And then the next time it was slightly more. “Nora got a scholarship, she’s so capable.” And over time the scholarship became full-funded in the telling, and the capability became a preference, and by the time I was twenty-six and working at my first actual clinic operations job, the family story was that I had flourished independently because I’d chosen to.
I knew the story wasn’t accurate. I let it stand.
I want to explain why, because it’s not a simple thing.
Part of it was pride. The true story had parts I was embarrassed about: the withdrawn class, the nights I did math at midnight trying to figure out whether I could afford both groceries and the next loan payment, the job interview I went to still wearing my billing office ID badge because I’d run out of time to change. These were not parts of myself I was eager to distribute to relatives.
Part of it was exhaustion. The energy required to correct a family narrative is enormous, and I didn’t have enormous energy. I had enough energy to go to work and go to class and call my mother on Sundays and maintain something like a functional life. That was most of my budget.
Part of it was avoidance. Correcting the story would have meant starting a conversation I didn’t know how to finish, with people I still had to sit across from at every holiday.
And part of it — the part I’m least proud of — is that I think I half-believed the story myself, sometimes. I half-believed that maybe I had chosen this. That maybe I was, in fact, someone who didn’t need help. That needing help and not getting it, and building something anyway, meant I hadn’t actually needed the help.