✑ Why I didn’t submit an ‘Introduce Yourself’ photo when I joined Steemit. (Spoiler alert: it’s because I’m terrified.)

     I have this thing with my face where I don’t really feel like it properly expresses who I think I am on the inside.

My face is sweet, but that’s not me. It’s drawn, but I’m not drawn. While inside I am thoughtful and pondering, outside my face looks pinched and irritated.

Truth be known, I might be completely wrong! Nobody has ever expressed distaste with my face. Well, except that fiasco in high school, but we’ll come to that in a bit. I’m also not really in the business of walking around asking people what they think of my face so I likely have no idea. Plus that’s a bit weird.

But I do feel there has always been a consistent… underestimation of me. People are surprised to find that I have such a strong conviction. That I am as stubborn as an ass, holding onto my principles even to my detriment. They are surprised to find me quick to call it. 

This surprise is getting old real fast. So here now with you as my witness, let me tell you what it’s like to have a sweet face…

People think they can pull the wool over your eyes. They think they can get away with saying one thing and meaning another. They think they can appeal to your good nature and values without ever doing the legwork to find out what yours truly are. Meanwhile you’re standing right there, seeing far into this person’s motives and agenda like they’re clear, shallow water. 

They think you’re flaky. They think you like things like gossiping and compliments and unsolicited smiling. It’s weird and it’s manipulative and it perpetuates the already pandemic drive to shut ourselves off from each other and I can’t understand how anybody couldn’t see how damaging and detrimental that is.

I am certain I can’t be the only one who feels like this. 

Don’t get me wrong, I want to show my face! And I will one day but there is another factor that renders me frozen at the thought of posting these journals with something that can be traced to my everyday life. And that is the people who know me. In real life. At my job.

The thought of my friends, relatives and peers knowing that I’m on a blockchain-based social media platform, journaling about all the injustices and challenges this idealistic dreamer faces is terrifying to me. 

I feel like the people who know me think I’m lazy. They think I’m distant and judgemental. 

I’m frightened that if I truly share just how deeply my wishful dreaming streak runs that I’ll be taken advantage of. That I’ll be ridiculed as infantile, misguided and lost. I’m afraid that people will come after me, try to help me with their ‘advice’ and ‘guidance.’ My creative energy and, hell, sense of hope is already being buffeted from all sides in this cruel, grey world, I can’t afford to needlessly expose my authentic vulnerability prematurely.

I know because this has happened before. I have been underestimated since I was 11 years old when my peers decided that my face was to become their tormenting amusement. That my creativity was something to be ridiculed. That my sensitivity was something to be violated.

My peers still know what I look like. I am unfortunately still even unwillingly in contact with some of them. If my peers know what I look like, they could trace me here. And then I wouldn’t be free to express the truth. I wouldn’t be free to express myself.

I wouldn’t be free.

And so I didn’t include my face in my first post because I want to be able to express myself as I am on the inside, where I really reside. This is the gauntlet I’m throwing down on Steemit. In these journals I will post what I truly feel, what I truly believe and how I truly think. Who I truly am. Who I truly wish to be, in the hope that I might find others who long for the same.

And I don’t want to be held back in any way. Not any more, not for another moment. Not by my sweet face, not by my circumstances and least of all not by my past.

But I don’t feel safe yet. I don’t feel safe in my convictions. I couldn’t truly step up to the ghosts of my past and lay waste to their judgements without a care for my self-preservation. Not yet. And so until such time as I do feel like I will be brave enough to unveil myself to the world, hidden my face will remain.

But one day… one day you’ll see me. And on that day I’ll finally, finally feel safe stepping out again into the sun, where I belong.