I miss Tris...

Actually I miss Tris and all of them...I've read all the books and I miss them, their voices...I could start reading fan fiction but it would not be the same...I just wish there was more.

I was driving and I heard this song...and I thought of Tris. I swear all the music I listen to could be featured on a Divergent movie except it's not popularly acclaimed music so it would never make it! I think Dauntless would totally go for Metal...dark, heavy and fast...or gloomy and depressing for those days where being Dauntless can get heavy and stifling...

I need to re-watch the movie...to reconnect. I don't want to lose the characters. I don't want to forget them until the next movie comes out. It's dumb but I am totally addicted. I'd throw myself a Divergent birthday party if it were my birthday!!

Four...ever

It's been a while now...I am far less consumed by the Divergent than I was a few weeks ago but the story and the characters linger in the back of my mind.
My life has definitely changed, and not for the better. The book had such an impact on my mood and my outlook. It made life so dull and uninspiring. It made the idea of aging and keeping up with mundane activities totally tasteless and unworthy. But life goes on...anyway...I trailed behind...then I caught up and went right back on track...kind of like the Dauntless jumping on the train! But the sparkle is gone...With Winter upon us, the grey skies, the rain, the colder temperature...it does not help and I feel myself like Four, wanting to escape this world ...except there is nowhere to go. Autopilot kicks in and soon life is back to what it always was but a little part of me has died.

It took a while for me to consider reading any other material or to try and watch any other movie. As if I was afraid anything else I read or watched would erase Four and Tris and their story. I am no longer achy at the thought of Tris's death. I have moved on. But I still hang on to Four. As if I wanted him to be real. I tried starting the Hunger Games but ended up reading all the other materials around the Divergent. The whole series about Four and the Path to Allegiant. I really appreciated the scenes from Four's point of view. It allowed me to plunge back into the story and savor those moments again. It also helped define Four in a new light, actually a darker 'light'. While Four first comes off as rough, a bit mean and dry, he also seems a powerful person within Dauntless after reading the extra material, he seems more like an outcast who has power and brains but who is on a dangerous path.

The question I am still stuck on is...if Four is not Divergent, then why does he have most of the Divergents' abilities. What makes him 'more'? Why does he feel so 'divergent' and struggles with the Factions?

Recovery...

When I was reading the books, I felt that I was engulfed in Veronica Roth's world. I was having difficulties prying myself off the world of factions and its ensuing chaos. I had to re-adjust to real life, to sunshine, to driving on real roads with real people around and taking an interest in the mundane activities of our life routines. Now the world is coming back into view, more clearly defined and I slowly take my place back into it. I resume my normal activities: going shopping, driving, cooking, talking to real people no longer feels strange.

While life is slowly coming back to normal, I am not done mourning and I still think a lot, too much, about the story. I feel the need to take it apart, to understand why it broke me, why it slapped me in the face the way it did, why I cared so much, too much. All the songs I hear on Pandora remind me of the story. I envision which part of the story they would match. 

I am currently reading the material about Four. It precedes the story and establishes Tobias/Four. I think he is the most complicated character in the novel. Reading those bits and pieces of his life before Tris are very interesting, revealing and really makes the ending of the book even more painful. Talk about an unfair life full of let downs and sacrifices. It really feels like all he reaps is pain, and more pain. How much more broken can he be? 

I really like Christina's character ...and finds that she is the one who has it the easiest in the end. Yes, she has her share of loss but overall she survives, keeps her spirits and gets back on her feet fairly fast becoming Tobias' rock. I like her because she might be Dauntless but she's also Candor and I can totally relate! I would be Candor and Dauntless too if I had to take a test! She starts out pretty strong and she ends the same, almost unscathed. 

I am not sure when this story will get out of my head, if ever...especially with the movie  Insurgent coming out in March next year. The trailer comes out tomorrow. I don't know that I will have the guts to see the movie either...It would be, by then, like reopening wounds. 

I had a nightmare last night...I am pretty sure caused by the book. I was thinking about the notion of fear landscape before going to bed. As I was falling asleep, weird images formed in my mind...what fully stirred me awake was the sight of three bodies descending from above, dangling, hanged! For some strange reason, Johnny Cash was one of the bodies...I don't even like or care about Johnny Cash (besides the 'You are my sunshine' song).

All hope is gone

Hope....in such a story, hope is not as obvious as survival and the seeking of the truth yet the only reason I kept reading  was hope! A dark world, a brooding instructor, mischievous initiates...not a lot of room for hope! The movie makes it even worse with the constant reminders that ranking will determine who is in and who will be factionless. Worst, fairly quickly Tris gets kicked out by Eric for not winning a fight...not really how it happened in the book!

Hope. I keep hoping I was wrong, I read wrong...Hope. Hope that the movie will provide an alternate happy ending that is not the book.  Hope. Hope that I have not wasted those last few weeks of my life engulfed in this world, avoiding everyone else (real people) for what seems nothing!

Hope is what drives me to turn the page until the end. Hope is what is taken from me when I get to the scene where Tris is killed. Yet, I keep reading because I need to check on Tobias.

Did Tris die in vain? It kind of seems that way but really she did what she wanted to do all along: seek and reveal the truth and make a change in the/her world. She did it! But she won't know it. She dies a hero.  Yet, she does not feel celebrated or recognized. The whole resetting memories...
What feels unfair is that of all those who fought so hard alongside her, only a few of the characters we have come to know and love  will reap the rewards of her final action. The rest of their world is ...unimportant to us because they are 'the masses'. I think Caleb making it out alive is upsetting too...At least Peter erased his memories...Caleb...Argh! Can Tobias fully enjoy the changes that have taken place in his world? Can Tobias heal? Does Tobias care enough that the factions are gone, that genetics do not rank people? I am not sure he does because he is left with nothing....He gained his mom back but he lost his future. How do you rebuild your life after such a series of event.

