seeing the side character

what does it mean to exist in someone else's stories?

For years, I’ve done things for the plot. I’ve fashioned myself unconsciously into the kind of person you root for, whose lore adds up to the picture it’s supposed to, who took a sharp turn and twisted the ides of fate neatly in her hands continuously when her past would say otherwise. I let myself make leaps, bounds, risks just to taste what it’ll be like to come out at the other end not with more wealth, but stronger in principles. I let myself be affected deeply, but never broken. I romanticized and unromanticized my life. I want to be your favorite protagonist, dear audience. I wake up with ideas in my head to leap fully out of the limitations I give myself, and to crash neatly into the arms of the universe taking me where I need to be. I’ve reckoned with my idea of agency. I go to sleep at night feeling like life is worth living, even when I’m depressed. For it is simply a matter of when I see it, not if.

Notice if it’s “for the plot,” it doesn’t involve other people. Names and memories go neatly together, yet they don’t stay enmeshed in my life. I feel sadness, but not the magnetic pull to cling, to make stay.

This is work I’ve usually done alone. I can count very strongly on the trajectory of my life veering toward “epic”. It’s mine, after all. It’s been painful, but never boring. It’s been rewarding, but never predictable. I think to myself, whoever I meet is part of the plot. Whoever I lose is part of the plot. Even at my worst, the unclogging of my brainworms, the rewiring of my basic narratives, is all this meta-cognitive self-serving spiral upward into infamy, in my own mind.

I believe everyone’s life can be this way. Everyone is a main character. Every time I meet a new person, I assume they have an epic narrative themselves, a character arc I see unfolding, qualities about them, knowledge and skills they’ve acquired, that make them incredibly interesting and inspiring. Each time, I’m excited to learn, and become part of their audience.

And yet, this is no longer fruitful to me. For years, what I’ve conveniently left out is that simultaneous to everyone being a main character, we are all side characters to one another’s plots.

I used to be fixed in the idea that you have your own world, I have my world, they are separate. There are separate arcs. We visit sometimes, but leave before the sun sets for the day. We wave at each other. We impact each other but temporally, ethereally.

We don’t exist in a shared world that is our worlds merging. I don’t exist to contort myself into the version that you want me to be. I observe you from a boundaried distance, on your journey, and I give you advice sometimes that I’m not attached to, and I stay minorly invested but never too pushy with regard to what your arc is. This is respectful. This is how it should be.

*****

This is maybe not how it should always be, because suppose you fall for someone who you’ve been connected to for some time, and suddenly you see how they’ve been toeing the boundaries of your worlds. You suddenly realize that every joke they leveled, every question they asked about your mind, every compliment you were paid, was actually infiltration, but not a menacing kind. A soft, curious, fantastical kind.

With every searing observation they make about you, with every gaze they cast into the crevices of your mind, that this person is a side character now inside your world, you feel the vertigo and it won’t stop, shifting all that’s around you. Suddenly, plot is irrelevant.

They wander in to your inhabitations with their long, casual gait, look around, and before you can stop them, they’re a part of the landscape. They salute you as they merge into part of the couch, they are part of the upholstery, they are the cup you seek to drink from. They are more enmeshed inside of it than you thought. They clutch your gaping jaw and pull you closer with the smirk of Lucifer, while being the sweetest angel you’ve met in recent memory, loyal and devoted to those they value for years and years, and make you want them to be inside this world more.

You’ve never believed before that people exist inside your world. Or that you exist in theirs. Yet now you look around and you raise your hand to query, can I be a part — 

And then your eyes widen and you see, you’re there. Already! How?

They’re usually part of a plot!

People are always an outcome, or a quest guider, but never literally the end of itself in a closed circle. Someone’s never been so essential — transcending lore, canon, anything — that they are literally the actual scenery. They are no longer just a person to move action along, but coming with you every step of the way, like a skin you can’t peel off of your character. This is no p zombie.

And then you stop and you stare and you realize that side characters can only exist two way. If they are suddenly a side character in your world, you are a character in their world too. Your social media is something they may think about when you’re not around, your texts are ones that linger in their mind, your presence may be missed when you are not there. You are thought of, not as a passing query, but as a figure they want actively to be close to.

Suddenly, this person’s entire worldview engulfs yours before you know it, usurping even the deadliest of sadnesses, making you pause before you walk yourself off a cliff of despair even when their tongue has not literally rasped to you, the memories and laughter and curiosity radiating off their presence every time you see them. For weeks, you realize how afraid you’ve been to touch and actually feel, to kiss and actually taste. Do you deserve to?

They bite your finger. Yes, you are a concrete person who’s real.

Your lips on their scar. They wince, oops. You wonder: what else can I not see, that hurts you so bad? That you don’t tell?

You’re sad you never thought to ask, til now. You were too busy guarding your own world to participate in a shared one. They query about “us”? Your query is, *I focus on either me, or I focus on only you*.

Now you’ve long surrendered to your desires no longer collapsing perfectly into a fantasy image of what your future life will look like. The goal of all this lore is no longer for you to end up in the arms of some idea of what it would mean to finally feel good enough. You’ve long since stopped longing for the validation of this shadowy figure that manifests into an internal object with almond eyes sneering at your every move, waiting for you to matter. You’ve collapsed and sat down, letting the plot run itself out. But all it does is show you the truth — that you’re real and always have been.

The truth doesn’t need a label, an expectation, a defined role. The truth is just there, watching you and waiting for you to see it back. The truth is transcendent of your own understanding of what it means to see and understand love.

*****

It’s much more rewarding realizing you’re a side character somewhere, realizing the power you clench in your fist when you get tight, when you don’t say what’s on your mind, when you let others speak for you, when you turn away to be entranced by the prospect of another plot device, rather than sit down and see whose world you want to build with together.

This is a different reality now.

****

I don’t even seek to yearn to matter, for I just paid close attention to whom I mattered to, to whom I would be devastating if the loss came too quick.

If I stop and savor all the lives for whom I am a side character to, I’ve always feared losing myself inside all the love and care and adoration I have around me.

Side Characters matter. It is often humbling to not be a main. It is often humbling to be next to someone instead, to finally rest from chasing meaning, to finally let yourself stop for long enough to see it in your eyes.