Listening To What I Ran From

For most of my life, I didn’t realise how loud the silence was.

On the outside, things looked solid. Strong body. Disciplined habits. Certifications, plans, goals.

I learned how to push, how to endure, how to keep moving forward no matter what was

happening inside. Motion became my safety. Achievement became my language. And

progress—always progress—became the proof that I was okay.

But underneath the movement lived something unspoken.

Pain that never learned how to speak.

Shame that hid behind competence.

Guilt that whispered I should be more grateful.

Loneliness that followed me even when I wasn’t alone.

I didn’t name these things at first. I trained around them. Worked around them. Outran them. I

told myself that if I just reached the next version of my life—fitter, freer, more aligned—then the

ache would disappear.

It didn’t.

Because what I called motivation was often avoidance.

What I called vision was sometimes escape.

There were needs inside me that went unmet for years:

The need to be deeply loved without performing.

The need for passion that wasn’t productive.

The need for fulfillment that didn’t require proving my worth.

Instead of listening to those needs, I tried to satisfy them with future goals. I placed my

happiness just beyond the horizon—on the other side of the next plan, the next reinvention, the

next “once I get there.”

And when I did get there, I felt it again.

That quiet sense of something missing.

For a long time, I thought the feelings were the problem. I treated sadness, anger, restlessness,

and emptiness like obstacles to overcome—signals that something was wrong with me. I tried to

fix them, reframe them, train them away.

What I didn’t realise was that the feelings were information.

They weren’t asking to be silenced.

They were asking to be listened to.

Not casually.

Not intellectually.

But deeply.

When I finally slowed down enough to hear them, they told me uncomfortable truths.

They told me I was living too far in the future and not enough in my body.

They told me I was confusing direction with presence.

They told me I was building a life that looked free, while parts of me were still trapped in old

patterns of self-abandonment.

I had learned how to coach others into clarity, but I hadn’t always offered myself the same

honesty. I had learned how to guide people back to themselves, while quietly leaving parts of

myself behind.

The biggest shift came when I stopped assuming my thoughts were the truth.

I began to notice how often my mind projected fear into the future—stories about what I might

lose, who I might disappoint, or what it would mean if I stopped striving. I realised how easily I

mistook familiar thoughts for facts.

But thoughts are not truth.

They are interpretations—often shaped by old wounds, unmet needs, and learned survival

strategies.

Truth lives somewhere else.

Truth lives in the body.

In the tight chest that says, “This isn’t aligned.”

In the heaviness that says, “You’re carrying something that isn’t yours.”

In the quiet longing that says, “I want more depth, not more success.”

As I began to separate truth from thought, something softened. I stopped demanding that my life

make sense on paper. I started asking whether it felt honest. I stopped forcing clarity and

allowed it to emerge through listening.

Not listening for answers—but listening for signals.

Signals that told me when I was chasing instead of choosing.

Signals that told me when a goal was rooted in fear instead of love.

Signals that reminded me I don’t need to become someone else to be whole.

I am still learning.

I still catch myself drifting into the future, tying my worth to what’s next. I still feel the old pull to

fix, improve, optimize. But now, when pain, shame, guilt, or loneliness appear, I don’t rush to get

rid of them.

I sit.

I breathe.

I ask, What are you here to show me?

And slowly, the relationship with myself changes. The feelings stop being enemies. The needs

stop being weaknesses. The silence becomes less heavy—because it’s no longer ignored.

This is not a story of arrival.

It’s a story of turning toward.

Toward the unspoken.

Toward the unmet.

Toward the truth beneath the thought.

And in that turning, something real begins to grow—not a future version of me, but a present

one.