This one is dumb but fuck you for judging me

(Also they’re all dumb)

The loneliest feeling, in my opinion, is to realize that no one – not one single human – has to tell you the truth about themselves.

It’s one thing to know that they can’t – that’s a separate problem. But at least most of the time, with most people, we assume, or just blindly hope, that they’re at least, for the most part, trying to.

True, the goal of most social interaction isn’t really to form a relationship strong enough to combat existential loneliness. But it could be. And on some level maybe we always want it to be. I think I do. I don’t know why. I don’t know if that’s special, I don’t think it is.

But no one you meet, no one you know, not even your closest family and friends, owes you the truth about themselves. Or at the very least, they’re not going to be forced to tell you the truth about themselves. Not completely. Not ever. So maybe they’re hiding the truth on purpose, maybe they’re trying to manipulate you or get something out of you, but maybe also they’re just ducking human and they don’t pay that much attention at all, they just do their best to manage each relationship by ear and hope for the best.

But no one is ever trustworthy. Not really. It will always be a possibility that any or all of the people you know are lying about who they are, are hiding some enormous secret that would change the way you see them, you just can’t know. You can’t. Unless you’re conjoined twins, maybe. But you can’t know for sure, not really.

But imagine if we lived our lives actually fully realizing that. Would we even be able to function?

When I finally figured it out, I can tell you, I couldn’t. Maybe I still can’t, I don’t know.

I think maybe the reason I’m so aggressively forthright in life and online is that the betrayal I’ve been through over and over since I became an adult has been so deep and caught me so unaware that now I feel compelled to be the opposite. Because I’d rather be too open than let myself become like the people who hurt me by pretending to be something they’re not.

I would rather live and die a thousand times being too honest about who I am than die once knowing that I protected my own ego and interests when I could have helped someone else feel less alone. I just wish I could still believe that anyone else truly felt the same way.