Our Reading Lives Crying Over MY FRIEND LEONARD

Our Reading Lives Crying Over MY FRIEND LEONARD This is a guest post by Taylor Jenkins Reid,  an author and essayist living in Los Angeles. Her first novel Forever, Interrupted is out now from Simon Schuster. Her second novel, After I Do, will be out next summer. Follow her @tjenkinsreid. _________________________ I was a year out of college and found myself in the middle of the real world the world where you learn that 9-5 is a myth, that you dont meet the love of your life in line at the grocery store, that bills pile up, and that the world doesnt really care if you just need a goddamn vacation. I had moved to a new city. I barely knew anyone and I wasnt going to meet anyone anytime soon because I was working thirteen or fourteen hours a day. My student loans had just kicked into repayment. I was broke, restless, and lonely. And then, for some reason, I picked up James Freys second  book,  My Friend Leonard. I use the word book here on purpose because Im terrified to call it a memoir, as he did back then. And Im also hesitant to call it a novel. It was 2006. The news about  A Million Little Pieces  had already come out. We all knew what he did. But I had liked  A Million Little Pieces  and I was curious about  My Friend Leonard  so I gave it a shot. It was a Friday night. I was facing another weekend where I didnt have any plans. I didnt know enough people in town to make plans. I read all the through the night. I woke up on Saturday and kept reading. Sunday night, I finished the  book, flipping page after page, desperately reading to find out what happened to Leonard. I had fallen in love with him over the weekend and I had to know if he was going to be okay, if things worked out for him. And then, when I finished the  book, I wept. I cried and cried, sometimes failing to catch my breath. I cried until my eyes were bloodshot and my face was blotchy. And then I cried some more. At first, I was crying for James Frey and for Leonard. I was crying for the tenderness with which they were there for each other. I was crying for the beauty of their friendship. And then, somewhere along the way, I was crying because I was crying. And I cried because I was crying for a long time. I needed to cry. The stress of my job, my loneliness, and the weight of the real world had been weighing me down. I needed to let it out, I needed to release my worries. And yet, I wasnt sure how to do it on my own.  I had needed an inciting incident. I needed something to pop the balloon, something to start the tears forming. And once  My Friend Leonard  got me started, I found that I had plenty of reasons to cry. And when I finally stopped crying, when I fell asleep and woke up the next morning feeling lighter and freer than Id felt in months, I immediately knew what  books  could do. Crying over someones story sometimes feels so much more cathartic than crying over your own. And in crying over Leonard, I was able to let go of my own pain, just a little bit. Its years later and I have a job I love.  Im married to an amazing man, I am blessed with wonderful friends, and sometimes I complain that my weekends are too full. That is what life does, it changes. We grow. We move forward. I am now very happy to live in the real world. But  My Friend Leonard, and its pale pink cover, sit in my living room, eye-level on the shelf. Sometimes I pull it down and hold it to my chest, as if I could give it a hug, as if I could say thank you. ____________________________ Sign up for our newsletter to have the best of Book Riot delivered straight to your inbox every two weeks. No spam. We promise. To keep up with Book Riot on a daily basis, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, , and subscribe to the Book Riot podcast in iTunes or via RSS. So much bookish goodnessall day, every day.