In Which Ashley Gets on a Soapbox

This is just a quick blurb, but I have something to say and no one to say it to...hence, using this blog!

I've been looking a lot into Mental Health Awareness, and what sort of groups and support and advocates there are, because it's important to me personally. In the course of this research, I am increasingly shocked (though I really shouldn't be) at the callousness and shear insensitivity of so many people on the internet. There's a campaign called "End the Stigma", which is all about changing the way the public perceives people with mental illness. This movement is great and I hope that it succeeds. However, in some areas I think it's gone way too far in the wrong direction. People glorify their perceived disorders. Now, I'm not going to say that these people don't necessarily have any sort of problems. However, I'm really skeptical about the people like those on Tumblr who post these "Mental Disorder Quizzes" where they answer maybe seven very open questions about various disorders and suddenly they have ADHD, OCD, Bulimia, Depression, and many others, all at once. I'm sorry for them if they really feel they have all of these illnesses...but seriously, taking a quiz like that and posting it on a social media or blog site such as Tumblr just smacks of begging for attention, sympathy, and maybe even being 'cool', since sadly in some social groups your status seems to be measured by how messed up you are.

Basically, this is what I have to say. If you feel like you have a mental disorder, do something about it. Talk to a friend, a doctor, someone to trust. At the very least do your research so that you can better understand the disorder. Get help, and if your help comes from talking to others and being public about your disorder, that's your way. However, don't trivialize it. There are so many people who are really suffering, and they have enough to deal with without trivializing what they are fighting through.

Solitude vs. Loneliness

I've been living on my own for two weeks now, and I'm still in that awkward time where you're in a new area but don't have new friends, so I've had a lot of time to myself. Obviously, a lot of that time is spent feeling rather lonely. Before I went to college, I would have said that I liked being alone; I've always been fairly independent and self-sufficient, and a good book was all I really needed in terms of company. Now, however, I know better than ever the aching pains of loneliness. So, what changed? Why do I feel the lack of companionship so much more now than I did before? The answer to that, I believe, lies in the difference between solitude and loneliness.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary online defines solitude as:
1: the quality or state of being alone or remote from society: seclusion, or;
2: a lonely place (as a desert).

Whereas lonely is defined as:
1 a: being without company: lone,
b: cut off from others: solitary;
2: not frequented by human beings: desolate;
3: sad from being alone: lonesome;
4. producing a feeling of bleakness or desolation - loneliness.

So here, besides seeing that lonely has many more variations, we see a distinct difference in tone, or at least I do. While solitude is simply "being" alone, lonely is being "cut off"; one is voluntary, the other not. That, I believe, is the crux of the matter.

When I think of solitude, I think of something that is chosen, or at least something that you're accepting of. When I think of loneliness, the overwhelming secondary feeling is that of being separate, or of missing out. Is loneliness really just the worry that you're missing out on something, somewhere else? I know a lot of my feelings of loneliness arise from reminders that life goes on for my friends and those I care about without me...that I am separate from the chain of events I used to be part of. On the other hand, when I'm in a solitary mood, it's only about me. I'm in a place where I'm not even thinking about those outside influences...therefore, loneliness arises from a comparison to others, while solitude is a state of completeness without need for anyone else.

I just went and sat out on my deck - just me, my TCU blanket, and a Lord of the Rings soundtrack. I didn't take my phone, I didn't turn the lights on...I just sat. I spent time with myself. And I felt more like a whole person than I feel like I have in a while. Time to yourself, completely by yourself, is something a bit lacking when you're living at home, as I was for the previous part of the summer. I had been having a bad day, and I was at the point where everything was just spiraling down into a bad place. So, basically, I gave myself a timeout. And I felt calm, and alone, and it was wonderful. It's the same feeling I get when I'm driving down a country road at night and can't see headlights from another car or even lights from civilization. It's being complete in yourself. That's something that I strive to feel more often.

However, as soon as I came back inside, all those worries and feelings of loneliness returned. When I'm surrounded by pictures and mementos and memories of life outside myself, I feel that part that I'm lacking right now and the loneliness and lacking comes back. And so I got my computer and wrote a blog post about what I was thinking that ended up being much more personal than I meant for it to be. Gah. I guess I was hoping for some huge revelation at the end, that maybe I would have figured my thoughts out, but that didn't happen. And now I'm stuck with that awkward feeling, as at the end of every blog entry, wondering if anyone will ever read this or if my thoughts will just bounce blindly around the blogosphere for all eternity, and then the secondary question of well, should I share it with others then? Present it like something they want to read and open myself up to ridicule and analyzation, even accusations of pretension? These are questions I have no answer to.

So, I suppose I will leave this entry with a challenge to myself, and anyone else who happens to read it. Battle loneliness, either with reassurance that you're not being forgotten or with interactions with friends. But, at the same time, relish solitude. Enjoy time to just be with yourself. Because, however trite it may sound, and despite the fact that I haven't necessarily found it true yet, I like to hope and believe that once you're happy being with yourself, other people will be happy to be with you also.

