suddenbursts

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This hits the sweet spot on night time wind-down

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Do you feel for others?

When a loved one is in pain, I feel their pain in my body strongly.

Also when an acquaintance does, when a stranger does, when a fictional character does.

Turns out that's called somatic empathy, and in my case, by overdoing it, it hasn't been very helpful.

Also, according to some research, it is not sustainable in the long term.

[suddenbursts]

Stephen King's influence in my life

I was encouraged since very little to read, and I grew up loving Roald Dahl's work, my favorites being Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and The BFG. I also loved Pippi Longstocking and big books with hundreds of short stories from all over the world that my mom gave me.  As pre-teen I remember reading, stimulated by my religious parents, the stories in Hindu literature and sacred books regarding the god Krishna in his childhood, and in particular the epic novel called the Mahabharat. This tale reminds me of The Lord of the Rings because of its very black and white view of things and people, huge battles between two armies, lots of handsome heroes and Utopian civilizations. My vision of the world was exactly like that for far too long, very simplistic. People were either bad or good. I believe my mom also reinforced that concept, because she believed in that for a long time too.  All these books, together with Disney movies, also brought forward my preference for wildly fantastic stories in which magic was a reality in the human world and paranormal beings existed. I not only loved the fantasy genre, but for longer than I care to admit I believed in actual magic, and secretly hoped that I was some sort of sorceress. That someday, I would discover that I could control the wind, or that I could fly, or that I could read people's mind.  Unfortunately I never uncovered any paranormal power in me. Trust me, it was not for lack of trying.

It makes me smile to think of how silly this was, and at the same time I long for those times in which magic could be anywhere to me. Contemplating the world with eyes filled with such possibilities was awesome, I loved it.  With all these sources for ideas and inspiration, I started having some creative outlets. For example, I used to read my books to my sister every night, impersonating the voices of the characters and acting them out. In time though, I started creating my own stories; I do not know if it was because my sister was bored of the same old books we had, or because I decided to do so. Probably the former.   I encountered another channel when I changed school at twelve or thirteen years old and met a great literature and grammar teacher. She was a very sensitive person, and she really stimulated me to write.  With her support I felt compelled to write a tale every day, often with different themes, but that almost always had some sort of supernatural part in it. I felt that she believed in me, and she always made us read our stories to the class. Even though probably my ideas were almost all nonsense, she probably could see that I had a pretty fertile imagination.  

I am unsure if I do still have all that imagination, but that is a reflection I will do another day.  I wish that I still had my school books so I could it read all back and have a few laughs.     Around that time, two new sagas entered my life: Harry Potter, as a gift from my oldest best friend called Alice, and The Lord of the Rings, because the first movie was coming out and I was curious about all the fuss. 

It goes without saying that I loved both book series. I loved them for the many fantasy elements in it, that were so strong and that the authors had gone through huge measures to develop and think through, but also for the idealism of many of the characters of the series. 

I always liked idealism, although its form has changed a lot for me as the years passed. 

The Lord of the Rings really moved me and made me want to become a writer. I wanted to be like J. R. R. Tolkien: write an epic with its own fantastic world, or maybe even write a sequel to The Lord of the Rings. I remember I started studying how to write in Sindarin (the fictional language invented by the author), I remember making list of the characters and their profile in the books and try to think of what kind of plot would I write. 

I do not know what made me stop doing that. I think I must have realized that I was not going to go anywhere trying to write a book based on characters written by someone else. 

Harry Potter on the other hand made me wish for magic to be real with enormous intensity. I actually cried in frustration some times when I realized that magic almost surely did not exist, and even if it did, it surely was not present in me.  

Then, when I was approximately nineteen years old, I started working at a big insurance company that had a youth working program. Within this program there were many adolescents a bit younger than me, with whom I was with every day at lunch.  One of them was Luis Gustavo, and he introduced me to The Dark Tower by Stephen King.  I was blown away reading the first book by the abundant and cringe-worthy details, by its brutal honesty about human nature and people's thoughts that was completely new to me, and of course, by the fantasy, adventure and suspense elements. It amazed me how Stephen King had managed to fit all of that in the story line.   After that I devoured all seven books, I felt avid for all that clarity and straightforwardness that the world did not want to show.

The Dark Tower was the beginning of a new phase for me, at many, many levels. 

