I followed along from the day I was given a box set of the first five books in late 1998 or '99. It colored my world as many books would, gave me something meaningful and exciting to see beneath the bleak surface. This was more though -- so deeply visceral, as intense and consuming as the most profoundly formative friendships I can remember having with real people. I felt like I was with them, albeit invisible, but I considered myself an unobtrusive observer of life back then anyway.
I had a gap where I couldn't keep up with the series for a while, until I happened across the last few books I hadn't yet read while hiding out at the library after running away from home (this turned out to be a very predictable and poorly thought-out position). It was only a few months after publication. To highlight the strangely powerful and probably somewhat maladaptive connection: I can recall weeping freely at the end of the book, not so much for the events, more out of relief of a tension I didn't know I'd been holding, and a nebulous bitter guilt that I now recognize as distantly comparable to the survivor's guilt of a veteran who wasn't there with his mates.
I'm not, broadly speaking, a sentimental or emotional person. Of course, I have things that are dear to me for the people they represent, and I get wistful at the end of a good story, and I cried after Flowers for Algernon too, like probably most people who aren't sociopaths (most). This is something else, though. Even now, over 20 years later, I can't relive it in any detail if I'm to stay entirely composed.
Maybe it was just timing. Maybe anything could have fueled that childhood escapism. I like to think it was as special as it felt. A glorious flash, over almost as soon as I was aware of it. Beautiful in that way that I hate to admit has any beauty. I mean, how dare anyone suggest that something I miss so dearly is beautiful in its impermanence, right? But I know it's not exactly wrong, either.
I just hope you know how lucky we were to be there.
