I’ve always gone the extra mile.
Not in the LinkedIn, “thrilled to announce” kind of way. Not as capitalism’s employee of the month.
I mean emotionally.
Ever since I could form sentences, I’ve been giving people more. More context. More explanations. More reassurance. More access to my inner world than they ever asked for. I thought I was being transparent. Mature. Easy to understand.
It turns out I was negotiating for something else entirely.
Belonging.
Respect.
Safety.
Maybe even self-worth.
It wasn’t communication. It was a plea dressed up as being ‘down to earth.’
I only realised recently that my habit of over-explaining wasn’t generosity;it was fear. If I could just provide enough evidence, enough backstory, enough footnotes to my own existence, surely people wouldn’t misunderstand me. Surely they wouldn’t leave.
Last year dismantled me in ways I didn’t know were possible.
Motherhood burnout. Debt. My partner’s car accident. A serious illness that forced my body to wave a giant white flag. Friendships quietly disappearing. Finally seeing family dynamics for what they were instead of what I’d hoped they’d become.
People love talking about the death of the ego like it’s a spiritual spa treatment. Like you come out glowing, floating six inches above the ground (chakras aligned and all that).
Mine wasn’t like that.
I’ve always been someone who sheds identities fairly easily. Opinions change. Versions of me expire. I usually welcome it.
But this shedding felt different.
I didn’t feel lighter.
I didn’t feel heavier.
I just felt... awake. It felt like mourning something that was only dead to me.
First came betrayal. The painful realisation that I’d spent years abandoning myself before anyone else had the chance (no doubt after being shown how to).
Then came a dawning, the type that a little further every day, like sunlight slowly finding new corners of a room.
It’s honestly been one of the greatest gifts of my life.
Somewhere inside that unraveling, I had to meet one of my oldest wounds: abandonment.
Except it wasn’t the version I’d imagined.
I’d spent years insisting I couldn’t possibly have abandonment issues because I genuinely enjoy my own company. I could spend an entire day alone and feel perfectly content.
But enjoying solitude isn’t the opposite of fearing abandonment.
Being alone isn’t the same as feeling lonely.
That distinction changed everything.
Because underneath that wound grew all its familiar branches.
Overthinking.
Oversharing.
Over-explaining.
Making sure everyone had the entire picture so they couldn’t possibly misunderstand me.
“If they know everything,” I thought, “they’ll finally know me.” (and I wouldn’t feel so alone)
Ironically, it made the inevitable misunderstandings hurt even more.
Whether someone misunderstood me accidentally or deliberately, it hit me with the weight of betrayal because I’d already emptied every drawer of myself onto the table.
The tragedy of self-abandonment is that it disguises itself as connection.
You think you’re building intimacy.
You’re actually auditioning for acceptance. And the auditions never bloody end.
The strangest part is that our survival strategies have an awful sense of humour.
The very behaviours we develop to avoid our deepest fears often escort us directly toward them.
The harder I tried to control how people perceived me, the less authentic I became.
The more I tried to prevent rejection, the more disconnected I felt.
The more desperately I tried to be understood, the lonelier I became.
It’s as though fear says, “Give me the steering wheel. I know a shortcut.”
For healing purposes,
So here’s the gist, or atleast what I’ve gathered in the last 10 months:
You don’t have to earn understanding through exhaustion.
You don’t need to narrate your humanity into being worthy of love.
You are allowed to let people misunderstand you without launching a closing argument (welcome it and don’t try to explain your side either… its part of the whole human thing it seems)
I truly believe the greatest act of healing isn’t convincing other people to stay but becoming the one person who finally stops leaving yourself.
Until then, redirect the urge.
Write instead of explaining.
Journal instead of rehearsing imaginary conversations.
Read something that reminds you there are people who’ve survived this before you.
Create something that belongs to you before it belongs to anyone else.