The thing about memory is that it can be so tricky, as we know.
It rewrites itself in mysterious ways. In the wormholes.
And every so often I set off on another internal investigation, only to discover that I am, yet again, wrong about so many things.
That second time I got fired.
The interviewer is very nice. Compassionate, curious, an asker of quiet questions.
And here we go.
The interviewer: Would you be willing to talk about getting fired from the bar? What happened there?
Me: Well, I threw a giant stack of coasters at someone’s head. Hit him straight in the forehead. Just about knocked him off his seat.
The interviewer: *cracks up laughing*
Me: You have a very infectious laugh. And yes, I guess that is kind of funny. It wasn’t really at the time. But yes. Okay.
We both giggle for a while.
Going deeper.
The interviewer: How many coasters?
Me: I don’t know. Fifty? A pretty thick stack. I just picked them up and nailed that guy right in the head.
The interviewer: And what happened?
Me: He was stunned. Everyone thought it was hilarious. He left me a giant tip. And apologized for whatever asshat thing he had done to provoke me, which of course I don’t even remember now, even though I’m sure it was totally justified and a long time coming.
The interviewer: But then you lost your job for it.
Me: Oh god no. That wasn’t the kind of place where something like that even registered. I mean, it was out of character for me, but it wasn’t a firing offense. I don’t even think anyone cared.
The interviewer: But that’s when you left.
Me: Huh. I guess I didn’t get fired. I left.
I left.
The interviewer: Wow. And all those years we thought you’d been fired.
Me: I know! Weird, right? I didn’t get fired! But really, I probably should have been.
The interviewer: You think?
Me: I was really burnt out. And really angry. Every minute I stayed was doing more damage. It was better for everyone involved that I leave. And the person I was becoming was kind of scaring me, to be honest.
The interviewer: What was good — or useful — about leaving when you did?
Me: It was time to go. It broke a cycle. It interrupted a pattern that was hurting me.
The interviewer: And what was hard about leaving when you did?
Me: Ahahahaha. You know in a film noir when the protagonist makes some tiny, seemingly meaningless decision that then launches him into a series of irreversible consequences that ultimately lead to his doom? That’s what this was.
The interviewer: Because of this.
Me: That’s the point where it started. Everything got worse. And it kept getting worse for a looooong time before it got better.
What’s true and what’s also true?
The interviewer: Is that true, do you think?
Me: Of course it’s true! I was there. That was the first step in a chain of awful, awful events that just got increasingly more awful.
The interviewer: Alright. And what else is true?
Me: Argh. What else is true? Let’s see. That possibly all that crappy stuff might have happened anyway. Or that if I knew how to approach burnout differently, I could have avoided the cycle of doom, but I had already pushed myself so far beyond the limits that I wasn’t really there anymore.
The interviewer: Let’s talk about Herodotus.
Me: Huh?
The interviewer: You know what I mean.
Me: Oh! Direct cause and indirect cause. You’re suggesting that I’ve retroactively assigned direct cause back to this one particular day when I supposedly got fired (even though I didn’t). But actually this event might not have been a cause of what followed — or maybe only an indirect one?
What’s possible?
The interviewer: When is it useful to tell your story? When does telling the tale of what happened to you become something positive, powerful or therapeutic?
Me: When it allows you to process your experience, release pain, identify distortions (or misunderstandings), and respond to your self-from-then with love.
The interviewer: And when are these re-tellings of our personal histories less useful?
Me: Well, when we aren’t curious. Because then we’re just solidifying and reinforcing the existing unexamined narrative.
The interviewer: What is possible here, now? What can come out of this telling of your story?
Me: I’m not sure. It’s probably useful to know that I didn’t actually get fired. And that I didn’t seal my fate of doom. And that I’m not actually in a film noir, even though that whole year was unbelievably hellish. I’m here now.
The interviewer: And how is now different from then?
Me: Oh! I see. When things are rough, I think I’m launching a Cycle of Disasters. Like in Nobody’s Fool when Sully goes on a stupid streak. What if there is no stupid streak? What if messing up once doesn’t mean it’s all going to be messed up?
