I was asked this question at a friend’s birthday over the weekend, and it caught me completely off guard.
“What’s your story?”
It’s one of those questions that sounds simple in your head… Until it’s asked of you. Out loud. In a pub. With a slice of pizza in your hand and people you’ve only just met looking at you, waiting for something neat and digestible in return. And suddenly you’re thinking, “Ah shit. How do I answer that?”
Maybe it’s easier if you’re someone who enjoys small talk. But I’m not. I like depth. I like jumping straight to what makes people tick. How they build their lives. What they chase. What they walk away from. Why they love the way they do. Why they leave. Why they stay. But when you’re sitting in a pub, surrounded by 95% of people you don’t yet know because you’re meeting for the first time, you don’t want to unload your life story. I mean, it wouldn’t fit into a neat answer anyway. So how do you describe yourself in a headline? A summarisation of yourself you can package up and pass over with a slice of pizza in your hand?
I had nothing.
Not because there was nothing there to talk about. Not to sound too self-indulgent, but I’ve had a pretty full life so far. My mind just went blank trying to decide which parts counted. Which parts should make the cut? Which versions of me were worth sharing in a first introduction? Books make it SO easy by having a blurb. But I am not a book. So I stalled. I laughed it off and did what I’m sure most of us do when we do not know how to summarise ourselves. I underplayed it.
But then we all started talking properly. About careers. Interests. Love. Loss. You know how it goes once the wine and beer start flowing, and everyone relaxes a little. Guards come down, people open up, and the conversation starts to move differently because we’re all less cautious and more curious, like we’re no longer skimming the surface of things because the alcohol has taken the edge off of the vulnerability.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, I found myself sharing pieces of my own life. About life. London. Why I moved. How it happened. And as the details spilt out, I noticed the looks across the table and that quiet pause that tells you you’ve just said something bigger than you realised. The one where you realise your earlier answer to “what’s your story” had quietly minimised your own life, simply because it doesn’t fit into a single sentence.
It’s a bit of a habit, if I’m honest. Because when I actually look at my life properly, so much of it has unfolded like that. A series of moments that started as small steps and became bigger than I ever realised at the time.
Take moving to London. I didn’t leap straight in. I moved to Milton Keynes first and booked a hotel in the city for two weeks, just to see if I liked living there rather than visiting it occasionally for a day trip. I dropped my dog off with Liz, the breeder I bought her from, who also did kennelling, and checked in with one simple intention. To find out whether my love affair with London would still hold up when I was fully immersed in it.
Clearly, the answer was yes. I absolutely loved it. Because I’ve been here for almost five years now. But that only happened because of one of those small moments that quietly spiralled into something much bigger.
You see, after my two weeks in the city, I went back to collect my dog, and Liz asked how it went. I told her how much I loved London and that I wanted to move there. Her first response was practical. “Hmm, expensive.” But her second was immediate. “I know a guy.”
She picked up her phone, dialled his number, and handed it to me without hesitation. That was the moment everything changed and I’m forever filled with gratitude. Because after that call, we met, we got along, I moved in with him and his housemate, and even though I’ve since moved out, they’re still some of my closest friends. All because of a small moment. A sentence said out loud, and a decision made before I had time to overthink it. And from there, my life evolved into something I could never have planned for. Friendships. Career. Love. Adventure. All of it stemmed from a handful of small steps that turned into something far bigger than I ever expected.
And I think that’s why that question stopped me in my tracks. Because “what’s your story” asks for something finished. Something you can hand over with confidence, like it’s already been written and bound. Like, in business, we’re taught to have elevator pitches. A neat way to explain what we do and what we offer, or where we want to go. But life doesn’t really work like that.
People aren’t tidy novels with a clear beginning, middle and end. Or maybe some people are. But from what I’ve seen so far, most of us are collections of chapters, written as we go, with no obvious through line until we look back later and try to make sense of it all. And even then, just when you think you’ve got yourself figured out, life throws another lesson into the mix and suddenly the version of you that felt so certain just one moment ago feels like a draft.
If I’m honest, I think I’ve always struggled with knowing which parts to share. I left home at 18 because my family life was chaotic, and I was tired of being collateral damage in someone else’s mess. Ever since then, I’ve been quietly testing different versions of life. New cities. New jobs. New ways of doing things. All trying to find my place. And what I’ve learnt is that I like arriving somewhere knowing nothing, letting anonymity remind me that there are a thousand ways to live and I don’t have to pick just one. But alongside that, I crave connection. I want to build a big, beautiful life with people in it, where connection feels meaningful, and there’s no need to perform or negotiate my worth, because belonging doesn’t come at the cost of growth.
Those two things have always existed side by side for me. The pull towards movement and the pull towards belonging. And they’ve shaped everything. How often I’ve started again. How I work. How I love. How willing I am to walk away when something no longer fits. So when someone asks me for my story, I never quite know which thread they’re actually asking for.
Are they asking about who I am at this very moment? Or how I became her?
Do they want to know where I’ve lived? Who I’ve loved? What I do for work?
The versions of myself I’ve shed along the way? The risks I’ve taken? The ones I didn’t?
Because depending on the thread, the answers to those questions very much change.
And I think that’s where the hesitation creeps in. Because once you start pulling at those threads, you’re not just telling a story, but admitting to a shit-ton of uncertainty too. Because I’m not fearless. I’m courageous yet scared of many things, like being alone in the dark, or open water, or fucking everything up. But I’ve also learned that you can’t really ruin your life in the way we’re taught to fear. You can make a decision, choose a direction, and life can still meet you somewhere else entirely.
You’re only ever one choice away from something new.
So I guess when someone asks me “what’s your story?”, I malfunction because my brain immediately tries to hold everything at once. Not just where I am now, but how I got here, what I’ve outgrown and what I’m still becoming. And I don’t know if I’ll ever find a way to summarise that, because most of us aren’t finished stories. We’re humans in motion, shaped by choices, detours, courage, fear, and a fuckload of uncertainty in between.
