How Harry Potter Changed My LIfe
Harry Potter changed my life. This may not be a new deceleration to many of you. And in some ways I feel that those who meet me will say I don't really have right to day this since I don't write fan-fiction, make fan art, or participate in the various fan-events that others, who are more obsessed than I, do.
But Harry Potter still changed my life. It changed the way I thought about the world, I thought about myself, and the way others thought about me.
From the time I was 5 to the time I was 10, I was bullied. And it wasn't beat-me-up-behind-the-play-structure bullying. It was the no-one-in-class-will-talk-to-me-except-to-comment-on-my-lack-of-looks-intelligence-common-sense-and/or-value-as-a-human-being. The type of bullying people don't see. The type that slowly eats you away and makes you believe everything they say about you. The type that lasts.
I would spend most of my time alone on the swing set, trying to be my own friend.
And it was during this time I found Harry Potter. I was about 6 when I started it and didn't finish the 4 published books until I was 7, but I was hooked.
I really hated and pitied myself then, but in Harry Potter I found someone whose home life sucked way more than mine and it put my life in perspective. I could be thankful, for once.
And even more than that, Harry Potter's “crappier than mine” life was saved. He went from being hated, ignored, and abused to being loved by everyone; honored and remembered by those he'd never meet. To me, that was a miracle. I was 7, so the idea that, when I turned eleven, I'd be taken away from here to a place where I'd learn magic and have friends and have the ability to know something more than all those brats who demeaned me, was what I wished for more in than anything else in the entire world.
Harry Potter became my salvation. It was my true home and it was made my life seem like living.
Then 5th grade came and with it, my next boon from the HP world.
At my elementary school there was a girl who could get away with anything. She was the Margo Roth Spiegelman (read “Paper Towns” by John Green! Read it!) of the whole kid world. As the only 11 year old with real boobs, she had many a schoolboy pining after her. She was tall, out-going, and intelligent. She had many varying interests. She could play music by ear (she used to play "Bad Habit" by the Dresden Dolls on the piano), sing with incredible pitch (she wrote a popular song on YouTube in 7th grade), write in a unique and entertaining fashion (she wrote a fan-fic in 6th grade that got featured on the HPFF website), and was, invariably, the most popular girl in school.
She also happened to love Harry Potter.
When her best friend transferred to a different school, she decided to create a new group of friends and used HP as the glue to bind them together. In the group was a tall, confident girl who loved Hermione, the two new kids (one, a scrawny, energetic girl with glasses who impersonated James, and the other spastic blonde who was nicknamed [for no apparent reason] Narcissa), one nerdy, fiddly white boy with a speech impediment, an Indian guy with a penchant for art, and me.
My first group of friends. We lasted for a good two years and they where the best two years of my life. We wrote stories, made recording, made movies, did cosplay, fan-art... oh, it was bliss. It was through this group I discovered the nerd community and I embraced it with all my might and never let go.
These people taught me about friends and loyalty. They taught me how to tell when someone was using you and how to tell when they wanted to be friends. I learned how to survive and now I'm more grateful for my friends than anyone in the entire world.
As I said earlier, we only lasted two years and are friends no longer. The Margo-girl grew faster than the rest of us. She became enthralled with theater and is now getting leads in Rocky Horror, Sweeney Todd, Chicago, and Hello Dolly. She denies a lot of her old nerdiness and lost a lot of her appeal (somewhere along the way, I grew about a half a foot taller than her and now when I see her I see someone who grew to fast and looks to mature for her mind). She's still great and all, just different.
The tall, confident girl is shorter than me as well now and is also my best friend. She grew with me into otaku-ism and it helped us stick together so that we grew into a larger group of friends that had wider interests. Scrawny, glasses girl, is now elegant actress with an abundance of friendliness that I value as golden. Spastic blond is now a ballet and modern dancer, who still loves HP, but it is subdued and more of an indie concert goer. Mr. Impediment hasn't changed too much, except for the change in his circle of friends, which I’m slightly grateful excludes me. Indian guy I haven't seen in years. I think he moved to Minnesota.
Anyway, all these people loved something. They loved something so much they let it shape their childhood and form their bonds. Although we where only so close for 2 years we used to say "God, those where the longest two years of our lives" and really, they where because of HP and the people who love HP.
So yeah. I love HP. I'm nerdy girl who loved something, not only because of itself but because of the love that surrounds it. Nerds provide people with immediate acceptance and assure you that you are awesome just for loving something. So nerds, keep on lovin'!