Hair

My, I have been particularly chatty today. Intriguing. Probably because I have so many strange things happening all at once. Something compelled me to clean out the boxes on my dresser. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. I got those when I was still with my longest boyfriend, who I am still calling Bob for the sake of my privacy (and, hell, even his privacy), so they have quite a few nick-knacks in them that are, in a sense, artifacts of that relationship. Some spikes he had on some of his clothes. Two guitar picks he gave me the first time I ever went to his house. A decorative bit of jewelry he gave me from the Edgar Allan Poe museum. And my hair.

As you know if you have stalked my previous posts, Bob had a huge influence on my life and the person I am. For the entire time I was with him, my hair was very long. Dark, straight, very long hair. Not so different, really, from how it has been lately. Well, before I felt compelled to have my wonderful mother cut it a bit. Anyway, I somehow felt like my hair length was keeping me bound to him, in a way. Granted I was playing Final Fantasy IX at the time, and anyone who has played that game knows that Dagger uses (ha. ha.) a dagger to cut off her hair to a short length in an effort to move past the person she was when she had longer hair, if only temporarily. I decided to give that a try after I had rebounded from Bob with two different relationships.

I cleared the idea with my mom, and I went into the bathroom, put my hair up into a high ponytail, and chopped almost all of it off (in a similar fashion to Dagger in Final Fantasy IX, like a bob (oh the irony of my fake name choice) not a pixie cut). It took a good five minutes because my hair is so thick. That was one of the ways I let that relationship go, and an effort to move past it. I tied up the hair I had cut off, and I kept it for sentimental purposes. I felt like I was starting an entirely new section of my life, but I think I know differently now.

In keeping the hair I chopped off, I was holding on. I don't think I did it on purpose. And I don't think I did it because I still wanted him back. At the time, I knew I was done, that he had changed into something else, something that I couldn't see myself loving anymore. But I think I was scared to let go, and I think I've always been scared of ever opening myself up to someone as much as I did to him. He ripped my heart out, tore it to shreds, dropped those on the floor, and smashed them with one of his steel-toed boots. Then he put it back in, mended it, for about an hour. Then he ripped it out again, and gave it the same nasty treatment as before. And then, for some stupid reason, he made it worse by coming to live with me for who knows how long.

By keeping my hair, and the guitar picks, and the spikes, and some of the other things he gave me, I haven't let go. I wanted it to be sentimental, but it has somehow served as a reminder that I placed my heart into another human being's hands, giving him complete power over its fate, and he destroyed it. I'm damaged. My heart mended itself, but now its careful. It put up a huge, brick wall around itself and it won't let anyone in. And that isn't what I want anymore. I don't remember what it feels like to be able to put the trust in them that I put into Bob, and I'm done trying to protect myself from the possibility that it will happen again.

I'm going to try and let go. I think I am going to take all of these things either outside, or to Virginia Tech, or something, and get rid of them. I'm going to wait for a windy day, and I'm going to let go of my hair. I mean, seriously. I took my hair out of that box, and I got the curious idea to sniff it. I wanted to see what it smelled like. And the only thing I could smell was Bob. And it bothers me that I've been too afraid to get rid of it. To just let it go, and fly away in the wind. I mean, if I am going to take a lesson from Dagger, I need to do it right. She didn't keep her hair. She let it go. And that is exactly what I plan on doing.

Race for Candy

Race for Candy

“Why are you wearing a trash bag?” I asked my friend Stephen. I had just opened my door to find him standing there wearing a tall hat made of black tape, and a black trash bag with holes cut out for his head and arms. I knew it was the first time he was allowed to go trick-or-treating, but I thought he had to have a better idea of a costume than a trash bag with a hat.

            

“I’m a magician, Christina,” he told me with a beaming grin on his face. I just smiled back and accepted it since I still needed to get my mother to do my hair. I was going to be Princess Leia, but I was much too young to tame my unruly hair into two buns on the sides of my head. My mom was more agreeable with this costume than she had ever been with any of its predecessors simply because part of it was a white turtle neck and she had always had a fear of me freezing to death while trick-or-treating.

