The Remains of a Poet

So finals? Actually going a lot better than I would expect, all things considered. I mean, I already have two out of four papers written, which for me is pretty amazing. All credit, of course, is due to my amazing and awesome roommate, who dragged me to Starbucks and wouldn't stop giving me disappointed looks until I cracked and actually started doing homework. What did I ever do without her, seriously?

Of course, I also spent an hour today that I was supposed to be working on a paper writing fanfic. Because of course I can never be inspired when I have plenty of leisure time, but only during the most stressful times of the school year, like midterms and finals. I really like what I wrote, though, only it's from Ron's POV, and I've never written him before (I generally stay from Trio fics in general because there's so much canon stuff), and I'm worried I've made him too introspective. But it is set a good few years after he's had kids, so I figure it's not that much of a stretch. At least, I hope so. And come 12:30 Thursday, I will be FREE for three whole weeks, and I'll be able to fine tune it and stuff. So now I just need to survive until then.

Argh, I am so fucking frustrated right now!

See, I have to write this research paper on Jane Eyre. Which is fine, whatever, because there are actually a ton of resources on Jane Eyre, except none of them are about what I want to write about and I don't actually agree with any of them. Because I really don't care what a bunch of academics say, Jane Eyre isn't a feminist novel, it's a stupid story about stupid people being stupid about the stupid problems they have because they're stupid! That's how I feel, and no number of articles arguing otherwise is going to change my mind.

Okay, so Jane refuses to be Rochester's mistress. Bully for her. You know, he's only tried to trick her into bigamy because, to paraphrase, "I knew if I told you the truth, you wouldn't marry me, and I wanted to marry you because I love you so much, so I didn't tell you the truth, but now that it's come out accidentally, even though I tried to trick you into doing something I knew you wouldn't want to do, will you be my mistress anyway?" And then when she refuses, he physically assaults her. Yeah, I can't imagine why she runs away from him after that. </ sarcasm>

Having said that, when she does run away, she does it in the most idiotic way possible. Yeah, I get that she doesn't have time to contact her uncle or gather money or whatever, but at least take your jewelry to hock along the way. My god, woman, do you have any idea how to be fugitive? What the hell is your plan?

And then - and then - she finds these long lost cousins (and let's not even get into how convenient that is) and her guy cousin is a total controlling asshole, and she lets him control her. "Oh, I want to learn German but you want me to learn Hindustani even though that will be of absolutely no use to me in the life I've planned for myself? Guess I'll learn Hindustani then." Wow, what a strong, independent woman! </ sarcasm> And the only reason she doesn't give in to said asshole cousin's demand that she marry him and become a missionary with him (and in the proposal he not only insults her in every possible manner but attempts to emotionally blackmail her by telling her she'll be damned to hell if she doesn't do what he says)? Because she hears the voice of Rochester! That's right, she doesn't give in to one manipulative bastard because the hold of another is stronger! Hurrah for women being able to think for themselves! (And that's not even talking about how afterward she hopes her bastard cousin will forgive her, even though she has nothing to be forgiven for and he should be the one begging her for forgiveness!)

And then she goes back to Rochester and immediately starts back into referring to him, even in her head, as her "master", which is way creepy, and he's all, "Why did you run away? I know I said I would break you in half if you didn't comply with my demands, but I only said it because I'm so in love with you! Of course I would never hurt you (even though I totally did)! I was so worried about you! Why didn't you just trust me?!?!" Oh gee, I can't imagine! Maybe because you tried to trick her into bigamy? I mean, just possibly. Also, great, so in real life, Rochester is totally the guy who beats his wife and then cries about it and blames it on her. Awesome. Yeah, this one epic love story right here! </ sarcasm>

And you know what? I get it. I get that it's fiction, which means when Rochester says he's reformed, he probably has. But in real life, that doesn't happen. In real life, Rochester is so very much the guy you don't want to date. I can make that distinction, but a lot of people can't, and it disturbs me. It's what disturbs me about Twilight and The Notebook and a lot of other "Epic Love Stories" that in real life would be very bad news. And it's why I have a problem with Jane Eyre being held up as this paragon of feminism when in real life we'd probably be trying to get her into counseling for Battered Wife Syndrome ASAP.

