littleartistthoughts

[littleartistthoughts]

Romeo x Juliet

Sooo. Sometime during my middle school years, I was on the AMV side of YouTube. I stumbled across an AMV of the anime, Romeo x Juliet, to the background song: “Romeo and Juliet.” Out of curiosity, I searched up the anime, and I found it on YouTube. I think I watched the final scenes of the last episode first, without any context. I guess I was interested enough to start from the beginning. 

And I became obsessed. By obsessed, I mean, seriously, seriously, obsessed. I fell in love with everything -- the main characters, the music, the world. The romance was touching, the story was impacting, and it was just perfect. I cried sooo hard. It became one of those things that touched me so much to the point I thought about it for weeks and weeks. I searched up AMV’s and fanart and scoured the Wikipedia page over and over, so eager to have more. 

I even tried to burn the entire series on DVD because I wanted to watch it whenever I wanted (so I had to learn how to burn a DVD, though I don’t think I ever actually succeeded). Eventually, though, by some luck, I found the DVD at Best Buy, and my dad bought it for me. 

I shared it with my friends. I sent them all home to watch it, and I felt overjoyed when they came back to school the next day saying they binged it and cried and loved it. We became something of a fan club. Lol. 

Then time went on and I thought of it less and less, though I was always fond of the memory of watching it. I remembered it as a sad, beautiful anime that I loved so much. Actually, it impacted me so much that I’m borrowing some elements of the story for my own works. To this day, I reference the show when I’m wondering about the design of my own fantasy universes. 

These days, I’m slowly molding my Sol Verynda universe. I’ve been doing that for about four years now. I keep changing things or developing them further. Sometimes, I run out of inspiration. I’m still dragging details out of the world where I can find them. Sometimes you just need a giant push. 

I don’t remember the reason, but sometime during this past week or the last, Romeo x Juliet popped into my mind. I think I was just reminiscing the story. And then I decided to just watch it. You know. For the heck of it. 

So for the first time in a very, very long time, I watched the series. 

I’m a lot older now and more mature than I was in middle school, which means there’s a lot more that I can understand now. That means I’m also a lot more cynical now. And critical. And the devil’s always on my shoulder. Plus this raging depression that just won’t go away is in my mind. So I re-watched the anime through a different lens. 

Still me, but a different version. 

I watched the series over the course of a few days (busy with school and work). I decided to watch it in Dub because that’s the original way I watched it, and I wanted to recapture that feeling I got when I watched before. Even though my sister gave me such a hard time about it. Like, seriously. She came into my room and slapped my phone out of my hands because she was so disgusted. I retaliated. 

I like the Dub also because the script is so lovely in English. They incorporate some Shakespearian speak (I learned later that it’s really called iambic pentameter). So the characters sometimes speak like it’s the 14th or something century, and it’s pleasant to hear. I also just really like hearing them speak poetically in an American accent. 

Buuuut, I caved out of curiosity. I searched the Subbed version on YouTube and watched a few minutes of the first episode, just to see the difference. And, well. I get it. The show was made specifically for Japanese, and so that version is actually very fitting. Buuut, I still continued on with the dub. I’m thinking now, though, that I’m going to rewatch the show in the Subbed version sometime soon. It’ll be like seeing the story again, but with a different feel. So, yeah. 

Anywayyyy, so the story. The show takes liberties with the adaptation. I’ve never read the original play, but we all know how it goes. And I think I watched Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio, so I had an idea. In the original, Romeo belongs to the Montague family and Juliet belongs to the Capulets. Their families hate each other, but they fall in love anyway. After a string of events, Romeo and Juliet die together, and the family conflict is resolved by this tragedy. 

In the anime, Romeo’s father, Leontes Montague, murders every member of the Capulet family so he can take over the city, Neo Verona, as ruler. Only Juliet, who was rescued by her family’s loyalists, escapes. She’s two years old. Fourteen years later, Montague is the tyrannical king of the city, and Juliet is forced into hiding. She disguises herself as a boy, named Odin, though she was never told the reason why she had to do so. 

