What you came to find
So as I think I mentioned, or eluded to, or maybe didn't say but thought I did because I feel like I talk about it so much in real life...I've not been writing. I haven't really written in a long time. I'm trying to sort of slowly work my way back. Trying to write more on LJ is part of that.
I've been kind of haunted by the Avengers fandom since I "joined" it. I tried to resist it, I stored my feelings in a place close to my anxiety center, to a point where a lot of times Avengers things made me nervous or scared me. I've had and lost enough fandoms and interests to feel like I needed a wall around my heart to be able to deal with it. I don't know that that aspect was wrong, but it certainly made sharing it or making any of the characters truly a part of me extremely difficult.
For a long time, a very long time, I wanted to write a story about Hawkeye and Black Widow. Not a romantic story, not completely, but just about them. A story that would cover the things that I hadn't been able to find in any fics about them; a way to add what I thought was missing.
And I couldn't do it.
I couldn't find my way to any sort of plot, there were moments but no way to connect them, my own fear of writing and anger at myself ruined many attempts of writing and made me afraid. So afraid.
I finally had a conversation with enigma731 who at that time had little interest in the fandom, and was able to remain unbiased. It was illuminating, gave me insight on what I might say, and at the same time, accidentally started to pull her in.
But then something else happened - actually it had happened the weekend before, but I only started to recognize the impact when I couldn't seem to shake it.
I picked up this book at work while I was pulling paperbacks for clearance. I knew we'd seen it often enough, usually there were several hardcover copies in the horror section. I liked the colors and the trees on the cover. I decided to read it.
I generally don't like any kind of post-apocalyptic anything. And I don't like vampires. So to put it weirdly, this book about post-apocalyptic world populated by horrible vampires caused by a virus should have been the last thing I ever read. It's like "The Stand" meets "The Road" (and while I read the latter and saw the movie, those were both very difficult). I actually considered not reading it several times. But there was something about the writing, some hook in the words and the unfolding story that made me decide to not just read it every day at lunch, but to take it home.
And the night I took it home I read it for 6 hours straight. I didn't eat dinner. I went to be at 3 even though I had to be up early. The next day, as soon as I got home from work, I went back to reading it, and I read it until it was over.
This book wrecked me.
If I could have just broken down sobbing at the end of it, I think it would have helped, but I couldn't and I didn't and I didn't really know what to do until I exploded about it at jou when I picked her up from the airport the next night.
I didn't want to love this book with the virals and so many (The Many) characters, with the end of the world and all the sorrow and the pain and all the things we do for love itself. But that's unfortunately, in a way, what it's about. It's about love, and it's about family. It's about life and time and unbearable, unimaginable sorrow that you endure anyway. It's about, in the book's own words: “What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.” And that “We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.”
So after being thoroughly ruined by this book, I found out it's part of a trilogy. The second book, "The Twelve," is already out, but the next one won't be out for at least another year. And I thought, "considering my reaction to this book, I should probably take a break for a while."
But it's kept haunting me. I've had trouble reading anything else since I read it. I feel strange and relieved and heartsick every time I check its tag on tumblr; I "liked" the facebook page run by the author (who is funny and pretty attractive >.>); I read this quote over and over: “So perhaps the greatest worry of all was that one day you would realize that all the worries of your life amounted to one thing: the desire to just stop worrying.”
I finally gave in and picked it up the other day, and I found the parts in it that talk about "giving it up," which is, essentially, letting go.
It reminded me, in a sense, of what my uncle tried to get me to do in meditation, what lots of people say about sort of..."living in the moment." To give it up in the sense of "The Passage," as I understood, was to sort of release your fear, your mind, yourself. To some extent, it's also like "if you love something, set it free, etc."
The other day, I gave it up. I lay on the couch with the blinds open on a beautiful cold day, I held my copy of the book, and I shed a few tears, and I did my best to give it up.
I dumped out my feelings about the book on sink_or_swim but for the first time, it wasn't as heavy. I can be near the book now and feel not just a weird haunted reverence and fear and need.
I will be reading "The Twelve," sooner or later. In keeping with my endless quoting of this fucking book, "bring me one and then another. Bring them that we may live in this way and no other."
But today I was thinking about Hawkeye and Black Widow. I was thinking about how hard it's been for me to muster any creative impulses, how I feel as distant from the fandom as ever. I thought about how I had meant to write this story for so long but suddenly...I didn't really want to. I didn't really need to.
I gave it up.
"He felt no surprise or even regret but, rather, a deep and sudden gratitude, and with it a force of clarity, filling him like a breath of winter air. He wondered what this feeling was and then he knew. He was giving her up."
I know this all probably sounds strange or trite or like a weird interpretation of something that's supposed to be something else, but...maybe for a moment, I learned how to let go of something that haunted and tormented me. To let it be a thing that exists but not something I need to exist for. I released it. I hope it released me.
So I just wanted to say that. I don't care if anyone else ever reads this book. If you love it or hate it or have no interest. I just...used to write about things that did this to me, and I felt I owed it to the book and myself, and maybe to Clint and Natasha, to get this all out. To embrace (and weirdly cherish) this book (in spite of how it MESSED ME UP) I never meant to read and then be glad that my lights are still on and hope for a future better than the one it portrays. To forgive myself, just a little, for not always being as strong in the dark passages of my life. To work on making it through them. To take it all and move on.
