pretty sure it was a punishment, but you turn me sweet from sour

[erika]

Oh yes, ignore the hyphens, please. My keyboard is acting up. (Over the weekend it pretended to be fixed to lull me into complacency-, but now it's fucked up again so I have ordered a new one.)

(1:29:20 AM) Nate: and you, then?
(1:30:02 AM) Nate: what do you get up to most nights?

(1:31:23 AM) Erika: the same thing i do every night, pinky
(1:31:33 AM) Erika: (come on, you handed me that)

(1:31:58 AM) Nate: try to take over the world, eh?

(1:32:08 AM) Erika: something like that, yes
(1:32:23 AM) Erika: i was thinking more along the lines of my best plots foiled, my doom unwittingly caused by my own flaws, but yes

(1:32:49 AM) Nate: heh, what are you plotting then?
(1:32:56 AM) Nate: world domination?

(1:34:45 AM) Erika: that would probably be simpler
(1:34:57 AM) Erika: ... no, hun, i'm not plotting world domination
(1:35:04 AM) Erika: what's the one thing i have never had and can probably never have?
(1:35:29 AM) Erika: i'll make it easy on you...
(1:36:03 AM) Erika: what's the first desire that a genius, a person recovering from 15 years of abuse, and a person with depression would all have in common?

(1:36:50 AM) Nate: probably an equal companion. either that or some stress free time off. :p
(1:38:02 AM) Nate: but maybe i'm way off base
(1:38:11 AM) Nate: wouldn't be the first time

(1:38:38 AM) Erika: you are, but then you are none of the things i mentioned
(1:38:40 AM) Erika: no offense
(1:38:51 AM) Erika: you are pretty smart, but there are very few people as smart as i am
(1:39:03 AM) Erika: and yes, i am proud of my intelligence
(1:39:13 AM) Erika: probably overly so, but it's the only thing i believe i have to be proud of

(1:39:26 AM) Nate: heh, fair enough, then

(1:39:32 AM) Erika: you're not seeing my point yet, so let me tell you a story
(1:40:23 AM) Erika: when i was 12, i went to venezuela and no one there spoke english, no one that i could actually talk to-- of the two people who were fluent, my aunt worked all the time... and my grandfather was deaf
(1:40:33 AM) Erika: it was supremely ironic, but i didn't appreciate it
(1:41:21 AM) Erika: i was incredibly bored, and luckily for me, my mother had been there on a visit 20 years previously
(1:41:33 AM) Erika: she had left behind two books... well, and the bible, but ugh
(1:41:40 AM) Erika: i had to save the bible for being bored in church
(1:41:54 AM) Erika: remind me to tell you about my love for Song of Solomon sometime, it's the closest thing to porn the bible has
(1:41:56 AM) Erika: anywa-
(1:42:16 AM) Erika: the first book was a random trashy novel, of which i have forgotten the title and the plot
(1:42:26 AM) Erika: the second book was Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

(1:42:45 AM) Nate: mhm

(1:42:52 AM) Erika: i'd tried to read it a few years before, but discovered that the language was di-fficult and confusing to me, so i'd never really gotten past the first few pages
(1:43:00 AM) Erika: i ignored Pride and Prejudice probably for a week
(1:43:43 AM) Erika: and then finally, driven to distraction by the lack of anything to do, including my inability to- communicate fluently with anyone, i decided that a novel written in a sty-le that i was unfamiliar with was just fine because thank you, baby- jesus, it was in ENGLISH

(1:43:53 AM) Nate: heh

(1:44:26 AM) Erika: and after i got into the ... swing of it, i guess, i realized i loved that book
(1:45:07 AM) Erika: i realized i was able to- adapt to the strange speech patterns much better than i'd thought, and at the same time i was also becoming very rapidly much more fluent in spanish
(1:45:33 AM) Erika: if my parents had had any money beyond sustenance, i would've gone back many times, maybe travelled the world
(1:45:40 AM) Erika: i would've loved that, but we didn't, so i read
(1:46:08 AM) Erika: i read a lot-- from austen i branched out into shakespeare and hemingway and basically every Great Writer you can think of
(1:46:39 AM) Erika: and then in AP english i discovered greek mythology and i was ... stunned
(1:46:47 AM) Erika: here, at last, were the roots of the stories i had read
(1:47:05 AM) Erika: betrayal, heartbreak, impossible odds, all there
(1:48:10 AM) Erika: granted, i know that the greeks are not the irreplaceable cultural & scientific touchstone that many in the english speaking world seem to believe, any story you hear of ancient china proves that they were just as deep thinkers as the greeks
(1:48:33 AM) Erika: but here at last were the roots of all the stories i so identified with
(1:49:02 AM) Erika: every hero has a tragic flaw, the greeks told me, every genius has madness, every god has appetites too large to- contain or curtail or sustain

