The Person I Pretended to Be Almost Erased Who I Truly Was

There’s a strange danger in pretending for too long. At first, it feels harmless—like slipping on a mask just to fit the occasion, adjusting your voice or your mannerisms to blend in, smoothing over your sharp edges so no one notices they’re there. But the longer you wear the mask, the harder it becomes to remember where the mask ends and where you begin.

For years, I pretended.

I pretended to be confident when inside I was shivering with self-doubt. I pretended to be agreeable when every bone in my body wanted to speak up. I pretended to have it all together because the world seemed too unkind to handle the truth of my fragility. And slowly, without realizing it, the person I pretended to be began to take up more space than the person I truly was.

At some point, I stopped just pretending—I started becoming.

The act felt safer than reality. People praised the version of me who always smiled, who said yes without hesitation, who performed like life was an endless stage play. I earned approval. I earned acceptance. I earned belonging—or at least I thought I did. But what I lost in the process was myself.

It’s easy to underestimate the cost of hiding. You convince yourself you’re being strategic, that you’re just adapting. But adaptation becomes self-erasure when it’s rooted in fear. I wasn’t adapting; I was disappearing.

The Silent Replacement

The first sign was subtle. I no longer trusted my own feelings. If I was upset, I’d swallow it down, whispering to myself, It’s not a big deal. Don’t make a scene. If I was excited, I’d tone it down, fearing someone might think I was “too much.” I filtered everything through the lens of how it would be received by others, until my own desires barely registered.

Then came the second sign: exhaustion. Pretending is heavy work. Carrying around a version of yourself that doesn’t belong to you will eventually crush you. I felt drained not from living, but from performing. Every interaction felt like another scene I had to rehearse, another script I had to memorize.

And the third sign was the most frightening: I began to forget what I actually wanted. If someone asked me my opinion, I froze. Not because I didn’t have one, but because I couldn’t tell which voice was mine anymore. The mask had become so convincing that even I struggled to see past it.

The Moment of Reckoning

I wish I could say there was a single dramatic moment when everything came crashing down, but in truth, it was quieter than that. It was the night I stared at myself in the mirror and felt like I was looking at a stranger.

I didn’t hate who I saw. I just didn’t know them.

That’s when it hit me: if I kept pretending long enough, the real me might never come back. The person I truly was—the one with messy emotions, unpolished thoughts, inconvenient truths—was fading into the background. And the longer I allowed the performance to dominate, the harder it would be to remember my own lines.

I realized I had a choice. I could keep living in the comfort of applause, validation, and external approval—or I could risk losing all of that to rediscover who I was beneath the masks.

It terrified me. But what terrified me more was the thought of leaving this world without ever being known—not by others, but by myself.

Reclaiming Myself

Reclaiming who I was didn’t happen overnight. It began with the smallest rebellions: saying no when I meant no, allowing myself to cry in front of people I trusted, admitting when I didn’t have it all together. At first, it felt unnatural, even wrong. Authenticity is uncomfortable when you’ve trained yourself to believe it’s unsafe.

But slowly, I started to breathe again.

I learned that some people didn’t like the real me—and that was okay. Their discomfort wasn’t my responsibility. For every person who drifted away when I stopped pretending, another person drew closer, grateful for my honesty. I realized that genuine connections could only grow in the soil of truth, not performance.

Most importantly, I learned to give myself permission to exist without explanation. To laugh too loudly. To feel too deeply. To dream too boldly. To be messy, contradictory, human.

The Lesson

The person I pretended to be nearly replaced who I was. And maybe, in a way, that’s what had to happen for me to finally understand the fragility and value of authenticity.

Because here’s the truth: the world doesn’t need another polished performance. It needs people willing to be real—people who remind others that imperfection is not failure but evidence of life.

Now, when I look in the mirror, I don’t see a stranger. I see someone scarred but alive, broken but whole, imperfect but free.

And I promise myself daily: never again will I let the mask become the masterpiece.


Thank you for reading this 🥰.