Overexplaining

I just watched the last episode of season 2 of The Man in the High Castle. At one point, a character is rightfully freaking the hell out, and as he leaves, her husband just says, "I love you."

Everything's about to hit the fan. He really should explain himself. But he doesn't.

All my life, I've been an over-explainer, a justifier. If I've learned anything in the past few months, it's that most people neither need nor want the whole story. If your story is bad or scary, it makes them uncomfortable, because if they respect you, what happened to you could happen to them. I've seen that fear on many faces in the past few months in my daily interactions. I don't care to scare people, only to survive my own challenges.

Sometimes underexplaining is a gift to all parties.

I came up in blogging in an era when raw truth was in fashion, and I am quite adept at that. As I've grown older, my taste has gone, perhaps, from raw to cooked. I now wish to see what will happen first, and as such I've felt less inclined to write anything but fiction. Because, well, fiction is really truth reframed and less personal, right?

I'm at a point now at which I feel less sure of who I am than I have been since high school. I suppose it's my midlife shift. I choose not to view it as a crisis. However, I'm curious as to who this evolving me will be and what she'll care about. Certain things -- integrity, kindness -- have not changed. But others have.

Onward.