This is a true story about me. I changed all names. I don't know what made me write this a few months ago, but I love this piece. This is truly who I am.
“It isn’t real, Aimee,” Melody said to me. “Why are you so obsessed with this book? Why do you act like it’s real?” What could I say? It’s real to me? My cousin would think I was delusional. But it was. To me, stories, thoughts…they weren’t just real. They were more real than the world I was in right now.
What if our world, just like the books we read, the movies and show we watch, was a mere story? What if it was just a short novel that someone off in some other world read? What if all the stories that we considered fiction were really truth…in another world? After all, words have power. What if the Inkheart trilogy was right? And what if I had fallen into the wrong story? Epiphany.
That was when I realized it. That was when I saw that I wasn’t normal—that, in fact, there was no such thing as normal at all. That was when I realized I was alone. Who knew what story I was meant to be in…I just knew it wasn’t this one.
And this explained so much. It explained why the characters of books and movies sometimes felt more real to me then my own family and friends. It explained why, in my mind, I could have conversations with characters who I had read about. It explained who I really was.
For a while, I kept this a secret. I was the only one, I knew. And what friend would I tell? Ha! I was a social outcast. A sad little friendless thing in the corner with a book. Why would I want to befriend one of these people, one of these middle-school idiots who considered the most demanding issue of the century the fact that eight grade promotion had been canceled. All anyone here cared about was where they got their clothes, who was making out with who, what show was on tonight, who the hottest guy in Twilight was. Did no one here care about the real issues of the world? Did they not even consider the great works of scientific research, the feats of engineering, the works of brilliant authors, the exhibits of talented artists? No. Some of them, I am sure, thought that cell phones were engineered over night, artists were all long dead, and authors were “nerds” who spent their hours cooped up in an untidy room, typing away a story that they would never read. These were the people whose greatest concerns were the looks of their hair, their clothes, their social status. And I knew that I truly had fallen into the wrong story. I was not one of these people.
At least there was always one other, one who liked the same shows and books and movies as me, who always cared about my feelings, and who might have fallen into the wrong story, too. But when he halted all communication with me, I was let down. And so, not trusting one other soul, I took up blogging.
Three people, three people quite like me, followed my blog. Only three, yet I knew there were more, many more, who read my blog. The current statistics? Over a thousand views. Over a thousand views by people like me.
And Discovery Girls. That website helped me greatly. On one of the Discussion Boards I threw out the idea of falling into the wrong story, and numerous people responded. Then I knew I was not completely alone. There were few of us, yes, but we were not alone. We were the writers of the world; those who did not just see words on a page, but saw another world, and could create another world with a mere thought.
The final realization that I was in good company was one, cold day, during P.E. I’m not the athletic type, so when Coach E offered two options: basketball or walking along the edge of the yard, I of course went for the latter. Only one other girl, Hallie, walked with me. We talked. And soon we discovered that in many ways we were alike…and that, like myself, she felt like she had fallen into the wrong story.
Now I know that I am not so strange. I am different, of course, then the narrow-minded, airhead girls who devoutly follow pop-culture as if it were a religion. But I am not alone. And one day, through words, we who have fallen into the wrong story will make it back, back to our intended story. And then, we will have truly found our place.
