Neverwhere

The first Neil Gaiman book I ever read was Neverwhere. Not American Gods or Stardust or even Coraline. Neverwhere.

SO OH MY GOD LOOK AT THIS: LOOK, it has Benedict Cumberbatch, Natalie Dormer, James McAvoy and other English goodies! Holy God.

It's a BBC 4 radio adaptation and and and and WORDS FAIL ME.

Rejection.

"Lets be friends."
"I'm not interested in dating right now."
"It's not you, it's me."
- Countless phrases used by the fairer sex to reject others.

I admit: I have used more than one of these. I hate to generalise, but we tend to avoid messy confrontations. We prefer to keep our ends neatly tied up. We would rather not have a bloody mess on our hands. And that's kind of what emotions are like: a sort of subtle warfare.

I'm not attempting to justify this behaviour at all. A part of me does think it a little despicable and honestly, I think it's best to be straightforward with someone. It should be okay to tell them: "I'm just not interested in dating you." (Maybe not in those terms, though.)

What I'm trying to say is this: we use these soft rejection lines because we don't want to hurt anyone. Because ultimately, we don't want anyone to hurt us.

Self sexual objectification.

I have a deep-seated issue with my self esteem levels. There are days where I loathe myself completely, mutilating myself in my head. There are other days where I walk past mirrors, my face turned away to avoid the look of hatred I tend to flash at myself.

I am currently incapable of receiving compliments. I cannot believe them. Neither do I like them.

Realising this, I decided to embark on a month of self-discovery and perhaps, even self-actualisation. I stared at a 30 Day Challenge and tried to think of anything I liked about myself.

Day One: A facial feature you like on yourself.

I spent a few moments in contemplation. "My lips."

Day Two: A physical feature you like on yourself.

Without hesitation. "My breasts. Or my butt."

I spent a few more minutes with my train of thought on this particular track. After a while, it struck me that I was sexually objectifying myself.

I saw myself as worthy of only sexual feelings.

That is, to date, one of my greatest problems in overcoming my low self esteem.

Les Misérables

“The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.” ― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

I was 15 and I was in London. I dug my fingers into my striped pink sweater, nervously fidgeting. My mother sat next to me, texting furiously. I spared a thought for my sisters and my father (they had opted to watch Wicked instead). The lights dimmed and I filched her phone away, stowing it in the pocket of my jeans. "It's starting," I murmured placatingly.

Thus began the conflicted torture.

It was unlike anything else I'd ever experienced.

(That very year, a few months before, someone had showed me a DVD of Les Misérables being performed. I was mesmerised. From then onwards I began a passionate affair with Victor Hugo. I devoured his works, I obsessed over his quotes, I sang the musical score for the contraltos beneath my breath.

When my father asked me if I wanted to watch any musicals, I fairly leaped at the opportunity. Les Misérables! In London!)

From the beginning to end, I was suffocating from my emotions. Never one easily moved to tears, I found drops making their way down my face from the very start. I found my knuckles turning white with the force of my grip on the armrests as Eponine died (the tragedy of all the tragedies).

When it was over, my mother turned her red-rimmed eyes towards mine. "I didn't expect that," she admitted.

I had read the book and watched a few performances on DVDs beforehand but even then I took her hand in mine and quietly said, "Me too."

“Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. --I shall feel it."
She dropped her head again on Marius' knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed. Eponine remained motionless. All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to proceed from another world:--
"And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you.” ― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

A tad maudlin.

“It slowly began to dawn on me that I had been staring at her for an impossible amount of time. Lost in my thoughts, lost in the sight of her. But her face didn't look offended or amused. It almost looked as if she were studying the lines of my face, almost as if she were waiting.  

I wanted to take her hand. I wanted to brush her cheek with my fingertips. I wanted to tell her that she was the first beautiful thing that I had seen in three years. The sight of her yawning to the back of her hand was enough to drive the breath from me. How I sometimes lost the sense of her words in the sweet fluting of her voice. I wanted to say that if she were with me then somehow nothing could ever be wrong for me again.  

In that breathless second I almost asked her. I felt the question boiling up from my chest. I remember drawing a breath then hesitating--what could I say? Come away with me? Stay with me? Come to the University? No. Sudden certainty tightened in my chest like a cold fist. What could I ask her? What could I offer? Nothing. Anything I said would sound foolish, a child's fantasy.  

I closed my mouth and looked across the water. Inches away, Denna did the same. I could feel the heat of her. She smelled like road dust, and honey, and the smell the air holds seconds before a heavy summer rain.  

Neither of us spoke. I closed my eyes. The closeness of her was the sweetest, sharpest thing I had ever known." 

 ― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind 

“I thought of all the others who had tried to tie her to the ground and failed. So I resisted showing her the songs and poems I had written, knowing that too much truth can ruin a thing. And if that meant she wasn't entirely mine, what of it? I would be the one she could always return to without fear of recrimination or question. So I did not try to win her and contented myself with playing a beautiful game. But there was always a part of me that hoped for more, and so there was a part of me that was always a fool.”   

― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

What is growing up?

Growing up is realising that other things take precedence over your dreams and hopes and longings. It is worries, cares and troubles. It is the subtle sense of responsibility creeping up to the forefront of your mind.

Sometimes, growing up involves breaking your own heart.

“When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.” 
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

So I'm 20 now.

I don't feel any difference. But then again, neither did I expect to.

I would, however, say that the night of my 20th birthday was the most epic ever. The less said about that, the better. (:

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe." - Neil Gaiman.

"What does your future look like?"

I hesitate before pasting on a shy smile. "I want to be a lawyer." Straight to the point.

"That sounds lovely..." The well-meaning voice chatters on to subjects of inconsequential matter. I drop the smile and fall back into my daydreams.

What does my future look like?

Law school, my chambering, being called to the Bar, practising, retirement. That is all I'm certain of.

Marriage, children, starting a family. These are all optional. (or maybe the option doesn't even figure in the picture- that's what I'm afraid of, that nobody thinks that I'm worth that kind of devotion, commitment)

I feel that there are two sides to every person- simplistically speaking, I would like to emphasise. On the one hand, we're all power-hungry beasts, gutless creatures. On the other, I honestly believe that most of us would be happy living on a beach somewhere with just enough money to survive.

(Why 'simplistically'? Because nobody is made up of only two sides. Nothing can be unsubdivided. Maybe that's why physicists are inevitably philosophers. An endless quest to reduce everything to it's most rudimentary form, a losing battle.

We are made up of thousands upon thousands of facets. We have motives behind our motives and reasons so minute they're incomprehensible. Our fleeting thoughts now can be the metaphorical pebbles that start off the avalanche years later subconsciously.)

Or something like that.

I digress.

What does my future look like?

In my head? Honestly, truthfully, sincerely? I see myself living in a tiny apartment, wearing nothing but sweaters and jeans. I am a barrister by day, a crime reporter at night (although my true dream would be to work as a war correspondent). I live near a small cafe that makes brilliant tea, an undiscovered gem. I subsist on a diet of scones and peppermint infusions, reading and dreaming through my life. (someone might even catch a glimpse of me, fall in love with me, make me live in this world- but that's another dream)

Or there's the other truth. The darker, flip side of the mirror. Making partner at a young age, winning case after case, arguing intelligently and faultlessly, my mind sharp as a shard of broken glass. Powerful, ruthless, cunning, ambitious. Being able to give myself everything I never knew I even wanted. Slaking my thirst for revenge (another dream for another day, one I refuse to elaborate on).

But the reality is that nothing is predestined.

"Plans can break down. You cannot plan the future. Only presumptuous fools plan. The wise man steers." Terry Pratchett

Of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman and mindgasms.

Firstly, you may already know that I am a HUGE fan of both Pratchett and Gaiman. I can say with certainty that I've read all of their books (in the case of Pratchett, this is actually quite impressive because the Discworld books alone number about 50 if you exclude the almanacs and supplementary works).

OH MY GOD COMPLETELY FANGIRLING HERE BECAUSE MINI SERIES

I was happily browsing through things and came across this: CLICK HERE BECAUSE OF REASONS

Basically, they'll be adapting the City Watch novels into a TV series as well as Good Omens, one of my all-time favourites, but the latter will be more of a mini series.

Best of all, THIS:

Although it's really spelled Aziraphale.

I don't think I'm sane right now with the amount of happiness in my head.

On men, on safety, on how women aren't safe because they're women.

men aren’t told to carry around weapons
men aren’t told to go to self defense classes
men aren’t told to only go out in groups
men aren’t told not to go out at a certain hour of the night
men aren’t told that they shouldn’t have a few drinks
men aren’t told that they shouldn’t wear certain articles of clothing
do you see where i’m going with this

I saw this somewhere. I don't know who wrote this. I don't know who came up with this. But if you are a woman, you understand this.

You know the fear that crawls up your spine when you're hurrying through a lonely area and is that someone following me? screams a loud whine in your mind.

You know the quickening of breath when you hear the raucous sound of rowdy male laughter behind you, the urge to fold up into yourself so nobody notices you scurrying your way.

You know the prayer that thrums through your veins: please don't say or do anything to me.

You know the panic that overtakes your body when you see a strange man heading towards you.

It really shouldn't be so.

It's a sad and strange world where more than half of the world's population is terrified of the other.