Who are we when we aren't pretending?

Hello everyone,

It feels a little weird that I’m writing something today, especially given what I wrote yesterday. But yet again, in my TMUA fuelled confidence crises, I find myself thinking about literally everything apart from the maths.

Throughout life, we meet new people. Naturally, people will have different perceptions of who you are, which is perfectly fine because everyone is different. But at some point in life, there comes a time where how you define yourself as a person is sort of just the average value of all of the different versions of you that exist. But is that really the person that you are? You might go outside, spend time with the people you may or may not care about (depending on if your image necessitates as such), and act in accordance with the expectations that you might perceive to be placed on you. We’re taught to mimic the behaviours expected of us, maybe because it’s easier or safer to do what’s expected than to express ourselves truly. Over time, the lines of pretend and the lines of your true self blur and we find ourselves seeing the two as being synonymous with eachother.

But when the curtains are drawn, and the audience has gone home, who are we left with? Our authentic selves, undefined by our awards, achievements, and social status; yet only found when alone. This is the version of us that exists if and only if the great facade does not. We cannot pretend and be ourselves at the same time, these are contradictory statements. When we stop pretending, we aren’t limited by any particular expectations, we exist with our imperfections perfectly in place. But to the world, we never want to show our imperfections, we have to be perfect. To stop pretending would be like showing your weaknesses to the world. Does this make us weak? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, but I don’t think it matters. We’re all very imperfect and far from finished, and accepting that is part living without pretense.

Does this then mean that any other versions of us are less valid? No, I don’t think so. To my friends I might be funny, or whatever they might see me as. To my teachers, I’m just a student who may or may not be inquisitive by nature. To myself currently, I’m sat in my brother’s empty room writing about why we shouldn’t try to maintain images for people we might not even like. I think we should become more comfortable with showing the versions of ourselves with all of our little idiosyncracies that fall almost perfectly out of place within us.

That’s all I have to say, or at least the shortened version. If I’d gone any longer there would be pages upon pages of words to read. For my sake and yours, I think it’d be better if I avoided 4000 character, 47 line documents for the foreseeable future. Although this one has been much more fun to write.

Thank you very much for reading. I’ll try to be back soon.

(Once again forgive any grammar errors please, I’m tired once again)