Humans are, as douchey writer types love to remind us all, inherently storytellers. From our earliest moments — or at least as soon as we’re able to grasp basic language and a few simple concepts — we are always telling stories, each and every day.
I don’t mean this simply in the sense of a formally written story, or even an informally relayed anecdote. I mean at the most basic, fundamental level, we make sense of every sensory input through a story. I open my eyes, and my feet are resting on a white coffee table next to the plastic cup that once contained yogurt but now holds just my spoon. My understanding of this little vignette is entirely based in storytelling, in my brain stringing together a rationale for what these blobs of color and shape are and how they relate to me and my experience.
Of course, it’s not just stories about yogurt cups and feet (thank goodness). Everything about how we understand ourselves and our identities is rooted in a narrative that we use to make sense of what is, fundamentally, just some chemical signals firing in the gooey mush that is our brains.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot as therapy has forced me to revisit my own personal narrative, to reflect on what does and does not feel true these days. I am the same person, with the same experiences, that I have been for the past 40+ years, and yet the way I understand those experiences — the way I make sense of the chemical signals rattling around my brain — is constantly changing, in a way that can be jarring in its utter assault on anything remotely resembling continuity.
And look, the way we understand our sexualities? That, too, is an act of storytelling. To call oneself bi — to even conceive of what a “bisexual” might be — is to come up with an entire narrative of what a bisexual even is, to interpret a collection of impulses and desires as an identity and not simply a behavior. It feels important to recognize that in another time, in another culture, we might not interpret our impulses as a sign that we are a Bisexual Person™️ — in another time, in another culture, we might have different words, different stories, that help contextualize the exact same feelings, experiences, impulses. (For a little more context on what I’m talking about here, check out this piece on the invention of heterosexuality.)
I don’t know that I have a grand conclusion here; this feels more likely a thought experiment worth occasionally engaging in, a way at poking at the corners of my psyche and rethinking the things I think I know. My narrative used to be that I was a straight girl who just really cared a lot about queer rights; at fourteen, an unexpected question reorganized my narrative and suddenly it was clear that I was always bi. Three years ago, I started to understand myself as sapphic, specifically — and that too had a cascade that rewrote all my previously written stories of the self. And yet! Who is to say that any one of these narratives is more “real” than the others, you know? Am I continually arcing towards a better understanding of the self, or am I simply pulling George Lucas and inserting new CGI elements into my classic work just because I can?
And I mean, how much is narrative and how much is me, you know?
There is no real answer, of course. Ultimately there is nothing beyond the pursuit of happiness — and the pursuit of a narrative that allows you to feel settled and good.
Ultimately there is nothing beyond the pursuit of happiness — and the pursuit of a narrative that allows you to feel settled and good" is so core to me, I love your expression of it.
I once wrote "The story you tell yourself about yourself is pivotal."