I’ve been hiding for 10 years.
Not behind a bush, but metaphorically.
I wish I were a hide and go seek champion or something fun like that, but no… my hiding is just because I’m someone who has long been afraid of taking up too much space and long been afraid of not just rejection, but also connection… because rejection is straight up painful and connection is not only just something with which I’m not comfortable (as a lifelong hider!), but also opens up the avenue for the even deeper pain of loss or the terrifying vulnerabilities of being truly seen or heard or understood. Because even though I’ve always craved deep connection, there was also a part of me since childhood that knew the safest place to be is hidden. And the easiest way to hide, is to make yourself small. And it’s not just the safest thing to do in life: keeping yourself small is also the most considerate thing you can do in a world of people who take up space too. So I try to shrink. And I hide. And not just from people: I also hide from my pursuits and parts of myself which I fear might invite rejection… or, more terrifyingly, connection. And I hide from my pursuits which might somehow invade someone else’s space. And so… I’ve been hiding.
Hiding from my writing. Hiding from my voice. Hiding from my music. Hiding from my art. Hiding from my philosophy. Hiding from my archaic love of all things beautiful and good. Hiding from myself. Hiding from rejection and misunderstanding. Hiding from connection and exposure and bleeding into other people’s space. Hiding from what is on my heart of hearts to do. Even hiding from my love of Jesus… silencing myself for the sake of some misplaced sense of safety. And in so doing, I feel I lost myself in my own game of hide and never seek.
Lost myself again. Because I have a history of hiding.
Indeed, I already confronted this tendency to hide 10 years ago when I first started publishing my writing (And years before that too, after one serendipitous night which I will write about one day!). And as I’ve been poring over my old words, I fear that– for all the work I did to come out of hiding– I stood still in time the moment I stopped writing and all the same ideas are here with me waiting to be shared. And I’ve let myself start to hide again. But I am so tired of the small life hiding creates. And the way that, even if it might stave off rejection, it makes true connection impossible. And I am tired of the ever-present conviction which I tuck away in the far recesses of my heart and mind… that tells me I am not quite doing what I should be doing. That conviction tells me I need to write.
But what will my writing matter? Why do I need to write? Why of all the things I wanted to grow up and be in life… a ninja, a mechanic, an adventurer, a stunt double, a wife, a writer, a farmer, a sumo wrestler, a mom, a roadie, an animal rescuer, a wealthy philanthropist… etc. … the one I’ve always known was inescapably my fate was to be a writer? And yet I have tried to escape it. Because I’m afraid of it. As I hoped I could write fiction or something from which I could distance myself… but I am a soul baringly personal writer. And I just don’t want to bare my soul to the world. And yet… it’s my fate. And I know it is my fate because I can’t ignore it no matter how much I try.
But why should my writing matter? It is such a small drop in an infinite sea. It will not amount to even one comma in the dictionary of life. And yet, even if I write a million words just so one person poring through the archives of the Internet in a space library 200 years from now can read a phrase which makes them feel seen and heard and not alone for the first time… I would write all those words for them.
—
My dad told me once that a man with whom he worked told him that something my dad had said to him years before changed his life. It was something my dad had just said in passing. And forgot about it. But it had changed that man’s life…
What we say does matter. And if we feel an annoying yet burning conviction to say it… I guess we should?
So, I’m here to write again. And share some of my old words too. I know I am not the only one who struggles with hiding… and so I want to openly write about such things and more to encourage anyone who can connect with what I write. I will write raw and honestly… because the world needs people who will be real. And that’s the only way I can write, and be, anyway. And I hope that sharing will make you feel heard and seen and known, future spaceman.
