Earlier this week, one of my friends (the friends-as-family type) sent me a playlist he’d been putting together of songs he thought I might like. I was a really nice experience, to have this sent to me, since he was absolutely correct on all counts, so much so that I’m still listening to the whole playlist over a week later. It was funny to immediately see that two of the songs on the playlist were songs I already loved and listened to regularly, but the rest were all new to me and all absolutely perfect songs. Well, perfect for me. It made me feel incredibly “seen” in a way that feels increasingly rare these days, especially as I’m often living in a conflicting manner when it comes to the various major portions of my life. At work, I do my best to not be seen and known in this way because I don’t trust my coworkers (which has gone from a general trepidation about being vulnerable with my coworkers and grown into an entirely justified mistrust), which is at odds with the way I live my life online or with the people I trust who I try to be as genuinely myself with as possible. Throw in a couple other places where the way I live as myself is different–the discord for my Final Fantasy 14 Free Company where I try to be myself but lightly and with little revelation of personal details for example, or my local friend group where I was forced to withdraw into myself in order to cope with last year’s pain and sleeplessness–and you can probably start to imagine how much internal conflict I’m dealing with most of the time. I have only one small space where I can be genuinely myself and it is in text messages I exchange with my closest friends, which feels incredibly stifling and makes me feel like I’m being ignored by the whole world.

Part of that is by design these days. I try not to attract attention to myself because, in the current political and social atmopshere, I anticipate that most attention I’d get would be more negative than positive, whether it was meant to be that way or not. After all, some of the people who have hurt me the worst meant well and I’m occasionally reminded by my own mistakes (and regularly reminded of my past mistakes by the too-loud voice in the back of my mind that thinks I deserve to be nothing but miserable) that it is very easy to be well-intentioned and well-behaved but still cause other people pain. I think there’d be plenty that was paid with the intention of being positive attention, but as a person who looks and behaves a lot like a stereotypical white, male resident of my state in the public sphere, I get a lot of people seeing me as someone who’d agree with their awful opinions that I absolutely do not share. Though it’s not like being visibily anything other than a stereotypical white, heterosexual man would save me from those people entirely. There’s plenty of them out there who are comfortable saying some incredibly awful things to people who don’t look like them that I bet I’d still be hearing some of the kinds of things I get told now, just hurled at me with an intent to cause harm rather than as some kind of horrible expectation that I’m a kindred spirit. The less people can see and know me, the true me, at a casual glance, the safer I will be these days.

Which sucks. It sucks to live like this. It sucks to be miserably comfortable here because I lived this way for most of my life. It sucks to feel invisible as people stare you in the eyes and only ever see the carefully crafted mask you’ve made to keep yourself safe, assuming as they do that this face you wear to safeguard your truest, most-vulnerable self is actually a true a reflection of who you are rather than who you know they will accept. None of this is new to me. None of this is unique to me. Tons of people live like this as they try to survive their current environment and if it were not for being able to be my true self with the people I care about, I’d have become a withered husk of a person a long time ago. Still, in the face of how heavy this mask and the need to wear it have become, it is easy to lose track of how it feels to be seen and understood by people you’re willing to be yourself around. Which is why this playlist has hit so hard with me. It is a sign that my friend, who has been dealing with some stuff himself, has been paying attention to me, has noticed the general shape of my life and my existence in this moment, and put in the effort to make that known to me. It’s a very rare feeling, this, and while this isn’t the only time I’ve ever felt it, it goes up on my personal record board with a small selection of moments where that feeling was the strongest (one of which was also him and the other of which was another Person Who Takes Care Of People taking notice of me doing the same thing and being genuinely caring about it rather than perfunctory or begrudging like so many others were).

There is little I want more in this world than to spend time with people I care about and who care about me in ways that make me feel like I am witnessed and understood as an individual. I’ve never liked feeling like I’m lumped into a group or the idea that being a member of a group gives people an understanding of who I am as a result. People are far more individual and interesting than that, even if you try to reduce it down to broad intentities. Few poeple share the same collection of indentities, so there’s plenty of room for nuance in this style of attempting to understand people, but I still don’t like it when it happens to me. Probably because I grew up as an enforced member of various broad groups that not only didn’t define me but actively denied me (boy/man, catholic, brother, responsible child, old soul, smart/”so much potential,” and on and on and on) because of the expectations they heaped on me and the ways I was forced to change to conform to my assigned roles. Which is probably why it feels so validating to be seen and understood, since that’s the opposite of being lumped into some group and defined as a result of being a part of that group whether you’re truly a member or not. We’re all individuals who deserve to have people in our lives that understand us as we are, for better or for worse, and I really hope I can provide that same feeling to other people when they need it.