And there is my confused, cliched, crazed blog post for the night. Ciao.

Saying Goodbye to Harry Potter

I first met Harry Potter when I was in fifth grade. I was just as much of a bookworm then as I am now, and my parents knew the easiest way to get me out of the way was to capture my imagination with a new book. So, when it came time to move to a new house, they presented me with a brand new hardback copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I don’t think they had any idea just what they had started.

I devoured that book. I still remember lying on my stomach in the empty living room of that house in Tucson, completely enraptured by the world of magic, wizards, and friendship that J.K. Rowling spun out of thin air as though she were magical herself. I don’t remember exactly how I got the next two books, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, both of which were released shortly after I started reading the series, but I know that I read them just as quickly. Those books were like friends themselves in a time when I had very few real friends. I read them over and over and over, so many times that I lost count after 15 each, and they are the most clearly loved out of my books today. I was captured.

When the first movie came out, I read the newspaper articles and reviews almost as avidly as the original books. I begged and begged my parents to take me to see it. However, this was still in the midst of the “Harry Potter is teaching our children witchcraft!” phase, and while my parents didn’t stop me from reading the books, they weren’t exactly eager to take me to see the film. I was a sad, obsessed child. I wanted to go see that movie so badly that I repeatedly dreamed about seeing the movie, meeting the actors, even being in the movie. Finally, after what in my memory was a month but could really be any amount of time, I got the see the movie, and I was even more in love than before.

Each year, as a new movie or new book came out I would await it with the highest expectations. As Harry, Hermione, and Ron grew up, I grew up with them. I was almost always the exact age that the characters themselves were, and as such their struggles were often similar to mine, minus the whole magic thing. When the fifth book came out and Harry was pining after Cho Chang, I was experiencing my first real crush as well. When the sixth book came out and new responsibilities and realities were laid upon the characters, I was discovering the harsh realities of life after moving to a new state. And when that final climax arrived and Harry fulfilled the goal he’d been working towards for seven years, I had just graduated from high school and found comfort in the shared ending with those characters I had loved for so long.

Beyond the connection I had with the characters and events of the books themselves, Harry Potter fostered great memories and friendships in my own life. I still remember my first midnight book event, which was probably the first time I was out past midnight ever. It was when the fifth book came out, and Sammy and I waited eagerly at the Barnes and Noble for hours, until midnight when we discovered we were supposed to have numbered tickets. Needless to say, we were very far back in line and didn’t get our books until after three in the morning. When the seventh and final book came out, Miriah, Kelsey, Katie and I didn’t hold back in the slightest, but proved ourselves true fans by dressing to the hilt as Professor Trelawney, Tonks, Bellatrix, and Professor McGonagall. Our costumes were so impressive that people actually asked to take pictures with us at Borders. I still remember that feeling of sharing something I loved so much with people I loved, as we rushed home and all sat in my basement for hours devouring the words J.K. Rowling had crafted until we physically couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer. When the second to last movie came out, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, Sammy and I were reunited in our love for the boy wizard, now 21 years old but still as much in love with the story as we were when we were 14. And now, the final movie is coming out, and I’m somehow supposed to say goodbye.

I don’t know how I’m supposed to say goodbye to this amazing series that has meant so much to me. Part of it is that feeling that, with the passing of Harry Potter, is the passing of my childhood. As a recent college graduate, I really have to grow up now. Maybe I’m not at my ‘Nineteen years later’ yet, but I’ve gone beyond what I can experience with Harry and Co. That doesn’t mean, though, that I can’t take them with me.

As I’ve grown, my appreciation for and love of the series has grown as well. My favorite characters have changed (with a few exceptions). I have started to appreciate the crafting of the words that Rowling uses just as much as the story she tells with them. I’ve taken life lessons and personal convictions and so much more from these books. And, perhaps most of all, I have learned to look back and appreciate how far those seven books and I have come.

In a way, it all comes down to Neville Longbottom. Neville has long been one of my favorite characters, perhaps because I can so identify with him. As much as I seem to be a Hermione at times, when I was first reading these books I was the lonely, awkward, chubby child who was picked on and didn’t quite seem to belong, just as Neville was. So, it was with delight that I watched Neville grow and develop and learn throughout the series. At the end, Neville proves to be one of the bravest of them all! I hope that I have grown as Neville has, and looking back, I think I have. While I might not have slain a snake/Horcrux, I’ve stood up for what I believe in, taken risks, and become truly myself, just as Neville grew into a fully realized character.

I find myself dragging out this blog entry because I’m not prepared for the end. I don’t know what my life will be like after Harry Potter. My recent complete re-reading of the books simply emphasized what these books mean to me. I suppose, though, that my life won’t ever really be without Harry Potter. My books will continue to travel with me to everywhere I live. Someday, I look forward to reading these books with my own children and watching them discover Harry’s magical world for themselves. I suppose, in the end, it all comes down to the words of J.K. Rowling herself:

“No story lives unless someone wants to listen…the stories we love best do live in us forever. So whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.”

