A - About Me

I, like every other resident of this planet, have spent my life being moulded, adjusted and reshaped by many parties, each intent on making the perfect me, the right kind of me. I’ve been influenced by every cartoon, every movie watched over the top of my DS, every word I’ve heard and every person I’ve admired.

My first solid ambition in life was to be a Pokémon Trainer and the second was to go to Hogwarts and live in the library; not exactly realistic goals. Even now, these ambitions still tug at my heartstrings, evoking the same kind of longing they did since the day they popped into my overcrowded head. I still sometimes add my longing to live in Hogwarts to the end of my diary entries, where I place all my thoughts, both magical and mundane.

Unfortunately, despite what my brain would tell you on an average day, the world I live in is strictly non- magical, occupied solely by muggles, who I have come to like, despite what certain people in the wizarding world think of them. I like school, even though we rarely get a chance to brew a Draught of Living Death or practice defensive spells in the Room of Requirement. For the most part, there’s a warmth and friendliness to the place that I love.

Being fifteen, and just out of a gruelling exam year, I have an unreasonable sense of freedom and a perhaps misguided carefree attitude. After all, as the teachers delight in slipping into our conversation, there is still the Leaving Cert to contend with. They love that word, and though I have a healthy fear of it, I’m not quite as terrified yet as some people are. As a teenager, I have my entire life ahead of me, apart from those wonderful childhood years that I still weep for. I remember when my homework was to fill in ‘cat’ and ‘mouse’ into a box, when getting 100% was as easy, literally, as a b c.

For some reason, I’ve always found myself drawn to people who have different interests than me, mostly that sphere of the unknown contains things like ‘make-up’, ‘dresses’ and ‘music’. Now, I like warbling along to my favourite tunes as much as the next teenager, but it’s never been something I’ve been passionate about, obsessed about. I don’t use that word lightly, but when I look at my friends, and catch a mention of ‘Shinee’ or ‘Onew’, I really do have to use that word. In fact, I use it so much, it worries me.

While I spend most of my life in what I hope have the potential to be parallel universes, I do occasionally revel in the magic of our world, my world. I look around me, stroking the covers of my favourite worlds on pages, and I kind of like the world where people read and dance, where people fall in love and fall apart. I can forgive the imperfections, though there are a lot of them, and while my world is very caged in and cushioned, I’m not unaware of the terrible state of our world. With the internet, I couldn’t be, but even though the world is a destructive place, a dangerous place; I can still love it, because I have ventured too many times into the Times New Roman world of my books, to think this place beyond saving.

I love the world,  and all of them that could not exist but for planet earth, which is why I like to live here sometimes, and watch as it moves around me through my spectacled eyes, from under my brown haired fringe, with no small amount of wonder.

As you have probably figured out, I love Harry Potter. In fact, I love all books with every ounce of my being. They have shaped me, broken me and put me back together again. They have made me laugh and, oh, they have made me cry. They have made me fall in love, and deep in love am I.

©EmmaTobin 2012