I'm Still Alive

Hello.


It's been rather a long time since I last posted, hasn't it? Almost two months, in fact. I hope no one's been overly worried about me.


The fact is, I just haven't had anything to say.


I've still been reading, of course. I've still been watching movies and having life experiences. There just hasn't been anything that jumped out at me, that got me thinking and demanded to be written about.


Which makes no sense, because it's not as though nothing's happened. I read Fahrenheit 451, which is some kind of great American classic. I suddenly realized how few old, classic movies I've seen and resolved to work on remedying that fact. Terry Pratchett and Leonard Nimoy died. My perfectly planned out and ordered reading list has been crumbling in on itself and not mattering to me as much as it did just a few months ago. There's been plenty to write about; plenty that should have been written about.


So why have I been so...... unaffectable?


(Quick thing before I get carried away rambling about my life: my last post, y'know, the one way back in February, was my 50th post. So YAY ME and I'M SO AWESOME, etc., etc. To commemorate the occasion, my blog is blue now.


I now return you to our regularly scheduled self-analysis.)


Sitting here, looking back, I realize that the last few months have been...... odd. Honestly, I've been aware that I haven't been quite myself. I feel like I've been slogging through books, reading much more slowly than I usually do. I haven't really loved anything I've read. My passion for writing has been nonexistent, hence the lack of posts. It's almost like some part of me has been missing. Like I said, I haven't been oblivious to this fact, and I haven't been unbothered by this fact, but now that I'm actively thinking about it I'm finding the whole thing a lot more unsettling than it has been.


This state of being hasn't exactly come out of nowhere. There are catalysts. I could list the ones I'm aware of (I'm not going to, but I could).


And it's not like I've been perpetually wraithlike and unhappy. I've had moments of happiness. I just haven't been as happy, or as frequently happy, as I sometimes have been in the past.


And then...... the last two weeks happened.


First came the Wingfeather Saga. There are four books; I read the first three in a week and a half. I still don't even really know whether I like them, because they're playing havoc with my feelings and they're not quite like anything I've ever read before, but that's not the point. The point is that I read them. Quickly. Like how I used to read books. And once I get my hands on the fourth book, I'm going to read it just as quickly. And there's a chance that it'll make me cry or rage or gasp or jump up and applaud. There's a chance that it'll take my breath away, and I am so excited.


The author of the Wingfeather Saga, Andrew Peterson, is also a musician, and during the week and a half that I was flying through his books I was also listening to a lot of his songs, some of them over and over and over again. Instead of spending long stretches of time online watching comedy videos that have all but lost their ability to make me laugh, I spent that time listening to music. Gentle music, some of it as soft as lullabies. Hopeful music. Music to soothe and calm and encourage and inspire heartache, the good kind of heartache, the kind that you keep going back to.


In the midst of that week and a half, I finally finished and turned in some overdue homework assignments. Writing assignments. I wrote. And, perhaps more significantly, I was pleased with what I wrote. I also impulsively checked out a book from the library and even more impulsively put a hold on another. My reading list is in unspeakable agony and for some reason I'm hardly fazed. And I got my senior pictures taken (EEP! When did I get so old?) and, while I haven't seen them yet, the whole time they were being taken I felt pretty and confident and like maybe being almost seventeen and having to grow up isn't quite as horrible as it's seemed lately. Maybe.


Next came These Old Shades. These Old Shades is a vapid, implausible, giddy historical romance novel full of snappy dialogue and ridiculous characters and powered wigs. I read it in three days and loved every second of it. I didn't want to give it back to the library.


In the midst of this, I got books in my Easter basket. Books I love, one because I've read it before and therefore know I love it, one simply because it was a gift from my mother. Books I want to be reading right now. Books I might actually read sooner rather than later, regardless of the list.


And I want to read more books by the author of These Old Shades. Sooner rather than later. My poor, poor list.


Finally, there was The Foreshadowing. It was bleak and sparse and far from impressive. I don't recommend it, unless you're really into Greek tragedy. But I read it in less than twelve hours. That felt good. Really, really good.


These last two weeks haven't been perfect. There were still low points, and days when I felt angry or upset for one reason or another. I'm still in an emotionally bizarre and unstable position. But there were moments that I felt great. Not functioning. Not fine. Not good. Great. Amazing. Sparkly. Capable of becoming okay again.


Still alive.


So I'm going to keep reading books. Perhaps my salvation has been in them all along, and I just didn't realize it because I wasn't reading the right ones. I don't know if lightning will keep striking and I'll keep finding books I blissfully inhale. But I'll keep reading, and maybe it will. And then maybe I'll start writing again.


Now wouldn't that be glorious.


~Pearl Clayton