I honest to goodness believe that everybody is alive for a reason. Some people are here to bring great joy just as others are destined to bring the most acute sorrow. It's not entirely black and white - in fact, sorting through the middling gray is the hardest part.
For quite a while now, I've struggled with my "life plan" - where I wanted to go, how I wanted to get there, and who I wanted to be. Over the past year alone, I've explored ten different career fields, taking classes outside of school to see which one fit just right. I've come to terms with the person I am in the here-and-now and learned to embrace my limitations only to shatter them later.
My point is, I've been in a state of relatively constant upheaval and through it all, one thing has remained constant. It's bright and shining and forefront in my thoughts most days - I want to be remembered.
We remember people for a variety of reasons - their kindness, their actions, their cruelty. Just open up your history text book (hopefully not for the first time this year) and read any section that talks about people. Those people were *someone*. They were revolutionary enough to make it into that dryly written chapter. I look at them and I wonder if they felt the same way I do - this constant force grinding down on me.
I have to believe they do because, on some level, we all want our lives to matter. We all want to have the lasting power of Shakespeare. If you're like me, it pushes you forward. My desire to do something of note has taken me to my greatest heights and has insured my place in the corresponding valleys.
If I had to choose, I'd most want to be remembered for my writing. Over the past year, I've seen a steep decline in "downtime," which has meant I have less time to devote to the noble craft of storytelling, but it's still inside of me. I can feel the fire there, burning, fueling everything I do with the promise of my name embossed on a title page and my pen gliding over dust covers. I know a lot of you reading this can relate.
In my fantasies, I can't see past signing that first autograph. I can't imagine what I would do after I had a book out there for the world to see. Hopefully, it's one of those books that comes along every once in a while. One of the ones where you can speak the author's name and the book immediately comes to mind. Maybe, if I'm lucky enough, it'll be enough to be remembered by.
I want, more than anything, to leave a legacy.
I've often wondered what it would be like to go to my own funeral. Who would be there? Who would cry? Would there be laughter or quiet reverence? Would animosity dominate the atmosphere?
I'm too young to know any of these things - hopefully I'll have a long life full of time to work them out or even shape them into what I want them to be. What I want now will change - that's the beauty of life.
But there's one thing I've wanted forever, and I'll probably keep wanting it until the day that I do fade into the blackness.
I want to be someone that people look back on and say, "Oh, yeah, Alice. She was something."
And if I'm lucky, I might end up in the history books.
TTFN, Whyville.
-xoxo Alice xoxo-
