It’s not about the bad dancing. Well, partially yes, but that’s not all of it. It’s about people seeing my long beard, the items in my childhood family room, the shirt that barely fits because I’ve gained 20 pounds since I bought it, and any other thing about me. It’s not really about them seeing bad things about me, it’s about them seeing anything about me.
I’ve shied away from posting things, I think, because I’ve felt afraid of people knowing me. We call it being famous, but we also call it being well known. And I haven’t wanted to be well known.
At least not consistently.
I have posted some very deep intense videos on the internet, including one of me bawling my eyes out after a breakup. However, even in that situation, I was careful to not mention names, to mask details of what actually happened in the relationship, and in so doing, making it harder for people to know too much about me or about the people in my life. When I do gain the courage to post these things, I often will wait a while before I post again, sometimes going months without posting much.
And it’s not just about posting, this is how I can be in interacting with others in conversation as well. I don’t use names, I don’t reference too many details about my life or the lives of others. I show emotions, yes, and show quite vulnerable emotions, yet seem to do it in a way that hides a lot of the things that would help someone know me well.
This causes me a challenge: to be well known, I have to let people know me—and I have hesitated to let people know me. The more someone knows me, the more power they have over me, or ratter, the more powerless I often feel. Yes, this means that people can hurt me more—just as loved ones seem to know how to jab us in just the right spots—it also means they can help me more.
On the call with the author support group today, I realized that by me taking down the video of me dancing, I, yes, was hiding what I thought to be my bad dancing from other people, but really I was hiding myself. I was hiding my facial expressions, living conditions, physical condition, and many other aspects. I was hiding.
But how do I spread the work that I’ve been doing if I keep hiding?
I’ve often said that, while they say “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know that counts,” I believe it’s more “it’s who knows you” that counts. Sometimes these ideas stay stuck in my head and take forever to sink into the body.
I feel scared when I think about people knowing so much about me. I feel scared when I think about strangers knowing so much about me. About my dreams, my hopes, my fears, my past, my future, my friends, family, and other people.
I guess that’s normal. Maybe again, it’s about the courage to face this. The courage to put this out there. The courage to let people know me. The courage to let people see me. After all, I’m just a human like everyone else—we’re all pretty much the same underneath.
