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.