The Horror Stories We Tell Ourselves in Order to Live
The notion that a story could save someone’s life has always struck me as a pathos-laden cliché. Not that I underestimate the written word: As a child, I discovered that stories were the ultimate escape. The world outside was dreary and gray, but in my notebook, stray cats could talk and unpopular girls could fly. When I grew up and became a writer, stories were how I brought to life the worlds I was not brave enough to step into because they were too seductive—or too frightening. But I’d never considered that the same tools used by writers to create imaginary stories could be useful for people trying to survive an unimaginable reality. And then came the war, which taught me otherwise.
In early October, I was hard at work on a new novel. Immediately after Hamas’s attack on Israel, I saved the file, knowing I would not be revisiting it for weeks. In addition to being a writer, I have a day job as a clinical psychologist, and Shalvata, the psychiatric hospital in Hod Hasharon, near Tel Aviv, where I work, declared a state of emergency. The massacre in the kibbutzim along Israel’s southern border had
