The difference between adapting and disappearing
Friday night. Three drinks in with your closest friends, telling a story that would get you fired if your boss heard it. You’re loud, unfiltered, maybe a bit unhinged, and someone nearly chokes on their beer laughing. This is you.
Monday morning. Same mouth, different words. Measured, polished, choosing every sentence like you’re defusing a f*cking bomb. You laugh at a joke that isn’t funny because the person telling it signs your paycheque. This is also you.
Your partner gets a third version. Your parents get a fourth. The person you’re trying to impress gets whatever version you think they’ll like the most.
So which one is actually you?
The bedroom with the moving window
Here’s a way to think about it that might stop you spiralling into an identity crisis at 2 am. Imagine your bedroom. Everything you are is in that room - the good, the embarrassing, the sh*t you’d never post online. Now imagine there’s a window, and you can slide it to show whoever is outside only what you want them to see. Messy floor? Probably not great for your boss. Red wine stain on the carpet you can’t shift? Show your mother, she might know what to do. The vinyl collection and the PlayStation you’re secretly proud of? That’s for your mates.
The room doesn’t change. You’re not building a fake room for each person, you’re just choosing which wall they see through. That’s not being fake, that’s being human. You don’t crack a dark joke at a funeral the same way you don’t bring your work voice to a barbecue. The room is still yours. The window is just a tool.
When the window becomes a wall
The trouble starts when you stop choosing which wall to show and start redecorating the room to match what you think people want to see.
You’re eighteen, new job. Your boss asks if you like books. You don’t, really, but you don’t want to look like an idiot, so you say yes. You buy a few, stack them on your bedside table, and give them a shot. They’re okay. You buy more. When your boss is around, the books are front and centre. But when you’re alone, staring at them, all you actually want is a f*cking vinyl player and a PlayStation.
Now you’re stuck. You can’t ditch the books without your boss thinking you lied, so you’ve built a version of yourself around someone else’s expectation. The cognitive dissonance – your actions clashing with what you actually want = itches like a woollen jumper in August. You know you’re pretending, and pretending costs energy you don’t have. Swap it for whatever fits your life. The hobby you picked up for a partner you’re not sure about. The career path you chose because your parents expected it. The personality you perform online that has f*ck all to do with who you are at 3 am when you can’t sleep.
The itch that won’t stop
I’m a different person depending on who I’m with, and that used to bother me. It felt two-faced, like I was performing instead of living. But here’s what I’ve worked out: I love dark humour, and not everyone does. Some people find it distasteful, like I’m fuelling hate or stereotypes, and others think it’s downright f*cking hilarious. I know my audience. I’m not dropping a dark joke on sensitive colleagues, and that’s not being fake; that’s reading the room.
The masks that made me suffer were the ones I wore to meet expectations I had invented in my own head, the ones I put on because I assumed people needed me to be something I wasn’t, and I kept wearing them long after it stopped making any sense. Those masks itch.
That low-level discomfort you can’t quite name is your compass telling you something doesn’t fit. Pay attention to how a mask makes you feel when you wear it. That’s the clue.
The questions behind the window
How many things do you do that directly challenge what you actually believe? If the person you’re performing for disappeared from your life tomorrow, would you keep doing the thing you’re doing for them now? Which faces do you need to throw away, and after holding on to them for so long, are you actually ready to let go of them?
Showing different parts of yourself to different people isn’t weakness; it’s how we survive a world that asks different things of us in different rooms. The window moves. The room stays.
But there’s a darker question underneath all of this. What happens when you’ve been performing so long that, once the mask comes off, you don’t recognise the face underneath? That’s a different problem. And it’s the one most of us are actually living with.