Retelling the retelling.
The interviewer: How are you going to tell this story now?
Me: Uh, I threw a bunch of coasters at someone’s head and he left me a giant tip and burnout is not good for me THE END?
The interviewer: Anything else?
Me: I don’t know. I will have to pay attention and investigate the narrative to see what patterns live there.
The interviewer: You know what I like about you?
Me: I don’t know how to answer this question, but you are the best interviewer ever!
The interviewer: You interact with things. Even the painful ones. But you don’t force anything.
Me: That’s the idea.
The interviewer: I just wanted to say that you’re going about this in a really good way so that later when you think this is crazy and you don’t want to post it, you’ll remember that it’s useful.
Me: Thank you.
And comment zen …
This is my own internal process. I’m not sharing it in order for it to be analyzed, or to be told what to do or to solicit theories about what’s wrong with me.
I share it in the hope that some aspect of it will be useful for other people who are also working on their own whatever-it-is.
As always, we all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. It takes time. We keep this space safe by not giving each other unsolicited advice.
Things that are welcome: your own stories and experiences (especially about how tricksy memory can be), thinking out loud about this thing that is conscious self-inquiry, apple juice.
I really want some apple juice.
That’s all. Love to all the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads.
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I really enjoyed this post.
“What if messing up once doesn’t mean it’s all going to be messed up?”
Exactly. This is something I keep having to remind myself of.
Also knowing when to leave? Awesome.
Reminds me of a horrible gig I had years ago. It was supposed to be 12 hr days (typical of film) but the first four days were 16 hr days with only 8 hours turnaround. The next 2 days may have only been 12 hrs, but I quit on day 6. (Day 7 was a day off.) I just knew the same excuse would continue to crop up: this is the last time we can shoot at this location.
The producer screamed at me–I mean really screamed– about breaking my commitment and such, but it didn’t get to me because I was able to say (well, possibly shout back), “You said it was going to be 12 hour days. This isn’t what I agreed to.” So proud I stuck up for myself.
Also got a job that paid 2.5x more/day a couple days later. And found out their last day 2 weeks later ran 24 hours. One of the guys I’d worked with totaled his car on the way home. It’s amazing he wasn’t seriously hurt.
So yeah… knowing when to leave is good.
There are family stories. Stories that are told in a certain way over and over again. Stories where the “what else is true” gets smothered because it ruins the retelling tradition.
Family story: When Gwen was 12 y/o she cut off all her hair, and was ugly for the next 5 years until it grew back.
Gwen’s story:
When I was 12 y/o my mother had cancer. All her hair fell off and she wore a wig with very short punky her. She took me to get a haircut so I’ll look like her.
She died about a year later.
If a 13 y/o looks ugly because she has a terrible haircut, nothing is wrong with her. Responsible adults could have taken her to get a nice haircut, but they were busy, distracted and overwhelmed. It happens. But telling it over and over again – “How ugly you were when you were a kid!”, that’s cruel.
Frankly, it still feels like an awful shoe. And I still have no clue how to deal with it.
How tricksy memory can be. Yes.
I was just thinking about this and it’s like one of those optical illusions where it’s a young woman, no it’s an old woman… Like the story where oooh-bad-thing-was-done-to-me, no wait, random-shit-happens-and-I-thought-it-was-A-but-maybe-it-was-just-X, no wait, something bad was done to me, no wait….
But it gets easier to see both “truths” if you practice at looking at it with curiosity and possibility not just This Is What I See Therefore That’s The Way It Is.
Mmmmmm optical illuuuusions….
This is making me notice that one particular story that I have been telling myself for years – for most of those years, it wasn’t helping; it was solidifying the pain and fear and sadness. On the other hand, the tellings after I discovered reiki and then started working on my stuff, those were helpful, because I was processing.
