Wizardry and Passion

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are: labor, mercy, why, Harry Potter, captain, and crunch. They were submitted by: http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com

This might be a bit rambly, but I did a loose format letting the words take me wherever. 

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For my entire existence, I’ve been into books. My mom has told me stories about being able to read

me books from memory because I would request certain ones over and over. Even now, when I see the cover of Wings on Things by Marc Brown (my favorite back then), I smile and feel a few warm fuzzies and can’t help wanting to slowly turn the pages even though I’m probably 30 years above the suggested reading level. Books, for me, were life. There was nothing better than being the captain of my own adventure through someone else’s vessel (me being the reader and the author being the owner of the vessel). It was the only way I made it through my childhood. That escape—the ability to live a life that wasn’t mine even for a short time while I devoured a novel—quite literally kept me sane.

I still read with the same fervor now as an almost 35 year old, but it isn’t exactly the same need as I had when I was young. As an adult, my life isn’t quite so tragic or so hectic. I mean adulting is an exercise of frustration and futility for the most point, and the escape into someone else’s world helps, but it’s not as necessary now as it used to be. I can go a whole week without reading anything much at all besides the occasional blog or article and not think about it, but that would have been torture for little-me.

Reading hasn’t been the same for my son which, admittedly, was a bit of a disappointment for me for awhile. I wanted him to love reading as much as I did when I was his age, and I really kind of pushed it on him from the time he started being able to read. It took some reflecting to realize he didn’t need it like I did, and when he does need an escape he is just as likely to pick up a video game as he is a book. And that’s okay. Along the way, though, when I backed off, he started finding things he really loved to read (which tickled me to no end), and once I started homeschooling him, we picked out books we could read simultaneously to discuss and reflect on.

That’s how we ended up reading the Harry Potter series last summer. I hadn’t ever gotten into it when I was younger. By the time the books came out, I was already 16 and too old for that sort of thing because of my snobbish teenage apathetic angst (yes I realize the oxymoron there). The books were a brand new world for both of us to explore while crunching through chapters and laboring on through the tears. I wasn’t at all prepared for the amount of tears I would shed nor for the profound effect that series would have on me. I read all 7 books in less than 3 weeks, but I’m still sitting here over a year later near tears and screaming “WHYYYYY????” whenever I think about Sirius. I fell a little in love with that character partially because I like troubled, dark, and handsome dudes but also because he reminded me a little of someone I used to love so profoundly that HIS death still haunts me after 14 years. Every death in that series, honestly, hit me no holds barred. No mercy was spared. I seriously cried through half the last book sitting in the floor of my bedroom being careful not to wake anyone in the house even the dogs knowing I would never be the same.

And I’m not.

I don’t know that it would have affected me so deeply in my youth without the same sort of understanding of the world that I have now (however limited it is). It certainly didn’t affect Evan the same way. He cried. On some level, I know he related to a few of the characters, but I also hope that he reads the series again in his teens and with his own children again in the future after he’s had time to experience the ups and downs that life continuously offers. And maybe just maybe, he’ll have to pick himself up off the floor at 8 a.m. and dry his face and know that part of him would always be a little different for having gone back to it. I also hope he calls me regardless of knowing that 8 a.m. is a time I wish didn’t exist so we can talk about all the things he missed when he was younger.

I love when art, in whatever form, leaves you changed the way Harry Potter did for me even as a 30-something who had previously baulked at the idea of a YA novel about wizards. But I’ve also grown to appreciate the fact that I don’t have to be reading to experience that. I used to be one of those people who didn’t watch television—a snob. And judged people for not reading. I shared memes about it, made statuses about it on social media, and proudly discussed what book I had just finished. After shows like Transparent, One Mississippi, Parks and Rec, Stranger Things, Grace and Frankie, and Love made me laugh and cry and get so incredibly immersed in a digital world, I started to see the art for what it was and not as automatically tainted based on what format it was in. The same is true for video games. The Witcher 3, Tell Tale’s Walking Dead, The Last of Us…those games are masters of human experience in a vivid world that may be fictional but still utterly relatable. Writing might be my preferred art—both for consumption and crafting—but it surely isn’t the be all, end all I’ve always made it out to be simply because it was the only anchor I ever knew. 

