As much as you want to believe, you are not the narrator of your own story. You’re not the author, you’re not the editor, and you’re not the audience. You’re a character. A character within your own story line.

You don’t get to pick the perspective in which your story is told. You don’t get to edit out parts of your life to improve it. You don’t get to be emotionally, physically, or mentally detached as if you’re watching your life on a screen.

You just get to live it.

You’ll never know how it begins and ends or what events are going to take place. You get the information that’s provided to you and from then on, you act on it.

Much like everyone on this Earth, I’ve been selfish. I’ve been treating my story as if I was going to be the one to decide how it all ends. But let me tell you something, you cannot just end a story in the middle of a sentence. You must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The story has to make sense, your life has to make sense, because there is a reason that you’re here.

Up until now, I’ve only been on the other side of the story. In my story, I am both the protagonist and the antagonist. I believed that I could play God and leave my story where ever I wanted to leave it off at. That is the selfishness coming out.

Being twenty three, I’m only in the rising action arch of my storyline. My life has just barely begun and I’m experiencing major conflicts that are crucial to my character development. I haven’t even reached near the climax of my life, I haven’t peaked.

But I looked down from this height, I got scared, and wanted it all to be over. Then I caught a glimpse of my audience.

My audience is my relatives, my best friends, and my boyfriend all rooting for me – the underdog – to complete my story. When I’ve tried to throw in the towel, they’ve kept reading on, never allowing my character to die. I’ve put them on the edges of their seats and some of them, I’ve let fall from out of reach. Those are the people who where merely background characters that got phased out in later chapters of my life.

I look to their faces, and I get lost swimming in the sadness of their eyes. I see my own reflection – and she is ugly. She has the face of a liar, the actions of a coward, the words of a mute, and the mind of a lunatic.

You’re not the hero in your own story, you never will be. The hero is always the person you least expect it to be. They always come in the right time with the right reasons. They won’t take your pain away, they will teach you how to cope with it and how to do better.

The hero is there, looking out for you, ready to whisk all of the conflict away resolving it with it’s perfect resolution. This may have played a small part in my story, but it was a narrative that had to be told. A side story that had to be completed. A chapter, that had to be closed.

It’s like finding another piece in the puzzle that is life – sometimes you have to stop forcing pieces together and take a step back to get the big picture.

My author could not continue my story without me learning my lesson, I had to learn how to view things from other people’s perspectives. I had to see the damage and hurt that I could cause with one little blade, because without it, I couldn’t have continued on with my purpose.

I’m meant to met new people, get new friends, live new places, try new foods, give advice to my friends, met my godson, have a new favorite song, get a new job, lose some people, make a few more people smile, do kind things just because, wish my aunt a happy birthday, receive a present from my brother, take care of my dog, and live more of my life.

I don’t just belong in my own story, I belong in everyone else’s stories as well. I have a role to play in their lives and I cannot do the things I need to do in order to impact their life, if I cannot finish my own.

As much as the conflicts weigh you down, your emotions make you hurt, and your actions affect everything around you – your story isn’t finished just because it feels like it’s over.

You cannot close the book until you see the other side of the story.