My Life Is Not A Movie

[talonkarrde]

For Siyi

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She's the artsy type, known for her love of literature and film. She catches every movie, especially the ones that push the boundaries of the genre. She has a gift for storytelling, too. She's okay with the compliment; she knows what parts of a story people want to hear, how to spin out the details to be much more dramatic than they actually happened, where to keep people guessing and when to reveal the ending for maximum effect.

But when they say "Oh, I wish I could have your life! Your life is like a movie!" she wants nothing more than to yell, 'My life is not a fucking thing like a movie.' But she does not; she merely smiles the fake smile that all teenagers learn to use and turns the conversation to other topics, letting chatter take over while she crumbles inside.

My life is not like a movie, she wants to say, because in movies, the hero pretty much always overcomes the obstacles arranged against them, and she knew that there would never be a happy ending for her. Studios don't make films that begin with misery and conclude with despair, and that was the only plot in her life. The latest prognosis gave her a 15% chance, down from the 40% of two months ago…and she knew why. Her body was breaking down, and none of the drugs were going to stop it.

Her life is not like an action movie, she thinks, because justice has never been there when she has needed it; it did not defend the weak and downtrodden in real life. When she stumbled into the wrong alleyway while high, there was no superhero or gunslinger or martial artist that believed in doing the right thing to save her from the street punks that took everything from her. There was just violence and darkness. When she came to, she dragged herself to the hospital, but there was no cop willing to look for the gang, no attorney willing to press charges. Not enough evidence, they said, another way of saying she asked for it.

Her life is not a thriller, she knows, because there is no tension that builds up to a riveting climax, no terrible ways that people are killed and plot points that are slowly discovered. Just a downwards spiral for the last five years, each event's outcome bleeding into the next. Her dad getting forty-to-life for domestic violence, the parade of new boyfriends that treated her mother like a whore, the endless roaches in the homeless shelter, and finally, acute liver failure or alcohol poisoning that finally took her mother - the doctors couldn't decide which and it's not like it mattered.

"My life is not a movie!" she screams one day in class, unable to take it anymore. In a comedy, there would be laughter after the punchline; in a romance, her true love would find her in this moment; in a drama, the class would burst into applause. But she is correct; her life is not a movie, and there is simply silence, a silence that carries with it no hope of redemption or resolution.