On My Mind

Why I Relate To...

I am a huge Percy Jackson fan. I love their world so much and wish that I could in someway be a part of it. There are really only two characters that I can personally sympathize with. Those being Percy Jackson and Leo Valdez. I can justify Annabeth Chase a little bit, but only for one reason or two.

I can relate to Percy in several instances but for several different reasons. For starters, I started getting gray hair (naturally, which is really hard for my brain to process) around the same age as when Percy and Annabeth got theirs in Titan's Curse. I have a younger sister and the two of us have a large age gap just like Percy and Estelle. Also one of my all time favorite colors is blue just like Percy. All of that is surface level though. The deeper reasonings are these. Percy was always treated like an outcast before Camp Half Blood and because he was different, he was bullied, misunderstood, and never really listened to. Because of those reasons and how those all added up for him, he got kicked out of almost every school he attended. There may be different reasons and though I may not have been kicked out of any school I have ever attended, I still relate to some of the things he has gone through. For example, I was bullied for my religion and although I had friends who shared that religion (I hardly had any friends back then), it still hurt to be treated as an outcast for something that I firmly believed in. It got so bad to a point where I started to doubt myself. I can also sympathize with the fact that he was misunderstood. Though his was a trick of the Mist, mine was just plain misunderstanding. I was hardly ever listened to and I was ignored so much that I was essentially mute to most of the people around me. At home, I was almost always blamed for things that I never did, and oftentimes, I hardly ever received an apology even after the fact that my parents figured out that it wasn't my fault. I can also really relate to the complicated love arc that he goes through in the first series since my love life sure as heck feels like walking through Tartarus. I also look up to Percy in this way since he was able to find love in Annabeth, I have hope that I will eventually find love in someone who makes me feel loved. I have also been able to find my Camp Half Blood in my high school. I have made several really close friends that are basically my Argo ll Crew. 

With Leo though, I can relate to the fact that my hands always need to be doing something. Whether its building with Legos (don't judge me for the fact that I still do this at 18) or typing stories for you guys, I just always feel like I need to be doing something. This goes with Percy too, but I have this built in sarcastic humor that no one ever really gets to see since, like I said with Percy, I was hardly ever heard. Leo is known for his witty humor and sarcastic jokes, and I have the potential to be that way. I can also relate to Leo because throughout most of Heroes of Olympus, he is granted the frustrating privilege of being a seventh wheel. I personally know how this feels. Three of my closest friends are in relationships and I almost always feel like I've been left out of a secret circle that only couples can get in. I have also had several failed attempts at relationships. One dumped me for another guy after three months, one I had ended on good terms with and we still talk every now and then, and then three times in a row, I was rejected. Each rejection hurt worse than the last. At the time I am writing this, I am still trying to get over the most recent rejection. (That happened November 16, 2020, and this part was written January 20, 2021). Once again, I feel hope that I can be defined by who I am and not who I am with thanks to what should have Leo's character arc instead of what we got. 

Annabeth is a character who I can relate to but for only a few reasons. She went through abandonment issues. I did too. Over the first couple of years of my life I had made two really good friends. One of them was diagnosed with cancer at a very early age and moved to the other side of the country for proper treatment. I wasn't even in grade school yet and I had already lost my best friend. A couple years later around kindergarten to first grade, my other best friend moved to a beach in the state above mine. Not too far but far enough to almost never see him again. I was alone with no friends for two years. I was afraid that if I tried to make any new friends that they would move away too leaving me alone again, so I put up walls to shut people out, but that didn't stop the two people who managed to break through. The first semester of third grade was when I met my next set of friends. One I met at church and one I met at school. I was genuinely thankful for them. Second semester of third grade, my best friend who had cancer had reach remission and was able to move back. I was super clingy to him because I didn't want to lose him again, but in a way, I had never really got him back in the first place. He was different when he came back. He acted better than everyone else, including me. He didn't even want to hang out with me at school anymore, like he was embarrassed of me. After fourth grade, my school best friend, the one that I had met before the return of my childhood friend, moved to the beach in my state. He and I tried to keep in touch, but eventually, we lost contact with each other. Things went pretty smooth from there I had made a few new friends, but I still held onto my fears. I met the first of my nine closest friends back in kindergarten, the next in third grade when my cancer friend came back, the next two friends early in middle school, and the next five early in high school. Around the end of me finally accepting these nine kind and caring people in my life, my church friend from back around third grade moved to the far end of the state above mine due to his dad's work. Not long after that one of the nine had to move to two states below mine for his dad's work. I still keep in touch with these two but it's still not the same as when they were here. Now with all of this COVID-19 mess, I can barely see the eight friends that I still have the opportunity to see, I can barely talk to the ones whose contacts are registered in my phone because I have no idea what their schedule is, and I have lost contact with or have stopped being friends with three of my childhood friends. 

Since that paragraph was getting a little long, I decided to split my reasoning for Annabeth up. My next reason for finding comfort in Annabeth is the fact is that she is so passionate about what she want to do with her life. She is a nerd for architecture, while I am a nerd for books, tv shows, anime, movies, and card games. If I asked you to ask me a question about something I was ever a nerd about, I would nine times out of ten be able to answer that question. I have all of this knowledge of these things and it scares some people off sometimes. That's the very reason why I was rejected last time. My nerdiness for certain things come and go in phases, but when I'm in that particular phase, it's almost like an addiction. A part of me that I can't live without. No matter how long I spend away from it, it's still there waiting for something or someone to trigger a memory or an idea that can restart my interests at that time. 

That's pretty much it for this go 'round. This chapter was inspired by ashlee.tayla. I discovered her through various tik toc compilations on YouTube which eventually caused me to discover her YouTube channel. She also gave me the courage to write this entire journal type thing in the first place. She is able to be so open with a worldwide audience that she barely knows and her bravery and strength have honestly gotten me through some tough times of my own. I don't care what she may think of herself, she is basically Annabeth. Not just in the way she looks, but in the way that she is strong enough to admit that she can be weak and vulnerable at times whether it be to a camera which she chooses to show her audience, or her actively seeking out therapy that she mentions in a few of her videos. She is an amazing person from what I have seen and you all should follow her on whatever social platforms she has, and no matter how much she denies it, she deserves the audience she has gained.

Signing off for now,

Jedi Matser Ardel, Son of Hephaestus, Gryffindor House