the basketcase

I'm talking to Daphna about the mess that is my life as of right now.

Me
i'm a basketcase
seriously
i should be institutionalized
Daphna
a cute basketcase
or ivy league institutionalized
Me
haha
maybe brown will be my institution
like, my mental institution
as well as ivy league
maybe it will be both!
Daphna
im sure they have good mental health services
just saying.
it worked for lena chen.
Me
good call, good call
Daphna
oh god, not that shes an example to model your college life on.

For those unaware, Lena Chen is the author of Sex and the Ivy and the Ch!cktionary. She's actually one hell of a feminist, but also a bit of a slut, which is not the route I necessarily plan to travel.

Here's a thought- narratives. Such as, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Memories, of course, aren't actual transcripts of events-- our interpretations are pretty influential in how we end up recalling things. So the way we tell ourselves our own stories shapes our reality.

But what happens when your narrative and reality simply don't correspond in a meaningful way?

We choose our narratives a lot based on what's easiest to believe. Which is a healthy human psychological phenomenon- it's part of the unconditional positive regard for ourselves that most mentally stable people have. (Lack of the unconditional positive regard is a symptom of depression, as I understand it).

But what if your narrative and reality differ in such drastic ways that people end up alienated?

How to resolve the narrative-reality dissonance?

Changing the narrative is inconvenient. It means you have to reevaluate your life, and all of the events between the time you formed this narrative and the present. That's a lot of work and a lot of thinking. But... what if you have to?

This is what I've been thinking about lately. Narratives are interesting. I want to know more about them- their adaptive qualities, and their destructive qualities. Flip sides of the same coin.

I like pretending my own life is some kind of microcosm for the world, be that in psychological terms, or moral terms, or whatever other terms.

Maybe that's because within my narrative, I'm the center of the world? And what is real in my world is real for all of the world, because all of the world is my world?

Maybe I'll be a philosophy major.

Love always,

Clara