Yesterday I read the latest chapter of Tite Kubo's manga Bleach, and one of my favorite characters has died. I sat here staring at the screen with tears flowing down my face, feeling as if I'd been punched in the gut, as if I'd lost a friend. Over the years I have shed tears for many a character. When someone is as passionate about the world of fiction and form the strong bonds that I do with fictional characters, you not only emphasize and feel for them as they go through the various circumstances that us writers put them through, but you also feel their absence when/if they meet their doom. I cry for them when they cry. I bleed for them when they bleed. But I truly feel as if I have lost someone important in my life if I have to say goodbye.
I wasn't the most popular kid when I was in school. I didn't really find my stride in life until I got to college and found like-minded people. Or at least people who thought my nerdiness was endearing. I had very few friends who respected me for being different. In fact, I think I had a total of, like, 4 friends who stuck by me even though I was a total dork. And only two of those shared my dorkiness.
I digress.
So, seeing as I wasn't exactly popular, I hated going to school. I was incredibly smart (which doesn't get you any popularity points either, unless the dumb jocks ask to cheat off you) so I enjoyed the learning aspect of things, but I got picked on pretty mercilessly in the early days. By the time I was 16 the bullying stopped because I refused to be bullied. I was a nerd with a temper.
Anyway, the world of fiction allowed me an escape. I'd been reading since I was 3, but it didn't truly become my refuge until I was probably 11. That's when I discovered the wonderful world of Harry Potter and fell in love with my first character. For the next seven years, not only did my love for all things fiction grow to include not only books but movies, anime, manga, video games, anything really, but my love for Harry Potter only grew. I became attached to the characters. They became my friends, my escape from a world where I was rarely understood. And then, when I was 18 years old, I lost the character that had not only been my favorite HP character since I was 11, but was also my favorite character in existence and still is to this day. I wept for an hour over the death of Severus Snape. I felt silly because I knew he wasn't real, but then another wise character by the name of Albus Dumbledore pointed out something to Harry that hit home with me.
"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" Dumbledore's wise words explained so much for me. Yes, the worlds that I dove into were not happening in my immediate reality. I am not physically at Hogwarts, nor in Narnia, the Soul Society, or in some galaxy far far away. I can't Time-walk, date vampires, or go to Camp Half-blood. But that doesn't make these places any less real in my mind or in my heart.
The worlds I find myself in when I read or watch movies or play games are a shelter for me, a sanctuary. When this reality becomes too much, or too little, I can go find my place somewhere else. Will I ever physically go there? No. But that doesn't make the feelings I feel or the people (YES PEOPLE!) I meet any less real to me. So if you see me crying or hear me talking about being sad over a character I have grown to truly love and care for dying, don't insult me or their memories by saying that I shouldn't get so upset over something that isn't real. Because, to be honest, a lot of these characters are more real to me than most of you are.
And so this shall be a tribute to the characters who I have loved and lost and feel like I owe a thank you to. Sometimes it's the realm of fiction that has the greatest impact, and these characters have helped me through some of the greatest pain that this reality has handed to me. I don't care if you don't understand or you don't like it. All that shows me is that you don't understand me. Just remember, just because it's happening in a place you cannot physically see doesn't mean you have the right to negate it's excistance.
I think it's becoming a new trend for me to start doing book reviews. Of course this seemed like a natural course of action considering I'm a walking library, but I realized I have an inability to write a proper one. I've never been one who gets caught up in things like symbolism, character development, plot, etc., Don't get me wrong! As someone who has a BA in English, I can attest to you, dear reader, that all of those things and more are extremely important when writing a novel. They are due their respect. But I don't think I can write a blog about them. Can I spot them, disect them, understand them, and appreciate them? Yes. But a novel is about so much more than the mechanics.
An old friend of mine told me that I should start my own version of Sparknotes. It took me a little while to realize this old friend is a freaking genius! My book reviews will have very little to do with mechanics and all about how a certain novel made me feel. A well written story should be able to invoke several emotions simultaneously and that is what is important to me. How did this novel make me feel while I was reading, and did it stay with me long after the last page was turned? And so, welcome to AliNotes! Be prepared to read my probably useless ramblings about the adventures that a good story can take us on.
I read Looking for Alaska by John Green almost as soon as I finished The Fault in Our Stars. I've since read another book by Green called Paper Towns, which I loved as well, though not as much as the aforementioned. I have fallen in love with Green's writing style and immature locker room humor. I have always been a bit boyish and so I guess inappropriate jokes about body parts and crazy pranks are right up my alley. What I like the most about Green is that (in my opinion) he's an incredibly deep thinker and makes you contemplate the big questions about life, death, love, hate, and everything in-between without even realizing that you're doing it. His thoughtful and downright philosophical musings are so well woven into the paragraphs and pages that you don't catch a glimpse of them until suddenly, he hits a little close to home.
