Personal Essays
If I Don't See You See Me
I know I'm not the only intensely private person in the world who has chosen, against all expectations, to share the squishy, silly, sly, and very sentimental details of her daily life online. I know I’m not the only one who doesn’t mind letting everyone and their mother read about her deepest delights and darkest dreads, but is also capable of shrinking small, smaller, smallest into herself the moment someone sitting opposite her at a family lunch asks a perfectly innocent question about how work is going.
The first reason I’m able to do this is simple: when I’m online, I don’t see you see me. I may know in my head that I told you about eating an entire pint of strawberry cheesecake ice cream in one sitting—but I didn’t hear you laugh under your breath as you scrolled down the page. I may realize, as I’m writing a post about how much I love/hate/fear/embrace/relish/despair of ever succeeding at my job, that you now know exactly how I feel—but I didn’t have to try to read the expression in your eyes when you found out.
Writing about myself online feels a little bit like this: It feels like I’m running to the top of a mountain, shouting my life out from deep within my lungs, and then racing down the scarp to hide in a cave before the echo of my words starts to resound. I get to say what I’m itching to say, but part of me likes to pretend that no one’s hearing it—not really.
The first reason I’m able to do this is simple: when I’m online, I don’t see you see me. I may know in my head that I told you about eating an entire pint of strawberry cheesecake ice cream in one sitting—but I didn’t hear you laugh under your breath as you scrolled down the page. I may realize, as I’m writing a post about how much I love/hate/fear/embrace/relish/despair of ever succeeding at my job, that you now know exactly how I feel—but I didn’t have to try to read the expression in your eyes when you found out.
Writing about myself online feels a little bit like this: It feels like I’m running to the top of a mountain, shouting my life out from deep within my lungs, and then racing down the scarp to hide in a cave before the echo of my words starts to resound. I get to say what I’m itching to say, but part of me likes to pretend that no one’s hearing it—not really.