snowflake challenge - 1/3
Jan. 3rd, 2019 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
casualbirdIn your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.
Long, weepy Hitchhiker's Guide nonsense under the cut.
I read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series all the way through when I was about fourteen. I couldn't put the thing down--I would be so conflicted between wanting to take a walk and needing to read more that I would just... wander around, my face still sewn to the inside of the book, hoping absently that I didn't run into anything and knowing that I wouldn't especially mind if I did. (And I did.) I loved the writing style, the dry, twisting narration, the humor, the world-building. I loved the way that Adams portrayed the bewilderment and frustration felt by a person who would rather be anywhere else than where they were, because honestly, that's where I was in life.
When I was fourteen, I was not the happiest, most stable person. I was in the midst of transitioning to high school, where I felt that much more was expected to me, where I saw my adult life much closer in front of me than it actually was. I felt pressure to be perfect, like my mother, a university professor who rarely betrayed any kind of confusion, and never met a situation that she couldn't fix. Mixed up in this was my issue with the fact that I was developing awareness of myself as a queer person and a sexual being at the same time--so, essentially, take the awkwardness and shame of that particular stage of adolescence and square it. I felt like I was doing something wrong, that I was wrong inherently, even though I'd grown up in a home that stressed, if awkwardly, acceptance of the LGBT community.
To top it off, we were moving out of my childhood home. It was the first truly stable, normal environment I'd been in as a kid, and it was the place I'd lived in for the longest. I'd done a lot of growing up there, and I was so much attached to it that I didn't know what to do when I was told that we'd be leaving. I felt powerless, as though I'd had no input in this decision, and it effected me really deeply at the time. I began to struggle more deeply with depression than I ever had before.
So I picked up the Hitchhiker's Guide and I read it all the way through. I needed a laugh, sure, and I got that, but it really became something more than that for me. The story portrays a person who loses every aspect of his status quo at once, and that's exactly what was happening for me. But instead of losing his mind about it, he, with the help of his friends, learns to take what comes to him. He blooms where he is planted, and in so doing uncovers a grit and flexibility that he would never have thought himself capable of. He learns to live without having a plan, without having a perfect life, and that really resonated with me.
And... well, the two main characters really did seem to have an enduring bond between them. One always took care of the other. When they were separated, they would always end up back together. They helped each other navigate the confusing, unhelpful world around them. Their relationship helped me understand how love worked, and how nothing could ever be wrong with it. I realized I was applying a double standard to myself--I would never speak ill about any other LGBT person or couple, so why was I coming down so harshly on myself?
The de facto motto of the book is the phrase "Don't Panic," and I feel that this is the most valuable advice I have ever received. Be adaptable. Live your life. Value the thing that screams inside you in confusion and frustration. But live anyway. Learn to be okay.
That probably wasn't supposed to be the message I took away from a book like this. But it was, so fight me.
Long, weepy Hitchhiker's Guide nonsense under the cut.
I read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series all the way through when I was about fourteen. I couldn't put the thing down--I would be so conflicted between wanting to take a walk and needing to read more that I would just... wander around, my face still sewn to the inside of the book, hoping absently that I didn't run into anything and knowing that I wouldn't especially mind if I did. (And I did.) I loved the writing style, the dry, twisting narration, the humor, the world-building. I loved the way that Adams portrayed the bewilderment and frustration felt by a person who would rather be anywhere else than where they were, because honestly, that's where I was in life.
When I was fourteen, I was not the happiest, most stable person. I was in the midst of transitioning to high school, where I felt that much more was expected to me, where I saw my adult life much closer in front of me than it actually was. I felt pressure to be perfect, like my mother, a university professor who rarely betrayed any kind of confusion, and never met a situation that she couldn't fix. Mixed up in this was my issue with the fact that I was developing awareness of myself as a queer person and a sexual being at the same time--so, essentially, take the awkwardness and shame of that particular stage of adolescence and square it. I felt like I was doing something wrong, that I was wrong inherently, even though I'd grown up in a home that stressed, if awkwardly, acceptance of the LGBT community.
To top it off, we were moving out of my childhood home. It was the first truly stable, normal environment I'd been in as a kid, and it was the place I'd lived in for the longest. I'd done a lot of growing up there, and I was so much attached to it that I didn't know what to do when I was told that we'd be leaving. I felt powerless, as though I'd had no input in this decision, and it effected me really deeply at the time. I began to struggle more deeply with depression than I ever had before.
So I picked up the Hitchhiker's Guide and I read it all the way through. I needed a laugh, sure, and I got that, but it really became something more than that for me. The story portrays a person who loses every aspect of his status quo at once, and that's exactly what was happening for me. But instead of losing his mind about it, he, with the help of his friends, learns to take what comes to him. He blooms where he is planted, and in so doing uncovers a grit and flexibility that he would never have thought himself capable of. He learns to live without having a plan, without having a perfect life, and that really resonated with me.
And... well, the two main characters really did seem to have an enduring bond between them. One always took care of the other. When they were separated, they would always end up back together. They helped each other navigate the confusing, unhelpful world around them. Their relationship helped me understand how love worked, and how nothing could ever be wrong with it. I realized I was applying a double standard to myself--I would never speak ill about any other LGBT person or couple, so why was I coming down so harshly on myself?
The de facto motto of the book is the phrase "Don't Panic," and I feel that this is the most valuable advice I have ever received. Be adaptable. Live your life. Value the thing that screams inside you in confusion and frustration. But live anyway. Learn to be okay.
That probably wasn't supposed to be the message I took away from a book like this. But it was, so fight me.
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Date: 2019-01-05 01:39 am (UTC)Thank you so much for your lovely comment.