#oneaday Day 748: Life Story

Do you think your own life story would make for an interesting read? Playing Katawa Shoujo rather extensively today has made me give some consideration to the thought, since that game, despite its distinctive — perhaps even unique — premise (“This is a game about disabled girls”) is in fact simply about human relationships and real life struggles. There’s no “epicness” whatsoever; the world doesn’t come to an end; there’s no “save the princess” (except metaphorically speaking in a few instances) — it’s just about normal people (albeit normal people with disabilities) living their lives.

When I think back on my own life, there are certainly plenty of interesting stories there for the telling, and given that we human beings are creatures of habit, often doomed to make the same mistakes over and over, it’s fairly unlikely that there’s nobody out there who could relate to some of them.

This makes the concept of autobiographies an interesting one. The shelves in ailing book retailers such as Smith’s and Waterstone’s are crammed with celebrity “autobiographies” (and I use the term loosely, since a large proportion of them are ghost-written), all called things like My Story, My Struggle or My Tits. (I made the last one up, but it’s arguably what anything written by Katie Price should be called, given the thing that most people seem to know her for.)

The thing is, though, I almost feel like I’d rather read the autobiography of someone who hasn’t led a remarkable life. Someone who hasn’t shot to stardom, done something remarkable with their life. It works for fictional narratives, as anyone who has read Generation X by Douglas Coupland will attest — a narrative in which nothing happens (relatively speaking) means that you can focus more on the people and their reactions to everyday, relatable situations and then, crucially, compare your own experiences and prejudices to the same situations. This is something that you simply can’t do with most celebrity works — they live in such a different world to the rest of us, almost like caricatures or fictional characters.

The “fiction” part of celebrities is arguably at least partly true. Their public perception is something which is carefully managed and controlled by their publicists. The truth behind their lives is often a lot more mundane, but by extension, more relatable. The trouble is, the only time we ever see that mundane everyday life is through the snooping lens of a paparazzi, or in some cringeworthy ITV documentary showing Peter Andre having a wank or something. The very nature of their celebrity makes them feel different, makes observing them doing “natural” things feel like an alien thing to do. Celebrity Big Brother proves this particularly aptly by being actually rather boring. In this case, it’s because they’re in an artificial situation where they’re forced to be mundane, and this, once again, is merely a fictional representation of a real life.

Normal (i.e. non-celebrity) people, though, the non-player characters of society? Those are the ones I’d be interested in reading about. Whether it’s the story of how they got into a fight with their supposed best friend at school over what one of them assumed was light-hearted teasing and the other one took to heart, or the tale of how they met their partner. Truth and real life is sometimes far stranger than fiction, and it’s worth remembering that sometimes.

I’m not sure what my point is, to be honest. I don’t think I’m planning on writing an autobiography (though certain fragments of this blog stray into that territory sometimes, admittedly) but I feel like doing so in one form or another might be an interesting experience. Perhaps writing fictionalised stories based on real-life experiences? It’s something I’ve toyed with the idea of before, but have always shied away from for fear of people connecting the dots too much and making judgements about things I’ve been through.

That said, despite my shyness in a lot of social situations, I’m generally pretty up-front with talking about past struggles if given the opportunity to do so, so perhaps it might not be such a terrible idea to do, after all. The truest, most resonant creative works come from the creator tapping into their own personal well of past experiences and pain.

Anyone reading this tapped into the contents of their own soul and memory and come up with something great?