Today's is a bookish non-bookish post. More of a real-life confession.
“In a book, all would have gone according to plan... but life was so fucking untidy.”
–Stephen King
This [Life] Chapter Sücks
I have not been as active as usual. It has been months since I posted something. All the stress of prepping for the Conference, while also managing my job, being a Master's student, and trying terribly at being social (because of #SocialAnxiety). All of this has taken a toll on my mental health. All of these things have made me exhaust myself to the point of having burnout.
Work and life have been a tangled knot of stress and anxiety, is a surprise I have not actually become crazy (or crazier than I already am).
I have cried more times this past couple of months than I admit. 2022 has been a rough year. We can all agree: Mars stood in retrograde the entire year!
I had tried again and again to hide it. The fact that I am not ok. Hide how I am deeply struggling. Smile when the only thing I wanted was an ugly cry. Where I had put on a mask and pretended I was a happy girl. Laughing, finding beauty in life. Listening and trying to help my friends because that is who I am: a helper. A people pleaser. But not to me. Never to please me.
I have pretended for so long that I am fine. That life is ok. Keep texting and talking like everything is fine. When in reality, I am far from it.
And some part of me is ashamed to say: I am not ok. To make it public. To be vulnerable to the eye of others.
Yet, at the same time, it has been a year with HUGE improvements in specific aspects of my life: especially in the social one.
Books and this community (YOU) have made me realize I am not alone. That everyone is a bit clueless in this life. Everybody is in a different chapter (or book) of their lives, but we are in this endless library together.
Life is Not a Book, is it?
And it is exactly characters like Nesta and Aelin that made me realize "I want to live. Not survive; not exist. Live" life to the fullest. To cry from laughter in public (my introverted side is saying a big NO to this one haha). We see these characters as strong, fierce, and unstoppable. We tend to forget that they were broken once upon a time too. They did not see the light at the end of the tunnel at the beginning.
Life is not a book, in the way that I do not have my enemies to lovers story. I have not found my soulmate, my heartmate, or my soulthread. Neither have I slain a dragon or gone to the end of the world to close the gates of a demon realm. My battles consist of not being an emotional ball of anxiety every other day. My life genre is definitely not romance haha. But there are SO many genres. Life is a mix of genres. And that is how life is: with a little bit of *spice*.
And like Nesta, I am learning. Learning to share my feelings, to open up, and let [some of] my guard down. To share with you some of my dark parts, deepest fears, and most importantly, who I really am. I have discovered my found family here on Bookstagram (this sounds super cheesy and tropey). To keep climbing. To keep reaching out my hand to whatever end and the darkness claim us.
You have become the highlight of my day, the reason to keep reaching out my hand. To laugh (at an inside book joke), to feel seen. To feel like being part of a community. You (you know who you are) are my Lysandra/Fenrys to my Aelin. My Valkyries to my Nesta. My Kenji to my Juliette. My Lina to my Rosie. You get the point.
Authors are the ones who decide and choose the paths for their characters. Somehow, I feel like that is not my role like I am just floating and following a path that has already been set.
Maybe I am not the author of my story, but me, myself, and I decide what chapters define me. I edit my persona into who I want to become. Because we can see the years we live by as chapters, some are better than others. I am light years away from the person I want to be. From the life I want (and honestly? The one I deserve). But I will edit it how I want. I am not gonna lie: it will be challenging. But if I am sure of something: we will find ourselves in these chapters of life with the best characters that an author could have given us.
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