Confessions of a stay at home drama queen

Maybe Jason is right.

Maybe I just have way too much time on my hands to just... think. I've always thought of myself as an analytical person, and I would be ashamed of myself if I weren't candidly honest that YES I have always thought way too much, analyzed far too often, and scrutinized the details of my life for as long as I can remember.

Exhibit A would be the collection of ten journals paging through my life since second grade when all I could account for was recess flirting episodes with Jordan. Exhibit B would be the dozen parenting books I've accumulated over the past three years that I don't think my mom acquired in 30 years of raising me and my brother. I guess my hyperanalytical tendencies also reveal my English major in college when I was down right expected to pick everything apart into deep thought.

So what is it this time?

Embarrassingly enough, again it is the damn vampire saga that has its grips on me. Was. Yes, Twilight, books one through four. Over the summer I submersed myself in the writings out of pure curiosity, and was engaged enough to read it at a painstakingly fast pace that emptied my ibprofen bottle to aleviate headaches resulted from reading four-hundred pages a day.

Why then? Why now? I'm addicted to what some have noted as girl porn. Hilarious, right?

Well allow this romance novel phene to elaborate. I was halfway through the third novel this past week when I found myself stealing time away from the kids stacking blocks or going-to-school-to-visit-daddy pretend play so I could return to Edward Cullen's monologues to Bella Swan declaring his chivalrous idealizations.

"You see, Bella, I was always that boy. In my world, I was already a man. I wasn't looking for love-- no, I was far too eager to be a soldier for that; I thought nothing but the idealized glory of the war that they were selling prospective draftees then-- but if I had found... I was going to say if I had found someone, but that won't do. If i had found you, there isn't a doubt in my mind how I would have proceeded. I was that boy who would have-- as soon as I discovered that you were what I was looking for-- gotten down on one knee and endeavored to secure your hand. I would have wanted you for eternity, even when the word didn't have quite the same connotations."

Sigh. Reading this completely fictitious literature from an idyllic character such as Edward Cullen left me phening for more. A modern day Romeo. While reading through this my stepdaughter made mention, as she did this summer, that she and her friends didn't want to date in high school unless the guy was a glimmer of Edward. I was stunned for a moment and absorbed her thought. Edward is the quintessential romantic man comprised of countless alluring attributes so hey, why not pass up the normal warped high school boy until Mr. Edward comes along? Perhaps she had a point.

On the other hand is there a self destructing prophecy here? Are young women deluding themselves with "something with no literary or artistic value other than to stimulate desire” which is what pornography simply is according to the Webster’s dictionary definition? Except the difference here is women are being misled by female escapism, vicariously seeking a romantic fairy tale of our own when in reality fairy tales are fictional. Purely. Are women setting themselves up for failure searching for a new standard of the ideal man?

I'd be lying if I said I wan't stunned by the idea of Edward. I am certainly not alone [as you sit there shaking your head at the computer screen in disagreement]. Really-- there are Facebook pages devoted to people who have unrealistic expections of relationships now as a result of becoming addicted to Twilight [I write that as if FB is quantifying anything]! I mean, this is female escapism on a completely different level, and it's one thing to obscure my own mind with hopes that Jason would one day recite lines of Romeo and Juliet as easily as he normally would recount the first five plays of Penn State's last football game. But he is not Edward and he would not watch R&J with me nor have the knowledge to whisper the lines to me like Edward, a la New Moon. And that's okay... because Jason is a real live man and most men I know don't suck blood either, so I'm fine with that.

I'm not proclaiming chivalry is dead but I am trying to reign in my thoughts a bit about the reality of expectations in relationships, and maybe trying to unveil them to my stepdaughter too.

Okay maybe more to myself.

Just as soon as I finish Breaking Dawn.

Enjoying the ride

Delayed as ever, I decided to take up the offer to join the Twilight band wagon and began reading the saga series last week.

I've never read Harry Potter or other mythical series like Lord of the Rings or Percy Jackson. I just don't really "do" fantasy-like books. Nothing personal against J.K. Rowling, but I'm just more acclimated with tragic drama and romance to really take up the idea of fiction beyond my imagination [or reality for that matter].

So why not read on some vampires and werewolves, right?

I'm currently finishing the third novel, Eclipse, in the saga series which should indicate that it's suspended my disbelief in fantasy fiction having any deeming qualities.

I have one confession, however, but I'll get to that later.

As I mentioned I am a fan of romance and usually reread one of my Nicholas Sparks novels and become indulged in the twisted fate of a couple who fall in love and likely ends in tragedy. I'll admit that some end happily, but mostly always end tragically; regardless, I read these tear jerkers repeatedly with the same result. Another trip to Costco's to replenish the tissue supply in our house. So why do I do that?

I asked myself the same questions about the Twilight series, but the question was phrased more like... why do I like this stuff?!

My step-daughter is also a pretty big fan of the series, being that all I've read is borrowed from her Twilight shelf of her bookcase. She'll be fifteen this Fall. When I was her age, I definitely focused on falling in love and looked for it everywhere, to put things mildly. I don't know that her thinking is quite as warped as mine was. I suspect she wonders what the love fall is all about too.

She forwarned me the second book in the series was a bore to her before I started the book this weekend. I finished it on Sunday and realized her boredom was due to the absense of details pertaining to the passion of falling in love that are exemplified in book one and three. I'm sure it's all over the final book as well, I just haven't reached that point yet. Without saying it, she too was drawn to the acute details of the two people falling in love-- the sheer physical, emotional and mental states that are completely overpowered by nature. Perhaps that intrigued her in a way of not having experienced that euphoria, the same way I would have viewed it at fifteen.

Enter: confession. At twenty-seven, I still look at it similarly, but in a way of nostalgia.

In a way of totally and completely missing it.

We lucky ones who have made a journey in our life and managed to fall helplessly, sometimes blindly, in love can remember the unbelievable array of emotions resulted from that first trip.

I was well into college when I realized that I was helplessly in love with a coach, yes my coach I met the last three months of my senior high school year, who I kept in contact with after graduating. I remember the visits to my dorm, our dinners out to local restaurants and the electricity that seemed to flow from him to me, and how the cheeks on my face would blush instantly when I thought about being around him. To say I had butterflies in my stomach with or without him in my proximity was a vast understatement and just one of the many physical results I felt after crashing head over heels in love.

I remember the first time he kissed me and how it literally left me breathless. When he returned to his home after that visit I remember replaying that kiss in my memory leaving me without oxygen again and again.

Poetic conversations, and lofty ideas of what the future could hold. I repeatedly thought of these words endlessly over in my mind during the time we spent a part. When I wasn't with him, I was completely out of myself and loathed the idea of feeling incomplete. Without any reservations I was overpowered by the notion that he was the one I would spend the rest of my life with, unquestionably.

The journey of falling in love is a profound, albeit an amazing experience too. I feel dismayed right now as I'm staggering through these vampire novels because it acknowledges that the high of falling in love is a temporary state, something I obviously knew before now. At the time, you feel compelled the emotions could last forever, and when it fades I think it's safe to say you miss it. Being in love is quite different and soon follows "the fall". The former almost always requires a commitment of faith and unlike the latter is not necessarily an amazing act of nature.

Regardless of the literature that gets me to relive those early days of our relationship, to be able to recount and revisit that experience vicariously through fictionalized characters, even vampires dare I say, is totally worth it.