Chapter Text
My name is Ben Organa Solo.
Yep. That Organa, and that Solo.
I’m twenty-four years old. I went to Naboo for college, but now live on Hosnian Prime with my mom, my dad and my little sister. I am currently unemployed, having moved back home recently, but I’m looking for work. If you have any connections, maybe you could hook a guy up.
I am six-foot-three, no matter what Encyclopedia Galactica may have to say. Sometimes, I’m even six-foot-four—just don’t stand next to me with a measuring tape.
I have a blog I’ve run since I was fifteen, but I haven’t posted much lately. I’ve been busy writing a novel.
The Force is strong in my family. My mother has it. Her father had it. I have it, too—but I have never fully explored what this means for me. I am not a Jedi…nor do I ever intend to be one.
Still…I haven’t ruled out the possibility. A lot of things have happened in my life that I never saw coming.
I’ve got a few folks I call my friends, a lot of ‘em on the HoloNet—but in general, I’m tough to get along with. I’m not very warm by nature, and I have an almost supernatural gifting for rubbing people the wrong way. I get angry too easily, and I don’t feel compassion easily enough. I’m not very sensitive, when it comes to the things I say to or about other people—and I’m way too sensitive, when it comes to the things people say about me.
And yet, somehow…a woman saw something in me, and fell in love.
Even crazier, I fell in love with her, too.
Like I said, I just finished writing my first novel, which took me the better part of six months. I probably should’ve taken a little longer than that…but I’ve got a bit of an impatient streak, so here we are. Let me know if you find any mistakes.
Because my ego’s a little too big for my own good—I wrote it about me. And…my girlfriend.
…My ex-girlfriend?
Definitely my best friend.
…We’ll see how things end up.
You know…the nice thing about a book is that there’s a predictable rise and fall. A conflict, and a resolution. The hero comes out a better guy in the end—bolder, stronger, smarter—and everything gets tied up with a nice little bow. The hero and the heroine don’t always end up together, I suppose…but you leave knowing that good has triumphed over evil. That all is right in the galaxy. That everyone lives happily ever after (or, at least, as happily as they can).
And so Ben the protagonist lives confined inside this narrative, with its neat little beginning and its neat little end—
—but he’s left me, Ben the author, on the outside…in a narrative that extends far beyond what I can see, and definitely far beyond what I could ever capture in writing for you.
Some of the characters in this tale have ended our little chronicle with better endings than others. Some of them have not had very good endings at all. For that reason, it’s a good thing that my “The End,” which you will come face to face with in a bit, is not really the end.
I hope Pennie Pentarra, for one, gets a better ending someday.
As for me…I wouldn’t mind keeping mine. Maybe not the part where Ben and Fannie break up. That part, I might have liked a rewrite—but unfortunately, life doesn’t grant us such luxuries.
The part I do like is the part where Ben finally turns his life around, and decides he’s gonna start doing things differently from there on out. Now, that’s a good ending. The part that keeps me up at night, though, is whether he’ll be able to continue on that path once we close the covers on him.
You’ve joined me for this particular character arc of mine. I have had many before. I will have many after. I will learn things and unlearn things and have to learn them again. That is the cost of being a real person—a man made not of words and descriptions and keystrokes and digitized information, but of flesh and blood and bone and sinew and some electricity to keep me running (though, perhaps, I am made of more than that). I am alive: gloriously, regrettably alive, with all the triumph and tragedy that goes along with that statement—and the thing about living things is that they’re always changing.
Always in motion, is the future.
Sometimes, when I lie awake in bed, or zone out while doing the dishes, I think about the things I’ve done in the past. Mistakes I’ve made. People I’ve hurt. And…it sucks, because even though I’m trying my best, I know I can never go back and undo the things I did.
You are reading the fourth draft of this novel. I made a lot of changes as I was working on it, in order to tell the story better—to make certain themes more clear, to portray people’s thoughts and feelings more accurately, to improve the coherency and flow of events. I could not, however, change anything in the story that I had done.
But…someone once told me that, even if we can’t escape the things we’ve already done, we always have the ability to choose what we will do next. We always have that choice.
Do you know what you want to do next?
I do.
It’s hard, being alive. Growing, and changing, and having to rediscover yourself all the time. I used to think that was just teenager stuff. I thought that, once I became an adult, I’d finally know who I was and have it all figured it out.
But…just when I think I know everything about myself, and just when I think I’ve finally figured it all out, I always find myself forced to realize: huh. I don’t know myself half as well as I thought I did.
Sometimes, it’s a horrible feeling. I’m constantly finding out I’m a worse person than I ever thought I was: capable of more selfishness than I’d like to confess, and willing to do more wrong than I wish to admit.
But sometimes…it’s good. Because at the same time, I’m always improving and growing more than I ever thought I would…and becoming wiser, stronger, nobler and braver than I ever dreamed I could be.
Sometimes, all of that is going on at once. Sometimes, the good and the bad are all mixed up together. Sometimes, the good and bad go back and forth, back and forth, over a very long period of time.
But…even if Ben the author has a whole lot more life to live than Ben the protagonist, who we’re about to tuck away forever to rest in his wordy grave…
…I’ve got a pretty strong feeling that good wins out, in the end.
So…hi. I’m Ben.
Yeah, yeah—I know. We’ve met before.
But…maybe the Ben you met before is a different Ben than who you’re meeting right now. Maybe you’ll even meet a different me tomorrow. Or in a couple more years down the line. In five years—a decade—who knows?
For now…
…Hi.
I’m Ben.
Nice to meet you.
THE END