But the most frustrating part is that I can't write any of that for my research paper because I can't find any research that fucking agrees with me! Because everyone thinks Jane Eyre is this amazing feminist declaration. And you know what? It isn't!

I've figured out why I hate Jane Eyre. Or rather, I've figured out why I hate Jane Eyre so much more than my classmates. In fact, I think I've figured out why people think I hate men.

See here's the issue:

I've never liked Cinderella. I mean, I've NEVER liked Cinderella. As in, even as a four-year-old kid I hated it. I hated it because I didn't understand it. I didn't understand why Cinderella was such a doormat. I didn't understand why she let her stepmother enslave her. The only version of the Cinderella story I genuinely like is Ella Enchanted (the book, not the film, obviously) because that actually makes sense.

This is my problem. This has always been my problem. I don't understand how slavery works. As in, I learned about the events leading up to the Civil War back in fifth grade, and I didn't understand why, if there were so many more slaves than plantation owners, the slaves didn't just burn down the owner's house or something.

The same goes for Stockholm and Battered Wife Syndromes. I mean, I'm educated, okay? Intellectually, I understand the psychology behind all of those things. But I still don't get it. I don't think I'll ever get it.

Guilt trips, emotional blackmail, reverse psychology, peer pressure -- they all don't work on me. Not really. It's like, whatever part of the brain it is that causes people to act and react in these twisted ways is disconnected in me. It doesn't work. I just don't get it.

It's like when I was a kid and my parents split up and people would say to me, "You know it's not your fault, right?" And I'd be like, "Duh! Why would it be? I wasn't married to them." And I always felt like kids who did think their parents' divorce was their fault were stupid.

And that's the problem with Jane Eyre. I think she's stupid. The End. Yes, she's starved for love, and yes, Rochester is the first man she's really ever met (who counts, I mean), and yes, she's constricted by her time and class and whatever, I don't care, she's still a MORON! Intellectually, yes, I know why she does the things she does. But I still don't get it. It makes no sense to me.

I cannot comprehend letting someone treat you that way. I cannot comprehend allowing someone to make you feel that way. I literally cannot comprehend it. I just can't wrap my mind around it all. It doesn't make sense to me.

And to people who think this is some backlash from my dad or whatever: Guess what? It's not. Because I've always hated Cinderella. It has nothing to do with being angry or hating men or anything like that. It's just that a part of my brain doesn't work (or a part of my brain actually does?).

And you know what? I'm perfectly okay with that.

We had my step-dad’s nephew, wife, and kids over today, and it was so strange because even though the task of entertaining the kids fell to me after dinner, really, I was one of the adults. I was part of the adult conversation, I understood the adult conversation, and afterward the girl was telling me all about the trials that come with being in fourth grade and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was all so simplistic, so idealistic, so entirely naïve and wrong about the way the world works: wanting to get out of school as soon as possible, and thinking growing up will solve all your problems, and being most worried about having to pay taxes of all things! And I just listened to her, and thought wasn’t that me just yesterday?, and how did this happen?

But the strangest thing was that even as I looked at her and thought, You have no idea how good you have it: enjoy it, enjoy it, enjoy it! I knew that I wouldn’t really go back to that age if I could. There is beauty in the innocence of childhood, but I’m beginning to recognize that there is also beauty in the … awareness that comes with being an adult. Understanding now what I couldn’t understand then, finally appreciating the things they told me: don’t grow up too fast, don’t crave the responsibility, live in the moment, enjoy it while it lasts. There is a beauty in wanting to go back that you could never experience if you’d stayed.

I liked being seventeen. I sort of understood all this, a little, enough, enough to feel the ache of loss that is so terrible and so beautiful, and yet the remnants of childhood still clung to me, barely, just barely, gifting me with flashes of innocent hope, letting me believe for just a little longer that things would be all right in the end.