Montague is on the hunt to find her. In his tyranny, he allows his guards to torment the citizens. And so Juliet, disguised as a man, takes on the persona of the Red Whirlwind to defend the people. 

Eventually, Juliet winds up at the palace, dressed as a girl, for the Rose Ball. And she and Romeo meet. And it’s a love at first sight moment. 

Later, Juliet finally learns of her heritage, and her world becomes chaotic. 

One thing I didn’t realize when I was younger was just how much of a sweetheart Romeo is. He lived a rough life in the palace. His father was emotionally and physically abusive. His mother left him to join a convent (though she deeply regretted leaving him). He was alone at the palace except for his best friend, Benvolio, and his Dragon Steed (basically, flying pegasus), Cielo. Despite that, he had a big heart. He was nothing like his father. He genuinely was a good person. 

And Juliet just deserved so much better. The girl could never catch a break. She and Romeo had similar temperaments. She was really sweet and considerate with a good, forgiving heart. But she was also this badass swordsman secret vigilante who was a fearless leader and fought for justice. We see her character develop over the course of the series. She slowly matures after all her mistakes. And in the end she’s the one to save the world. 

The love shared between these two is really the driving force of the story. It’s the reason the two fought so hard to create a world of love instead of hatred. Instead of revenge, Juliet’s focus was on freedom and happiness. Without Romeo, she might have actually killed Montague and gone with the route of hatred. 

The series did get a little cheesy and naive sometimes, I felt while watching. That’s the cynical adult in me. However, the show doesn’t hesitate to admit that. For example, when Romeo’s trying to motivate a group of exiles to cultivate a dead land, his words do seem childish and idealistic. And several inmates point that out. But they do eventually try. 

I don’t know. To me, it’s a reminder that the idealism of children is so powerful. Adults don’t have that same spirit. A lot of us are always worried about the bad outcomes of things. We’re always tired. We’re so used to seeing bad things that we become cynical. But kids aren’t so used to it yet, so they still have these grand hopes. 

It can be a disadvantage, of course, such as when Juliet jumped into an opportunity out of her naivety, just to see her loyalists fall. 

But, still. We get characters like William (a caricature of Shakespeare himself), who is so childish and idealistic and perpetually inspired. 

When I was in middle school, I hadn’t yet experienced a real relationship. So it was fun to imagine what it would be like. Watching Romeo and Juliet’s relationship blossom gave me such a warm, fluttery feeling. You know. I wanted a romance like that. 

Re-watching it, post-heartbreak from my FL and other “romantic” endeavors, I view love a lot differently now. Honestly, I haven’t felt fondly about it for a long time. I’ve come to a point where I almost detest it. I detest boys and the hurt they can cause me. It’s hard to imagine myself in a good, loving, idealistic relationship again after all the guys I’ve encountered. 

Well. My heart is still too broken for a new love, but I still felt my heartstrings pulled by the anime. Maybe it’s too soon to tell, but I think my opinion has shifted a bit. I forgot, really, how amazing romantic love can be. How consuming. Even when I’m not a part of it, just seeing it unfold is so precious. It makes me feel all warm and happy inside. And inspired to write. 

Anyway. 

One other thing that I’m really noticing now that I just didn’t before is the symbolism. That scene where Romeo asked Juliet (without knowing she was present) what flower she would prefer for a garden, she answered with a “rose.” I remember feeling confused. The entire series, the white iris was the symbol of their relationship. But why would she answer a rose?

Well. The iris is on the Capulet family crest, and the rose is on the Montague family crest. Juliet was saying she wanted him. 

Also, Leontes Montague entered the family by becoming a ward, and then poisoning his way to the top. Also, his father is a Capulet, meaning Romeo and Juliet are distant cousins. Oof. 

