My Life as a Romance Novel

Yeah, it's a weird way of looking at it.

If my artistic journey was a tawdry romance story, then Writing would have been my youthful true love that got away. We grew up together, promised each other we’d get married (we were only ten), and then circumstances and a heavy dose of fear tore us apart. But we always wrote to each other, praying for the day we’d be reunited.

Singing was my passionate fling, fun and wonderful and carefree. But as it carried on, we cared about each other too much, in an unhealthy, jealous way. Ultimately, we were doomed because we were too similar, or too dissimilar, or some other dumb excuse.

Then arrived Theatre, the sensible, good-natured, natural choice for marriage. We clicked, and just sort of fell into the patterns of love. Theatre provided for me, and we built a stable life together. From the outside, people thought we were passionately in love.

But my heart was forever bound to Writing, and my relationship with Theatre was but a shell of a marriage.

And now…

The day comes that Writing is brought back into my life, and I am torn between true love versus home and security. Then Theatre finds out about Writing, takes a shotgun, and threatens to kill Writing! They struggle, the gun goes off, the camera cuts away (in the Lifetime movie adaptation, of course). We know one of them has died… but who?!

Of course, the audience is divided on who they want to survive and live happily ever after.

This whole tragedy could’ve been avoided if I had just stuck with Writing in the first place. On the other hand, Writing and I didn’t have our act together in our youths, so wouldn’t it have fallen apart without the time and experience we now have?

There are those who feel for Theatre. Theatre has done all the heavy lifting, and there’s no denying that Theatre and I have chemistry, we work well together, and we’ve built a fairly stable life. Should I really call that a loveless marriage?

Then you have the small crowd who are rooting for Singing to somehow come out on top here. I mean, Singing was the relationship that arguably made me the happiest, and Singing is just such a beloved art. Could I really not have worked things out?

And finally, from the woodworks crawl those who remember Band and make #justiceforBand go semi-trending on social media.

Band was my obsession in high school, and for a brief time, I thought that Band and I would be paired for life. But Band changed (due to moving schools and changing programs), and though we kept in touch for a time as friends, Band and I just weren’t ever going to be a lifelong match.

So, how does the story end? Do I end up with Writing, Theatre, Singing, or Band? Depends on the genre, I guess.

Romance would almost certainly wind up with Writing and I reunited, and either we find out Theatre was abusive all along and we rejoice at the grizzly death (and implausible acquittal), or perhaps the whole marriage with Theatre was a massive misunderstanding and everybody winds up happy in the end.

Literary fiction would end up with me either dead or alone, rejected by all of them.

If it were an anime, there would be the possibility of a harem ending, but that just presents more problems than it fixes. (And also… ew.)

If you were to ask me how I want the story to end… I guess you’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

Photo by Jens Lelie on Unsplash

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