The Terror of Five Years

During the week of graduation, my mom gave me a book. Actually, she gave me several books, but in particular she gave me A Line a Day book. In this book, I am meant to write a sentence or so every day for five years about what is happening in my life. At first, it was just a neat idea. It was sort of a continuation of my Suddenly a Senior blog, an easy way to remember what happens in my life. As time goes on though, it becomes a wee bit terrifying.

You see, the thing is, a lot can happen in five years. Five years ago, I was at DCI band camp in Illinois. I was about to start my senior year of high school. In that five years, I've graduated twice, performed in four different Bowl games, met so many people who've changed my life, lived in five different places, had surgery, been an intern, and so many other things, many of which I would have never expected five years ago. So that begs the question...what is going to happen in the next five years?

There is pretty much exactly one thing that I am reasonably sure will happen in the next five years. Three years from now, I will graduate from KU with my Masters in Art History. However, that's just the bare bones. What will it be like? What will I learn? Where will I go after that?

While the uncertainty of the next five years is a little frightening, that's not what really terrifies me. Everything is always uncertain. That's true whether you're five, twenty-five, or one hundred and five. No, what terrifies me about this next five years is that things are expected of me.

I know that my mom gave me this book in the hopes that it would be a record of important events in my life, things like graduations, but also maybe trips to Italy or meeting 'the one' or my first real job. And while I know it was given with no real expectations on me, specifically, it kind of hits on a sore point, namely, my lack of significant other at really any point in my life, but especially now as I reach maturity. There isn't a visit home that passes without some reference to how when it happens, I'll fall so fast I won't know what hits me, or what my "type" is, or how everyone is waiting for me. My sister said something to that effect just the other day, about how the whole family just wants me to find someone. She said it in the sense that they'll be happy for me and want me to have that, but still. When I look back at the past, it's hard to imagine that there is going to be someone for me in five years. Then I realize that in five years I'll be 27, and I'm terrified that there won't be someone for me. But then I don't know what's scarier...that there might not be someone, or the fact that in the realm of human possibility it is completely possible for me to meet someone and even get married and have a child in five years. I want to say no, this won't happen, but I don't really have any control over that (though I'm really not planning on any children in the next five years). I mean, I want to find 'the one'...who doesn't? But I'm not sure I'm ready, and with five years seeming both so long and so short I guess I'm just scared either way.

Five years...who knows what will happen. I just hope that I can face these next five years without fear of what the future may bring and without being encumbered by the expectations of others. If I can manage that, then in five years hopefully I'll be able to look back at the past five years as fondly as I look back at the five years I just experienced.

Summer Reading Pt. 2

I have been horrible at blogging this summer, and it's not that I'm super busy or don't have things to blog about...I guess I'm just a bit lazy, or something. Anyways, while I haven't been blogging, I have been reading! Here's what I've read since my last summer reading post.

8. The Deeds of the Disturber by Elizabeth Peters
9. The Golden One by Elizabeth Peters



I got five of these books at the library sale and I'm sorry, but they're some of my favorite summer books to read. I mean..Victorian era? Egypt? Archaeology? These books are so me.

10. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien



This was the book I was forgetting from the last entry! I fell in love with the Lord of the Rings trilogy when I first read it about nine years ago, though I didn't read the Hobbit until a little while after that. While I enjoy The Hobbit, it has no where near the place in my heart that Lord of the Rings does. Still, in honor of the movie coming out (in December 2012, how shall I wait?!?) I decided it was time for me to finally own and reread this book. It didn't disappoint at all and it was a nice enjoyable read, as usual.

11. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte



For graduating with my BA in English a few months ago, and loving reading since I was very very young, I have huge glaring gaps in my classical literature knowledge. I had never read Wuthering Heights before, and didn't much want to...I still remembered struggled through Jane Eyre the first time, and I felt the Bronte sisters just weren't for me. Plus, I basically knew the story, and as someone who is very driven by characters, the idea of a whole novel with no real redeeming characters was a bit off-putting. Still, my Little Audrey was reading it this summer so I decided to read it with her. I'm glad that I did, though I can't say that it is anywhere near my favorites list.

12. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
13. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
14. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
15. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
16. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
17. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
18. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling



So...the last Harry Potter movie is coming out in a week, if you'd been living under a rock and were somehow unaware of this fact! Harry Potter has pretty much been my childhood, adolescence, young adulthood...everything. I'm going to write a very long post about this next week, so I'm not going to talk about it here, but I felt that at the end, I had to go back to the beginning, and remember why I really love this series...the story. Reading these books now, as a 22-year-old college graduate is so different from reading them as the 10-year-old lying on the bare carpet in a new house, but the world that Rowling creates engrosses me just the same. Reading the first four was like greeting old friends...I knew many passages by heart, and even the creases and stains on the pages have stories to tell. My Prisoner of Azkaban is especially guilty of this; not only are the pages falling off the binding because I read it so many times, it has pages gnawed by an escaped hamster, aptly enough, named Scabbers (and no, I am so not making this up). It's been an emotional and exciting experience, and I'm sure that watching the film next week is going to be highly emotional for many fans, me not the least.