When you’re someone who pretends to read before they actually can, it stands to reason that the characters that people the stories that entrance you as you grow up become the “friends you made along the way”.
For me, there were a variety of friends. From Jedi to anthropomorphized hares and badgers, a divine lion, coyote shapeshifters, British Egyptologists who solve mysteries, and a host of other strange and wonderful people.
Now, at thirty-six, as I move closer to my thirty-seventh birthday (May 3rd!!!!) I find joy in contemplating the friends I have met born out of the imaginations of other people (writers) who inadvertently, in their own ways, became friends along the way, too.
Not all of these friends are characters I have spent time with over and over again. Some of them had an impact so profound that one brush with them was enough. In other cases, their words and actions were enough to stay with me, to pop up in memory when I come across something difficult or harsh or I’m merely ruminating on what I have learned.
Most of these friends will be characters I have loved for a very long time. Some will be characters I barely had a brush with, but their impact was astounding. Perhaps just a line or two from their stories, whereas the other parts were . . . well, not my favorite.
Distant Friends
It’s interesting when you come across a moment in a novel where you can see so clearly how talented the writer could be and yet the entirety of the story is weighed down by something or other. Or, in other ways, where the writer is extremely talented and shows it in every sentence, but the story is rife with their own agenda, in some ways perhaps even an agenda you later come to realize may be anathema to your own.
And the entire time you were unaware of it and yet through the reading of the novel you did feel yourself squinting at the page, your enjoyment of the story drizzling away under the realization that the author is trying to evangelize something (anything, really, not just a religion) and that the only reason this story exists is because they wanted to lull you into listening to them.
But the characters still spoke to you, and sometimes at odd intervals, on random days, they’ll pop up in your memory to say hello, and honestly, you are still fond of them. The characters, I mean.
Best Friends
Then there are those characters you literally grew up with, pretended to talk with, fight with, love with, join their adventures and cry with them in their sorrows . . . and maybe it was to the point where it was just a teensy, tiny bit unhealthy.
They call it maladaptive daydreaming and there are a number of theories and opinions on it. I am of the opinion that moderation in everything is important and too much of anything is either an addiction or a coping skill developed while in survival mode. For me, reading and maladaptive daydreaming was for a long time an escape and a form of survival. As I move more toward healing, reading is still an enjoyable pastime, an old love that I’ve never let go of, and maladaptive daydreaming, or at the very least, daydreaming, is a setting I use to let my writer’s imagination play.
Because in this play, I build worlds and stories peopled by characters that could, perhaps, someday become someone else’s friend along the way.
Friends That Broke Your Heart
An avid reader comes to know the sorrow of befriending a character who eventually breaks your heart. Whether it be in a series that has ten plus books or a single novel where you fell for the character right from the beginning, there is always that one series or novel that a reader talks of while wearing an expression of nostalgia and genuine pain.
That one character you trusted - and of course it’s the author you shouldn’t have trusted. But you believed in this character, and they betrayed everything you thought they stood for and in doing so betrayed you as well.
Or the character who stayed true to the end whom the author killed in their cruel position as ultimate master of the universe they created. How dare they!
I always laugh at myself at this juncture in my thought process as I am currently aiming to be the author who will someday cause my readers to feel the same exact emotions I have, and do, and will. But two things can be true at the same time, and I can be both [insert emotion here] at an author while knowing I’m going to be doing the same thing. Ha!
I have one or two characters in my reading journey who were once friends, and in their final form, became people I would never want to be around in real life or in a daydream. In a way I mourned them like I would have a real friend. Whether that’s healthy or not, I do not know (nor really care, it happened already, and there’s so much more to be worried about where I’m concerned).
An Echo of What’s Real
That’s the magic of stories, or at least one component of the magic. Have you ever felt that spark of recognition when you meet someone and you realize that what you are recognizing are traits from a character.
