Okay. The first thing I have to say before you read this is that I didn't write it because I have a love for the novel Great Expectations. Far from it. Honestly, I found the book to be boring as crap; I just really loved Estella’s character. Then I had this project assigned to me in English class. We read The House On Mango Street, and we were talking about a protagonist’s journey to self-discovery, and we had to choose a protagonist from a novel we’d read earlier in the year and write a bunch of vignettes about them. So, I picked Estella. And I wrote these vignettes from her point of view, and I used literary devices and crap (using literary devices was part of the project) and I just really like them, okay?! So, if you’re like me and you were forced to read Great Expectations, I hope you read and enjoy the only Great Expectations fanfiction in existence. Oh, also: SPOILER ALERT. I follow Estella through the entire plot of the book, so if you don’t know how it ends and you don’t want to know, DON’T READ IT. Okay. Cool. Enjoy. This is part three...
Part IV. Choosing
People return to you at the strangest and most inopportune times. People you thought you had forgotten. People you forgot to remember. They hear about the new people in your life and they question you. They ask you the questions that you don’t think to ask yourself.
People like that - like him - make you reevaluate yourself. People who you never realized meant that much to you, and suddenly, they become all you think about and it scares you. He scares me.
It’s not that I think he isn’t safe; it’s that he shows me a different way of living, and it takes me away from what I know. He makes me re-think everything.
People return to you at the strangest and most inopportune times. People you thought you had forgotten. People you forgot to remember. They hear about the new people in your life and they question you. They ask you the questions that you don’t think to ask yourself.
People like that - like him - make you reevaluate yourself. People who you never realized meant that much to you, and suddenly, they become all you think about and it scares you. He scares me.
It’s not that I think he isn’t safe; it’s that he shows me a different way of living, and it takes me away from what I know. He makes me re-think everything.
At first, he showed me a humble lifestyle, no grandeur, no extravagance. And I scorned it. I laughed at him and his coarse hands and his thick-soled boots.
Now, he shows me that maybe love isn’t all about money and status. Maybe marriage isn’t about taking advantage of other people's assets. Maybe being a lady isn’t the most important thing to be. Maybe there is more to loving somebody than I know; maybe I don’t know anything about loving somebody because I’ve never experienced it. Maybe I’ve only imagined love where there isn’t any.
And then he leaves me and I think about how I think when I’m around him and it’s so different from how I think when I’m not around him and I’m feeling (is that what this is) and if it is feeling and it happens when I’m around him then am I feeling for him and this is not what I know I don’t know what to do I have to act like I know but I am just stumbling through each day blind - I’m so confused.
And then he’s back, and it happens again. Then I start to think again. I become more and more muddled, these new notions creep around the edges of everything I thought I knew. I am a flower, and my petals are just beginning to open, sunlight beginning to seep in and make things clear.
I think I know what I want. I think I know what’s really true. I have to change, but I don’t know how. I’m angry at myself for being the way I am, and I wonder why everything is so hard.
Now I remember. I remember who taught me to be a lady. I have made my choice; I need to go home.
- CinnamonGinger
No comments:
Post a Comment