The people who knew you early have evidence, though they do not have the whole record.

Old friends and family hold real evidence about you. They saw the version you cannot check, and they remember things you have edited out or forgotten entirely, which is why their accounts can be so unsettling. What they do not have is everything that happened after they stopped watching closely. Evidence from one period gets mistaken for a complete file, by them and sometimes by you.

Listen to an old story about yourself for what it genuinely preserves. Then decide, on your own authority, which parts are still a description and which are only a photograph.