Nothing really ends, and its all subject to revision

I'd estimate that nearly half of my existing journal is made up of "bitchy" entries, in which I complain about some emotional/mental/physical pain I'm in. I'd always regarded these entries as useful in their creation (they purge these thoughts, keep them from running around in circles in my head) but utterly useless reading material, the very definition of self-indulgence.

But now I'm starting to use them as a way of learning more about how I deal with shitty situations or how I've changed/not changed as a person. Sometimes I use them as guidance as to how to feel about something. How did I reacte to similar trouble 2 years back, 6 years back? Perhaps the most heartening aspect of looking back is realizing how utterly hopeless you were at one point, and how unwarranted that hopelessness was. Better days were on the way; you just didn't feel that they were.

I'm really interested in the ways that we impose narrative structures on our formless lives. I wonder if many people, now or ever, saw only the One Big Story - their own life, instead of the thousands of stories that I see my life as. Each time I'm in one, I feel that its THE story of my life, but it never ends up that way. I feel fortunate and somewhat immortal in this respect, as if I've been allowed to lead multiple lives, just out of curiousity. What could possibly bind that night camping on the mountain with my trip to Quebec City? At best, its a serial. Franzen was right; "the only real story, in the end, is that you die".

This is what I do when I go back and read those bitch sessions: locate my old self in a narrative, and identify w/ that old pre-comeback self, thus manufacturing hope for my current self. But I sound more detached from my life than I really am. Perhaps I aspire to be detached. I aspire to laugh (as a detached watcher would laugh) during the sad parts, but be deadly serious (pious, even) about the happy parts. That's the tone of my favorite authors/films, and that's the tone I wish to impose on my personal narrative.

(months later...)

After having watched the ending of 'Before Sunset,' I've a revision to make. We don't even live a full story. Even the snuffing out of my consciousness doesn't end what I think of as the plot of my life. In fact, its very unlikely that any of our deaths will coincide with any sense of closure. It'll probably be just like the end of this movie, just fading out while the narrative keeps going. It's maddening to consider this, but that's why I divide my life into many individual, overlapping stories - so I can get some closure. Its possible that my appetite for closure comes from watching/reading so many stories w/ beginnings and endings. Supposedly we spend more time in fictional universes, watching movies, reading novels, than anyone else in history, to correspond to the multiple lives we live (multiple marriages, multiple groups of friends, multiple "homes.")