Look, I know a good number of you are from the US and things aren't amazing there either, but my country is literally on the brink of collapse. So I'd love it if we could talk about that for a minute.
If you can't do anything else, please just read and reblog.
A second COVID wave has taken out the healthcare system. There are no more hospital beds. There's an oxygen shortage. There's a critical vaccine shortage. The Central Government has thrown its hands up and is passing the baton to the State Governments to do what they can.
There are over 16 million covid cases. A record 330,000 new cases reported yesterday - comparable to the US at its peak. 187,000 dead as of today.
There is no plan.
Mass cremations are taking place. The cremation grounds are running day and night and they are short on wood. People are watching their loved ones die while waiting for a hospital bed, and then they're unable to give them the proper burial rights.
Hospitals are overwhelmed. Patients are being confined, two to a bed. They're the lucky ones.
We are on the verge of people dying in the streets.
This is the second-most populous country in the world. The largest democracy. A country that encapsulates over 15,000 years of recorded human history and has endured everything from famine to invasion to colonisation.
We might be at the end. This might be the thing that does us in.
People are dying.
People are dying.
People are dying and there is no plan.
More good news? Variants are popping up. A double mutation strain has shown up. It is resistant to current vaccines. This will not go away. This is the devastation they warned of when the anti-maskers were out protesting the minor inconvenience of covering their face in public.
My country is on the verge of an emergency state. Our government has failed us. This is as dire a situation as it ever could be.
Look. I don't do much with my life. I write fics, some of you have read them and that's pretty much it. I spend my days with my head in the clouds because that's where I like to be.
But two days ago, my grandmother tested positive, had to be taken to hospital and the ambulance caught fire.
She barely made it to the urgent care she needs.
So, here I am, using whatever meager platform I have to cobble this request together. Because I have to do something.
If you can, donate.
Or spread the word.
Help. Please.
Instagram: abookandadream
▬ ᵗᵃᵉʰʸᵘⁿᵍ ’ ᵃʳᵗ ˢᵗᵘᵈᵉⁿᵗ’ ᵐᵒᵒᵈᵇᵒᵃʳᵈ 🎨 for @taescuit happy birthday cutie!!♡ u r a very nice and talented person mmh love uuu baby
⇝please like or reblog if you save/use
⇝don’t repost
I just want to be held, is that too much to ask for?
prompt: “Just hold me for a while, please.” requested by everyone’s fave, @nyc-parker
“You look lovely,” he tells her, and she smiles at him warmly, a small thing that barely lifts the corner of her painted red mouth, and he loves the sight of her.
Her mascara is smudged, just the tiniest bit. It’s the kind of thing that you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t spend hours learning the sight of her face in every setting. She’s so pretty, curled hair flattening after hours at some dinner for her job.
She hadn’t had a plus one, and he’d had work to do anyway.
He’d seen her getting ready, hung out with her while got ready. She’s got a certain laser-sharp focus when she does these things, eyes trained on the right color of eyeshadow and how to do the uptick of her eyeliner just perfect, and it’s lovely to watch. (She usually reserved such attention to him.) She had curled her hair and yelled at him for making her laugh because I could burn myself you dick!
She’d stepped into silver heels and he’d looked her up and down like it’s still before he’d had the nerve to tell her looking at her was his favorite thing to do- and she’d looked like the most stunning thing the world’s ever made. She’d had the nerve to ask if she looked okay, tucking a curled lock behind her ear and brows furrowed as if that wasn’t an insane question.
(Sometimes he wonders if she can see.)
And while it was upsetting not to go with her, this is still the best part of the night, anyway. She’s wearing a long purple dress and her heels are off because she can’t stand them anymore. She falls into the space next to him on the couch, leaning into him like she’s made to exist in his sphere. It’s second nature, the way he wraps his arm around her shoulders and how she leans back.
“Thank you,” she replies, and fatigue drips from her honey-sweet voice, and she turns to tuck her face into the crook of his neck, voice muffled as she speaks, “You look lovely too.”
He does not. He is wearing a grey T-shirt that has a coffee stain on the front and old shorts he’s pretty sure he bought in high school, his hair’s a mess because he’s run his hands through it like 8 times, and he’s pretty sure the cold cup of tea and half-eaten slice of pizza doesn’t make him look like some god of attractiveness. She sounded serious though, and that’s the part that still melts him down to the center.
(She drinks in the sight of him the same way he looks at her, and it’s still hard to believe.)
“No comment,” he says back, and it’s worth it for the way she laughs, soft and real while shifting to prop her legs up on their cheap coffee table from goodwill.
She’s wearing the perfume he gave her for their anniversary, and she’s all easy movements and effortless grace, careful and reverent with the way she touches him. He loves her when she laughs, loves her when she smiles and loves her when she fights with him over what show to watch and loves her when she’s not doing anything at all.
