My Life as a Metaphor

I recently enrolled in a six-week writing class to flex the old muscles while I search for an agent. I thought I would share some of my writing assignments. This week's topic was 'My Life as a Metaphor'. Enjoy!

             My life is a work of fiction ‘based on actual events’. You would think it would be a memoir, but I’m not convinced. It feels contrived like a play with affected dialogue or an unscripted television show with a suspiciously consistent pace. It’s a film being filmed that becomes cohesive in retrospect, in an attempt to control the narrative.

            The highs addictively high, the lows a series of worst-case scenarios. The use of stereotypical tropes evidence of lethargy or at least apathy. The uneventful, forgettable middle most people inhabit as scarce as a sighting of the Loch Ness Monster, Mothman, Elvis.

            At times, I’m skeptical, like Truman in his eponymous show, commandeering his little boat to search for the place where the horizon stops with a metallic clank. In my production, I never find the back wall, the back door. I allocate less time to activities in the boat, but my suspicions remain.

            At the edge of my anxiety.

            On the periphery of my joy.

            And I know, intellectually, that my life cannot be fiction, so I am compelled to control the story.

            Am I an unreliable narrator?

            Is my intentionality duplicitous?

            Isn’t fiction ‘based on actual events’ simply a way to avoid litigation?

            Yes.

            At least according to my editor.