A Narrative

Everyone would come to her. Her friends, her family, a few acquaintances, for advice. It wasn't as if she was known as "that" girl,but when the cookie crumbled, what she predicted would usually become reality. Elle was, by no means, a black and white thinker. As time passed, her world seemed to expand into more shades of gray, leaving less room for anything absolute. When people asked how she knew so much, Elle would simply shrug and say, "you have to view things from their point of view."

That was it, wasn't it? Losing herself long enough to analyze someone's thoughts and action to come up with a probable explanation or outcome. It wasn't always easy, but Elle liked to understand things. She wanted to know why. Like a toddler, always asking, "why, why why".

The problem was, sometimes she lost herself. She couldn't always distinguish the grays in the world from the few bits of black and white in her heart; her morals. She could make a decision and then realize she had been so far gone in thinking like someone else that she forgot to draw herself back in. Each time, she would pick herself up off the ground, brush away the dust and say, "I'll take this and learn from it." Because anyone can take something away from each day, each experience, that they can piece together with other experiences to figure something out in the future. Anyone can do this. Especially Elle.

Although she does make mistakes; she shares some of them with her friends as freely as she does her successes. With each mistake comes an abundance of knowledge. Because she has done some stupid things. Some mistakes have turned into things she does on purpose. Some mentalities have disappeared into walls of gray, now overlooked by her eyes. Elle is in no means perfect, she feels as though she slips more from that standard with each passing day. Yet she does nothing to change that. This, she recognizes, is a choice.

Choices. Oh so easily masked with the words "mistake", "accident". and "coincidence". Choices that people refuse to own up to consciously, partially because some do not even realize they have made a choice. Elle has seen people run from their choices like scared dogs, unable to accept them for what they are. Elle has done her fair share of running, too.