            

“If someone tells you that you can have however much candy you want, only take three or four pieces,” my mom told me.

            

“Okay,” I responded.

            

“And don’t walk in the middle of the road,” she continued as she yanked the left half of my hair into a bun.

            

“Okay.”

            

“And don’t run when you are going to get candy. The candy isn’t going anywhere,” she kept going.

            

“Okay,” I said. But actually, the candy was going somewhere: into the bags and baskets of the other numerous children in my neighborhood. And that just wasn’t okay.

After I was fully dressed as the Star Wars heroine in all my nerdy glory, my dad drove Stephen and me down my neighborhood to get on the hayride that all the kids got on to go around getting free candy from families that it seemed our parents had deemed trustworthy. When we got to the house where the hayride started, I immediately dragged Stephen along to hunt down my friends from school.

            

“Uh, why are you wearing a trash bag?” one of them asked Stephen.

            

“He’s a magician. Isn’t it obvious?” I asked. I had felt, since I met him in first grade, an inherent need to defend him. He was so short and bony, and people always picked on him. His mother was essentially a crazy-Christian and had a strong dislike for me because the word “sex” was on a paper I wrote in third grade. I was talking about gender. But anyway, until this year, his mother had told him that trick-or-treating was an act of Satan-worship and hadn’t let him go, nor would his parents give out candy to trick-or-treaters.

            

My other friend nodded. “I can see it. I mean, magicians definitely wear black. And the hat totally works. Nice costume Stephen,” she commented. Mr. Goodman, the owner of the hayride, called for everyone to get on and that it was time to go. Stephen and I went and sat down as close to the back as we could. After all, we wanted to get to the candy first.

            

We chuckled and ran from house to house, racing to ring the doorbell first and say “trick-or-treat” to the owners. One house was so covered in fake spider webs that I was pretty sure I could spot some real ones inside the fake ones. At one door, a Great Dane barked at us until someone shooed him away and brought out the candy. As an extremely small child, I was a bit traumatized from having a dog taller than me barking directly at my face through a glass door.

           

“Trick-or-treat!” we harmonized at the next door. A smiling old woman came out with a giant box of DVDs in her arms.

            

“Take whichever you like, dearies,” her voice creaked, almost like a wooden floorboard in an old house. I was pretty excited about getting a free DVD. At least, I was excited until I saw that they were all A Series of Unfortunate Events. That movie made me angry. It deviated too far from the book. And that old woman? Her greeting was misleading.

            

We were approximately three-fourths of the way done with trick-or-treating when some higher power decided to attempt to give me the life lesson of “always do what your mother tells you.” We were running, just like my mother told me not to, up one of the steeper driveways. No one came to answer the door, but there was a bowl of candy set out on the porch, so I took four pieces. Everything was going smoothly. However, when we were running back down the driveway to go to the next house, Stephen fell.

            

I’ve always had a problem with blood. The idea of something meant to be inside my body coming out freaks me out as well as making me feel light-headed and nauseous. Both of Stephen’s knees were completely bleeding, so I told another kid to find the hayride people or someone’s parents to help.

            

“Here, I’ll go pick up your candy,” I offered, scampering around, trying to find the loose candy in the darkness. Some of it had probably rolled into a ditch, but I wanted to salvage as much as I could. About five minutes later, the kid I had sent on his journey successfully returned with an adult.

            

“What happened?” he asked.

           

“We were going a bit too fast and I tripped,” Stephen answered. The whole mood on the evening was dampened for me. It was Stephen’s first Halloween and, in my need to not listen to my mother, I had completely ruined it for him. I looked in my pumpkin-shaped bucket. It was almost full to the brim. One of the next five houses was going to be mine, so I could just go home if I wanted to.

            

“I think I’m going to go home Stephen,” I told him. I felt guilty. I was the one who had encouraged him to run, and, in my childish mind, Stephen’s knee injuries were a lot more severe than any adult would think they were.

