deep deep deep sigh
barbie fanfic:
In the real world, all the cups hold liquids and sometimes they’re the wrong temperature. In the real world, Barbara’s skin breaks out in textures, and she just has to deal with it. In the real world, her clothes crease and discolor and she has to do laundry every Sunday. In the real world, Barbara cries at the drop of a hat and she wonders what is wrong with her, how the world makes her heart hurt, how the sun is too bright and the rain is too cold and how skin is softer than plastic, and she wonders, what exactly she is doing here.
Not to say Barbara’s unhappy. She’s deliriously happy. But sometimes at night her heart beats in her chest and it feels like a drum, or waves against a beachhead, and sometimes in the morning Barbieland feels like a distant, far-off dream and she doesn’t even remember the choreography from the dance parties. Barbara feels like she’s forgetting something.
“That’s not surprising,” Gloria tells her. Barbara’s living with her now, until she has enough of a credit history to get her own place. It’s nice. They drink coffee together on weekend mornings and Barbara is getting better at swallowing.
“Most people don’t remember their childhood that well,” Gloria says. “Usually it’s just… a series of impressions. A few moments. The really good stuff, and the really bad stuff.”
“It was all really good stuff,” Barbara says. “Every day was perfect. Or it was, until, well.”
She smiles ruefully. Gloria smiles back. And Barbara doesn’t say what she’s worried about, which is that: if everything was perfect, then does that mean nothing was, and she’s going to forget everything?
Barbie would have said that out loud. Barbie didn’t keep secrets, or worry, or think about how the human mind is a fallible organ and that eventually it will fail and every single person who’s ever lived has died. But she’s not exactly Barbie anymore.
