A Modern Day Truman Show

I feel like Truman Burbank.

 

Jim Carey's lead role from the widely know movie The Truman Show (which, according to my recent search on IMDB came out in 1998. WHAT? That doesn't sound that long ago.....until I do the math. 15 years ago?!?!).

 

If you for some unfortunate reason are unfamiliar with this movie, let me give you a quick plot synopsis:

Truman Burbank is a normal man. Living a normal life. Only he is completely unaware that his "normal life" is completely manufactured by a TV crew. His friends and family are all actors. His entire life has been aired live on TV 24-7. Cameras are hidden in inconspicuous places, scenes are set up for him to react to, and every person in his life is directed by a TV producer through an inner ear microphone.

He is unsatisfied with the life he leads and his discovery of his lead role in a faux life leads him along the ultimate path of adventure and self affirmation.

 

If you haven't seen it (seriously?) then please, rent it and enjoy.

 

Let me say again, I feel like Truman Burbank. My life is not real. I cannot say that enough because its a constant thread in my thought process lately.

 

I keep waiting to see the same car circling the block, or to walk around a corner and catch a cameraman unawares. I'll say something like "HA! I knew it!" While pointing a finger at him, a look of success and simultaneous dismay displayed across my features.

Success because I knew it couldn't all be true, dismay because I was secretly afraid to be so right.

 

Most days I wake up from dreams of things I used to do. Fuzzy landscapes of varying shades of green, grass tickling my feet as I ride a giant paint horse through a field. Sun on my back and wind on my face. It all melts to the background as my eyes open, my brain catalogs and reviews it and tucks it away as one would place a well read, dog-eared book back on a shelf. It actually confounds me that I accept what are actual memories as some sort of dream life. 

 

I've been in New Zealand for over a month now. Some mornings, I lie in bed, smothered in fleece sheets, staring out across a coastal city. Pacific ocean to my right, mountains slowly rippling into the distance on my left.

 

It blows my mind how right my life feels. How right and normal that view out the window is. How much the sound of an ocean breeze comforts a girl who grew up listening to wind whispering through tall grass. She was one who took solace in the silence and scents of a rolling field. She was more comfortable on horseback than on her own two feet. She lead a life of continuity, each day bleeding into the next.

 

No more. Now she lives a life of mountains. Of tides. Of wild weather. Of great music. Of even better food. Of the best company. Of air, and balance and adventure.

 

You know, I hope my life is a modern day Truman Show. The ratings of late must be killing it.