This is what it feels like to be human: You ache. Like frostbite, the pain comes only after you begin to thaw. You did not know it was possible to hurt this much. Your heart is not ice, or stone, or machine, or whatever else they told you. Your heart is red and slippery; your pulse crashes; your breaths are chaotic in your chest. You are a disaster. You are raw material. You are warm and messy and newborn, stumbling your way through this world, colliding with other bodies in the dark. You are confused. You are scared. You are too much, and then sometimes you are not enough. Sometimes you feel so hard that your lungs burst and your throat closes and you bite your tongue and your ribs crack, thrusting outward, breaking through your flesh, your heart swollen and shivering, your guts laid bare for anyone to see. Sometimes you are very small, and you curl up in your bed, and you want desperately to be cold again. Thatâs the worst part, maybe: that sometimes you want to be cold again. You expand. You contract. This happens more often in the beginning, right after you are born. You lurch between extremes. The world is loud and bright and makes such strange noises. You wonder if it will be like this forever. You wonder: how does everyone else bear it? And yet somehow they do. And so you try. You wake up each morning and shake the ice from your limbs. You crawl out into the world. You learn about forests, and music, and donuts, and big blue skies and soft beds and hugs, and friends, and the odd shudder of laughter, and stories and history and funerals, and chocolate, and parties, and flying, and long showers, and warmth, and warmth, and warmth. Slowly, you thaw.
tell me about the big bang by @jhholtzmann
a Poe/Finn, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens fanfic
