"If I woke up in a different body every day..."

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*Includes Every Day spoilers*

Every Day by David Levithan was in my ebooks folder for quite a while but I just couldn’t find any interest. I loved all Levithan books I’ve read; Boy Meets Boy, The Lover’s Dictionary etc. For some reason Every Day just didn't grab my attention. But for some reason I started reading it. I think this was mostly because I saw a quote from it on Tumblr and wondered why I wasn’t reading a book with such beautiful words. So I read it and of course, I love it.

Every Day is a story about A. A wakes up in a different body everyday. Today A is a Chinese girl living in America and tomorrow A is a metalhead. Since this has been happening since birth, A is now used to the whole deal. By assessing the memories attached to the body, A can be that person for the day.

Then A falls in love with Rhiannon and things get complicated.

"This is hard for me.

    I have gotten so used to what I am, and how my life works.

    I never want to stay. I’m always ready to leave.

    But not tonight.

    Tonight I’m haunted by the fact that tomorrow he’ll be here and I won’t be.

    I want to stay.

    I pray to stay.

    I close my eyes and wish to stay."

I don’t really do book reviews so this won’t be one. But this is about the book or a certain aspect of it. When A falls in love with Rhiannon, A does their best to be with her. However, being in a different body everyday complicates things. And so we realize a human flaw that we all have.

I’m a female in a female body. There have been moments when I’ve felt very boyish (mostly due to stereotypes) but in general, I identify as a female. I also grew up being told that opposites attract. This wasn't just about the loud liking the quiet or dark liking the fair. It meant that females were attracted to males and males were attracted to females.

It’s simple, isn’t it? And as a kid, it’s easy to believe in this. Cinderella or Snow White or any of the other princesses didn’t have women rescuing them. Prince Charming was a man. The women ultimately fell in love with men. And the men fell in love with women. Romeo and Juliet. Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. Nala and Simba. Man and woman. Woman and man.

But then we grow up and we see that love isn’t so simple. We see that men don’t always fall in love with women and that women don’t always fall in love with men. And so we learn that love is complicated. But that love is also so freeing.

“desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love with a gender. I have fallen for individuals. I know this is hard for people to do, but I don’t understand why it’s so hard, when it’s so obvious...
One of the protestor’s signs catches my eye. HOMOSEXUALITY IS THE DEVIL’S WORK, it says. And once again I think about how people use the devil as an alias for the things they fear. The cause and effect is backward. The devil doesn’t make anyone do anything. People just do things and blame the devil after.”

One of the biggest (and silliest) arguments against homosexuality is that it’s against religion. It’s the devil’s work. But then… Why do we love someone? How is it that people who claim their religions speak of the importance of love somehow cannot grasp the idea that love isn't a choice and more importantly, that love is so much more than attraction towards a body.

We claim we love the person, the individual, and yet, if the person changed sex, would we still love them? Aren’t we wired to be attracted to the sex too? If I’m attracted to a person, am I not, in someway, attracted to that person because they are of a particular sex?

"“If I woke up in a different body every day—if you never knew what I was going to look like tomorrow—would you still love me?”
She doesn’t miss a beat, or even act like the question is strange. “Even if you were green and had a beard and a male appendage between your legs. Even if your eyebrows were orange and you had a mole covering your entire cheek and a nose that poked me in the eye every time I kissed you. Even if you weighed seven hundred pounds and had hair the size of a Doberman under your arms. Even then, I would love you.”
“Likewise,” I tell her.
It’s so easy to say, because it never has to be true"

Let’s be honest for a moment.

Say there’s a boy I like/love. Will I love him(/her), if tomorrow, (s)he is a girl? Will I love him, if tomorrow, he’s obese? Will I love him, if tomorrow, he refuses to bathe and dresses in rags? Would I love all these various versions of one person? And I may think now, yes, I will still love him but am I not saying this because I know it will never happen?

And so for all our talk about loving people and not their bodies or appearance, don’t we still define their ‘self’ within their bodies or appearance? Don’t we still love them because they are male or tall or beautiful?

“What is it about the moment you fall in love? How can such a small measure of time contain such enormity? I suddenly realize why people believe in déjà vu, why people believe they've lived past lives, because there is no way the years I've spent on this earth could possibly encapsulate what I'm feeling. The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations—all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In you heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are now just arriving at the place you were always meant to be.”

I mayn't have ever been 'in love.' I haven't looked at someone and known that they love me just as much as I love them. So I mayn't be the best person to write about love. But here's what I think.

Love is often described as this thing with no boundaries. Love cannot be contained. And yet, haven't we imprisoned it? Haven't we brainwashed it so we only love people who meet our requirements? Don't we only cling on to the love that is 'right' to us; right according to our beliefs, right according to society?

People say that love conquers all but maybe we have managed to conquer love.