"The Story of My Life"

I feel a little bad, because I started this blog with very good intentions.  There actually was a brief window of my life when something funny would happen to me, and I'd think, "This would make a good blog post," but that's about as far as I got.  In order to revive the blog a little, I'm going to update twice.  In, like, a minute.  It sounds impressive and everything, but I'm going to cheat.
We've had two readings at school over the past couple of months.  One was a Halloween reading, which called for Halloween-based stories or poems (you might be thinking, "duh," but it's the weekend before finals here, so this all seems like necessary information to me).  I wanted to support the English club (sponsors of the event) and write something, but a couple problems presented themselves.  One: I'm a literature major, not a creative writing major.  Two: Even if I were a creative writing major, horror is not my preferred genre...mainly because I get freaked out by, like, the movie Jumanji, so I'm confident what scares me does not align with what scares the rest of the sane world.  In order to be supportive-ish, I decided to risk getting sent to English club jail, and bent the rules a little.  Are we all seeing a pattern here?
Now, if anyone wants to read real work within the horror genre, check out this blog.
And, here we go.  This is called "The Story of My Life."  Happy reading.

Let me just start off by saying that I’m angry, and I feel like I have every right to be.  I mean, how would you feel if your ex-boyfriend was basically canonized?  No matter how great of a person you are, I can guarantee that after you break up with someone, there’s at least a small amount of time when you want the rest of the world to hate that person with you, so how would you feel if basically every girl in the world, from seven to forty-five, was drooling after this fictionalized ideal of your ex-boyfriend?  Now add in the fact that someone stole your life story and made millions of dollars off of it.  So, basically consider yourself poor, cheated, and misrepresented, and see how happy you are.  Yeah, the smiling sunshine is not exactly peeking from behind the pink, lacey curtains of my soul. 

Maybe I should just cut to the chase.  You know the Twilight books?  More specifically, the first Twilight book.  Yeah, that’s a romanticized version of my life.  Don’t talk to random Mormons on the street when you’re heartbroken, kids.  That’s the real moral to my story.  I made the mistake of trusting a stranger with my sob story, and suddenly my ex is a Barbie doll.  Please.  If you people knew what he really looked like, no one would ever complain about Robert Pattinson as a casting choice for the movies. 

Those of you who have been paying close attention will have realized that this means I’ve dated a vampire.  Yeah, I did, and as you have probably figured by now, I’m not really in the mood to be judged about my taste in men.  It’s not really that unusual anyway.  I mean, most women have dated guys who’ve slept all day and had a questionable diet.  My ex is just defined by those two characteristics.  Let’s not forget that I’m the afflicted party here, and I think judging my choice in men is getting very blame-the-victim-y, and also missing the point of my narrative: Twilight is my story, and Stephenie Meyer owes me a lot of money and a sincere apology.

Though, the woman is talented, I have to say.  I mean, she managed to make Ted of all people into a sex symbol, which I would have guessed was impossible.  Somehow she turned all of his annoying quirks into these shining attributes…But we’ll get to that later.  First, I’m sure you’re all wondering how one meets a vampire. 

I work a lot of graveyard shifts at a grocery store.  I know, ha ha, graveyard shifts.  Really, I’m over the humor.  Anyway, I met Ted on the bus when I was commuting to work.  He was just this pale guy, dressed in black, with a very intriguing accent, which, coincidentally enough, made me think of Count Chocola.  I’ll admit that it was the accent that did me in, and it was the accent I was imagining hearing on the other end of my phone when I gave him my number.  We talked for a while, he was very charming, and we started to date.  I didn’t think it was unusual that we only talked at night, because I figured he was being considerate of my work-schedule.  We went out on a couple dates, and by the time he told me he was a vampire, I’d kind of already worked it out for myself.  Unlike Meyer’s corrupted version of my life, in which the male lead looks nothing like a typical vampire, Ted had sort of noticeable fangs and also liked to wear a cape around.  I thought that by not mentioning these things, by never saying, “My, Ted, what big teeth you have,” or “What’s with the cape?” I was avoiding a story about a family who was too poor for some sort of vital dental surgery, or a confession about a strange superhero obsession.  Don’t avoid the hard topics, ladies.  You only end up hurting yourself. 

So, anyway, I’ve always been superstitious, and believed in ghosts and everything like that, so the fact that Ted was a vampire was weird, but really also great because that meant that I was right about supernatural stuff and the rest of the world was wrong.  Who doesn’t love it when that happens?

OK, so the relationship progressed and we moved in together.  Mistake.  You know the inherit dangers of that kind of step.  You find out all about the other person’s bad habits, and the other person finds out all about yours.  Well, Ted had one really, really bad habit: He was always watching me sleep.  Somehow in the book of my would-be-life, Meyer makes this pastime seem endearing.  But, really, who would be OK with this?  I would wake up and Ted would be standing over me, just staring.  And, I know, I know, a relationship is all about trust, and Ted said he didn’t eat people, but I was not comfortable with him just peering at my exposed neck when I was at my most vulnerable.  Sometimes when I’d wake up and see his dark eyes a foot away from me, I’d scream, and he’d be all offended.  But, for God’s sake, that’s creepy!  I’d tell him how weird he was being, and he’d pout off somewhere.  You’d think a person who walked around in a cape would be more impervious to criticism, but whatever. 

Another point of contention with us was how poor Ted constantly was.  I know the literary ideal of Ted drove a Volvo or something and had all of this money he showered on his girlfriend, well, the reality of the situation is that Ted was 300 years old and never had over 50 dollars in his checking account.  “You haven’t learned a marketable skill in over three centuries?” I would ask him.  And he’d get all defensive—again with the sensitivity thing, and say that money wasn’t everything.  And I would say, “You haven’t learned an alternative to tired clichés in over three centuries?” And he would say that I was being awful just for the sake of being awful, to which I’d reply he was being poor just for the sake of being poor, and I didn’t know if I was supposed to find his poverty bohemian and attractive, but I definitely didn’t.  And he’d cry.  Like, really.  You know how emo the vampire is in those books?  That’s about the only thing Stephenie got right. 

Meyer also completely misrepresented me.  I mean, it’s bad enough she constantly stresses how plain and borderline ugly Bella is.  The woman just met me on a really bad day, OK?  I had just broken up with my boyfriend, I was entitled to forgo curling my hair that day.  Also, Bella was always like, “Oh, gee Edward, since you’ve been stalking me for months, maybe you should turn me into a vampire so we can be together forever!”  I was totally not like that.  Ted was the clingy one, the “eternity” obsessed one.  That’s part of the reason we broke up; I thought the next step in our relationship was, like, getting a dog or something, but he thought the next step was having me join the ranks of the legions of the undead.  We were just going in really different directions.

So, anyway, things ended, I vented to someone I didn’t know but thought I could trust, and now everywhere I look, someone is in love with this make believe Ted.  I’ve contacted Stephenie and told her I’m prepared to go public with her betrayal, but I have not gotten a response yet.  I just thought all of you had the right to know that you’re obsessing over a lie, and someone is profiting off an innocent girl’s pain.  But, I guess if there’s any justice in the world, Taylor Lautner will eventually show up to comfort me, and I can finally settle this ridiculous Team Edward, Team Jacob debate.