i am NOT ur manic pixie dream girl

Ahhhh, the Manic Pixie Dream girl, who sweeps into your life, like a beautiful butterfly you have never seen before, or a damn near ray of sunshine, only there to cure and ease your pain and suffering, showing you a world you never knew existed. She is placed on this earth solely to warm the heart of the sad, depressed, broody male protagonist, and once that job is complete, once he can walk outside and see sunshine instead of rain, she quite literally disappears. Her quirky yet profound ability to turn any unhappy man into what he always wishes he could be, is of no use anymore. She is found by some other miserable man who ~needs~ her, or is written out of the movie entirely. She does her job, and is thrown to the damn curb, she is yet a prop in this man’s life and only there to inspire this man to appreciate the life he was given. Well, to put it lightly, men, no, sorry, I mean, BOYS, I am not your fucking Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Instead of evading the subject, I am going to dive right in, because, though the boys I associate myself with, may not realize, I in fact am human and I have feelings, and they are ~hurt~. I am not some fictional character who you can have intimate moments with, someone you can tell how much you care about, then pretend I don’t exist and expect me to just be okay. The idea of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl is nothing new, think of the movies Garden State, Elizabethtown, Almost Famous, 500 Days of Summer, Sing Street, Paper Towns, and so on. In cinematic history MPDG’s have been quite the phenomenon, always placed in movies,depicted as these vivacious, fun loving, cute and adorable, profound and intelligent characters whose purpose is only to inspire and help the male lead. They really have no actual substance or explanation of their lives outside of these duties. Now to a normal person reading these descriptions, you would think immediately, well for starters that's pretty fucked up, but also clearly this is not something that happens in real life, this is just a trope used in movies and shows. WRONG. This whole idea is as real as it gets. Sure not every guy is out here sulking away through life hoping they run into a MPDG in a classic “meet cute” kind of way, but a lot of them are. I dated a boy a few years ago, who quite literally told me he was looking for this type of woman. Someone to come in, sweep him off his feet, show him how to be happy, and how to love again. I mean he didn’t say that I was necessarily that girl, but he alluded to that. He said the classic “you are different than anyone I have ever met”, “you make me want to be better, to do better, to be happy again” “I wish you could show me how to be so carefree and love life the way you do”, “I’ve never met another girl like you”, blah blah blah. God even writing those sentences out makes me want to puke and yell at him. Sorry ex boyfriend, who was a sad depressed white boy, whos parents supported him fully, BUT I am actually a person who is not here to change your life, and show you the mysteries of the world. I have my own stuff to work through, I have goals and dreams, and things I care about, and weirdly enough my world doesn't revolve around you. I know… crazy.

