Fifty Shades Fan Girl for Life...why I will be forever grateful to EL James.

In early 2011 I got married, I was working two full time jobs, and my life was full and busy, late nights and early mornings were an everyday occurrence, I was slowly becoming tired, melancholy and burnt out. I had started to forget about me, I wasn't depressed per say, but I wasn't waking up every day grateful for a new day, I needed a holiday, but would of happily settled for a full day off. 2012 started with more of the same, long days, longer night, sore feet from jobs in retail and hospitality, back pain, lack of sleep and ultimately a lack of motivation started my downhill descent into a period I'm glad to be out of. As the early months of 2012 began to pass there seemed to be a book that was making waves in the romance world. You might remember it, black cover with a simple grey tie... I'd heard whisperings, I was mildly intrigued.

One of my staff came in to work one morning and in between unpacking and hanging boxes of clothes and serving customers she mentioned she had bought a new book in an effort to get back into reading, the title... FIFTY SHADES OF GREY by EL James. This book was sexy, super sexy, with a narrative cloaked in the BDSM realm, something I had no experience or knowledge of, it was the tale of a young Anastasia Steele and the enigmatic Christian Grey. Jenn asked me to read it with her, I agreed, it had been a while since I was utterly obsessed with a book, Twilight and The Bronze Horseman had been and gone and I secretly hoped this book would capture my imagination the way they had.

My team of eleven was almost entirely female, save for two young men who were unfussed by the idea of joining out group read, the rest of us however raced out to buy our paperbacks and start. Text messages would be the start of this new wondrous dialogue that Fifty would inspire, the following morning bleary eyed we counted in floats and opened the store, a chorus of ohhhhs and ahhhhhs and constant discussion about this whole new world we had discovered together. We devoured the trilogy, but more importantly I devoured them, I lost sleep and didn't care, I found myself sneaking to the back room "to check for something" to read one more page, I was utterly and unequivocally obsessed. I had amassed multiple copies of Grey, Darker and Freed as people asked to borrow my books and I feared they might not return them.  I walked back into Borders Books and asked what I needed to read next and left with a shiny new copy of Bared to You by Sylvia Day.

Shortly after I took to google to ask what was next, finding Maryse Black's blog and discovered the world of Kindle and ebooks. I was fervent in my thirst for new titles, new worlds to discover. Slowly but surely I not only l discovered new characters to love but rediscovered myself. I found a joy that was mine, I found a sense of peace when I read, I found a way to just be for the first time in a long time.

I devoured books in a somewhat solitary manner for over a year, adding Authors as friends on Facebook and building my e-library. It wasn't until late 2013 that stirrings of book signings in Australia focused solely on the Romance genre really took shape. Indie and Trad published authors would be there to meet and speak to in person...all these years later and I still can't quite believe just how big of an impact picking up Fifty Shades of Grey would have on my life.

These random musings of mind would still be swirling around in my head, my closest and dearest friends would be living their lives and we would have never met. That incredible trip to Paris and the UK in 2016 for Four Brits Book Fest would be a figment of my imagination. The millions upon millions of words that have been published by thousands upon thousands of Romance Authors would still be trapped on saved files on laptops and computers around the world, because they would have never seen the explosion of Anastasia and Christian and thought to themselves WHY NOT ME?

With the release of Fifty Shades Freed on the big screen the inevitable naysayers are pulling out and dusting off their soap boxes ready for one final hurrah. People who haven't read the books are quick to remark that their relationship is abusive, others snicker behind their hands that it's mummy porn, other's complain about how the story was not to their liking, even throwing out that their books are far better. It seems it's easy to forget that the fact that there is now a billion dollar romance industry that allows them to push publish was spurned on by the release and subsequent success of that book they like to raise their pitch forks at. Fifty Shades very clearly gave romance and erotic romance readers not only a voice but a buying power that was entirely unheard of previously. 2012 saw authors like Colleen Hoover, Abbi Glines, Tammara Webber, launch successful careers, we saw Samantha Towle and Samantha Young capture our hearts with Jake Wethers and Braden Carmichael, we saw Jodi Ellen Malpas bring to life The Lord of the Manor, we discovered and devoured countless heroes and heroines in an effort to stave off our seemingly unquenchable thirst. 

As I sit here still encased in a Christian Grey shaped fog from last nights viewing of Fifty Shades Freed, I am overcome with emotions, I smile freely reminiscing about all that has happened since first hearing the name EL James, and hope that one day I can genuinely thank her for giving us something that so many of us truly needed. 

What I have learnt over the past weekend...

This past weekend I ventured to North Sydney for the first Books by the Bridge event, there's an unparallelled sense of excitement for book signings, and for most the idea of spending time with some of your favourite authors is just about the best thing ever, for me it's more than that though, for me, most of dearest friends have come from book world and book signings like this one. In fact, almost all of my closest book friends I met at a signing on the Gold Coast in Queensland in early 2014.

So this past weekend I was not only going away for my wedding anniversary (at a book signing no less) but I was also going to see and spend time with some of my closest friends, catching up and laughing about anything and everything, and spending some much needed time away from all the stresses of day to day life. 

I've been honest about my difficulty with reading and time constraints of late, I've even been forthright about both personal and family health scares, and in the effort of full disclosure I thought I'd talk about some other issues that have been causing issues of late. By nature I'm an extrovert, the life of the party (if I do say so myself ), I enjoy nothing more than being around people, in fact up until two years ago I worked in retail and hospitality full time, you see I even originally rediscovered my passion for reading when I became bored with spending so much time alone during my first year of marriage when my husband worked long hours. Sitting idly by is not my forte, but in reading I found a place I could lose myself, and with the explosion of social media, I found a way to connect with those authors I had found. I made friends easily and chatting away the hour became my second favourite thing next to reading. GPI was born, beta reading and reviewing commitments tripled, and I became burnt out, and for a long time I kept telling myself that's all it was. I mean I was reading excessively, a book a day at least, a review to accompany it, feedback for authors, and a signing to help organise... last year I decided to take a step back in terms of blog commitments and it helped, but unfortunately it didn't solve the problem. It wasn't until the past weekend that I realised that something bigger was going on, as a person who had always thrived in large groups anxiety was never something I had experience in, and yet there I was on Thursday night, sitting on the floor freaking out, unable to control the sense of panic that was welling inside me. After all I love being sociable, I adore being around big groups of people, and as my mother will attest I work best when on a deadline. 

Why am I telling you this, you may ask? Well one thing I realised this past weekend is that admitting you're struggling isn't a sign of weakness, asking for help isn't going to ruin your street cred, facing the things that scare you doesn't impact on the person you are, and talking to someone, anyone who you trust, is invaluable. 

 

Finding your tribe, those that lift you up is one of the greatest things you will ever experience, and if like me you feel the need to talk to someone entirely removed from your circle for added support I implore you to reach out to your GP, set up a mental health plan and get the help you need from a professional.