Or, Failing That, Invent
The White Album by Joan Didion begins with the line, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live."
I've been thinking about it for days. It feels like the truest thing I've ever heard, but also, somehow, not. Sometimes we tell ourselves stories in order to stay small, to keep ourselves safe. Sometimes we build prisons out of stories. Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves become self-fulfilling prophecies, and not in a positive way. Sometimes building a story starts to feel like the same process as digging a grave.
There are many stories I've told myself over the years about myself, about my life and my capabilities, that are now burying me. In the wake of the election, which has felt like a kind of death, I've been thinking about what I can do to feel more grounded, less helpless, more awake, less detached, and the thing I keep coming back to is community. The thing I always come back to is community. I want to help people, to make a difference to demographics who need it and rarely receive it, to feel like I'm contributing in whatever small ways I can to improving my corner of the world since focusing on the larger political landscape fills me with abject hopelessness. It's hard to know where to begin, living where I live, but beginning has always been the hardest part of any endeavor for me and I know I need to just push past that block and do something.
The story I tell myself goes like this: once upon a time there was a girl who had imagination, dreams, hopes, joys. Once upon a time there was a girl so full of sparking potential that she ignited blazes everywhere she went. Once upon a time there was a girl who carried the entire world inside of herself, spinning like a planet all its own, and she created new realities every time she breathed.
And then the story swerves like this: but one day a suffocating evil stole it all away and left her unable to move, think, create, hope. But one day her eyes were opened and she saw the devastation all around her and realized there was no point to any of it. But one day she understood that her true nature was not to embody new realities but to merely survive the one she was in.
The story shifts and changes to fit where I'm at in my life, but the core theme is always that I can't. I can't because I'm too unwell, mentally or physically. I can't because I'm trapped by circumstances. I can't because I'm not smart enough, not capable enough, not strong enough. I can't because I'm not good enough.
Some of these things are true, or at least they have a kernel of truth to them. I am unwell, physically more than mentally these days, and I am somewhat limited by my life circumstances. But many of them are not true and are things I've convinced myself of because it's easier to not try. If I try, I might fail, and as I've spent hours discussing with my therapist, failure is the worst thing that could ever conceivably happen to me. Better to do nothing, that way I can protect myself from the possibility that I really am not good enough.
My therapist asks me when was the last time I failed at something, and I search my memory banks and have to concede that maybe it hasn't happened recently, maybe this particular story that I'm destined for failure in all things isn't actually true. But the lesson never sticks.
I remember reading once, I think it was in a poem, something to the effect of, "If you are a story you are telling, then change the narrative." I also think of this Monique Wittig quote often that goes,
There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember . . . You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.
Or, failing that, invent. This line lives in my head and I don't heed it, but what if I did? What if I invented a version of myself who is more than her circumstances, more than her self-imposed restrictions, more than her fears and her misguided certainties? What if I invented a reality where I could thrive? I have learned to love myself over the past couple of years, but my story hasn't been updated to reflect that development. Maybe it's time.
As we near the end of this frankly awful year and approach 2025, I'm reflecting on the lessons I've learned, and one of those lessons is that I deserve more than I allow myself to have. I've been saddened by slowly disintegrating friendships and learning to let go of people who don't make space for me in their lives, and people who aren't who I believed them to be and don't have my best interests at heart. I'm past the point in my life where I'm willing to chase people and force them to acknowledge me, and I'm past the point where I'm willing to accept poor treatment in order to keep the peace and keep the people. Mary Oliver said joy is not made to be a crumb and she is my life coach. I listen when she speaks.
And so, if I can apply these lessons in my relationships with others, the next logical step is to apply them to my relationship with myself. I know who I am and it feels like it's time to start treating myself as the person I want to be, the person I believe myself capable of being. There's a potential full-time job on the horizon if I go for it, there are many more magazines to submit many more poems to, there's good to do and trips to take and love to experience. There's life to live. Whatever else happens in the wider world, there's still life to live, small and quiet as it may be, and I have made my life and myself so small for so long. A few years ago, I chose a word for the year instead of resolutions, and that word was sprawl. I didn't do a great job of applying it because I wasn't ready yet to take up space, but maybe now I am. Or maybe I'm ready to start building a foun dation to support the sprawl.
I hope you'll all accompany me into this new story. It's not even a new chapter, but an entirely new text. We can write it together, as a collective of people who want justice and peace and health and kindness and comfort, not just for ourselves but for everyone, and who are willing to fight to make it happen. Fighting can look a lot of different ways and not all of them are loud and showy. Some of them are valuing ourselves, loving our people, making space for light to shine and flowers to grow through the cracks. Everyone who reads this has given me light and flowers this year and I am indescribably grateful to know you. I don't know what this newsletter might look like in the new year, but I'm thinking about it and making tentative plans, now that we're coming up on a year of its existence. I know I've been very bad at consistency recently, and that's part of it. I'm thinking about how to make it something I can continue to do even during the weeks when all I want is to detach and dissociate my life away. I want to keep writing as long as people want to keep reading, but the nature of the writing might need to change.
This is all 2025 stuff, though. For now, happy December. We survived what is, for me, always the worst month of the year without fail. It's dark and it's cold and mostly I just want to be tucked up in bed instead of doing anything productive, but at least it's not November. At least there's that. At least Christmas is near, and then New Year's, and then my birthday, which is a holiday and everyone should celebrate it accordingly. It will be my first birthday as Daisy and isn't that a nice thing? I hope you all have some nice things to sustain you. I hope this newsletter is one of them. I love you.