I’m Not Who You Think I Am, But Then Again, Neither Are You

You’re not who you think you are, you know—at least not to anyone else.

The version of you that lives in your head is only one of many, and maybe not even your most accurate.

You’re not the same person in every story.

In one, you’re a villain. In another, you’re the one who got away. To someone else, you’re a footnote, a lifeline, a background character, or perhaps the love of someone’s life.

We all live in other people’s heads in very different forms, edited and shaped by their own experiences, their projections, their wounds.

And none of those versions are exactly the same.

The “you” that exists in your mind might not even vaguely resemble the one that lives in someone else’s.

Kinda unsettling, isn’t it?

To think of yourself as a different character in everyone’s narrative. Sometimes a hero, sometimes a ghost, sometimes just a blur in the background of someone else’s memory.

I’ve come to realize that I am not one person, but a constellation of half-formed impressions scattered across other people’s minds.

A highlight reel, if you will—of quirks, assumptions, projections, and one deeply regrettable text sent at 2 :00 am.

There’s a version of me who laughs when it’s inappropriate, who speaks strictly in sarcasm, one who stays too long and leaves too soon. One who plants herself firmly on a hill she swore she’d die on, and then apologizes for taking up space.

These versions are pieced together from moments, some true, some assumed.

All of them are “me.” And also… not me.

The truth is, a different version of me exists in everyone I’ve ever encountered.

It’s humbling. And oddly vulnerable.

There’s something strange about living in someone else’s mind, knowing they have already decided who you are, and even more so, knowing you can’t undo it.

We don’t get to rewrite their memories, reshape their opinion, or reclaim the version of us they chose to keep.

It’s kind of eerie. Because if no one really knows me… do I know me?

It got me thinking, that if some people only ever see a distorted view, perhaps others may catch something closer to the truth.

But what is the truth? Is it the version we believe—or the one they remember?

Maybe the truth lies with the ones who’ve witnessed our quiet undoings, the small, invisible ruptures that don’t warrant sympathy or applause.

The ones who’ve stuck around long enough to notice our contradictions, our softness, our sharp edges—and still didn’t flinch.

Maybe it’s the person who knows what our silence sounds like. Or the ones who can hear what we’re not saying.

And sometimes, the version of you that lives in someone else’s mind is actually softer, kinder, more beautiful than the one you carry— because they hold a version of us that’s a little more forgiving.

Maybe no one sees the whole picture, but I believe some get close enough to touch the quiet curve of our truth.

And when it happens, we feel it—like someone cracked a window open in our soul and let a little light in.

I think some of us realize early on that every single person on Earth exists at the center of their own reality.

We don’t just think from our point of view—we exist from it.

We’ve become the center of our own universe, not out of arrogance, but because it’s the only vantage point we’ve got.

We can’t crawl behind someone else’s eyes, or dive into the pool of their mind, no matter how badly we ache to surface with answers.

And it’s a lonely kind of truth.

One that makes us feel like we’re watching our own lives from outside, as if we’re both the observer and the observed.

Like watching a movie of ourselves, half-finished, unpolished, with no clear ending.

I think we also live in our own mythology.

Sometimes we’re stuck in a version of ourselves we wrote ten years ago, and just never turned the page.

We recycle old plotlines, cast ourselves in roles we’ve long since outgrown. Cling to character traits that no longer fit, simply because they feel familiar.

Sometimes we mistake memory for truth, and nostalgia for identity. We write ourselves in past tense, even though the ink is still drying.

All the while, other people are reading an entirely different script—reflections of us that don’t match the story we think we’re living.

There’s a tension between who we think we are and who others believe us to be, and it’s a little haunting.

We are both everything and nothing—fully formed and yet wildly unfinished.

We can shift their perception, sure, but we can never steer it. And it’s unnerving, this presence without ownership—to exist in so many versions, yet belong to none.

Who we are depends so much on who we’re with.

We’re basically shapeshifters. We move, adapt, perform—whether we mean to or not.

Sometimes it feels like we’re constantly switching masks—not out of dishonesty, but self-preservation. Or maybe just instinct.

It’s strange how fluid identity becomes when it moves through different rooms and different people. Not unlike fabric, brushing against a wall and picking up scent, colour and energy as it passes.

Sometimes we get tired of making decisions based on how we think others will perceive us.

Of filtering every thought, every action, through an imaginary focus group of people, who probably aren’t even thinking about us anyway.

When other people’s opinions have been tangled up with our own for so long, it’s hard to tell where theirs end and ours begin.

In our own minds, we know we’re complicated.

We can name the cringeworthy things we’ve done just as easily as the moments of quiet kindness that no one ever sees.

Our lives are made up of millions of private moments that only we know.

Most people, even the ones closest to us, only ever get a fraction of who we really are.

What’s wild is that even you, reading this right now, might be building your own version of me. From these words, the tone, the vibe—piecing me together from syllables and sentences. Shaped by what you’ve read, what I’ve shared, and whatever else you decide to fill in.

And it’s not wrong. But it’s not whole. None of you actually know me.

Not fully, anyway. And maybe that’s the point.

Maybe it’s a gift that people don’t remember us the way we remember ourselves.

The awkward silence, the nervous laugh, the private heartbreak, the moments we have felt too much or not enough—they vanish in other people’s minds like steam on glass.

And yet we carry these moments like stones in our pockets, worn smooth from turning them over again and again. When the truth is, most of the time, no one even noticed, and that, I believe, is a simple kind of grace.

Maybe the goal isn’t to be fully known by everyone, but just to be known, in small ways—by a few people who matter.

To find peace in the fact that we’ll always be a little blurry and misunderstood in someone else’s memory, and that’s okay.

Perhaps the truest version of us isn’t something fixed or universally agreed upon.

Maybe it’s something we’re still becoming—a canvas that was never meant to dry.

So what if there are thousands of different versions of ourselves out there in the world!

Maybe that isn’t a crisis—but a kind of freedom.

I love the idea that we are just tiny stars in other people’s skies—shaped by how we made them feel.

Maybe we were never meant to be just one thing, one version, one truth.

Maybe the magic is in the movement. Where we rewrite, re-root, and reimagine. Where we tear open the sky just to see what bleeds into us.

Our existence outlives our control of it. Like a quiet stubborn kind of immortality.

And we get to choose who we become next.

We spend so much time trying to be seen, but maybe the version we choose to become, quietly and deliberately, when no one is looking—

is the most honest version of us yet.