Dying to Be

Main Character Syndrome: A Life or Death Situation

When my sister got hit by a car, my dad took me to iHop and let me order anything I wanted. I ordered the pancakes with the smiley face on the kids’ menu and a plate of mac ‘n cheese. It was a lot of food for a 7-8 year old, so I claimed I’d bring the leftovers to my sister in the hospital. I did not—I promptly scarfed it all down and felt no remorse about it once I heard the news that all she had were a few bruises. I suppose I’ve always been selfish, which I guess is why I felt a bit envious that it was my sister who got hit and not me.

It’s funny to me how clear this memory is. My family had a tradition of going to our local Brazilian pizzeria in Newark, New Jersey with a big group of friends almost every Saturday night. Unfortunately, this would be the last night we did so, which I blamed my sister for for a while. We had to cross a busy street to get there, and my sister ran ahead. Since streets tended to always be busy in Newark, no one thought much of it. As we all began to cross, me a few steps behind my sister, I remember looking up at the streetlights and thinking to myself, “Why is my life so boring? Why can’t something exciting happen to me for once? Why isn’t it like a movie?” 

I’ve thought like that for as long as I could remember. Every movie had a sob story, and therefore I’d been somewhat “trained” to want my own. Funnily enough, right as I had this thought, my sister got hit by a stolen car going 40 mph. And of course I was concerned, and I screamed her name, and everyone rushed towards her. But as soon as I saw she was okay, in the back of my mind I began to think, “Dammit. Why not me?” 

Now, these are terrible thoughts that I no longer have nor condone, and if you have these thoughts, I recommend you do your best to grow out of them as soon as possible. But I have to admit that I had them often in my childhood, and I know lots of people that have too. Many of us have wished that terrible things would happen to us to make us an exciting “main character” worthy to lead our own story, whether we’ll admit to it or not. And I had these thoughts when I was only a kid, too young to understand the severity of these twisted wishes. 

This has been ingrained into the minds of countless American children: The harder things we go through, the more it means in the long run. We see the embrace of trauma everywhere we go. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Simon Cowell hitting a golden buzzer on anyone who’s had a difficult life. Everyone in school gathering to sign the cast of the kid with the broken arm, but never bothering to care about them before. It’s gotten to the point that some are even embarrassed to admit that they have led a privileged life, me included when I was younger. 

Humans are inevitably drawn to tragedy. A part of us always thinks, “That could happen to me,” and whether we mean that thought positively or negatively, it’s there regardless. Because of this obsession, it can cause some of us to want to create our own tragedy. 

TW: Suicide and self harm. Scroll to the next section to continue reading.

I read somewhere during the first launch of the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why that the creators were warned against having a graphic suicide scene, and against even making the show at all, because it might “inspire” some viewers for the worst and cause recreations of Hannah Baker’s glamorized death. If you haven’t seen the show or read the book, Hannah Baker is a high school girl who kills herself by slitting her wrists, which is all shown on screen. Before committing suicide, she recorded a series of tapes dedicated to everyone who has ever wronged her, saying that they are to blame for her passing. Sure enough, after the launch of season 1, there was a chain of what the media called “copycat” suicides as some teenagers took to the main character’s method, right down to the recorded tapes. 

Safe to continue here!

Yes, humans are drawn to tragedy, but the media, especially American media, takes advantage of this and appeals to the darkest parts of ourselves. Some sources have said that the creators of 13 Reasons Why asked professionals what not to do in their show, and then did exactly that. Although this is a pattern that one can see worldwide, it’s much more visible within the United States; not only through media, but historically as well. America either glorifies pain or buries it. Take, for example, some of the biggest modern American singers out there. Listen to two seconds of Lana del Rey’s music. How could little eight year old me be able to distinguish my damaging thoughts when it seemed to be praised all around me? I wanted to be adored too; how could I be adored if not in pain?

Like I’ve briefly mentioned, it took me time to recognize these thoughts and detangle them enough to lay out in front of me and make sense of. I was dying to be someone that mattered, dying to simply be, and it looked like a mess of noodles, angel hair, amongst a web of other nonsense I’d unwittingly gathered throughout my childhood. Learning to not crave destruction upon myself was slow, arduous, and truly only came to a head after my freshman year in college. Maturing is a process of unlearning and learning as a side effect. I didn’t mean to know the things I know now, but I do. It took a lot of smiley face pancakes to get through it.