Are there certain topics that are so close to your heart, that you can't bear to talk about them with other people? Or are you always open about sharing your feelings and favourite things?

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For example, sometimes I have a hard time discussing books I really, really love with those who don't share the feeling. I'm lucky to have a roommate who is an avid reader, but our literary preferences vary - I adore classics, modern and historical, while she tends towards miscellaneous contemporary authors. But because it's rare to meet a person who loves reading with passion, I rave about what I'm reading to her. I also get very excited when the reading lists come out for next semester, because they're always filled with classic texts (leg. homer's odyssey, thomas moore's utopia) that I've always wanted to read. She obviously doesn't have the same taste, so once she said sarcastically "I'm glad it makes you so happy." "The sarcasm rather hurt - I must've been too eager for sympathy.

Once we chanced to talk of AoGG and I mentioned that they were my all-time favourites. But I couldn't bear to talk about it - of course my friend said that she liked the first few books and could care less about the rest of the Anne series, it was a perfect fairytale storyline. Fair enough - but somehow it always hurts more when a good friend doesn't understand why you love something so deeply, and knowing that I didn't dare probe into AoGG and lay bare my heart.

(But should I have? Shouldn't my love of something be strong enough so that I can stand up for it in a disagreement?)

Or even, when I lent another friend one of Charles Dickens' books. I love Dickens - I love the way he writes and his sense of humour. But my friend made fun of it after he finished it, and I felt like my love for it was tarnished.

Tonight we had a dinner party and I was telling an endearing childhood memory about my grandmother and how she reacted to a certain situation. My friends, whose family background must've been a bit different from mine, thought the way she behaved would've been scarring to a child. But I wasn't scarred, I was proud of my grandmother for what she did, and it... hurts to be misunderstood.

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Sometimes I hate conversation because it makes you so vulnerable. I wonder if it's worth sharing favourite things and run the risk of their being mocked, or if it's better to "keep them in your heart, where they remain beautiful"