If the character is a hero, the experience is a cool little moment - a sort of “I may have faith in humanity again” moment (you never should’ve had faith in humanity, but that’s another essay/conversation). If the character is a villain, it’s not so much shock that you experience as much as it is a slowly rising sense of the inevitable. Of course, the villain exists in real life. How else do you think the author was inspired to create the character?
But where did characters like Aragorn and Luke Skywalker come from? Or Leia and Eowyn? Were they wishes and hopes of the author, or did they see Aragorn, Luke, Leia, and Eowyn staring out at them from the eyes of someone they knew or a stranger on the street? Were their friends along the way real people whom they mimicked in their stories, a fond simulacrum for the friend whom they loved and trusted.
There’s No One By That Name Here
A character can sometimes be the representation for what’s not present in our lives. I was always fascinated with characters who were fathers, whether villains or heroes, and I often read those scenes with an eye to detail, absorbing the glimpse of a father-daughter relationship that I had no real inkling of. Even just father-child relationships, where I related equally as much to the son as to the daughter when the father turned his back on his children or betrayed them in some way. Scenes where the father showed a respect or sacrificial love for their children were a revelation.
In the same vein, characters who were from or inspired by cultures far from me or I had not yet interacted with were a source of not only fascination, but an avenue of growth for empathy and curiosity. My reading life was rich from a young age, encouraged by my mother, and it was not strange in my house to see books by an author from a foreign country or to hear languages from all over the world as we watched movies and tv shows with subtitles.
Fantasy and sci-fi invite readers to explore worlds unknown to us through magic, other worlds, and technology, and often they are inspired by cultures of Earth. The characters are sometimes inspired by figures from the past in the way that becomes familiar only if you study history. Even if you do not, the core of their characters, the mark of their personalities, become something like archetypes that are recognized in story after story.
The beleaguered king whose head is heavy with the weight of the crown.
The young boy or girl, from poor beginnings, who finds themselves the hero or the leader.
Women plagued by the men in their lives but living with strength and resilience.
Men beset by trouble and enemies at every turn who try to remain noble and true to themselves.
The prophet, a voice in the wilderness, ignored by their neighbors and strangers alike.
The fool and all of their mistakes before the revelation dawns.
The bitter victim who seeks revenge and finds only emptiness. Perhaps they turn to hope and new beginnings. Perhaps they do not.
The princess who becomes the poor servant girl, or the pauper who becomes the prince.
There are archetypes upon archetypes and yet an author, writing with their own voice, their story influenced by their upbringing, environment, beliefs, and personal motivations, can make a living, breathing, unique character who can both embody an archetype and leap off the page a person in their own right.
Friends Along the Way
The distant friend, the best friend, the stranger, the inspiration, the villain, the father - all of these characters were beside me growing up. They went to school with me. They distracted me when I felt there was nowhere to turn. They encouraged me to fight. They showed me how to hope and persevere. They revealed an aspect of God I did not know. They broke my heart, they mended it, they broke it again.
A reader’s life is peopled with those who had never drawn breath, and yet, in my every breath, just a little bit, perhaps in manner or thought or lesson or deed, when I breathe, these friends breathe with me.
Who Could Possibly Be First
So, in telling you I am writing a series about the friends along the way of my life, who could I possibly write about first.
What a fascinating question! I was pretending to read before I could actually read. I knew about characters and real people who seemed like characters before I could read, and even then they peopled my imagination. However, I would choose to begin when I was able to read, to begin my literary journeys unprompted. So, my first friend will be someone that I brought into my everyday imagination, who I remember quite clearly being entranced by.
There are large gaps in my memory from my childhood. In many ways, my clearest memories start around nine or ten years old. I know facts and have vivid recollections of general truths (like the fact that I pretended to read) but no memories to fall back on.
In that way, I do not think I can write this essay series in a linear, chronological fashion. In an odd way, perhaps I am inspired with order in the way these friends had an impact.
And if there was anyone who had an impact, who I remember introducing me to a world I had yet to be introduced to, it is Edmond Dantes, the Count of Monte Cristo.
I met him when I was between 11-12. And that was a meeting I will remember for the rest of my life.