            

I hugged Stephen and my other friends goodbye and apologized to him before taking the turn down the road to get to my house. I made sure not to run, and I stayed as far to the side of the road as I could. My house came into view and I trudged up to the front door. My mother opened it after I rang the doorbell. I just looked at her for a moment and walked right past her, going into the living room to do my annual “sort the candy” ritual.

            

“You came home early?” she asked. I just nodded. “Are you okay?” Twizzlers go in the “icky” pile. “Christina?” Skittles go in the “super yummy” pile. “What happened?” she put her hand on my shoulder, forcing my attention. I looked up at her.

            

“Stephen fell,” I said.

            

“Oh? Is he okay? How did he fall?” she asked. I paused, throwing out an unwrapped piece of candy. I wasn’t allowed to eat those. I looked up again to see my mother staring at me expectantly. I let out a long sigh.

            

“We were running. Because the candy totally does go somewhere if we don’t get there before everyone else.” 

Christmas Bull

The Christmas Bull

“Mama, we need a Christmas tree.”

            

I placed the glass I was scrubbing back down in the sink, still covered in suds. Julie was sitting on a couch in the living room, and Nancy was behind me, staring up at me with wide eyes. “Oh? It’s true we don’t have one yet, but your Papa usually takes you to find one.”

            

“But he’s working late still. Mama, you have to take us to go get one. It isn’t Christmas if we don’t have a tree!” she exclaimed. I was skeptical. To go into the woods to find a tree, we would need to go through the fields where the cows grazed. It wasn’t the cows in general that I thought would give us trouble; the bull was what I was concerned about. However, with Nancy staring at me so hopefully, I couldn’t bring myself to say no.

            

It wasn’t too late yet, so I told Nancy to go find herself something warm to wear while I finished washing the dishes. Once I was done with that, I brought Julie to their room to get her dressed in something warm too. I almost had a heart attack, however, when I saw Nancy holding up a bright red sweater like she was about to put it on.

            

“No!” I said quickly. She dropped the sweater to the floor. Her eyes were almost as wide as when she was asking me to go get a tree as I explained. “If the big bull out there sees anything red, he’ll come running at it. I don’t want him to come running at you.”

            

“But mama,” she responded, “the wheelbarrow is red. How are we supposed to get a tree if we can’t take it?”

            

“We can still take that. It should be fine. Now go get yourself a coat and wait for us on the porch,” I reassured her. I pulled a brown shirt and a blue coat out for Julie, dressed her, and wore clothing of a similar shade. Nancy was waiting patiently on the porch when I arrived.

            

“This is so fun,” Nancy said as we traversed across the yard and down into the farm. There weren’t many crops out, since it was winter, but I had to keep the two of them careful of the fire ant hills. “I love Christmas trees, mama. They have the best smell ever!” I smiled down at her in response.

            

We came up to the big, brown barn and I had them wait outside. In the far back corner sat a faded, red wheelbarrow that we would take. Off of one of the shelves to the side I retrieved a hatchet and a handsaw, dropped the saw in the wheelbarrow, and brought it all outside.

            

I opened up the gate to get past the barbed wire fence and we continued our journey. It took about ten minutes to get far enough into the woods to see any good trees. Luckily, it seemed like the cows were out grazing much further than we needed to go, so I figured we wouldn’t need to worry about the bull. Finally, I spotted a tree I thought looked nice.

            

“What about this pretty little tree?” I asked, hatchet in hand. Nancy’s nose crinkled as she stared at the tree in question.

            

“It’s so small,” she replied. “We can do better than that.”

            

We kept looking through all of the trees in our woods. I came across another one that looked like it could be successful, but when I suggested it, Nancy pointed out that “It is way too big, mama There’s no way it would fit in our living room!” What she said was true, so we continued our search.

            

We had been walking for about twenty minutes more when I found another tree. It was larger than the first, and smaller than the second. When I looked at Nancy for approval, all she needed to do was smile and nod before I used the hatchet and the saw in the wheelbarrow to cut it down. Once it was down, I threw it on the wheelbarrow and began the long trek back.

           

            

We stopped once by the river for a break. The sound of it trickling through the woods was relaxing. Though it was cold outside, I was sweating. the cool breeze blowing against my skin felt heavenly, like stepping in front of a fan after being on the farm all day. I noticed it was starting to get darker, so we continued our journey back to the house.