Looking for Alaska dealt with a group of teenagers away at boarding school in butthole Alabama. The three that the story focuses on is our narrator Pudge, his roommate The Colonel, and, of course, Alaska. Alaska is an impuslive, chain smoking troublemaker with deep wounds that she can never seem to heal. She is the glue that seems to keep the group together, and Pudge believes himself very much in love even though she has a boyfriend she allegedly loves very much. I mean, he is the only guy she's never cheated on. Oh, that is until a drunken make out session with Pudge. Anyway, the night of the crazy make out, in which Alaska promises to continue when they're sober, Alaska suddenly freaks out and asks the boys to help her get off campus. They distract the principal, Alaska gets in her car, and is killed in an accident. The rest of the novel is about Pudge and his friends in search of answers to what happened. What had upset Alaska so much before she drove away? Had she really been so drunk that she didn't see the cop car (lights and all) in the middle of the road? Was it suicide? The cop said she didn't even swerve.
To me, LFA is about a young person coming to terms with unanswerable questions, broken promises, and the fact that actions have consequences.
Death is one of the greatest mysteries that we humans have been trying to uncover for centuries. In LFA, Pudge is obsessed with peoples last words. He later goes on a quest trying to understand the death of his friend. It took me back to when death first touched my life and opened my eyes to the fact that I'm not ten feet tall and bullet proof, and those I love aren't always going to be by my side. We watch Pudge and The Colonel struggle with trying to understand why Alaska died. How could their healthy, beautiful friend be there one minute and suddenly gone the next. I've had death touch me in significant ways and I've wrestled with those same questions. I've also wrestled with Alaska's struggle to make it out of what she refers to as the "labyrinth of suffering." I was taken back to being a kid and seeing the world for what it was for the first time. I remember that pain, the fear of uncertainty. I remember it the moment that it dawned on me that I would definitely die someday and I'd probably never see it coming. That's what this novel is about.
Alaska's answer to the question of how to escape the labyrinth of was simple. "Hard and fast," she wrote in the margin of her favorite book. At the end of the novel, honoring Alaska's memory, Pudge's Religion teacher poses this question to them. I think it only appropriate that I answer this question for myself.
"How will you---you personally---ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering? Now that you've wrestled with three major religious traditions, apply your newly enlightened mind to Alaska's question."
The answer is actually quite simple: I wont.
It isn't a bad thing. It's just a reality we all have to face. I believe a famous mere-cat once told us all that sometimes bad things happen and there isn't anything that you can do about it. At some point in your life, someone will betray you. Someone will break your heart, people will die, and you will make choices that come with great consequences that you have to learn to live with. When it comes to suffering, you really have two choices: let it break you, or make you. I've chosen the latter .
It's no secret that I've seen and felt my fair share of suffering. I've seen death with my own two eyes, had my heart broken more times then you would believe humanly possible, and I've screwed up in some monstrous ways. I've screamed myself hoarse and cried so much I've thrown up. Sometimes I go through times where I wonder if agony and pain is the only thing I remember how to feel. I have days where the losses I've felt press on me harder than other days and I don't even know if I'll have to strength to crawl out of bed and simply go on. But I do.
Every day I wake up knowing there are people I've lost that I'll never get back, whether that be to death or circumstance, and I have to accept that fact every time I am greeted by a new day. I have to make a decision every morning to get up, put my pants on, and live. There are scars on my heart with peoples names etched into them that will never ever fade. I can feel the empty spaces in my house where my dad should be. When I want to tell Shelley something or show her something, she isn't there for me to tell and show.
Suffering is a part of life. There isn't a way to escape it. You just have to let it bleed, because at the end of the day, it's worth it. Maybe there are people out there who truly live charmed lives and never know anything other than utter contentment. If so, I actually feel sorry for them because they will never learn to appreciate the great things about life that I have.
Happiness is truly a fickle and fleeting emotion. You cant capture it in a jar like a lightning bug and watch the light show. Happiness comes and goes, just like suffering, just like pain. But it's worth it. Only when you have truly suffered can you be truly grateful for even just one moment of pure and unadulterated joy. I've felt that. At the end of the day, those brief spells of happiness have made all the pain worth it. I don't want out of the labyrinth if I lost the ability to drop to my knees and say thank you for even just one moment of something better.
It doesn't matter how it ended, it only matters that it happened. I have wished on stars and seen those wishes come to fruition. I have had a first kiss that will stay with me for the rest of my life. It doesn't matter how badly it ended or how my heart bled. Nothing can take the memories away from me. They're mine and no amount of sadness I felt afterward can taint the happiness I felt in those moments. No one and nothing can take that away from me. That moments may have had a heavy price attached, but I'd pay them every time. I wouldn't take back not one second, even if I'd known how it would have turned out later. I wouldn't have loved or fought or smiled any less.
Think back to a moment in time where you were happy. I don't mean "I got chocolate cake!" happy. I mean the kind where you turn your face to the star clad sky and you are so overcome with emotion that you can barely choke out a whispered thanks. I remember every single one of those moments. I remember thinking, "so this is what it feels like. This is passion. This is joy. This is love." It wont last forever. Nothing does. But neither will pain. Hold on to the joy and let go of the rest, because there isn't anything you can do to change it. And if it made you that happy at the time, you shouldn't. You can't really hate someone or something that once caused you so much joy, even if they did deal you a heavy wound. Send them light and love every time you think of them. Be grateful to them. They taught you how to survive. They showed you how to smile.
They helped you learn how to love.
I will never escape the labyrinth of suffering for inside the labyrinth is "the great perhaps." Inside of suffering is all the possibilities that life has to offer me. Where there is pain, there is love. Where there is love, there is hope. And where there is hope, there is the possibility of a life that not even death can claim.
