Something About Grey's

Something about Grey’s Anatomy makes me want to write. I guess it’s the drama. I guess it’s how bad things happen and good things happen in such a way that you know exactly whether they’re bad or good. You know how all the characters feel. You know, while you’re watching Grey’s Anatomy, that whatever happens this week will be resolved in some grand, heart-melting way a week or two from now… or that everything will fall apart and an episode will end with a beloved character in tears on the floor in a dimly lit room (or in a well-lit, cheery room; that happens sometimes too, but there are always tears).

Why doesn’t real life make me want to write? I guess it’s because I don’t have a job. I don’t have work-related stress or work friends or a bar named Joe’s to go to after work. 

My life is happy.… I’m engaged! But my engagement is so slow and normal. Found the venue; hired the caterer; yada yada. I don’t get to be the character of the bride. My back story has taken place over 24 years and my relationship with my husband-to-be has evolved over the past 4 or 5. He didn’t woosh into my life through emergency room doors, holding together the chest of some bloody victim. He showed up across the sanctuary from me at church. And then he kept showing up across the sanctuary from me for years and… eventually we fell in love. Don’t get me wrong. He is a dreamy character. He’s got these sexy dimples and these green eyes and broad shoulders. He’s intelligent and ambitious and even deliver’s sweet lines to me like a staff of writers came up with them over coffee and donuts.

I think the problem is that I’m 24. No great character is 24. In community college I was a character. I was a kind of quirky girl who made jokes to strangers who surprisingly often wouldn't laugh. I’d brush off people’s opinions of me and carry on in my usually light-hearted way. I’d notice flowers on campus and thank God. I’d walk from my house, through the woods, to an evening poetry class once a week clutching a notebook of thoughts that I’d then share with a hodge podge of other community college characters. I knew then, that I was interesting.

I think I’ll be interesting again if you give me a few years… How old is Meredith Grey? Like early thirties, right? Yeah—give me 6 years and I’ll be interesting again.