it's not that deep (to everyone else)

I used to spend an embarrassing amount of time trying to make people understand me. I would replay conversations in the shower and think of the thing I should've said instead. I would rewrite text messages before sending them. I’d explain myself before anyone even asked for an explanation. If I felt misunderstood, I treated it like a problem that needed solving, as if somewhere out there was the perfect combination of words that would finally make someone say, "Now I get you."

I think that’s just a part of the human experience. We all want to be seen and want the people we love to understand why we make the choices we make, why certain things hurt us and why we are the way we are. Extremely valid, but I realized that it’s not that deep (at least not to everyone else).

That conversation you've replayed fifty times? They probably haven't thought about it since it ended. Most people are too consumed with their own lives to spend much time narrating yours. The version of you that lives in someone else's mind has always been out of your control anyway.

I don't mean that in a cynical way. I actually think it's comforting and extremely liberating. For so long, I treated being understood like a destination or an "aha’ moment. If I could just explain myself one more time or defend my intentions one more time, maybe people would finally see me correctly. What I was really doing was asking strangers, acquaintances, family members, friends, even people who had already decided who I was, to hand me permission to be myself. That permission was never theirs to give.

Emotions are real. Your, mine and theirs. The desire to be understood is real too. It’s valid as hell. Your emotions deserve your attention before they deserve anyone else's agreement and understanding. I think a lot of us quietly perform our lives at one point or another. We soften our opinions because we don't want to seem difficult. We over-explain our boundaries because we want them to sound reasonable. We even make decisions while mentally preparing ourselves for how we'll eventually tell everyone else, and it’s soooo exhausting.

I got tired of editing my life for an audience that wasn't paying nearly as much attention as I imagined. Nobody cares, literally. People will misunderstand you with a five-minute explanation, a two-hour conversation and even while you're silent. Sometimes people misunderstand you because they can't see past their own experiences, and sometimes they'll misunderstand you because they don't want to. A harsh reality but it’s real.

Let people have the wrong version of you if correcting it costs your peace. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn't mean becoming cold or careless or refusing accountability or pretending other people's feelings don't matter. Just accept that your life cannot revolve around managing other people's perception of it.

You don't have to convince everyone you're kind or prove you're growing or explain every decision that makes sense to you. Your life doesn’t have to be digestible for people who were never going to understand you anyway.

For me, freedom isn’t being understood. It took me years to get here, and I believe that freedom is waking up one day and realizing you no longer need to be understood.

Your real life is happening while you're busy trying to explain it. Go live it.