It's a thought I've had many times over the course of the past two years. I had it the day I read the entirety of Patrick Ness's exceptional Chaos Walking trilogy. Again when I was until four in the morning reading Shipbreaker. My motion sickness kicked in when I couldn't put the Birthmarked series down. When I got off the bus and made myself a cup of ginger tea I repeated the mantra to myself.
***
Michelle is the only person with whom I actually enjoy going to history museums.
Scratch that. Michelle is the only person with whom I actually enjoy going to museums.
Full stop.
We spent the majority of the day today at the Minnesota History Center at an exhibit about Prohibition. It was incredible. It was infinitely better than I could have imagined. I stood in front of the 21st Amendment. I got my picture taken with a banner saying Votes for Women. I got to tell Michelle that William Jennings Bryan not only supported women's suffrage and the temperance movement, but also prosecuted the Scopes trial. We talked about how people we knew in Milwaukee and Northern Wisconsin had known Al Capone (no joke) and benefited directly from his largess.
It was a good day.
Because we're both nuts for museums we spent part of the day in the Minnesota's Greatest Generation exhibit. I wandered away from her at some point and started reading the story of a Minnesota veteran who was an incredibly talented jazz musician who worked seven days a week at an laundromat and played gigs in the evenings. The story made me think of how difficult that life must have been--balancing what you love with the financial necessity of having to work and before I knew it I was tearing up in the middle of the museum.
Some people cry when they cross the finish line of a race. Others get a little misty at the top of a mountain they've hiked. Church or books or music can set others off.
I cry in museums.
Lingering in art museums I will inevitably happen upon a piece (intentionally or otherwise) that I find so lovely I dissolve on the spot. Wandering through science museums, I think about the improbability of our own existence or stand in front of an early prototype of Voyager and consider us reaching out through the stars to find intelligent life and I break down. Perusing history museums I imagine receiving a telegram that my brother or father or boyfriend will never come home as the result of a war and my heart feels like it's breaking.
Michelle, being the intrepid best friend of sixteen years, is my ideal museum companion because discovering me wiping my eyes in front of a poster about a long-deceased saxophonist is no longer unusual. It's not even cause for comment.
***
I read The Fault in Our Stars cover to cover, in about three hours.
Today, in fact.
I didn't time it well. I started it before the history center and finished it after, so I was already rubbed a little raw. But once I started it I couldn't put it down. It's an emotional lulu of a book, at times infuriating (No sixteen year old talks like that! What seventeen year old read Waiting for Godot?) at times hysterically funny and at times a real emotional sucker-punch.
It's the second YA novel I've read in 2014 and while it didn't have quite the same Everyoneneedstoreadthisbookimmediately quality that Eleanor & Park had (Oh, haven't you heard me talk about how much I loved that book?) it was still funny, smart, and deeply moving. I was pleased that I read it. And when I closed the book and went to make myself a cup of tea and find some tissues I thought (again):
Joel Stein is an idiot.
***
No fewer than six acquaintances have sent me the HuffPost article "16 Habits of Highly Sensitive People."
It's kindly meant, and I usually send back a quick "Thanks! A couple other folks have emailed this to me too!"
What I really want to say is "Send me something peer-reviewed, with footnotes, and I might take it seriously."
Have I mentioned I'm a real snot when it comes to things that even come remotely near smelling of pop-science?
You've probably seen the article Or, at least, if you're not a Luddite you've probably come across it in some capacity. Even without the emails, it's shown up in my Facebook newsfeed at least a zillion times in the past week. It was trending on Twitter. A workshop at a conference I attended recently made reference to it. At first I can't tell what's annoying me about the article but apparently because I'm highly sensitive, I'm more annoyed than the rest of the world.
My feathers, I'll realize eventually, are still a little ruffled by the fallout from one of my recent posts (Note: do not tell men they have the emotional capacity of Peter Pan and that their literary heroes are entitled, passive, egotistic shitheads. Even if both are true). I'm pissed because I've been told a number of times in the past week You're too emotional. You're so sensitive. You have no place commenting on the emotions of men because you have lady feelings. Get on medication because you're clearly bi-polar.
Here are some things I know about myself. I cry more easily than some people I know, less easily than others. I often cry when thinking about things that have no direct impact on me whatsoever. Books, television (ohmygodthedoomsdayepisodeofwho), music, museums, they all hit me hard, in the emotional solar plexus. I'm wired in such a way that I seem to be more reactive to things, good or bad. It takes me longer to process my emotions, and I'm often not ready to talk about them until weeks later. My default setting is for privacy and pushing people away.
These things all seem to qualify me as a Highly Sensitive Person.
***
I try not to be too fussy about the things that people read.
When I read a book I love, I do have a slight tendency to evangelize about how wonderful and life changing it is, but all in all, I try not to judge people based on what they read. I don't, you know, always succeed (It still find myself flabbergasted when people tell me they haven't read The Great Gatsby) but I make an effort. I think people should try to read omnivorously, but because I believe it both broadens and deepens your relationship with books when you cane make connections across the things you read (if you ever want to see me have an intense geekout ask me about how The Code Book made me understand a throwaway scene in Life After Life).
All of that said, I love YA books.
I am an unapologetic reader of YA novels. I stopped reading Moby-Dick so that I could read The Hunger Games. Once, I went to work without sleep so that I could stay up and finish Ender's Game. When I missed Paulo Bacigalupi at the National Book Festival in September I was devastated.
One of the most frustrating parts of becoming an adult is the feeling that everything about you needs to have a different label slapped on it. You're INTJ, you have anxiety, the results of your StrengthsFinder analysis suggest that you like bran muffins, you're experiencing obsessive-compulsive disorder, that's clinical depression talking. The feeling of constant diagnosis (sought or no) is what gets me so hot about the HuffPost article (that and lack of footnotes. Seriously, guys). There are times when a diagnosis is extremely helpful and necessary (OCD, depression, and anxiety). There are other times when it just feels like one more label. One more way in which you are not being the person you're supposed to be. It's not enough to say "you experience the world in a different way, and that's cool" instead you're a Highly Sensitive Person.
One of the reasons I love YA books is their emotional vulnerability. They're nakedly, hugely emotional in a way that so many adult novels aren't. I suspect it's because as a teenager all of your emotions and reactions to things are so intense, and so it resonates well with them.
And it resonates with me. Not because I'm emotionally stunted or crazy (Fuck you, Joel Stein). I don't throw fits in public. I can count on one hand the number of times I've raised my voice when I've been upset. I don't smash crockery or throw things across the room. It resonates with me because my emotional hard-wiring is just different. I have a lower threshold for stimulation or reaction. When I experience an emotion (particularly a strong one like love or lust or jealousy) it hits me harder than it hits other people, But, honestly, who the fuck cares? I read and love YA books because they hit me where I live emotionally and because they take me back to a time when having those emotions and expressing them wasn't something that need to be diagnosed.
At least, that's what I tell myself as I use the last of my tissues to mop up after the last five pages of The Fault in Our Stars.
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