Your Human Is Showing

As kids, we’re prone to get bruises, scrapes, broken bones — you name it. We’re not worried if our cuts will ever heal — we know they will. We don’t waste brain space wondering if our cast will change the way our arm moves forever. We’re focused on debating what color cast to get, what designs to draw, and who we want to sign it.

We’re focused on exploring that new sandbox at the park, getting to go to our friend’s house with a trampoline, getting that corner piece of cookie cake at our friend’s birthday party.

We’re engaged, excited, and able to exist just fine with our arms covered in Band-Aids, our legs decorated in bruises, and our tooth chipped from running on the playground too hard.

Somewhere along the way, something shifts.

Suddenly, our wounds feel different than other people’s — but also… more shameful?

Spiderman Band-Aids are no longer cool, yet we don’t even like the thing that is supposed to be cool.

That time we fell off the monkey bars — well, that’s now super embarrassing. Lucky for us at the time, our older sister let us borrow her makeup so we could cover up those bruises. We made sure no one ever knew.

Because we’re reminded of a few weeks back, when we saw the new girl in our class fall off the monkey bars. Everyone called her clumsy and uncoordinated — it was super embarrassing when she cried. Her mom was so confused when she didn’t try out for the soccer team, but I mean — how could she, with that reputation? Even the coach heard she was clumsy.

Somewhere along the way, being a human became incredibly embarrassing.

The older we got, the more isolating it all became. It’s no longer cool to show our friends our new Band-Aids. Showing others the shape of our new scar? Not socially acceptable.

But what is?

We don’t really know, but we learn by the experiences we have and see. We hide the things we’ve learned are not well received and do our best to present something collectively more digestible — a survival skill that builds a quiet blockade between us and real connection.

That “clumsy” girl who fell off the monkey bars — she probably would have comforted us if she knew we went through the same thing. Maybe we would have set the record straight when other people called her clumsy. Maybe she would have become the captain of the soccer team, or our best friend.

To our own detriment, all the polish we used to cover up our “flaws” made it all but impossible for the natural beauty that was dying to break through the surface.

So how do we start showing more of ourselves — and does it need to be so complicated?

Probably not.

Maybe we stop apologizing for our bruises.
We start saying “me too” when someone else falls.
We show a little more of ourselves each day and see what happens.