Your brain is a terrible journalist. Misquotes sources. Fabricates context. Runs stories based on anonymous tips from your childhood.
But it writes with such confidence.
"She didn't text back because she's mad at you." Source? Unnamed anxiety from 2009. "He looked at you funny in the meeting because he thinks you're incompetent." Evidence? Vibes. General vibes.
We walk around treating assumptions like sworn testimony. Building entire legal cases on evidence that wouldn't survive a fact-check, let alone cross-examination.
I once spent an entire weekend convinced a friend was angry at me. Constructed a whole narrative. Reviewed the evidence. Found supporting details in texts that, upon re-reading, were just... short. She was busy. That was the whole story. Four days of internal litigation over someone being at Target.
Your brain will fill in every gap with the worst possible explanation because your brain's job isn't accuracy — it's protection. And protected people see threats everywhere, even in punctuation.
The period at the end of that text isn't passive-aggressive. It's just a period.
Probably.
