Tonight, as I was talking to my professor, completely exuberant about my topic, another classmate asked how I have had time to learn so much about Chaucer in these weeks. I didn’t get it at first. But then it dawned on me. People assume this is a recent development because I have only now started openly speaking about it.

I have had this fascination with Chaucer for almost fifteen years. I have written half a dozen papers, and even long after I finished school the first time, I perused this interest independently. I have only recently opened up about it for several reasons. The first of which was my assumption that no one would ever be interested in it, so it would be best to keep it to myself. I remember a few years ago, as I was driving out to a cafe in Hollywood with Sean and Ashlyn, I was reciting Chaucer to them off the top of my head, and they thought it was quite interesting. But I could not imagine anyone outside of academia ever wanting to hear about this. So I never spoke about it. I most certainly didn’t blog about it. I just buried it, using it as something to fill my time in the middle of the night when I could not sleep.

Then I went back to school. But Chaucer isn’t exactly the most popular topic there either. So I focused on other things. Until a project came up for which I could not think of any other topic. It was perfect! I could finally put all of my research to good use! Yet in doing so it came back to what it originally was. I had a legitimate reason to conduct my research in the light of day, and actually feel as if I was doing something worthwhile with it. So of course I got excited again. I went to my parents’s house and unearthed the many boxes of books I had kept in my old closet. I looked over all of my old papers, and revisited the original sources. I remembered all of the things I had learned which I enfolded in the crevices of my memory, believing it was all too antiquated (600 year old manuscripts are hardly ever a hot topic in any situation).

But now that it has all come back, I have no intention of putting it away again.