By Endera Allen
Reading has always occupied a special place in my heart. Books are the keys which unlock universes that overflow with exciting magic and adventure. The ability to step into another person’s shoes and experience his/her created world fills me with a sense of wonder. For those reasons, finishing a 200-page novel in a single day was an easy feat for me as a teenager. Fiction is my preference. As I continued to read, the real world became more distant to me. I was untouched by some truths that were of common knowledge to my classmates. While my hunger for adventure took me to mystical lands, I was unsure how the real world around me worked.
If you asked me about witches, warlocks, vampires, werewolves, fairies, or elves, I was a burbling encyclopedia. My knowledge of how one fends off vamps and werewolves were not useful to me in the real world. Nevertheless, the joy these stories brought me and the hope for brighter, more magical, horizons carried me through. In retrospect, I’ve realized that some of the messages told in those teen novels weren’t reflective of what occurs in the real world. Worse, sometimes the articulated messages negatively affected a girl’s development as they did mine. Even now, I struggle to acknowledge the untruths I found in some of my favorite novels, as the inner child in me holds tightly to my daydreams. Three of the problematic messages present in the fictional books many adolescent girls read are:
Deep friendships are easy to create.
My awakening came around high school, as I sought to rejoin the world. The rose-colored glasses were sitting on the bridge of my nose, allowing me to peek around and see what was happening. I noticed my classmates were nothing like the exciting people I encountered in my books. The feelings that were elicited from those daring encounters on a book’s page made me yearn for more companionship. I desired a bond that felt deeper and meaningful. I let go of my childhood friends and began my hunt for something more unique. I ended up isolating myself in my search, thereby closing myself off to the love and friendship of those around me.
It wasn’t until I hurt a friend did I realized the error of my ways. In books, 15 pages of text can build an incredible affinity for a character that lasts for a lifetime. I was trying to develop that same relationship from a chance encounter with a real person. I hadn’t realized what I was looking for takes time. “What comes easy won’t last, and what lasts won’t come easy.” I also learned that having a good friend requires you to be a good friend. The latter realization is helping me embody the relationships I’m presently trying to have in my close friendships.
Your partner is supposed to be your everything. He/she will complete you. There is no ‘you’ without a partner in life.
This myth came to me through countless teen romance novels. Think about the beginning of such a book. It introduces you to the story’s main characters and the dynamics in their worlds. This is designed to help you understand how a woman can fit into a man’s life, as well as how lackluster her life was before his arrival. Such stories perpetuate the sexist concept that it’s okay if you don’t like your life right now because the right man will make your life better when he arrives. Can you imagine my first relationship? It was a whirlwind of fun, but also provided me with some eye-opening life lessons.
For instance, your partner is not a cure-all to the troubles in your life. This was hard for me to accept. I didn’t want to be in charge of my destiny. I wanted someone else to lead me towards greener pastures. Another false message! But the truth is your partner’s presence does enhance your life. However, he is his own person, and he can’t make strides for you or entirely focus on you while creating his life. I had to learn to work and focus on myself. While difficult, I wouldn’t have it another way!
Success can happen overnight. Fate is in charge of bringing about happy endings.
Who doesn’t love a success montage? Especially, where the main character becomes a queen overnight, ready to lead an army into battle against a monster or an evil foe. Fictional books have a beautiful way of leaving the gritty bits of change out of the sequence. They don’t say how hard healing and evolution is. Thus, leading me to my erroneous mantra of if it is hard, it is not for me. This falsehood has held me back. I waited for divine inspiration to pour into me and finish the task at hand.
Well, I have received the rudest of awakening on this journey of understanding this great truth. For some reason Nike’s ‘Just Do It!’ slogan no longer looks so stupid. The fact of the matter is that you still have to move your body to get to your desire location. I can credit countless adventure books with their overnight glow ups for this belief. Thankfully, I’m now aware that I am the captain of my vessel. Only I can keep it on course.
Although, I’ve retained some useless knowledge of fantasy worlds. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Fiction gave my life some brightness and vibrancy. It also helped me to see new possibilities. The books never were just stories. They were someone else’s reality, and I relished in the opportunity to know another being in this way. The level of empathy and tolerance for other’s differences and my excitement for new things derive from my love of reading. Books kept me young at heart and helped me decide the reality I want for myself. I believe that anything is possible. I, therefore, encourage readers to pick up a fictional book and enjoy it for what it is, namely a fantasied world. Because it’s not real, don’t take the author’s messages literally.
