You Don’t Have to Explain Yourself to Anyone

You have been explaining yourself for so long that not explaining feels weird. Every choice comes with a reason you need to give. Every decision comes with justification. Every action needs to be defended so people don’t think the wrong thing about you.

Then you realize you don’t have to do that. You really don’t. Nobody actually needs your explanation. They just want it because they are curious or judgmental or they don’t get it. None of those reasons mean you owe them an explanation.

The relief of just not explaining is huge. Someone asks why you did something and instead of launching into the whole story you just say you did it. That’s it. No justification. No reasoning. No attempt to make them understand. Just the fact that it happened.

They might think you are being rude or defensive or hiding something. That’s what they’ll think when you stop explaining everything. They are used to you explaining so the stopping feels like a change in the relationship. Really it’s just you getting tired of something that was never necessary in the first place.

Your choices don’t need to make sense to other people. Your reasons don’t need to satisfy their curiosity. Your life doesn’t need to be justified to people who question it. That’s a hard thing to actually believe but it’s true.

The people who care about you don’t need you to explain yourself to them. The people who need you to explain are the people who don’t actually care. They just want the explanation so they can understand enough to judge you properly. So maybe they don’t deserve the explanation anyway.

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