I usually tell people that I am an open book. I share everything or so it seems. I don’t know if my friends would tell you I am the same person in their lives that I am online. They might say they know me well. But do they? How much do we share with the people close to us? Is there a dark side to us we keep hidden from them? Is our online persona different if someone is a charismatic leader, trying to lead us to his or her persuasion, than they are in private? Do some people exude sweetness and niceness for their fans while those that know them personally could tell you that is not who they are?

I might come off as this confident person who has it all together. My friends know better. They know I am easily hurt, not confident in some of what I do, and crabby some of the time. Only a few friends know I have hidden much of who I am in my life because of the some of the conservative settings I grew up in, especially as a woman. I didn’t balk (much) when the men got fed first at the table. I seethed inside at some of the restrictions at church that I thought didn’t matter, such as no pink cakes at funerals or the perfect lining up of the silverware in the drawers because we were bullied by the kitchen committee many years ago. It seems petty but it was the small things that set me off at church and made me want to not darken the door. Ok, I can’t say I was always quiet about those small things or the big things either and I felt the judgment.

I was a frustrated housewife trying to keep up and decorate my house in a way that was acceptable in society the first thirty years of my married life, and when I began to be weird in my decorating sense that made me happy, I was ridiculed. So I hid the wildness inside of me for a long time because I had to be a responsible person so I garnered acceptance. That may sound strange. This was before the internet.

We become a chameleon changing our face to the public depending on what is acceptable. Should we do that? We are arguing big time about morals and politics right now. I don’t recognize some of my friends and they don’t recognize me. Before I wouldn’t have challenged their beliefs. I wouldn’t have known if they have hate in their heart for another race or religion. Maybe that is why they are surprised at my advocacy and I am surprised by their views. We kept hidden in many instances who we truly are out of what? Fear? Worry about losing a friend? Or worrying our views would be judged? Also to keep the peace. Were we fooling anyone? Did they know who we were but didn’t say anything because as long as we didn’t openly do it in front of them, it was that silent elephant in the room and our lives could continue.

I once knew someone who was the outstanding church worker. You never heard a word of bad language come out of their mouth when they were working in the church. They treated people well and with respect. The minute they left the church they were a different person with one the foulest mouths I knew. The also liked their drink. The language offended many people but it was never used in church. I never understood that. I am not judging, and I liked this person, but it was my puzzlement that made me want to ask why they used different language in church than in public. We all knew. It wasn’t a secret. It was well talked about. Did this person think God just lived in the church and didn’t hear them outside of the church? Or did they change who they were for that short time in church so they wouldn’t be ostracized. Should our church have been a place where this person didn’t need to change who they were when they walked through the door? And then begs the thought, if this person could hold the language when inside a church, why couldn’t they hold the bad language outside the church? Who did this person want us to see or want to be? Do we not accept all of our foibles and is that why we pretend to the world?

A long time friend brought up the subject of someone they had known for years, grown up with, spent their childhood with. My friend married someone of a different race in the early 70s. Her old childhood friend visited their home, sat a their table for years with both of them and their children. Then the internet arrived. Racism ruled it’s ugly head on social media posts and this longtime friend of my friend, started posting horrible, racist posts. I knew this person too and I was shocked as I had known them a long time too. My friend said to me, “They sat at my table with my family, shared meals. I had no idea they hated people of other races until now. What do I do with this? Who are they? I never knew when they sat at my table they were pretending.”

Who are we? Who and what do we let people see and why? It seems the advent of social media has given us all permission to be who we really are because we aren’t standing across from that person. If we were would we spew the same thing? I am just as guilty as anyone else of hiding behind the distance of social media posts.

I’m working on being more authentic. I don’t want to hurt people, but I’m finding that all that has been kept hidden from us by our friends, and all we have hidden, challenges that authenticity. I have heard the phrase, we have to agree to disagree. The problem I have with that is that if I agree to disagree I am compromising my values and who I am to the core of what I believe, and I now realize I have done that much of my adult life. When someone has made fun of someone, instead of standing up for them because I believe it was wrong, I laughed too, while inside I was cringing. I wanted to belong. When I saw someone that needed a friend but they weren’t acceptable because of how they behaved, I stayed away too so I wouldn’t become unacceptable in the crowd. When my kids wanted to hang with someone whose reputation was a little shady, I put my foot down and judged instead of accepting them into my family and finding out who they really were inside, and why their behavior deemed them unacceptable to the people in the community. All of that was wrong and though I wanted to, I did not speak up. I was too afraid of being left out in the cold by others.

I have stepped away these past few weeks from people that I have known forever, stepped away for a time is the action, for a time. I had to remove myself so I don’t bring out the inner devil that sits inside of me wanting to scream at our difference of opinion. I can’t agree to disagree but I can disengage myself from them because our views are so different. Step back and take a break. I suspect I am blocked too by many of my friends because of my views.

I don’t want to become that person again that laughs at a cruelty instead of speaking up. I can be cruel with my words, as I suspect most of us have that hidden devil inside. I am working on accepting my friends as they are, but if I feel that devil rising I know that I need to take a break, distance myself. I need a break from them and they need a break from me. That is a compromise I can do to keep peace even when I don’t feel peaceful. I don’t think there are any totally authentic people. But we can work on figuring out what we show to the world and is it true to who we are?