An Utterly Random and Overlookable Post

You know what the worst part of reading a book without a fandom is?


It's being awake, reading, in those dark, lonely hours between midnight and dawn, and feeling things which aren't quite feels because you're not quite invested enough in the book to be crying or laughing or excited, but are still heavy and weighty and maybe just the slightest bit overwhelming, and having nowhere to go.


It's not worse, in my opinion, to be reading a book I'm actually super invested in alone. If I'm reading a book so good that I'm laughing or grinning or hanging on every word or, with those rarest of rare books, crying, I don't need anyone else. Sure, it's glorious when somebody else finally listens to my recommendations, like my best friend is now finally doing with Charlie Bone (we have a marvelous little two-person fandom now, complete with excessive amounts of shipping and fangirling and she's rapidly approaching the feelsy sections of the series and I am so freaking excited) but when I love a book I can happily love it alone.


And, for the most part, I'm okay reading older books alone. Basically anything written before, like, 1990 and I'll happily read by myself whether I'm enjoying it or not.


Well, maybe that's not quite true.


Here's the thing: try to talk to me about school, or politics, or my nonexistent plans for my life, or the shockingly grandiose implications of the speed with which news travels, or philosophy, or the future, etc., and I'll be bored in two minutes, irritated in five, and attempting to leave the room in ten. But get me talking about books and movies and I'll be devastated if you try to leave or change the subject after just an hour and a half. I've said it before. This blog is called "Everything Unreal" because this blog is primarily focused on that which is unreal. For some reason I don't know which might possibly be a sign of deep-rooted psychological unwellness but probably isn't, the dreamy stories born in other people's heads are the surest ways I know of grounding myself and knowing my identity, of getting through life and staving off loneliness. They're the only things I'm really passionate about and they always have been. (And I now have a song stuck in my head that goes, "she is the one who tempts me and she for whom I'm pure; my love for her confounds me and is all of which I'm sure". With some lyrical changes, I think it becomes quite fitting.)


But if I want to spend two hours talking the ears off my longsuffering best friend or my longer-suffering family members in an elaborate and mostly one-sided discourse on the myriad feelings and thoughts elicited in me by some book or movie I've experienced alone, I first have to describe in great detail any plotlines or characters I'll be bringing up, and even if I can get past the guilt brought on by such a spoiler-filled speech I still tend to be met by mostly blank looks and minimalist responses, because no one else I know feels the way I do about stories. My best friend comes closest, and she'll gladly fangirl with me and listen to my monologues for as long as I want her to, but of course she's not always immediately available, and she also has absolutely brilliant plans and ambitions and ideas that make my current life goal of achieving immortality so I can be a sixteen-year-old sitting in my messy bedroom reading books forever look even more pathetically childish than it already is. And my mom...... well, she's basically the best mom I've ever encountered, but we're never going to care about the same things.


Thus the Internet has somewhat spoiled me by giving me the ability to discuss all the stories I long to without even having to say anything. On Facebook posts and YouTube videos, I can read comments for as long as I like, and instead of feeling like an annoyance or a blathering teenager displaying her emotional immaturity way too proudly, I feel like one piece of a massive and brightly colored jigsaw puzzle, acceptable and accepted, united to hundreds and thousands of other people by my love for a story.


But of course this only works for as long as I like super popular stuff. Which isn't very long.


So now we're back at the beginning of the post, a post brought on by a couple of things, like the fact that I just read a few books that were dense and heavy, and then I watched a movie that was heavy, and now I'm a little more than halfway through a book that's quite heavy for different reasons and I don't like any of those three books or the movie but I don't dislike them either and I have no one to talk to about any of it, not really, and I feel like I'm going crazy. And then there's the fact that the last time I discovered a book I really liked was almost six months ago, and that was just a book I liked and I'm more than ready to find something I love again. Or at least to have a deep, probing, fulfilling, three-hour-long discussion with someone about things I don't quite love.


*Deep sigh*


Look, it's not really as bad as I'm melodramatically making it sound. I've been brought down a bit by the book I'm reading, which I was rather expecting to love and which I am instead being disappointed and slightly befuddled by. I'm greatly questioning the advisability of even posting this particular post, because I feel like it says a great many things I'm not entirely sure I mean, and seems to reveal a lot about me to the vast and indestructible Internet, and might very well make no sense. But I've been working on it for a long enough time that I figure I might as well reveal it to the world and face the consequences if there are any. Plus, I think that right now I'm being largely driven by the hateful, ugly part of my brain that desperately wants people to feel sorry for me. Ugh.


But like I said...... this mood shouldn't last. It never does. And there're lots of books coming up on my reading list that look really good (they wouldn't be on my reading list if they didn't). And I've seen some really good movies recently. And Netflix is just a few clicks away, brimming with random movies and TV shows that don't have fandoms but might just be good enough they don't need them. And is it just me, or do I sound insufferably immature right now?


Well, who cares? I don't. (Much.) I am who I am.


Lamest self-affirmation ever, huh?


*Second deep sigh*


And now I sound all sad again. I promise I'm okay. Watch, I'll probably be back in just a few weeks, sheepishly blogging about some amazing new book I'm reading and pretending this post doesn't exist.


I'll see you then.


~Pearl Clayton