Black

The inner self. It is strange to think that maybe one is an entirely different person inside than they are outside. It is not necessarily because one is fake or because one tries to be something that they are not, it is just that the selective view of the self that others see is not the full picture of the true self, the self that only the individual can know.

It is interesting to realize that the outer self that is perceived by others is so far from the truth. Many of us pretend to be happy, many of us pretend like we occupy our time thinking about saving the world or the latest gossip or the paper that we have to write for our next class or whatever other socially acceptable topic you can think of. We all pretend like that is what our self is, that those things are all that occupy our time and thought. And it is funny because in reality, those things likely occupy about 10% of our true thought and the other 90% of our thoughts are about things that hardly any other person will ever know about.

It is like we all walk around pretending to be these well-adjusted people, entirely in control of our emotions. We act as though nothing affects us, as though we have gotten over past events or actions in a reasonable way and as though the future does not cause us any anxiety. Even when we do discuss our problems, we do so according to social etiquette. We carefully choose the right things to complain about or cry about but make sure we only scratch the surface of what is real.

We are all so afraid of being vulnerable, of being touched, of caring, of being judged, that we hide so much away. Perhaps we are even so afraid of ourselves that rather than articulate our own inner darkness, our own shadows and nuances, we simply push these things away from language, away from physical embodiment. As a defense mechanism, we only confront our demons in abstract and opaque ways, never defining them or bringing them to light.

These truths, these more full pictures of ourselves, are hidden so deeply inside of us that they are often even hidden from ourselves. But every once in awhile, something will remind us of them. Something will force us to wrestle with them once again. And the ironic thing is that rather than truly face them, rather than voice our emotions and fears and frighteningly complicated inner dialectics, we wrestle our personal truths back underneath the surface. We push them so far in hopes that we will never have to see them again.

So we sit in silence. We smile. We pretend. We become so good at pretending that we fool ourselves into thinking that we are truly happy, that all of the pieces of our self are good, that we have moved on from the past and that the future looks bright. We fool ourselves. But it becomes exceedingly difficult to do so and eventually we learn that no one can pretend forever.

Eventually, we remember. Always.