The Stories We Tell Ourselves

A friend of mine recently contacted me through one of those social networking sites. No, wait, let me go back further. In tenth grade I had a brief friendship with two girls from Bonn, Germany, who participated in a foreign exchange program at my school. When the two left to return home, we all had every intention of continuing our communications via postal mail, but I have never been very good at keeping up correspondence through mail...too many steps, writing, folding, finding an envelope, buying the stamp, taking to the box. I have no reasons for it, I've just never been too good at it, no matter how hard I've tried. So, it has been 12 years since I have spoken to my German friends, but the other day one tracked me down through that social networking site.

We greeted with the regulatory "WOW! It's been so long! Great to see you! How've you been?" greetings, but my German friend wanted to know why I was no longer in Columbus. She asked two different ways why I had moved from Ohio to West Virginia, and I found myself wondering as well. Suddenly, the regular explaination of "For financial reasons" didn't cut it. So I sat down and I told her the reader's digest version of the last 12 years of my life, and most of it wasn't pretty.

As I was laying down the truth of it all, putting it in ways I had never allowed myself to explain it, somehow more free with honesty than I had ever been before, I realized how many stories I had told myself to get through. I realized how many times I had given myself an excuse in order to make it through the next few minutes, the next hour, the next day. I wondered if those stories hindered my progress by not allowing me to see the truth for myself, but I heard the doubt creep into my head even as I thought it. No, my mind said. You told yourself those stories, because if you didn't, it would have been too much to handle. Those stories were your protection. They softened the blow and allowed you to climb slowly out of the hole you were in. In a way, my stories were like a scuba diver coming slowly to the surface to as to allow the body time to adjust to the change in pressure. I needed to come up slowly, in order to come up safely.

Many of the stories I told myself were really excuses in disguise. Many of my stories allowed me to make mistakes, like getting pregnant too soon, or not taking care of myself or others. I played the victim a lot. I spent much of my time telling people how I had been wronged by so many people in my life. Sure, a lot of what I went through was harsh, and horrible, and out of my control. In some respects, I was a victim. But I used that label, that excuse, so that others would forgive me of my shortcomings. I used that excuse as a way to stay in my hole without interference. I can't get up today, it hurts too much. I keep thinking about everything that happened. In some respects, it was true. But many people have days like these, and the best of them get up anyways, despite the pain, in spite of it, they get up and they move their feet and they clear a path for the ones to come behind them.

The hard part of all of this is knowing when to change the story. Sometimes it changes on its own, through your actions. Sometimes decisions have to be made to change the stories into what you need them to be. I try to stick with the truth, and let that be my guide, but the truth changes as my story changes. Yes, I went through some very hard things, but I can chose in which direction that story will take me. Wherever I go, the story will follow and change, things will be added, and only the core of who I am will continue throughout.