Holding Onto Our Stories

I first heard the concept of holding on to our stories almost nine years ago. Although I was able to recognize what was meant by this and the tendency of others to do it, I couldn’t see the same pattern in myself. Today I can and I think it’s such a vital thing to have an awareness of that I’m hoping writing this might help someone else.

The behavior is when someone is so rigidly attached to their life story as they perceive it or some portion of it that they end up telling it to as many as will listen. It also becomes their definition of themselves and often the world around them.

I remember the first person in whom I recognized this was a woman I became close to partly out of concern for her situation. Her story. She had been brutally divorced by a man who took her life away in her early forties. She had been fairly well-off and now she was struggling to pay her bills. The husband had hired a very good attorney – according to her tale – and left her and her children with little.

The longer I knew this lady, the more I heard the story. Everyone I introduced her to would eventually hear it, if they spent more than a few minutes with her. I got to the point where I could tell it as well as she. Okay, I thought one day, now it’s time to stop telling this story.

Why? Because she had trapped herself, her children and all of their futures inside the web of the story. She was destined to be and remain a victim. Powerless. Pitiful.

My own story is a little different, but has still frozen me in time. I lost my beloved Pete twelve years ago. He was the love of my life and an extremely good man. This is a true story, but the problem is that although I’ve dated several men, some seriously, they have all been compared to “the love of my life.” Nothing could ever happen to change my story, because I loved the object of it so much that allowing my heart to open meant giving up my Pete story.

So, I’ve recognized the legend I’ve created for what it is. However, I find I’m still not ready to give it up. I’m not sure how harmful sticking to your story is if you know that’s what you’re doing. Maybe I’ll have to look at this again in a year or so and figure that out. But for now, I know that I have trapped myself in the amber of a lost love.

Just that consciousness is enough for now.