Me and Snape - 7/23/2007 in 2005 - 2007: High School

Spoilers. But really, if it's spoiled for you at this point it's your own damn fault for reading slowly and being on the internet.

I finished Deathly Hallows at ten o'clock Saturday night. I wasn't very healthy about it. I didn't pace myself. I read until six a.m, at which point I was exhausted, but I still had to take a sleeping pill to calm myself the fuck down. I was up and reading again at noon. It only occured to me at three p.m. that I was very hungry, so I went downstairs and ate. Then I went back to reading. Dinner with my parents was my only other break. When I finished I had a stomachache and a headache and was jittery and and tired and emotionally explosive.

That being said, I loved the book. I was completely satisfied with it. There were so many great moments. However, looking back, there was one thing that was unquestionably more important than everything else. It is what I have been thinking about for the last two days as I have been sitting around obsessing and desperately searching the internet for human contact. It is what has been giving me spontaneous bursts of sadness and what has been keeping me up at night. (Well, that and that fact that I seriously screwed up my sleep cycle by staying up until six a.m.)

Snape loved Lily. He loved her. He loved her for his whole life. He loved her so much that he was willing to do anything for her - to kill and die and be used and humiliated for her. He loved her so much that his last words were a request to die looking into her eyes. He loved her that much, and he could never have her.

I sobbed during that chapter. Really. I cried the kind of hard, loud crying where your body shakes and you can't control your breathing. I cried after I finished the book too, but only for Snape. I cried a long time into the night. And I thought about it all the next day. What a beautiful story. Beautiful and sad and tantalizing and absorbing. Infinitely more important than everything else in the book, really.

Of course, I only cry at books and movies for selfish reasons. Really, I only cry about my own life. So why did I cry about Snape so long and hard? At first my only answer was, "Well, Julian. Duh." That's true, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there's more to it than that.

I love the way Snape loves. That is: hard, and not very well. I would like to think that if I asked someone to save Julian's life and they asked me what I would give in return, I would say, "Anything." I would like to think that if someone said to me "You still love him? After all this time?" I would say, "Always." But Snape still isn't a very nice guy, is he? Even when he loves absolutely, he loves selfishly. He is described as looking at her "greedily." He watches her from behind bushes. He treats her badly, even though he doesn't mean to. He doesn't even listen to her. He stops listening as soon as he's heard what he wants to hear. He doesn't think of how she will feel if he spares her life but lets her family die. That's just the way Snape is. He just doesn't really get it, and that's why he loses her. He just wants her, he wants her all to himself, and he is desperate for her, because he is lonely. But she is good and brave and pure, and he's just... Snape.

But, no matter how imperfect Snape is, he still exists in a universe where things matter. Even though his feelings are kind of creepy and selfish, they are still important and real and beautiful. Hell, they more or less save the day. Snape gets to be a tragic hero. I live in constant fear that I exist in a universe where things do not matter. I live in constant fear that my feelings are not important or real or beautiful, but rather dumb and silly. In my universe, loving someone creepily and obsessively and poorly is not excusable, because no one is going to look at your story and see the beauty in it. That is why I am clinging to Snape's story so hard. That is probably why I like Harry Potter in general - everything matters.

I went to my last therepy today. I guess the whole thing wasn't a complete failure, since she did draw some conclusions. Here are the conclusions: - I have OCD, but my compulsions aren't really hurting me too much, and when they have in the past I've been able to overpower them, so I'm okay. - I am grumpy and introverted, but I don't really have any sort of antisocial personality disorder, so I just have to learn to live with the fact that I am grumpy and introverted. - Sex freaks me out, but I am only eighteen, so it is not that big of a deal. It doesn't freak me out any more than it freaks out most religious people anyway. - I dislike my parents, but everyone dislikes their parents. I just have to suck it up.

These are all very good conclusions, I think. I have drawn a conclusion of my own though: a therepist is not the same as a diary. Therepists are not interested in the soul. If you want to make someone understand you and see the complex beauty in your life, you are not looking for a therepist. You are looking for a diary. And I already have that. So I don't know why the hell I still feel empty, why I still need someone to understand me and appreciate the complex beauty of my life. But I do. That's why I always tell too many people too many things about me that they don't need to know. That's a major difference between me and Severus Snape: He wants to keep his soul hidden. I want to show mine to everyone. In this case, I think he's the one who's more admirable.