So… let me begin (Or continue?) with a very fitting post from my original blog, with only quite slight editing. Because as I said: I got stuck and I have all the same thoughts to share. It’s almost as though I can’t go on until I share them. Indeed, not much has changed with how I feel about what I wrote, except my understanding has grown immensely of why I hid so much in life and delved into my own inner world… and I realized my lifelong fears had much more to do with fear of connection and taking up space and being a burden, than merely rejection… but that is a story for another time. So… please just enjoy this now:
When the Room is Silent
I felt my throat choke up and the black lace of my dress was suddenly much itchier than it had ever been. No one was going to say anything at my grandpa’s funeral. The pastor had asked: “Does anyone have anything they want to say?” and the sanctuary held nothing but silence and people shifting uneasily against the hardness of the pews.
Then my brother stood up. He said something quite simple about my grandfather. I can’t quite remember what. But that started it: people all over the church began standing up and telling stories I and my family had never known about a preacher grandpa who stood watch by death beds and comforted the sick and gave words that gave life…
—
It’s awkward to be the first one to speak. It’s awkward to put yourself out there. But if there is one thing most responsible for making the world a more boring and disconnected and even lonely place than it need be, it is the fear of rejection. And it is rampant. The fear that someone will judge you and dismiss you because of something you do or say so often shapes what goes down in life, even at funerals. It leaves you sitting silent, when something should be said.
I figure that there are three basic ways to deal with this fear of rejection:
- You can hide so no one can find you to reject you.
- You can try to fit in so no one can find a reason to reject you.
- You can face your fears and risk rejection.
As a (mostly) reformed morbidly shy person, I have to say that I was pretty good at option #1 throughout high school. And once, even in college, I might’ve, umm… hid behind a bush to avoid someone I was too shy to face. Or not. If that’s weird :)
Anyway, I was, and sometimes still am, quite a good hider. Not to brag or anything. I just was and am great at hiding. It comes naturally to me. But I was never good at fitting in. Mostly because I never understood it was an option. As, much as I assumed people with nice hair just had nice hair and never realized people “did” their hair, growing up I also never realized people tried to fit in. Socially oblivious person that I was, I honestly thought a lot of people were just quite similar… and some of us were just duck out of water, awkwardly not similar. And there was nothing to be done about it. Now I know a little bit better. I think.
But I still don’t quite understand the “how to” of trying to fit in. Nor do I want to. As the advantage to the hiding method of method #1 is that existentialists like me can still tell ourselves we’re being authentic if we just hide most of who we are– confining ourselves to just sharing very limited yet authentic aspects of ourselves with others, rather than changing ourselves to fit in or showing a false front to suit others. But the more I’ve hidden throughout life… the more I’m seeing that as just a way to fit in too. Perhaps an even more inauthentic way than being fake? But let’s not get into that here. For the purpose of this essay, let’s leave #1 and #2 distinct, and move unto method #3: facing fears and risking rejection.
I’ve been working on this option ever since senior year of high school, when I decided that hiding was just too boring…. and more profoundly, could very well cause me to miss my life (1). But coming out of hiding has been a continuous and fluctuating process. Because I have to be honest and say that sometimes I still find myself just wanting to hide, you know… on some occasions, if there is a bush handy and rejection seems imminent. And writing is generally such an occasion. Sometimes I just get self-conscious when I write, wondering if my writing just sounds weird, over the top, or whatever might be rejectable. I just made up that word: rejectable. But don’t you also sometimes try to avoid saying/doing/noticeably being things which might be rejectable? Yeah, me neither :) Who would do that?
But seriously, isn’t it too often in life that we try to hide or blend in and the result is…boring? Or worse. And it is the same with writing as well: to avoid rejection of your writing you can either not write, or you can write something that people want to hear– something that will save you face and help you to fit in. But how can you be honest about the human experience if you just hide or try to fit in? How can you write anything of worth? These are the type of questions which keep a writer up at night when she is not learning to tap dance, or baking triple chocolate cookies, or building forts and making miniature smores, or sleeping. Or trying to sound fun while adding accurate detail to an essay 😉 You know?
These questions keep a writer up at night because words carry truth and ideas, and these can change things. Just think of even simple phrases like “hello, nice to meet you” or “I’m sorry” or “I love you” or “I need help”… simple phrases with the profundity to alter the course of a life. And then think of the words of all the books and poems and speeches and documents in the world that inspired people, or made them remember, or moved them to feel again, or opened their eyes, or prompted them to fathom a different way of life.
