Musings & Marginal Madness: Observations and Narratives

            Sometimes I consider what sort of character I would be in a novel, and when so doing I usually end up writing some third person narrative of such a situation.  Here are a few short, self-descriptions.  (I should add as a disclaimer, that I am almost always in a low mood when I do this type of thing.):

If asked, Anne would have described herself as “decently pretty, but by no means beautiful”.

            She had been an affectionate and tenderhearted child, and perhaps, beneath the thorns of her sarcasm, she still possessed those traits.  She had been too effective at keeping everyone at arm’s length to know one way or another.

            She spent most of her time feeling helpless, hopeless, and pointless.  It was not a pleasant pool of sentiments to dwell in, but she’d marinated in it so long that it penetrated to the deepest parts of her soul.  It wasn’t that she was powerless, rather she feared her own potential, feared that she could never measure up to what was expected of her and was therefore too terrified to even try. 

            The only area in which she thrived was theatrical deception.  She’d perfected the part of a young woman, full of hope and fun and zesty sarcasm, and she played it so well that those around her were unaware that she was performing a grand charade.  Sometimes she performed so perfectly that even she lost sight of her true feelings.  She knew many people but was known to few. 

            On the inside she was a small child, struggling in a harried crowd of strangers to find a familiar face for comfort.  Frequently her emotions were similar to a room full of yarn after a litter of kittens got loose in it, and while she longed for someone willing to help her sort through the tangles of her internal workings, she was unlikely to open up enough to give anyone a chance to try. 

            Relationships, particularly romantic relationships, caused her a fair bit of distress.  Familial dynamics and basic friendships she understood, they were fairly clear-cut about expectations compared to dating and the like.  Romance, however, was so skewed by centuries upon centuries of frequently subpar stories that she honestly wasn’t even sure what it was.  Everyone seemed to have a different, contradictory answer.  Even in her own desires, she found contradiction.  She wanted romance, probably.  But since she did not understand it, found it unlikely that she would ever obtain it.  While she loved many people she had never, to her understanding, been in love.  Sometimes she wondered if she was even capable of it. 

            I read a couple of these to my older sister and she suggested I expand my observations and subsequent narratives to others as a type of writing exercise.  I occasionally do so now.  Here is one of my resulting efforts:

            For years he’d ridden the city bus, every day to school and back again.  Yet, every time he did so, without the protective crush of his peers, he felt tiny.  When he boarded the bus alone he was left feeling small, a smallness that may or may not have had anything to do with his stature.  He was a child, barely over a decade in age, yet he sat surrounded by adults, each pursuing their purpose and passing by him as if he were insignificant, or worse: invisible. 

            Sometimes the urge to jump up, screaming at the top of his lungs so that someone would see him would seize upon him, but he was grown enough to know that they wouldn’t, even if he did so.  Instead of him, they would see a problem, a nuisance, so he sat silently, clasping the elbows of his slim, childish arms as the bus drove onward.