A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a friend of mine about a recent romantic scandal of his. He was the wronged party. It was all still pretty raw for him. It was a fascinating tale – one that I can’t share, because obviously it’s his, not mine – and I found myself asking him about it again, if there were any further additions to the saga, any new details revealed.
“It’s such an amazing story,” I said, and he was silent. I realized I was being an asshole about the whole thing. It wasn’t just a crazy story to him. It was his heartbreak. I said as much to him.
“But eventually it will just become a story to you,” I said.
“When does that happen?” he said.
I considered this for a second. I kind of fumbled over an answer, because I was just figuring it out for the first time myself.
“I guess when you don’t need to tell it anymore,” I said.
And then last night my friend Jeremy and I took a walk around Reno, through the casinos and down to the Truckee River. By the river, we saw a group of people dressed in green and black swinging hula hoops around their hips. There were mountains in the distance and it was sunny.
Jeremy and I don’t know each other that well, but the conversations we have had in the past have always been pretty great. We met in Omaha, and now he lives in Reno. He’s an artist. He likes to drive around the country too. He makes sculptures using map paper. I write books about women on the road. We are kindred spirits.
But still, we didn’t know a lot about each other. We dived into talking about relationships. He told me some stories. He asked me about my love life. I told him some stories. He pushed a little further about why I broke up with my last significant boyfriend.
I’m an open person and a good conversationalist but I found myself clamming up just then. I tried to summon up something, anything, that would define that moment in time. There were Reasons. There were Stories. But I had no interest in explaining or exploring them.
“It doesn’t even matter anymore,” I said, and it doesn’t.
That’s of no disrespect to my ex-boyfriend. I just don’t feel wounded at this point. No stitches, no swelling, no bruising, no scar tissue. Now it’s just me, slightly altered. A tiny scar left behind. We all have them.
When does it become just a story? When it doesn’t define who you are.
