flâneur

against narratives - by Ava - bookbear express

ava.substack.com · 2,241 words · saved by 1 readers

I grew up subsisting on stories. During all of elementary school I kept a book on my lap and read while the teacher talked. If I wasn’t consuming narratives I was creating them—daydreaming intensely, making up elaborate stories in my head. For a long time I would default to a kind of narrative playacting in every situation, trying to autopredict my own life. When I was 16 and had a crush on a boy, I would come with hypothetical scenarios about how it would play out: we would have a conversation after school at a club event, then we would walk home together, then he would message me to get coffee, then we would hold hands... I didn’t know what the hero’s journey was called, but I already knew its plot points by heart:

I grew up subsisting on stories. During all of elementary school I kept a book on my lap and read while the teacher talked. If I wasn’t consuming narratives I was creating them—daydreaming intensely, making up elaborate stories in my head. For a long time I would default to a kind of narrative playacting in every situation, trying to autopredict my own life. When I was 16 and had a crush on a boy, I would come with hypothetical scenarios about how it would play out: we would have a conversation after school at a club event, then we would walk home together, then he would message me to get…

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