For most of my life, nothing was neutral.
Every look meant something.
Every pause carried meaning.
Every change in tone became a signal I had to decode.
I didn’t realise I was doing it.
I thought I was being perceptive.
Intuitive.
Emotionally intelligent.
But really, I was exhausted.
Because I wasn’t living in the moment —
I was living in the story I attached to the moment.
I later realised this constant story-making was the same noise that had been blocking my ability to hear myself clearly in the first place.
And the stories were relentless.
If someone didn’t text back straight away, the story arrived instantly:
“They’re losing interest.”
“I said something wrong.”
“I’m about to be abandoned.”
If someone sounded flat on the phone:
“They’re annoyed with me.”
“I’ve disappointed them.”
“I’m a burden.”
If plans changed:
“I’m not a priority.”
“I matter less.”
“I always come last.”
I didn’t pause to ask if any of this was true.
My body reacted as if it already was.
My chest tightened.
My stomach dropped.
My mind sprinted ahead, building entire futures from single moments.
And I called this being realistic.
The truth?
I was living inside a constant internal courtroom, putting myself on trial for things no one had actually accused me of.
The day it shifted wasn’t dramatic.
It was quiet. Almost boring.
Someone cancelled plans with me — politely, reasonably, without blame.
And I felt the familiar surge rise up:
Here it comes.
The story.
The spiral.
The self-erasure.
But something interrupted it.
Not a positive thought.
Not a reframe.
Not a spiritual insight.
Just a question:
“What if this doesn’t mean anything about me?”
The question landed differently.
It didn’t demand an answer.
It didn’t try to soothe me.
It simply opened space.
So I tried something radical.
I didn’t attach a story.
I didn’t decide they didn’t care.
I didn’t decide I was unimportant.
I didn’t decide this was a pattern or a prophecy.
I just let the moment be… a moment.
And something shocking happened.
Nothing collapsed.
No abandonment followed.
No rejection arrived.
No emotional catastrophe unfolded.
My nervous system, however, didn’t know what to do.
Because it had been surviving on stories for years.
Stories were how I made sense of uncertainty.
Stories were how I stayed alert.
Stories were how I tried to stay safe.
But they came at a cost.
Every story I attached pulled me out of my body and into my head.
Every story demanded a reaction.
Every story required me to manage, fix, anticipate, or brace.
Once I stopped narrating everything, it became easier to simply name what emotions were actually there instead of inventing meaning around it.
When I stopped attaching them — even briefly — my body softened in a way I wasn’t used to.
Not relief.
Not joy.
Space.
Here’s what I started to notice when I didn’t attach a story:
Someone was quiet → and I didn’t shrink.
A message was short → and I didn’t chase meaning.
A misunderstanding happened → and I didn’t turn it into an identity flaw.
Without the story, the sensation passed.
That part stunned me.
The feelings still arose — but they moved through instead of lodging inside me.
I could finally see how many of these stories were just unprocessed emotions trying to move — emotions I’d never fully felt or named.”
Before, the story locked them in place.
Fear + story = suffering.
Discomfort + story = identity.
Uncertainty + story = panic.
That’s when it became obvious that these stories weren’t coming from my true self — they were coming from my survival self, trying to stay ahead of imagined threats.
Without the story, discomfort became temporary.
Without the story, silence became neutral.
Without the story, I stayed with myself.
I began to see how many of my relationships had been shaped not by what people did — but by the meaning I assigned to it.
I wasn’t reacting to behaviour.
I was reacting to the narrative my nervous system had memorised years ago.
A narrative that said:
“Connection is fragile.”
“You’re easy to leave.”
“You must monitor everything.”
“Relaxing is dangerous.”
Letting go of stories didn’t make me passive.
It made me present.
Instead of assuming intent, I asked questions.
Instead of spiralling, I paused.
Instead of filling silence with fear, I let it breathe.
And slowly, something profound shifted.
I stopped living in anticipation of pain.
I stopped rehearsing abandonment.
I stopped arguing with ghosts.
Not because life suddenly became perfect —
but because I wasn’t adding unnecessary suffering on top of uncertainty.
The greatest freedom wasn’t detachment.
It was non-assumption.
I realised that most of the pain I had been carrying wasn’t happening to me.
It was happening inside the story I was telling.
And when I stopped telling it — even for a moment —
I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Here.
Whole.
Unbraced.
Not waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Just… here.
That’s when I understood:
Peace didn’t come from controlling outcomes.
It came from releasing the meaning I glued to every moment.
And once I tasted that kind of freedom,
it became very hard to go back to living inside stories that weren’t actually happening.
Because the present moment —
when you stop narrating it —
is far kinder than the future you keep predicting.