Hindsight

I’ve told stories about how I edited parts of my life, compartmentalized others, masked pieces, and made myself smaller in order to keep things manageable — for me and for others.

We’re not gonna rehash that here – if you need a catch-up, check out Ripple Effect and Taking Up Space.

What we are gonna do is take a look back at those moments — not to relive them, but to learn from them, recognize patterns, own my part, and hopefully loosen the grip they still have on me.

So, here we go…

When I think back to any of the relationship defining moments I’ve experienced (good or bad), one thing that I can say for certain was consistent in each situation is that while I knew what I was holding back, they didn’t.

If I said I was fine, maybe I looked fine.
If I wasn’t as fully present in each moment, maybe it looked like distance to them.
If I kept showing up but didn’t share the hard, maybe there was no reason to think anything was wrong.
If I spent years keeping things close to the vest and then one day became more direct, more vocal, or more willing to say, “That hurt my feelings,” maybe it felt sudden to someone who wasn’t aware of all the things….

From my perspective, it was a slow burn.

But no one else was living inside my perspective.

And that’s the part that took me some time to understand differently.

I can see now how my choices helped shape the version of me other people knew.

I wasn’t being fake — at the core of everything, I was still me, ya know? — but I was absolutely being selective.

I shared what felt manageable. I didn’t share what felt too complicated.

Without even realizing it, I was deciding what other people did and didn’t get to see.

But, at the same time, I somehow expected them to understand me through that same incomplete lens.

That’s where my accountability lives.

In recognizing that the people around me were responding to the version of me I gave them.

And often, that version looked very different from what I was actually experiencing at the time.

I think about that now when I write things publicly – things that I didn’t say out-loud back then.

I can imagine that being confusing.

Maybe even hurtful to people I haven’t spoken to in detail yet.
Maybe someone reads something and thinks, I had no idea.
Maybe they wonder why I didn’t tell them.
Maybe they question whether they misunderstood our relationship – fair.
Maybe they replay old conversations with information they didn’t have then.

Yep. Totally get it!

That doesn’t make either perspective wrong.

That’s probably the strangest thing for me to admit.

I knew the context behind my mask.
They only saw the mask.

I knew why I was holding back.
They only saw the pieces I shared.

I knew why something finally became too much.
They may have only seen the reaction.

Now I understand much more clearly how much those gaps mattered.

I know there are people who deserved more honesty from me sooner, and I’ve prioritized having those conversations.

Most people understood.

Some people didn’t want to hear me out.
Some listened and were hurt.
Some reactions I initially perceived as indifference, I know were likely feelings of being deceived – also fair.

And some people may simply have been responding as best they could to a version of me that was harder to read than I realized.

I mentioned that not everyone wanted to hear my perspective – I learned to understand that is okay too.

Part of looking back honestly means accepting that I don’t get to control what someone does with the information once I give it to them.

I can own what I withheld, which I feel I have done my best to do. I can also understand how that may have shaped someone else’s experience of me — and, in turn, our relationship. I can also recognize that honesty doesn’t guarantee understanding, repair, or reconciliation.

Look, we all have moments we wish we’d handled differently in real time, but… hindsight, right?!

So when people see me differently today, maybe they aren’t imagining it.

I am different.

But, not because I’m not the same – I’m just letting people see more of me than I used to. To me, that distinction matters.

I don’t think I suddenly became a different person overnight.
I think I just stopped hiding so much of the person who was already there underneath it all.

Susan

Nickel from the 🫙: Hindsight doesn’t change the past, but it can change how we show up now.