I have been spending an insane amount of time reading. And yes, surprisingly, I am reading the Twilight series. Vampire romances. Very unlike me to be reading these books. But I have to say that I am completely fascinated. I don't really think the books are particularly great, but they are captivating. Sometimes they feel like a perfect mistake, a beautiful train wreck, a necessary evil. And sometimes they are just pure fun and completely engrossing.

They tap into this thing with me, this weird nightmare that I have had on and off for my whole life. A vampire nightmare that started when I was about 7. Always running, I was as a little girl, from the vampires. My heart pounding in my chest as I ran and ran. I think the nightmares started right after I saved my sister and I from being kidnapped. Kidnapped by a dark haired man in an old purple car. We ran and ran that day, through our neighbors back yards and across streets. She was too little to understand what was going on, so I had to pick her up and toss her over low fences and hope that we would escape. It sounds so dramatic, but I am sure it was only about 5 or so minutes of my life, this great escape. I often wonder if I dreamed it up. But no, my sister affirms the story. Us in our matching terry cloth jackets, walking one street away from our house as the purple car began to follow us and the tall thin man got out and started walking toward us.

So then the nightmares began and I endured them and sometimes Andy and Barney from Mayberry were also vampires and they also chased me down the street, them in black and white and me in color. So strange. But mostly, it was a version of the typical pre-Buffy vampire that provided me with the terror. Then one day, at maybe 12 or so, I decided in the dream that I wouldn't be chased anymore. I would just stop and let him catch me.

"Screw this," I thought looking down at a black and white checkered dream floor, "You've got me." And this is what Stephenie Meyer's books kinda tap into with me. The giving up and letting the monster catch you because you can't and don't want to run anymore. And frankly because you are kinda interested in what he wants anyway. (To be honest, this might have been how I felt about my high school boyfriend. And if you know me, you know which one I am talking about.) The heroine in her novels does just this and it of course goes terribly wrong. But what is better, being chased by the vampires your whole life or just giving up, really? In the end, I don't think it is the best message for young girls, but I can understand the appeal. The surrender, the want to be more than you are, to be superhuman, to be loved forever.

I will have more to say on this when I complete the final book, but for now, I am both completely engrossed and completely appalled by these books and their message. And yet I feel like I have been there, in a dream world long ago, that I understand the impulse. Meyer has tapped into something really interesting and I didn't expect I would be remotely interested.

If you thought I was brave for being honest in the past in this blog, I totally just admitted to reading a set of vampire romances. Awesome.