There was once a girl who always believed the stories she heard, whether they were stories about the rain and the clouds or stories about aliens landing on earth. She believed them all. If someone said she was beautiful she would believe them and feel happy and if someone said she was ugly she would believe them and feel sad and ugly. If she failed at something she believed she was a failure and if she succeeded at something else then she was a success and the world was her oyster. She believed men when they said they loved her and she was the most wonderful creature in the world and that they would never love another and she gave her energy and her life to feed these stories to keep them coming to validate her because if we are not our stories then who are we?
One day she found out someone was lying. This was a huge shock to her, it had never occurred to her that someone would lie. Then she looked around her and realized everyone was lying, including herself. She was lying to herself. She believed each and every one of the stories she heard and told them to herself and there had been a part of her that knew they weren’t true but she ignored that part and kept believing the stories because they told her how to feel and how to be.
She stopped listening to the stories. She stopped listening to all the stories, when someone told her a story she would smile sweetly and look for the truth behind the story and the truth behind the story generally ran something like ‘listen to me I am lonely’ or ‘please believe this story of how amazing I am because I need your approval’ or ‘if I tell you how wonderful and beautiful you are you will stay with me and love me’ or simply ‘I need love’
As she stopped listening to the stories she began to lose her own stories and she saw that she wasn’t beautiful or ugly or a failure or a success or the most wonderful creature in the world capable of inspiring undying love in men, that these were simply stories to make people feel good or bad about themselves and it made her sad to let go of these beliefs. She wanted to be beautiful and a success and the most loved and most adored but these were illusions and stories and so she let them go.
What was past the stories? I am still finding out, it is a place of calmness and sense of unshakable self that comes from the heart. It is my own connection to my truth that does not depend on outside approval or a need to comply. It is not selling myself for love and realizing that being on my own does not mean failure, it is the letting go of all the stories bit by bit and facing the fear that comes with letting go my way of manipulating the world to see me the way my mind wants to be seen. It is happiness and a feeling of freedom that is greater than anything the stories can offer. It is love.
