Falling out of Love with your favourite author

It starts off with the promise of a fairy tale romance – reader meets writer's work and they live happily ever after. However, there come certain phases of life that are very difficult on a reader. One such traumatic experience is no longer being able to call the person, who kept you up night after night just turning the pages, your favourite author. What makes it all the more devastating is that books aren't like movies; they usually demand more commitment as they take more time, attention and a call for your imagination. The recovery from such a blow takes time. After all, it is a grieving process. It can happen to us readers anytime and so I present to you the monologue of a hurt and broken certain someone who recently lost a favourite author.

1. DENIAL
No. This can't possibly be true. This, this right here, it must be a rough patch and nothing more. What I just read, it probably isn't even as bad as I think it was. Maybe it was me; maybe I'm the one who didn't get it. It must have gone completely over my head. But, we could work it out, couldn't we? Remember how we planned it all out? How I was supposed to devote hours and days of my life to all your works? Please tell me that it's still happening.

2. ANGER
All I can think of are those assignments that I blatantly ignored, all of my favourite sitcoms that I missed, just so I could finish one more chapter and prove to myself that you were as good as I initially thought. If only! What has become of all your fancy titles of best-seller and award-winner? It's just really hard for me to believe that you, of all the people, turned out to have flaws. How could you?

3. BARGAINING
Maybe it's not as bad as it seems. Book B might be significantly worse than Book A, but so what? That must have been a learning curve – a stepping stone to something brilliant. Then again that makes me think of the brilliantly bad Book C which should have never seen the light of day (that's alright; C could be our dirty little secret). Book A was so good – now to sell that propaganda.

4. DEPRESSION
It is definitely as bad as it seems. Everything we had together is turning bitter as the words grow more banal and clichéd. I know I should let go – the feelings I have (or at least had) for you. If only it were that easy. The easier option now is just to block it all out. Ignore everyone I so eagerly and foolishly introduced you to. Shy away from all those people to whom I raved about reading your poetic prose. I suppose my misguided love for you makes me deserving of this distress.

5. ACCEPTANCE
There is no acceptance.