Things I no longer explain about myself
There was a time when I carried a script in my head for every social situation. Pre-rehearsed justifications. Carefully worded exits. Apologies for being the way I am, delivered before anyone even asked. I spent years explaining myself to people who weren’t really listening. And somewhere along the way, I stopped.At some point, a quieter truth settled in. Nobody is coming to save you. Nobody will do the work for you. People can be great cheerleaders. They can hold your hand through the worst of it. But when the crowd thins out and the noise dies down, you’re the one still standing there. Holding yourself. That’s not a sad realisation. It’s a freeing one. Because once you stop waiting for someone else to validate the way you live, you finally start living it.
So here are a few things that I no longer make a case for.
My need for solitude
People hear “I need to be alone” and translate it as “I don’t want to be around you.” That’s never been it. Solitude is not absence. It’s the only place I can hear my own thoughts without competing with someone else’s expectations. It’s where I return to myself after a long day of being poured into several cups at once.
In a world that treats collaboration like a religion and visibility like virtue, wanting to sit still in a quiet room sounds almost rebellious. But I’ve stopped apologising for it. The noise will still be there when I step back into it. It always is.
My slow responses
We’ve built a culture where not replying instantly is a character flaw. Where being unreachable for a few hours means something is wrong. Where “seen” is a verdict.
Not everything needs immediacy. Not every message deserves to interrupt whatever fragile rhythm I’m holding together. I’ve started treating my phone the way I treat guests. Welcome, but on my terms. Most things can wait. Most people know that too, even if they won’t admit it.
My smaller circle
I used to count. How many showed up at my birthday. How many followed me back. How many replied in the group chat. I tracked closeness like a metric, and then wondered why it never felt close enough.
At some point, I stopped counting and started noticing. Who called after my mother died, not just on day one, but on day forty, when the casseroles stopped and the loneliness didn’t. Who remembered the small things I mentioned in passing. Who could sit with me in silence and not rush to fill it.
That list is short. Painfully short sometimes. But every name on it carries weight. I’ve learned that connection isn’t a numbers game. You can have five hundred people at your wedding and still feel unseen. Or you can have three people who know the exact sound of your laugh when something is actually funny, and that’s more than enough.
Leaving early
There’s a moment at every gathering where the energy shifts. Where I stop participating and start performing. And if I stay past that point, I become someone I don’t like. Curt. Flat. Unkind in small, invisible ways.
So I leave. Sometimes too early by everyone else’s standards. I’ve gotten the looks. The “already?” and the “but we just got here.”
But leaving early isn’t about hating the room. It’s about protecting what I felt while I was actually enjoying it. I’d rather carry home a warm memory than drain it dry by staying an hour too long.
Saying NO without reasons
For most of my twenties, every “no” came with a paragraph. An excuse. A backup excuse. Sometimes a third one, just in case the first two weren’t convincing enough. Three reasons for a single refusal. As if one wasn’t enough. As if my “no” needed a lawyer.
Growing up in India will do that to you. Here, boundaries aren’t just uncommon. They’re suspicious, and refusal doesn’t register as a choice. It registers as an offence. And it will be brought up at the next gathering, casually, between helpings. But the more reasons you give, the weaker your no becomes. It invites negotiation. It tells people that your boundary has terms and conditions, and if they argue well enough, you’ll fold.
Now I just say no. Full stop. No performance. No three-act justification. It felt rude at first. Like I was becoming the kind of person I used to quietly judge. But maybe the people I judged weren’t harsh. Maybe they were just twenty years ahead of me.
My Rituals
Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning, I walk into a café with a book. I get there when the staff is barely starting their day. Chairs still being pulled down from tables. The machine still warming up. No crowd. No chatter. Just a few familiar faces who are probably there for the same reason I am.
Then there’s this website. I built it with absolutely no goal in mind. No content calendar. No growth strategy. No “niche.” I just needed to write. And the act of writing here, without agenda, without audience expectations, gives me the kind of clarity that nothing else does. It’s where I find meaning on days that feel like they have none.
People find these things unreasonable. A café ritual three mornings a week. A blog with no monetisation plan. No ROI. No justification that fits neatly into a conversation. But these aren’t hobbies. They’re how I stay myself. And I’m not ready to let go of them for anybody.
I used to think that the people who stopped explaining themselves had figured something out. Some secret formula for self-assurance. Some breakthrough moment where everything clicked. Turns out, there’s no click. There’s just a slow, unglamorous shift. One day you give a reason. The next day you give a shorter one. And then one day, you just don’t. Because you’ve stopped leaving yourself behind to make others comfortable.
The world will keep asking, keep probing, and keep expecting you to shrink your life into a shape they understand. Let it. You don’t owe anyone a tour of your inner world just because they knocked. 🙂