            

We were almost back when I started to hear the cows. I was immediately concerned and began to walk a bit faster. Eventually, we came upon them. They were returning from when they were out grazing. It took me a long moment before I saw the bull. Unfortunately, he also spotted us. In a panic, I dropped the tree and wheelbarrow right in front of the barbed wire fence, since none of the cows go near that fence, and opened the gate. The bull was running over at us, and I threw both Nancy and Julie through the open gate soon following them and closing it behind me.

            

I held both of their hands as we made our way back to the house. “Mama,” Nancy said, “what about the tree? We can’t just leave it there.”

            

“It will be fine. The cows won’t go near the fence,” I reassured her. “Once your papa gets home I’ll send him out to fetch it. Then we can set it up and decorate it with all of the pretty ornament and icicles, okay?”

            

She nodded, though she didn’t seem convinced. We got back to the house and I sent Nancy and Julie to go change their clothes. Nancy had to help Julie since she was so young, but she had done so on occasion before. I started to cook supper.

            

“Is papa gonna be back soon?” Nancy asked, sitting down at one of the chairs by the kitchen table. I briefly turned from the stove.

            

“I’m sure he will,” I responded.

            

Nancy waited in that chair, not making a sound, for me to finish making the food. I went to find Julie and sat her down at the table. As we were eating, Nancy would look up at the clock and then eat more, then look up at the clock, and then eat even more.

            

“Don’t fret about it,” I told her. “He will be home soon.”

            

Sure enough, about ten minutes later, my husband walked through the front door. 

“Papa!” Nancy exclaimed, running up from the table and giving him a hug. “We went and we were trying to get a tree, and one was little and ugly, and one was really huge, and one was so perfect that we cut it down and we were bringing it back but then the cows were there and the bull started running at us so mama threw us out of the fence and we ran away but we had to leave the tree and I didn’t wanna leave the tree and we need you to go back and get the tree!” she told him, all in one breath.

            

“It’s okay dear, come and have supper first,” I said. He grabbed a plate of the food and joined us at the table, along with Nancy. Once he was done, he got his hat from his office room and went out to get the tree.

            

The house was completely silent as we waited for him to return. We waited for what felt like much longer than it had actually been. The minutes seemed to feel like hours. Finally, we heard him come in through the back door and carry the tree all the way into the living room, where the stand was already waiting.

            

We spent our evening decorating the tree and I hadn’t seen Nancy happier, at least not since last Christmas. After it was lit and covered in ornaments, papa told me he just threw the tree and wheelbarrow over the fence. I decided that day that I was never going to go without him to take the girls to find a Christmas tree again.

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In tribute to my grandmother who, though she now probably can't remember this story herself, has been immortalized by the fantastic internet.

Christmas Insomnia Part 2

In response to the coincidentally quite relevant memoir I had to  write for Creative Writing, I have decided to write another one, here, for all of your reading enjoyment, about this recent Christmas Eve. It will probably be longer, and I should warn you that, if you are planning on seeing The Hobbit movies but have not read the actual book, it would be advised that you do not read this post. Because there are spoilers. Big ones. Like, the size of the spiders in Australia.

Yes. That big. And I'm sure the spoilers have little baby spoilers hidden beside them too... if those spiders can be called little.

I am going to continue to spew in an effort to have the spoilers be far enough down the page for people who care to be able to leave. I need to at least give you a fair opportunity to not be spoiled, as large as I know the temptation is. So I am going to take this space to talk about none other than my favorite non-domestic animal, Pandas.

I am very fond of pandas. I am currently in possession of a stuffed panda I bought from the national zoo, an aromatherapy panda that I can microwave (even though it feels like animal cruelty, I just have to remind myself that it is NOT a real panda), a panda pillow pet, and a panda wearing a maroon t-shirt that says "I <3 Virginia Tech." Because pandas are simply too cool.

I have been playing World of Warcraft a lot, which I haven't done in a while, and I smile every time I see a panda. I can be a panda, too, and that is just... too great.