There were things I still didn't understand at first, but I got a first glimpse of reality in regards to what people really are and can be in extreme situations. My view of me and everyone around me changed, and the world as it is, as real and raw as it can be, started making sense. 

After reading this series, I of course became a huge Stephen King's fan, but also turned into an eager seeker of the truth about people; I just wanted to know it all, even if it hurt. I wanted to know what could drive people to certain actions, and made me question myself about who I really am, what I would do in those situations. 

Little by little, my black and white vision of the world began to change. I started to realize that there were and are billions of shades of grey in between (I hate having to use this analogy, but it fits incredibly well what I felt and realized). 

The many shades of grey confused me a lot per se. I started to think that when something bad happens to someone, and that someone becomes a villain, then he or she cannot be blamed because what happened to him or she justifies everything. 

I just started feeling bad for everyone, and that everyone was a victim. 

You can imagine that this sort of thinking was not good at all for me, and it made reality more blurred and difficult.  After The Dark Tower I remember reading Lisey's Story. Oh, I loved it. The characters are stunningly deep and rich, and I associated some of them, like Scott and his father, with people in my life. It was beautiful and heart breaking at the same time for me. 

I ended up reading almost all of Stephen King's books and short stories, my favorites are The Stand, Insomnia and the Green Mile. 

More recently I read Dolores Claiborne and Gerald's Game, which are breathtaking novels with women as main characters going through hell on earth. Their struggles hit a nerve for me, and I identified myself a lot with them. I think almost every one of his books made me cry at some point, and since we are talking about the King of Horror, I will come right out at it and say it: almost all of his villains manage to get under my skin, and they crawled in deeply. For example, I was coincidentally having trouble sleeping when I started reading Insomnia and I was scared shitless of starting to see weird ETish figures around me and other people. I was actually driving myself insane. Many of his villains became my personal bogeymen. One that haunts me until today is Raymond Andrew Joubert, the “it” that stood at the corner of Jessie’s room in Gerald’s Game. The bundle of clothes that always hangs in a recess of my bedroom is usually brought to life by my eyes when it’s dark, and I can see his weird smile while he shows me the jewelry he stole from exhumed corpses.

Still, I don’t mind keeping the boogeyman, because these books got me more and more acquainted with my own mind and nature, as well as of the people around me. Sounds like a pretty fair trade to me.   Eventually, I understood that even though there are thousands of shades of grey, there is always a line: sometimes blurred, but a line for sure.  

I concluded that bad things happen all the time, with everyone. And what shows if a person is fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, is the choices those persons make afterwards.  I realized that evil is something that exists in all of us at some degree, and that sometimes in can lash out in small amounts. But in some people, if brought forward by trauma and pain, evil can be gigantic and take over the person at enormous proportions. 

And that is exactly where the difference is.

Many people have come to the same conclusion, and there are countless movies and books that speak exactly of that. But until that point, I had never understood it correctly. 

I have suffered great trauma as a child, and in the early years in which I started to process it all, I was scared to death to become a monster. This happened because I thought that if something bad happened to you, it automatically meant you were going to become evil and look for vengeance. 

But that's the thing. I found out that just don't have it in me. Evil is not major within myself. It lashed out a bit when I was a very difficult and confused teen, but as years went by and I started to understand things better, this side of me lashed out less and less. 

I have always wanted to meet Stephen King in person, but when I think of it, I doubt I would say to him anything different or better than any other fan has said before. 

Still, my message to Stephen King one day will be:

Your characters have accompanied and helped me since I was 18 in a journey of self-discovery, and because of this your work is very important to me. It is obvious that a deep understanding of our own nature is something very important to you too; therefore I am sure you understand why your books had such a huge influence in my growth into an adult.  Besides the very real characters you have built, I admire and enjoy deeply the amazing creativity you have shown in imagining all the extraordinary stories I have read so far. If there ever was a chance for someone to become immortal without ageing I would sign you up for it so that your stories would never stop, without dwelling too much into the possible consequences of immortality. Because come on, in what universe having more of your stories could be bad?  As a side note, not to be included in my message to Stephen King, I will admit that I wish I was American and able to go back in time just to attend to Stephen King’s classes back in his teaching days.  

I will also confess that I secretly wish I was somehow related with him and his family so that I could have often contact with him and his genius ideas.  

I am aware that this sounds very creepy, but I am sure you feel the same way about your favorite author.