This Is The Life

Though Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson, and John Krasinski got most of the attention and big laughs, the series’ true MVP was Jenna Fischer. She could land a good frustrated look with the best of them, but her vulnerability and warmth provided the series its humanity. Her character changed the most organically throughout the series’ life, and in a very unshowy way, she provided a center that made these characters seem like an ad hoc family, not just a collection of types. So it’s appropriate she uttered the final words we heard as we move from her taking the painting she drew of Dunder Mifflin off the wall, to Michael Scott placing it on the wall after buying it at her art show years ago, to a final image of Dunder Mifflin itself.

“I thought it was weird when you picked us to make a documentary, but all in all, I think an ordinary paper company like Dunder Mifflin was a great subject for a documentary. There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn’t that kind of the point?”

Each time I’m asked to tell about myself, I find myself starting the same way: “My name is Kelsey and I’m nineteen..”
but what I’d really like to say is:
“My name means island of the ships but once
I found a translation that said I’m a burning shipwreck-
not a burning ship but a ship that has caught fire
after the wreckage and well, I’d say that’s more fitting.”

I’ve learned that people don’t have time for about me’s.
They need two things: a name and an indication you’re someone special.

The doctors, they want facts not details.
“I broke my leg when I was three, it’s a funny story actually-“
The right or the left?
Conversation over.

The teachers, they want interests, hobbies.
You’re sad, yes, but what do you like to do?

The adults are a spew of questions.
What school do you go to? What classes are you taking?
What do you plan on becoming? Got a boyfriend?
No, stop.

People my own age are the worst.
“I’m planning on an English degree with a concentration in creative writing.”
Yeah, aren’t we all. So how many times have you, you know,
done it?

I’m pulled apart, my interests travelling highway 2
my goals at a stop light at traffic hour,
my medical history on a billboard for the world to see.
But what about me?

Where’s the chance to say,
“I hang on to fistfuls of poetry like loose change in my pockets,
and I keep waiting for the day that the world turns upside down
so I can swim with the stars.
I’m not afraid of darkness, it’s a loneliness I can empathize with it.
It’s the blackholes like cigarette burns inside of me that get troublesome.
I walk through graveyards and read the dashes between years,
each a story I’ll never know. Sometimes I create my own.”

No wonder none of us know who we are anymore.