I wonder when you stop trying to hurl yourself forward and start wanting to go back. I wonder if you grow up the day you stop wanting to grow up. Maybe Peter Pan is the most grown up of us all. He knows that one thing other children don’t, even if he doesn’t fully understand it: to grow up is the least desirable thing of all.

Only it’s not, really. The pain of childhood is simple, straightforward: it hurts, and that’s all it does, and that’s all you understand. The pain of adulthood is a complicated, twisted, terrible, beautiful ache: it’s the good kind of pain, the best kind, shattering you and piecing you back together again, and even when it hurts you know, on some fundamental level, that it’s what you need.

There’s a reason adults cry during movies, a reason kids can never understand. We cry because we must. We cry because we know now what we didn’t know, what they don’t know, what they one day will know. We cry because sometimes beauty is so painful and pain so beautiful.

I cry because my life is one twisted, awful, beautiful, terrible, gorgeous, horrific, magnificent, fucked up mess, and when my heart is torn open and my soul laid bare, I know I wouldn’t really change a thing.

So the a week ago Thursday, my mom mentioned that the next thing she wanted to "do" to the house was get some ceiling fans for the bedrooms, specifically mine, which is the hottest room in the entire house (and yes, I've been kicking myself for that ever since we moved here). But whatever, the point is that the way she said it implied that it might not happen for a while, possibly not until next year, and she was just mentioning it in passing.

By Saturday morning, however, this passing whim has somehow transformed into us needing ceiling fans RIGHT NOW, and so she dragged my sister and me to Home Depot to buy some ceiling fans. This is when we discovered that Home Depot charges a $100 per fan installation fee, and my mom was like, "Screw that, we can totally put them in ourselves!" I pointed out that when my dad installed a ceiling fan in my parents' room back when I was a kid, it took him like, two days and a lot of fake swearing, which didn't seem to bode well for us. My mom explained that this was because my dad had also had to install the wiring in their room, but our rooms already have wiring, so it would be SO MUCH EASIER and we could TOTALLY DO IT. Which I knew was a total lie, but I also knew that my mom was never going to fork over $300 dollars to have some professional do something that she was convinced she could do herself. Plus, I like to think of this as proof that she hasn't turned into a totally useless housewife quite yet, and that's cool. (It could also just be proof that she's getting just as tightfisted and stupidly stubborn about money as my grandpa, but the other one is more positive, so we're going with it.)

Anyway, it was supposed to be cooler on Wednesday, and since you have to turn of the electricity to install these sorts of things and that means no AC, we decided to install them Wednesday morning, starting with my sister's room/the TV room, which is the smallest and second-hottest room in the house, so we figured it would be the best one to test with. Admittedly, it did not take two days to install the first fan, but it still took four and a half hours, a panic attack (from me, I don't like heights, especially ladders, OKAY?), and wiring complications (because who needs men when you have women to not read directions and fuck things up?) that could totally have been avoided if people had just listened to me. Then my mom had to go to work, and we decided that doing all the fans in one day had been overly optimistic, and we'd do the other two later in the week. We were proud of ourselves, and all was well, though personally I still think we could all have been saved some physical and mental distress if we'd just payed the hundred bucks to have someone do it for us, but what do I know? (I also had to spend that whole evening getting advice from my mom and step-dad about all the different careers I could have with my "mechanically-inclined mind" because apparently being able to read directions in an instruction manual {that is totally written for morons because those are the only people who would think to install these things themselves} makes you totally qualified to fly fighter planes or whatever. Look, I don't even know.)

Owing to everyone's schedules, we didn't get around to installing the other fans until this morning. My mom was at work, so my sisters and I (really just my sisters, because after spending most of Wednesday afternoon shaking, I have concluded that it's better for everyone {read: me} if I never get on a ladder again) set to work installing the fan in my room. Aside from some issues with a screw, it went way more smoothly and quickly than the first one, and we were all congratulating each other proudly when we turned the electricity back on.

Which is when we discovered that the fan DIDN'T WORK. Which, you know, totally would happen to me.