Whatever you love, find something that makes you feel, that makes you see a new perspective, that leaves you shaken to your core and trying to put back the pieces of everything you thought you knew. Watch it, play it, read it, write it, act in it, who the fuck cares…just do it. Life’s too short to live without passion, too fleeting to live without the sucker punch of a quote that robs all the air from your lungs because someone, somewhere gets you exactly the way you are.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado http://www.bakinginatornado.com/2016/09/use-your-words-because-hope-rules.html

Southern Belle Charm http://www.southernbellecharm.com

Not That Sarah Michelle http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com

Spatulas on Parade http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/

The Bergham Chronicles http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver http://www.thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html

Dinosaur Superhero Mommy http://dinoheromommy.com/

On the Border http://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/2016/09/baby-painting.html

Confessions of a part time working mom http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2016/09/use-your-words-day-in-ancient-rome.html

Never Ever Give Up Hope http://batteredhope.blogspot.com

The Dopest Lesson

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 11 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My “Secret Subject” is:

Fall is upon us! With the start of a new school year, do you think back on any particular grade you enjoyed? Or hated?

It was submitted by: http://thelieberfamily.com

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"All I’m saying is that if I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself." –Randall “Pink” Floyd, Dazed and Confused

That pretty much sums up high school in a nutshell for me. I mean, it surely wasn’t the peak of my existence. In those 4 years, the couple before it, and the couple after it, I dealt with more than someone my age should have to go through, and the high school “experience” did nothing to help those problems.

I was raped at the age of 13 in my own home by a friend. I grew up in a home where my alcoholic, drug-using father was, on his best days, emotionally/mentally abusive, and I really don’t want to talk about his worst. After my parents divorced, I lived with him for awhile and got into drugs and alcohol to numb the world. I dressed weird. I acted weird. I submerged myself in 90s grunge and metal because reality had too much hurt. I was discovering my own queerness and completely out of my element in rural South Georgia where football and hunting reign supreme as pasttimes and people ask about where you go to church before they ask you your name.

It was impossible to traverse the social hierarchy even without my inept attempts at conquering my own demons. I wasn’t from a football sort of family. My dad didn’t hunt or do much of anything really but work and get fucked up, and we certainly didn’t spend Sunday mornings in church. So even if you could flip a switch and magically take away the violence of my youth and all the lasting effects, I would still have been an outcast. Of that, I have no doubt especially when you add in what a nerd I was. Straight As. Honor graduate. I lived in books, and my grades effortless. In every conceivable way, I was an outsider.

I’ll be honest—I’m kind of bitter about it despite how often I’ve tried to let it completely go.

I’m not bitter in a way that comes up every day or even often, but if tasked, like I am currently, with the thought of picking out a best or even a worst year, all I can do is let out one of those slightly disturbing, ironic laughs that doesn’t quite reach my eyes and lets you know you might’ve well have asked me if I think the Harry Potter movies are better than the books. It’s just not going to end well for you, man. Those years left an imprint and ultimately helped shape the me I am now.

I’m not alone in this. I mean, there are dozens of movies, iconic ones even, that detail the high school experience, and for many of the individuals on screen those years are some of the roughest possible. That sentiment came from somewhere, no? If Randall “Pink” Floyd, a jock with a horde of friends, too many girlfriends, and the run of the school had issues with that period of his life then it’s safe to say there’s a problem. He was, in fact, pretty fucking dreamy, wasn’t he?

Coincidentally, I watched one of those movies the other night called Dope about a 90s nerd growing up in one of the toughest neighborhoods possible—Inglewood, California in an area called The Bottoms. It’s crime-ridden with most of his peers either belonging to gangs or slinging drugs. He is constantly accused of being an Oreo (black on the outside but white on the inside) to the point he makes his own punk band named Awreeoh. He’s extremely intelligent and is on a mission to get into Harvard. Even his own teachers call him arrogant for ever thinking he could do more than be the norm for his hood. I related so hard to his story and especially this quote:

“For most of my life, I’ve been caught up in between who I really am and how I’m perceived, in between categories and definition. I don’t fit in. And I used to think that was a curse, but now I’m slowly starting to see maybe it’s a blessing. See, when you don’t fit in, you’re forced to see the world from many different angles and points of view. You gain knowledge, life lessons from disparate people and places. And those lessons, for better or worse, have shaped me.”

It’s a mixed bag really. Even while I’m bitter, I see the blessing for what it is. There may not have been a best year (or even a worst considering they were all equally unbearable), but understanding the blessing was certainly the best lesson.

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Here are the other contributions to the challenge. Hope you will check them out!

Baking In A Tornado http://www.BakingInATornado.com

Not That Sarah Michelle http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com

The Bergham Chronicles http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com

Spatulas on Parade http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

Dinosaur Superhero Mommy http://dinoheromommy.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver http://www.thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html

The Lieber Family Blog http://thelieberfamily.com

Confessions of a part time working mom http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Southern Belle Charm http://www.southernbellecharm.com

Never Ever Give Up Hope http://batteredhope.blogspot.com

Climaxed http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com