I’ve been noticing how often I explain myself after the moment has already passed. Not always out loud. Sometimes it happens later, alone, when nothing is at stake anymore and I’m still trying to fix the exchange retroactively, like if I could just phrase it better now, the earlier version would somehow stop bothering me.
It shows up most often in the car. I replay something I said and draft a cleaner version of it, one that sounds calmer or more reasonable or easier to understand. I imagine sending a follow-up text that adds context no one asked for. I think through a sentence that begins with “What I meant was,” even though the conversation is already over and the other person has likely moved on.
There’s a steady pressure underneath that, a sense that I owe people clarity. That I’m responsible for making myself legible so no one has to work too hard to understand me. I can feel how quickly I reach for explanations when I’m tired, or when something matters to me more than I expected it to, or when I don’t have a good answer to “So what’s next.” I rarely stop at the first sentence. I keep going, smoothing, qualifying, trying to land somewhere that feels acceptable.
For a long time, that felt like care. It still does, sometimes. But it also feels like a kind of nervousness I don’t always want to admit to. The anxiety that if I don’t explain myself clearly enough, I’ll be misunderstood in a way that sticks. That someone will fill in the blanks incorrectly and I won’t get another chance to correct it.
The other day someone asked a simple question at the end of a meeting, the kind people ask to be kind, and I felt my throat tighten before I even answered. I could hear myself adding clauses as I spoke, offering context I hadn’t planned to share, trying to make my response impossible to misread. By the time I stopped talking, I wasn’t even sure what question I was answering anymore.
After moments like that, I try to get ahead of it. I clarify. I add context. I soften the edges. And more often than not, I walk away feeling like I’ve done a lot of talking without actually feeling more understood. Sometimes it even makes things worse. The explanation invites another question. The clarification opens a new angle. The more I say, the less settled the moment feels.
I catch it while it’s happening now, which doesn’t mean I always stop. Old habits have momentum. But every so often I do manage to end a sentence where it naturally wants to end. I let “I’m tired” stay tired instead of turning it into a story about the week I’ve had. I let “I don’t know yet” stand without padding it with reassurance or a plan.
When I do that, there’s usually a moment of discomfort. A small gap opens up, and I can feel how quickly my body wants to close it. That gap feels risky. Someone might not quite get it. I might seem vague or unprepared or harder to read than I’d like. There’s no immediate signal that everything is fine.
I don’t always resist that pull. I circle back and explain anyway. I send the follow-up text. But when I don’t, when I let the moment stay a little unfinished, something eases. The exchange feels less managed. Less like I’m performing coherence. It feels more like it belonged to me while it was happening.
The longer I pay attention, the more I can see it. A lot of my explaining has less to do with clarity and more to do with control, not control in a harsh way, but the quiet hope that if I say things just right, I can prevent disappointment or conflict or misinterpretation. That I can keep everything smooth. That’s a lot to ask of a sentence, and it’s probably why I feel so tired after saying the right thing.
When I stop trying to explain myself, the invisible panel doesn’t disappear. I just stop updating it. I don’t offer the footnotes. I don’t rush to resolve the ambiguity. I let someone else hold an incomplete version of me, even when that makes me uneasy.
Ryan
I write here once a week. Sometimes a little less.
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