It’s odd that I would even have to say it to myself, given how self-obvious it is, that life isn’t like a story. There are no happy endings, there are no plots that tie up nicely at the end. All of life is in media res, in eternity (unless some of the cosmological theoretical physicists are right, and everything comes to a freezing crawl in few trillion years, not with a bang, but a whimper.)

Life isn’t a story, except when you have to try to tell someone about your own. Except for maybe Taoists and Zen Buddhists, anyone who takes some interest in you wants to know—not necessarily how your life has actually gone—but how you’ve decided to narrate your own story arc. No one wants event-to-event reportage, with much of it not making any sense, most of it tangential, all of it sound and fury signifying—let’s be honest—not much of anything. They want you to edit out the boring parts, want you to pretend that you’re really third-person omniscient when the truth of it is that first-personal limited probably overstates how clear you understand anything.

I seriously doubt she is looking for someone with skill in such matters. There are some people who really do want that out of a human being—the actual physical mechanics, the verbal niceties, all the storybook accoutrements, or maybe just decent-sized genitalia—but I suspect she’d rather be interested in someone who actually felt something. And it’s been a while since I have. Because I’ve stopped trying to give a running account of my thought processes, it’s hard to pinpoint just exactly when this comfortable numbness had taken hold. Maybe it was just the inevitable chemical consequences of taking anti-depressants for years. Maybe it’s just too much alcohol. Maybe (and most likely) I don’t really know at all, and I’m just forced to confabulate something because the narrative impulse requires some sort of explanation. One thing I know, though. Anyway it shakes out, and whatever I come up with, I’m probably doomed. Oh, sure, we’re all doomed, but I’m talking redshirt-doomed. Because I’ve always had this sneaking suspicion that I’m not really the main character in this story.