Also, I know more about art and architecture now thanks to Art History courses. So seeing all the reliefs and structures in the series was astounding. Seriously. Astounding. There’s this constant image of a goddess with angel’s wings in prayer. It appears in statues, reliefs, statuettes, paintings, etc. There was a goddess statue at the fountain where Romeo and Juliet first met. 

In the end, we learned this goddess is a symbol of Escalus, the grand tree that serves as a life force to the continent. 

If anything, I really really really wish there was a prequel or something that went into the history of the Capulet family and the tree of Escalus. There were so many unanswered questions. Like, why was Neo Verona floating over the sky the whole time? How? Why did Escalus keep it afloat? Why did the Capulet family have to be the one to make sacrifices? Why the girls? Who was Ophelia, really? What’s the history? When they fell from the sky, did they just rejoin the larger world? They mention Christian and Greek mythos, so how do they know about it? They say Escalus is the patron goddess of Neo Verona, so are there others? 

Sadly, we might never find out. But it’s all still very interesting. 

Neo Verona is a living, breathing world. It’s a fantasy world that we fall in love with. 

All the side characters make us care for saving the world, and Juliet mentions this, too. She decides her sacrifice would be worth it if it meant her loved ones would get to live. And we agree, too, because we come to love all the minor characters. Every single one. Even though we don’t want her to die. 

Watching it this time around, I also started to understand Montague, and admire him as a villain. He’s layered. He’s vicious. He’s ruthless. He’s a little insane. He was never loved (he says this in his final moments). His mother died when he was young. He told Romeo he deeply cared for him, which I kind of believe. In a twisted way, I believe he did love him. I believe he also loved Romeo’s mother, Portia. When he visited her, he started by saying she could have lived in luxury with him if she didn’t leave. 

Montague also seemed to genuinely care for Escalus. For some reason. Maybe he didn’t want to the world to end with him in it. He seemed to be searching for a genuine solution to the problem. 

Anytime Montague was on screen, he was riveting. Truly terrifying. Charming with some, like Hermoine and other lady nobility. But murderous. And a swordsman. Underneath it all, all his heinous acts, he just wanted love. In the end, he died in Juliet’s arms. 

The mythos of the world was incredible as well. I’m a sucker for fantasy, and the show really runs with all my favorite things. Prophecy. Ancient things. Sacrifice. Enhanced nature. 

I haven’t watched anime in a long time. Honestly, I sort of shunned it from my mind when “Asian things” became more and more shameful. Well, that thinking is shameful. Because anime is truly beautiful. It captures humans in a different way. Anime knows how to do romance. It knows how to build tension and longing, it knows how to invest the audience. Every anime I ever watched has hooked me to the romance (something American TV can’t ever do with me). 

I just love the tone of anime. The wittiness, the playful scenes, the heavy moods, the characters and their attitudes. It’s all entirely distinct. I don’t know why, but it really gets you wanting. Plus the expressiveness of 2D animation that can do absolute wonders. 

I’m a really big fan of Game of Thrones, don’t get me wrong, and maybe the show just butchered the story, but for a while I just wanted to make a story similar in spirit to Thrones. You know. The realism. The darkness. The unfairness. 

But I forgot that you can make your own worlds with fiction. And your own rules. Life is life. It’ll always be unfair and tragically beautiful, and there are lovely stories to capture that. But then there are those stories that are an abstraction of reality, like Romeo x Juliet. Not totally realistic, but spellbinding. You’re thrown into this world, and you just want to be a part of it. For a while, you can escape the real world and join this one. 

It gets one inspired about living in a different world. 

So while realism is great, fiction and world-building are just so much more fun. And impactful. And creative. And magical. And fan-service isn’t a bad thing. 

I cried during the final episode, once right after Romeo died, and again during the Epilogue. Everyone who lived got a happy ending, and I was so sad and happy seeing them all enjoying life. After all the darkness that they went through, they all ended up living in the bright, joyous world that Romeo and Juliet dreamed of. 

