I have spent so much of my life wanting to be understood. There is a particular discomfort in being misunderstood—the almost instinctive desire to reach into another person’s mind and rearrange their perception of you. No, that isn’t what I meant. That isn’t why I did it. That isn’t who I am. So I learned to explain. I explained my choices, my intentions, my silences, my contradictions. I tried to leave as little room as possible between who I knew myself to be and who someone else might imagine me to be. Yet, no one will ever know every version of me. There is a child inside my history that only a handful of people remember. There are versions of me that existed for years and others that existed only long enough to teach me something. There are memories I rarely visit, thoughts I have never spoken aloud, dreams still too delicate to be shared, and parts of myself I have not even met yet. Even those who love me most will only ever know me in fragments. And I will know them in fragments too. There is something strangely beautiful about that. There Are Parts of Me You Will Never Meet is my surrender to the unknowability of another human being, and to my own. You may misunderstand me. You may remember me differently than I remember myself. You may construct an entire version of me inside your mind that I will never recognize. But freedom for me is, knowing that I do not have to make all of myself visible in order for all of me to be real.