Fictional Life

Sometimes a wrap myself up into a ball and hold myself together with the strings and fibers of comfort. Burrowing under the covers, I hide from what is to come, what I think is coming, and that wish I hope will never arrive. Questioning my existence, I pray that I will not come to the realization one day that my entire life is actually the figment of someone else’s imagination. That I am fake. That I am fictional.

And how ironic that would be. The girl who keeps her face crammed in a book learns that her life has actually been the plot line of some random novel. That my life is actually taking place on paper or in some random author’s imagination. He’s pretty imaginative isn’t he.  I say he because for some reason that’s who I picture writing out the pages of my life. A man. Look at that irony again! Anyway, he just sits there scribbling away moments of my life. Birth. First word. First step. First bike ride. First pet. First dead pet. First kiss. Middle school angst. First hook up. Prom. College. Career? Marriage? Kids? … … … Death? Those last few chapters have yet to be written yet.

This is the craziness that runs through my mind on any given day. What if I’m not real and my whole life can be taken out by the whim of some ambitious young novelist, or even worse, a disgruntled, alcoholic, short story, writer. Short stories never really end well for the characters involved and I, for one, don’t feel like being another dismembered protagonist. I might be able to live with, and in, a novel. But, I’d like it to be a happy one. Maybe a romance novel or a new adult. I’d even take an epic.

I can just picture it now; me as a hero protected by God or the gods, for some unknown reason; a voyage through space or time and maybe a trip into the underworld or somewhere out of the ordinary. Yeah. I think I could deal with the fact that my life is a complete work of fiction if I learned it was part of an epic novel. I still think I’d prefer the romance novel though. So, ahem, hint, hint writer. That leading man can make an appearance now. That whole extended rising action thing is so overdone, don’t you think?

So as I sit here, waiting for my leading man to make an appearance, I’m stunned by how inventive my author would have to be to create such a long and involved plot line. Though living through the plot twists of my life has been difficult, I can still appreciate the complexity of it all. So thumbs up writer, you’ve done a spectacular job there.

In the end, I’m unsure which I prefer. Is it easier to think my life is a manuscript or as simply life itself. I’m unsure which option is better, but I do know one thing. Either way, it’s easier to think their is some puppeteer (an author or God) pulling all the strings of my life, than it is to think I’m out here all alone with no real plot line or purpose. So, I guess, when it comes down to it, living a fictional life isn’t all that bad.

The Decision of Indecision

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

~Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

 
Indecision can be a decision and sometimes it’s actually a quite brilliant choice. When every option you have has a negative side to it, a negative facet, sometimes the only thing you can do is choose to not decide on either choice.

Sometimes it seems as if my life is one permanent fork in the road, both signs seeming to point me in completely different directions. And stubborn as I am, instead of making a gut decision, I stick my feet it. I barrel down and remain stationary in an attempt to collect my thoughts and weigh out the pros and cons of both decisions. In the end, however, I eventually am forced to make a decision. I mean, no one ever got anywhere by standing still did they?

So, I choose. Left or right. In or out. Here or there. There’s always a choice and always a decision to be made. But, no matter my decision, I’m always left feeling a sense of buyers remorse. Did I make the wrong decision? Would I have been better off taken the other path? I never know the answers to these questions, but I wish it did. If I knew the outcome life would run a smoother course and I could breathe easier.

Life is not easy though. Life is loss and love and every emotion wrapped into one perplexing bit. It’s everything and it’s nothing at the same time. So why should one choice seem to the potential to change it completely? I mean, why should we let it? Why do decisions have to run our lives? Why can’t I come to a fork in the road and, instead of picking one, simply sit down in the center of that fork for a little while. Why can’t I decide to not decide? Or even better, why can’t I decide something completely different instead. In the end, why can’t I chose to ignore both paths and create an entirely new path of my own design? Better yet, I think I will.