That’s fucking inspiring. To the max. A little cheesy, but in a way that feels so earned and so right. 

So anyway, I’m glad I decided to rewatch it. I was in my early teens when I last watched it, and now I’m 21. Oh, and the decade is ending. Seems fitting. Maybe it’ll help me set the tone for the next decade, which I hope will be one of creativity. And maybe some romance. Maybe. Maybe it’ll have that attitude. 

It’s still one of my favorite stories of all time, and I’m definitely going to rewatch it again in the future. Next time will probably be soon. I have to spend some time recovering from the emotional roller coaster that I went through. Maybe next month. I’ll watch it in Sub, the way it was meant to be, I guess. And I’ll see the difference. And I’ll probably write another post about how I felt about it. 

Until the next time. 

[littleartistthoughts]

Red Leather

I first discovered this book when I was in the 8th grade, back when I was obsessed with Wattpad. It’s a sequel to another book I like, called “White Lies”, but I find myself returning to this story more often. I reread it every couple of years for fun. I get captivated every single time. 

I recently reread the story again while my family was vacationing in Hawaii, about a week ago. It’s just as dark, twisted, and genius as I remember. 

The Story: 

So, the book is told in the perspective of a teen psychopath. 17-year-old Renee Griffin is beautiful, popular, cunning, and murderous. 

Her first victim was her next door neighbor’s bunny, which she mutilated to death when she was 6 years old. Ever since then, her victims have suffered worse and worse fates, and the monster inside her grows ever stronger and ever darker. The story follows Renee’s journey as she moves to Alistair (where her cousin, Jessabel, the heroine of the first novel, lives). Here, in this fresh new city, she ensues in a grand, wicked scheme to cause chaos and destruction. 

She details all her plots in a red, leather-bound book (hence, the title), which she nicknames “Genesis.” 

Renee’s plan before moving to town was to befriend Jessabel and use the advantage of her highly admirable reputation to tear the city to bits. Things don’t go as planned. Renee, clever as she is, isn’t the best judge of character. Jessabel instantly senses something off about her, and they don’t become as close as she hopes. They don’t even become friends, really. Worst of all, Renee develops a crush on Jessabel’s boyfriend, Nathan. We see this small crush turn slowly into obsession throughout the book. 

At school, Renee befriends many of the younger siblings of Jessabel’s classmates. However, “friends” to Renee are merely means to several ends. She has different uses for her classmates, like obtaining information, learning the ropes, and sabotaging. Reneee chooses several lives to destroy, and she does so successfully. And the city falls into insanity, just as she planned. 

One of my favorite dynamics in the books is that of Renee and her relationship with her father, Ted. Ted is Renee’s single father, who has loved, spoiled, and cherished her all her life. He’s the only person in the novel that Renee feels true, human love for. Albeit a touch toxic and many touches obsessive, he’s a very humanizing presence in Renee’s life. The best irony is that he’s a doctor who sometimes must fix the people his daughter wrecks. But he’s aloof to it all. Renee, who he nicknames “Poppy,” is an angel in his eyes. After the death of his beloved wife, he’s devoted all his love to Renee, giving her everything she’s ever wanted and more. Blinded by his love for her, he’s completely oblivious to all the pain and destruction she’s caused. 

Renee’s safety is Ted’s drive to move states and start a new life. He wants nothing but her happiness and safety, but he doesn’t realize that all the chaos that happens around them is because of her. 

Another interesting character is Eli Lincoln, another psychopath, who Renee finds intriguing. She trusts him almost right away, without question, especially as he begins helping her with her schemes. 

Back in her hometown, Renee left behind an enemy, a girl named Chloe. Renee murdered her boyfriend and got away with it by framing it as a suicide, but Chloe was there that night. She knew the truth, and she set forth to bringing down Renee, once and for all. Her whereabouts remain unknown to Renee, which infuriates her. Despite her attempts to stop the threat before it happens, Chloe seems to be three steps ahead, always. 

