The greatest tragedy of my life is that I’m not a figment of someone’s imagination.

            My mind constantly exists in the world of fantasy, a world filled with adventures and daring deeds.  I desire larger than life scenarios divided along black and white lines of good versus evil.  I long to look out my window and see the skies peppered by brave men and women in capes and tights righting wrongs and beating the bad guys.  I wish to read newspaper headlines about some nefarious organization that doesn’t mean harm for ideological reasons based on religious fanaticism.  I prefer my shadowy groups lead by a man with a predilection to reptile themes and bungled attempts at global domination.  I want to find treasure maps, destroy ancient cursed relics, encounter creatures that exist beyond our planet, our dimension, or simply beyond the ken of our understanding.

            But that’s not the way this world works, nor the way my life has gone thus far.  And as the years progress, I realize more and more that I will never be a part of that world.  That the realm of my imagination, which closely resembles that of a young boy, will solely exist within my daydreams, my fiction, and whatever escapist fantasies I can watch or read.

            I know that the life of a costumed do-gooder will never be mine.  Spiderman wouldn’t be defeated by a bad case of shin splints.  Batman doesn’t ride a crowded Chinatown bus to get to his destinations.  Superman does not have a lactose intolerance.

            If I were doused by radiation, I would be more likely to develop a cancerous rash than some superpower.  My curse is not a superheroic responsibility, but instead the inability to function normally in most social situations.

            And so I continue in this world, wishing I was merely a bit player in someone else’s lavish dreams of faraway lands that never existed, fighting villains with a flair for theatrics, and having adventures that free me from cubicles and deadlines and the confines of normality.

            How did I get this way?  Does anyone else feel this sense of longing for the impossible?  Is this an example of my innocent idealism or just a sad case of arrested development?

            Maybe I should just start wearing a cape and see where it goes from there.