I was fourteen years old when I first realized that I wasn’t as good of a person as I thought I was and that I was far from being as good as I had always hoped to be.

The specific details of my life around the time of my harsh realization have since faded, but the ghosts of violent emotions still linger. It might have been because of a heated argument or an icy fall out or a culmination of everything that happened at once, but I remember blaming myself. I felt toxic, like a bomb that people should stay away from. There were no fingers pointed at me except for my own, and somehow, that was more eye opening than if I had been told, “This was all your fault. This was all because of you.”

No one has ever had to tell me that my stubbornness and my pride are my fatal flaws, qualities I undoubtedly inherited from my father but flourished due to my own ignorance. And that is why it took fourteen years for me to fully realize and accept my blame. My stubbornness had always stopped me from pushing any other argument that wasn’t mine, and my pride stopped me from admitting I was wrong, because I somehow believed that that made me inferior. That being wrong knocked me off a pedestal I desperately wanted to be on.

I thought I was a good person, a good friend, and a good daughter; I’m not. Not always. I wanted to be the best. But I can’t be. Even though I want to.

There is a mirror leaning against my the wall of my bedroom near the door. When I get up from my bed or my chair and I leave my room, I know that I am not supposed to hit that mirror and knock it over. I can control myself, so when I stand up and walk out of my room, I don’t hit that mirror.

Why can’t I make decisions like that about everything else in my life? If I want to be a mother someday, I want to be the best mother. But guess what? I am not going to be. I’m not going to be the best mother. And that feels wrong.

Too often, I have gotten into an argument and have thought of something that I know will hurt someone. I know I should not say it, but I do it anyways and I don’t know why. It feels sadistic, knowing that I may hurt someone and still going forward. That is not going to help anything. Being awful won’t help the other person and it won’t help me to be the best friend, daughter, or person. That means that if I were to treat the things in my surroundings the way I treat other people, I would get up and knock that mirror to the ground.

It is not enough to want to be a good person. We all want to be good people. But time and time again, we fail. Even the greatest people of our history have people they have hurt, cruel words they have said. It is not possible to get through life without doing at least one messed up thing to others because as humans, we are emotional, and sometimes our emotions get the best of us. So we really have to try. We have to try to make a conscious effort to be better if we want to be good. We have to be mindful of how we treat others and exercise restraint over our words and actions. In order to do that, we must first set aside our pride and obstinacy

I read this book a while ago and I honestly don’t know why it took me so long to finally write a review on it. But first things first, I loved this book and I love Rainbow Rowell. I have yet to read Attachments or Landline (I really want to but what can you do when the nearest bookstore is 30 minutes away, you’re a lazy sixteen year old who hasn’t done anything for her license, and you survive on giftcards?) but I have read Eleanor & Park and (finally) just read Carry On, which got me to reread Fangirl, which is probably one of my favorite books ever. I found this book to be charming, embarrassingly funny, and incredibly sweet and tender. I couldn’t help but relate to Cath (even with her most awkward moments) and see myself in her, a young writer trying to find her voice. And not to mention her love of fanfiction. Yes. 

But to say that Fangirl was a story about a young writer who loves fanfic and has a scary (but not so bad at all) roommate, well... you’d barely be seeing even the tip of the iceberg.

Even in a story as sweet as this, Rowell didn’t shy away from some fairly complex subjects such as divorce, abandonment, and mental illnesses. Cath has more than enough on her plate as she works to keep up in college, have a new roommate, deal with boys, satisfy thousands of readers with her epic fanfic, Carry On, Simon, worry for her manic-depressive father, and live independently from her polar opposite of a twin sister who doesn’t really have her back anymore. And I loved it.

What’s more is that Cath has a pretty sad backstory and although she didn’t exactly come out of it unscathed, she didn’t let it control her. Even Levi had a pretty rough time before their story begins. We hear a little from Reagan about her and Levi’s somewhat messy relationship, and then from Levi himself how rough that freshman year college was for him. But hey, he certainly moved on and found love. That was all so adorable it had my cheeks hurting.

And if that wasn’t enough, Rowell created another fictional world within this fictional world. Simon Snow and the World of Mages (and gay vampires.) I found myself forgetting that the Simon Snow series didn’t actually exist, at least not really until Rainbow Rowell released Carry On in 2015. (And thank God for that.) The small snippets from the Simon Snow series and excerpts from Cath’s fanfiction had me wanting to know how the story ended.

To sum it all up, I am a fangirl of Fangirl.

You’ve seen your fair share of know-it-alls, whether it’s that one kid in history who knows all about the Great Battle of Whatever-the-Hell-it-Was in Whenever-the-Hell-it-Was,  or that kid who knows all about pulleys, levers, and gears in your engineering class, or that one blonde-haired kid with glasses in “The Polar Express” who just knew everything.

Yeah, that kid.

But what about the other ones? The ones that do well in all their classes without that special spike in any particular subject to go above and beyond with? The ones that don’t place in the academic decathlons or participate in all of those extracurriculars? The ones that want to go to college, but have no real direction as to where they want to go, why they want to go? The ones that are still working hard for a future they aren’t sure they want to have? The unknowing know-it-alls?

For the sake of my sanity, I hope at least one of you out there can relate. Chances are, learning new things isn’t that difficult for you. You get a lesson, a fact, a concept, and it just goes click! You’ve never really struggled in anything, you put in all of the work, and you get all the grades, but nothing has yet to completely fascinate you enough to make you want to excel with it.

College seems like a necessity. After all, thanks to our schools, educational TV shows, pamphlets, orientations, and maybe our own family members and friends, it’s been hardwired into our new-generation brains that our goal is to grow up, get a good education to get into a good college to get a good job to get a nice house to support your significant other and your kids, even after you’ve gone. But it kind of sucks if you don’t have any plan to do that, or if you don’t even really want to at all.

But you’re smart and bright, you’ve got nothing to worry about! You’ll get into whatever college you want, you’ll figure it all out.

Right?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something about it all that just doesn’t feel right about it all. To coast through everything on autopilot, doing what works best for you and your skills isn’t ideal for everyone. What about passion and drive? You know, that thing that makes you want to do this or do that?

Or maybe you’ve found that. Maybe you’ve found something that you’ve got a real knack for and you really enjoy doing it! The only problem is, what if it’s something that doesn’t get you into college? Or bring in the big bucks? The perfect house with the picket fence or the stylish brick apartment with a beautiful view of the New York City skyline that you always dreamed of having, you can kiss them all goodbye, simply because you’ve got the talent for something that doesn’t fit into the standard issue How to Grow Up Guide.

js

like the cutest.

like oh yeah thats right fargo is head of GD now

and allison and henry's wife