Echos of Insight

Learning to close the gap between who I am and who I appear to be.

The self I’ve lived with
and the self the world has seen
were never quite the same.

At home I learned that calm was currency.
Silence kept the peace.
Expectation filled the air so thick
you could almost choke on it.
I wore goodness like a costume,
careful not to tear the seams.
Everything inside me was louder, stranger,
more alive than the space would allow.

In private, the story was different.
Behind my door I exhaled.
The quiet turned porous—almost holy.
I wrote what I couldn’t say,
made secret vows to the girl I meant to become.
It was the only place I didn’t owe perfection,
only truth scratched in ink.

At school I measured myself by other voices.
I’d learned that safety lived in neutrality,
that wanting could sound like rebellion.
So I stayed quiet,
behaving as if every room reported back home.

The distance between those versions hollowed me out.
To be seen for obedience but never for wonder
is a loneliness that hums beneath applause.
But each page I wrote became a bridge—
a thin plank of honesty across the split.
Every confession, every refusal to perform,
tightened the span a little more.

Now the public and the private aren’t mirror images,
but they meet more often.
I’m still learning how to stand in the light
without performing for it.

Someone wrote it in a song once:

I want you to know, I’m a mirrorball—
I’ll show you every version of yourself tonight.
I can change everything about me to fit in.
They called off the circus, burned the disco down,
But I’m still on that tightrope, still trying everything to keep you looking at me.
I’ve never been a natural— all I do is try, try, try.

The spinning still comes,
but slower now.
Each time it steadies, I gather the scattered light
and remember: I was never meant to disappear inside reflection—
only to find myself shining through it.