without...
[henry] oh god. i don’t like the way this sounds.
[grant] i was naive enough to hope that people might do the right thing for me once in my life, so i told the medical staff, like, hey, i'm suffering, and i need help. and they just kind of, uh, waved me off and said their job was to patch me up so i could be on the ice, not fix me.
[grant] i was already trouble in all the staff's eyes because i was the odd one out in the locker room, and that's not looked upon well. so, in hindsight, i should have seen literally all the red flags or should have been brave enough to just break down and see a real doctor elsewhere again, but i didn’t.
[grant] anyway, the team staff offered me opioids and i gladly took them. and they kind of sort of barely worked. so i took more. and more and more, and i mixed them with all kinds of other substances. like, i should probably be dead from the amount of mixing i did or from just the sheer volume of drugs i took. also, no one gave a fuck how many times a week i came in to ask for drugs as long as i played hockey good enough.
[henry] and you were good.
[grant] still, the pills never genuinely made me feel better. they just got me high enough to forget about suffering. that makes sense now because i have a diagnosis and have heard nothing but anti-inflammatories are going to really work on resolving the whole pain thing. too late for that, though. i'm an addict. yes, am, not was, even if i'm sober. so, i won't touch them now. i haven't in years.
[grant] but there you go! there’s the story.
[grant] that feels supremely embarrassing to have told, but i wanted to get it off my chest. you are my best friend. more than that. you're family. you're my brother. i don’t have to be afraid to tell you anything and you deserve to know the truth.
[grant] especially because you've never shied away from honesty and you stuck with me that whole time. i don’t think most addicts are lucky enough to have friends and family that patient. and i tried many, many times to push everyone away so i could destroy myself in peace. i wouldn’t blame any of you if you had given up on me.
[grant] yeah. it's not very kind of me to receive that much, um, grace and love and forgiveness, and not at least reward and thank you with the truth. the full and honest truth, even if you didn't ask for it. oh, and a window into why i am the way i am, why i keep my mouth shut.
42 notes
·
View notes