Rewriting the Story I’ve Told Myself

My negative self narrative is not my soundtrack.

Photo by Kat Stokes via Unsplash

At the age of 45, I’m not just starting a new chapter in my life. I am completely rewriting the book. From the beginning. The previous draft doesn’t suit me. It’s not my story.

I have anxiety that comes from fear. I have a negative self narrative that spins on a turntable in my head. It’s so familiar, I barely noticed when it started to skip. The skipping began to drive me crazy. A jolt that I needed to turn the record over, get a different one, do something different. Anything. It’s time.

These thoughts have controlled me and my life for 45 years. If I’m going to spend the back half of my life being who I really want to be, who I love, I need to rewrite the story I’ve told myself. It means tearing out what remains of that previous story, the one that’s not mine.

The story I’ve told myself is that I’m unlovable.

Someone very important to me actually told me this once. I heard him loud and clear. I believed him. It became true. It has lived in the back of my head for a decade as a forgone conclusion.

I have spent much of my life bending myself to whatever anyone has needed me to be in order to be lovable. If that love was pulled away, I adapted…