The Death Diary

Arthur’s Diary: Don’t read this unless your name is Arthur.

Dear Eve,

Do you know what sucks? Living your life and then dramatically having it pulled out from underneath you. Having everything usurped as if you meant nothing. As if your life meant nothing. It seems to be happening to me more than it is to every other human being on the planet. I mean, how hard is it to choose a different person for something to happen to? There are literally billions of us. Aren’t the odds in our favor that disappointment and life ruining events can only happen once? We should get a prize when we win from the Horrible Life Happenings Lottery more than once. At least it would make it a little worthwhile.

In case you haven’t guessed by now, my life just got a little more full of hurt. Jeri broke up with me. I guess we were never technically together. We went on dates and made out so it seemed like we were a thing. I was wrong. She went back to Michael. She went back to the douche. He’s actually kind of the king of douches. The Grand Magistrate of Douchetopia.

I’ve been thinking about stories lately, mostly because mom keeps saying ‘Read the story. How will your decisions affect the end?’ and I gotta tell you, I don’t very much care for the one-point perspective. Every story follows someone. I mean there are stories that follow multiple people, but rarely does the story follow the path of the villain. For the most part, because I don’t want to generalize, stories follow the hero (es) and we don’t hear much about what the villain is thinking or how they perceive themselves. Don’t you think the villain sees themselves as a hero? Everyone thinks that their point of view is the right one, so doesn’t it make sense that if we were reading the book from the villain’s point of view, that we would then be reading the hero? The hero would be the villain and the villain would be the hero. Two different stories but with the same characters, doing the same things, just from a different perspective. Is that making sense? It’s like up is down and down is up. I guess all that, however confusing it might be, to say that Michael is the hero of his story, like I am the hero of my story. However, that doesn’t stop him from being the villain in my story.

It kind of sucks when you figure out that the ratio for being a hero to villain is practically 1: 7 billion. Unless you’re self-sabotaging in which case it would be 0: 7 billion and 1. You can only truly be the hero of your own story but you can be the villain to everyone else’s. That sucks! And it especially sucks when you learn that not only is the villain a hero to his own story, but he’s found a way to sneak into your story and be the hero. I think I’m the villain in my story.

Everything that I try to do ends up failing in some way. I feel like I try really hard to be the hero. When Olivia died, I pulled it back together to fight another day. When Jeri and Michael broke up, I was there to help Jeri and eventually fall for her. Every day of Petey’s life I’ve tried to stick up for him, tried to help and protect the kid from everything and everyone. But you know what? Nothing seems to work out. Realizing that books and movies aren’t real sucks. I want that reality but I’m stuck in this one instead.