Let's see. What else can I spew about? My sisters and I made a gingerbread house on Christmas Eve. Look, I'm being relevant. 

I know you want to know why it looks so spectacular. And, you know what? Just because you have taken the time to read my silly post, I will tell you our secret. It is the logs. See the snow-covered logs in the bottom right? They are what make the house amazing. And they are simply three broken pieces of a white-chocolate covered pretzel.

Have I covered enough space yet? I certainly hope so.

It is time to begin.

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Insomnia 2012

I couldn't sleep. It was funny, before coming home for Christmas break, my Creative Writing professor has us write a memoir about a Christmas memory, and I chose to write about mt insomnia once. I didn't imagine that such an event would happen again, since it had been years since I'd had a sleeping problem on Christmas Eve.

Oh, how very wrong I was.

I recently saw The Hobbit in theaters three times, conveniently only paying for one of them, and I loved it. I am also irrationally in love with Kili the Dwarf. Yes, sometimes I get slightly concerned for my mental health, but when I convince myself that a fictional character is my soulmate, I just tend to write so very well. So I was spending my Christmas Eve looking up things on the internet about The Hobbit.

The day didn't start off well. I knew Peter Jackson was adding in a female elf, but I wasn't aware that he was adding her in to be a love interest for Kili. This got me irrationally upset, for a variety of reasons. I am only slightly ashamed to admit that the largest was because I was jealous. The others were because it doesn't really seem like something Tolkein would have done.

My problems were lessened a bit when I saw a post by Aidan Turner, Kili's actor, that said his character knew nothing could happen. This led me to believe it was more like how Gimli had a minor crush on Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring. And I decided I could handle that. Curious, I kept looking through comments and blogs about the situation, and I was shocked to find one that said (SPOILERS, SO DEAR LORD IF YOU DID NOT LEAVE BEFORE WHEN I STALLED OUT FOREVER, I HOLD NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS) both characters would probably be dead by the end of the three movies anyway, so he didn't much suppose it mattered.

My heart took that opportunity to stop.

I had come to terms with my fictional dwarf thinking some elf woman was pretty and trying to woo her. I was like, "okay, it isn't like it would work out anyway." But this? Death? That was a more permanent problem.

Unfortunately, I was then distracted by my sisters forcing me to help them make the lovely gingerbread house shown above, so I had to migrate my research to my iPhone.

I had read The Hobbit before. I remembered all of the main scenes. Why didn't I remember Kili dying? And, what's that internet? Fili dies too? To attempt to protect a mortally wounded Thorin? Who then also dies anyway?

My heart was breaking into a thousand little pieces, falling all over the kitchen floor, but I had to hide it. I couldn't very well tell my sisters or mother about my problem, or they would undoubtedly send me to the loony bin due to my clear insanity. Instead, I hid my heartbreak and distracted myself with the gingerbread house (which turned out so very lovely).

I continued to distract myself for the rest of the evening. Though the dilemma occasionally crossed my mind, I was focused on watching Elf, opening my new pajamas and seeing everyone else's, and watching Scrooge. But when Scrooge was over, the trouble began.

It was time to go to my room.

I was fine for a while. I played World of Warcraft. Granted, I couldn't play my dwarf hunter because, not only was she a dwarf because of how much I loved The Hobbit, she has a pet cat named Kili and I figured it would just make me depressed. So I played different characters, until eventually I felt tired.

And then all hell - within my mind, of course - broke loose.

Every time I would look at my background and see Kili, Fili, or Thorin, I would get irrationally depressed and almost cry. I was listening to The Hobbit soundtrack, but some of the songs were also causing the same effect. I still didn't turn it off, and I tried to sleep.

It wasn't working. And, lord save my soul, I had begun to actually cry. And there were no tissues within an arm's reach. Disastrous.

So I decided I would email my dearest roommate and friend, Grace.

