Pages redux

The management would like you to know that the problems with this post have been fixed thanks to the author reading another blog and figuring out what the hell she was trying to say. We thank you for your patience while we tended to the overthinking brain behind the blog. Now without further ado, Pages:

I love books. A lot. More than I really have any right to. Heaven knows they've given me more than I've given them over the years, but we'll get to that later.

Why do I love books? Because in books I'm not me. In books I'm some random NPC along for the ride. I can interact with the characters to an extent, but they lead the story, and I'm all too happy to trail along behind enjoying the splendor of their world while ignoring the fact that my real life exists. I get lost in pages and ink and adventure and just for a while I don't have to be the half cracked 21 year old whose future is foggy at best and who runs from just about everything because facing it is just too hard.

The me outside of books is terrified of adventure and battle and hardship. She has had it easy just about her whole life, and she flat out refuses to face the parts of her life that haven't been luxury and ease. She glues those pages together and pretends they don't exist even when the glue starts to crack and people get hurt because she has the emotional capacities of a nine year old.
She debates for hours whether or not she wants to post a blog that at best ten people read about those stuck together pages because then she might have to open them up to someone else.

The me in books is much cooler.
The me in books takes things head on as they come. She speaks her mind even when it's hard and doesn't get all choked up and sappy and lose her voice in the pain of speaking her piece. She stands tall, faces things head on, and isn't so terrified by actual relationships that she hides in fictional worlds just to avoid real intimacy or emotional contact. Even when her life sucks she owns it and deals and makes the best of things. She's pretty much who I aspire to be.

So I write about her, and she's awesome. Sometimes she a side character, sometimes she's in the thick of it struggling as the protagonist, but she's always there, living out my life in a way I'm incapable of living.

Recently I watched a documentary called Darkon about a group of people who find their identity by LARPing in a conquer the world Risk sort of game. As I listened to the interviews in which almost all the interviewees said they found themselves more confident and at home in their character rather than their actual identity I wondered why they didn't just combine the two. Why did their character have to be so different from themselves when they obviously have the capacity to be both people?

But I guess I already have the answer, because I live it everyday.