What Sam Showed Me About Pretending

I am someone who is very good at looking fine. I learned it early. Smile, deflect, change the subject, make a joke. By the time I met Sam in my twenties I had been doing it for so long that I didn't know there was another way.

Sam saw through it almost immediately. Not in a confrontational way — he never made me feel exposed. He just answered my "I'm good, you?" with the truth. He'd tell me what was actually happening in his head. He'd say the thing the rest of us were thinking but had agreed not to say. And the first few times he did it I remember being almost angry, like he had broken some unspoken contract.

What I came to understand, slowly, was that Sam wasn't breaking the contract. The contract was the problem. He was offering me a way out of it.

After Sam died I started telling people the truth. Just little truths at first. "I'm having a hard week." "I'm scared about my mom." "I miss him today." It felt like jumping off a cliff every single time. And every single time the world did not end. People met me where I was. Some of them cried with me. Some of them told me their own little truths. None of them looked away.

That is what Sam gave me. Not a lesson, exactly. Permission. Permission to stop performing. Permission to be a person in the room instead of a polished version of one.

If you're reading this and you've been pretending for a long time, I want you to know what I wish I had known sooner. The people who love you can take it. They are waiting for you to let them in. You don't have to do it all at once. You just have to start.