(1:49:14 AM) Nate: mhm

(1:49:45 AM) Erika: and i was very, very sad when i realized this
(1:49:55 AM) Erika: every person is the protagonist of their own story, i knew that, i've always known that
(1:51:10 AM) Erika: but what the roots of all of the stories i have ever read-- what the myths showed me was that the deepest desire of any teenager, echoed in my own desperate wish, fueled by things that most people are lucky enough to avoid... was impossible
(1:51:17 AM) Erika: the deepest desire of any teenager
(1:51:28 AM) Erika: what did you want when you were 14 and awkward?
(1:51:45 AM) Erika: what did your friends want

(1:52:15 AM) Nate: pretty sure everyone just wants to not be awkward at 14

(1:52:17 AM) Erika: what did the annoying geeks in your classes want, what did the irritating jocks want, what did the disgustingly peppy band assholes want, what did the irritatingly obtuse theatre geeks want

(1:52:18 AM) Erika: right
(1:52:23 AM) Erika: they want to fit in
(1:52:36 AM) Erika: all i ever wanted was to be normal, darling
(1:53:02 AM) Erika: in my experience, that is the one thing that may be most impossible for me to ever obtain
(1:53:41 AM) Erika: so there you go
(1:53:47 AM) Erika: that's what i do every night and day- of my life
(1:53:57 AM) Erika: i try to figure out some way- to be better, to be happier, to be more content, to be normal
(1:54:40 AM) Erika: and, much like sisyphus, i accept that every action i take brings me further away- from my goal

(1:55:03 AM) Nate: hm

(1:55:07 AM) Erika: also, in the last few years, i've read a lot of fanfiction
(1:55:13 AM) Erika: i like happy- endings
(1:55:17 AM) Erika: they're so unrealistic
(1:55:31 AM) Erika: also novels, movies, etc

(1:55:39 AM) Nate: heh, true

(1:55:46 AM) Erika: fiction, i suppose, in its broadest sense
(1:56:06 AM) Erika: as long as it has a happy ending, i care very little about the genre or the theme
(1:56:22 AM) Erika: that's pretty much why i avoid foreign films
(1:56:27 AM) Erika: most of them are far too realistic

(1:57:15 AM) Nate: why watch fiction that's too close to reality, i suppose?

(1:57:51 AM) Erika: well, it certainly doesn't help with stress relief
(1:58:15 AM) Erika: i have long since accepted that if i am a hero, i am a tragic one
(1:58:28 AM) Erika: and it seems as the protagonist, i must be some sort of hero
(1:58:51 AM) Erika: i would appreciate it if someone would tell me the moral of this story, though, as it seems to have escaped me thus far
(1:59:04 AM) Erika: but of course the protagonist can't catch on until the last act, or nearly
(2:01:18 AM) Erika: so i accept it, i guess
(2:01:22 AM) Erika: can't really do anything differently
(2:01:28 AM) Erika: would ruin the story, for one thing :P

Comments

[viridian]

I'm pretty sure there is no normal.

And if there is, it's incredibly boring.

I mean, I sympathize, but I look around at people that I've declared "normal" and think, my God, do I really want to be stupid?

[erika]

Yeah... I've been thinking about it.

I should write more often. I'm just so tired all the time.

[enemyofperfect]

Maybe I'm being overly pedantic, but why do you say that happy endings are unrealistic? I mean, as written, a lot of them probably are, yeah. I would guess it's for the same reason that the protagonist can't figure it all out until the story's nearly over: it's more interesting to save the epiphany until the end, and it's more dramatic to take things from very bad to very good very quickly, even though in real life, changes for the better are often gradual and ongoing. Happy endings in general, though?

[erika]

Books are generally written so that you sympathize with the protagonist.

I can't imagine getting a happy ending, so anyone I sympathize with suffers a similar decline in my imagination.

[enemyofperfect]

Ah. That.

Yeah, I hate that.