The Weight of Pretending

Sometimes, the most exhausting thing isn’t the anxiety itself, but the performance of *not* having it. I used to think I was just naturally agreeable, a good listener, someone who blended in. It was safer that way. Safer than the quiet, buzzing feeling under my skin, the one that makes my hands clammy and my breath shallow when I think someone might see through the surface.

It started, I think, with wanting to be the kind of kid my parents could be proud of. My dad, particularly, has this idea of strength that’s... unyielding. It doesn’t leave room for wobble or uncertainty. Any time I tried to voice a worry, a feeling that didn't quite fit into his definition of appropriate, it felt like I was failing some silent test. So I learned to edit. To sand down the edges of myself until I was smooth and unremarkable.

It's like playing a part. Not in a dramatic, theatrical way, but a constant, low-grade hum of acting. At school, it’s nodding along in class even when I don’t understand a word. It’s laughing at jokes I don’t find funny, saying “yeah, that’s cool” when someone’s talking about something I’m actively indifferent to. At home, it's minimizing my stress, painting a picture of calm competence. It's a script I wrote a long time ago, and I’ve become awfully good at reciting it.

The thing is, the script never changes. The lines are always the same, the expressions are practiced, the outcome predictable. But the effort... the effort never stops. It's a constant drain, a slow leak of energy that leaves me feeling brittle and hollow. My mom notices, sometimes. She’ll give me these looks, these searching glances that seem to ask, "Are you okay?" And I always say, "Yeah, I'm fine." Because acknowledging anything else feels… dangerous.

The Phoebe Bridgers show changed something, though. Seeing so many people connect with a song, with a feeling I’d only ever whispered to myself, felt like a tiny crack in the façade. The comments on the blog after that post felt like proof of something bigger than my small town, bigger than my dad's expectations. People *got* it. They understood the specific ache of loneliness and vulnerability that I hadn’t even realized I’d been broadcasting.

It's not that I suddenly started being "authentic." I still wear the mask, most of the time. It’s just… I’m starting to question the script. I wonder if there's a way to rewrite it, to add some improvisation, some room for the messy, inconvenient truth of who I am. Maybe just a few lines, at first. A quiet observation, a hesitant question.

There’s a weight to keeping all of it inside. Like carrying a suitcase filled with stones. It makes it hard to breathe, hard to move. I realize now that the exhaustion isn’t just from the anxiety itself, but from the work of keeping it hidden. The constant vigilance, the editing, the pretending.

I don't have answers. I don't know how to dismantle years of ingrained behavior. But the idea of finding even a tiny bit of space to simply *be*, to let the real me flicker through, feels worth the risk. Even if it means facing the quiet judgment, the subtle disappointment. Because maybe, just maybe, being seen – truly seen – is more important than being perfect.