Things Get So Bad You Can Finally Stop Pretending

The facade cracks and instead of trying to fix it there’s just this sense of okay, finally we can be real about this. The thing that’s been bad for months or years is finally bad enough that hiding it isn’t worth the energy anymore.

Giving up has a strange freedom to it. The trying to keep things together takes so much effort. The fighting to make things look okay when they’re not okay is exhausting in ways that don’t show on the outside. When you finally stop doing that, there’s this breath you get to take. The energy that was going into the performance gets to go somewhere else or nowhere at all. The performance stops being the priority.

People know now. They know it’s not fine. They know you are not fine. The secret is out and keeping the secret was worse than people knowing. People knowing means you don’t have to carry it alone anymore. People knowing means you can finally ask for something instead of pretending you don’t need anything. The asking becomes possible because there’s no more pretense to maintain.

The relief of things being bad enough that they match how you feel inside is real. For so long the inside was bad and the outside looked fine and holding that contradiction took everything. The contradiction was like living as two different people. Now the outside is bad too and there’s no contradiction. There’s just bad, and everyone can see it, and you don’t have to pretend otherwise.

What’s strange is that admitting things are bad feels easier than pretending things are fine. Admitting things are bad is honest. Pretending things are fine requires constant monitoring and adjustment. Pretending requires you to be aware of what your face is doing and what your voice sounds like and whether you are expressing the right amount of concern about the right things. That’s exhausting and now you get to stop.

The relief doesn’t mean everything is good now. Things are actually worse in a lot of ways. The collapse is real and consequences are coming. But at least now you are dealing with the real situation instead of dealing with the real situation plus the performance about how fine you are about the real situation.

Some people will use the knowledge of how bad things are to judge you or to help you or to abandon you. That’s their choice. What matters is that you are not using energy to hide it from them anymore. You are not performing stability that you don’t have. You are just being honest about how bad it is and letting them respond however they’re going to respond.

It’s not good. Things being visibly bad is not a good situation. But it’s less lonely than pretending was. It’s less exhausting than maintaining the facade. It’s more honest and honestly the honesty matters more right now than the good does.

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