After that relationship thankfully ended,a handful of guys appeared wanting the same thing. I mean I didn’t really notice this until now, but damn so many men are basing their life off of some outdated model of how women are background characters only on this earth to ease the pain of their existence.  A lot of the guys I started seeing, or hooking up with, were looking for a woman to come in and change everything. They were looking for a prop, for a character, for someone who didn’t have problems or sadness (like every human does) and simply help them be a better version of themselves. I kid you not, I can list all the boys I’ve been with, and probably 90% were looking for exactly that. In the moment I didn’t exactly notice this, my hopeless romantic ass thought that aw this boy is sad, let me try and help fix him. Let me try and show him how to be loved, how to see himself the way I see him…. I fell right into it. I let these guys think of me as this MPDG because that’s exactly what I was. I remember moments with them, in which I did so many things that these movie characters did and didn’t even realize. I was standing there, in the rain, and he was under an umbrella, and I was dancing around like nothing mattered in life, and finally somehow got him to do the same. So there we were jumping around in the rain, through puddles, as our hair and clothes got wet, and a smile appeared on his face. He then kisses me and told me how happy I make him. HA. I would stand in front of these dudes as they complained about all the sad things in their life, and how depressed they are, and how they don’t know what to do, and then console them and tell them ways to make them happy. If you saw this from the outside you would think it was one of these classic movies. Aw you hate your life and your job, say fuck it a quit, get a new job, you are young and smart and talented, why would you suffer through something that you hate… LIFE IS SHORT. That’s a line they love, they love to hear that life is short, and that tomorrow they might not wake up, that I might not wake up, so they should be living their lives to the fullest, not waking up everyday going to a job they loathe, just to repeat it the next day. Damn it's like text book. I would make them skip classes, or take a sick day, I would make them stand there butt ass naked in front of me and tell me their biggest secret, I would skinny dip in the Boston Harbor and yell at them from the water, while they were fully clothed to jump in, and I would tell them I wanted them to see themselves the way I did, and that it was heartbreaking that they couldn't, all while loving them and them fucking knowing it but not caring. You know thinking about all of these times I let these boys use me as their fucking crutch so perfectly, I think I have truly mastered this role. The role of the pretty quirky girl, the one who dresses crazy, who is loud and talks a lot, who lives her life to the fullest, in such an unconventional way, who knows all of life's secrets, and whose sole purpose is to show men the way to the fun and the mysterious and the excitement the world has to offer. I played right into it, without even noticing. But that doesn’t mean I should be treated this way. The fact that these guys saw me that way, is the problem. Maybe parts of me and what I do, resemble a MPDG, but that doesn’t mean I am one. I am a real person, with real feelings, with a real life, and if you are a guy who comes into my life thinking this, then abruptly leaving before things get ~serious~, that makes you an asshole. Do you think I don’t have heartbreak and pain? Do you think I am perfectly happy all the time, do you think I know what the fuck I plan to do with my life? All these guys probably did think this, or most of them didn’t even  care, because hurting me and not caring about it was easier for them. I was just there to help them, then hurting me was just a stage direction in italics in the script that they had to do. Me sobbing into a pillow after they left, didn’t concern them, because hey they were better now, they were fixed, they didn’t need their cute little quirky Manic Pixie Dream Girl anymore.

In movies, the MPDG is only in the lives of these boys for a short amount of time, when their job is completed they are no longer useful or needed. In these movies, this girl is not heartbroken, because well she was barely a real character anyways, no real emotions or feelings or cares in the world. In real life though, not the same, no no, not at all, because in real life, it fucking hurts. I am not a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, I never will be, because, crazy enough, but they are not real. They are one dimensional, they don’t have wants or needs, but that is not me. I have wants and I have needs. I am not some bubbly, “happy all the time” girl, who wears an over sized band t with converses, who spends my time in record shops or old book stores with no job or care in the world. I am not here to be the supporting character in your sad depressing movie, or show you that it’s okay to cry, it’s okay to have feelings, and it’s okay to quit your job to travel the world. I am not some girl who bites her nails while laying on your bed, listening to you talk about your problems, just to then be sweet yet mysterious in fixing them. I am not the girl that comes into your sad and boring existence just to make it ~fun and exciting and crazy~. I am not the substitute person, to fix you in order for you to then meet the real love of your life once I teach you to love yourself. I don’t want to be that girl, and no one should expect that of me. I want to be the fucking love of you life not some disregarded background idea. I want the fights, and the passion, I want the adventures sure, and the mysteries, but I also want the real side of things. I don’t want to be some band aid for you to use until your cut is healed, I want to sit there and have real conversations, have real feelings, better each other together. Maybe people are scared of feeling things, of being in real relationships, of loving someone so much that even if they leave, even if they hurt you, you still want them to be happy. Maybe all the guys that have come into my life, treated me as this character, then left, weren’t doing it on purpose, or even knowing what this was, but alas, it was done. I fell in love with a boy, who looked at me as just another supporting character in his movie, and it sucked, it really fucking sucked. I wonder if I’ll ever be more than this idea, more than this character, or if I will keep running into men who want just that.  Hopefully one day they realize that there is just no such thing as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and to the guys who think of me that way, who think of any woman that way, grow the fuck up.