Do the People Closest to You Actually Know You?

Has anyone else watched the show Imperfect Women? I managed to binge it all in one weekend and my brain has been nonstop ever since. The basic premise is: Three best friends. Years of history. Real love between them. And also... so many secrets. So much of themselves they'd tucked away from each other, for all kinds of reasons. Fear, shame, protecting the image the group had built of them. Watching it, I kept thinking, “girl, just TELL them…” and then I caught myself. Because honestly, I've been those women. We've all been those women.

And that moment opened up something for me, a thought that’s been lingering for a while, even when it comes to some of my closest and longest relationships.

Recently, someone close to me made a choice that stopped me cold. I'm not going to get into specifics (we respect privacy around here, lol) but it was the kind of thing where everything I thought I knew about this person's values, the way they moved through the world, the things they'd always stood for... just didn't line up with what I was seeing.

My first instinct was confusion. Then, if I'm being real, it was a little grief. Not because of what they did exactly, but because of what it revealed. That the version of them I'd been holding onto in my head... might have been more mine than theirs. I had built a whole picture of who this person was, and they'd been quietly becoming someone else entirely. Or maybe they'd always been that person and I just hadn't been paying close enough attention.

Both options kind of shook me.

The Story We Tell About the People We Love

I think we do this more than we realize. We meet someone, we collect data points, and then we stop collecting. We file them away under a label and assume they'll stay there. She's the responsible one. She'd never. That's just not who she is.

But people are not filed away. People are always in motion... growing, shrinking, pivoting, hiding, revealing. And when someone we love does something that cracks the image we had of them, it's disorienting because it's not just about them. It's about us realizing we were holding an idea, not a person.

Friendships are weird that way. The longer you know someone, sometimes the easier it is to stop actually seeing them. The history becomes the whole story, and you can be deeply loyal to a version of someone that they outgrew years ago.

And Then I Turned It Back To Myself

Because once I sat with all of this... I had to ask myself some uncomfortable questions:

How much of me are the people in my life actually seeing?

How much of who I am now, who I'm becoming, the things I want, the ways I've changed, have I actually let them in on?

Or have I been performing the version of myself they expect, because it's easier than explaining the evolution? Have I been protecting their comfort at the expense of my own truth?

Growing up and growing into yourself is one thing. But doing it while maintaining relationships that were built around an older version of you... that's where it gets complicated. Sometimes the people who love us the most are also the ones most invested in us staying exactly as we were. Not out of malice. Just out of love for the person they've always known.

And if we let it, that love can stifle us.

So What Do We Actually Do With This?

I don't have a clean answer, and I'm suspicious of anyone who does. Here are a few journal prompts that I'll be exploring:

1. Is there a part of who you're becoming that you haven't told the people closest to you about yet? What's the real reason you've been keeping it quiet?

2. Who in your life would be most surprised by who you are right now? What does that tell you?

3. Is there a role you've outgrown but you're still showing up to play because people expect it? What would it feel like to retire that version of yourself?

4. Do you feel like an imposter in your own evolution? Like part of you is waiting for someone to give you permission to just be different now?

Love ya!

Cas