Humanizing Myself

I have spent years trying to convince myself and everyone else that I was human enough.

Not in a science-fiction sense as if I’m a robot or an alien or another specie. I wasn’t questioning whether I had a soul. It is more like standing in a room full of people who all seemed to understand it. They cried at the right moments without overthinking it, laughed easily and wore their feelings like a second skin. There I was on the other side wondering why I felt like I was just watching it all behind a glass.

What makes a person human, exactly? I used to think about this like it was a riddle I could solve if I thought hard enough. I’d go so deep into my own head that I’d forget my name. I’d lose the thread of where I ended and my thoughts began. I still do this sometimes and it is not going away.

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” — Søren Kierkegaard

What I was experiencing is called emotional suppression. Research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people who suppress their emotions don’t experience them less intensely. They just carry the weight of them alone and their bodies and minds pay the price. Higher stress levels. Difficulty connecting with others. A kind of loneliness that’s hard to explain because everything on the outside looks fine.

That was me. Everything was fine. My face said so.

The first time I realized I felt things more intensely than most people around me, my instinct wasn’t to lean into it but to hide it. To perform neutrality. To master the poker face. If I didn’t show it, no one could use it against me. No one could look at me like I was too much. I became very good at it.

What I didn’t realize was that I was becoming a stranger to myself.

For years I wore it like an armor, and I thought I was protecting myself. On the outside, happy and sad and furious all looked the same, a kind of calm, unbothered neutrality that people probably read as composed. On the inside, I was a weather system. Thunder with no sound. I was exploding constantly and no one around me had any idea, because my face was always neutral.

I wouldn’t say I woke up one day and decided to change. It didn’t happened in a heartbeat. It was gradual. I started learning. Slowly, then all at once. I tried to get to know more about myself. What it means to be someone who feels deeply in a world that often rewards people who perform with less emotion. I started paying attention to what was actually happening inside me.

And then, just last year, something shifted. I cried. It was the kind where you don’t care what your face is doing. I laughed so hard at something stupid that my stomach hurt. I told someone I was angry, and I meant it, and I didn’t immediately soften it into something easier for them to hear just to make them feel comfortable. I felt things and I let my face show it.

I made myself feel safe. That’s the thing no one tells you. Sometimes the person who has to give you permission to feel is you. I would have loved for someone to have done that for me when I was younger. I would have loved for someone to sit across from me and say: all of it is okay. The big feelings, the loud feelings, the ones that don’t make sense. You are not too much or broken. You just feel things, and that is one of the most human things there is.

But no one did, and so I’m telling it to myself now. It may be late but not too late.

There is something quietly revolutionary about letting yourself feel. It doesn’t make you weak. It makes you present. It makes you real and free.

Lying To The Point Of No Redemption

At a young age I was pushed so hard to admit the truth that lying started to feel pointless. The truth was obvious anyway and I have never regretted saying the truth ever since. Sometimes the truth is the only thing that makes the weight in your chest a little lighter. 

I hold a deep reverence for an oath where once I swear to god, I’m bound to tell the truth. Some people probably feel the same way. When someone asks me to swear, it almost feels like they already know the answer and are just waiting for me to confirm it so I just say it.

Lying is complicated. People notice patterns. If your story doesn’t match the last thing you said, that’s when things start falling apart. I don’t really understand why people lie about small things. The kind of lies that aren’t protecting anyone or sparing anyone pain. But I guess I’m not them. Maybe for them it’s embarrassing to tell the truth or maybe it feels easier to lie. I am good at noticing when someone else is lying. Sometimes I just pretend I didn’t notice but if its something that matters, I have to understand why they felt they couldn’t just say it.

There is one kind of lying that I think is harmless and kind of fun. When you go somewhere and a stranger you know you’re not going to meet again asks for your name or your life, you can just give them a different version. You can just tell them a different name, or say that you’re married, act dumb, say self-sabotaging or weird things or claim you failed school or say that you work at a morgue or as a ghost writer or a barista or a fortune teller, any job you feel like at any moment or any life that feels interesting. It’s fun cosplaying as a different person for minutes. It’s its own kind of performance and then you leave, and they’ll never know who you actually were. Identity is not really as fixed as we think.

The Urge To Sabotage

It’s strange how we sometimes sabotage the very things we say we want. Oh how quickly our excitement turns into avoidance. You make a vision board. You start a challenge. And then a few days later you abandon it, like the version of you who cared about it was a completely different person.

We live in a world that constantly rewards short-term gratification, the quick dopamine hit or immediate comfort. Committing to something long-term suddenly feels heavy. Especially when there are a thousand other options right in front of you. You could do this, or that, or maybe something even better will come tomorrow. So instead of choosing, we just hover. And the more options we have, the harder it becomes to commit to anything at all. Sometimes all we need to do is just pick one thing because staying undecided slowly erodes our ability to move forward at all.

