Monthly Archives: September 2018

What Books Have Meant to Me

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I have been a voracious reader most of my life. However, it didn’t come easy to me at first. In First Grade, where we really started to learn to read, I struggled a great deal. I always feared reading out loud because I would jumble words. They would swim in my vision and make it really difficult to read. I still switch words and I feel like when I’m reading out loud, I’m staring at the whole page rather than a specific line. It’s very difficult. However, I liked the stories that I was plunged into and it definitely made things feel worth it. In 3rd grade I really started to read ahead, but started to get major headaches while reading, so I had to get glasses just for reading. It eventually turned into requiring glasses all the time.

In 5th grade I really jumped into the world of Fantasy. When i’d get in trouble with the parents, we’d get sent to corners and one of the corners was next to my parent’s “nice” book shelf. In there was a really old version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I was super interested by the book spines, as there was this crazy eye in the center of a ring. I decided to read this book when I got an assignment for doing a diorama about a specific book. Most of my classmates selected much shorter books, but I was super proud of selecting that book.

A few years later, my friends and I had a falling out. I ended up falling back into that series again. I read everything i could get my hands on. I was so depressed, but didn’t really understand what depression was. I was alone, but couldn’t really articulate to my parents and nor could my parents help me with my depression and loneliness because they didn’t have the emotional tools to help me with my depression. My dad specifically, because he was struggling with his own depression so he just wasn’t there.

As a result, I end up spending a great deal of time with Middle Earth. Since this was around when Metallica Load came out, I deeply associated that album with the Lord of the Rings. To the point where I was really disappointed with the video of “Hero of the Day” because I kept associating the narrator of that song with Frodo. It’s not the worst video, but it definitely didn’t fit with what I was expecting given how many times I heard that album while reading those books.

Over the years I’ve escaped into books to deal with the depression rooted in my parents fighting. Dealing with my girlfriend in HS. The divorce of my parents. Books were always my escape from these difficult times. Lately, I’ve been depressed to the point where it was a struggle to read.

I plan to start a small series on here for when the fancy strikes to write about a book that meant something to me and why it meant something to me. Something in more detail than what I wrote, here, about Lord of the Rings. This idea came from the Movies with Mikey episode about what Animation Taught Us. For me though, since I was limited in what I could watch on TV, including Movies, I think that Books are more appropriate. I’m not sure exactly how this will play out, so we’ll see.

Review: The Queen of Crows by Myke Cole

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The Queen of Crows (The Sacred Throne, #2)The Queen of Crows by Myke Cole
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is a quick read. I wouldn’t say it’s a light read, there’s definitely some serious heavy material covered in this book. It doesn’t hit you over the head with the parallels to the Inquisition as the first one did, but it didn’t need to. That was already established in the fantastic first book. This book continues where the Armored Saint left off, Heloise trying to protect her family. Like the first book, it’s brutal, the heroine does not have an easy time of things and isn’t perfect. She’s young, very inexperienced at fighting, and making it up as she goes. She pays for it. So does her community. You want her to be perfect and succeed, much like Barnard does. She’s flawed, human, and great though.

This book really delivers in a lot of ways. If you’re looking for an easy entrance into the fantasy genre and want to have a strong female lead (who is also a lesbian), this book is definitely for you.

View all my reviews

On Relationships and Death

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A few weeks ago a friend of mine committed suicide. I say friend, but we definitely had a falling out and I hadn’t talked to him since he’d moved from Portland. He was my roommate here for a while and we had some disagreements on how his dog behaved that ultimately drove a wedge between the two of us. However, I really think that was just the cherry on top. Both of us were depressed while he was living here and I was in such a bad spot that I wasn’t able to be that empathetic about it. I simply was overwhelmed with my own depression. Which is why I’m getting help. I know that I’m in a position where I can and am able to get that help.

This past weekend, a rapper, Mac Miller, I’ve never heard of overdosed. Apparently, he’d been dealing with demons for quite some time. Many people are attributing it to Ariana Grande breaking up with him. They are putting this death on her. To me this is a complete in justice. Similar to the reasons what my former roommate moved out, there’s a point in your relationships that you must do what is right for you. It’s not always easy. You feel like, to some extent, responsible for their actions afterwards. Like you could have done more or something different to help with that person.

The other reason that I’m really upset by this ridiculous backlash against Ms. Grande, is that I almost was in the exact same situation. While in Highschool and in College, I had a girlfriend that was extremely depressed and suicidal. I dated her for three years. Those years were very difficult for me for a variety of reasons. My parents were going through a divorce where they were asking me for advice on what to do. I had to figure out where I was going to school, knowing I was effectively on my own to pay for it. I was dealing with her depression, and I was adjusting to the school of my choice with her paranoid and constant demands on my time.

While we were dating, I helped her decide she needed to get therapy. She went to a Psychiatrist and a Psychologist where the former prescribed anti-depressants. Nothing helped her. She decided to move down to Pitt to be closer to me. I was against it, but I was too passive because of her increasingly erratic behavior along with her continual lack of trust in me. So she transferred and it became too much for me to handle my friends, school, and no breaks from her. I eventually reached out to her parents and her best friend and let them know I was breaking up with her. After I broke up with her, she hounded me, until I talked with her Therapist. At which point I made it clear that we were truly over. It was hard. At the time it was absolutely the hardest thing I’d ever done. I was terrified she was going to kill herself.

I found out years later, by random happenstance when I delivered a pizza to her mom, that she had in fact attempted suicide. I then talked to her afterwards, since her mom asked me too. Apparently her mom found her in the bathroom having took a bottle of pills. She survived and subsequently got better. Talking with her was super difficult, because I never really was able to deal with the emotional toll of our relationship. I didn’t realize that I had worried and dreaded finding out she had committed suicide.

I had needed to get out of that relationship because it was destroying me. There was nothing else for me to do. I was a mess I didn’t really figure out how to deal with what I’d gone through until getting therapy myself. I had to end that relationship and the fact that I knew she might kill herself simply increased the time I was in an unhealthy relationship.

We cannot punish people for electing to leave a relationship because their partner is abusing them with threats or past suicidal threats. Ms. Grande was very brave in ending that relationship and likely knew the risks of breaking it off with Mac Miller. I knew the risks when I ended the relationship with my HS GF. Ending the relationship is what ultimately saved her life. She would not have gotten healthier while still being with me. I would have been miserable, depressed, and constantly on edge waiting for her to try to kill herself – which may have ultimately happened despite my efforts.

Ms. Grande does not deserve to be castigated for ending this relationship. I do not envy her, I can only imagine what I would have gone through if my GF had been successful. I know with my roommate I beat myself up that I didn’t help him enough. This decision was ultimately out of our hands despite our best efforts. Sometimes when you love someone you need to cut them out of your life in hopes that they hit rock bottom and get the help they need. Sadly, it doesn’t always happen.