Do you ever write stories in your head? Like when you’re rehearsing a difficult conversation you need to have. You forget your lover’s singing recital because you were busy flirting with the redhead at Starbucks and you spend several minutes picturing yourself explaining yourself to your lover – what you will say, how expressive your face will look, the gestures you will make to emphasize how large the men were who knocked you out and left you for dead.
And then there are the martyr stories you tell yourself when you feel like you’ve been unfairly blamed. You get angry. You get depressed. You tell yourself why it wasn’t your fault. You justify your mistakes in your head by pointing out where things could have been saved if only someone else had stopped it. You remove yourself from the process in an attempt to nurse the budding anger towards everyone else who brought you to this place of guilt.
All these almost-real stories, lingering in your head.