My A Little Life Shrine

Both Luke, Harold, and Dr Traylor would make Jude drink milk with his dinner

Milk as a symbolism of childhood, protection, nurturing care. Milk used to regain physical strength when it was lost, because the three of them each needed jude for something (a tool, a son, a toy) and he needed that strength to take on what they wanted from him.

october 22, 2023

I just read the first chapter of the “axiom of equality” part of a little life and dude I’m really reconsidering the way I view life as a whole.

x=x, yes Jude, I feel you so fucking much, all my life I felt like I wouldn’t surpass this feeling of being wrong, the wrongdoings of my childhood, my mistakes and mistakes of others done to me haunt me every single moment of my days, maybe If I were funnier, maybe I if worked on my weight a little harder it would disappear, what did I do to deserve so much hate from others as a kid? to experience the heavy bullying? why should it stain my memory like a wine stained carpet? (you get used to it but it’s never really clean, this metaphor worked in my head so please bear with it). and Caleb, man I’ve met so many fucking Calebs in my life, people i trusted at first sight, thought it could work just to be utterly disappointed at the outcome.

“you’re not your past”, easier said than done.

it’s 3:15 a.m where I live as i’m writing this and I doubt i’ll be able to afford a good night of sleep due the mental state i find myself in. I haven’t cried once while reading this book, maybe it’s because I see so much of myself in these characters that I’m just perplexed and angry, at myself, at others who made me feel like a complete piece of shit my whole life, at the JB’s, cause we all have that one friend that, at some point, made fun of our insecurities and left us feeling like garbage.

read “a little life” by Hanya Yanagihara, i promise it’ll change you and the way you interpret life and others (and i haven’t even finished it yet)

how i imagine willem posed for jb’s photos:

the parallels in this book make me insane but yk when Harold was talking w Liesl for the first time in sixteen years and discovered she had been doing the same thing he had, which was seeing Jacob’s essence in the faces of students or just passerbys in the street.

“Only to realize later that she had imagined they might be our son, alive and well and away from us, no longer ours, but walking freely through the world, unaware that we might have been searching for him all this time”

And then later on, after Jude’s death, Harold finds that in everything he sees, he sees him. He seeks his son’s face once again, finding comfort in the idea that he might be somewhere off in the world, walking free, without pain and without grief, but he is no longer his and Julia’s.

Was that the price that Harold and Julia paid to let Jude be freed? That he might be off somewhere else, no longer really Jude but something or someone else that does not carry the pain or grief that Jude carried with him? But in return, he would no longer be Harold and Julia’s? They would never be able to reach him again, but he is free now.

“And if a child can no longer be comforted, is it my job to give him permission to leave?”

something i just find so hilarious is how obsessed with being comfy and cosy jude and willem are. like okay grown man shuffling about in his wee blanket in the morning and jude staying for five more minutes

jude when he used to swim so he wouldn’t relapse:

people i imagine as jude (multiple people bcs in everything AND everyone i see, i see him)

1.) loyle carner

I SAW HIM LIVE AND I WAS LIKE?? OMG JUDE HI

2.) ethan hawke

very random but he is serving sm jude at university here

3.) rami malek

the average rami malek jude fancast, but i really do understand it

4.) james norton

THIS CASTING CHOICE FOR THE PLAY WAS SAUR GOOD (except jude isnt white)

5.) joseph gordon levitt

he’s just so jude in mysterious skin ok

6.) milo ventimiglia

i refuse to elaborate

auuuuuGHHHH the old man in Rome. Harold being so happy that Jude is recognized as his son by others even when they don't look anything alike, but the love is so clear and so vivid that people can just tell. Like when Harold was telling Liesl about adopting Jude and she can just tell how much he loves him that she says "You love him a lot" bc Harold loves so freely and so intensely and so unconditionally and his love shines out of him like warm rays of sun

And also the old man teasing Harold for being so plain but having such a beautiful wife and handsome son,,,,,,,,,,justice for Harold Stein

literally and the way harold and jude just fit, so well so that people think they’re biologically related. :(

sharks i’m asking you to resurrect jude and willem. now .

guys i just had a jude and harold in rome moment