Possessiveness

It's not only me who does it. And if you think it's only you who has ever felt this way, you're wrong.
Feeling protective, no - possessive of things I enjoy is not an unfamiliar occurrence. There has been more than one occasion on which I've been reduced to a little child who is forced to share her favourite toy.

The first time I noticed it was when a classmate of mine began singing a Death Cab For Cutie song in school. When my best friend describes the incident now, she claims I jumped to where this unsuspecting girl was standing, and YELLED, "Oh, I LOVE Death Cab!" and stared at her in a very imposing manner. It was not so. I gently placed myself beside her and asserted my dominance as a Death Cab fan in a very mild manner. My sister says that I came home and cried. This is also untrue. 

It started happening more often from then on - people began listening to Vampire Weekend and Radiohead. And it killed me. I was frustrated, but I had no words - how could I tell these people that these bands were MINE and I was obviously a bigger fan and they were not worthy of this music?

But what annoyed me most of all was the fact that no one seemed to understand the beauty of keeping these things secret. You were not supposed to post it on Facebook, for crying out loud! You weren't supposed to announce it for the whole world to hear! People had to find it. They couldn't be handed it on a silver platter (funny that I thought this because almost everything that I'd heard/read/watched at that point of time was handed directly to me by my sister).

I swear, I would lay awake at night wondering how to make people acknowledge that I was the #1 fan. I would whine and complain to my family and best friends about what idiots everyone else were. I wanted to cry every time I thought about it. 

Things I have got worked up about over the years:

Peers watching Fight Club, peers watching 500 Days Of Summer (I wanted to be Zooey Deschanel before any of them knew her name), peers listening to Arctic Monkeys after they played the Olympics (Fake Tales was my jam in the 6th Grade).

But I learned to deal with it better through the years. Here are some ways :

You can discreetly corner the person who you're uncomfortable about and act really chill and laid back, and pretend that liking the band/movie/book is no big deal and almost make it seem insignificant while in actuality, you're playing a mental game with them which convinces them never to talk about it to anyone else and establishes your authority on the subject in their subconsciousness. 

A personal favourite for me - just keep talking about the subject in question. Like, just sprout everything you know so that no one can question your authority. Casually mention an obscure interview or a hidden meaning. Offer up some trivia. Mention - again and again - what a big fan you are.

For one of my friends, this feeling of possessiveness was a very recent phenomenon. She went around telling her friends who talked about The Fault In Out Stars that they were to give her due credit for introducing it to them. Fair enough. My best friends (the very same who used to make fun of me for reacting the way I do when I hear someone else sing a Vampire Weekend song) employ the very same technique of coping as well.

For the record, I think it's very important to give credit to people to introduce you to things, ESPECIALLY when you are going to talk about these things in the presence of the aforementioned messiah.

You can also implore other people not to discuss these things in public. That usually doesn't go down so well, because some people just DO NOT get why they should keep things to themselves.

Of course, there is another way.

I used to really be into YouTube vloggers - Charlie, Alex, and the like. There was this other girl in my class who used to watch them too, and my opinion of her increased when I learnt this fact. Up until then the only person I talked about music/movies/books that I liked was my sister.
I realised that maybe discussing things you like with people who share your interest in said thing wasn't such a bad idea after all - in fact, I found that on talking about things, your appreciation for it grows ten-fold.

Alternatively, you can choose not to care; you can be beyond these things. I do not know anyone capable of achieving such a feat.

I think the problem arises because these things were so sacred to me, and I couldn't stand the thought of other people that I knew and didn't particularly like liking the same things I did. I felt like I a part of me was being torn away; I felt a little less myself. 

The thing is, I shouldn't  have defined myself by the music I listen to, or the books I read, or the movies I watch. I shouldn't have had a superiority complex because of my interests. That's a really dumb way to make yourself feel good. Feel good about yourself because of the person you are.

I'm not preaching about how no one should be over-protective about things they like, because then I'd be a hypocrite. It's just that it can get tiresome sometimes, and that's when you have to find a strategy on dealing with it.