All Our Hidden Gifts

[droqen]

re: Caroline O'Donoghue's
"All Our Hidden Gifts"

[droqen]

[AB]

[droqen]

the protagonist of the story, whose name i've already forgotten, has happened upon a deck of tarot cards.
she also seems somewhat not in control of her emotions -- she emotionally hurts her sister and doubles down without meaning to.
and she isn't, or doesn't consider herself to be, a good student, or smart. she can't remember things easily. i relate. (even if people do tell me that i'm smart, i do forget things a lot. i'm good at covering it up by thinking about it or socially smoothing it over. so i don't relate to it completely.)

but more than anything i related to this last bit from the end of the third chapter.

"I find it very interesting," [my dad] says before leaving the room, "that you can learn all about these cards in an evening but still haven't quite mastered your times tables." . . . it is a little weird that I've managed to learn the cards so well in an evening. But it's not like learning everything else. It doesn't fall out of my brain the minute I move on to something different, like school stuff does. It sticks, like song lyrics. Like poetry. Like feelings I already had but finally have a map for.

this bit hit me hard.

~ backlinked from very, very abstract - project to write a response to jack's letter, esp. the line about 'organizing'