If I Tell My Stories

This entire essay is a disclaimer, a warning about how gentle I will be with you and with my own truth. It is an ethical treatise on how we share the stories that are also other people’s stories.

I used to tell myself a story about the day I would tell my whole story. Not just the hopeful, inspiring bits, but the really deep and painful bits, too. I’d imagine the circumstances that would have to align in order for me to feel ready. Mostly I would imagine a sort of post-apocalyptic world in which everyone I had ever known was dead and somehow I was the lone survivor of my own orbit sharing with the rest of humanity’s survivors.

Carli Circa 1993

Pretty bleak, I know, but the following conditions seemed necessary for me: 1) telling the story wouldn’t hurt anyone, and 2) either I would have to be ready to defend myself OR I wouldn’t have a need to defend myself. The post-apocalypse seemed the most likely scenario for meeting those conditions.

I hadn’t always felt like that. From the time I was a kid I was info dumping horror stories pretty regularly. I would innocently drop facts about myself, thinking I was just a very open person. Often jaws would drop. I had no idea how weird my life had truly been, though I had suspected. This idea that I had about myself, that I was very open, conveniently kept people at arm’s length. It was a mind trick I played on myself. False intimacy is the name of that game.

Then about ten years ago I had a major crash. It was like a midlife crisis on an epic scale. Health problems, major depressive episode, CPTSD that debilitated me in all the ways that my health and depression hadn’t hit. I was pretty confronted by every way that I had ever hurt myself or been hurt by someone else. If you have been through any of these things, you know it is a slow claw out of a deep hole.

Part of my overall journey included realizing how my “openness” was partly a result of how my life had played out and partly a solution to the problem I had, which was trusting people. It kept them out and I didn’t have to worry about trusting anyone. In my efforts to deal with all of that I swung the other way. I became mysterious. I became enigmatic. It was a win/win. I still didn’t have to confront hurting others or defending myself AND I got to be super cool while doing it. I mean, if you’re mysterious no one really knows how super cool you are, but it’s an ego win for sure.

But I found over the years, my story would still come out. In small drips. It would have to emerge in support of an argument I was making or in request for accommodations, etc. And it was the same information I had shared before, but it felt like knives on its way out. All of the feelings I didn’t have, had refused to have or been unable to have, about the scary things that had happened to me were still in there waiting for me. All of the hurt I had tried to forgive before I felt it, it was bleeding out now all at once.

I thought I’d stopped telling my stories because I didn’t want to hurt the other people in the tales, and it turned out I had also been protecting myself from being hurt. But the hurt I felt when telling the stories was temporary. And after the words came out and the feelings with it, it was like there was suddenly more space inside to breathe. One of the Buddhist ways of conceiving how we’re configured is that the no-self that’s in us is pure and beautiful, it is in fact Nirvana and the way we get there is by clearing out all the junk that we think we are. It’s like we are an overpacked garage waiting to be turned into a rumpus room for relaxing and being joyful in, we just have to get rid of all the stuff we don’t need. So, every story that came out with the feelings still attached was progress toward having my very own inner rumpus room.

Once I told a story in this painful way it lost a lot of its power over me. And I’d known something of this before I realized why. I had often shared in writing and on social media when I had really hard days, panic attacks, and other things that were connected to feelings of shame. My motive at the time was to overcome the shame feelings themselves. The logic was that if I was open about things I felt shame about but knew weren’t shameful I could somehow dissolve that shame. And it did work. But I see now that it was working in a way I didn’t understand at the time. I wasn’t just doing the opposite of my impulse. I was actually holding space for myself. I was witnessing my own story. I was refusing to protect myself from the pain I was feeling.

The ways in which I have viewed my stories has evolved so much over the years. I have seen them as a way to connect. I have seen them as a way to explain myself or excuse myself. Sometimes I felt the need to share and couldn’t explain why. In recent years I’ve been encouraged to share because my stories could have a positive impact. I also realize that part of asking people to trust me means that I have to give them a reason to, and that means showing them my heart, and we do that through actions, but we also do it through stories.

This puts me in a vulnerable position, one which I have put a great deal of thought into. And the question I’ve posed to myself is how do I relate to my previous reasons for not sharing and the conditions I’d put on sharing? (Telling the story wouldn’t hurt anyone, and either being ready to defend myself OR not needing to defend myself.) The second condition is met now. I don’t feel the need to defend myself, so I don’t need to be prepared to. The first condition is more complex. Telling stories can hurt people. Whether it is because of their involvement or because it reveals information to them that they previously didn’t have, or myriad other reasons.

Here is what I’ve come to on that point: it doesn’t matter who hurt me in the past, what matters is holding space for myself, witnessing my own pain, and keeping myself safe today, what matters most is my intention. I am not sure that it matters to people who’ve hurt me that I no longer care that they hurt me. I know that sounds big and crazy. But I have worked so hard to be mentally and emotionally in a place where I can look at who I am now and deal with who I am now. The hurt and harm on the way informs how I handle myself now, but it doesn’t determine me anymore. If that makes sense to you, I’m glad. If it doesn’t make sense to you, I hope someday it does. If I tell a story now about my past it is information that I hope others can use to forgive and heal. It’s not accusations or indictments. It’s cause and effect. I’ll say that things like that shouldn’t happen and work to keep those conditions from impacting others, but I won’t judge those who acted against me in those ways. Maybe that is not a position you, the reader holds or agrees with. It is however the best way I’ve found to be happy, to heal, to move forward. And just because the intention matters most, it doesn’t mean that it’s all that matters. I still must work to minimize harm to people and will do my best to that end.

I work toward radical acceptance. I want that for myself and for others. I can accept myself and still want to do better, make different choices, and change the situations I am in. But since the past we tell stories about can’t be changed, beyond the way we perceive it, we have to accept it. And how can we change our perception without first accepting it?

I want to be an example for others to be gentle with themselves. I will work to be as gentle with you and myself as I can. My ultimate goal is to help relieve suffering, and as such I don’t think we should push ourselves to suffer more for that cause. Nor should we share as a way to inflict suffering on others.

If I tell my stories now, it is as a witness to myself.

I will hold space for myself to feel what I didn’t feel before.

If I tell my stories now it is so that you can see yourself there

To help you hold space for yourself,

To be a witness to yourself,

So that you can feel and release what you didn’t feel before.

So you can accept yourself and change perspectives and situations as needed.

I will tell my stories as kindly as I can,

And with respect to the privacy of others as much as I can.

And if you need to tell your story, please do so.