Oh! Today, I noticed today that when people tell me how good the pup looks, I have a pattern of saying “yes, but ..” and mentioning at least one of his health issues. I don’t know why I do this. Ok, he’s had a lot of health issues, and he has some chronic ones, but if I look at it objectively, he has been so healthy in the past year that most of his issues aren’t really an issue in daily life. And yet, I think of him as a sickly pup. I am curious to examine this further – and somehow I think the memory of this post will be helpful.
A few years ago, shortly after we moved to West Virginia, something happened that hurt me, that shook my sense of self-confidence and safety — and the oddest thing of all is, I don’t quite remember what it was. My family and I were on our way to have breakfast at a diner, and I said — something — something innocent and carefree, shimmering with possibility and energy and happiness — and one of the people I was with said something unexpectedly derisive, and everyone else in the car just…laughed. And I was crushed. But that’s all I remember. No more detail than that. And the fact that the memory is so hazy — bewilderingly so, for something that happened such a relatively short time ago — gives it even more weight, in an odd way, gives the half-memory the added intensity of a dream, or some kind of pre-verbal trauma. (I suspect, in fact, that whatever happened did somehow echo some very early past experience that pre-dates conscious recall. That would explain why the emotional content is so keenly remembered while the verbal content is all but forgotten. I am certain that the person who threw the shoe didn’t realize it was such a heavy shoe, and that whatever it was he said didn’t mean everything that my emotions attributed to it.)
There is a story in my head telling me that ever since that morning, I have not been the same. That a decade or more of personal growth and inner strengthening were washed away in a chance encounter lasting less than a minute, leaving me wobbly and far more fragile. In short, that I’ve been screwing up ever since.
It’s a strange story. Sometimes I forget that it doesn’t have to be the truth. Certainly, it doesn’t need to be the only truth.
Because what’s also true is that in the past few years, I have been learning so much about what it’s like to feel scared or sad or angry and to know that no matter how bad I may feel in the moment, I’m still okay. What’s also true is that I’ve been learning how strong I can be. What’s also true is that, far from having lost my center, I have found my core — a self that isn’t defined by outward success or good fortune, and isn’t limited by them, either.
Whew. Feeling vulnerable, here — but it felt like the right time to share all of this. Thank you, as always, for holding the space and lighting the path.
Oy! The stuff-of-then can be so incredibly haaaaaaard!!! Both to be feeling, and to let go of /sigh
I’ve been dealing with a great deal of this lately, and having monster conversations galore. We seem to be getting somewhere a bit more open and spacious, but there are still quite a few cobwebs in the shadows… maybe I need to hire a maid?!
Havi, the questions the interviewer asked you were so insightful, and so were your answers. If I can ask myself that kind of question and not give shallow, evasive, flippant responses, it may signficantly affect the way I process my stuff.
Kathleen, hugs for the hard and for the learning. That whatever happened tapped into something very early is probably true.
I had a conversation years ago in which a friend said that her daughter, then four, could be anything she wanted to be. Something in those words just triggered all kinds of upset and tears in me, and I don’t know why. I didn’t know then, and I still don’t know now. But, wow, pain.
Slightly off topic but something I learned and thought others might find helpful: One of the most hurtful and damaging things that anyone could say to me used to be: “Just who do you think you are?” One day I made a list of my roles and collected some pictures and some poems I’d written that sort of went with my various roles and put them in a binder with a title page: Just Who Do You Think You Are?
I made a section of pictures of me and my husband, and some love poems; pictures of my son and poems I’d written about our sometimes difficult relationship; pictures of our foster children and poems I’d written for them, and so on. Now when I hear the Phrase of Doom, the memory of that book grounds me and removes the fear.
The interviewer: When is it useful to tell your story? When does telling the tale of what happened to you become something positive, powerful or therapeutic?
Me: When it allows you to process your experience, release pain, identify distortions (or misunderstandings), and respond to your self-from-then with love.
The interviewer: And when are these re-tellings of our personal histories less useful?
Me: Well, when we aren’t curious. Because then we’re just solidifying and reinforcing the existing unexamined narrative.
