A Writing from Reading 'EVERY DAY'

Have you ever imagined what it feels like to be a different person every day? Well, you are yourself, but you are also someone else because you don’t have a permanent body. You always have a different body every day. It’s like your soul moves from body to body each day. There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. You really have no idea what’s for tomorrow.

Of course we do know, we’re created with one soul and one body. So, I think it’s kind of hard to guess what it feels like to live in different places, interact or live with different persons and families every day. How would it be like?

Imagine that you wake up in the morning and find yourself in a different body every day. Within a few minutes, you have to access that person’s memory to know the basic information, like names of Mom and Dad, best friends, and maybe boyfriend or girlfriend. The most weird thing is, you don’t have any sex. You can’t even identify whether you are a man or woman. You can move from a male body to a female body freely. Isn’t that scary? For me it is. But one thing for sure, you still have your own character. You still have and keep your thoughts, emotions or feelings, and life principals.

What is interesting from this story is the idea. When I saw this book, read the summary, I directly fell in love with the idea. Every day a different body, every day a different life. It’s like we double don’t know what will happen tomorrow. The story is so unpredictable. We totally can’t guess what will happen in the next chapter because every chapter is a day. So, for example chapter 1 is day 5994, chapter 2 is day 5995, and so on. We really can’t guess what kind of life he would be in because every morning, he woke up in a different body, a different person which had a different life with the yesterday person.

The main character is ‘A’, just call him that way since he also didn’t know his real name. He named himself when he was a kid. It is told that A had been that way since he was still an infant. At first, he thought that was life. Moved from body to body every day. As he grew up, he started to realize that he was different. He was no other like the people around him. He started to see that every person stayed in a same life every day. But not him. In his childhood times, he seldom cried at night, begging someone’s parents to not make him go to sleep. Why? Because it was when he slept, he moved to somebody else without his knowing. He couldn’t sense anything in that moving. He just woke up every morning and knew he was in another different body. Another body, another mind. And every body that he moved into was consistent or suitable as his age. When he was 5, he moved in the bodies of 5 years old kids. When he was 12, he moved in the bodies of 12 years old kids. He just didn’t want to move because he wanted to feel and know the meaning of “See you tomorrow”. He never had a tomorrow with the same family, friend, boyfriend or girlfriend. He didn’t even know who and where he would be at tomorrow.

A didn’t know his real parents. He didn’t even have one. He didn’t have any family. A didn’t have any friends. No one knew him for real. Those things were just because of this worst part which is A didn’t have a permanent body. But that was his life. His existence had never been known. Kind of sad, isn’t it? You live, but no one knows about your existence. No one even knows that you live.

He always had these principals to run his life in peace. One, respect every person’s life you’re in. Two, don’t interfere that person’s life. Everything that goes on in that person’s life is not his problem because he may ruin something. Three, never get too connected or too attached with anyone because he doesn’t have anyone for more than one day. He never let himself be drawn too deep into someone’s life. He just wanted to keep everything as it’s placed. He wanted to be peace with the fact that he simply was.

What he found pleasurable from his life was although he was a drifter, and as lonely that could be, it was also remarkably freeing. He felt like he had no string attached to anything or anyone. Moving from body to body, life to life, made him a great observer. He had to know and analyze what a family and a person character were, fast and promptly to know what he should do as that person.

The story begins with A who had turned 16.

The story gets more interesting when A fell in love.

No matter how far he moved, no matter what kind of body he was into, no matter what kind of life he was going through that day, he still was in love with the same girl. Her name was Rhiannon. He met her while he was in Justin’s body. Rhiannon was Justin’s girlfriend. The sad thing was, Justin treated her badly though Rhiannon loved that boy very much. A loved Rhiannon with all his heart. Finally, A had found someone he wanted to be with day in, day out, day after day. It was for the first time, he wanted someone to know his existence. And for the first time, that continued troubles came in.

Because of that love, he wanted to see Rhiannon every day. He wanted to talk to her, communicate with her every day. He wanted to be with her. No matter how far he was from her. No matter how hard it was, he only wanted that love to be real and mutual. So, he planned things and began his moves. Those moves created problems that he’d never held before.

A nerdy guy named Nathan terrorized him. Nathan claimed to the world that he’d been possessed with an evil spirit that made him drive far away to the place he didn’t know. Then, he was left in the car without having himself near his home. He said, after the devil had gone, he really had no idea why he was in his car and stayed in a deserted road at midnight.

That was all because A drove along the way from Nathan’s town to Rhiannon’s town for 2 hours, just to see that girl in a party. At first, he always became a new friend that approached Rhiannon. A few days passed. Then, he started to be open with her. He told the truth. Of course, her first reaction was confused. She felt like she’d been played. But then, as the days passed, Rhiannon started to realize that every person she was with for those days had the same character. It was like one person in different bodies. She believed A. She trusted him. She fell in love with him since the first time A had a day with her in the body of Justin. They began that love relationship. They both seek to discover if you can truly love someone who is destined to change every day.

Another problem came. They couldn’t be together in that way. A understood it. Rhiannon wanted A to be with her every day from night until morning and morning until night. The hard thing was A wouldn’t be in the same body every day. Rhiannon wanted to wake up next to A every morning. But it couldn’t be as easy as that. She could be judged as a bad girl if she went out with different guys every day. On the other side, A also didn’t want to mess another person’s life.

One day, A woke up in Alex’s body. He knew that it was time to leave Rhiannon and let her be happy with someone else. He didn’t want to be an egoistic person. He loved her, but his life was not meant to be like that. Alex was the best guy he’d ever been in. Rhiannon also liked how Alex showed himself. They spent a day together. That was A and Rhiannon’s last day.

I think, you all can guess what happened next.

A left good memories of a day with a girl named Rhiannon in Alex’s mind. Later, Alex would find out how great Rhiannon was and loved her. So did with Rhiannon, who would learn to love Alex.

Whether this was a sad ending or good ending, it depends on how you see and interpret it.

Well, the lucky thing was A could make up an ordinary memory in every person’s mind he was in. He would leave memories he’d made so that on the next day, the person wouldn’t remember exactly what happened yesterday, but they would know in a brief and slight way. A knew he could do this after that 'Nathan incident'.

This story had so many great lessons, such as love is not selfish. Love is patient, kind and understanding. Live and appreciate your life day by day. You can know something for a long time without it really hitting you. And many more. From this book we also can see the diversity and complexity of life, types of people, and the different perspectives they have.

David Levithan wrote this story with such an interesting way. I really love the way he tells the story. Every sentence he built, every thought, emotion and feeling he expressed, and every saying he added were styled greatly wonderful and awesome. It really makes the book is riveting and easy to understand.

Such a great and awesome book!