Why it's real.

My little brother asks me a lot about Spider Man. As we live in Mexico and he knows Spider Man lives in the US, he asked me to take pictures of him shooting a web when I move back. He's 5 years old so I debated quickly on whether to explain to him the fact that Peter Parker was fiction or not, to which I decided to in fact do so. I tried to explain it though, without making fiction and not-real synonyms if you know what I mean.

I get emotionally attached to characters all the time, every time, from a book, a show, a movie, even a commercial. And though I sometimes question whether it has to do with some psychological affair I should check out with a shrink, I have ultimately always decided on accepting it and embracing it even. Now, I have finally been able to put into words how I take in those situations, where I cry with them and laugh with them, and throw tantrums even though I appear to be insane.

They may be a part of a story, of a script, just fiction. But that's the thing, isn't it. Fiction isn't just.

Because although names are different, faces, places, families, lies, promises... it still is something that happens, that happened somewhere in the world. Somewhere there are men who jump in front of the women they love every time someone wants to hurt her, somewhere there are people making their friend smile and laugh and helping them overcome whatever they need so they can be happy, somewhere there is someone teaching humility, or love or friendship or forgiveness or loyalty and there's someone learning.

So how can I not get attached? How can I not smile like an absolute fool or cry like a baby when I see these things happen in front of my eyes? How, when there are people in this world really crying, losing, laughing, loving, winning, yelling, learning and living... how can I just act as if it were fiction when it is just so so obvious that it's real?

- Vanessa