books, you've failed me

Remember when I posted about how I'd like 18+ protagonists, books with old-enough birdies who have flown from their warm nice homes and are off adventuring in the big scary world?

That was what I asked for when I was still nestled in my nice warm home, thinking I'd like to live that sort of adventure through fictional people and yearning for such a book wistfully, in the same way you yearn for Harry Potter 8 or fictional foods like Butter-pies* or a new Hayao Miyazaki film.

It's not necessary to your existence but it'd be interesting and cool and make you'd feel entertained and happy if those yearnings suddenly materialized.

Well, I feel 18+ books are kind of necessary, now, not just a nice addition to maybe have someday.

Since I last posted here, I've started college. And while it's COLLEGE and everything what I really wish I had--as I walk around adrift on campus confused by everything and everyone and a bit lost and lonely and basically a choco-tumbleweed of a girl---is a book or a fictional character I could relate to.

And I don't have that, not really. Boarding school YA-ers? They're never homesick. They're too busy playing pranks or chasing after manic pixie dream girls or learning magic.

High school I understood. There are a thousand high schoolers within the pages of books I can talk to, and these shared experiences I had with these YA high schoolers made it more bearable and doable back then.

But college? Not just college, but this living on my own, living far away from everything familiar and normal, this complete sudden shock of EVERYTHING BEING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT?

This, I don't understand. And this is definitely a harder and more dynamic and interesting and new and strange and weird part of my life than high school was.

I think you readers will understand what I'm trying to say more than anyone else possibly could. We book bloggers and book readers are so invested in characters and paper-word-worlds that we sort of live our lives in conjunction with the stories that we love and the characters that have melded themselves into us and sometimes we find comfort in characters who are going through the same scary and untested and quite strange situations we're also going through. We become them and they become us in some small but beautiful way and things are just better, having a chance to learn about life through others' eyes.

YA has books that are like friends you can lean shoulders on or maybe older siblings that tell you what to expect.

And you know what?

There's nothing of that sort for college. Or more precisely, that aching feeling you get of not being home anymore and of being a semi-adult and figuring out how to take care of yourself.

I get that there are more pressing things to read and write about other than college students shellshocked by this sudden appearance of a newfangled life.

But there is also room for these types of books, somewhere. If there's room for sparkly vampires, there better be room for "WAIT...WHAT... I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING. I AM EIGHTEEN BUT NOT IN ANYWAY IMMUNE TO COMING OF AGE." books.

I guess what I'm getting at is I would like to know things, and this college thing is something I feel utterly unprepared for by books.
I would like to read about teenagers out in the world struggling to transition because I find it laughable and weird that anyone would think transitioning into an adult would be easy or uninteresting or not meaningful material for a book.

This was a ramble.

I hope you are all doing well and reading lovely books.

I would like to post here more often again.

*oh Diana Wynne Jones your Tale of Time City is lovely