One day you are going to answer my email. Probably tomorrow (today?), when I won't be able to see your response because I will be in the middle of nowhere, with no internet, in South Carolina. Or the next day. When I will also be there. Really, not excited about it. And I have a problem. Every time I look at the background of my computer, my eyes start getting all teary and I sometimes start crying. However, I am not willing to take off my Kili theme. I am trying to figure out how I got past this with L. Possibly because he is still there for the rest of the show in spirit. And because Near is very similar to him. But really, Kili hasn't even died yet. That is going to be in the summer of 2014. So why on earth am I being so emotional right now? It sucks, yo. J.R.R. Tolkein is a cruel, cruel man. As is Peter Jackson. Why did he have to make the three characters that die the three most attractive/connectable-to/awesome? (Aside from the hedgehog, of course, but he died for a brief moment as well. Just saying.) Couldn't he have made... Bombur super attractive? Or like... Ori? There were plenty of dwarves. Why does he feel the need to torture his poor, fangirling audience members? When HE caused the fangirling! It is, again, cruel. Mistreatment of the public, I daresay. And poor Aiden Dewhurst; there is now no escape for him from being very, very alike to Kili. I will refrain from making him royalty, and refrain from making him a dwarf. It was all I could do not to go and immediately change his eye color to a chocolately brown.

I was sitting at my desk with my computer open when I minimized the internet after being super upset about the whole Kili dying thing, and I noticed the amazingly attractive face on my background. My eyes got all watery, again, and my poor little heart broke, again, like it has been all day for various reasons, and I observed how everything about said face on my background was Aiden except for the eyes.

Because Aidan Turner has chocolately brown eyes, but Aiden Dewhurst has very bright, green eyes. I thought to myself, "Christina, all you have to do is change the description of his eyes in chapter one and then tell Shayna the change; it isn't as if she has even started to draw him, much less color him, yet."

But then, my stronger self, the one that managed to move on past L's death, said "No, Christina. There was a reason you gave Aiden green eyes, not only because you didn't want him to be one hundred percent identical to Kili. You cannot, I repeat CANNOT, change it."

My weaker, heartbroken self responded with "But it could still work if his eyes were deep and chocolately and blah blah blah (I can assure you, self, that I can make describing Aidan Turner/Kili's eyes sound EXTREMELY gooey and romantic, perhaps even moreso than with bright green ones). Does it really make a difference? The readers will never know that Aiden is heavily based, physically, on Kili the dwarf. Only my friends and family would even notice, and only because I am obsessed. So why can't I?"

"Because," my stronger self began, "you need to have a point of reference, physically, that reminds you that Aiden is not Kili."

"But doesn't the fact that he is tall count? Kili is short."

"No. Because you don't picture Kili as short, because he is always around other dwarves. But eye color. You pay attention to eye color. This way if you get too drawn in, you can mention the eye color to pull back out and remember that, as much as they have in common, Aiden is NOT Kili."

"But all I want to do right now is immortalize Kili. Because I love him." <---- (Look at this irrational, emotional response! It reminds me of you when you are upset. O.O) <3

"First of all, he is a fictional character. Therefore, he is not real. So even when you are forced to watch him die to save his uncle on a very large screen in 3D and possibly 48fps, he is not really dying. In fact, Aidan Turner is not dying at all. Secondly, you should not be in love with a fictional character. Again, he is not real. He will never be real. Also, it is unlikely that you will find anyone on earth right now who is that attractive, funny, intelligent, trained with a bow and arrow, and can pull off the long hair. Third, you tried to write fan fiction after L died because you wanted to find a way to bring him back. But you never actually wrote it. You got over it. Therefore, I think it is safe to assume you can get over this as well. I am relatively certain that you are no more in love with Kili than you were initially with L, Envy, Lavi, Riku, or any of the other fictional men that have each captured parts of your heart. You. Will. Get. Over. It."

My argument was extremely logical, and you know how I respond to logical arguments. Usually if someone lays the facts down in front of my eyes, I can understand them and stop being emotionally irrational. But you may recall when I told you that (insert name of male I recently had a huge crush on but am not willing to share with the public here) was the exception to that rule.

I lied.

