Balancing Act

117

After Jess and Celeste had gone off to the Plaza, with intention to drive straight home after, G had cosied up on the parlor couch in her father's grey Boston sweatshirt to hang out with Rory. Feeling Rory care by allowing her to sleep with her had felt good, she'd truly needed that. But what this had also shown her was that Rory didn't have it very easy either. This had been one of these nights when not only did Rory have to get up and feed the twins around 4 AM, but also Finny had woken an hour before the twins, making Rory's sleep even more interrupted. And while G knew that that's what being a mother meant - she hadn't really experienced it as closely as from the same bed, waking for a minute too when Rory did, or when she returned to bed. So once again she felt like she really couldn't blame Rory for her lack to time and attention. But this made her actually want to help out more, feeling like maybe this was what would provide her with the healthier distraction at this point.

Thankfully all the kids were quite enjoying simple lounging time that Saturday morning - Finny simply coloring some of his coloring pages on the coffee table while the twins were on the couch beside them, so they could easily just keep an eye on them while they watched some old Scrubs reruns.

At some point, Rory got a call from Celeste, who gave her an overview of what had happened with her mother while she and Jess were driving back to Stars Hollow, and overall the lightness of which Rory was commenting on it, left also G a little curious to what had happened. She was still angry at Celeste, but interested nonetheless, just unwilling to admit it yet.

What she'd herself spent that morning on already, while Celeste and Jess had been around, had been a thorough procedure of unfollowing Finn from every social media channel she used. While Finn was mostly just about Facebook and Instagram, he on occasion also reposted some stuff elsewhere, hence she wanted to be thorough, going according to Rosalie's recommendations. She'd also deleted the content of the file he'd made for her about the off the beaten path things to do in New York, her being unable to delete the shared file altogether. What still hurt was that she really knew the list by heart by now and whenever she walked around the City the places would remind her of him just the same.

As she now sat on that couch, half paying attention to J.D's and Turk's banter on the TV screen, casually browsing through her feed on her phone, which now felt empty - like there wasn't enough happening that actually interested her.

"Anything interesting?" Rory asked as she returned to the couch, putting her own phone away.

"Quite the opposite really. I'm trying to think of what else interests me - maybe I should follow something new," she admitted. This was not really something teenagers struggled with, but she was just tired - tired of last night and tired of hiding anything, actually feeling a little relieved Rory knew about what had happened.

"Give me that?" Rory asked, and G relented, handing over the phone, deciding to trust her.

A few minutes later Rory had followed numerous feminist and female-empowering Instagram accounts on her phone, including writers, politicians, activists and to blend in with the rest some that she'd planned on introducing to her all along - sadgirlsclub and crisistextline for mental health support and after brief consideration whether that wouldn't be asking for trouble even freethenipple, hoping she'd not just get inspiration but maybe just broaden her worldview a bit. She wanted her to see that defining oneself didn't mean defining onself through the opinion of men.

"Thanks", she said as she accepted it. She got what she was doing, but frankly again it felt like giving up some control and promised herself to give it a try.

"You know, I think it's good you're going to France for the holidays. I mean I'll miss you and I don't want to get rid of you, but I know that taking a trip can really help sometimes," Rory shared.