as someone who's felt this way since developing consciousness, I love a protagonist / narrator who doesn’t seem to fit, no matter how hard they try. its obviously even better when they do find their people, their place, their voice, etc. much needed hope ♥️
Dec 18, 2024
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This might not make the most sense but if I don’t write it I know I’ll be angry with myself.
As someone who has always naturally been drawn to archives and journals and stories- I’ve found that I’ve been trapping myself in the narrative. The idea that life is a singular, vertical narrative, that pain is not simply pain but part of some bigger cycle of distribution and retribution. That pain is naturally repaid with love or safety or comfort. This narrative keeps me coddled in myself, it keeps me safe from having to face the fact that tomorrow might not be easier than today. That this year might not feel much better than last year. That as some things go on, they don’t always get lighter. They don’t alchemize from emotionally pain into material pleasure.
The hero’s journey tells us that the narrative follows simple steps. We are called- your alarm, a Britney Spears song, plays in the morning. Your car breaks down in an unfamiliar part of the city. There’s a death in the family. Whatever it is, the call is something that moves us from familiarity to the unknown. It pulls the hero into the journey. We will then face the unknown and hopefully overcome it. But what about the calls that we don’t answer? Or when we get stuck in the unknown? What about when we are braver than brave and we still cannot overcome everything? I’ve learned that sometimes our pain doesn’t come with atonement. Sometimes there is no return.
Life doesn’t fit into the narrative. The alarm in itself is a narrative, you set it the night before, or maybe you set it three years ago and you’ve been waking up to the same song every single day. The car is a narrative, the unfamiliar side of the city is a narrative. Why haven’t you been there? The death is a narrative explored and experienced by every person in your family, every friend of the dead, every coworker who called the morning after to see why they didn’t show up when their alarm went off that day. Everything is a million narratives coinciding and to trap ourselves into one, to tell ourselves only one story, is blinding us to the intricate nature of life. We cannot exist in only one dimension, and to choose to exist in various different- sometimes beautiful and sometimes horrible- narratives at once is to choose to stop coddling oneself, to stop following your pain like it always has something to give you.
Sometimes it doesn’t. Maybe that’s fine.
Mar 11, 2024
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inner city child of rural island immigrants grows up in the smallest coastal state. taken in by college kids at 13, spends adolescence masquerading as an adult (destined to spend adulthood masquerading as an adolescent). trades dream of tattoo artist rockstar for college. plays pretend well. graduates to world traveling design consultant. never rooted. loses it, but finds it again. discovers happiness is not fleeting. returns to self to avenge childhood dreams.
Apr 22, 2024
I didn’t catch on until a few years ago, a lot of my dreams that are filled with anxious fear are surrounded with the feeling of being lost, facing an unknown and a sense of wanting to find home. The motif appears in different forms but the theme is always in some way traced back to these. There’s a bit to unpack there, I’ve really only scratched the surface
Feb 6, 2025
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I Add to them all the time :—)
Dec 29, 2024
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