When the Story Turns (1/4) — a selected passage from my essay series. Slaven Vujić. Personal literary reflections inspired by the works of J. R. R. Tolkien.
A moment comes in every life when the ground shifts beneath our feet.
Not all at once, as in a battle scene, but slowly. Quietly. A dream begins to fail. A truth unravels. A relationship dies in pieces. Or perhaps we ourselves are slowly dying inside, unnoticed by the world.
It is not one great tragedy. It is a slow unravelling. A quiet fading of colour. A grief whose name we do not yet know.
This is the part of the story that is difficult to tell: nothing dramatic happens on the outside, yet everything begins to fade.
The Long Defeat
In Tolkien’s world, we encounter the idea of the long defeat: the gradual decline of what was once full of light. The Elves resist evil knowing that their victories will be neither final nor everlasting. Yet they keep building. They keep singing. They keep hoping.
But what happens when even that flame begins to die? When we no longer build, pray or try? When we look in the mirror and do not recognise the person looking back?
Fantasy as the Last Safe Place
When my own world collapsed, I did not turn to therapy immediately. First, I turned to hobbits.
To lonely Rangers and dispossessed kings. To broken swords waiting to be reforged. To stories in which pain had meaning, even when I could not yet believe it might have meaning for me.
Fantasy became a lifeboat. It did not deny my suffering. It recognised it. Named it. Sang of it. Sat beside it without hurrying to put everything right.
In Aragorn’s words about walking through sorrow without despair, there was something I needed to hear, even when I could not fully believe it.
Fantasy did not heal me. It held me until I was ready to begin healing.
The Silence before Eucatastrophe
Eucatastrophe was not yet part of my vocabulary. I was still living in catastrophe, convinced that the story would never turn.
But something stirred. Not a solution. Not redemption. Only the faint thought that stories might still matter. That mine might not be over.
Perhaps the fact that fantasy felt more real than life spoke of a longing: for meaning, for mercy, for the miracle Tolkien had given a name.
If That Is Where You Are Now
If you are on the floor of your own life and do not know how to stand again, these words are not a solution.
They are a candle. A whisper. A reminder that the story is still being written, even in a chapter without light.
Allow yourself to grieve. Allow yourself rest. Let stories wrap around you like a cloak.
Sometimes the first step towards recovery means believing that someone else has already passed through the darkness and found a way out.
You do not have to be ready to hope yet. Begin by being ready to listen.
