Our Stories Become Rabbit Holes — and Self-Fulfilling Prophesies

There’s a reason the past repeats itself

Down the rabbit hole, I go. It happens almost daily. I check my Facebook memories, and while I’m grateful to be reminded of my children’s growth and my own, I also confront difficult memories. Sometimes, they are written out and shared, but more often than not, they are the untold story behind a completely innocuous post.

To complicate matters, I read through articles I’d written when I first started sharing my work publicly. While you’d think I would cringe at my earlier, less-than-polished work, I was actually more focused on the emotional journey I took through my review. It was a rabbit hole of its own, and I went down, down, down into the dark.

Actually, it was more like spiraling down into the dark, watching myself climb out of it, and falling all over again.

I’m so exhausted from falling all over again.

But doesn’t everyone feel this way? Don’t we all feel like we work hard for our progress, and then we have to start all over again? It may feel like we’re alone in the experience, and yet it’s incredibly common. This is how we learn and grow, and yet it feels like we’re doing something wrong.

A wise friend said something to me recently. She cautioned me not to create a self-fulfilling prophecy from the patterns of my past. Just because I’ve had common experiences doesn’t mean I have to continue the pattern. In fact, just being aware there is a pattern can help break it.

I asked myself what story I’ve been telling that could lend itself to being repeated. I want to say unrequited love because I’ve been there before, and here I am again, but I think there’s a larger narrative in play — one I may be perpetuating.

Everyone I love leaves.

That’s the narrative. It’s also one of my defining stories, cultivated since early childhood. For me, love was something that could be withdrawn at every misstep and failure. I had learned that it was conditional, but I also internalized the idea that it was something I had to work to keep — a product of moving too often and trying desperately to maintain those connections. Absence never made the heart grow fonder; it made the heart forget me.

When I was in my early twenties, I lost my closest friend. No, he didn’t die. He just ghosted me — years before ghosting was even a term. Pre-social media, this was so much easier to do. Unreturned phone calls, letters that never received a response — the person I loved the most and trusted absolutely let me down. Even now, I want to say that this is where I began the narrative, but it only reinforced a long-established one. I could love, I could trust, but I would be left behind.

Talk about trust issues!

But have I created a self-fulfilling prophecy out of it? Have I allowed my anxiety, rooted deep in trauma, to become the story of my life? Wading through past memories and articles makes me wonder.

In Doctor Who, the companions always get names. The Girl Who Waited. The Last Centurion. The Impossible Girl. Bad Wolf. Have I made myself The Girl Left Behind? Is that the story I want to claim for myself?

I could have spun my story in so many ways. I could have been The Woman Who Loved or The Steadfast Heart. I could have defined myself by my love and loyalty rather than my loss. Instead, I have focused on the loss.

I wonder how I’m playing this out right now. Is my story about unrequited love, or is it about being brave enough to love again, even if it didn’t go according to plan? Maybe my focus should be on having had the opportunity to know and love the best person I’ve ever met rather than on the loss. We spin our narratives, and we keep tilting them toward the darkness rather than finding the light.

I can tell a very sad story about my marriage and divorce, but am I leaving out the part where this experience freed me to live exactly the life I needed? Those experiences, however challenging, pushed me into the career I always wanted but never thought I’d have. And all the relationships that ended — weren’t they meant to end? Didn’t they push me toward something so much better for me?

We need to examine our narratives. Having failed at relationships doesn’t mean that failure is inevitable. It just means those relationships were meant to fail, and yet we still tried. Why do we automatically assume that means something bad about ourselves? Why don’t we see that it’s hopeful and good and a way of learning how to be better?

Our stories become rabbit holes. If we aren’t careful, we are propping up the patterns rather than breaking them down. We tell ourselves a story, and we believe it. Then, we put ourselves in situations that reinforce the story we’re already telling. We do it again. Then we do it again.

Until we don’t anymore.

Everyone I love doesn’t leave. We outgrow people. Sometimes, people outgrow us. Relationships change. The narrative isn’t the truth. It’s a child’s whispered fear in the dark, a nightmare that keeps coming true as long as we believe it.

We don’t have to keep telling ourselves the same old story. Instead of saying we failed, we can be proud of ourselves for trying. Instead of focusing on the loss, we can turn our attention to gratitude and love. Instead of wrapping ourselves inside our hurt feelings and wearing them like a second skin, we can realize that we’re meant to feel these things for a while, not cling to them forever.

I don’t want to fall into any more rabbit holes, and I don’t want to create patterns in my future that mirror my past. I just want to love well and live from a place of joy. To do that, it may be time to leave the old story behind so that I can tell a new one.