Words can heal. Words can set free. Words can wake you up to life. Words are possibilities that open floodgates. That is why it is important to write– and write what is true.
—
My conviction of the importance of words and my lifelong quest to live without regard of the fear of rejection are basically why I started this blog. Then, a little while ago, I got unfriended (de-friended ?) on Facebook as a result of writing about Jesus. Bummer. It had taken a long time for me to write anything about Jesus at all. I was hesitant to do so because there are so many misconceptions about Christianity that I was afraid people would reject me and my writing just because I’m a Christian, without even understanding what it is that I actually believe (2). Besides that, it is just hard to write about faith, because it is a long life story best told at 2 a.m. while sitting on the kitchen floor.
But if I don’t let any of that story of the faith in my life–which is so central to who I am– bleed into my writing, how can I be an authentic writer? How can I write anything truthful, if I purposefully hide so that I won’t be rejected? Yet still, when I got unfriended on Facebook I wanted to find a bush and hide and take down this blog that’s been plaguing me… but the things that make you want to hide in life are the most important things to face. So I did the opposite of what I felt like doing and wrote this post instead (though I took a few weeks to publish it :).
For all art is self-expression. But the fear of rejection can easily stifle this expression. Yet the work of a true artist is to tell the truth by pushing through this fear to communicate life as it is actually experienced– ourselves as we actually are– not life as we want people to think we experience it (3). And the importance of art like this is greater than we might even think.
For people really want to be accepted for who they truly are, but are willing to settle just for being accepted. But life is too short to settle like that and so miss out on all the richness of authenticity and true connection and all the healing and soul-waking goodness and life that authenticity and true connection offers. So say and do what you really want and be who you really are. Write what is true. Say what needs to be said, not what saves you face and…you might get unfriended on Facebook. Or worse. But risking rejection is the only way to find true acceptance. And you never know when what you say or do or create will open the way for others to freely express themselves too and so enable the way for true connection and more…
So, when the silence is stifling…. let your writing, your music, your art, your life be like the first person to stand up and speak in a silent room. You never know what connection that may allow and what permission that may give others to do the same.
(1) This decision is a story unto itself. .. a story which loosely concerns Greek history, coffee houses, love, and razor wire. But there isn’t space for that story here. But there is space to share a line from a blog post someone wrote once which stuck with me, as someone who would rather have no regrets in life: ”I hid myself from the possibility of pain so well, I reached a point where the pain of regret outgrew the pain of rejection.” …a good reason to write, instead of regret never having the guts to be a real writer…right?
(2) Of course these misconceptions are part of why I allow myself to write about my faith at all. As many people I meet and talk to have a very different view and experience of Christianity than I do, which is why I want to share my perspective rather than stifle my authentic expressions of my faith, so that people can get a different take. If they want.
I kind of advocate talking about religion and politics and all those taboo subjects, because I think this is part of how everyone has to come to their own beliefs… which I think is really important to do in life…actually, more than that, I think it is paramount as an individual to think for yourself and rid yourself of all dogmatic thinking -whether it be religious, political, ideological, social or scientific- for the sake of living an examined, authentic life. After all, it is a way of thinking—accepting what someone else says as authoritative without examining it thoroughly yourself– not the content of what you think that is intellectually objectionable and rightly called dogmatic (this is part of why I am a fan of subverting society through wholesome mayhem and why I majored in philosophy!).
Indeed, I think that a large bit of life is about finding your own convictions and living by them (which is part of why I think religion and politics should be freely discussed and never censored with ridicule or ostracism.). And that is why I’m into Jesus, because though I’ve studied the writings of some of the greatest thinkers of both Western and Eastern philosophy, what Jesus said and was said about him has been some of the only truth that ever really resonated within my soul and not just my intellect.
(3) Okay, so this is ONE theory of art… :)