Daily Prompt: What’s There To Say?

You need money to hire a biographer, don’t you?  Because what writer in their right mind is going to plant themselves down in a house that hasn’t been cleaned in 7 years that smells like dog and stale pot and write the biography of a no-name unless they’re getting paid beaucoup money (Pardon while I squeeze a little French practice in my blog)?

…Unless I become famous one day.  Maybe I’ll be known as “That boat lady that threw up in front of the Mona Lisa and was thrown in jail for three years for being disrespectful of a French icon.”  I’ll hire a biographer from jail to explain that it was only jet lag and had nothing to do with hating the Mona Lisa.  Although… I must confess off-the-record that she doesn’t do a thing for me.  I don’t quite get the attraction.  I’m simply not a deep thinker.  If something doesn’t come up and punch me in the face, I probably won’t understand it.

When I was in my mid-twenties, I had a boyfriend.  His mother had a tenant who lived in her house with her.  He was a young kid, maybe early twenties.  He was a valet attendant for a living, and he always had stories about cheating people.  I can’t remember the exact stories, but I remember thinking that he was a borderline crook.  He was a good looking kid who just seemed a little on the odd side the way he thought these things were funny.

One day he went into my boyfriend’s mother’s dresser and pulled out her gun, and then shot himself in the head on her front lawn.

I was filled with questions about this young kid.  Why would someone with their entire life ahead of them kill themselves?  What had happened to him as a child to make him the sort of person he was?  Was he abused?  Did he run away from home?  What made him tick?  How could life be so terrible for him that he would choose death?  Did someone see this coming and ignore it?  What was his story?

That’s the sort of biography I’d love to see, because I’d love to know what makes people choose death over life.

Yes, I admit, though, I have tried to commit suicide in my lifetime — several times, in fact.  But it would be hard to write about me because I am a very complicated person, and I doubt even the best writer would be able to understand the why’s of my life.  Even I can’t comprehend or explain who I am.  This blog is really the best I can do.  Perhaps some interested and astute descendant will do some research after I’m long gone and trace this and other miscellaneous blogs floating around the ether to their ancestor, studying them long enough to piece together a life story.

The more likely scenario is I’ll die, and my ashes will be spread throughout the woods with a eulogy written on a post-it and stuck on a tree:  “She lived, and then she died.  What more is there to say?”  I’d be ok with that.  Because, seriously, my past is not me.  My bad driving is not me.  My cancer is not me.  My pot smoking is not me.  It’s only what I am here and now in this very instant that matters to me, and that could never be captured in a biography.

From a famous writer or celebrity, to a WordPress.com blogger or someone close to you — who would you like to be your biographer?
Your Life, the Book

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