I know, I know… terrible start. Even I don’t believe it when I say it like that, and I can feel the collective eye roll already.

And fine. There’s a very real possibility it was me. I’m not even going to insult anyone’s intelligence here. You all saw it. Or at least… enough of it.

But I need you to understand something: that wasn’t… this version of me talking to you right now.

Sitting here, talking to you, I’m not in that same place. I’ve slowed down. I’ve replayed it. I’ve had that slightly uncomfortable moment where you look back and go, “huh… okay, that wasn’t my best move.”

And that version of me? He doesn’t think things through. He just… goes, says yes too fast, laughs at things he shouldn’t, convinces himself something’s a good idea because it feels right for like five seconds.

In the moment, it felt… fine. Natural, even. Like the next obvious step. There wasn’t this big red flag or alarm going off. It was just a series of small, reasonable steps that somehow added up to something that, from the outside, looks… questionable.

You know how that happens.

One decision that’s harmless on its own. Then another one that still feels harmless. And then suddenly you’re in a place where, if you had to explain how you got there step by step, it sounds worse than it felt.

And I think that’s the part that’s hard to communicate.

Because I can stand here now and tell you, “yeah, I wouldn’t do that again.” And I mean it. I really do. But that clarity only showed up after everything had already happened.

Before that? I was just… moving. And I know I’m not the only one.

I’ve seen it. I’ve heard it in the way you all talk sometimes: those little pauses, those half-sentences where you can tell there was a moment you’d rather not fully unpack. Not because it’s terrible, just because it doesn’t quite match the version of yourself you prefer to present.

So this is me, not dodging it, but also not flattening it into something it isn’t.

Yes, something happened.
Yes, it traces back to me.

But it wasn’t this… steady, thinking, slightly more self-aware version of me sitting here now. That one showed up later. Too late to change it, just in time to understand it.

And now I’m here doing what we all do in that situation: trying to reconcile the two. Not erase it. Not deny it completely. Just… place it where it belongs.

Because if we’re being honest—and I think we should be, at least for a minute—we’re not one fixed thing. We shift. We react. We get it right, we get it wrong, sometimes in ways that don’t even make sense in hindsight.

And then we come back, like this, a bit more aware, a bit more careful, trying to make sense of the trail we just left behind.

So yes…

It wasn’t me.

Not in the way that actually matters.

And if it was…
then it was a version of me that did what it did, and is no longer the one speaking to you now.

That’s the closest thing I have to the truth.

H.