My boyfriend and I are collectors. He compulsively buys DVD’s and Blu-rays from Amazon, and he’s reorganized his movies three times this week. We spend most of our free time these days watching movies. Our conversations tend to revolve around movies we’re going to watch or movies he’s added to his wishlist.
I, on the other hand, collect books. I can’t share my obsession in the same way he can–we can’t sit down and read a book together in two hours. Also, like most normies, he probably hasn’t read a book in years. So, while we watch movies in our overlapping spare time, I sometimes dream about the characters and the stories and the settings in my beloved novels. I usually force him to listen to (what I assure him will be) a succinct synopsis for every book I read. His movie obsession is insatiable lately, so I figure he should indulge my passion, too.
He’s never cared much for Netflix. I never bought a Kindle. He obtains physical copies of movies for the same reason I read tangible books–we prize them. We want to gaze at them neatly organized on their shelves; we want their presence to decorate our rooms and our lives. They define some part of us. Their influence has contributed to shaping our identities.
Retrospective Lily 
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