IV. Sentences
by MonochromaticThere came a point where she didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
Not because she didn’t want to, really, but because she didn’t like what others had to say. It wasn’t that they were saying things that were strictly untrue or that weren’t coming from a place of love, but her friends had switched to trying to get her to Move On.
They’d say things like “we can’t count on Twilight coming back” or “in a year or so, you won’t feel this way, anymore” or the particularly egregious “you’ll find someone else”.
She loathed them all—the sentences, not her friends, though she would be lying if she said there wasn’t times she couldn’t separate the two. Times where she wanted to yell at her friends and tell them they understood nothing.
“Rarity,” Pinkie had said once, after noticing Rarity hadn’t slept well for days on end. “You should talk with someone. I think it would be good for you! Maybe help stop the nightmares?”
“I’m perfectly alright,” Rarity replied politely, folding clothes.
“But, Rari—”
“Pinkie, I’d like to change the topic, please.”
Pinkie acquiesced, but Rarity knew the earth pony wanted to keep pressing the matter. How could she not when Rarity was making it a point to shut Princess Luna out of her personal life? When she was being kept awake by awful nightmares about Twilight that Rarity had expressly forbidden Princess Luna from seeing or addressing?
Obviously not because she was afraid Princess Luna would tell her things she didn’t want to hear or admit to, but because she was fine.
“You are avoiding facing your situation, Rarity,” Princess Luna had said in response to Rarity’s request.
And maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t, but so what?
She was fine.
She didn’t need to address anything at all.
I don’t, she told herself, trying her best to ignore the gnawing voice in her heart that felt something wasn’t quite right about that.
Rarity needs therapy.
The feeling of not wanting to talk about something, but that also preventing you from addressing it, is relatable, and definitely proves to be an important part of TEK after this.
I forget, doesn’t Rarity end up trying to date some ponies in The Gap?
It is difficult to look at something directly, without intellectualizing it or without trying to reify it. I know I’m bad at that. Another good one.
This is another heavy chapter. We want to help those we care about. We want to ease their pain. But sometimes we can’t with words intended to lift them or heal them – it’s not the right moment for those words. I think sometimes the best we can do is just be there. Just exist with them. Hang out or work or what it is we’d normally do with them. Maybe listen if they need to talk. We heal at our own paces. Sometimes we can’t hurry the healing too much.
A well written chapter. It’s going to stick with me and make me think back on it.