It's okay if your ex thinks you're crazy.
You're a different story in everyone’s head.
There are two sides to every story.
The truth usually lives somewhere in the middle.
It’s all a matter of perspective.
Everyone’s the villain in someone else’s version.
You catch my drift? What you see won’t be what others see. The sooner you really get that, the easier it becomes to move through the world without hurting people you care about—friends, family, your local barista.
Perception is a slippery bastard, and nowhere is that more obvious than with exes. If you have one (an ex, I mean), then you probably have a version of yourself living in someone else’s mind that feels like you were the manic pixie dream girl, minus the dream and pixie part.
I know I do. So let’s talk about them so you can come to terms with this being something you can’t control
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How my high school ex remembers me:
I was the girl with the car big enough for his amp, guitars, and our tangled bodies in the backseat. The girl who asked too many questions. Who wanted more time together than his religious parents allowed. I was intrusive. Overbearing. Probably the reason he ended up with another girl.
To me, I was just a teenage girl experiencing her first love with a boy she’d known since birth. I thought that meant something. I looked for him after school and found him with a freshman. “She’s just a friend,” he shouted in front of everyone. Later, I drove him home. After, I found his phone wedged between the seat and door. Yes, I was nosey. But what I found confirmed it: she wasn’t just a friend.
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To my college boyfriend, I was everything, all at once. His dream girl. The one who met his mother just a week into knowing each other. The girl he loved and with a bedroom he could move into. The future mother of our hypothetical dog, Lilly. A girl working hard for his dreams. Emotional. Manipulative. Ungrateful. Whose dreams held him back from his dreams. The girl who cried to get her way. The one who left him, forcing him to call my mom in tears to beg for me back.
To me, I was just a girl new to LA, taken in by a charming guy who said “I love you” in two weeks and asked to move in soon after. This was the last time I gave my full, romantic self to someone. He met it with jabs at my body. He said I’d be better if I looked like the models he worked with. He said he needed a threesome to feel fulfilled. I panicked. I cried. I was an anxious mess. When I tried to leave, he threatened legal action. So I moved across the world, to China, just to get away from him.
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To my ex who was eleven years older, I was a “score,” he once told a friend. Young. Different. Fun, but kinda serious, bro. Too emotional. I asked too much. I made him “do that unforgivable thing,” though I later forgave him—which, to him, was kind of noble of me. Fights that ended with me hiding in my car. One Thanksgiving he told me not to get on the place. I was the girl who used that weekend to move out.
To me, I was in over my head. A consolation prize hoping not to feel like more. I thought our friendship was a solid foundation for love, but it wasn’t strong enough to hold his ego or temper. After the horrible thing, I clung to survival. I needed reassurance. He couldn’t give it. To him, I’ll always be the crazy ex who made one of his favorite wine glasses disappear (I smashed it and threw it down the trash chute). My final, petty act of freedom.
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To the ex who lived with my best friend, I was an easy target. His friends joked about it when they thought no one could hear. I was damaged. Those kinds of girls were kinky. I was interesting enough to flirt with, snap photos of when I wasn’t looking. Chase intently, but only until he had me. I was the one who broke leaving a mess. The one who sat outside his house crying. Who later checked into a psychiatric facility because of him. His crazy ex.
To me, I needed kindness. I was clinically depressed. I’d just been dumped and laid off. He lived with my best friend, so he was around. So were his intentions. I ignored the pain until I couldn’t anymore. It scared him. I stopped hearing from him. But I was still close with my friend—still around the house. One night, my ex and I talked. It felt… decent. I sat in my car after, overwhelmed. I called him again. He said no. I tried again. I pushed his boundaries, it’s true. And I did later go to a psychiatric facility, due to the depression and eating disorder I’d been struggling with for years before I even met him.
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There’s no such thing as a perfect relationship—there’s always some level of mess. I did the best I could with what I had, and maybe the same is true for them.
It makes sense that the versions of me living in my exes’ minds don’t match how I see myself. For a while, it bothered me. I’d play out imaginary scenarios where I ran into one of them and explained who I really was. Which would, of course, only make it worse.
But not anymore. I’ve made peace with those versions.
I’d even say they’re part of me—if only because they exist somewhere out there.
I’m the sum of everything that’s ever happened to me, perceptions included. Maybe.
But what matters is I no longer let those stories define me. I know who I am. My friends do. My family does. The guy who owns the new coffee shop down the street knows me—slightly.
And honestly, I think you know me too. Better than most. Better than my barista.
So whatever versions of me are out there in the world, I’m okay with them. From my exes or that person I was once talking to at an event. The one where tinnitus came up and I coolly explained how the owner of Texas Roadhouse offed himself because of how bad his tinnitus had gotten. The look on his face assured me a version of myself had been planted in his mind after that.
The only version of me that impacts my life, every day, is this one. The one I’m living. The one some people might say is the “real” me.
I’ll put my energy into her. My exes can handle the other crazy versions.
What version of yourself exists in someone else’s head? Comment below!
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