Warning. Introspective post ahead.
My entire life revolves around story. The stories I tell others, and the stories I tell myself. From the time I was little, I was telling myself stories. The settings changed, and the side characters. However I was always the main character, the one setting things in motion and leading the plot forward.
It was, and is, second nature to create a story about my friends and I. Or about strangers. I watched people in the parking lot and made up lives for them, and places for them to go.
When I got older, those stories tended to take a romantic bent. It was not uncommon for me to make up a love story between two friends, two strangers, or more often between a friend and myself. Sometimes those stories were just for fun, an exercise in imagination, sometimes they were more serious. I made up a story because I wanted the story to happen.
All of the stories that I thought up for my life, then and now, they have all been upended. The story I am living out is not the one I dreamed up so long ago.
Still single. Who would have thought? Not me. Perhaps there was a friend who foresaw my lack of romance, but I didn’t. My family didn’t. And now, I don’t know what to think of it. The story writer, surprised by her own story. A year ago I would have laughed at the thought of me being surprised by anything. I found stories and patterns in the ring of a bell, in a robins twitter. Yet I can’t find them in my own life.
What kind of story is being told in my life? I still haven’t decided whether I am living a comedy or a tragedy. Perhaps it is a piece of literary fiction, beautifully written but sitting on a dusty shelf.
I haven’t decided what it is yet. But do I get to decide the story? Or is it merely my circumstances that decide it for me? I can make all the fuss I want, but a relationship is not entirely up to me. Other people will help decide that. (unless I go all psycho and kidnap someone, but that would just be weird.)
Do any of us really know what our story will be beforehand? We can make all the plans we want, but in the end, our story follows along different paths. A death of a family member, a wedding, or an unexpected opportunity all play into our stories. It is not as clear cut as at least I thought it would be when I was young and staring into the night sky.
And it isn’t even over yet. I have the rest of my life in front of me. At least 50 more years of living and laughing and adventuring. I have plans and hopes, but who knows what will happen in that time.
My story is still unwritten, for the most part. I am curious to find out what the rest will be.
Shaina Merrick
The Beauty of a Story 