Relections...What We Tell Ourselves When No One’s Looking

If April felt suspiciously quiet from Jean’s corner of the continuum care campus, that’s because she spent the month living a double life. By day, she was the same woman who shows up for Wii bowling, Mahjong, and medical appointments that require more specialists than a NASCAR pit crew. But by night—and by “night” it means any hour she could barricade herself in her apartment—she was secretly hammering out posts for the A to Z April Bloggers Challenge like an undercover agent with a keyboard instead of a badge. And somewhere along the line she stumbled across a phrase that lodged itself in her brain and refused to leave through out the entire Bloggers Challenge.….AI

It seems like a month of Sundays since I’ve written a regular blog post. Oh wait—it has been that long since I’ve written the kind of essay that's about what’s going on in my life here in the continuum care community. The A to Z Bloggers Challenge was fun and energizing, but it devoured a month when my calendar was already full. And since none of my fellow residents know I keep a blog, I felt like an undercover agent who couldn’t reveal what was really taking up my time or why I was staying in my apartment more than usual. I was the Cheshire Cat of the CCC—smirking my way through April, wishing I could blurt out my secret but knowing I couldn’t. Shouldn’t.

Some of the other things I did during April:

• I got the results from my overnight-in-the-sleep-lab study, which confirmed that I have Central Sleep Apnea which means my brain is failing to signal the muscles that control breathing at night that it needs to do so. 

• I kept up with my weekly Wii bowling team and Mahjong group.

• I had an outpatient surgery to implant a Bravo device  which led to a diagnosis of Barrett’s Esophagus. Another puzzle piece on why I kept waking up. When I lay down, acid reflux crawls up my esophagus and wakes me up. Treatment is easy. Two pills. 

• I was in the audience—instead of the cast—for the first time at our annual mystery dinner theater. Boohoo.That was hard to explain since our Life Enrichment Director was begging for actors right up to the day before.

• I finally saw a urogynecologist after waiting five months, even though the original problem of getting up to pee seven to nine times a night has been cut down to three or four times thanks to my handsome, young sleep doctor and being put on estrogen cream. (I'll leave it to your imagination on how to get it where it needs to be.) The urogrynocologist and Dr, Google agrees, it helps with sleep issues. Strange, eh? 

• I got a BiPAP machine, which puts me to sleep like a baby and—gasp—might be turning me into a morning person but is making my face look like a relief map when I get up. In case you're wondering, a BiPAP differs from a CPAP because it puts air in and takes it back out where the CPAP only puts it in.

• And I went to book club unprepared because the assigned book couldn’t hold my interest. Watching ants march across my floor would have been more exciting than A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler.

But I believe in facing the music when I haven’t finished a book—unlike a few others who simply skip the discussion. And I’m glad I went, because the facilitator tossed me a comment that stayed with me all month as I wrote my A to Z posts. I don’t remember what excuse I gave for not finishing the book, but she replied:

“We all tell ourselves stories about the stories we tell.”

Her words smacked me right in the place where blog posts are born. I said, “I want to get that embroidered on a pillow,” and she shot back—tongue firmly in cheek—that I couldn’t because she had it copyrighted.

Naturally, I googled the phrase to see whether she made it up or borrowed it. The closest match was Joan Didion’s famous line, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” but that’s not quite the same thing. What I did find was an interesting idea about the four stories we tell ourselves: who we are, where we came from, where we’re going, and why things happen the way they do.

And Google completed the concept with:

“The stories we tell ourselves are internal narratives constructed to make sense of experiences, often acting as filters that dictate our reality, self-worth, and behavioral limits. These scripts, often formed by past traumas or habits, can either empower us or create self-limiting beliefs that hinder growth. Recognizing and rewriting these narratives is essential for personal agency and overcoming emotional traps.”

That explanation gets at exactly what the book club facilitator meant. And I used her phrase as a magnifying glass while writing my A to Z posts. With every post I'd ask myself: Was I being totally honest? Was I sugar coating parts to protect myself or someone else? Was I being unfair or too harsh in my assessments of events or people?

And now I’m asking you: Do we tell ourselves stories about our stories so often that we stop recognizing where fact ends and fiction begins?

Maybe it depends on how scarred some of our realities are—whether we invent stories to protect our inner child or to shield an abuser who’s still in our lives. The latter is, of course, one of those emotional traps Google warned about.

I don’t know the answer. But I do know it was pure serendipity that I heard that phrase at book club on the first day of April, and I thought about it with every post I wrote for the challenge.

So yes, we tell ourselves stories about our stories, and sometimes those stories are accurate, and sometimes they’re stitched together with wishful thinking, duct tape, and whatever scraps of memory haven’t wandered off. But if the A to Z Challenge taught me anything, it’s that the act of examining those stories — even briefly — is its own kind of honesty. And if I ever do get that phrase embroidered on a pillow, I’ll make sure it comes with a tag that reads: “Warning: Jean tries to tell the truest version of her stories — or at least the version that makes her look only moderately unhinged." ©

See you Next Wednesday.