People Who Require Footnotes.

Some people are still relating to a version of you that no longer exists.

The strange part is that most of us spend years helping them do it.

I have a handful of friends who’ve seen me do things I would never tell a therapist. Not dramatic things. The unfiltered, slightly feral, completely unedited version of me that only exists when I forget I’m being observed.

They’re the few relationships where I’ve never felt the urge to clean it up first. To provide context. To build a case.

Not because they’ve agreed to some blanket amnesty in advance. Because they already know what’s underneath whatever I’m doing, so the doing doesn’t need a deffense attorney.

I could make the strangest decision of my year and their only question would be: “Are you good?” Not: “Why?”

Most relationships don’t work like this. Most relationships run on a quiet, ongoing subscription fee of justification. Here’s the context. Here’s what happened. Here’s why it makes sense. Let me explain.

With these few friends, the case has been closed for years. What’s left is just the unbothered fact of being known.

For a long time I thought that was rare because of them.

Now I think it’s rare because of me. Because of what I subconsciously stop doing when I’m with them. Explaining my contradictions.

Like most people, I contain a few.

I’m the first person to disappear into a six-hour conversation with a stranger. I’m also the first person to spend an entire day alone and enjoy every second of it. I’ll absorb someone else’s worldview for an afternoon, try it on like a coat, ask every question I can think of, genuinely consider it, then walk away exactly as myself as I walked in. At times I’ll go so physical and competitive I out-boy the boys. Then I’ll spend the evening dancing, giggling and talking nonsense with the girliest girls I know.

For years I felt like I owed people an explanation for all of that. Like the inconsistencies needed smoothing over before anyone could take the whole picture seriously. I don’t feel that anymore. Not because I figured out how all the pieces fit. Because I stopped needing them to.

It took me a while to realise what constantly explaining myself was costing me.

It’s not just exhausting. It quietly teaches you to doubt yourself.

You stop asking: “Why don’t they understand?”

And start asking: “Why am I so hard to understand?”

Am I weird? Am I inconsistent? Have I got myself wrong?

The constant justifying doesn’t just wear you out. It plants a low-grade suspicion that the thing requiring explanation is actually a flaw.

That’s the real cost. Not the energy. The self-doubt it manufactures.

For a long time I thought what I wanted was to be known. That’s why I kept explaining. More context. More information. More pieces of the story.

I assumed that if people had enough data, they’d finally understand me. But knowledge and understanding aren’t the same thing.

Some of the people who know me best understand me least. And some of the people who understand me best know surprisingly little about me. That was the moment I realized I wasn’t actually trying to be understood.

I was trying to earn understanding. As if the right explanation could finally make me make sense.

Somewhere along the way I noticed I wasn’t only doing this with family.

I was doing it with people I’d just met.

I’d meet someone new and within twenty minutes I’d be halfway through a presentation about myself. Not because they’d asked. Because I was already anticipating the misunderstanding.

I’d explain why I move countries. Why I need routine. Why I disappear sometimes. Why I work the way I do. Why I don’t work the way I used to.

Nobody was confused yet. I was solving a problem that didn’t exist.

The strange thing is that once you start explaining yourself, people assume there’s something that needs explaining. You hand them a magnifying glass and point them toward your contradictions. You teach them where to look.

Most people weren’t sitting there thinking: “Hang on. This doesn’t add up.”

I was. And by trying to prevent the misunderstanding, I was creating it.

My siblings think there’s something slightly off with me.

Because one week I’ll text them from a new country with no warning and the next week I’ll say no to a plan because I refuse to break my morning ritual. They know the spontaneous version. The one who moves continents on a whim. The one who books flights with alarming confidence and very little planning. That’s the version they have on file.

What they don’t always see is that every spontaneous move I’ve ever made was followed by a routine so disciplined it borders on religious. The same morning rituals. The same non-negotiable moments of prayer. Movement. Nature. Stillness.

The spontaneity only works because the structure underneath it is non-negotiable.

So when I tell my sister I’m not coming to a morning coffee because it clashes with my routine, she doesn’t see discipline. She sees the easy-going sister suddenly being rigid about something small. The two versions don’t compute. One half of the story makes the other half look contradictory.

I used to explain this. How the routine is what allows the spontaneity. How the structure supports the freedom. How they’re not opposites at all. The explanation never landed. It just generated more confusion. More: “But you used to be so chill.” More quiet conviction that something had changed in me for the worse.

Eventually I realised the case was never winnable. Not because my reasoning was bad. Because she wasn’t actually asking for reasoning. She was asking me to be the version of myself she still had on file.

Family is where this gets hardest.

They have decades of earlier footage. The version of you that fit a certain role. Made sense within a certain story. Needed things explained in a certain way. With them, the urge to explain isn’t just habit. It’s reflex. Built from years of being known one way and gently corrected back into it whenever you drift.

You don’t get witnessed by people who are still holding old footage and expecting it to play. You get explained at. Or you do the explaining yourself, trying to update a file nobody asked you to update.

What’s changed for me recently is simple. I’ve stopped trying to close the gap.

My mum asks why I’m doing the thing I’m doing this time and instead of delivering the well-rehearsed paragraph that makes it land safely, I just say: “Because I want to.” And smile.

Then I let the silence be exactly as awkward as it’s going to be.

It doesn’t always go well. Sometimes the silence gets filled with concern. Or confusion. Or a slightly inaccurate story about me. That’s allowed to happen. The alternative costs more.

Because here’s the distinction I’ve finally learned:

Explaining yourself because someone is genuinely curious is intimacy. Explaining yourself because you’re trying to earn permission to be yourself is self-abandonment.

One sounds like: “Tell me more.” The other sounds like: “Please let me justify my existence.”

Only one of those leads to being known.

The people who love you will not always understand you. The people who understand you will not always agree with you. Neither of those things is a problem.

The real problem is spending your life translating yourself into a version that’s easier to file.

The moment you stop narrating your contradictions, people stop experiencing you as contradictory. The narration is what makes it look like a problem. Remove the narration and it’s just a person. A whole one. Multiple things simultaneously. Some parts finished. Some parts still becoming. Like every human being who’s ever existed.

The translation was never the bridge to being known. It was the thing standing in the way of it.

And the people who can hold you without the translation? They’re rarer than you think. Worth noticing who they are. Worth noticing, too, that some of the people who love you most may never fully be among them. Not because they don’t care. Because they’re still relating to a version of you that no longer exists.

But what if — maybe just maybe — your confidence in not over-explaining yourself will give them confidence in the you showing up today? Wild thought.

For the next couple of weeks, try this. I dare you.

The next time you do the thing you’d normally explain, notice the urge. Feel the justification lining up. Ready to go.

Don’t say it.

Unless someone asks out of genuine curiosity. You’ll feel it.

Otherwise, let the silence stay exactly where the explanation used to live.

Some people will fill the gap with their own assumptions. Let them. Some people won’t need you to fill it at all. They’ll simply trust that there’s a part of the story they haven’t been given yet.

And you’ll know instantly who they are.

Do this for a week. Especially with the people who’ve known you longest. Every time the urge to explain appears, treat it as the cue. Smile instead.

By the end of it you’ll know exactly who in your life witnesses who you’re becoming, and who is still relating to the version they have on file. And for the first time in a long time, you’ll have stopped asking for permission to be the current one.