Now I'm going to eat some pizza.
I've been kind of haunted by the Avengers fandom since I "joined" it. I tried to resist it, I stored my feelings in a place close to my anxiety center, to a point where a lot of times Avengers things made me nervous or scared me. I've had and lost enough fandoms and interests to feel like I needed a wall around my heart to be able to deal with it. I don't know that that aspect was wrong, but it certainly made sharing it or making any of the characters truly a part of me extremely difficult.
For a long time, a very long time, I wanted to write a story about Hawkeye and Black Widow. Not a romantic story, not completely, but just about them. A story that would cover the things that I hadn't been able to find in any fics about them; a way to add what I thought was missing.
And I couldn't do it.
I couldn't find my way to any sort of plot, there were moments but no way to connect them, my own fear of writing and anger at myself ruined many attempts of writing and made me afraid. So afraid.
I finally had a conversation with enigma731 who at that time had little interest in the fandom, and was able to remain unbiased. It was illuminating, gave me insight on what I might say, and at the same time, accidentally started to pull her in.
But then something else happened - actually it had happened the weekend before, but I only started to recognize the impact when I couldn't seem to shake it.
I picked up this book at work while I was pulling paperbacks for clearance. I knew we'd seen it often enough, usually there were several hardcover copies in the horror section. I liked the colors and the trees on the cover. I decided to read it.
I generally don't like any kind of post-apocalyptic anything. And I don't like vampires. So to put it weirdly, this book about post-apocalyptic world populated by horrible vampires caused by a virus should have been the last thing I ever read. It's like "The Stand" meets "The Road" (and while I read the latter and saw the movie, those were both very difficult). I actually considered not reading it several times. But there was something about the writing, some hook in the words and the unfolding story that made me decide to not just read it every day at lunch, but to take it home.
And the night I took it home I read it for 6 hours straight. I didn't eat dinner. I went to be at 3 even though I had to be up early. The next day, as soon as I got home from work, I went back to reading it, and I read it until it was over.
This book wrecked me.
If I could have just broken down sobbing at the end of it, I think it would have helped, but I couldn't and I didn't and I didn't really know what to do until I exploded about it at jou when I picked her up from the airport the next night.
I didn't want to love this book with the virals and so many (The Many) characters, with the end of the world and all the sorrow and the pain and all the things we do for love itself. But that's unfortunately, in a way, what it's about. It's about love, and it's about family. It's about life and time and unbearable, unimaginable sorrow that you endure anyway. It's about, in the book's own words: “What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.” And that “We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.”
So after being thoroughly ruined by this book, I found out it's part of a trilogy. The second book, "The Twelve," is already out, but the next one won't be out for at least another year. And I thought, "considering my reaction to this book, I should probably take a break for a while."
But it's kept haunting me. I've had trouble reading anything else since I read it. I feel strange and relieved and heartsick every time I check its tag on tumblr; I "liked" the facebook page run by the author (who is funny and pretty attractive >.>); I read this quote over and over: “So perhaps the greatest worry of all was that one day you would realize that all the worries of your life amounted to one thing: the desire to just stop worrying.”
I finally gave in and picked it up the other day, and I found the parts in it that talk about "giving it up," which is, essentially, letting go.
It reminded me, in a sense, of what my uncle tried to get me to do in meditation, what lots of people say about sort of..."living in the moment." To give it up in the sense of "The Passage," as I understood, was to sort of release your fear, your mind, yourself. To some extent, it's also like "if you love something, set it free, etc."
The other day, I gave it up. I lay on the couch with the blinds open on a beautiful cold day, I held my copy of the book, and I shed a few tears, and I did my best to give it up.
I dumped out my feelings about the book on sink_or_swim but for the first time, it wasn't as heavy. I can be near the book now and feel not just a weird haunted reverence and fear and need.
I will be reading "The Twelve," sooner or later. In keeping with my endless quoting of this fucking book, "bring me one and then another. Bring them that we may live in this way and no other."
But today I was thinking about Hawkeye and Black Widow. I was thinking about how hard it's been for me to muster any creative impulses, how I feel as distant from the fandom as ever. I thought about how I had meant to write this story for so long but suddenly...I didn't really want to. I didn't really need to.
I gave it up.
"He felt no surprise or even regret but, rather, a deep and sudden gratitude, and with it a force of clarity, filling him like a breath of winter air. He wondered what this feeling was and then he knew. He was giving her up."
I know this all probably sounds strange or trite or like a weird interpretation of something that's supposed to be something else, but...maybe for a moment, I learned how to let go of something that haunted and tormented me. To let it be a thing that exists but not something I need to exist for. I released it. I hope it released me.
So I just wanted to say that. I don't care if anyone else ever reads this book. If you love it or hate it or have no interest. I just...used to write about things that did this to me, and I felt I owed it to the book and myself, and maybe to Clint and Natasha, to get this all out. To embrace (and weirdly cherish) this book (in spite of how it MESSED ME UP) I never meant to read and then be glad that my lights are still on and hope for a future better than the one it portrays. To forgive myself, just a little, for not always being as strong in the dark passages of my life. To work on making it through them. To take it all and move on.
Now I'm going to eat some pizza.