Confident as ever, Renee and Eli design a scheme to accomplish everything she’s aiming for -- kill Chloe, kill Jessabel, kidnap Nathan, bring chaos, and escape to another country. Everything goes as planned. 

Except that Eli didn’t kill Chloe as Renee thought he did. She failed to kill Jessabel. Nathan wasn’t in love with her. And Aurora Hockley, her host (and the main mastermind behind the kidnappings in the first novel), was never on her side. Neither was Eli. 

Chloe had planned it all along -- Renee’s downfall. With Eli’s and Jessabel’s help, Renee is defeated, expunged from her throne of deceit. It’s very, very satisfying to the readers. Once again, good prevails. Evil is defeated, just as it’s destined to. 

Despite losing it all (including the love of her father), she manages to put herself in control. Before her trials can happen, she kills herself and her father, with the audience of her dreams. 

It’s infuriating that her death happened at her own hands, but I can see how it’s a fitting end to her character. If it is the end. The author once promised us a third installment to the White Lies series, but it never came. And as of now, there’s no promise that it’ll ever happen. There was an epilogue to Red Leather in Eli’s perspective, where there was small indication that Renee wasn’t dead after all. But, I guess we’ll never know. The author has fallen off of Wattpad, unfortunately. And so that’s simply that. 

I find myself returning to this story because of how captivating and clever it is. Stories are traditionally told in the perspective of the heroes, protagonists who represent good and fairness, people whose shoes we can fit into, people who represent more good than they do bad. This is changing, now, in recent times, but this was the very first book I read that was in the perspective of the villain. 

It’s interesting how you learn to love and hate Renee. Her crimes are heinous and unsettling, but you find yourself somewhat rooting for her. Renee goes through something like an anti-arch. The story is all about her downfall, even though we don’t realize it until the end. 

Renee frequently flashes back to different parts of her life, and she tells about her past schemes. She tells us about her transition from her old self, Rhea, to her present self, Renee. Rhea, to her, was the part of her that was impulsive, sloppy, and miscalculating. Vicious, yes, and cunning, of course, but also prone to mistakes. So she adopts a new persona (and a new name) which she calls Renee. Renee is like a mask to her. Renee is kind, sweet, funny, popular, generous... nothing short of angelic. This is the face she wears in public to gain favor and trust. But Renee is also very murderous. Renee knows how to keep her hands clean. Renee manipulates and destroys from a distance, staying careful not to raise suspicion. Renee is smart and calculating, organized and well-spoken. 

Throughout the story, we kind of see this resolve fade away. With Eli���s (unknowing) help, she makes more and more mistakes. She also grows more and more enraged, darker, more unhinged. The less sane she gets, the more Renee fades away, eventually giving way to the monster inside, her true self, Rhea Griffin. And she topples down until she’s ultimately defeated. She accepts her fate, but she now also accepts who she truly is. 

As Renee, she constantly refers to the darkness within her as the “monster” that lurks beneath her skin. By the end, she fully embraces that she, Rhea, is the monster. 

And despite it all, we’re captivated by Renee/Rhea’s confidence, her cleverness, her vulnerability. She’s a villain, through and through. Even on a gray scale, she falls very, very dark. But her novel gets us thinking, about morality, about our friends, and about ourselves. And that’s the true genius of the novel. 

I can’t wait to give it another read, sometime later in the future. 

[littleartistthoughts]

Shorter Version: SitS

I felt many complicated emotions. And other things I probably shouldn’t have felt. And it was honestly a toxic romance. And that’s an understatement. But despite it all, defying all sense, I loved it. 

[littleartistthoughts]

Screaming In the Silence

Last night in bed, after the third day of quarantine in a pile of illness (I have a cold), I randomly decided to browse through old stories I used to read on Booksie. 

Booksie is a website where any writer with access to the internet can submit stories for the world to read, a platform I discovered when I was around 11/12 years old. I created my account. Typed up a few stories. Posted them. Enjoyed the interaction I received from the few people who found them. Showed my appreciation to all of them. 

