Characters

A long time ago, a counselor warned me that I was not living life but rather watching over it, narrating it as it goes by.  I didn't see that as a problem then--I would not say I had truly lived life at all up to that point, and witnessing it so very closely at last felt a lot like living.  Sometimes I feel the depression encroaching again, and instead of being so very grateful to be near life, I painfully miss living it. 

I can't explain where the change begins or where it ends.  I don't know when I stopped observing life and started living it, or why that stopped coming so easily.  But I feel very overwhelmed and far away.  In these moments, it becomes second narture to narrate and observe again, compare life, deconstruct life, scream at life but do everything but live life. 

I suppose selfishly I hope this will make it easier to make things again.  After all, seeing through the lens only should make it relatively easy to mimic the lens.  But what about my friends my dog my family my husband my God?  What happens when I step out permanently this time?  They will notice, they already have.

I read Where the Heart Is.  I used to stop every time that movie came on lifetime.  It is one of a very short list of books that translate perfectly into movie form.  Having read the book, I don't think the movie missed anything-- if anything, the characters are richer (except for losing Americus's menagerie).  And I think of how Novalee simply is in most of the story.  She doesn't think about being too much or too little, she simply is and does and provides and makes this incredible life out of nothing, so grateful for the tiny outpourings of a million strangers, and never worries about being less than until the last moment.  And then of course she panics and sends Forney away but it is all so very perfect, and you don't realize until she does, sitting in that car outside the motel, that she considers herself less.  And you never think about how incredible it is that she doesn't pass an ounce of that to her little girl, no matter how deeply it is ingrained in her.  I imagine after she declares her love to Forney she never again worries about being less and simply lives.  I suspect Lexie also simply lives and basks in her good fortune at having made a family out of luck and a genuine heart.  How do these women stop themselves from getting lost as so many of us less fortunate get lost?  Or those as unfortunate, for that matter?  How do they neither become paralyzed in self loathing and fear nor become complacent and live of the system? 

Why can I not learn to become unbroken in the way they are unbroken?

And why can I not frame my life without a story from another's mind?

Why do I not live my life as fully as characters on the page of a book?

I know.  I don't want to put in the time.  I still see that regrowth as time lost, time that would be more productive if I were already fixed, not in process.  And I know how very stupid that is, yet I yell because, I don't know, maybe fixed me will come lead current me and the time lapse will close in the paradox?  So what do I do to jolt myself into mental presence and stop narrating?

Evidently, I narrate louder and pray that that works.