I hide who I am, sometimes.
It's surprisingly difficult to admit that.
Probably because on some level it's an admission that sometimes I lie.
I don't ever mean to. Not intentionally, anyways. And yet, it still happens. Because most of my lies in life have been by way of omission.
I simply don't say anything at all. I don't share. I don't let anyone in.
I hide the truth because it's more comfortable to do that sometimes than to face it.
Lately, I've been realizing that this is a devastating pattern. A true downward spiral, in to a fairly dark and damaging place.
We only avoid the truth when there's a fear of what would happen if we were to tell it. We only lie when we want to protect ourselves.
But maybe it even goes beyond that. Maybe it's actually a form of rejecting yourself.
The moment you hide who you are, the moment you tuck away a truthful part of your experience as a human being, you have entered in to the dangerous ideology of letting the opinion of others decide what is important to you.
You reject yourself, in anticipation of others rejecting you.
And in turn, you signal to yourself that you do not actually know what is deeply important to you. That you prioritize the judgement of others over the equanimity of yourself.
There's no real tangible way to measure this, other than the slow, sinking feeling of being inauthentic. It hurts to own up to it. It's easier to do the mental gymnastics to assure ourselves we are perfectly honest people. Being real about it is difficult and complicated and messy.
So most of us don't even try. We ignore it. Bury it. And for a while, it can be numbed away. Drank away. Smoked away. Partied away. Sedated away. We can use the external world to hide from our internal world. Temporarily, at least.
But that, in itself, is the acquisition of a terrible habit: pushing who you are down, deeper and deeper, in the hopes that if no one else sees it, then no one can judge you, and therefore, you are allowed to simply ignore whatever it is that causing you pain. Except, pain will not be ignored. As John Green wrote "pain demands to be noticed". And noticed it will be.
The inevitable, uncomfortable truth is that you will deal with all of it eventually. Whatever you suppress will show itself later. Whatever mess you push in to the dark, tiny corners of yourself will eventually have a bright light shined on it. Whatever elaborate justification you have built for why you are failing to live in integrity with yourself will eventually, like sand castles built on the edge of a beach, be overpowered by a force far greater, and crumble.
So, perhaps the question is: when do you want to deal with what you're really feeling? Today or tomorrow? Now or later?
If we're being honest, I reject myself all the time.
I wish I didn't.
I wish I could say that it's easy not to.
But I do it all the time. In little ways and small ways. It's a work in progress.
So often we reject ourselves under the pretence it might help us belong. We believe hiding certain things will help us "fit in”. We tell ourselves it’s in our own interest.
And yet in doing so, you do yourself the biggest injustice imaginable: you hide your authentic truth for inauthentic acceptance.
We don't have to do this. Sure, we all know that. Yet, we feel often times like we need to do it. We believe we need to filter ourselves, in order to be accepted and loved. There's a deep rooted problem though: when you reject yourself, you disconnect from yourself.
In the immediate short term, that's no real painful consequence to that. Often times, we can allow ourselves to believe that hiding who we are actually helps us.
We share the things we think are acceptable to share.
We adapt ourselves to our social and emotional environments.
We use well practiced vulnerability to seem as though we are honest, when really we are still hiding.
We'll show as much of ourselves as we think others will permit and enjoy and find valuable.
We play stupid games.
And we end up losing a real authentic connection to ourselves and what we are actually experiencing. We get so lost in the bubble of what we think we need to be for others, we actually start to neglect every other part of ourselves. We lose an honest relationship not just with others, but with ourself too. And over time, we become complete strangers to what’s really happening in our head and our heart.
I've lived it. It sucks. It hurts.
And, unfortunately, it exists right below the surface, waiting to show up again and again.
But what’s interesting is when you allow yourself to stop living inside the fantasies of what you believe other people want, you can start to find out the facts about who you really are right here and now.
And you can work with facts. You can learn from facts. Facts can help us orient ourselves towards who we want to really be.
What you can't learn from is pretending to be something you aren't. Or only letting people see a small, polished piece of you.
I used to think because I could be honest about my mental health that meant I was honest everywhere. But it was bullshit. It was where I began to feel comfortable. Ask me about other aspects of my life, and I would spit out whatever answer served me best in that moment, in that room, with those people. But it wasn't honest. It was filtered. It was rehearsed. I was hiding in plain sight.
We want so deeply to be seen, yet we do everything we can not to let anyone really see us.
But perhaps being truly known is the best gift you can give yourself. It’s the most radically honest version of love that exists. And it’s also the only real way to know where to go from here.
If you can't even acknowledge where you are on the path, how can we possibly know where to go next?
If we're always running and hiding, how can we show up fully?
We build walls all around us, hoping they will keep us safe. And instead they end up trapping us inside. Alone. Scared. Anxious.
"The truth will set you free" and all that. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. So how come it’s so hard to live it?
Maybe because it demands us to disconnect from the ridiculous narratives we tell ourselves and use to justify and rationalize our inauthenticity.
We have to take off the protective armour.
We have to stop living in our fear.
We have to step forward in to the light and stand there exposed and open to judgement.
Vulnerable.
Human.
Alive.
But, it turns out that's where the growth is.
It turns out that’s where the journey actually begins.
It turns out that’s where you are.
The real you, anyways.
'we use well practiced vulnerability....' Ouch, that hit a nerve. What a poseur I can be and the sad thing right now is that I'm too depressed to care. Yet everyone tells me I wear my heart on my sleeve. And somehow Kevin I suspect that your authentic self shines through even when you think you've shut yourself down.