We Try So Hard To Be Relatable We End Up Losing Our True Selves

When was the last time someone asked you how your heart was taking it all?

And I mean, asked you. Looked in the eyes and asked you. Creases forming on their forehead because they’re part interested part worried asked you. Lowered their voice till you heard the depth of the patience they were prepared to dive into, if your answer wasn’t something that could be covered entirely in a tweet asked you.

When was the last time someone asked you how you felt of this world and you didn’t weave the words they’d like to hear?

Comforting words. Words which offer no resistance, no conflict. Words that soothe never smother.

Why didn’t you tell them, that there was a storm brewing inside you which no one else understood, but it was still brewing and wearing you down and the sound of the shipping wind was sharp on your skin and loud in your ears?

Why don’t you tell them there are parts of you that ache but can’t be smoothed over like it was never there?

But that isn’t what they want, you’d tell me.

They want us to become relatable. They want us to become easier to access, easier to empathise with, easier to walk with. We’re being tailor-made every day. Our sorrows stitched out and sewn together with feelings which barely belong to us anymore. We are taught being relatable is a virtue.

If people understand you better, if they can relate themselves with you, it’ll be easier for you to tell them what you think, to make them empathise and support you.

But how will they understand us, when we don’t understand ourselves?

How will they understand the desire for solitude, when you have to speak about crippling loneliness instead?

How will they comfort an ailment they can’t see, which you hide under a facade of issues you don’t have to speak about, don’t want to either but you must because studies say that’s what people relate with most?

We’re slowly becoming one long episode of a reality show.

We’re talking about family issues which don’t concern us, but avoiding taking about the ones which do. We’re conjuring emotions, while repressing our own continually.

Our lives are as generic as toys on a long assembly line, or advertisements for soda. We frame our sentences depending on the prevalent pop culture reference. We archive our lives without a pause, designed to either show us happy when we aren’t, or over play our tragedies to the point of it turning inconsequential. Others were supposed to relate to what you felt; you weren’t supposed to cater your feelings according to what others might relate to.

So next time someone asks you, how your heart is taking it all, wear it on your sleeves, and show them.