When you are asked "What is the greatest thing you've lost?" What comes to mind. Most of us will first think of lost as a loved one who passed. Next we will move on to a friend who moved away. Perhaps we will consider something we are too old for now. These things have monumental impact on our lives. I have lost family to illness, even if I was too young to know them well, so I regret the loss of time spent with them. Just last year I experienced the first death of someone I truly KNEW-my favorite substitute teacher. My best friend moved without giving me her new number. My group-"Clique" if you could call us one, though we held little in common-dissipated in the transition from middle school to high, where the differences that once made us a beautiful melting pot drove us to different schools that fit who we thought we should be, who we wanted to be. These losses have taken a toll on me. They have changed me. Scarred me. And, maybe, made me better.
However, there are some things we overlook. Losses of people that may linger in our thoughts a few short weeks after their departure from our lives. They are called to mind by silly things for a few more years, like accents or genres or maybe something as innocent as a favorite color. Then, when we are old, we will hear their name on T.V. and think "That's a lovely name..." not knowing why we are fond of it. These names to me are many, that now with them hold heavy connotations of love. Klaus. Mandy. Rose. Jackson. People who have changed my life, like those that may have changed yours. Yours, though, may be less strong, but I may be mistaken. Harry. Bella. Ron. Elena. Katniss (if you hear that when you are older, let ,me know). Forrest. Luke. People who you loved or loved to hate, who stopped your heart or sped it up. As you lay awake, elderly, heart consumed with "REAL" people, mind wrapped around this cursed name, finally it falls to memory-the movie screen with that cursed black oval in the corner you seem to be the only one to ever catch, the lost book marks, the paper cuts, the pages falling from spines after you let your sister borrow it, tears over a scratched DVD or licking your thumb to turn a page. Mine will fall to battered notebooks.
Those names I mentioned, and why they may be closer to my heart than Peeta or Agnus is to you? They exist in my room, beneath my bedside table. Those people I hold dearly are crammed into pages, forced into spiral notebooks and the stuffed into binders. They sit, unknown to the world but all too real for me.
I loved them.
I didn't blame them when my hand split open from writing, when my nightmares were plagued by self-proclaimed writers guilt or when I wasted lunches in the library writing, when perhaps I could have looked for friends with similar ideas of what we should be. But, no, instead I thanked them for teaching me compassion, strength and above all bravery. If that sounds a little crazy to you, that's okay, it does to me too. But, don't try to tell me I taught myself such things, or I will argue it with you to my grave.
But, I lost them.
I eventually put down my pencil and had to tell myself, "this is it". Because, as the old cliché saying goes, all good things must come to an end. Five books and so much pain, victory, sorrow and joy ended with one more of those ratty notebooks. I didn't choose it anymore than I chose for my friends to part ways, or anymore than we choose to lose family. It was simply time.
You might think, as all around me did, this was no more consequential than when you finish a really good essay. I mean, not a B+ essay, but that one you broke out the Thesaurus for, wrote five drafts of and turned in ten pages of for a 110% kind of essay. I have written those. It is not the same. I did not end my books with pride. I did not end them with a sense of accomplishment. I ended them with betrayal. I abandoned characters I set up for failure and helped succeed, people I devoted three years of my life to, people who, it seemed, would cease to exist without me.
When you closed, lets say, the last Harry Potter book, perhaps you were satisfied with the ending. I was. Much as I was for Hunger Games, or I wasn't for Divergent(Read at your own risk!). But what happened to the characters? They ended. Their lives did not go on, and so they lost significance, and over time, they lost power. Their voices died the day the writer wrote "The End". And, just like that, a writer abandoning its own creation, they were lost. Hermionee no more grew old than the Districts recovered. So why, then, do writers CHOOSE to end a book?
It's simple.
They don't.
In very much the same way, their characters do not leave them. I will forever cry for Klaus' pain, strive for Mandy's strength, respect Rose's independence, and empathize with Jackson. Their loss, to me, was as mighty as that of anyone I ever knew and lost, cynical as that may sound, because they were just as real to me. So, how do we move on? The simple thing is, you don't You mourn. You miss. You love.
Loss is REAL.
Don't let ever let anyone tell you you have not experienced real loss, because you have. You undoubtedly have, as surely as you have loved. Even if you loved that fictional boy who didn't know you existed, or you lost that fantasy girl that defied all reality and was impossibly out of your league, you have felt those emotions, and they are REAL.