The End of Stories
I was cooler when I was broke
Last weekend I came to the realization that all my stories had come to an end. It was during an innocuous task, replacing an outlet in my newly purchased home, if you happen to care about details like that. The thing is, I’m pretty sure I always knew that this was how they were going to come to a close.
“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
The first apartment I could claim as mine, as much as a rented property could ever be owned by a tenant, was a one-bedroom situation. Basically, an attic of an old four-unit duplex that someone had shoved a toilet and stove into. There wasn’t even a door for the bathroom, just a sheet of hard plastic that would accordion open and close with sufficient effort. By the time I finally moved out I had three others living in it with me. My neighbor across the way was a guy who had an obsession with knives and guns and regularly broke into my car trying to score cigarettes. Beneath me was another guy, who would regularly trap you in half-hour-long polite conversations. His son and his son’s girlfriend squatted with him; you could hear their screaming matches well past midnight. I never really got to know the last tenant all that well, except for the time he scowled at me when I set up a chair on the curb to hand out candy on Halloween.
What I’m trying to get at here was that at that time, life was a series of stories rolling out one right after another. I had no choice but to read them, just to get the chance to see if the next one had a chapter in it with me getting laid or cheaply drunk in a fun new location. The thing is, I didn’t just experience these things, I was a greedy rat scouring a dirty floor for bits of raw ramen noodles and dirt, I collected them and hid them away to sustain myself with when times got cold and lean. I returned to this stockpile time and time and time again, only to look at versions of myself created by hardships, that had thankfully died horrible deaths, and found the same comfort over and over and over.
Then, things got better. I became more financially secure. I went from a shitty dead-end job to a shitty dead-end job with “responsibilities”, then eventually a shitty career. Each step coming with another level of comfort, and I took that comfort like a crowbar and wrenched an acceptable amount of control over my life out of the ether. After this, I started to do some pretty cool things. I started travelling the world, I picked up some fun hobbies, I started to have progressively healthier relationships, bought a house, and adopted a kitty. I had set out on my own path, with the intention of creating the next generations of stories that I would use to comfort myself. Except something strange happened, the memories of these new experiences weren’t replacing those old stories. I was still retreating to an impoverished life that I could barely recognize.
I feel bad, because I feel like I started this out with a tone that suggested I knew why this was the case. I don’t. I really don’t. I have a theory though. Living through something that you weren’t controlling is something to be proud of, something you point at and think “I fucking lived through that”, yet if you make it through something you had some semblance of control over, then things just went according to plan.
“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”
― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
Here’s the thing though, I’m never going back, if I have anything to say about it. I replaced that outlet, I spent hours deciding on a new interior paint color (Beverly Hills Yellow in case you were curious), I bought a gently used Roomba because dust shows up so much more on wood floors and i don’t have the patience to sweep everyday. And you know what? I’m going to go to work on Monday and act like those were the most fascinating things that happened to me, ever. So, I guess you can say I got comfortable with the end of my stories.