PERFECT PLACES

Jonathan (2)

Why do so many stories have happy endings? What a ridiculous portrayal of real life. Stories are misleading. If someone has their own story to tell, it means they are there to tell it; it means they have a happy ending to share with you. Even if something terrible happens in the middle, a resolution will come. They came out alive, after all, and that in itself makes the story a little too predictable. If someone makes up a story instead, it means they are trying to pretend that their happiness is real. That they can make up whatever they want, and go along with it for however long they choose. Their entire minds can be painted into words, and they can make something beautiful out of a small feeling of hope. The overwhelming sadness and awkwardness that they see with their eyes can be pushed to the corners of their view, and can be replaced with what they see inside themselves. The story they choose to tell is probably a pretty nice substitute for everything that is happening around them, in their reality, outside of the words. And if someone is telling someone else's story, they probably wish it was their own. The fascination that someone else could be that successful, or interesting, completely overtakes their existence.
   
Stories, in a way, are really nothing at all. Just fluffy, processed, saturated, filtered lenses to wear and somehow believe in. They teach us excitement, hope, imagination, bravery, heroism; really they should be thrown in the trash and laughed at. They try to suck us away from the grey towns we live in, down a long winding corridor. It leads to the center of the earth, to a fluorescent heaven up in the sky where everything we ever need actually exists, floating around in nothingness, forever. The cold and mechanical motions of reality make our stories that much more tempting, aspirational, and believable.

How could we have ever learned growing up that everything will be okay, that the obstacles coming toward us will eventually pass? Where is the fairy tale where everyone dies, where evil takes over for as long as time exists and nothing can be done about it? Stories are hideous. Stories are fake and brittle. Stories are just a way to ignore the draining and overwhelming despair of being a person. It's ironic, really, how perfectly resolved everything is. The optimism that radiates from every corner of anywhere I've ever been, that beams off of other people and their creations, is too fucking perfect.

I looked at so many stories on my phone last night. It was draining. Stories of the entire world. Of terror and sadness. The stories of famous people, in short little snippets and anecdotes. I watched videos of people who had interesting things to say, or interesting lives to put up on display. I sat there, in the dark after everyone was probably asleep on my floor, and spent my hours learning their stories. The number of stories that were in front of me was unexplainable. It was like everyone who had something to say, who thought they were interesting enough to show everyone else, had bottled up all of their ideas and emotions from the day and posted them online for everyone to see. My friends had stories, too. Their stories were pictures, videos, sometimes with little paragraphs attached. It seemed like almost everyone around me believed that their own stories were interesting. That their stories would string together over time and create an optimistic and colourful timeline of their own lives.

Everyone experiences these stories together, but at different times, in different places, on their own. Everything is so perfect in every one of these stories. At four in the morning last night, my screen was a visual playlist of every amazing thing that had happened that day to everyone I knew. They were just as unbelievable as the stories I had read as a kid. Too perfect and neatly presented. Fairy tales.

Everyone showed off their happiness online. Everything was okay, everything was exciting. My eyes could scroll through everything important that was going on around me and I could bend the sadness that I felt away from the spotlight, into a small little box somewhere deep inside my heart, hidden away for the time being.

Then I finally turned the screen off. It took me so long to turn it off. Hours and hours of endless stories had just flashed across the surface of my eyes. But eventually, I managed to turn it off. And as soon as I did, I felt completely empty inside. My stomach dropped to the floor. My eyes burned from keeping myself locked onto my phone screen for so long and ignoring the idea of sleep. I felt devastated and powerless once the screen turned black, because my own real story that I felt and was forced to experience in that moment was so different. It was unbearable. I felt like I was finally falling back into the darkness, while all of my friends continued scrolling about in the bright, beautiful clouds of each other's dreams.