Growing up a writer, but not a reader, I have always had a disjointed view of stories and the vocabulary that describes them. For me, people weren’t broken into protagonist and antagonist [people are too layered for that] and sentences were almost always improperly punctuated, not for lack of knowing how to but because my cadence and the way my brain flowed, never followed traditional rules. In my head sentences don’t start and stop. They just move. Fast.

So I guess, [to be a narcissistic stereotypical writer for a second] In more ways that one, my stories were never meant to be read off a page, but rather heard and felt and seen. But maybe that’s why I often find myself stuck. Maybe that’s why the main character in my stories was was never really me, but my braver and more self assured contemporary.

My contemporaries and me

When it came to storytelling I was always good at building the scene, but when it came to characters, I wasn’t the best at delving deeper than skin deep. Characters always followed the typical tropes of popular shows and movies. The conflicted jock, the boy broken, the promiscuous girl who wanted more, the nice ones, the mean ones, and all the ones that were always understood more easily than I felt I was.

I fancied myself an enigma, and it took years to figure out that’s something I never was.

Which, I guess, is why I found it oddly relatable when I recently heard an interview where Halsey talks about being young and thinking we’re the main character of everyone’s story.

“You are not the main character”

But I guess, back then, when it came to my stories on paper, I thought I was.

Just Rachel

It’s wild to me, the way life works. The way we are raised to create a sense of self, but also a self that fits into the mold of others. We are meant to be unique, but often only within the bounds of what others find palatable.

And while society is slowly growing away from this, for most of us, it is still very much an issue of who am I, (vs) who can I be? In certain spaces.

“It’s a hard concept to understand in your twenties…”

It’s sometimes strange to think that things don’t happen to us. But things do happen in proximity of us and because of us; and that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And yet all the while it’s still up to us to take accountability for the things we do and accept that we can’t change the things that are beyond us.

“the most important and difficult lessons to learn in your twenties, you are not the main character of everyone else’s story.” She said. “You’re the main character of your story. But not everyone else’s.”

Halsey

And as someone in my twenties, obviously this resonated with me, I mean, duh, I’m writing a whole blog around it. But also, as a human being of any age, I think this is something all of us need to hear sometimes. Because we all find ourselves a bit too self important sometimes. And we all have things that we refuse to change.

The funny thing is that for most of my life I often haven’t felt like the main character — of my story or anyone else’s. And on the times when I should have or was meant to, I really didn’t want any part of it. But then again, maybe that’s a tell tale sign that we are because sure, I’ve been selfish, I’ve made things about me. I’ve taken anecdotes too far because I think something I say could help and beyond that I’ve even taken something personally when it really wasn’t about me.

I’ve been the girl that thinks she’s important.

But I’ve also been the girl that was shown she wasn’t. (And at the time I accepted it)

Or at least I’ve wanted to be important. And who hasn’t? Ur maybe the difference between a sense of main character syndrome and just wanting people to know you exist is that you need to learn to matter to you, so you don’t feel the pressure to matter for everyone else – because you won’t and you can’t always be that for them.

Moral of this story

Truth is, I don’t really feel like a typical 20 something and I certainly don’t feel like main character. And more than that I stopped pretending to be a hero in my stories a long time ago. So I guess at the end of the day I don’t want to be the main character right now, and I don’t really wanna be the hero either – but I’d love to explore being the villain for a little while at some point…. But I feel like that’s more of a story for next week.