The Power

I'm depressed.
I finished yet another book. Soon my books will push me out of my home. I'm not depressed because I finished the book, although that is not completely out of the reach of possibility. Often I have been depressed to finish a story. I know I'm not alone when I say I rush through a book to get the whole tale and then am sad when there's nothing more to read. You grow attached to these people that you're reading about and you want to know where they go from here. I'm depressed because the book that I just finished had the power. The power to suck me it. The power to make me care. The power to make me cry. Not that making me cry is a hard task to accomplish. I cry during TV, during movies, watching a Campbell's soup commercial. I've cried about a character that I killed off. I had the power to keep them going and I killed them off and then cried about it. Of course me being a typical crazy girl it's socially acceptable for me to cry at Campbell's soup commercials.
This book really got to me and that is not an easy feat. Normally I can relate to a character just enough to spin a world of imagination in my head to play out the story. Once the story is done I can put the book on the shelf and say, 'that was good, what's next?' With my most current read I actually attached myself to many of the characters. A few hours ago I threw my book down in anger because the character was being a child and acting stupid. To the point that I wanted to reach into the book and slap her. Then I picked back up and connected again. Feeling happy with her, feeling angry with her, feeling sad with her.... truly attaching myself to this person that doesn't exist. And when one of the characters died (even as I knew he would from the beginning) I felt that emptiness. And then the book was over and it stuck with me. So I decided to write to you about it.
It's not even the connection that moved me so much when I thought about it. I've connected like that before. So much so that I couldn't read the sequel of a book because I was too upset about the ending of the first. It doesn't matter which story I'm talking about because it's really just the power that gets to me. The power of the author to make me care about her imagination. I want that power. I want to make people have emotions towards something that doesn't exist except in my head and now their's. It's not real and it doesn't make the world spin. It doesn't affect daily life and its not going to be there when you close the cover again, but for those moments you cared about me. About my imagination. I want that.