My favorite book is The World According to Garp, but I don’t usually say that. When people ask me my favorite book, I usually lie. More often, I rattle off several and usually list the authors I like, rather than the books I love. Don’t get me wrong—I almost always remember to include John Irving in my list of favorite authors, but I very rarely commit only to Garp. It’s hard to explain and I don’t fully understand it myself. I am a book snob, but it’s not because of a precious, elitist desire to hide books from other people that I don’t often talk about it. My rationale is really much more reprehensible than that. Truthfully, the reason I lie is because I’m afraid you’ll ruin it and I’m afraid you won’t understand.

I have feelings for The World According to Garp. I am in love with The World According to Garp. Sometimes I have to put it down because I’ll catch myself reading too many consecutive pages and find that I’m closer to finishing it. And when it comes down to it, I don’t really ever want to finish reading The World According to Garp. I read and enjoy a lot of other things, but there’s something totally singular about my state of mind when I’m in the middle of this book.

My relationship with The World According to Garp is far from casual and talking about it just introduces the possibility that you’ll say something to destroy the affair. There are very few people to whom I will even give the benefit of the doubt. I am a rigid, unyielding fangirl when it comes to this book and I know it’s wrong and I don’t care.

The larger issue—and there’s always a larger issue—is this: There’s a loneliness that exists in the need to explain yourself to someone who doesn’t understand. And although most of the time it’s completely self-generated, self-inflicted, and premature, the acute pain caused by the look of someone who is pretending to get it is as rough of a go as I know. I’ve learned, sometimes, to let it be. I no longer rush to defend or clarify as often as I used to. It still breaks my heart a little bit, though, when I see the valiant effort of someone who will never be on the same page as me, or worse still, the ones that fake it.

It’s like having to explain the punchline or condense the backstory—it takes so much away from the full effect and makes me really tired. I do realize that the potential payoff is obvious and huge. I know that if I make myself vulnerable and chance it more often, I might run into more people who share my uniquely sensitive and irrational interests, but still. Meh. Too often I’ve been lulled into a false sense of security, having a lovely conversation with someone I think I’m connecting with, only to be devastated by an irreconcilable difference of opinion or the huge gaping chasm that is a lack of common reference.

I don’t know what’s worse; feeling misunderstood or fearing it.