The older I get (I turn fifty this week, ugh!) the more I recognize the way we tell ourselves stories about our lives in order to explain, justify, and come to grips with our place in the world. Everyone does this to some degree, some more than others. When I’m writing about relationships in novels, I like to create characters in conflict who have differing views of a shared past.

As a writer, I like telling stories. But what if the story I’ve been telling myself is not true? What if, in fact, it is dangerous because of how far off the mark it is? I find myself questioning my own version of reality. When I recall the past, the further back I look, the more colored the memories become, distorted by the retelling of events in my own head, until the actual thing I remember may not even resemble what truly occurred. I can ask three different people who were there, and wind up with three widely differing accounts. It’s like that game where you have a circle of people, and the first person tells a short story to the next person, and they whisper the story around the circle until it comes back around to the first one. It’s never the same story.

Time does the same thing, along with our individual motives, our personality, and the way that we have allowed our past to shape our present. The reason this can be destructive is clear: our future can be altered, destroyed, by the lies we tell ourselves about our past.

Why do we persist? Because often we don’t know we are doing it, I suppose. And when there is a whisper in the back of our minds that we are wrong, it’s easier to stick to the lies we have always known. God forbid we confront something harmful we have done and take responsibility for it. It’s much easier to blame others, to rage at circumstance, and wrap ourselves in anger and resentment at those around us.

When someone else hurts me by doing this, I can see it clearly. I can recall what the truth was and point to facts and memories which contradict the other person’s narrative. I can stand and be strong and attempt to take the battery acid and vitriol sprayed on me for a while. Yet, I also question my own narrative, and wonder where the truth lies, for it surely must not be the one I recall so vividly…

With memories and emotion, there is no single truth. One person’s truth may contradict my own, yet perhaps neither of us is truly wrong.