This society doesn’t really train us to be committed people anymore. If anything, it trains us to constantly look for the next thing. Social media makes it worse. You feel clear about what you want, and then you scroll for ten minutes and suddenly you want five completely different lives. It’s hard to stay loyal to your own direction when you’re constantly being shown other directions.

The thing about goals is that the beginning is always the most exciting part. Starting something feels electric but after that, consistency is where it gets quiet, repetitive and boring. When there are no immediate consequences for stopping or when no one is watching or holding you accountable, that’s when most people drift away. The uncomfortable truth is that you have to learn how to commit even when nobody is watching.

It’s kind of like being in a relationship. When you’re truly committed to someone, you don’t wake up every day asking yourself whether you should keep showing up. You just do. Because the decision was already made.

There’s a line from Carl Jung that always comes to my mind: Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.

We keep asking “Why does this keep happening to me?” but the answer is just somewhere inside us. Our inner world. The stories we carry about who we are. Sometimes we say we want something like success, love, opportunity but internally the story doesn’t match. Maybe a part of us believes we don’t deserve it or that we’re not really going to get it. Maybe we think wanting it is a bad thing because it makes us selfish or greedy.

So when opportunities actually appear, we hesitate. Our ego steps in and tries to protect us from uncomfortable feelings like guilt, fear, or vulnerability. And instead of moving forward, we hold ourselves back.

Then later we call it bad luck. Or fate.

Another strange thing I noticed about desire is that the more desperately we cling to it, the more resistance we create. When we want something so badly, we try to control every step of it, the energy becomes tense and almost repelling.

Sometimes the only way forward is to loosen your grip a little and allow the desire to exist without trying to force it. Enjoy the feeling of wanting something, then let go of the need to control how it arrives.

The Brightest Star In The Sky

There’s this bright red and white star that I keep noticing whenever I look up at the sky.

One time I came home and accidentally glanced up, and there it was again. I don’t know why but looking at it made me feel comforted. It felt like running into someone familiar in a crowded place.

I started tracing the stars around it and realized it might be a constellation. I feel happy because it was the first time I’d ever tried to recognize a constellation myself. After looking it up, I think it might be the Scorpius constellation. The red star in it that I kept noticing is called Antares, a red supergiant that astronomers say is nearing the end of its life and will eventually explode in a supernova. Which is strange to think about because it feels like its been there forever. Though I suppose I’ll go long before it does.

It made me think, maybe people from thousands of years ago also looked up at that same star and just like me,  felt the same kind of comfort.

Last night I went outside because I felt like petting the dog and my cat. I sat on the stairs for a while and when I lifted my head, I immediately spotted it again.

“Oh,” I thought. “There you are.”

It almost feels like the star is looking back at you, like it’s winking. And it’s nice somehow to think that every night there’s just this one star there, waiting for you to notice it again.

Although I can’t actually be sure it’s Antares. Maybe it’s Sirius instead. I only know it as that red-and-white star that flickers like it’s alive. If it really is Antares, it’s strange to think that it’s technically dying.

Maybe that’s also why it made me think about my cats that night.

When my first cat died, there were nights when I’d hear a cat meowing outside the house. Every time I went out to check, there was nothing there.

I always felt guilty.

Cats were more independent, that’s why I chose them over dogs. I thought they would be fine if I traveled for a week and left them with my family. I thought they didn’t need me as much.

But I was wrong.

Whenever I leave, it feels like they also get depressed. A week after I came back from a trip they get sick.

And yesterday I realized something that I hadn’t really thought about before: I’m there for their entire life.

For me, they’re just a part of my life.

But for them, I’m part of all of it.

Maybe that’s also why I miss them when I’m away.

Because they miss me too.

I’m fxking Orpheus

If you don’t know who Orpheus is, he’s that stupid mortal who went to the underworld to get his lover back. He almost did. He really, really almost did. But then he ruined everything because he couldn’t follow one simple rule: don’t look back.

I used to be so mad at him. I questioned whether he really loved Eurydice, his wife. How could someone who crossed death itself not stop himself for a few more steps? How hard is it to just keep walking forward until the light? I was even thinking, if it were me I wouldn’t do that. I’d wait. I’d endure. I thought I would do better but now I’m eating my words.

I can’t believe I was sympathizing with him right now because I’ve looked back too. I hate that I understand him now.

Orpheus didn’t look back because he lacked love, he looked back because he loved too much. Silence can be too cruel. The heart starts to ache when it is desperate to be reassured.

Maybe the gods chose that rule on purpose. Maybe they already knew he would look back. Maybe they knew love, when tested with silence, almost always fails.

Even when the heart knows better, the silence between footsteps can be louder than death itself.