what you’re afraid people will see

Oct 15

Dear Reader,

Before people come over, a lot of us do a quick cleanup. Whatever doesn’t have a place gets put in one room, and the door gets closed before anyone arrives. It’s a small thing, but I’ve noticed how rushed it can feel, as if it really matters that nobody sees the mess.

I think many of us do something similar with ourselves. We tidy up the parts people can see and keep the rest out of view. In my work, what people keep hidden usually turns out to be pretty ordinary. Often it’s just that they’re more worried or more tired than they let anyone know.

Keeping it hidden does work, in a way. People see the tidy version of us, and that’s what they respond to. There’s a cost to that, though. When someone tells you they don’t know how you do it all, they mean it kindly, but they’re talking about the version you let them see. Part of you thinks they’d feel differently if they knew the rest, so the kindness doesn’t quite reach you. Over time that can leave us feeling lonely, even around people who care about us. And the strange part is that the closer someone is to us, the harder we often work to keep that door closed. Hiding protects us, and it also keeps us from being loved in the places where we need it most.

There’s a hope that goes back a long way, the hope of being fully known and loved anyway. Most of us have had a taste of it, maybe when someone saw a part of us we usually keep hidden and didn’t seem to mind. Those moments are often simpler than we expect, and sometimes the other person just says, me too.

Yours in the journey,