Imagine you’re nine years old.
You’ve packed your school bag carefully today—not just with books, but with hope. Your friend Lily invited you to her house after school, and this morning—miraculously—your mum said yes.
Not just “we’ll see” or “maybe”—but a real, actual yes. It felt like sunshine. You even smiled.
At school, you tell Lily the good news, and you both make after-school plans like kids do. Easy. Light. No edge to it.
But as the final bell rings, something shifts in your belly. You ignore it. You’ve learned not to trust those feelings. They ruin things. You go to Lily’s house anyway, holding onto the yes like it’s something solid.
The phone rings twenty minutes after you arrive.
You freeze.
You know it’s her. You don’t know how you know—but you do. Something in your chest tightens before the words are even spoken.
Lily’s mum walks in, phone in hand, eyebrows raised.
“Lena, sweetheart… your mum says you need to go home. Right now.”
And just like that, the ground drops out.
You gather your things in silence, cheeks burning. Lily is confused, watching you like you’ve done something wrong. You try to smile. You try to stay small. You try to disappear without disappearing.
The car ride home is silent—until it isn’t.
“Don’t ever do that again.”
“How dare you go off without telling me properly.”
“You didn’t even think, did you?”
You want to scream, You said I could! But your voice gets lost somewhere deep inside your ribs.
That night, you lie in bed staring at the ceiling. You decide something important:
Next time, don’t trust the yes.
Now pause.
How do you think Lena feels?
Not just in her head—but in her body?
Would she tense around kindness? Hold her breath waiting for the turn? Would she double-check every word she hears, every message she receives, searching for what might be hidden underneath?
Would she start to believe the problem is her?
Maybe you’ve been Lena once. Maybe you still are.
This story is for her.
The Early Lessons
Lena stopped asking for things after that.
She learned to say, “It’s okay, I didn’t really want to go anyway.” She stopped bringing permission slips home. Stopped getting excited. Excitement was dangerous. It made the fall worse.
Instead, she became the quiet child. The helpful one. The one who always knew when to vanish from a room just before an argument began. She had a sixth sense for the temperature of the house. A masterful interpreter of sighs, slamming drawers, and the sudden, unnatural calm before the storm.
No one ever told Lena what the rules really were. But she still blamed herself when she broke them.
Adulthood Echoes
Years later, Lena was the kind of person people called “reliable” and “sensitive.” She was the one who noticed when someone in the group was being left out. The one who offered help before it was asked for. The one who always replied with “No worries!” even when she was hurting.
She told herself she liked it that way.
Then she met Elise. The kind of friend who meant it when she said, “Come over any time.” The kind who texted just to check in. Who hugged like she meant it.
Lena wanted to trust it.
And for a while, she did. Until the text came. A short reply to a long message. Something about the tone was… off. No emoji. No warmth. Lena’s heart dropped. She read it five times, then scanned their recent messages. Did she say too much? Was she too much?
That night she didn’t sleep.
The next day, Elise called—cheerful, kind, as if nothing had happened. But Lena had already curled into the old story. You thought it was safe again. You thought wrong.
She began pulling back. Polite, but distant. Elise noticed, but Lena deflected.
“Just busy, that’s all.”
But inside, she was nine years old again. Standing in Lily’s hallway, coat in hand, shame creeping up her spine like cold water.
A Letter Never Sent
One rainy afternoon, Lena sat at her desk, heart heavy. She opened her notebook and, without planning to, began writing a letter.
Not to Elise.
But to the girl in the hallway.
Dear little me,
You didn’t do anything wrong.
You were told it was okay to go. You believed them. You trusted. That is not a failure. That is innocence. That is hope.
You were not wrong to feel excited. You were not wrong to feel safe.
The shame that followed was not yours to carry.
And I am so sorry no one came to tell you that sooner.
She read the letter aloud. Something inside softened. She didn’t magically feel better. But she felt real. Grounded. As if, just maybe, her feelings made sense after all.
The Explanation
If you saw yourself in Lena, you’re not alone.
When love and punishment are tangled in childhood, the nervous system adapts. It learns to mistrust safety. It learns that permission can turn to punishment. That joy must be dulled to avoid disappointment. That trust is risky.
Over time, this creates a survival strategy: stay small, stay careful, stay invisible.
But these strategies—though once protective—can become prisons.
Lena’s story is about more than a girl and a phone call. It’s about how emotional inconsistency quietly rewrites our understanding of the world. And how, years later, we can still live by rules we never agreed to—rules that keep changing.
But here’s the hopeful part:
What was learned in confusion can be unlearned in compassion.
When we begin to notice the pattern, name it, and offer kindness to the part of us still flinching from the past—we begin to rewrite the story. Slowly. Gently. Powerfully.
And maybe, like Lena, we begin to trust again—not the people who harmed us, but ourselves.
I wrote The Rules Keep Changing for anyone who grew up unsure where they stood—whose childhood felt like walking on eggshells. For those who know what it’s like to try to make sense of inconsistent love, to internalise blame, and to carry confusion long into adulthood.
This story is a gentle offering. A way of saying, You were never the problem. Your responses made sense in the world you were raised in. I hope Lena’s journey gives you space to reflect, to soften toward yourself, and to realise—you’re not alone, and your story matters.