I am in pain!! The crying...The bleeding...The betraying...

http://nickelbackloverxoxox.deviantart.com/art/Divergent-Tris-and-Four-397162002

Veronica is Eric

I am still numb...life keeps going but I am not fully recovered. I function. My brain is stuck on the story. The point of the story. The deaths. The feelings of loss. The sea of tears. And then I think...Veronica Roth is like Eric. Eric is always promoting the 'new rules' of Dauntless. He embraces the rules having changed for the worse. Well, Veronica did the same. She killed her main character. She did not let the love interest get his girl. She did not kill them both...united in death like Romeo and Juliet. No...and she kept them separated. Tris died alone. That's a cruel Dauntless way to end the story.

Allegiant...My world has ended.

Yesterday...I died. I collapsed in a puddle of tears. I got shot through the heart and died once with Tris. It was an easy death. It was a coming home. It was a relief...the calm has finally come ....the fighting is over...I am home...she is home....But the story keeps going and the ache just starts over. The tears pour as I realize the ones that are left behind...all alone...in a chaotic world...their short lives full of sufferings and unfair deaths. I hurt. I am sick with pain to see Tobias...I have not even read all his entries and already I can anticipate his agony. I was Tris and now I am Tobias...Tortured, again.
This book is so painful, so so so saddeningly full of affliction. I push through. I read until the end and I cry, cry, cry. I hurt. I am alone. The world around me, the real world around me does not care. They don't know. They could not possibly comprehend. I mourn. It's a freaking story. It's not real people! I can't reason with myself. I can't make it go away...it might all be inside a book but it feels that I have really lived it. The pain is real.

I had entered the world of the Divergent so enthused by the characters and the newness of their organized world and by the end of book one, it's chaos everywhere. Chaos in the city, chaos within families, chaos within friends, chaos within their souls. I think that's why the book grips me. There is so much mending to do, so much fixing and you want to see it happen, you, as a reader, crave resolution. Except it does not come soon enough. Except nothing is ever as it seems and doubt is in every page so you keep turning those darn pages, pushing through the pain, the anxiety, the grief and then you reach the end and you are BROKEN.

I am lost....

I started reading the Divergent series....I had heard about it before from other kids...from family members...I did not think twice about it. Then I saw the movie. The movie hit me like a ton of bricks! I know the reviews were not nice and the whole thing could have been better but it struck a chord within me, deep, deep deep within me. It haunted me. It captivated me. The notion of factions. This idea of initiation. The faction-less...so familiar yet so different. The lack of time stamp made the story appealing too...not old fashion, not futuristic enough...it all felt relatable yet different.

After getting stuck on the movie, I decided to purchase the book. I am too lazy to go to an actual bookstore and pick up a copy...I am also afraid of how different it will be from the movie. Finally the book arrives and I start reading it. Having seen the movie, I lose the magic of creating the characters in my mind and they come alive through the pages as the real people who acted them out in the film. I guess I will never see those actors as anyone else but Veronica Roth's invention.

I recognize scenes, I realize the changes that have been made. In some ways, the book has been simplified to fit onscreen. Or at least, that's how I see it. The book is powerful. It grabs me. I read it quickly. I realize that kids who liked Twilight will love this book too for the romance part but I also realize that there are much deeper conversations to be had about the ideologies in the book, whereas Twilight was way beyond shallow. Many online reviews of the Divergent series differ and speak negatively of the serie but I am blown away by the imagination and intricate details of this closed in society. Everyone compares it to the Hunger Games....I did not read it...I saw the movie and I could not read it. I could not deal with the idea of having to kill everyone and only one survivor 'winning' the game. It was too...too mean, too low, too vile...In Divergent, there are murders too but it's not as drastic and cold.

After finishing the Divergent, I can not wait for the paperback version of Insurgent. So I read the next book on the Kindle app on my phone and my tablet...It consumes me. It makes me feel sick to my stomach. It destroys my insides. I stop breathing when I am not reading it...I realize that I am holding my breath, that I am just waiting to resume the story. Even as I read, I have to take breaks. I moan, I wring my hands...It's torture. When I am away from the story, it is burned in my brain. Scenes repeat themselves; words echo; I hurt. My hands shake. I can't eat. I am worried....There is so much action, so much deceit, so much lying, so much guilt. so many deaths...It feels like a Shakespeare play in a science fiction novel. 1984 meets Shakespeare's Hamlet/Romeo and Juliet. After a few days of agony and two late nights of reading way into the early morning hours, I have finished the book.

I move on to Allegiance...but I already know I am not going to like it. I don't like the falling apart of the society. I was fine with the factions. I don't like Tobias' s mom. I don't like the truth revealed. I don't like the idea of behind the fence. I don't like to see my heroes, who by now are more like superheroes without capes, in a world where they are reduced to nothingness. They are lost. They are powerless. They don't fit anywhere. They can't make sense of it without pain and deceit again...I am only a quarter into it and I am sure it is going to be another difficult read. I already know Tris dies...because there are a lot of spoilers online and I just caught a glimpse of it...It already made me cry. I totally get that she dies. The way I see it, she has to...and it's obvious from the start. I might change my mind after I read the rest.

I keep thinking about Dauntless...About the old ones becoming faction-less and I cannot help but wonder what would have happened to Tris and Tobias if they aged in that faction....

I can't wait for the next movies...it will be a long while...In the meantime I am re-watching the first movie and catch more details as I go.

I have never been that obsessed by a story besides The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy but at least in that one, the main girl does not die...the author does! Leaving me drying my tears in the dust, forever wondering.

I am destroyed...when the series ends, I will have to rebuild myself and heal.