It is satisfying to have a narrative self, to be able to tell a more or less coherent story culminating in the present with equal parts assigned to self and world. It is something you do for an interlocutor, a fantastic construction which gives expression to the immediate feelings they elicit, even if they, the interlocutor, the feelings, are largely imaginary. You don't entirely believe it in the telling but that doesn't matter since you have now handed over a good part of your truth. But something like this doesn't happen, the narrative self is a thing of nostalgia and brief slippages; the anchors have been let go. But you like to see it done, you admire the tenacity of these narrators, thinking they absolve you somehow, which they don't.