Two Stories I Tell Myself.

 
I actually wrote this last night at midnight when I had racing thoughts as I tried to go to sleep. I wrote it on the notes app in my phone. And it helped me get to sleep. My thoughts were about how recently... well over the past several years really... I've been busting down the old walls I built around myself... How I'm rewriting my truth by destroying old negative self truths. By doing what I thought wasn't possible. The pictures in this post are just a small example. I've told myself for years that while I can design on the computer, I can't design with actual paper, paint and pencil. I believed this. Until I tried.

I have two stories. I'm going to tell you both of them because I'm betting at least some of you have similar stories. One is true. The other? Sadly, that's the one that's easier to hold on to. You've told yourself this story since you were old enough to start collecting stories. And you hold on to it because it is deeply rooted in personal history... some of which you may have been too young to understand. 

The other story takes far more courage to believe. But in the end, it's your true story. And only you can write it.

Maybe it's the writing that makes it so difficult. It's gotta be 'eeked out of the dark recesses of who you really are.

The first story? You didn't write it. It's things that you assumed, it's something a teacher said in elementary school, it's the way a childhood friend treated you, it's simply your place in the birth order between you and your siblings. It's all too easy to hold on to.

This is that easy story... and though it's easy to remember, it's not without hardship. I've told myself this story stretching back to my earliest memories. I've told it even when I thought I wasn't. It's the story of what I'm not good at. What I can't do. It's the story about how I'm not liked. If you do like me, it's the story about how if you only knew the truth about who I really am, you would not like me anymore. It's a dreadful, painful story. The telling of it has shattered bits and pieces of me. And yet it's my voice that tells the story. 

If only I/she could be quiet. There's a louder, happier story that needs to be told. A story that doesn't get told nearly as often as it should. A story that once and for all stomps out the smoke from the first story.

The story that needs to be told is the one in which I win. It's the one that says that when I try hard enough, I succeed. It's the one in which I'm good at things I never thought I could be good at. It's the one in which I'm not ashamed of my achievements (as if they aren't my own to share), but proud of them. It's the one in which I don't care if you like me, because I like me enough for the both of us. It's the one in which what I have is enough. I'm grateful. I'm peaceful. Although I tell myself this story over and over, it's at constant war with the other, prickly story. But it's this story that's gonna win. Is winning. Because I'm writing it... I'm not relying on old truths, half memories or something someone else told me.

Bit by bit, day by day, year by year ... it grows louder. It grows more fierce. It's angry at the old irrational story. It pushes through to be the one true story. 

It's my story. It's your story. It's the true story.