We Met In Detention ✓

Seventeen | Books

ramadan mubarak <3

~Harry's POV

I like to read sad books. Books about suicide, self-harm, abuse, anorexia, death and disorders and mental health problems in general.

I feel safe reading them.

I feel seen.

But I also feel invalid sometimes, because in books you can make characters go through hell and back three times over, or give them an easy life. 

You never really see anyone who struggles with their mental health without any trauma to cause it.

I'm not saying I've not gone through much, but I haven't gone through the worst. In my opinion at least. Or maybe that's my self-hatred and constant fear that all I've been through is my own mind making me think I'm an attention seeker.

But despite that, books where there's sad shit make me feel comfortable. Especially the comment sections where you see people making funny jokes or people who are just like you- or both.

It makes me feel... heard. It makes me feel like I'm not alone.

So instead of getting therapy, I read books. 

Even if sometimes the funeral speeches make me cry, or the horrible, jaw-dropping backstories of everything the characters have been through.

And I think it's working.

I've been burying myself in books recently to avoid the fact that I told the truth to Hermione and "opened-up" to Draco. To avoid the guilt of hiding stuff from Mione and lying to Dray.

And there it is. People just like me.

And the exact opposites. 

I hate reading those books when the person tells their shit to the love of their life instantly and get better right after. The ones with no road to recovery, and instead, the artificial idea that love heals all and you never struggle ever again once you're in love.

The ones where they say I love you straight away. 

I hate those books.

You could say I'm like that, but the love of my life doesn't know the truth about me; I only "opened-up" so he could too, because clearly he needed to. You could say Draco's the one I'm talking about.

But it doesn't matter because this is my life and point of view.

I prefer the books where they struggle to open up and have accurate representations of anxiety and depression and rocky recoveries. Where they show the realistic side of eating disorders and mental illnesses/disorders.

When it happens so fast and all due to love it just seems unrealistic and gives me no hope at all, because tell me honestly that "true love fixes every curse." 

It isn't Once Upon a Time.

It's real life.

It doesn't help the non-mentally ill people either- although let's be honest, who reads fucked up books and isn't mentally ill?

It'll make people think it's easy to help other people in healing. It isn't.

Sometimes books are unrealistic because it's a fan fiction. I've read fan fictions where the character's lives are so different I completely forget the book is based on something that already exists.

Sometimes I write these types of books too. The books where life isn't easy. The books with sad endings.

It makes me feel like I can pretend my own shit doesn't exist, because I'll be so focussed on the fake version I'm writing.

I'll get so wrapped up in my own work that I forget to worry about my own life and all the fucked up things that happen to me.

And I get to write what I wish I got.

Death, love, help, recovery. 

You name it.

The trauma I give my characters is something I'd never wish for, but the parts about love and recovery I do wish I have. 

Obviously I'd make it realistic. There wouldn't be any jumping into things and opening up right away. There'd have to be plot twists every now and then and, of course, a sad ending that must include death.

Cause if there isn't death, what's the point?

We all die in the end, right? Why not write it.

I'm not an expert writer either. I write for fun. I'd never go into an author-type career because one, I lack the skill and two, I'm Harry Potter.

I'm not allowed to choose the way my life goes. 

I have to follow what everyone else wants me to be.

I have to be perfect. I have to be a hero.

To the world I'm Harry "The Boy Who Lived" Potter. "The Golden Boy." "The Chosen One." They see me as everything I'm not, when in reality...

In reality I'm just Harry, like I said to Hagrid all those years ago. I'm just a boy who was thrown into a world that screwed him over.

But despite that, I have a personality and a whole life and side to me that no one knows about. Only a few people know me because they're my friends, but no one really knows me.

And the public definitely don't know me. For all they care I could actually be a serial killer but because I accidentally killed a noseless egghead when I was a baby, it's okay.

I'm nothing but a name and a legend.

I'd like to be just me.

And Dudley knows a lot of me.

Petunia wishes she could fully know me.

Mione knows most of me.

Ron knows some of me.

Draco wants to know me.

And Ginny, Luna, Neville, Pansy, Blaise and Theo? Well, even if I have grown to care about them and want to protect them when necessary...

They'll know me when I die.

Which hopefully will be soon because life just gets a bit much sometimes. I don't know why, I don't know when, but life just feels like shit sometimes and I wish I wasn't here.

I don't know what I'm on about to be honest.

I hope Baldy comes and lets me off him soon, because I need to off myself.

idk what this is

ig its kinda a vent chapter from me but written so its from harry

i'm not gonna kms dw?

im kinda aware this book wasn't a slow burn but thats bc i wanted to focus on the mental health side of things and basically just harry in general

this is basically harry's trauma + a side of drarry