She won't let you feel a thing unless she wants you to. She twists the blade. He feels it.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the stories that we tell ourselves. These musings have come from both some of the more painful (in a good way!) books I've read recently, as well as things in my own life. I'm fascinated by the ways we make meaning from our experiences, the ways that we interpret our realities and through those narratives shape these realities in these dialectical ways.

Part of what fascinates me in all of this is how we construct these narratives without even realizing that we are doing so. It's almost instinctual. I'm reminded, in a strange way, of this course on epistemology that I took once. We had all these conversations about the question of whether objective reality exists, whether there is a capital T Truth, and about how interpretation shapes reality.

I am also fascinated by the cognitive dissonance that somehow manages to coexist in these narratives. I can know that I have constructed this part of my life in a way that tells a story that I can manage, that I can be all right with, even as I know that it is not True in that capital T way, even as I know I am constructing it for my own ability to cope.

It's an interesting lens to apply to novels, since I see this cropping up over and over again. Particularly with  most of the ones that I've read recently (Everything You Need, Surfacing, Rabbit Run, After the Quake, etc.). This is another one of those times that I almost want to write an academic paper.