Ooooh, this. Yes! This reminds me of what I call “ranting” and “moaning”, as ways to talk about unsatisfactory things.
Ranting is (what I call) the energetic version – where as you explain it or tell the story, things fall into place, and you can express anger and frustration and probably also have a laugh, and maybe you remember some little thing and realise that the importance of it hadn’t even occurred to you at the time. And afterwards you’re like “phew!” and “yeah!” and “that’s THAT then!”. And often some new truths or insight do emerge, but at least you feel better afterwards.
Moaning is (what I call) the one where the more you tell it, the more it stays the same.
Sometimes I ring up a friend and say “I just need to have a rant”.
Havi – speaking as someone currently at risk of being fired, I found this VERY cheering. Apple juice to you!
I’m going to try a quick interview about my experience starting school when I was for (which I think is still hanging around trying to get me fired nearly 30 years later.
The interviewer is Jeremy Paxman in a tutu and fairy wings. Probably because I was watching Tooth Fairy last night. Jeremy Paxman is a famously incisive interviewer and the outfit is there to signify that he is being incisive in a fluffy, non-hurtful way and to make me laugh and stop me being afraid of him. Bless to my subconscious for coming up with that.
Paxman Fairy: So tell me about your experiences starting school.
Me: Well, I was a gifted kid, and my mother was a teacher so she taught me all kinds of stuff before I started school. Learning was play for me. I loved it and I loved her. My dad had depression and used to shout at me, and I was scared of him, so I think I went into school a bit unsettled because of that. Also because my parents were kind of hippies and didn’t give me a lot of boundaries, so I was totally unprepared for school discipline.
Paxman Fairy: So what happened when you started school?
Me: Screaming havoc, basically. I went into school expecting respect, choices, and learning that was at my level and I got none of that. The school was in crisis at the time, which didn’t help. A third of parents had taken their kids out. If my parents had known they wouldn’t have sent me there.
Paxman Fairy: So you blame the school?
Me: Mostly, yes. I also blame my parents for being too idealistic and not preparing me for the real world. But mostly the school. They gave me a special timetable with lessons in several different year groups depending on my ability in each subject,and I had to follow it by myself, which I was totally not up to doing at age four. The worst thing about it was that I had to leave half way through double art lessons. I never got to finish a painting. I had to be dragged out kicking and screaming.
Paxman Fairy: How would you describe that using the language of NVC, which doesn’t talk about blame?
Me: Ack. Um. Okay. I felt angry, upset, confused and frustrated because I was needing… I was needing consistency and support. If I’d been brought up with discipline from the word go that would have been okay, and if I’d gone from hippy parents to a hippy school that would probably have been okay too. I needed consistency. And I needed someone to hold my hand and take me to my lessons. And I needed understanding of what mattered to me. I needed creative expression. I needed to be allowed to finish my creative projects. Oh, wait – I still have huge trouble finishing creative projects to this day! (Tearing up) It’s like I still need someone to say, ‘It’s okay, you are allowed to finish. You can stay here and create for as long as it takes. You can have as much time as you need.’
Paxman Fairy: And how do you think your needs for consistency and support are expressing themselves now?
Me: Well, that’s obvious. I’m completely terrified of change. And I have a three-person buddy system lined up giving me daily support. But sometimes I feel irritation or even fear towards them and I don’t know why. And I treat my housemate like a mother, even though she doesn’t like that. And neither do I really.
Paxman Fairy: What’s also true?
Me: I need respect and choices.
Paxman Fairy: And how does that express itself?
Me: I get people to mother me and then kick and scream and won’t do what mummy tells me to.
Paxman Fairy: What’s also true?
Me: That’s not productive of respect.
Paxman Fairy: Going back to when you were little: What do you think the other people in the situation were observing, feeling, needing, and requesting?
Me: My parents were observing their only child becoming miserable, angry, and negative. They were feeling distraught, guilty, and helpless.
Paxman Fairy: Helpless isn’t a feeling.
