I have been clinging, fingernails tearing, to the last vestiges of childhood. I am desperate to continue school, not because I want an education, but because it will allow me the opportunity to be a kid for a bit longer.
I am a woman with an addictive personality. I have been obsessed with superhero movies from the time I hit puberty. More recently, I've found myself with a near obscene need to watch certain television shows: a normal high-school girl chosen to be the lone soldier in a war against evil, women taken away from their mundane lives to go traveling amongst the whole of time and space with a mysterious doctor, and, of course, their various respective spin-offs.
I love to act. I am a pretty fair actress, I think, when I am given a role that I am allowed to make real. The problem with this is that I only do community theatre, which has the terminal illness of, intentionally or not, only using plays with characters that are nothing more than stereotyped hulls of “real” people. Very few community directors will do a show that requires more than learning lines and showing exaggerated emotion while moving from point A to point B. I do understand why this is: it is immensely difficult to showcase real humanity to an audience from fifty feet away without overdoing the emotions for them to be evident. And let's face it: most community actors couldn't handle a character who is built off of being a real person in a unique situation; for most actors in such theatres, acting is a hobby and nothing more. My problem is the opposite. I need to be a real person in my acting roles. When I am told to over-emphasize my emotions or facial expressions, my brain protests, screaming that it's not what my character would do. This leads to my feeling like a failure as an actor. Not only am I not allowed to become the person I'd like to become, but I'm also unable to become the stage-version of that person.
All of this leads me to my rediscovering a very simple, but very distressing, fact about the person that is me: I yearn to be somebody important. I want, with everything that is me, to be someone who matters in this world. I want to be the person in the foreground, saving lives, rather than the woman in the background, screaming at the monsters. Of course, the problem with growing up is that I am forced to come to terms with the fact that I am one of the 99% of humanity who is in the background. I am destined, like the overwhelming majority of the human race, to become a nobody. Sure, I will be somebody to the people in my life. I will matter to a few dozen (maybe even a few hundred) people before I die. When I die, though, I will die knowing that if I'd never been here, I wouldn't have made any lasting differences. Sure, philosophers will argue until the end of time that by their mere existence and through every interaction, every person makes a difference in the direction that the universe travels. I can respect and even acknowledge the validity of that idea. However, I know that I will make no larger difference than the secretary at the local law office.
I will likely go to university, get married, have a job that I moderately enjoy (hopefully), have a few children, retire, and die, all without ever having the satisfaction of knowing that, without me, the world would have gone to hell. I shall never save the world. It's probably a good thing, too. Given the opportunity, I would likely blow it, out of fear or other human emotion, just like most others would.
I'm sure I will eventually come to terms with the simple fact of my being a backgrounder. I will tell myself that I made a difference in the lives of my family, friends, and perhaps even a few strangers, and that is all that truly matters. For now, though, I know that I will never be a hero.
And that kills me every single day.
