So I have an ancient laptop which is old enough to be thrown into the dumps but still a few years shy of being called vintage, hence it takes forever to start which I normally hate but today particularly so because I am bursting up with emotions I need to vent out and don't even want to waste a moment afraid that the words bubbling inside me would somehow fizzle out and I would be left with a dreary choice of words which would pale in comparison to what I had been feeling at the moment just because I was not able to find the right words to express my emotions. Have you loved a fictional character so much that they seemed more real to you than anything or anyone else you had in real life? Now some would say no, and the others who read books would know what I am trying to say. As I have grown older this feeling has hit me lesser and lesser but today as I sat down to read Turtles All The Way Down by John Green I was hit with that familiar old feeling, where the story remains with you long long after the story has ended. It's a beautiful sensation, feeling so overwhelmingly for someone who doesn't even exist. But perhaps we love them so much because they exist in us, as parts of us that we sometimes choose not to address, or simply ignore trying too hard to fit in a normal world. But then sometimes we read a book and we discover a character we fall in love with, simply because it made us rediscover who we had buried deep inside of us. I don't even know if I make sense right now and I don't intend for anyone to ever read it, and perhaps no one would really, but on this Christmas eve, I am thankful for stories; and for the various versions of us we can find and rediscover and even live simply by being a part of a story, whether by reading or even writing one. As John Green writes, the world is a billion of years old, and life is a product of nucleotide mutation and everything. But the world is also the stories we tell about it.