do we ever really know each other?

on the quiet ache of being known, and the selves we leave behind

Lately, I’ve been wondering if anyone has ever truly known me. Known me beyond the performance, past the persona I assemble like armor each morning, the softness I hand out in teaspoons so I don’t run dry. I think about it more than I’d like to admit. And sometimes, in the quiet hours when the world feels far away, I wonder if I’ve ever let anyone see me as I really am—messy, uncertain, shifting by the hour. Or if I’ve just grown too skilled at becoming who people expect me to be.

It’s strange, isn’t it? That I can sit beside someone I love, press my secrets into their palms like offerings, and still feel like I’m shouting from behind glass. That I can be the perfect quiet student in one breath and the loud, effortless friend in the next. That even my mother—the person who gave me life—doesn’t know who I am when I’m not trying to make her proud.

I’m not lying to them, not exactly. I’m just never telling the whole truth. Somewhere, someone remembers me as kind and soft. Somewhere else, someone swears I was bold and bright. They’re both right. They’re both wrong. Each memory is a silhouette, stitched together from the parts I chose to show. And the more I think about it, the more I realize: maybe no one has ever met me completely. Maybe I haven’t either.

So it’s not that I’m pretending to be someone I’m not. It’s more subtle than that, much quieter. I smooth out the edges, dim the brightness, rearrange the furniture of my personality into something softer, easier to swallow. I offer people the girl they’ll like best, the girl I think they can fall in love with. Because people don’t really listen unless they like the sound of you.

My parents always preferred the well-behaved version of me—the one who smiled on cue, never spoke too much or too little, always agreeable, just opinionated enough to seem thoughtful but never defiant. Strangers warm to me when I make quiet, careful small talk, when I nod politely and tilt my head just enough to look curious but not challenging. I’ve learned to crinkle the sides of my lips like a sweet, wide-eyed girl—harmless, sweet, caring—exactly what they were hoping for. Friends liked me when I was funny but not attention-seeking, kind but not clingy. People believe the version of me that fits the script they’ve already written. Anything outside of that—too intense, too odd, too much—and suddenly, I’m not quite lovable anymore.

When everyone holds a piece of you, but no one knows you, the loneliness doesn’t scream. It rumbles quietly—low and constant, like a refrigerator at midnight. It becomes something you carry in your chest like fog clogging the path to your throat. Something you learn to live with because it’s easier than the pain of being too much. I’ve worn so many masks that I’ve forgotten what my soul looks like underneath. And worse, sometimes I’m not even sure there was anything there to begin with because maybe I’ve been a collage of expectations for so long that the original has faded.

There are days I catch myself pausing before I speak, scanning the room for what kind of person they want me to be. Do I play the clever one? The dreamer? The shy observer who smiles softly and says nothing at all? I can slip into any of them, and that should make me proud, should feel like a skill. But all it does is hollow me out. I don’t know if I’m an introvert or an extrovert, if I prefer Montesquieu or long walks where no one speaks. I don’t know if I truly enjoy dancing until morning or if I’ve just learned to wear it like a costume, a role I’ve practiced until it feels like mine. Sometimes I wonder if everything I love, everything I do, everything I am, was ever chosen freely. Or if I just got very good at becoming the kind of person who is easy to want.

But even beyond the questions of who I am, beneath the shifting masks and practiced smiles, there’s another fear that lingers: not just of being misunderstood, but of being invisible altogether. Of slipping through life like a shadow, present but unregistered. I’m terrified that I’ve become background noise in every room I walk into. Pleasant, ignorable, ordinary. If I am perfectly crafted to someone else’s taste, am I distinct enough to leave a mark? If I’m likable but never memorable, am I now replaceable? If there is nothing about me that is sharp, that is signature, that is mine—will I be forgotten?

And maybe that’s the most haunting part. That even if someone tried to remember me, I don’t know which impression they’d recall. The soft-spoken girl with polite smiles? The one who filled silence with laughter? The overachiever? The wallflower? None of them are lies, but none of them are entirely true. No one has ever met the real me. But maybe I haven’t met them either.

Still, is that really a failure? Maybe we’re all a little unknowable, even to the people who love us best. We show pieces of ourselves. Fragments stitched together with timing, circumstance, and the fear of being too much or not enough. No one ever sees the whole. Not really. Not even us. Because the “whole” keeps shifting. It flickers and folds, expanding and retreating like the tide. To know someone completely would be like trying to bottle the wind. By the time you think you’ve caught it, it’s already gone.

And perhaps that’s the rule: no one is supposed to meet you in full. Maybe we’re meant to be experienced in glimpses—a laugh here, a silence there, a version of ourselves that only flickers into view under the right kind of light. There’s something quietly poetic about that. That the self is too fluid, too alive to be pinned down. That knowing someone isn’t about grasping all of them—it’s about holding what you can, gently. And maybe the most honest form of love is one that doesn’t demand completeness, but stays anyway. Even in the gaps. Even in the blur.

Some days, I think I’m almost there—almost real, almost whole. But then, without thinking, I change again. A shift in tone, a gesture that wasn’t really mine, an opinion molded for someone else. But the terrifying thing is I barely notice. Tearing myself apart has become muscle memory. Like a survival instinct I can’t control. I wonder if I’ve built a life out of broken pieces so convincingly that even I’ve lost the blueprint. I don’t know if I’m hiding or if this is just who I’ve become. I don’t know if anyone could hold all of me—or if I’d let them try.

And so I’m left with the question that lingers behind every laugh, every mask, every version I hand out like faded letters:

Do we ever really know each other?