Uh oh. I think I have a problem.
Now, my reason for writing this is to put a face to that mythical, fictional being-
The Fixer.
Much like it's cousin the "quirky cute Zooey Daschcenel look alike but flakey & aloof" girl, it seems to be fabricated out of some male fantasy. That girl doesn't exist. She's a conglomerate of several girls, wrapped together in a hazy, badly written character with very little basis in reality.
The 'quirky girl' has her pro/cons- Yes, she'll change your life forever, but yes, she'll also not be able to stay with you because her heart & mind are up in the clouds. (Or so all the Young Adult books and Netflix RomComs have told me.)
But like the Sasquatch or Loch Ness, she lives in more myth than fact.
So the Fixer must be the same, right?
The Fixer (n.) someone who gets into relationships wishing to 'help' or 'fix' the other person, or look for people they need to 'save.'
Origin: the wanting to feel 'needed' by someone (unconsciously.)
Thesaurus: rescuer, life vest, superhero (my own word choice.)
Born out of some young writer's daydreams.
A girl to come along and be the bandaid over the wound.
A girl who thinks she can be the one to save him from being someone he's not-
A girl to pick him up from the lowest he's ever been in his life.
Are we all barfing now? I sure hope so.
She doesn't exist!
There's no way a strong female could fall into any of those tropes. It just doesn't happen.
Like the 'quirky girl', she's more of a collage of ladies than a real person.
Or... at least I thought. Until someone called me out.
Like all things born out of a Cosmopolitan Magazine, it started with a ladies night.
Discussing relationships, paining nails, etc etc.
I was trying to stay out of the conversation because I was reading Game of Thrones (and, come on, who could blame me?) but being dragged in I talked in a very concise cordial terms about my experiences in the past. Mostly to help another girl out, who was questioning her current endeavor, but the room went silent.
I thought, "Yeah, it's a little boring, but..."
A girl giggled and looked at me. "You're a fixer, arn't you?"
All the other heads in the room started nodding in agreement.
I suddenly felt like a rare breed of Dragon- something they've heard about in stories but never guessed they'd ever see in real life.
They smiled, and I half expected them to come up and poke me to see if I was real.
I laughed, blowing it off like, "oh yeah, sureeee."
I almost succeeded too, if a girl hadn't taken my silence as her advantage to explain, in impressive detail, the grounds for her kind accusation/ observation.
And inside, I started mildly flipping out.
Was I going to sprout horns???
Magic wings???
Was I going to grow a hunchback and start ringing bells???
In one of those Christopher Nolan-esque moments, I had to reconsider everything my life had been leading up to this point. The pieces started falling together. And a maybe crushing realization.
I was a walking talking plot device.
Maybe I grew up watching too many movies and reading too many books, but somewhere along the line I became the person that starving artist write about in bad screenplays. I was the net before the fall. I was the parachute. I was Obi Wan Kenobi, the only hope.
The evidence was there.
I couldn't deny it.
So, while writing this little essay, I kept wondering (as I'm sure you are too-) what I am getting at here?
I guess this is a letter to all my Quirky Girl, Female Fetal, & Independent Women out there.
Do all those labels sound familiar?
They should. Because they're probably all inside you.
Being called a fixer at first offended me, but then I thought how many times I've also been accused of being the 'quirky girl' that always gets away. Or the nerd-turned-cool girl. Or the manic pixie dream girl. Or any other labels what-have-you.
Truth is?
Yeah, it's easy to pin me down to some sort of Fictional outline of who you perceive that I am but what's even easier is to recognize all the great qualities I have in myself that are represented in these tropes.
Ladies, there's a quirky side and a female fetal side and an independent woman that jumble you together to make you the awesome, creative person that you are. So no wonder people try to put a label on it- we all sound too good to be true, no?
Haha well maybe we are.
Maybe we're all a little better from the outside than we feel on the inside.
And boys are no different- the jock, the sensitive guy, the loner, the funny one, the outgoing one- take your pick, I'm sure you've been called one or all of those at some point.
So whatever you're most recent blaring facet that seems to be shining on others, embrace it as a part of a whole.
Yeah, so what I'm a fixer? That's awesome that I see good in people at their lowest. Label me whatever you want- I'll just collect them and stick them next to my laminated Pokemon cards.
And next time you're having a bad day, I'll probably be able to smell it from a mile away.
It's a gift, it's a curse, but its also a part of me for better or for worse.
So have a nice day, all you walking Fictional Characters.
Next time you're curious, take a look at that name tag on your chest.
And feel free to live by it, or write another name in with sharpie.
In the end, it's really all up to you.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Blogger,
Maggie Mae Fish
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