In my early Booksie days, I saw an ad at the bottom of the page displaying a story called “Screaming in the Silence.” The ad explained that the story was initially published to Booksie in chapter by chapter updates, and was now published as a real book. I read the blurb and the first chapter. Found it pretty interesting. The rest of the book had to be taken down from Booksie, though, for obvious reasons.  

11 year old me didn’t have the accessibility to purchase the book myself, so that was that for a while. Throughout my teen years, especially when I discovered the wonders of YA Fiction and Goodreads, I would randomly decide to go back to Booksie and browse through the stories I had once spent hours of my day reading and writing. I would go back to “Screaming in the Silence.” I looked it up on Goodreads and read what other people had to say about it, read the preview over and over, thought about reading it someday, and repeat. I did that over and over, and even when I did finally have the resources to access it myself, it never peaked my interest enough to actually read it. 

Until last night. While revisiting the story once again on Booksie, I read a small piece of the Epilogue that I hadn’t seen before. I skipped to the end. Didn’t understand a word of it. Visited Goodreads. Read some reviews. Wondered if I would agree or disagree with any of them if I read the book myself. Wandered over to Apple Books. Read the preview, once again, and realized this preview extended to the second chapter. Found a steamy scene. Was captivated. Saw that it was only $4.99 as an eBook. Checked my bank account to see if I could afford it. Decided I could. Switched back to Books. Bought it. 

And then I stayed up the entire night to finish it, which is something I haven’t done for a book in a very very long time. 

Edit: I forgot to add how funny it was that I forgot daylight savings was ending yesterday at 2am. In the middle of reading, I peeked at the time and saw that it was 2:54 or something. I was scared of hitting haunting hour, so I rushed to the bathroom to pee before I had to worry about it. I got back, continued reading, checked the time again, and saw that it was 2:04. Time is such a magical thing. Saved me from haunting hour for another hour. And also gave me back that extra hour to finish the book overnight. 

So, the book: 

“Screaming in the Silence” was published in 2010, which means it was probably written between 2008/2009/2010. So, the book is about a decade old. As I was reading the book, I couldn’t help but think of how terribly the world would receive the story considering today’s social climate. 

The story is told in the point of view of 26-year-old Raleigh Winters, a recent graduate with a PhD in Political Science and Economics. She’s white. She’s blond. She has grey eyes. She’s the daughter of the Senator of Delaware. She went to George Washington University. She has daddy issues. She’s pretty and educated. And she’s been deaf since she was 6 years old (English mother didn’t believe in vaccinations, and she lost her hearing from the measles, a tragedy which tore her parents’ marriage apart). Since she was 6 years old, Raleigh has mastered the ability to read lips and speak.     

The story begins with Raleigh waking up and realizing she’s been dumped in the back of a trunk with the dead body of her hitchhiking companion, Julie. The two girls had been hit by an out of control car driven by three friends, Ray, Marshal, and Kaden. When the men discover that Raleigh is still alive, Ray wants to kill her and be done with it. But Kaden offers that they, instead, keep her in their basement and ransom her. 

The story is dark and twisted and focuses very heavily on the relationship between Kaden and Raleigh. I say the social climate of today’s world would be unforgiving of this story because, well, it’s the story about a man who abducts a girl and enforces dominance over her to make her fall in love with him, until he later realizes he’s being very fucked up, and eventually does the noble thing to set her free, but only after a string of horrible decisions (including raping her), and he still gets her in the end. 

With the Kavanaugh election and Twitter becoming increasingly conscious of rape culture -- no I really don't think the world would let this one slide if they got their hands on this one. For this reason, I’m glad it stays relatively unknown, with only a faithful, low-key audience. 

In the story, Raleigh never lets Kaden off the hook for anything he’s done. At the trials, Raleigh doesn’t hide it in her testimony that Kaden raped her. 

