You want to be known. You also want to control what is known. These two things are not compatible. Real knowing requires exposure. Not the exposure of a curated reveal, where you decide what to show and when. Exposure of the unedited version. The parts that are not working. The fears that are not rational. The contradictions you have not resolved.
The desires you are not proud of. Most people have never shown that to anyone. They have shown approximations. Versions. Edited highlights of their interior life. They have been vulnerable in the ways that are socially legible and safely received. The deeper material stays hidden. Not because no one asks. Because the risk of showing it and having it rejected is more threatening than the pain of keeping it hidden. This is the bind.
You are lonely at a level that connection through performance cannot reach. The connection you want requires you to be seen at the level you are hiding. But being seen at that level requires a trust you have not built, or a courage you have not found, or a belief that what is there is not too much for someone else to hold.
Most people resolve this bind by staying at the surface and calling it connection. They maintain the performance and tell themselves it is because others could not handle the real version. Often it is because they cannot handle the possibility that they might be right. You want to be known. But you are more afraid of being known and found insufficient than you are of not being known at all.
