December 28 - The boy who drank stars.

I kind of feel like I’m at the point in my life where everything’s going to be boring from here on out. Not in a bad way. Like if my life was a novel, even though everyone was clamoring for a sequel my author would refuse because my story was just done and there was no more to be told. I always hear authors say that, that when a story is finished, it’s just finished. That if they were forced to write more they’d be stretching the story beyond it’s natural limits. There’s a sense of finality.

Usually authors get to that point when their characters have passed their story’s climax and resolution and are moving on to boring things like marriage and children and taxes. That shit’s tedious, no one wants to read about that. Not after slaying dragons and struggles for power and otherworldly adventures. I mean honestly, who would have wanted to read about Harry Potter’s daily struggle with the kitchen faucet acting up after all that dramz with Voldy? Well, I’m sure some of you would (weirdos. You are weirdos), but I wouldn’t. Their lives are just at peace, and their author wants to leave them to it.

I feel like that’s where I’m at. There’s nothing interesting left to write.

In books, the hardest things are the big ones. The dragon needs to be slayed. The princess needs to be saved. The riches need to be found. The little stuff doesn’t matter so much. But when that’s done, when our story has run its course, the hardest thing is just living. The most difficult part is getting up in the morning, washing your face, doing the laundry, getting dressed for the day. Just living is hard. It’s hard just to keep going.

I met a certain therapist once and hated her immediately. Probably because she verbally handed me my ass and the things she said resonated with me on a deeply uncomfortable level. It’s never a cool feeling when a total stranger rips out your guts and lays them on the dining room table with a nice seasoning of your deepest secrets and darkest fears. But we all need that, don’t we? To have our asses handed to us sometimes. We almost never want to hear it. But I think we need to.

She told me, firstly, “Life is boring. Your life will be boring. It won’t always be exciting, it won’t be a Cappola film, you won’t have your own background music. It’s gonna be hard just to wake up sometimes, cause you won’t have a glamorous life to look forward to. But you still have to do it. You have to find a reason to keep going. Because there will be exciting moments, and really good days, and fabulous experiences. But not every second. So find something else to keep you going. Find it in literature, find it in pictures, find it in scenery, find it in travel, hell, find it in church. But get up and go find it.”

And I wanted to say, Well of course I know that you insufferable old twat. But did I really? Did I really understand that my life was not going to be like Gossip Girl, and I would not have juicy scandal in my wake every minute? That I wouldn’t always look fabulous and my life would not go according to plan and there wouldn’t always be a song for what I was feeling, did I get that? It wouldn’t be like a well-planned youtube skit, with all the right players taking all the right cues and saying all the right things and all the right people laughing. It wouldn’t be like an obscure indie film, long drawn out moments wouldn’t be tension-filled and meaningful, and long car rides wouldn’t be quietly sorrowful but expertly shot. That’s not life. Not my life, at least. Probably not anybody’s life. I don’t think I wanted to grasp that yet.

People make fun of me for being easily amused. But I have to be. I have to focus on tiny things, because if I don’t wake up every morning and feel amazed at how pretty my nails look, or how nice my bed looks made, or how scrumptious my morning coffee is, I’ll see too big of a picture. I’ll look at my whole month and say, “Nothing interesting happened. It was a failed month. I hated it. It sucked.” And every month will be like that. Because I don’t go to parties and get drunk and stay out well into the night and then wake at noon to drink mimosas poolside in well-fitted bikinis with beautiful friends who always have daring ideas for what we can do tonight. My life is boring. But I feel like I’ve reached the climax of my story (for now), I’ve passed my resolution, and now I’m just at peace, fighting life’s tiny everyday battles.