But even when she’s free of him, she’s battling with herself over how she feels about him. She loves him even though she knows she’s not supposed to. And she hates herself for loving him. She knows it’s not right. She thinks about it in the context of her friends and family; she knows all of them would say it’s a very wrong thing to love the man who held her captive, starved her, raped her, and brought her to near-death countless times. And yet the feelings remain, powerful and unrelenting. 

Because really, only Raleigh and Kaden know what was shared between them. Raleigh was lost in life even before she was kidnapped. She had so many directions to go, and she didn’t know which one felt the most right. That’s why she ran away from home to go hitchhiking for a while. This led to her captivity. Suddenly, she had no direction to go. Her future was unknown, and she had little control over her life. Kaden grew up in Paris, spoke French, was a translator, had a mentally unstable best friend that he felt the responsibility to look after. Honestly, I’m not really sure what finding Raleigh did for him other than make him commit horrendous crimes and then soften? (Tbh, he doesn’t have much of an arch. Even as we unravel things about him, he remains much of a mystery.) Really, I felt like Kaden’s purpose was to be a male love interest, and that’s just it. Kaden was protective over Raleigh when it came to the true dark figure in the house -- Ray. Kaden was soft and playful and teasing when he allowed himself to be. Kaden had a temper that led him to physically hurt Raleigh on a couple instances. Kaden was snarky and had the “Booksie/Wattpad love interest smirk.” Honestly, the spark in their relationship didn’t really come from actions, but from the actual chemistry between their personalities. Their spirits were just too aligned.  

Reading Raleigh’s internal battles with herself made me think of my own emotions about the story. I got so invested in their romance that I sacrificed all sleep to finish the book I waited almost a decade to read. Even though there were moments during the story where I had to shake my head and think to myself, “God, this cannot be right,” I was happy that Raleigh and Kaden got their happy ending. There were so many things that were wrong about their romance. It’s hard to call it Stockholm syndrome, though even Raleigh admits that’s probably what it is, because it feels more complicated than that, even though it isn’t. All this, Raleigh thinks about. Even she can’t believe she loves the guy. And she’s a smart, rational woman. 

Sometimes, feelings just are. And there’s no real way of explaining them. (Maybe it’s a linguistics thing. We’re locked away from certain possibilities because there’s simply no way for words to describe certain things.) 

It’s kind of like that scene in Grey’s Anatomy where Meredith is talking to the girl who ran away from her abductor after years in his captivity. The girl tells Meredith that, even though she isn’t supposed to, she somewhat misses her captor, but it’s a feeling she can’t comprehend through words. 

[Side note: I can’t wait to hold a degree in Psychology.] 

Yeah, yeah. These are dramatic situations that happened in fiction. But, hey. Big real-life world. All these people. 

Another side note, I’m used to reading YA Fiction at this point. This was my first real time reading a romance about people who are well into their 20′s (as in late twenties, early thirties). It was interesting, to me, reading in a voice that wasn’t a teenage girl. By 26, a girl’s residual hormones from puberty are supposed to have calmed down. Or something. No a scientist. But, yeah. Anyway, considering I’m no longer a teenager and I’m now in my early 20′s, it feels right. 

Anyway, anyway, I can go on forever, but let’s just leave this at:

I’m happy I finally read the book. And I think it was right timing. 20-year-old me absorbed the book with the sophistication 11-year-old me or even 17-year-old me wouldn’t have had. Every once in a while, in between my breaks of avid reading, I run into a romance that grabs all my heartstrings and twists and turns them with every word of a good story. “Screaming in the Silence” was not perfect, and it’s definitely dated, but it made me feel something that I haven’t felt in a long time, which was excitement for life and excitement for romance. 

And in addition to that, excitement for reading. It was nice getting away from my own headspace for a while to experience someone else’s emotions. And I really like the format of reading on my phone, so I’m going to make it a thing to try and read at least one book every week.