Your Story Well Told: Book Passage March 2024 Forum Lara's Story (3/13/24)

the start of the story leans into social pressures with "pat" and your imposter syndome situation, feeling like a "fraud" with the blond,. blue eyed dutch girl.  

this makes it seem like she is the mail character and either the antagonist in the story, or the catalyst to your own change.  

that didnt seem to happen - the key drama was about the talent show dance, which you were the leader of and the mind behind, even though you were feeling nervous.  

the Jean Luis character enters the story around this time and kind of took over the attention, which is fine, narratively, but I think I (and the audience) would wonder about Pat -- did she not matter anymore (and did she notice that she was less important in your eyes?). 

The success of the show - the feeling liked, wanted, appreciated, was a lovely joyful moment.  

then the meeting with Jean Luis and the asking him out feels like an "until finally" untl the ACTUAL until finally shows up with his rejection of you! 

which I also really like - the undermining of what we might expect to be a clean, simple "unpopular to popular" arc or a "zero to hero" story.  instead we have an insecure child who experiences a moment of appreciation, only to be rejected again which is... how life is, right?  we poke our heads up and find a reason (any reason) to go back into hiding...

so I guess my thoughts for this story is to figure out - is it about Pat or about Jean Luis?  Is it about being rejected as a child and how you rebuilt your own self esteem?  

Or, in the lovely turn you pulled at the end, about "blending in" (wearing/doing/being what everyone else wanted you to do) and how this rejrection episode sticks in your mind as an example for how you never want to feel again - and how, as an adult, you have learned to embrace all the colors and beauty in the world, and the quirkiness of those around you so that nobody has to feel the way you did?

Corey