Fiction and Reality Are Interconnected

Do you ever wonder at the fact that fiction is fiction but sometimes fiction can be so frighteningly real?

I have recently started reading some Chinese novels in my free time, and I’ve come to the realization once again at how frightening real sometimes fiction can be. Yes, fiction novels may have situations in it that seem so real that it’s frightening because that comes from the author’s personal life. I won’t deny that fact. However, there have been people who’ve said fiction won’t ever come to life because such events and characters exist only in one’s imagination and fantasies. You’ll never meet a man like Harry Potter, Archie Sheridan, Augustus Waters, Edward Rochester, Mr. Darcy, Sherlock Holmes, etc. The list just goes on and on for guys and girls alike! And then there are events such as love at first sight, selfless love, sacrificial love, meeting the perfect guy in high school and marrying them, being able to forgive the person who killed someone you loved or ruined your life, so on.

 There are so many things we believe exist only in books and even if books get turned into movies – it’s still not reality and never would be so you have always thought. I don’t blame you because it just seems so surreal and impossible, right? I have always thought that it was possible that fiction was born from somewhere- this author must have experienced similar events to have caused them to write such a scene or whatever the cause may be. So I have fantasized of love at first sight and meeting the perfect guy in high school and each time it was a let down. That was when my beliefs in fiction can become reality started to fade over the years. I started laughing at the storylines of some of the young adult books I read and thinking: ‘No way that is so ridiculous.’

However, over the span of the past last year and this year I have experienced life events where I have been forced to take back all of what I thought and said about how fiction is not real. It is as real as you and I. It is as alive as you and I and even if it’s not happening to you and I…someone is experiencing it out there right now at some edge of the world. So don’t say:’ oh that is so cliché and has been used a thousand times!’ or ‘oh my god- I can already predict how this story is going to progress.’ Okay, some books are predictable like that but not all and many of the times there is just no better way to describe a scene or present it to readers.

I’ve been going through very crazy experiences regarding relationships and certain occurrences have caused me to relate them to a manga called Hirunaka no Ryuusei and the Chinese novel I am currently reading called The Journey of the Flower or 花千骨 in simplified Chinese. I like keeping to myself in general but life didn’t seem to want me to do that anymore and I’ve ended up in a few tangled knots of love. I’ve never experienced or even imagined of having the chance to experience what I did in the last year and half.

I’ll summarize what I experienced like this: a single girl being pursued by multiple guys…and a girl who is so persistent in loving someone she isn’t supposedly to love and yet still is unable to let go and that person who is unwilling to sat anything or let her in due to their positions and his own worries and considerations. That’s all I am going to say. I have never seen love or relationships as a serious need. If it comes, I will deal with it and if it doesn’t come then I don’t really give it much thought. However, when I fall for someone…I can say that I am the most persistent and dedicated girl that I’d ever met. I just don’t know when to let go and most of the times I can’t even though the entire world tells me to.

And in the two books I’ve mentioned where I’ve found fiction has become reality and it frightens me to come to that realization. It’s not a coincidence and I don’t know what to say other than fiction is born from reality. Reality is not born from fiction. Reality happens first and then writers turn it into fiction.

I haven’t figured out any of my problems but I hope to one day. I hope my persistence will be able to move someone’s heart. People have called me stupid and foolish. I will only leave one ending quote for everyone here and it’s something I chose to live by since I fell for the first guy I liked several years ago:

“Sometimes the best way to stay close to someone you love is by being just a friend.”