The Mask of Authenticity

Authenticity...

Have you ever met someone and immediately felt their authenticity? Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like an impostor? Have you ever feared someone seeing through a carefully crafted image you'd cultivated? Have you ever feared your authentic self would be hated or maligned? Have you ever feared your authentic self would invite ridicule and pain? Have you ever feared your authentic self would expose your vulnerabilities?

Yes, I have. I most definitely have. And, if you have, too, then you and I have that in common. It's sometimes difficult to be authentic when you know the person you are will be deemed unacceptable, particularly in your own close knit circle of friends and family.

When you're told often enough that you're not good enough, not perfect not, not acceptable enough, not lovable, you begin to believe it even if you don't admit it to yourself. As that message sinks in, it becomes easy to put on a mask in order to conform to expectations. The charade can begin to feel so real that you can fool yourself into believing the mask you show the world is authentic.

We live in a world where projecting an image we want the world to see has become increasingly easier in large part due to social media. Post the perfect picture of the perfect moment leaving out the struggle and the pain it took to achieve that moment. Post only the highlights of vacations, events, and even everyday life but leave out the travel delays and lost luggage as well as the debt and the stress. Post the family portrait that shows only the happiest smiles leaving out the tears before and after the photo. Post the most perfect celebration of an anniversary never showing the fights or the challenges of every day life. Post only the pictures showing the most flattering outfits and hair but leave out the baggy sweats and dirty hair. Oh, yes, let us show the most perfect versions of ourselves while trying desperately to convince ourselves the image we project is authentic to our true selves ignoring all the little things we know are only pretense.

It's so easy to fool ourselves into believing we are authentic when we live up to the image we've carefully cultivated. I know because in the name of creating my author platform, I cultivated an image that I thought would best entice people to not only read my work but buy it. I wanted people to believe I was perfect but also authentic. I wanted to be authentically perfect and perfectly authentic. Only... those two things can't co-exist, so I faced a dilemma. How did I become authentic in public?

I convinced myself I was authentic, or at least I wasn't inauthentic, even as I suffered from insomnia because I felt like I'd lost touch with myself. Not being inauthentic isn't the same thing as being authentic. It took me a long time to realize that. I never lied about who I was, but I only revealed certain aspects of myself - the ones I thought most acceptable to the most people. I kept the parts of me that I thought others would find unacceptable tucked away, hidden from the world and often even from myself.

There came a time when I couldn't do it anymore. I'd spent so much time and energy hiding from the experiences that had shaped me that I was exhausted and smothering from denial. So I started playing around with vulnerability, but that didn't feel authentic because being vulnerable doesn't come naturally to me yet I knew that in order to live an authentic life I had to get in touch with my vulnerability and to actively make myself vulnerable by doing things that made me feel vulnerable. It's amazing how inauthentic I felt as I took actions that made me feel vulnerable yet each time the end result was a feeling of being more authentic.

As I practiced vulnerability and saw the link between strength and vulnerability, I began to feel more authentic. I stopped worrying so much about people's expectations and started living a life that felt fulfilling and real and honest. I still struggle at times with letting people see the full authentic me, the one they might not like so much, but I try.

When I realized that I had to work at being authentic, I resisted. Authenticity shouldn't be work. That's what I kept telling myself. Being authentic should be natural and easy. Authenticity should be the norm. Yet, that's not the world we live in. True authenticity makes people uncomfortable because it means people don't always conform to expectations. True authenticity had been suppressed in most of us because we're afraid of being shunned by the world in which we live. Most of us don't even know our authenticity has been suppressed. We accept that as the normal way of being and would even declare our own authenticity until that moment we're sitting alone and stressed out because we're more worried about what this person or that group or whoever will think badly of us because we did something outside the norm but completely within the realm of who we are.

I hate to admit it, but I have to work at being authentic because it's often far easier and feels far safer to just hide those parts of me I know you or she or he or they or whoever won't like so much for whatever asinine reason can be conjured.

So when I look at you or her or him or them or whoever, I want to scream "Please be real. Please be you. Please be authentic. Please know you are enough, and I am not intimidated by seeing the real you." but, I only smile and nod and accept the person you present to me in the hopes that someday you'll trust me enough to be vulnerable with me, to be authentic with me, to be authentically you...

Then I walk away from our encounter and wonder if I was as authentic as I could've been or did I hold back just a little here and a little there in ways that were obvious enough to make you wish you could tell me you'd accept me as I am if I'd only be authentic with you...

And, there we have it our societal contract that drives us to be less than authentic far too often in order to keep the peace...

Am I the only one that listens to P!nk sing "when you're authentic, you're incredible" in The Last Song of Your Life and wants to scream it to everyone I love and really to everyone alive?

I'd rather be hated than not be authentic, but then I feel myself bite my tongue or ignore some action that hurts my feelings rather than be honest with someone for fear I'll hurt their feelings or they'll hate me. I pretend I'm unaffected by the actions or inactions of those in my life. I smile when I feel like crying. I pretend I've got it all together even when it feels like the world around me is crumbling.

Perhaps if we all just give ourselves permission to be just a little more authentic, we can break the societal restraints that make us forfeit our authenticity for acceptability...