Let's get one thing straight, I had an extremely ordinary life. I grew up in an ordinary house, with ordinary people, in an ordinary country. I had a Mom, a Dad, a younger brother and two dogs. The sign for our suburb read 'Glen Iris, Melbourne, Australia: an Exciting Place to Live.' To make it even more ordinary, the local government decided to paint all the houses on my street green and white to make it 'interesting'. I always thought they looked more like cloned birdhouses crammed against each other along a busy street where nothing happens.
My parents, both of whom were full on British, spent alot of time with my younger brother, who was severely autistic. Regular therapy appointments and special needs workshops dictated my family's schedule, so I was left at home most of the time.
I was jealous, as most children would be, but I knew my parents still loved me. At the end of the day I kind of enjoyed spending time alone in the house, because I was free to do whatever I wanted. From being alone I had time to work on my drawing, a hobby which had started since I was eight.
Out of all the options, watching movies was among my favourite pass-time activities. They provided a nice little escape into other worlds, much more exciting and interesting than my own. For a few precious hours, I could get myself wrapped up in a movie and completely forget everything around me. Most of the time, the movies I watched was the Lord of the Rings.
The beauty of the feature films was only matched by the beauty of the written work by the great JRR Tolkien. I loved it so much that I used to draw the characters and make up little stories about them in Middle Earth, a magical medieval land in which I longed to join them in.
There are scenes in those movies that I have learned off by heart. 'By heart' is not an expression that I use lightly. My heart is weak and unreliable, much like my lungs and throat which would contract until I had incredible trouble breathing. Because of these set-backs, I was quite happy to sit down to draw and watch movies for the rest of my life.
Almost every night I would watch the Fellowship of the Ring; I would set my computer down on my bedside table then slip into bed, and stare at the ceiling, reciting each line along with the actors. As the Shire theme burbled in the background, my heart rate would slow and I'd inhale deeply until I was asleep. Those movies were one of the only things that truly calmed me down after whatever had happened in the day, so when I finally fell asleep, I would at least be happy. This went on for quite a while.
These movies became my obsession, but as soon as I entered my late teens, my studies took priority. I didn't have time to think about a silly made up world where elves and hobbits and wizards lived. Now that exams constantly loomed over my head, I had to focus on getting through university, getting a career, getting money; basically getting a life.
I eventually decided that I wanted to become an animator for a small company I'd discovered. It was a perfect blend of my two favorite things, drawing and movies. I entered university with a part-time job and a tiny apartment all the way over in a very wet and cold England.
Everything was going well, until I turned twenty-four. That was when it happened, that was when I literally fell into another world, which just so happened to be Middle Earth. Oh, I almost forgot; I'm Victoria by the way, Victoria Aitken.
