The Bride of Smoke

How do I start is such a lame way to start something but whatever I don’t have anything cool or interesting to start this off so here,I’ve been going back and forth in my head trying to come up with some cool anecdotal way of starting of my story with some deep metaphor for life wrapped up in just some ocd type of habit or some super intricate detail about my life. I thought maybe I could use an outer habit like my obsession with clothes and how from morning to night I can easily spend the whole day going through cute clothes and pretend online shopping with money I don’t have to buy clothes I’ll never wear, but the pretending is fun in of itself so I just keep doing it even if it does waste my life way for a while before one day, I finally have some deep revelation about why I keep doing this and maybe instead of fixating on this outer persona of the perfect version of myself, I should just start acting in the way that this mythical version of me would and that’s how I ended up here, or some junk. I don’t know, I’m just kind of always been average to be real with you. There was no special life changing moment where my whole reality shifted and that I can easily pinpoint to and relay like an epic medieval poem where I slay the dragon and save the town or something. 

I fell in love early, that’s the only thing that would be decidedly “different” about my life. By the time I was a kid, I was in a long term relationship. That was different. Sort of epic, if you think about it. I always used to think that we were this epic romance meant to be and in each new version of ourselves that the world created, we would somehow find our way back to each other like  the universal Romeo and Juliet of our time, except without the bad ending part. That was always the best part of my life, being with him. The only poetic thing about me was how we found each other across the whole world and reunited together before we even knew what love was and state together for the rest of our lives till some notebook type ending happened and we’d be remembered for centuries as this wonderful couple. In actuality it was a lot less dramatic than all that, but I really really loved him. So many of these types of things do revolve round love, usually a tragic one where the loved one dies and the hero has to spend the rest of his or her life avenging their death, but honestly that just seems like so much work and I know he’d understand if instead of all that, I just sorta chilled cause that’s what he would’ve wanted me to do anyways. He was always pretty chill, I was too. Just I guess as I got older, I wanted to be less chill, as eloquent as that is. I had filled up my chill-o-meter for years and all of a sudden it was sort of all filled up and I wanted to do things. Small things at first, like doing dishes or finishing work early rather than waiting till the last second, normal things, ya know. I just got bored is the best I can say for what happened. I had spent so much of my life doing absolutely nothing and being happy, mind you, but I changed after a while. I tried to think of the kid version of me and all the big ideas and dreams it had had about the future. I figured, why not try and do what little me would have wanted. 

So I did everything, I drew, I wrote, I sewed. I did things I thought I could never do like math and science and inventing. I gave more care to the people in my life and I woke up everyday like it was a brand new day full of possibilities. Everything I tried, I did great at, it was so strange. That was something that had never happened before, I had always slid between the cracks, never being seen or noticed or cared about. I never did anything, I never was anything before, but now I was. I was doing so much more than I ever thought I could and it was great, but it was never really enough. I still don’t know if anything would have actually been enough for me. Maybe I just wasn’t hardwired to be happy, maybe I was doomed from the start. 

And now after all these years of searching and trying to do something, anything to find true happiness, I learn the most ridiculous thing of all. That the actual amazing part of my life, the thing that made me special and different and amazing was actually, wait for it...my ability to do nothing.Yeah, me doing nothing, wasting my life away for years, that was it. That was my whole special quality. The fact that I could live with myself and the person I love with no resources, abilities or ambitions in life, that was a previous impossibility. Isn’t that so stupid and anticlimactic? It feels like a hallmark cop out like “the real magic was inside you all along'' type of crap.

 Look, this was never going to be more than this because I’m not more than this because no one is actually better than this. We’re all just using random base achievements to make it seem like we matter and did something with our life and even me saying this isn’t a new revelation, but I’m just so sick of life being this great big contest where you pretty much can never win. I’m not this amazing hero, no one is. We all are disappointing and messy and stupid almost all of the time and trying to act like we’re not is a waste. I loved someone. That’s my biggest accomplishment and I don’t want it to be just another one of the trophies that I rake up in life I want that to be what I did. I lived happily because of that. I did so many things trying to be more than I was and in the end, none of it mattered. The best times I had were doing the stupid stuff that I’m ashamed of, the times I “wasted” and the guy that I loved.