What I Mean by “Stories”

We don’t actually live inside reality.

We live inside stories about reality.

They tell us who we are, what we’re worth, what matters, what we should fear, what we should chase. Most of them were written long before we ever showed up. We inherit them the way we inherit eye color. Quietly. Automatically. Without consent.

When I say “stories,” I’m not talking about fairy tales or mythology. I mean the roles we step into without noticing. The good parent. The responsible one. The black sheep. The fixer. The disappointment. The strong one who never needs help. Each role comes with an emotional soundtrack. Shame. Guilt. Pressure. Competition. That low-grade ache of never being enough.

Those emotions feel personal. They feel intimate.

They’re not.

They’re the fuel that keeps the system running.

A story runs on emotion the same way a machine runs on electricity. Something happens, an emotional charge fires, and the program boots up. You get undermined at work and suddenly you feel worthless. Not just now, but historically worthless. You try to do everything right for your family and still feel like you’re failing. Same loop. Different costume.

The emotion is real. The explanation that shows up with it is not.

That explanation is inherited code.

This is the simplest way I know how to say it.

Story is the program.

Emotion is the fuel.

Belief is the lock that keeps it looping.

The more emotional charge a story gets, the more solid it feels. That’s why the same patterns repeat across families and cultures. Savior and sinner. Victim and hero. Good and evil. Success and failure. Same operating system. Just new branding.

Waking up to this doesn’t make you less human. It actually gives you your humanity back.

You don’t stop being a parent or a friend or a witch or a partner. You just stop confusing the background noise of the system with your own voice. Not every emotion that passes through you belongs to you. Panic. Shame. Chronic guilt. The constant need to prove something. Most of that is residue. Static from the collective story.

Once you see that, something subtle changes. Emotion stops being identity and starts being information again. You can feel deeply without being dragged into a loop.

Here’s the part most people miss.

When an emotion hits hard, it almost never arrives alone. It brings history with it. A whole archive. Your father. A teacher. An ex. A boss. Sometimes even older stuff. Survival patterns passed down quietly through generations. The feeling insists that this moment is about now, but it’s not. It’s a replay.

That’s how story hides. In emotional continuity.

The same sensation keeps showing up, wearing different faces, convincing you it’s personal. But it’s one long thread trying to keep itself alive.

You don’t have to relive every memory or fix every chapter. You don’t have to analyze it to death. You just see it clearly. This isn’t me. This is a loop.

And when that recognition lands, something collapses.

That collapse is what I call the Between. The Crack. The space between stories where awareness steps in. Not an escape hatch. Not transcendence. Just a gap where the program loses traction.

Inside that gap, emotion turns back into neutral energy. Sensation without narrative. Data without identity. You stop being written by the story and start responding from presence.

Here’s what that looks like in real life.

Someone undermines you at work. That old punch hits your gut. I’m not good enough. The mind wants to pile on. This always happens. I never get what I deserve. Same script, same gravity.

Instead of running it, you pause.

You feel the sensation. Heat. Tightness. Pressure. You watch it without explaining it. You don’t feed it with history. You don’t argue with it. You don’t spiritualize it.

That pause is the Between.

The emotion moves. It clears. And then something interesting happens. Action becomes clean. Maybe you speak up. Maybe you set a boundary. Maybe you don’t. But whatever you do isn’t driven by residue. It’s not performative. It’s precise.

And because it’s clean, it has consequences. Real ones. A conversation shifts. A door opens. A pattern breaks.

Life starts responding again once you’re not trapped inside the loop.

From there on, you still feel things. You still love. You still grieve. You still argue. But the gravity is gone. You’re no longer acting out a script written decades or centuries ago. You’re here.

When a story tries to claim you, you don’t have to fight it.

You notice it.

You feel the emotion fully, without commentary. You recognize it as not yours. And you let awareness hold the space until the signal underneath comes back online.

That quiet that follows isn’t numbness.

It’s clarity.

That’s what freedom actually sounds like.