Her eyes are fluttering shut, and it’s an easy tell that she’s exhausted. Her favorite show is on, which they don’t watch together often, mostly because of how she fawns over the main character, which leads to him being miffed, not jealous, and she fawns over that.
Now, though, she can’t keep her gaze focused on anything at all. The only indication he has that she’s still awake is that she’s holding him too tightly to be asleep.
“Baby,” he says, and it’s hard not to relish how she preens, just the tiniest bit at the affection. It’s still so new, even after years of loving each other, the way it feels to hear the affection that drips from every affectation. “You wanna head to bed?”
“In a minute,” she replies, picking her head up to meet his gaze. It will invariably not be just a minute. And she’s been sleeping late lately, they should probably go to bed, especially if- “Just hold me for a while, please.”
Please. As if it’s a favor. As if it isn’t the greatest privilege he thinks he will ever have.
She snuggles into him and leans on his shoulder again, and she still makes his heart skip. Okay. Okay.
He kisses her temple then leans his head back on hers, legs tangled, the blanket covering her than on him, and he’s happy. Happy she’s warm, happy she’s with him, happy that his favorite thing to do in the world was asked of him. With a please.
“Of course, honey.”
Tan, 49, was the mother of Jami Webb, a recent graduate from the University of Georgia. She was a licensed massage therapist and the owner of Young’s Asian Massage, along with other businesses in the area, including another spa and a tanning salon, according to state records. She was “the sweetest, most kind-hearted, giving, never-met-a-stranger person,” a friend told Atlanta’s WSB-TV. Just one day away from her 50th birthday when she was killed, according to USA Today, Tan was described by her daughter as thoughtful, devoted to her family, and looking forward to traveling in her retirement.
Hyun Jung Grant was a Korean immigrant who worked at Atlanta’s Gold Spa. Her son Randy Park, 23, shared a tribute to his mother on GoFundMe: He said his mother was a single parent who “dedicated her whole life to providing for my brother and I.” She loved dancing and sushi, according to Park, who told The Daily Beast, “She wasn’t just my mother. She was my friend.” Park, who now has to raise his brother alone, is not buying law-enforcement officials’ suggestion that the attack was motivated by a supposed sex addiction, not racism. “That’s bullshit,” he said.
Yaun Gonzalez, 33, was a mother of two — 13-year-old Mayson and 8-month-old Mia. She had worked all day on Tuesday at the Waffle House a few shops down from Tan’s spa business. She had been looking forward to having a relaxing night out with her husband, Mario Gonzalez, whom she married only last year, and the couple had reportedly never been to Young’s Asian Massage before. According to Fox 5 Atlanta, family members say that Mario Gonzalez, who survived the shooting, is “taking [the situation] hard.” Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez’s friends and family have set up a GoFundMe to address her funeral costs.
Michels, 54, was a handyman at Young’s Asian Massage and the owner of an electric company. He was only recently hired for the role and excited to take it on after looking for more work during the pandemic, according to a friend who spoke with CBS46. An army veteran originally from Detroit, Michels is one of nine siblings and is survived by his wife of more than two decades. In an interview with the Guardian, his brother John Michels emphasized his kindness. “He was just a regular guy, very good-hearted, very soft-natured,” he said, while noting that Michels had expressed an interest in getting involved in the massage business.
A licensed massage therapist, she was laid off at the start of the pandemic last year and was excited to finally start shifts at the spa again, her son Elliott Peterson, 42, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday morning. Yue’s youngest child, Robert Peterson, 38, agreed, recalling their mother as a kind and deeply caring woman. If you stopped by her house, she’d sit you down, ask if you’d eaten, and then insist on a trip to H Mart grocery store so she could make a meal.
Daoyou Feng, 44, began working at Young’s Asian Massage in recent months, according to Tan’s friend Hynson. She was kind and quiet, he said. Her relatives could not be reached for comment.
Soon Chung Park, 74, was also a worker at an Atlanta spa. Her family didn’t respond when reached for comment. Park previously lived in New York, where she has relatives, her son-in-law, Scott Lee, told the New York Times. “She got along with her family so well,” Lee told the newspaper.
Suncha Kim, 69, worked at one of the spas in Atlanta. Her family could not be reached for comment. Kim, a grandmother, was married for more than 50 years, a family member told the Times. She enjoyed line dancing and worked hard, the relative said.
Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, was the only survivor of the victims who were shot on Tuesday, and he remains hospitalized for multiple gunshot wounds in his “forehead, throat, lungs and stomach,” according to the Washington Post. He was shot while standing outside in the shopping center where Young’s Asian Massage is located. “He came from nothing and has come a long way; that is why I have faith he will survive this,” his wife Flor Gonzalez told the Washington Post. Gonzalez has also set up a GoFundMe to help with the costs of Hernandez-Ortiz’s medical care.
A - Z with Yoongi
S: Smile
[cr. in the soop: qdeoks]