Starring Role

It almost feels like a joke to play out the part
When you are not the starring role in someone else's heart
You know I'd rather work alone, than play a supporting role
If I can't get the starring role.

-- "Starring Role" by Marina and the Diamonds

There are a couple of habits you pick up as a storyteller.

You become really good at remembering the minutiae of people's lives. You know that this person will eat only mushroom pizza and no other toppings. You know that this other person can recite the lyrics to every Backstreet Boys song ever recorded. You know that this person accidentally hit reply all to the work e-mail listserv, and so everyone saw him joke about hasenpfeffer in response to an email about an Easter Bunny photo-op at the hospital. You catalog all these quirks into your brain, because the best script-writing is happening all around you. You simply learn to pay attention better than anyone else.

You also develop the habit of seeing life around you as a story in the process of unfolding. If you're the type that shies away from attention, perhaps you imagine yourself in the supporting role to one of your dramatic friends. Maybe you're the witty one who makes snippy wisecracks about the heroine's mishaps, or maybe you're the sidekick who gets the inside scoop of every escapade. If you imagine yourself as part of an ensemble cast, you might wonder which of your friends has garnered the biggest fanbase among viewers, whose storyline has been the most consistently riveting, or which potential romantic pairing in your life do the viewers ship most rabidly.

So when things don't go the way you wanted, you learn to go with the flow, because you know that nobody writes a story where the dominoes all line up perfectly. Nobody wants to watch a TV show about a protagonist who gets everything he's ever wanted without facing a single setback. Maybe you had to fail here, in order to stumble onto a whole new and exciting narrative arc elsewhere. Maybe you weren't meant to attain that dream at this moment, because what's coming around the corner is so much greater than anything you could have achieved right now.

Maybe you and I have circled each other for so long, because our time wasn't then. It is now.