Also, Some Fiction

 Being alone can have its major perks. I'm discovering new things about myself that I thought I hated before but actually quite enjoy. It's very strange, I've always been dynamic, but there is a certain point in all of my relationships (friendships too) where I stop being me and start being whoever I am spending all of my time with. At that point my relationships usually end because people don't want another them, they want me and I am usually long gone. I need to put that in my about me:

      "Hi, my name is Jade Monroe and I will get lost in you."

 That aside, I've come to love fiction. I used to when I was younger, but as I got older I didn't love it as much anymore. I preferred poetry or pros to long novels. Under the influence of long "fiction hate speeches" by a surprisingly great deal of my peers (usually English majors), I considered loving fiction a mark of foolishness or stupidity.
 How unfair and tragic is that? Fiction is beautiful. I beg to differ with anyone who proclaims fiction does not benefit a person or teach them something. If nothing else, fiction is for the writer.
 I have been writing poetry my entire life, but for the life of me I absolutely cannot write short stories. Mom asked me the other day about why I have only written anthologies and never a novel. I absolutely can't. I can't remember all the hooks and twists or build up around them. Outlines are the bane of my existence. The only organization I can keep is to break up a long story into small pieces ("Escaping Ann Arbor" for example), even then, I feel like my work is lacking.
 I admire fiction writers, especially people like Jodie Picoult. I marvel at her work, she must do long extensive studies on whatever she's writing over before she begins. There are so many facts in her books that blow my mind. I don't have the patience for that kind of research, nor do I believe that would take my work to the "next level". I am a poet. Just recently I've become more comfortable with writing in paragraph form. I'm studying grammar because mine is terrible. I'm not entirely sure my brain is big enough to create another alternate universe where things work out, boys don't leave and there are capes and dragons or even better: gasoline under $3.00.
 I suppose I will be the odd duck of the English majors for awhile. I think I'm going to spend my spare time investing in fiction. I want to explore what makes fiction "good," I want to find new authors to write about and support. I want to pay my respects to a genre that I feel like by many is completely underrated.