Book Coping: How Not To Die and Take Everyone With You

This has been a tough day. I fell asleep a little past 2:00 AM last night, and I feel like I need gallons of coffee before I will feel like a normal human being. All day, a fire has been licking across my eyelids and has threatened to spill over the threshold onto my skin, burning and ripping through it like acid.

This is not healthy book coping.

Readers, I want to let you in on a few things.

1. When I walked into my first period class, I dropped to the ground and bawled for a few minutes, much to the discomfort of my fellow classmates. This episode went on for a good while and has been lurking in the background, waiting for a good time to spring back at me. I got told "It's just a book" a good ten times before people decided to leave me alone.

2. Tatiana had an attack of the ants in her clothes and described the pain that was spreading throughout her body. Unsympathetically, I explained that her situation was a perfect analogy for what I'm feeling today.

3. My logic when I am in such deep despair over a book, turns to stupidity. What happens is this progression, where my heart is battered after trying to cling to [insert dead character here] and finally realizes that the effort must be placed elsewhere. You may think the logical thing is to focus that emotional energy into something productive, but me? Definitely not. That would be much too easy for my logic to agree with such a plan. No. I have to go get another book. Oh, that's not that bad, right? Just grab a trashy teen comedy and be done with it in a day or two! Unfortunately, my life is not that simple. What my body craves is more sadness. I am the biggest book masochist I've ever met in my life. In order to move on from one tragedy, I have to progress towards another. See, the trick lies in the journey. After reading Allegiant, I was hyper-focused on the deaths of major characters that will remain unnamed. So what my heart needed was an outlet to release that pain that wasn't so scarring. Therefore, I had to find a book that allowed for the possibility of tragedy, but it wasn't a certain, impending doom. The suspense is necessary; it offers me something equally enveloping to latch onto to distract from the first book. Hopefully, the book is long enough to allow for some healing before that possible tragedy does or does not occur.

So how, you ask, does this relate to my problem at hand?

I went to the library and happened to find a book I've wanted to read for a LONG time: The Book Thief. Those of you who have read this already probably know how I'm feeling. It's not even page 20 and I am deeply concerned for my emotional wellbeing. I think this falls under the category of certain, impending doom.

Dear readers, if you don't hear from me again soon, please come find me and make sure I'm okay.
-Erica Kriner