The true exception is any person, fictional or not, that I feel a strong, romantic, emotional attachment to. (I didn't lie on purpose, by the way. I just wasn't thinking about fictional characters during that particular late-night chat.) And, right now, that person is Kili. Somehow I end up feeling as strongly for fictional characters as if they were real. It is really a problem. And I may need to, one day, see a therapist about it. Unless I find a man who doesn't care. Writing does help some, but with the current circumstance it just makes me want to cry more.

I also can't sleep. Which is why I narrated my dilemma to you like it was creative nonfiction. It seemed entertaining, and I want to write.

Now then, what I do need you to tell me, along with the things mentioned in the previous email about naming the animals, if you think it would be too much to change Aiden's eye color. I haven't looked at a picture of Kili in about an hour, so most of me is on the "keep them green" side, but the moment I see a picture that is likely to waver.

And I also need you to tell me whether I am certifiably insane and legitimately need to see a psychiatrist before I harm someone (myself included). Or if you think I am insane but no treatment is needed because I am clearly passive and won't harm anyone (including myself). Or if you don't think I am insane at all, and that this kind of an attachment to a fictional character is completely normal. Especially doing it multiple times. I have a very, very long list of fictional characters I have had this problem with in the past. However, I usually am not writing a story with a character similar to them in it, nor do I spontaneously find out that they are going to die in the final installment of whatever they are in after the creator goes through a bunch of trouble to get me emotionally attached to them. Hence why Kili is being more of a problem than most.

Maybe it would help if I had my shirt.

It hasn't come in yet.

Neither has my poster.

Or my phone case.

Or my J-Pop CDs.

Sad life.

I have been writing this email for a long time. I would like to let you know that I apologize for writing you a novel, but it really does help me with emotional instability if I can write it all down and share it with someone. You get to be that lucky person. Because my family won't let me tell them what has me upset because I told them I found out something about the end of the Hobbit that I would have been better off not knowing.

That isn't entirely true, by the way. I mean I am sure I would have found out before the third movie came out anyway, but it still matters. What if I hadn't known and went to the third movie without a huge box of tissues and a blanket and a large stuffed animal to cuddle? It would come as a surprise. And then I would probably have a heart attack or going running out of the theater with tears streaming down my face and no one would understand what was wrong because no one else is so damn obsessed with a stupid fictional character to freak out this much about them freaking DYING.

And then I hear the damn Blunt the Knives song and it makes me really happy, but then really sad. Because... I mean, I think you get it.

Really though. If I ever am planning on killing off a character that I have gone through any length to keep my readers emotionally attached to without an EXTREMELY good reason, yell at me, remind me how I felt when I found out about Kili dying, and if I still don't believe you, show me this email. Because, in the event that I am not the only psycho like me in the world, I do not want to put anyone through the pain and torture that I have been through today.

Ever.

It is cruel.

And so, so depressing.

And it is Christmas, so that just isn't allowed. 

I am supposed to be happy.

Damn.

You.

J.

R.

R.

Tolkein.

And.

Peter.

Jackson.

Anyway, sorry to write you a novel. I do hope you read all of it. Because I just put about an hour's work into writing it. And I would be sad if you didn't read all of it.

I hope it entertained you at least a little, and that you don't ask for a roommate switch now that you have seen the full brunt of my crazy. (This is actually the worst of it. I don't think I am hiding any other strange, mental issues from you. Intentionally or unintentionally.)

Thank you for your lovely time, and I hope you respond to my email.

Even if I don't get to read your response for a few days.

Because no internet.

Kill me.

I'm just going to be sitting around, trying not to cry about Kili.

This is not going to end well.

But Merry Christmas, and I will probably text you a bunch, but it would probably be a good idea to answer this email with another email as opposed to trying to respond to it in its lengthy glory via text message. Or phone call for that matter. No, email will be the best method there.

<3

I then continued to attempt to sleep, but still nothing was working. Conveniently, I write well when I am in an emotional state, especially when it involves a fictional character I think I am in love with. So, I wrote stuff. Lots of stuff. And I kept writing for a few hours before I decided that I really needed to sleep. Because it was almost 4:00 in the morning. I did, luckily, succeed.

