Le Petit Ami

I really do believe books can change people.

I reread parts of Nana for the first time in maybe two years last night. A part of it was mainly spurred on by the fact that my roommate and I have a running joke about how she is the air-headed Hachi and I am the cooler-than-thou Nana O. But mainly, I wanted to reread the key scenes with Nana and Ren.

There seems to be so much pressure on me to date now -- every time I talk to my mother on the phone, it seems like the conversation always turns to, "So Sophelia? Find anyone interesting?" In fact, when I talked to her the day after my 20th birthday, she brought it up again -- except this time, she went through a whole spiel about how I was too proud and independent for my own good, and how I need to learn when to pull the "damsel-in-distress" card on a guy. Not only that, it seems to be a frequent topic of conversation among my friends. My friends here at Duke like to hypothesize what type of person I would ever date. Whenever they ask if there's anyone here I'm interested here, I am being entirely honest when I say no. In fact, it's pretty much universally agreed upon that I will be the last amongst my friends to date -- partly because I show hardly any interest in that sort of business in the first place.

Reading Nana yesterday put a lot of things in perspective. For one, it brought me back into my high-school-sophomore-year mindset from four years ago. I saw just how much Nana had influenced the person I have become. The pride and independence that I admired so much in Nana subconsciously took hold in myself.

But that I already discovered earlier last year. What really struck me last night was just how much I idealized the all-consuming relationship between Ren and Nana. In regards to the whole boyfriend issue, I had consciously forgotten what I was looking for -- until rediscovering Ren made me realize I'd still been subconsciously looking for it this whole time.

For those unfamiliar with Ren and Nana, their love is controversial. For the guys out there -- would you be weirded out if your girlfriend locked a chain and padlock around your neck a la Sid and Nancy and kept the key? Or would you think that was really hot/romantic? Their relationship is plagued with possessiveness and pride, but on the other hand, the term "soulmates" seems to fit Ren and Nana more than any other couple in the series.

And that's the thing. I wanted a Ren. I never wanted to be like Hachi, who flitted from Shoji to Yasu to Takumi to Nobu. And to an extent, I still want a Ren even now.

It would make sense, right? The girl who can harbor the same crush for two years does not easily flit from love to love. She becomes consumed in her own addiction. I once wrote a post about the Badass One -- he once said in a magazine interview, "When I fall in love, I will be so into it... to the point of losing my reason." At the time, I questioned the idea. I found it a scary. For the girl obsessed with self-control, to the point that she refuses to get drunk -- the idea of losing yourself in love is terrifying.

But I'm beginning to think the potential lies within me.