On stories

I read this article and this one over the last two days that have spurred me to write.  They are both about how and why we tell stories.  Both speak to me and seem to require me to speak.

One of the things that fascinates me about stories is that there are so many ways to tell them, and all of them have a certain kind of truth.  To pick an easy, if painful, example, I can tell the story of my divorce lots of ways.  The funniest way and the way I choose most often is to say that my ex-husband left me for a lesbian.  Because it is funny and strange, it deflects both me and the listener from the pain that underlies the story.  I feel clever and brave for describing it like that.

Another way to tell the story:  I was a person going through a major depressive incident with all the dysfunction that entails.  I drove a lot of people, including my ex-husband, away from me with my self-destructive behavior.

Another way:  My ex-husband and I got together in high school and the process of growing up resulted in growing apart.

Again:  A series of not-entirely-preventable disasters put more stress on the relationship than it could bear.

Or:  I am a raging bitch who cannot form lasting relationships because I suck the soul out of everyone I might care about.

One more:  My ex-husband is a narcissist, an adult child of an alcoholic family (now an alcoholic himself), and an expert manipulator.  He is always seeking the next person to dominate and exploit.

All of those are true and none of them are true.  Some of them are hard to write.  Even intending to tell the story, I find I want to leave things out that hurt, that make me look bad, that feel mean or judgmental.  It’s hard to tell sometimes if I am a victim or a perp, or both, or neither.  And all of these versions are from my perspective.  I don’t know how my ex-husband tells the story, but I’m pretty sure his ways are different.

As I said, I picked an easy example.  Most divorces, I think, can be told in as many ways or more, depending on who is telling and who is listening, on distance, on stage of enlightenment, on mood at the time.

What is more difficult is the ongoing narrative of life. 

This interlude brought to you by “who the hell am I and/or who do I think I am?”

While writing the first part of this, I stopped for various reasons.

I got a text from a client canceling a session.

I got a message from one of my kids about funny stuff at his job.

I needed to move my car, get gas, and run an errand before 10 a.m. street sweeping.  Also, my husband needs to get his car out from behind mine in the driveway for his meeting later.

My other kid texted me to say he thinks he is having a migraine.  I went downstairs to diagnose, console, provide advice, wet a washcloth, give crackers, and then run to the store for different OTC pain medication for when the Ibuprofen he already took on an empty stomach wears off.

I changed the laundry.

What this could mean is another slippery story.

Maybe the story is that stories are always interrupted.  Narrative continuity is a lie we tell ourselves.  It is the calculus that smooths out the curve of individual moments/data points.

Maybe the story is that I have no business trying to tell stories at all.  I am supposed to be working/caring/doing chores.  I am not the storyteller; I may not even be a player character.  Even changing my name to Rosencrantz or Guildenstern would be far too grandiose an aspiration for me.

Or the story is a mock-epic, in which I valiantly fight against the mundane powers that would stop me on my quest to reach the bottom of the page in one piece with sanity intact.  Will our fearless heroine triumph against the powers of the papercut?  The laundry basket?

Then there is the art-movie version:  I am at the mercy of all the voices in my head, each telling me something else.  I should seize the power.  I should be ashamed.  I have nothing to say.  No one is listening anyway.  I don’t know how to tell the truth.  We’re all disappointed in you because you’re not doing it right.

As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, the ongoing narrative of life is the hard part.  In this moment, I am some combination of bodily processes, dream stuff, strawberries, nameless dread, socioethnographic history, and random quotations from books and movies.

In the moment, I might not recognize the narcoleptic Argentinian falling through my ceiling as the true portent it is (did I mention the random quotations from movies?).  I might not even see the turning point, the tipping point, any point at all.  Maybe the pens and feathers I find on the sidewalk are just pens and feathers, not messages.  Maybe people actually tell me what they want and I don’t listen.  I don’t know how to tell.

I like philosophy and physics for similar reasons.  They both, in different ways, require a certain attitude of Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast.  What would be different if I turned out to be a brain in a jar?  What is it that I am perceiving if it is actually impossible for two things to touch without fusing?  Is there a reality in which I don’t tell stories?

In Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Criseyde is ruled by fear.  It is fear that keeps her from her love, fear that drives the tragedy.  As a woman in her culture, her fear is not entirely unfounded.  She is lucky that her love story only resulted in a single tragedy, rather than an entire war.

Fear drives more than her story.  It drives many stories.  Even the stories I choose not to tell because they would be embarrassing or hurtful, because I can’t do them justice, because someone will be disappointed in me.

I am afraid to write even this.

My mother would not approve.  Then again, that’s kind of her normal state.  I try to remember this when I am putting words on paper.

People may not love me.  I wish I were less motivated by wanting people to love me, but there it is.  I hesitate to say things because someone might be offended or mad.  Someone might dislike me, or shame me for being wrong, or, God forbid, create conflict.  Is it better to tell a story and then retract it to keep peace or to skip telling it entirely?  Is it really love if I don’t show up?

Tell me a story, says every child.  And then tell me another.