fiction fan

it had been a while since i read any, the stories i've saved on a fanfiction site that i discovered quite a few years ago. i'd become uninterested, not able to engage in the soppy romances, or the predictability of the {getting together}s or even the love expressed between two humans who In Real Life {well, their original fictional universes} were just mates, or arch enemies, or indifferent to each other's existence.

how different that had been years ago, when i'd spend hours devouring one story after another. mainly very well-written stuff, with deep layered plots, by incredibly well researched or just amazingly insightful authors. the lesser ones cast aside in search of gems, most leaving me feeling hopeful, happy, touched... some of them however had the capacity to render me in a heap of sad introspection. convinced none of the love-lives i discovered and became part of were ever going to be reality for myself. or any of us...


just now i've read a couple, cos i had the time, and the energy, to engage. somewhere deep in me a longing was tweaked to immerse myself in the {fictional} love-lives of two {already fictional} individuals, who have what i fear i'll never have...

ever...

cos a part of me has decided that having a loving, tender, sweet, trustworthy, devoted, joyful partner/relationship is not for me in this life... to have someone in my life who loves me so truly, so tenderly, allows me to trust him so deeply, connects with me on such an amazing level - it's only for stories...

why should this even be part of my desires in the first place?! is it just my silly unrealistic romantic side, as someone who once featured strongly in my life kept telling me? is it just proof of my inability to connect to the reality of real people? people who have flaws, and are a little bit crap at connecting, at trusting others, at showing their own vulnerable sides? but if it is indeed such a silly, childish, unrealistic flawed side of me, then why do i desire it so incredibly strongly? what is it that makes me feel so sad to think that i'll never be loved or wanted or connected with, feel a trusting bond with another individual in that way ever?

plenty of stuff has been written about the unrealistic expectations that romantic fiction has set, in novels and films, making us all assume that the love displayed to us on the screens in movie theatres or the pages of books is The Ideal To Aim For... but is it? don't we know, deep down, that these people that we see have their own flaws, aren't in any way perfect? but the love that they experience is that what we all would love in our lives, one day - someone who accepts us, loves us, trusts us, that person with whom life is easy, and nice and then we feel happy and okay...

last week my daughter and i watched Sleepless In Seattle, a film that i hadn't seen for years, and now twice in a few months. she likes it for the same reasons i do, i think {Tom Hanks as a thirty-something, life that's simple before internet, the goofy humour...}, though probably doesn't carry the same heavy heart when the film finishes - a happy ending that i never had... i hope that she will, one day. meet someone who thinks she's the wonderful, sweet, funny, tender, amazing person that she is... who loves her to pieces... who will never betray her trust...

like i thought had happened to me 25 years ago, when i met her father.

i guess reading the stories i did this morning, about the getting together of two flawed individuals who find a connection with each other, who feel they can deeply trust each other, and decide to spend their lives together, i long back for the beginning of mine... the excitement of finding out, of getting to know, of melting my heart with another's...

the unravelling of my love story that has been going on for many years, many more than the official part, and the sense of betrayal, of severed connections, of being made to feel like some gormless loser, when we'd promised to never go there, was tough...

but i've come out the other end now, i feel... ready for another love-story... in whatever form that will land in my life...