Dear, Probably Not You*

I wasn’t comfortable with the possibility that you were my manic pixie, because I wasn’t comfortable with the character. She pops into the protagonist’s life when he needs her most, then disappears just as quickly, or in some cases, gets left behind. It seemed more than unfair to relegate you to the position of a glorified foil. Having said that, there are parallels that are hard to ignore, like the intervention of fate: the dream girl is thrust into the protagonist’s life with an impossible-to-overlook sort of serendipity. Not only did you live 100 feet from my back door, but we met in a writer’s workshop, arguably the most romantic of platonic settings. I was forced to show you my heart and mind long before I showed you my peen, which was ideal, because if I had approached you under any other circumstances, you would have dismissed me outright as just another buttoned-down ding-dong trying to hold your attention while my already microscopic window of opportunity slammed shut. The workshop not only gave me a valid excuse to be in your orbit, but it also saved me from the worst parts of myself: namely, impatience and douchebaggery.

I had no idea how to get you, but I knew I had to try. In chasing a woman of your caliber, i.e., one I had no earthly right to attain, I was free to act in ways with which a sane man would have strongly disagreed. For example, asking you if you like to be dominated was probably the biggest risk I’ve taken in pursuit of the opposite sex. My sense of reason told me it was stupid, and my best friend told me it was creepy, but I just had a gut feeling that it was going to work.

Adversely, once I could actually call you mine, sanity was a must. Calmly watching you get hit on at bars was a regular strain on my self-confidence. I’d see some fuck put his hand on your back and feel the rekindling of old jealous embers. My pride wanted me to puff out my chest and my inner animal wanted me to mark my territory. Fortunately, a more logical part of my brain told me to calm the F down, to let you handle it, and that holding too tightly was a foolproof method for fucking it up.

Of course, our story isn’t a perfect comparison. There was no depression for you to pull me out of, no hurdle to inspire me over, and no prize to help me obtain. You were the prize. The hope of winning you over emboldened the best parts of me, and the fear of losing you restrained the worst. You motivated me to be a better man simply by being you.  It’s probably not the way you imagined yourself in the make of the manic pixie, but she’s a complex character, far too complex to be embodied by any individual. She’s spontaneous and mysterious, funny and fearless, and her confidence is not only magnetic but infectious. She is a mixture of all the women with whom we fall in love. I know that I once told you that I didn’t think I could fall in love with you, but I was wrong. You’re my manic pixie dream girl.

Footnotes:

*statistically speaking