Justice For "Poor Dear" Pamela

IS THAT

When Fiona Apple sang, “How can I ask anyone to love me, when all I do is beg to be left alone,” and when Mitski sang, “you’re growing tired of me, and all the things I don’t talk about,” and when Julien Baker sang, “it’s not easy when what you think of me is important, and I know it shouldn’t be so damn important, but it is to me,” and when Elliott Smith sang, “I’m alone but that’s okay, I don’t mind most of the time; I don’t feel afraid to die,” and when the Front Bottoms sang, “sometimes you get sad when we’re together because you’re not sure if you’ll miss me when I’m gone,” and when

Remember that time I read a book everyone said was heartbreaking and I said I’d be fine because nothing like that ever bothers me???

And then I cried through the last two parts???

And I can’t stop thinking about it???

the way felix is convinced he's living in a romance movie to the extent that he dresses up like juliet. he considers kissing oliver in the maze. he makes himself off limits but not quite with the open door while he's in the bath; he's the damsel of the film, no doubt. but felix's tragedy is that oliver is convinced it's a horror story and a tale of revenge. so he doesn't play his part as romeo. he vomits up the poison so he can't die from "some poison more" and leaves felix to die alone.

HOLD ON BABE NEW GERARD PIC DROPPED

This is so sick and twisted why did I do this to myself last year

(suicide cw) (a little life spoilers) I habitually go back to the last portion of the book. As I read it the first time, I was only dimly aware this was the ending. I could see the number of pages, sure, and the repetitive title of Lispenard Street was ominous enough that I should’ve known - after all, why else would you bookend it like that?

I think it didn’t hit me initially, though, because for all the arduous buildup, all the scares, this is all we get of Jude’s death.

We get the aftermath, of course (and naturally I sobbed through it) - but this is the tragedy we’re led to anticipate the whole book through, and so, aware of its inevitability, I’d expected all the magnitude of Jude’s suicide attempt, of all the tragedies that followed. But Jude’s life gets 800 pages and his death gets two sentences.

The story doesn’t end on an ending. It ends on Lispenard Street.

This is what Harold leaves us with: kindness, and a father and his grinning son reminiscing; and of course that’s how he would tell Jude’s story, of course that’s how you would speak of someone you love, after: with all the kindness of eternity. People aren’t endings. Jude’s life wasn’t a stopgap, it was the story.

I can see how A Little Life might be read as a gruesome, cobweb veiled backstory to a suicide to many. That’s certainly how Jude would see it, at times, I think; but that’s why Harold is the narrator. (Harold, to whom Jude’s life was so precious, who treasured it so wholly and selfishly, as parents often do.)

And so, as we’re taken back to Lispenard Street, I can’t possibly read this story as anything other than a love letter — from a father, to his son’s life.

there's a difference between father and dad. one is a title, the other is a bond.