We spend so much of our lives hiding, but not from others—no, we hide from ourselves.
The person you show to the world, the face you wear, the mask you’ve spent years sculpting—it’s not just a defense against the eyes of others. It’s a defense against the truth.
There’s a quiet fear that seeps in when you realize that once someone truly sees you, you can’t hide anymore. You can’t pretend anymore. The mask will be ripped off, and you will stand bare, vulnerable. The idea of being known, really known, terrifies us. It feels like an exposure that we aren’t prepared for—because if someone sees you completely, they might not like what they see.
What happens when you’re no longer the image you’ve carefully constructed for yourself? When the polished facade is removed, and what’s left is the raw, unrefined version of you, full of cracks, faults, and all the parts you’ve hidden away in the dark corners of your mind?
Do you run, or do you stand in front of it?
Are you brave enough to face the reflection that shows more than just your surface, more than just what you’ve chosen for the world to see?
We want to be seen, of course. We want to be understood.
But we want it to be on our terms. We want the world to recognize us in the way we want to be recognized, to validate the identity we’ve chosen for ourselves. We want the truth to be filtered through the lens of our own creation.
We don’t mind being looked at, so long as what is seen fits the script we’ve written.
But the real danger isn’t in being seen. It’s in being seen for who we truly are. Without the mask, without the filters, and without the carefully crafted persona that keeps us safe from vulnerability. The risk lies in what we will find when the veil is lifted, when we see ourselves as we truly are, not as we pretend to be.
Here’s the thing we don’t want to admit:
The most dangerous part of being seen isn’t the exposure. It’s the revelation. The fear that we may be empty underneath, or that what we find within might not align with the identity we’ve spent so long protecting.
If we are truly seen, we might have to face the parts of ourselves we’ve buried deep, the parts we’ve denied or repressed because we believed they weren’t worthy of being seen. And that’s terrifying. We don’t just hide from the world; we hide from ourselves.
But in this fear, there is also a strange truth:
The more we hide, the more disconnected we become. The more we shield ourselves from the world, the less of ourselves we reveal—not just to others, but to our own soul.
The act of hiding is not simply a defense; it is a distortion. A mask that clouds our vision of the truth of our existence. And once we begin to truly see ourselves—without the filters, without the judgments, without the ego pushing things aside—we begin to understand that the only thing that truly matters is not whether others see us, but whether we see ourselves.
What happens when you embrace the truth of who you are, the messy, imperfect, unpolished version? What if instead of running from that truth, you welcomed it? Not as a failure, but as a release?
You are still you. You are whole. The only difference is that now you stand unmasked.
In the end, being known isn’t as scary as it seems. The real terror lies in the refusal to acknowledge the fullness of who we are, the deep parts we’ve buried because we thought they didn’t belong. But the truth is, everything belongs.
Even the parts we fear.
And in that acceptance, we are no longer afraid of being seen. We learn that being seen isn’t the same as being defined by someone else. Being seen, in its purest form, is a recognition of self—an acceptance of the full spectrum of who you are, with all your flaws and complexities.
Once you are seen, truly seen, nothing changes, except that now you know the truth—and the weight of hiding from it dissolves.
Gyatt 