Since before puberty, I’ve spent a lot of time and money trying to be like other people. I had a sense that there was safety in being like other people because to me, the cost of being myself was too high. We do this in micro and macro ways to fit in–shopping at the same stores as our peers, liking the same foods, I even remember feeling uncomfortable in the second grade because my pencil case didn’t look same as everyone else’s.

It took me years to see, then admit this, and even longer to unpack this (who am I kidding, I still am…). And it’s complicated…

Storytime: In winter of my freshman year of high school, the band director gave me a solo. I was terrified. I told myself that it was only a few measures long, that I could handle it. I was only in the lower band, not the good one, I told myself. I did everything I could to psych myself into being able to perform this solo.

I was good at my instrument when no one was watching. I played beautifully to an audience of zero. But in tryouts, sight-reading, and this solo, all the beauty seemed to go away. I was clunky and nervous–prohibitively so.

My solution was something I cringed at for years. Right before I stood for my solo in band practice, I’d put a bowler hat on my head. Yes, you read that correctly– like the old-timey, Charlie Chaplin, Magritte’s granny smith apple-face, Clockwork Orange bowler hat.

Sidenote: This would be a totally different conversation if bowler hats were truly aligned to my personhood. If bowler hats are your thing, then, by George, go and be merry! But for me, I wore it as camouflage. I wore it as a way to hide. I wore it so I could be someone else–a ridiculous someone else, but someone else nonetheless. Because it was way too hard to be myself and be seen just as me.

I hid in the hat and it made me feel better and that’s that, right? Oh nooooo, my friends. It’s an example, albeit simple, of the false safety in avoiding acceptance of self.

I got so many weird looks from my bandmates for that hat. The band director sighed at me, rolled his eyes at me, said he didn’t know what to do with me. I kept at it, day after day at practice. I did it so no one would think about my solo. And maybe they didn’t, but I had a totally different-and decidedly bigger- problem. Now I was the bowler-hat-kid. Now I was starting out my high school career as the kid who wears unusual hats.

When the big night of the concert came around, I didn’t put on the hat. I didn’t stand for my solo. I sat there and played–poorly. The song came and went and later none of my peers congratulated me on my solo and at the time I agreed with their silence–the playing wasn’t deserving of congratulations. But the act of trying was.

I did what I could to survive as a kid in that moment, but if I could do it differently, I would have taken all those days at practice as a low-stakes opportunity to stand and be seen, just as me. Without the hat. Because when it came to the actual performance, the moment of visibility to showcase my hard work just as me, I recoiled. I got scared and turned inward and didn’t function at my best.

There wasn’t safety in being someone else, because I couldn’t draw from some inner power. The hat wasn’t my power. It was a distraction. I didn’t spend that winter learning how to put myself, as me, out there. And now as an adult with many more high-stakes moments of needing to be visible and being scared, I wish I had all that practice under my belt.

And I used to cringe, but I don’t anymore. It was a way to get through another moment of my adolescence, and that’s enough for adult-me now.

So, now, I try. I try to function without the bowler hat, without the hiding, without the false safety. And I have to say, it’s easier now that I’ve worked on it.

If you’re anything like bowler-hat me, maybe you need to hear that it’s okay to do what you’re doing. And when you’re ready for a change, step 1 toward finding and tolerating your authentic identity to function as your true self may be to start here:

Learn to recognize what is happening-that you may be masking as avoidance. I know this sounds simple, but it can be hard. And honestly it took me soooo many years to be able to see and understand that it was even happening–not everything was as simple or unusual as the bowler hat. The recognition alone deserves its own topic, because it’s EVERYTHING.

But for now, may you cherish those low-stakes moments of practicing just being your authentic self. Let me know in the comments below if you relate to this or are struggling to visibly show up as your authentic self.