#you can see the extra layers 🫠🫠🫠🫠🎄🎁✨

[therentyoupay]

“This year has been kind of wild, hasn’t it?” Anna muses much, much later that evening, well into the second round of dessert. Elsa looks up, startled by the wave of somber thoughtfulness from Anna’s side of the table. She isn’t quite sure what’s going on in her own headspace, let alone her sister’s.

“I mean,” Anna’s face crumbles, and she hides it poorly, “between me moving around so much, and finding my new job, and. You know. Dealing with Hans.”

Elsa’s fingers tighten imperceptibly on the handle of her fork. She lets Anna talk, and offers her a single encouraging nod, precise and controlled. Anna’s mouth is brave, tiny smiles and courageous words, but her eyes glisten with disappointment, with fear, with countless questions that Elsa cannot answer.

“I guess I wasn’t expecting my life to really… turn out like this?”

That makes two of us, Elsa can’t help but think but doesn’t dare let the thought rise any closer to the surface. These thoughts are not fair, she knows. They are not real, or maybe they are, but perhaps they shouldn’t be; Elsa has made her own decisions, and Anna has made hers—because Anna is an adult, because she’s starting to think like one—and now the two of them are left to pick up the pieces.

“I can understand that feeling,” Elsa shares, reluctant to offer anything more encouraging, such as no one does, really, or there’s still so much more, and your life isn’t over yet. “Sometimes plans change.”

Anna makes a face. “Sometimes for the better,” she mutters darkly, grimacing into her cup of cold tea. Elsa faintly wonders when Anna will think to reheat it but lets her make that choice on her own; she tries to keep a tally in her head, these days, of how many choices she consciously relents to Anna. She knows Anna does not notice. “Like. A hell of a lot better.”

Elsa cracks an amused grin at the grit in Anna’s voice, of fire and violence, and you won’t fool me again, and allows herself a deep sigh of unexpected relief.

“It’s okay to blame me, you know,” Anna’s confession cuts through the contented haze of Elsa’s awareness. Her sister’s eyes are so honest, and all over again, Anna is breaking, breaking her heart. “You gave up your doctoral program for me.”

Elsa turns her gaze to the contents of her mug, still warm. Whatever she says next will stay in Anna’s heart forever; she wants to make sure the words are the right ones.

“I did,” she answers eventually. “But I left for me, too.”

“But you’ve been waiting for that opportunity your whole life,” Anna insists, and her cheeks are dry but there are tears in her voice, in her throat, in her essence. “You want it. And you gave it up, because I’m a mess.”

“No,” Elsa corrects. “I withdrew because life is a mess.” She thinks in sudden waves and flashes—of freedom, of feeling trapped by four walls and a bedroom set of furniture, of opportunity, of wanting escape but not knowing how to find it, of feeling crowded and alone, of realizing that control is relative and everything and nothing, and says, “It may not have been the best thing to do, but it was the best decision we could have made at the time. It happened because it needed to happen.” Elsa lets that sink in. “And I’ll go back someday.”

“When?” Anna wants to know.

But Elsa still doesn’t really have an answer.

————

start from the beginning of livable 🎄🎁❤️

#while rereading this today i didn't remember this part and #now that i am in my fourth year of my doctoral program #i gasped-----i feel this bit so much more strongly now #like i could imagine it in 2016 when i wrote this story clearly but i didn't KNOW #this story was written right before i moved to japan for a year and a half (and this tory was POSTED retroactively from tubmlr to ao3 #WHILE I WAS IN JAPAN) and at this point in my life i still had an eventual PhD program on my radar but it wasn't anytime close because i #was about about embark on my Big Adventure Abroad with my fresh master's degree and my language learning journey ahead of me and i still #believed that i would be a classroom teacher forever and forever and that i would get an EdD #so the mere idea of elsa leaving her doctoral program---i could imagine but i could NOT FATHOM; not really #therentyoupay livable #jelsa #also for those of you who have read my most recent blog post on my site about how so many of my friends have either been kicked out #of our phd program or who have made the choice to leave #you can see the extra layers 🫠🫠🫠🫠🎄🎁✨