Me: They were feeling desperate because they were needing some control over what happened to their child. They were requesting that I be treated according to my needs. And they were observing me having tantrums and pushing away their affection, and they were feeling angry and hurt about that because they needed to know that their child still loved and respected them. They were requesting – for me to let them comfort me! To acknowledge that they weren’t the enemy.
Paxman Fairy: How are you with your parents comforting you?
Me: Really, really bad. I spent my childhood hiding injuries and holding my breath when I had a cough, because I couldn’t bear their sympathy.
Paxman Fairy: Were you feeling angry?
Me: Disgusted. Disgusted and angry. Because I was needing space from them.
Paxman Fairy: And how about the teachers? What were they observing, feeling, needing and requesting?
Me: They were observing a child having a disruptive meltdown in their class. And sometimes her parents having disruptive meltdowns as well. They were feeling frustrated, stressed (is stressed a feeling? Should I say tense?) and tired. And helpless, no, desperate because they were needing control. They were requesting for me to share their attention so they could teach the other children.
Paxman Fairy: So nobody was really being a bad person here?
Me: No. Everyone was suffering. And yet I’ve grown up with a desire to ‘get them back somehow’. And yet there was no bad guy in this story. I feel guilty for having blamed my parents and my teachers all these years.
Paxman Fairy: You just said there was no bad guy, and yet you’re blaming yourself.
Me: Oh. Right. Wow. Um, thank you.
Wow, I just spelled four ‘for’. In a story about how gifted I was. Lolololololololol.
Oh Havi, thank you. Just exactly EXACTLY what I needed to read. Reminds me of several Stories I Tell That Are Not Quite Right and at least one place in my life where honestly, I’m not honoring the good stuff. Thank you.
This could not be better timing. Sometimes it feels that all I have are funny stories about my childhood, about my parents, about my inability to fit into the world. I know they’re polished to within an inch of their lives (although staying within the realms of truth) to entertain and amuse people. How sad that I hold my life up for other people’s amusement.
A lot to think about here- thanks all for sharing, as always xx
Havi, this is such a useful post.
Plus: Herodotus! It makes me think of all the historians and scholars and theorists from the academic part of my life whose ideas and wisdom so rarely seep into the other parts of my life, though they might be so useful.
I’m thinking feminist standpoint theory stuff by Sandra Harding; situated knowledges by Donna Haraway; and Simon Schama’s narrative play in Dead Certainties, where he explores, in the words of one reviewer, “the gap between a lived event and its subsequent narration.” Clearly, I have some rereading (and rewriting!) to do.
Thanks so much–again.
This REALLY hit an “ah-HA!” spot for me. Years ago I was in a job I hated, and became so miserable that I developed hives and then a peanut allergy. Yes, developed one, as in had never had one. But this was so bad that my face & lips swelled up scarily, one time bad enough to send me to the hospital. As someone who had never had allergies, to suddenly have that happen was earth-shakingly scary. And it was all from stress. When you wrote, “I was really burnt out. And really angry. Every minute I stayed was doing more damage…And the person I was becoming was kind of scaring me…” I was nodding in crazy agreement. That was me. Exactly! And the worst part was that I was unable to get out of the situation for many weeks (I was teaching, waaaay too many classes online & off, and there was no one to take my classes), so I had to figure out ways to hang in there until I could leave. Wish I’d had your site then, lol!
I think of that time as my “breaking point,” kinda like your coaster-tossing experience, but also like what you went through, the years after my peanut-h*ll got worse. You said, “That’s the point where it started. Everything got worse. And it kept getting worse for a looooong time before it got better.” Yep, that’s what happened to me! Or at least that’s the story I’ve been telling myself. But after reading this post, I’m thinking that my story needs examining. I need to sit down & chat with an interviewer. 🙂
Oh wow, do I love this: The interviewer: And when are these re-tellings of our personal histories less useful?
Me: Well, when we aren’t curious. Because then we’re just solidifying and reinforcing the existing unexamined narrative.
