There’s a version of you living in other people’s memories. You don’t control it, but you feed it every day.

Everyone who knows you keeps a rough copy of you, assembled out of moments you have forgotten and mostly did not choose. You cannot edit their copy, and arguing with it rarely helps. What you can do is keep adding, because every ordinary interaction is another entry going into somebody’s file.

Think of one person whose copy is out of date, maybe from a bad stretch or a version of you from two years ago. Deleting what is in there is not an option. Giving them enough new material that the old entry stops being the main one is.