In the morning, I was again distracted by presents. There were lots of them. Reminiscent of my older Insomnia memoir, I got a PlayStation 3 from dearest Santa this year. Very exciting. But then, we were done with presents eventually. And I was very sad.

And my sister convinced me that telling her about it would help, even though it was a huge, Australian spider-sized spoiler. So I did. And I proceeded to spend the next three hours crying my eyes out with some breaks in between. I moved all of my presents to my room, and I eventually managed to pull myself together enough to watch a video of Aidan Turner being interviewed about The Hobbit.

It was like magic.

I stopped crying.

Somehow, I don't know if it was the reminder that all three movies had been filmed and Kili's actor was still alive, or the ability I gained to separate the actor from the character to have a bit more of reality in the situation, but I was okay again. I watched a few more interviews and they made me laugh. I was able to continue on my Christmas day in peace.

Though, I should point out, my character Aiden does now have brown eyes. However, this decision was made later on, from a less heartbroken mind, and for reasons very different than the needs listed above. Plus, his personality really isn't anything like Kili's. If anyone is, it would be Isaac.

I may just be trying to justify myself right now, but I don't particularly care. And I will continue to funnel this emotional energy into writing my story.

Christmas Insomnia

This is a memoir of a Christmas Eve night when I couldn't sleep that mirrored, though for very different reasons, this most recent Christmas Eve when I could not sleep.

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Insomnia

I couldn't sleep. It felt like hours had gone by, but in reality it had only been about fifteen minutes. Before coming upstairs, we had done what we do every Christmas Eve: we watched Scrooge and opened a present. Of course, the present was always pajamas. We ate little cubes of cheese, meatballs, and some crackers along with some steaming apple cider, and then, like every year, my two sisters and I are sent to bed.

            
Unfortunately, I didn't seem to be able to sleep. I had experienced this problem before, but never to this degree. Time kept passing, and I just kept lying there, in my tiny bed, awake. I tried to count sheep, but that method had never worked for me. All I wanted was to go downstairs and see what I got from Santa, but I knew that if I went too soon, nothing would be there yet. I had to wait.

            
So I waited.

            
During this time, I thoroughly regretted having a clock that ticks. In the complete silence of the house and dark of my room, all I heard was the even “tick… tick…” of my clock. It didn't quite make me angry, but it was the main cause of it being near impossible for me to get to sleep. It was approximately two hours later when my body decided it would allow me some rest. So sleep I did until my alarm woke me up at 2:00 in the morning. Finally, the time had come to sneak downstairs and see my presents.

            
I crept into my sister Carol’s room and poked her on the shoulder. She didn't budge. I poked again, but there was still no response.

            
“Carol,” I whispered. I certainly was not planning on going downstairs in the pitch black darkness by myself.

            
“Caaaroool,” I whispered a bit louder. “It’s time to wake uuuuuuup.” I poked her again. Still no response. I took this opportunity to nudge her over and over again until, eventually, she woke up.

            
“It’s time to go look!” I exclaimed quietly. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and got out of bed, grabbing her flashlight and making her way downstairs without a word. We carefully avoided the spots in the hallway that we knew would squeak; we didn't want out mother to know that we always snuck down to look at the presents early.

            
Our presents from Santa were always laid out in a certain fashion. My oldest sister Lauren’s were on the longest couch, Carol’s were in front of the fire, and mine were on the smaller couch. When the two of us went to our respective sections, we were happy with what we found.

            
On my couch, as well as Carol’s pile, was a PlayStation 2. We had both wanted one for a while, so that pretty much made my Christmas. For me, there was also an extremely large, gray throw blanket, a book I had been wanting, a coloring book and some crayons, a big teddy bear, a furry, blue robe, some colorful pens, some chapstick, and various other things that are too numerous to describe.

            
After we finished looking through all of our things, we quietly made our way back up the stairs and back over the squeaky spots in the hallway. This time was much better than the first. I was able to lie down in my bed, disregarding the candy cane under my pillow, and fall asleep within ten minutes. And I knew, when I woke up again, that I had a fun day ahead of me.