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I hate it when my husband tells me “It’s just a story” or
“it’s just a movie” or “it’s just a show, it isn’t real” or he asks me “Why do
you care so much? It’s not real?”
I can’t
help it. It makes me flame. I’ve lost count of the number of times his off-handed
aforementioned comments have left me more pissed off than I should have been
(I’ll admit that much), stomping my way down the hall and into my office, where
I once again take solace in my books, my music, my movies, my computer.
Such is
life for way too overly imaginative, creatively minded me.
Oh yeah,
did I forget to mention the fact that I’m a writer?
Oh shit.
Probably should have mentioned that earlier.
I tried to
explain it to him tonight.
That as a
writer, over 95% of what whirls around like a maelstrom in my brain every
minute of every hour of every day (when it isn’t song lyrics), is those
characters that “aren’t real” to most people. And plot lines, random name and
story ideas, movies I loved, books I loved, random things that inspire me along
the way.
I’m a
writer. If not for things that “didn’t exist”, my brain would be almost
entirely silent almost all of every day.
But it
isn’t, as those of you out there who are fellow writers, fellow movie buffs,
fellow fanboys and fangirls and music buffs—fellow imaginative and
creatively-minded people will attest.
Life is
what you make it. And what the hell kind of life can we ever hope to live
without passion in it, without love—love of life, love of loved ones, love of
what we do, love of the things we find joy in—the things that we’re passionate
about, the things that drive and inspire and move us—to do, to partake in, to
create for ourselves?
I’m a
writer, and a lifelong self-admitting bibliophile. I’ve been in love with the
written, spoken, and sung word for my entire life. Since I was four, I can’t
remember a time I wasn’t madly in love with a book—with the worlds that lie in
wait between the covers, in the movies, on the TV screen, and more often than
I’m comfortable admitting, in my head, in the worlds that exist there, and the
characters that live and breathe within each and every one of them.
I have been
writing stories, poetry, and songs of my own since I was 8 years old, which
means that I have of my own free will, sat down to homework of my own assigning
each and every night (most nights for 8-12 hours at a sitting without
blinking), spinning out tales and creating characters and dialogue and
situations and creating worlds that “aren’t real.”
When it
comes to the work of others—books, poetry, songs, movies, TV shows—I’ve always
paid more attention than most of the people I know in my day to day life.
I don’t
know why.
Is it
because I’m a bibliophile? Is it because I’m a writer? Because I understand how
much work and thought and effort and time they pour into their work, as I
always have?
Maybe it’s just because I’m overly imaginative,
or my empathetic nature?
I’ve always
had this uncanny way of being able to feel the feelings of others very deeply,
the same as I’ve always felt things in general very deeply—when I love, when I
hate, when I despair, when I rage, when I yearn, or desire, or despise, or
loathe, I do so with every single fiber of my being. Down into the depths of my
deepest heart and soul.
I always
felt that it was my empathetic and strongly passionate and feeling nature that
helped me dive into my work as hard and deeply as I do—that it added to the
realism and the depth of my work—that it made it easier for me to convey the
feelings of what I was trying to put across to possible readers, and what my
characters felt.
After all,
what good is a story, if you can’t move others to feel? If you can’t touch them
through your work? If you can’t share stories with them that haunt them, or
inspire them, hurt them, or heal them?
What good
is a story, a movie, a book, a song, a poem, a painting, a portrait, a work of
art at ALL, if it doesn’t affect those who see/hear/feel/taste/touch it?
This is why
it pisses me off when he tells me it’s “Just a show”… it’s “Just characters,
they’re not real.”
No shit,
Sherlock. (no offense to Sherlock in any of his incarnations, be they movie,
book, TV show (hell yes I’m a fan. Bring it on BBC. And hell no, I still haven’t
forgiven you for the end of Merlin. That one seriously hurt.)
I know
they’re figments of someone’s imagination.
But you
know what? Those figments are put forth into the world meant to inspire…
…to teach.
…to touch
…to move.
…to hurt.
To heal.
To convey human emotion, in all its
sometimes painful, generally messy, sometimes ugly, sometimes beautiful,
passionate, and sometimes horrendous glory.
It was created by emotion-feeling
people, for emotion-feeling people.
It was one person’s way of opening
their heart and soul, laying it bare before our feet and saying “Here, come
crawl into my brain and give me a moment of your time, and I share with you the
endless galaxies that exist within my innermost heart and soul.”
But
don’t ask my husband.
After
all.
“It’s
only a TV show.”
