The History of a Total Nobody - Fiction, Chapter 1

There are thousands of books written on hundreds of important people in history. In those books, the personality quirks, manner of dress, journey, failures and successes of those historical persons of interest are recorded, sometimes very dryly, sometimes in the most vivid and intriguing detail, and sometimes with a sense of mistrust. Someone, such as George Washington for example, has their portrait drawn up in an almost Picasso-like display through pages and pages of pen strokes by one person seeking to capture the essence of another.

It's grand. It's a rich tapestry. It's an incredible display of the human curiosity and desire to understand.

It was all so beyond Jayna. At 23, she was unremarkably unemployed and still living with her parents. Every day she woke up with a slight buzzing noise in her head, wondering what in the world she was doing. Having graduated from university, she was slowly but surely sinking into the terrible business of apathy. Sometimes she would open the refrigerator, even when she was not hungry. She did it simply to look, and then close the door again. If she were out with friends, she did not always say very clever things. More often, Jayna would simply repeat things word-for-word that others just said in an effort to mask the fact that she had absolutely nothing to contribute to the conversation. Her head often felt hollow and yet heavy.

Her eating habits were sporadic. One day determined to be healthy, the next she could be found sitting cross-legged on her parent's living room floor, slurping up a bowl of instant ramen noodles. Jayna would try to help out around the house sometimes. She would pick up after her younger brother and wipe off the kitchen floor with the old Swiffer, and perhaps do the dishes once or twice. But it was just not significant enough and her small efforts were unnoticeable, and thus, went unnoticed.

Jayna was not a willful girl, but she was prone to being misguided and undercut by her self-doubts. Her parents never pushed her excessively, but it appeared that they did not expect much from her either. When she was younger, she could get away for months without showing her report card to her parents without much effort because they were often at work (and if not at work, then at church function, or bible study, or meeting). Though her grades were not impressive, they were not troubling either; she was an average student, flying just under the recognizable radar.

It's not that she did not dream though. Jayna would spend hours of her childhood reading books and dreaming of ways she could be fantastic and what a difference that her life would make in the world. She would read about people like Helen Keller and Harry Potter and wonder about what sort of shortcomings she would overcome, what adventures she'd have. However, nobody knew about the gorgeous dreams Jayna had. All anybody ever saw of those dreams was the blank expression of vacancy in her face when she flew high and fast through the skies of her imagination.

"Jayna, wake up!"

So begins the detailed history of a common-place, unremarkable, just so nobody.