My mother thinks she knows me.
She is my mother.
She would probably find it faintly ridiculous to question something so obvious.
She knew me before I knew myself.
She has seen versions of me I barely remember.
The child.
The teenager.
The man I used to be.
The problem is that I am no longer all of those people.
Or perhaps I am, mixed together with many others who arrived later.
Because we change.
For the better.
For the worse.
Sometimes we simply change, full stop.
And the people who have known us the longest do not always manage to keep hold of the thread.
But it would be too easy to blame them.
Sometimes we are the ones who cut the thread.
What we stop telling
I no longer tell my mother everything.
Not because there is necessarily anything to hide.
I leave things out.
A detail. A truth. Part of a story.
Something I know she may not understand.
Something that might create disagreement.
A conversation whose opening, middle and probably closing credits I can already predict.
So I do not start it.
That may look like distance.
Perhaps it is.
But there is also a strange kind of affection in the things we choose not to tell.
Not every omission is meant to deceive.
Some help us keep loving one another without endlessly arguing about who we are supposed to be.
Knowing is not owning
Being someone's mother does not automatically mean knowing that child better than anyone else.
It means having had access to them for a very long time.
That is not quite the same thing.
To know someone, that person must also keep allowing themselves to be known.
And we do not always do that.
As we grow older, we build rooms.
Some remain open. Others become private.
Not necessarily because anything terrible is hidden inside them.
Sometimes we simply no longer feel like explaining the furniture.
So perhaps my mother is right when she says she knows me.
She knows the son I have allowed her to know.
She knows who I was. What she remembers. What I still choose to show her.
But there are parts of the man I am now that she cannot access.
And the uncomfortable part is admitting that this is not only because she might not understand.
It is also because I have chosen not to give her that access.
A permission we can withdraw
Perhaps that is how truly knowing someone works.
It is not a permanent right.
Not after decades. Not even for a mother.
It is permission we keep granting.
Or, slowly, withdraw.
And suddenly the question Amanda Lear said she would ask Salvador Dalí feels different to me.
Why didn't you understand me?
Perhaps sometimes we should add another.
How much had I allowed you to understand?
I do not say that to excuse people who failed to listen.
Some people do not understand us because they prefer the version of us they have already built.
But sometimes we simply stop correcting them.
It is less exhausting.
We let them keep knowing that person.
Meanwhile, we move on.
Perhaps people do not always stop knowing us.
Sometimes we are the ones who stop updating them.