You don’t have to explain your whole background before someone can know you. Share it on your own timing.

People sometimes want the explanation up front, as though your history were an entry requirement for a conversation. It is not. Someone can know you from how you argue, what makes you laugh, whether you turn up when you said you would, long before they know where your family is from or what happened when you were nine.

Let the friendship go first and the history follow. When someone asks early, you can give the short version and move on, warmly, without it being a refusal. Tell the longer one when you want to, to the people who have shown they will hold it well.