ab initio, ad infinitum

protagonist.

HEY EVERYONE! i hope you're all doing well and are safe and healthy and are doing good things whether that be to yourself or for the world outside of you! i'm not sure if this piece really fits w the vibe of the others, but i think it's an important one all the same. have a wonderful day and enjoy my fellow protagonists ;) do good, be well. <3

P R O T A G O N I S T .

There are things that I like to call, protagonist traits. When I'm walking down the street and I hear a loud, booming, utterly delightful laugh, I call that a protagonist trait. When someone has the ability to always find themselves in the strangest and most intriguing of situations, I call that a protagonist trait. When someone has a confusing and complicated and drama-filled love life, I call that a protagonist trait.

Not to make light of the situation, mind you. It's just how I personally identify the vivid and interesting stories that these people have to tell. Stories are written and read about these people and their wonderful life, or the situations they get thrown into, or their dramatic attempts to find the one.

It's what make people so fascinating. What makes other people drawn to these fascinating lives, wanting to learn more, wanting to immerse themselves in their world.

Even through years of finding those protagonist traits in everyone else, I still can't find any of my own.

As both a reader and writer, a protagonist is an idea that resonates with me. Because while some may associate protagonist with hero or good guy, all the protagonist is, is the main person, the one who tells the story. And so it happens, our viewing of the story is inherently biased – try as we may, most of us are not Buddhist monks who can successfully practice the art of non-attachment. We are human and we are biased by our experiences and perspectives and the life we've lived.

(PSA: that's not an excuse to not try and challenge those biases when you can – question and learn, it's called growth!)

This being said, I know I speak not only for myself when I say that growing up, I never felt that I was the protagonist.

I never saw someone like me in that role before. Movies, shows, books, anything really. I never saw anyone who I felt reflected me in that lead role. I was too brown, too short, not thin enough, too quiet, too unassuming, a mediator and conflict-adverse. I was a perfect supporting character, yet never the lead.

As a child, that stung a lot worse. And in retrospect, I can see how I handled that situation. I was boisterous and loud, defying anyone who told me that 'you can't play that character, they're white' or whatever adjective that I didn't fit. I played the main character because that's who I wanted to be, and I was oftentimes the headstrong, passionate leaders those protagonists were. In some ways, however, that wasn't right either. Ignoring and hiding away all the parts of me that didn't fit into that mold of 'protagonist', wasn't right either.

And as time wore on, I realized that. People who I thought were better suited to the title of lead, were louder, and so I in turn became quieter. I became more contained and level-headed; not at all bad qualities necessarily, but not protagonist traits.

Jump forward more years, and suddenly my perspective opened up again. Suddenly, I could see the merits in quiet strength and a calm, rational mind, just as much as I always valued being loud and defiant and having your heart burst open with feeling. And I recognized that people have or can be both as well. I started to see how each person is a protagonist in their own story, recognizing how different each one of our tales are. How interesting and wonderful it is that they are so different.

Seeing myself as the protagonist to my own story is hard, however, even now. Even after pondering and wondering about it, some days, I still feel like a supporting character, maybe even an extra. But that's when I choose to instead wonder about what kind of protagonist I'd be.

My story would be one full of run-on sentences and poor grammar, bursting with good intention and sometimes falling short. There would be a significant amount of dialogue, but double the amount of thoughts, jumping from tangent to tangent.

There would be moments full of happiness and joy, so bright that it would be comparable to looking straight at the gleaming sun. Some passages would be somber and hopeless and numb, with fragments of sentences and hollow expression. Other parts would be full of expletives and rage and cursing life, ready to burn the world to the ground and rebuild it with my bare fists alone. There will be chapters full of dizzying worrying, nonsensical tension and nausea. Hopefully others will be filled with a sense of peace and stillness, a quiet sigh lost in the sound of a sweeping wind, serenity and contentness with the world moving around us.

In my story, there will be a lot of balancing scales, trying to maintain stability and offer more perspectives. Opportunities to challenge beliefs and gain understanding. At the same time, there will be times in my story, that I acknowledge my close-mindedness and hypocrisy, aware that I can do better, yet choose not to because I am tired or feel that at that precise moment, it's not my responsibility.

And that's okay.

In my story, it will be very obvious that I'm human and prone to screwing up and oftentimes struggling to fix things because of pride and fear. I will constantly be fighting an internal war over not giving a fuck and caring way too much.

In my story, I will not speak much unless I get caught up in something I care about or I'm speaking to someone I care about, or it's one of those chapters that I want to engage and talk with everything. And in those cases, I won't shut up, babbling and prattling on about important and trivial things alike.

In my story, there will be pages upon pages of observations and musings and thoughts about people, places, and things. In my story, I will acknowledge and marvel at the beauty of the world every single fucking chapter, because there never will be a moment that I fail to see that beauty, even if it's marred by deep gashes of ugliness. Because in my book, contradictions and paradoxes run free.

And you know what; not everyone will want the book in which I'm the protagonist. Quiet and thoughtful and paradoxical and very human heroines may not be everyone's cup of tea, and that's okay.

Even if no one else reads it, I will. I will reread the pages of my own story and learn from it and grow from it and admire it, because all those pages are proof that I have survived that much and I will survive even more. That I will live that much more.

So maybe it took me a few years to realize that I'm a protagonist, and maybe I still struggle with it. Maybe I don't see those protagonist traits in myself, because I haven't read any books that have a main character like myself. That's okay.

Because I know a story that has a protagonist exactly like me. And that story, is my own.

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