Writing Herself

I haven't read the book yet - the one in which a 50-odd year old woman wakes up one day to realize she is, comma, quote, "living the wrong life." end quote. I don't know whether she realizes that she is meant to be a lounge singer or a lesbian or has discoverd that her body was misplaced by aliens. Maybe she is a mother of 6 and a housewife but she was meant to be a brain surgeon or a missionary or a terrorist who blows up spas and hair salons because the aftermath creates a glut of sad single men who end up in a bar near the apartment she has rented. Maybe she just realizes that she has compromised her own self into such a mad jumble of almosts and maybes that she no longer recognizes which direction is forward. Or, quote "future" unquote.
Maybe, hypothetically speaking, for example, let's just say, she rides a streetcar to work, and she’s wondering if she’ll be able to right herself. By which she means, of course, write herself. Like Harold and the Purple Crayon, she is a person who exists when her pen hits the page. She ignores this for long stretches. She pretends she can NotWrite, and creates a whole life of NotWriting. And then, when she writes herself again, she has to figure out how not to resent the people who populated her NotRight world. Her husband enables the NotWrite. Her children depend on the NotWrite for school clothes and food and guitar lessons. But look out. She is writing herself. And when she does, she realizes that she is, quote “living the wrong life” end quote, again. She can’t go on like this.
Maybe, she thinks, the people of the not-write world will be okay if she ignores them and goes on to write in the interstices of her life. Maybe this will quell the urge to become a missionary or befriend aliens. Maybe they can all be friends. She has to wonder, however, if they cannot be melded, which of the worlds will be allowed to be real.