What We Don't Show the World

I can't always remember who I was thirty or more years ago.  I know I was headed down a different road.  I know I wasn't the me I am now.  I know I still carry her in me, carry her hurts and fears and anger and scars.  I know I carry her memories, even as I cannot recall them.

I remember people, and I remember what I thought they thought of me, but I know that my perceptions were skewed and I can't trust them today, but I'm too much a coward to reach out, reach back, and find out what's real and what's figment.

This is what mental illness does to me.

I have such clarity of memory, when I remember.  Little things, scenes, a few words here and there, so crystalline and detailed down to the scent on the wind and the color of the trees and sky, but then when asked if I recall this or that incident, I stare blankly and shake my head - some seminal event is nonexistent in my noggin.

Everything I have experienced since a very young age had been filtered through depression, through shattered self-confidence and negative self-worth, through the tangled and thorny hedgerows around my mind and heart, until it bears no resemblance to its original form.

Still, today, I struggle with receiving information as it is given rather than through all of those horrid, dark, devastating filters.

I must remain honest and open even when I fear that my honesty and openness are costing me happiness, because that happiness would be built on falsehood and I could never trust it.  I must remain honest and open even when I am afraid and want to curl protectively around myself and hide because how can my compassion and love grow if they are kept in the dark?

What we don't always show the world, what we don't always show even those closest to us, is how we tremble within, how terrifying it is to be open, how damaged we feel, how unworthy, how unwanted, how lonely, how lost.  It's too much, too much to ask anyone to understand or bear with, and we've lost so very much, so very many, showing what we don't always show the world.

Still.

There's more to gain, isn't there, in revealing than concealing?

One small step at a time, I will show the world.