Broken and Built Anew by Nienna324
Mar. 2nd, 2019 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nienna324 posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
b2memB2MEM Prompt, Card and Number: I20, reason (Deep Thoughts)
Format: Ficlet I suppose
Genre: Personal Meta?
Rating: T
Warnings: Excessive (unintentional) use of water metaphors, CNTW for talk of questioning
Characters: N/A
Pairings: N/A
Creator’s Notes: I’m not sure if this really counts. It’s what came out when I was looking at the prompt, after a few failed attempts at writing fic.
Summary: After I first read LOTR, I went through a period of intense questioning, which was one of the many after effects of reading LOTR that changed me forever. This is some of the what led to it, and brief thoughts looking back. (I need a better summary)
When I was newly thirteen and first reading LOTR, I was obsessive about not spoiling it for myself. So obsessive that I would do anything. Force myself to believe what I read was a dream, make up stories about how I found it in an untrustworthy source, remind myself that I had seen implications of different versions, say, “It is still unknown” even when it wasn’t. I said it so many times that it became true.
It was so easy to believe it once I was in that pattern. Even when I was hearing information in direct opposition, it was hard to change the feeling.
I was carried on a boat filled with holes, held up only by my own obstinate determination.
Exactly three weeks after I finished LOTR was when the dam started to break. Something had been troubling me, and I finally allowed it to find words.
It had been so easy, relatively speaking, to trick myself. Once I was in that mode of thinking it didn’t even feel like pretending. It became real to me, not because of anything logical, but because the feeling in my head told me so, very strongly. At that moment I understood that something could “feel right” even if it wasn’t. And it scared me.
That moment was right before it all came crashing down. All my beliefs were called into question. I won’t bother you with the details, but it was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. My world was torn apart at the seams and built anew.
I felt like I left a version of myself behind, reaching out in the dust. (Those were my words at the actual time of these events.) This sounds rather over dramatic but it’s how it really felt. I read in a book once the term ontological shock. That seems an apt descriptor for what I felt in this period of intense questioning. It was sort of the end of childhood. All of these things, and much, much more, are intimately interwoven with my first reading of LOTR.
Despite all this, I don’t think it was a bad thing. A difficult thing, absolutely, but I would never go back.There is so much that I couldn’t have even imagined before this ordeal. It opened me up so fully that I never quite closed.
Format: Ficlet I suppose
Genre: Personal Meta?
Rating: T
Warnings: Excessive (unintentional) use of water metaphors, CNTW for talk of questioning
Characters: N/A
Pairings: N/A
Creator’s Notes: I’m not sure if this really counts. It’s what came out when I was looking at the prompt, after a few failed attempts at writing fic.
Summary: After I first read LOTR, I went through a period of intense questioning, which was one of the many after effects of reading LOTR that changed me forever. This is some of the what led to it, and brief thoughts looking back. (I need a better summary)
When I was newly thirteen and first reading LOTR, I was obsessive about not spoiling it for myself. So obsessive that I would do anything. Force myself to believe what I read was a dream, make up stories about how I found it in an untrustworthy source, remind myself that I had seen implications of different versions, say, “It is still unknown” even when it wasn’t. I said it so many times that it became true.
It was so easy to believe it once I was in that pattern. Even when I was hearing information in direct opposition, it was hard to change the feeling.
I was carried on a boat filled with holes, held up only by my own obstinate determination.
Exactly three weeks after I finished LOTR was when the dam started to break. Something had been troubling me, and I finally allowed it to find words.
It had been so easy, relatively speaking, to trick myself. Once I was in that mode of thinking it didn’t even feel like pretending. It became real to me, not because of anything logical, but because the feeling in my head told me so, very strongly. At that moment I understood that something could “feel right” even if it wasn’t. And it scared me.
That moment was right before it all came crashing down. All my beliefs were called into question. I won’t bother you with the details, but it was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. My world was torn apart at the seams and built anew.
I felt like I left a version of myself behind, reaching out in the dust. (Those were my words at the actual time of these events.) This sounds rather over dramatic but it’s how it really felt. I read in a book once the term ontological shock. That seems an apt descriptor for what I felt in this period of intense questioning. It was sort of the end of childhood. All of these things, and much, much more, are intimately interwoven with my first reading of LOTR.
Despite all this, I don’t think it was a bad thing. A difficult thing, absolutely, but I would never go back.There is so much that I couldn’t have even imagined before this ordeal. It opened me up so fully that I never quite closed.
