Unlikely Story

by Ali Rosen

“I’ve always liked Carl Rogers and the idea of self-concept. Who we imagine we are creates a kind of feedback loop into how we see ourselves, and that then influences who we actually are.”

Seeing him like this gives me a sudden pang, a realization that I shouldn’t always read the endings of my books. I don’t want to be a person who always keeps everything safe. Life is meant to be lived. Books end—they have a trajectory and then a conclusion—but people go on. Messy, predictable, messing-up people. We fall down and get up with no guarantee we won’t fall down all over again. Nothing is tidy, and there are no neat bows. Each of us is a hundred different versions of ourselves with different people, and they all converge into a single flawed human.