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but it's as real as the feelings I feel
Jul. 10th, 2013 02:34 pmIf I were the protagonist, it would have made sense for Ava to die.
I wasn't kidding when I said she was the only person I've ever been in love with. I've been in a good, strong relationship for five years, and I've loved plenty of people, but I'm pretty much aromantic. I don't do in love. The only reason I did it with Abby, I think, was because she herself was so madly in love with love. She bought into it, all of it, real odds-defying reason-scrambling Princess-Bride-style true love, and if I could give her any of that, I had to. Like being GGG about a kink that drives your partner wild, and discovering that it actually works for you just because they're so into it.
It's frustrating beyond belief, how narratively perfect our story was, in a pretentious literary-fiction sort of way. The last time I saw her in person was at her driver's ed class, did I tell you that? It was in Arizona in early summer--June, I think--and the heat was overwhelming. She didn't seem to mind; she'd grown up in it, and I know her mother has always loved the desert. We'd spent the night making pie and kissing and laughing and not sleeping very much, and in the morning her mother took her to driver's ed class and I came along. That might have been the car she died in; I'm not sure, but it's likely, and if so, talk about foreshadowing. We dropped her off, and then Tamara took me to the motel where my mom was staying, or maybe she took me back to their house and Mom picked me up, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention.
She was learning a lesson that night, I think, and then I learned a very different lesson, and then she died in a car accident, and the reader would remember the driver's ed and maybe the car if it really was the same one--in a story, it would have been more clear than it is in my memory--and it would have been satisfying. Because if I were the protagonist, of course the girl I fell in love with would die.
If Ava were the protagonist (and Christ, if ever anyone were a born protagonist) it wouldn't have been pretentious literary fiction and no one would have had to die. It would have been a light little romance story about a vivacious heroine meeting a cynical love interest who doesn't believe in romance, and maybe it would have ended at pie and kisses. Or maybe it would have been a more modern story--we were both girls, after all--and she would have gone off to college and grown up on her own terms and then run into me a few years later, which did happen. Maybe it would have ended just before she died, when we were finally talking again, and anything could have happened. She wouldn't have died. Nobody dies in romance stories except older relatives whose funerals provide convenient scenarios for emotional vulnerability.
I don't spend that much time thinking about this, really. If I did, my life would be miserable, and it's not. I'm happy. Just... not happily-ever-after. Really, really not that.
I wasn't kidding when I said she was the only person I've ever been in love with. I've been in a good, strong relationship for five years, and I've loved plenty of people, but I'm pretty much aromantic. I don't do in love. The only reason I did it with Abby, I think, was because she herself was so madly in love with love. She bought into it, all of it, real odds-defying reason-scrambling Princess-Bride-style true love, and if I could give her any of that, I had to. Like being GGG about a kink that drives your partner wild, and discovering that it actually works for you just because they're so into it.
It's frustrating beyond belief, how narratively perfect our story was, in a pretentious literary-fiction sort of way. The last time I saw her in person was at her driver's ed class, did I tell you that? It was in Arizona in early summer--June, I think--and the heat was overwhelming. She didn't seem to mind; she'd grown up in it, and I know her mother has always loved the desert. We'd spent the night making pie and kissing and laughing and not sleeping very much, and in the morning her mother took her to driver's ed class and I came along. That might have been the car she died in; I'm not sure, but it's likely, and if so, talk about foreshadowing. We dropped her off, and then Tamara took me to the motel where my mom was staying, or maybe she took me back to their house and Mom picked me up, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention.
She was learning a lesson that night, I think, and then I learned a very different lesson, and then she died in a car accident, and the reader would remember the driver's ed and maybe the car if it really was the same one--in a story, it would have been more clear than it is in my memory--and it would have been satisfying. Because if I were the protagonist, of course the girl I fell in love with would die.
If Ava were the protagonist (and Christ, if ever anyone were a born protagonist) it wouldn't have been pretentious literary fiction and no one would have had to die. It would have been a light little romance story about a vivacious heroine meeting a cynical love interest who doesn't believe in romance, and maybe it would have ended at pie and kisses. Or maybe it would have been a more modern story--we were both girls, after all--and she would have gone off to college and grown up on her own terms and then run into me a few years later, which did happen. Maybe it would have ended just before she died, when we were finally talking again, and anything could have happened. She wouldn't have died. Nobody dies in romance stories except older relatives whose funerals provide convenient scenarios for emotional vulnerability.
I don't spend that much time thinking about this, really. If I did, my life would be miserable, and it's not. I'm happy. Just... not happily-ever-after. Really, really not that.
