Lie No. 3 | 09.02.18

I get so annoyed by all the inevitable end-of-summer talk surrounding LDW for a few reasons, not least of which is it isn’t the end of summer. That’s plain wrong, people! I’m fairly certain everyone knows this, too, which makes it worse imo. I love me some certainty + accuracy, both of which hit me over the head this summer, making it a weird one for me. For the first time ever, I’m ready for fall.
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I learned a new word this summer + it took me for a real ride: confabulation. Do you know it? It’s the stories or untruths we tell ourselves subconsciously. We don’t know we’re making them up + don’t mean to deceive; it’s like an emotional excuse we tell ourselves to make sense of something we don’t understand. Warning: These stories can be real rabble rousers.
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Earlier this summer I found myself square in the middle of a beautiful one + it got ugly fast. I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time, I just knew it was disorienting af. Like falling asleep in one place + waking up mid-dream in another. My brain spiraled as I learned about our ability to misinterpret moments into memories (through my own research, not that professional I pay handsomely for insights like this). I fact check my damn IG posts, so for me to have misread something—to interpret something so fantastically wrong—felt like vertigo. What other stories had I planted with zero roots in reality? What else had I gotten wrong? This particular story I’d told myself wasn’t really that big a deal in the grand scheme, but what it lacked in significance it more than made up for in consequence.
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I can’t stand when people rewrite history + here I was catching myself in the act. It’s really hard to rewrite a good story when the beginning remains the same but the ending has to go. Just when I think I’ve questioned everything, I get buried by another avalanche of doubt + the internal inquiry starts again. The dig out is hard, but worth it. Sometimes the questions we don’t want to ask ourselves have the most surprising answers. I’m so ready to move this particular story into Act 3 + be done with it, but Act 2 isn’t quite over yet. Just like summer.