For as long as I can remember, there have been characters in my head. It began with imaginary friends, puppets formed by my fingers, and toys with elaborate personalities embarking on extraordinary adventures. When I grew older, I created epic stories in my head that I would think out in episodic form every afternoon after school as I jumped on the backyard trampoline. By high school, I was attempting to write novels, with my fair share of false starts. Some of my longest and strongest relationships are with people and things that don’t really exist.

I think this is why I struggle a bit with real people. I expect them to act like the characters in my head. I expect to understand their reasoning behind everything they do. I assume that there IS reasoning behind everything they do. Heaven forbid someone does something incredible, like roller skating backwards across the country, and when I ask them why, they just shrug and say, “I dunno”. How can you not have clear motivations and objectives? You can’t allow plot holes like that!

Obviously this is a very unhealthy way to view people. But I think everyone feels this way at least a little bit sometimes. We’ve all been guilty of having expectations of people and feeling slighted when those expectations aren’t met. It’s something I really need to work on, though. Reality is a very different world to the messy little maze inside my head. The sooner I accept this, the sooner I can be more at peace with the world around me.