Several hours and phone calls later, my mom and sister have tried everything they can think of (including "soldering" something or something? I don't know, me and my mechanical mind have no idea what was going on up there), and I'm sitting in my sauna of a bedroom that not only doesn't have a working ceiling fan but now also doesn't have a working light. Because, you know, we tore it out. To install the ceiling fan. Which doesn't work. Which totally would happen to me.

To top it off, my mom and sisters installed the third fan in like, half an hour, and it's happily twirling away.

I hate my life.

Sometimes I wonder if maybe I’m so insistent that being single doesn’t mean you’re less of a person because I subconsciously know I’ll probably end up single, and it’s easier to convince others – to convince myself – that that’s okay now. I hate myself for thinking that, but … I don’t know. To be known so completely by someone else. It’s not what marriage means, but it is what a relationship means, or should mean, or was meant to mean. I want that more than I want marriage and everything that entails, I think. To be known; to be validated. To not have to hide any part of myself, to not have to pretend. And that’s not what happens in a relationship, really. Relationships are compromise.

Well, I’m tired of compromising. I’m so, so tired. Tired of giving up little pieces of my soul every time I’m not alone. Tired of being stubborn, of waiting for the world to give me what I deserve, of thinking the world owes me something, when it doesn’t, really, nothing that I didn’t give it willingly, anyway, because I was four and stupid and thought that’s what it wanted. It’s funny, that, a decision you made at four haunting you into your twenties, practically (probably). It’s funny too, you get into college and people start telling you that “the decisions you make now will affect the rest of your life”, and I can’t help wondering why people weren’t telling me that at four, that the person I chose to be in public at four would be the person I had to be in public for the rest of my childhood, for the rest of my life, probably. Set down the neurological pathways, or whatever they call it. The cycle’s gone on too long, runs too deep, can’t be changed. Some habits are impossible to break, and if you choose to be who you think people want you to be when you’re four, you’ll always have to change for people; or, alternatively, the backlash will come, and you’ll be in your teens and hate people, hate them for doing this to you, for making you think at four, when you didn’t (couldn’t) know any better, that being yourself around people wasn’t okay, that it never would be. They don’t tell you to be yourself at four, not until you’re older and it’s too late, and they don’t mean it then, anyway, not really. They mean don’t be stupid, don’t be who the bad kids say “yourself” is. And you don’t know who “yourself” is anymore anyway, because you lost that at four when you changed.

And just … where did I learn that? Where did I learn that being myself wasn’t okay? How did I know, at four, that people will always want you to be someone you’re not? Tuck away your real thoughts and feelings in a corner of your brain, only visit it when you’re alone, live in your head and talk to those imaginary people in the bathroom because that’s one of the only places you’re alone and thus safe. It makes me wonder, really, how many people are just wearing personas, how different the people you interact with are from the people they are in their heads. You can touch a heart, fine, it’s just an organ, albeit an important one. But to hold someone’s brain.… That’s where they live, that’s where the true person is, and the heart swells and breaks in a firing of neurons, if you really get down to it. Hold someone’s brain? You might as well hold their soul.

My grandma had surgery and suffered some minor brain damage, lost a bunch of inhibitors, and it’s like she had this complete personality transplant. But sometimes she says something and I just sort of think … I can’t help but wonder if that’s who she actually is, you know? If maybe she’s become the person she kept tucked away in her head for seventy-five years. Like, there is the person everyone knows as me, and then there is actually me, the me I keep in my head, the me I know. And I can’t help but wonder if I suffered the same brain damage as my grandma, if I would become a completely different person, or if people would think I’d become a completely different person but I would actually become myself. Like maybe the person I present to the world would actually be the person I am inside, if that makes any sense at all.

Now I’m just rambling, and this went in a completely different direction than I intended it to go, so I’ll just wrap it up for now.

