Level 10 Crash Out

When the story feels bigger than reality

“I’m about to have a level 10 crash out.”

That’s how my daughter Elise described it.

She’s a junior in college now. Clear across the country. Law exam looming. Voice trembling somewhere between rational and unraveling.

From thousands of miles away, I could feel the spiral beginning. The verdict had already been handed down. In her mind, the F was on the transcript. The future was compromised. The disappointment was inevitable.

The exam hadn’t even happened yet.
But the story had.

Nearly twenty years ago, I was traveling for business with a breast pump, a cooler of “liquid gold,” and a body I no longer recognized. Elise was just a few months old. I had already returned to work after a ten-week maternity leave. That felt like a crime, but staying home wasn’t in my DNA. A career had been on my vision board since birth.

Circa July 2005. I was already back at work. Already narrating a future I thought I had to secure. This is one of only a few photos I have of the two of us. Well before the days of iPhones. Long before I learned to question the stories I create.

I was in the bulkhead window seat, feeling that raw postpartum cocktail of emotional fatigue and anxiety about my appearance. I felt painfully exposed by the knowing that, at any moment, my boobs could turn on like a faucet.

Across the aisle sat a blind man with his Golden Retriever. In the middle seat next to me sat another man who kept turning his head in my direction.

Again and again.

Postpartum. Exhausted. Given the faucet situation, I was already hyper-aware. I tightened my jacket and shrank into the seat. I had already cast him in a role. The creeper. The voyeur.

Near the end of the flight, he tapped my arm.

“Excuse me, ma’am. Would you mind pressing the call button? I’m blind.”

I had spent an entire flight protecting myself from a man who couldn’t even see me.

The man wasn’t staring.
The disaster never arrived.
But the narrative did.

---

The Narrative Trap

We do this every day. With our friends, with strangers, and in our text messages. We don’t just see the world. We narrate it.

• The Stranger: Someone looks at us in public, and we decide there is something wrong with our outfit.

• The Friend: A text goes unanswered, and we decide they’re upset.

• The Colleague: A deadline is missed, and we decide they’re lazy or don’t care.

• The Neighbor: Someone holds a different political view, and we decide they’re an enemy we can no longer know.

We assign roles no one auditioned for. We build entire cases, gather evidence, and reach a verdict without ever hearing a word from the defendant.

I spent a flight protecting myself from a man who couldn’t see me.

How much energy are you spending today protecting yourself from a story you made up?
Or grieving an ending that never arrived?

---

I watched it unfold in real time again this week. Elise was on the verge of an ugly cry over her impending Law exam.

We broke it down:

• Me: “In the years since you started high school, how many times have you failed a class?”

• Elise: “Zero.”

• Me: “How many times have you failed an exam?”

• Elise: “Almost once.”

• Me: “So if history is the indicator, what is the likelihood you fail this?”

• Elise: “Nearly zero.”

As we talked, I realized she wasn’t just worried about failing. She had already decided the outcome. She was simply waiting for the clock to catch up to the fear.

She had found herself guilty of a failure that hadn’t even happened yet, just as I had convicted a man who couldn’t even see me.

We don’t wait for reality. We sentence ourselves and others in advance.

Never confirmed but often attributed to Mark Twain

The Bottom Line

Whether it’s a stranger on a plane, an unanswered text, or an upcoming exam, most of the narratives we create in fear never ring true. Yet the worry, the stress, and the alienation we feel in those moments are very real. They steal the energy we need to actually do the work, or worse, to simply be a friend.

The man in the middle seat wasn’t staring. He was likely turning his ear toward the cabin noise to orient himself. The bummer about that moment – I could have made a friend. It was a chance I will never get to know because I had already decided who he was.

This week, ask yourself:

Is the threat I’m fighting real, or is it a ghost I created?

Stop defending yourself against stories that haven’t happened yet.

Save that energy for the truth.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

P.S. I’ve just landed in Switzerland. I’m here for a reset. Of myself. Of the story. More soon.

If you stayed to the end, leave a comment. I read every one. Thoughts, questions, recommendations, even a single emoji.