#c.

Highly. Had a brief debate whether this was any of my business to respond to, but we thought that maybe it's good that it comes from both angles. I'll just have to... remember to actually hand the message over to him also.

From my perspective - he has always had what childhood we could preserve for ourselves. That doesn't mean so much that he had it when we were children, but rather when it was safer to have a childhood, which is still ongoing. And that is, in my view, his right; we fought for this, to give him that opportunity, to give him the ability to be all the things that he can be which are as often endearing as they are infuriating. He is immature and juvenile in the negative senses of the words, incapable of handling responsibility, uncaring of consequences and other people's emotions, careless and always prioritising entertainment and excitement over necessity and need, as well as his own safety, and that of others.

On the other hand, he is capable of feeling unrestrained joy and enthusiasm, he is capable of wanting, he is excitable and always at something, he's curious about everything, and never stops trying new things and reaching out to new people, trying things on for size, finding out what he likes and what he doesn't like. He is resilient against stress and shrugs it off because most musts in life don't mean much to him: he doesn't care about it if it doesn't entertain him, and what other people think of him is none of his concern, because he is trusting that someone else is always looking out for him. He has that faith in others that I completely lack - that things, at their core, will treat him well, because he is lovable and deserving, and surely people see that too.

These are qualities that I'd sacrifice for nothing, and would endure anything to preserve. We didn't survive our childhood just so he could live in that same fear and under those same pressures forever. I never got to be a child and I don't know how not to be crushed by my own fears and my mistrust of the world but Calla does not struggle with this and I will do anything to protect that innocence in him.

... anyways,

I don't think I really ever recognised how much Geta is doing to keep us safe but even acknowledging that what he does is still insane to me because

you can't live like that. I can't imagine living like that. being stressed and afraid and tense all day all week all year and never even sleeping well because, what, someone thinks something mean about you? because you did or said something wrong like who the fuck cares. I don't. it's not my job to please everyone and it's stupid to always be stuck up observing yourself from the outside like oh no am I appealing to everyone. that's fucking ridiculous again WHO cares?

but I also honestly. I really fucking envy children sometimes for I guess the reasons of we never had a childhood like Geta said. it's not the same doing it now as it would have been if we weren't living in constant fear for our lives the first our entire fucking lives. I'm the only one who ever really pushed out of that shell and then oops Geta got punished for it again for some fuckass reason. and I was always hiding. so I don't know what my view of childhood actually even is. Geta seems to know what being childishness is like but to me "childhood" really is just like, a split between having stupid ideas and trying not to get killed by adults.

so maybe it's actually better he answered first? because he knows? but I really don't. the more I think of it the more it's like, I don't even know what a child is. or what it means to be like a child.

what annoys me is that it's also assigned to me as if I'm incapable of being an adult. I'm not? I'm not worse than him or anybody else or less adult because I don't subscribe to stupid rules about how you're supposed to be and all that nonsense about behaviour and upholding image and adhering to ritual like do you understand,

have you EVER thought about how exhausting that is, actually? every day you wake up to make yourself like everybody else and do the same things as everybody else and say the things that everybody else wants to hear. why the fuck should anybody do that actually? Geta is made of this shit and I am not I'm the opposite of it. I say whatever I want because I happen to think it and I don't pretend to like boring shit and if I have an opinion I'm going to say it and not just be palatable about it because we're all so fucking palatable all of the time nothing ever has any flavour and everything is pre-scripted and there's no surprise to being alive. is that childishness? or is that just like, not being dead inside.

people are so stuck up pretending to be cardboard cutouts that they miss on things that actually matter like real pleasures and how it feels like to not care when you're feeling something and what it's like to chase after things you actually care about and forming real actual relationships that don't stretch out to the end of the world just because you have some kind of a sunk cost fallacy deal going on with each other long after the light went out of that one, like, experience just doing things for the sake of doing them, tasting flavours to know what they're like and actually dwelling on it, going out and actually seeing the world instead of worrying if your clothes are on right or if you look stupid today or if you didn't pluck a hair out or literally why do we care about those things. people demand that nobody ever does anything or enjoys anything or experiences anything and we all just sit down quietly and listen while others are talking. WHY do we do this

anyway I don't know if that answers the question but that, I think, is the difference between me and Geta that he's trying to articulate and what comes across to other people as childishness, maybe.

Aside the harshness, I want to also say - which I don't think he would ever get to - is that he has a softness to him also which is unlike most others. I don't know how to describe this but he isn't afraid to climb up into my bed every night and come close and hold onto my shirt and tell me that he loves me, or that he's afraid, or he wants to be held, or he wants to hold me. There's a sweetness in him that he really doesn't show to most people but when you get to know him past the... all of that, he's one of, if not the most, warm person I know. He has a loyalty to him that is - very selective - about the people he wants to show that side to, but if you earn his trust, he shows love much the same way a young child would, or could, without reservation, and without pretense or performance to it. I don't know if it's hard or easy to see that about him, but he has a lot of innocence that he never burned through, unlike most people who become jaded over time and you would think in his position, with the things he's done and seen and caused and gone through and all of this, it would have shed from him. But even the worst things he's ever done, he's done them the way a child does something - without fully understanding why it hurt, and often finding that at the end of the day, he is also frightened by the things he did.