So I randomly decided to go see Twilight with a bunch of my friends at 10:00 last night.  I am exhausted now, but it was so worth it!  Most of the people I went with love the book, but Amy wasn't there so I was able to be honest about how much I hate the books, so it was all okay.  The only other lolfan was my roommate, who only knows what I've told her about the books, and thus thinks they're ridiculous.  I sat next to her and we snarked through most of it (it was a virtually empty theatre, so we weren't disturbing anyone [except during the scene in Bella's bedroom A FEW DAYS AFTER THEY'VE FINALLY STARTED TALKING TO EACH OTHER, when Edward casually tells her that he's been sneaking into her room for TWO MONTHS ... at which point I gave a small scream, and my Twihard friend I was sitting next to snapped at me, but I didn't care because HE WAS SNEAKING INTO HER ROOM AND LURKING IN THE CORNER FOR TWO MONTHS, TWO MONTHS OH MY GOD!]).  It was fun.

All my Twihard friends were disappointed, but ... the film was EVERYTHING I hoped for!  RPATTZ, I LOVE YOU!  BE MORE AWESOME!

Seriously, afterward everyone went on and on about how he wasn't pretty enough or charming enough or romantic enough or [adjective] enough, but ... Robert Pattinson is MY Edward!  He played the creepy, semi-psychopathic, bipolar, socially awkward thing PERFECTLY!  Seriously, "Spunk", be my best friend!  We will snark at the Twihards and harass Rupert as he struggles through the books, and you can tell me all about how you got pissed one night after being stalked by fangirls all day and leaked Midnight Sun (this is my pet theory), and IT WILL BE AWESOME!

Also, I don't know if Kristen Stewart is just a bad actress, or if she got what RPattz got out of the book and actually meant to play Bella as sort of blah and void of personality, but either way, she is MY Bella, except about 500% less angsty and bitchy and annoying, and I love her for that!  Oh Kristen!  Oh Robert!  You are both so lovely!  Don't EVER change!

I seriously love this film, guys.  I mean, as a film it's quite poor.  (The cuts are so abrupt and painful!  The special effects are sloppy!  The soundtrack is so over the top it's hilarious!)  But it is exactly what I wanted from film!Twilight, and I fully intend to go back for more!

So I was reading xlormp, and all the people on Team Christopher (and I am included on that team; Christopher actually makes me question my sexuality) got me thinking about all the Jacob/Bella shippers, and how stupid they are because if Bella hadn’t ended up with Edward, that would have rendered the entire first book completely pointless. I mean, even more pointless, since it was pretty much pointless anyway. But as far as I could tell, if it did have a point, it was basically, “OMG, EDWARD/BELLA 4EVER!!!!!111!!!!” So if, after all that, Bella ended up with Jacob, that would be stupid.

But then I started thinking about it more, and actually, I kind of wish Bella had ended up with … well, not necessarily Jacob (who is pretty awesome in New Moon, but then goes all Edward “I-will-get-myself-killed-because-my-life-is-meaningless-without-Bella’s-love-even-though-she-is-a-whiney-angsty-bitch-and-I-could-do-so-much-better” Cullen in Eclipse, which is way creepy, and also like Edward, he may or may not watch Bella while she sleeps. Also, domestic violence FTW [though that’s also one of Edward’s many negatives, so it doesn’t actually stop Jacob from being a better {though still bad} choice]), but someone other than Edward. Because even though from a narrative point of view, that would make the entire first book pointless, from a reality point of view … that’s life. I mean, how many people actually end up with the person they were in love with at seventeen? How many people’s “first love” ends up being “the love of their life”? How many people marry their high school sweetheart? And how many of those actually work out? So actually, I think it would kind of be brilliant if Bella didn’t end up with Edward.

But of course, that would never ever happen because reality does not exist in Stephenie Meyer’s world, clearly. And I mean realistic characters with realistic emotions. Obviously I expect vampires, and werewolves (exploding werewolves, lol!), and whatever. My favorite genre is fantasy, people. I get all that. But what makes good fantasy is an element of reality – the believability of it, if you will – and Twilight doesn’t have that. Twilight really doesn’t have anything – plot, realistic characters, good technical writing style, good examples of healthy relationships – except some unexplainable addicting quality I really can’t explain. I mean, I know this series is horrible, and I still kept having to slap myself to keep from getting sucked in to New Moon. Why is this, people??? Can someone explain it to me? Please?

On a related note, I’m super excited to go see the film with Amy soon. I could use some amusement in my life right now.