Mortaine’s Blog

I’ve been updating my music collection, re-importing a bunch into iTunes, etc.

By the end of today, there will be enough classical music on my hard drive for me to listen to it, non-stop, for an entire weekend.

This brings me a very odd sort of joy.

Is expressed here (first stanza). If you’ve never heard the song, then you might not be aware of the fact that “oranges” lands at the end of a rhythmic line, and does, in fact, rhyme with “syringes.”

The reason I love Eminem? That fuckin’ genius rhymed with orange. The utter cheek it takes to try to rhyme with orange in English is just phenomenal, but then to actually do it… it blows my mind.

Fifteen years.

Fifteen goddamn years.

I’m still here. I’m still standing. I’m still fucking standing.

A lot of my friends-list is going through a bad time right now. Everything from family medical issues to depression to just facing their own lives changing. Confronting news about school shootings involving the most unassuming group of people in America.

Well, here it is, guys. I was a white, middle-class suburban girl who was in one of those horrible things you read about in the newspapers, and fifteen years later, I’m still fucking here. Stable. Alive. Happy. Healthy. Successful.

I usually don’t know what to say on this anniversary, but today, this year, I do. I’m here. You’re here. You feel like you’re broken and on the ground, but you’re not. You’re standing tall, too, you just don’t have a mirror to see it yet. Here, I’ll be your mirror if you need one. Straighten your back a bit, hold my hand. See? It’s odd how it’s not that hard, but it’s also so impossible, isn’t it?

Now. Take a deep breath. Stand fucking tall.

It’s the only way to win.