While all the collected events of this life and others coalesce to make the unique you, you don’t have to be a victim of other people’s choices. Shedding the residue of the past is much easier than you think.
In another moment down went Alice after it [the white rabbit], never once considering how in the world she was to get out again. —Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Each of us is one thing and many things at once, but we often spend large swaths of life avoiding our own complexity instead of embracing it as a sign of our uniqueness.