YES YES YES YES and again yes! And also: a round of apple juice, on the house!
Last month I discovered a story I’d been telling myself for almost ten years was full of holes and falsehoods, mis-remembered bits and distortions. And most interestingly, the full-of-holes version was pretty good at only one thing: making me feel helpless in the face of necessary change. When I called the story out on all its holes (we had a dance-off in the playground) it suddenly resolved into this overwhelming need for comfort, structure and support for the change I needed. Absolutely amazing feeling to move from that awful story to the good version of the story.
Thank you so much for posting this. xoxo Havi and to everyone who’s posted amazing, hard and inspiring stories. @Gwen in particular — honey that is hard. Sending you hugs and love for that particular shoe, which I recognize, hoping it dissolves further.
Yep, yep – quite useful. Thanks and Cheers!
coasters!
love it!
I love the laughter I hear when I read your words!
that added a bit of sunshine to my day!
I have such a big past negative painful thing that I’m beginning to realise just how distorted and untrue my “memory” of it was. It’s helpful to know i’m not the only one; so thank you for posting it 🙂
Ohmygosh. I’ve already shared the story I wrote about in my earlier comment on this post. I’ve just been meandering through the labyrinth of links, and there it is: my comment on Crumbling, nearly a year ago, in which I shared the same story. Not really surprising, I suppose — but fascinating, to compare the two accounts, to see what my relationship to the story was then, and what it is now. What will it be next year, I wonder?
I don’t have any sort of fitting response to any of this. Just big big hugs (except for those who don’t want them, of course. Kindness when I’m talking about hard things is… hard.) I have been having huge shifts in how I view these old stories of mine – that don’t *change* anything, but changing how I view them and with what level of honesty/clarity seems to change *everything*!!! I don’t feel like I can explain that out loud in a way that makes sense to many people. You all are amazing, and I feel so much less alone in my internal stuff. Thanks Havi & all for sharing your process.
I recently ran into an old friend on facebook. Well, really a friend of my ex, which is why we haven’t stayed in touch. He mentioned seeing my ex and his wife, and I considered how to respond to that. I came up with “I am sensitive about this person; be gentle.” Then, “He broke my heart.” This morning I switched it to “I was heartbroken.” Because technically I broke up with him. But still, He Broke My Heart. For The First Time. This feels like a very big deal.
Due to this post, I am now thinking about how I never told the story this way. I always told it as though I had hurt him, which is how he wrote the story at the time. That’s not what happened. My heart was broken.
My sucky day job from hell that I hate? The position was eliminated today. I am so relieved. Sigh…
Hooray for you Riin, your relief is palatable 🙂
THANK YOU. And YES.
I have to say, this *really* is my kind of thing. Thank you again!
I don’t remember how old I was, maybe 5 or 6 and we were at a boardwalk carnival. This was rare for my family. My father won some tickets and I got to pick out a toy. I selected a blue stuffed fairy but as soon as it was given to me I was ransacked with the feeling that I had made the wrong choice and I wanted the green one (I was given to horrible indecision as a child, always afraid I was going to pick the wrong thing… not that this has changed much.) and I guess I got upset and my father grabbed me and said “What’s wrong?” and I said “I wanted the other one” so he took me back and I got the other one but he was gruff and he scared me. I think I’ve been reading this story wrong my whole life, I felt like I had done something wrong and my father was mean but I should reframe it that my father helped me get what I wanted even though I was scared instead of making him out to be some kind of bad guy because he was easily frustrated.
“What if messing up once doesn’t mean it’s all going to be messed up?”
thank you so much for this.
and hugs to all of the commenter mice who are going through some hard in their jobs. ninja-shoe-avoiding-shoes-skills to all of us 😉
Whoa. I am bookmarking this so I can come back later and take notes on useful questions.
“I share it in the hope that some aspect of it will be useful for other people who are also working on their own whatever-it-is.”
I just wanted to let you know that yes, this will be useful for me, who is also working on my stuff.
Thank you.
Very much.