Hiding in Plain Sight

What It Costs to Become Very Good at Fitting In

I waited in line at Tractor Supply, a bale of pine shavings perched awkwardly against my hip. A man was checking out across the counter at the other register. He had an ornate tattoo featured prominently on his left temple.

With short-cropped graying hair and a brown flannel over his black t-shirt, he could easily have been a software engineer save for the face tattoo. He still could have been, actually.

Why the tattoo? I wondered. Has he been to prison? I noticed the thought immediately. The assumption that I made based solely on an artifact of his otherwise unremarkable appearance. It wasn’t a judgement—not really. More curiosity. I’ve always been in awe of people who could so flagrantly and unapologetically show up as themselves.

I once had a boyfriend who brought whatever he was doing before he arrived somewhere into the situation. If he was listening to a song on his headphones when he walked through the door, it immediately went on the speakers. No matter that someone else was reading, or having a conversation, or whatever.

It boggled my mind. I was half frustrated and half in admiration. Did he not assess the situation first? Did he not notice the vibe of the environment and adapt to it?

Obviously not. This is something I cannot fathom.

I suss a place out before I engage. If I’m at a party, I spend time listening to those around me to take stock of the general social norms for this group. If I walk into a space, I pattern my behavior on the average of what’s happening within.

I have tattoos, none of them prominent. And yes, I did go through my blue hair phase. But really, when you live in Seattle, blue hair is pretty unremarkable.

I have always tried to not exactly blend, but fit. Not because I didn’t want to be noticed, but I didn’t want to be noticed for the wrong reasons.

I call it “hiding in plain sight.”

I’m not exactly sure when or where I learned this but I have suspicions about the origins of this pattern. I was a vibrant and creative child. My report cards were filled with stories of singing and playing and general merry-making. And then, one day, it changed.

It was first grade. I was talking to another kid in class, totally immersed in the conversation. The teacher called us to order but I didn’t hear him. Legitimately did not hear him. He even turned out the lights in the classroom. We were all supposed to sit quietly at our desks and pay attention but I was still mid-conversation, so wrapped up in my thoughts that I was oblivious to the world around me. I didn’t even notice the lights going off.

Next thing I knew, I was off to detention, totally confused.

The next few years saw my report cards shift from descriptors of a lively and playful child to one who was disruptive, struggled to focus, could not complete homework on time.

And then, one day, it changed. My mom came home from a parent-teacher conference and said with some surprise, there are no Cs on your report card. She was happy with me, approving.

It wasn’t a conscious thought, but at that moment I realized that no Cs meant approval and acceptance. Following the rules, figuring out the structure, that got me relief. It got me left alone.

So I watched. I figured out the rules. School wasn’t really that hard once I scrutinized it and saw the frameworks. In fact, if I was a “good girl” for a few months at the beginning, I could almost phone it in for the rest of the year while the teacher focused on the “problem” students.

I went from a struggling mid student to straight As, early to college, and graduating with honors.

I learned that behaving—fitting in—got me rewards.

But it came at a cost, and that cost was steep. The cost was the loss of myself.

My ex-boyfriend was utterly himself regardless of who was around, and while I admired his chutzpah, I found his disregard for my preferences and the comfort of those around him frustrating. There’s a reason the relationship didn’t last. (More than one.)

Me, I tend to accommodate people. But there’s a fine line between accommodating others out of care and doing it out of a survival response—a behavior often labeled people pleasing. Prioritizing the comfort of others above your own.

I’ve written about people pleasing and how it gets a bad rap. People say it’s manipulative—trying to control those around you. I disagree.

People pleasing, or adapting to the expectations of others, is an elaborate survival response. We do it to maintain the three macronutrients of human connection: safety, dignity, and respect.

When others rubber stamp our choices and behavior, we avoid criticism and rejection. We don’t risk social isolation. Rejection is tantamount to death for the human nervous system. So fundamental is connection to our survival that our brain triggers a pain response at the slightest hint of exclusion.

And so we adapt to the norms and expectations of others in order to preserve safety through human connection. This is far from binary, however. As I mentioned, I’m not advocating for throwing all rules to the wind. There are benefits to conforming in some aspects of life.

Studying hard, for example, helps you to achieve good grades. Good grades grant you acceptance to higher education, which in turn can result in greater earning potential throughout your life. That’s not a bad thing.

Where it turns rotten, however, is when the adaptation results in what I call self loss. Some professionals refer to it as self abandonment, but that implies active intent. Self loss, on the other hand, is more the passive disappearing of the intrinsic you—a sort of quiet evaporation of your aliveness. The end result is feeling a bit lost, drifting in a fog, living a life that seems like it should be good but you can’t quite inhabit.

It’s the vague dissatisfaction you feel—and the guilt for feeling that way—when life really isn’t so bad.

It’s showing up, getting things done, but inside carrying a hundred pounds of emotional weight, the origin of which you can’t pinpoint.

It’s the hazy background buzz of anxiety—not strong enough to be clinical, but omnipresent.

It’s the absolute paralysis when someone asks you what you want. Because honestly? You don’t know without someone telling you what you should want. And you’re no longer sure if you could even recognize what you want if it walked right on up to you.

It’s overthinking everything, asking everyone around you what you should do before making a decision, and not moving forward with anything until you have absolute surety—which is of course elusive.

It’s working to preserve a self—or at least an image of a self—that you’re not even certain is really you, but it’s a role you’re damn good at performing.

It’s at this point that one often finds themselves elbow-deep in the self-help aisle of the bookstore. Or clapping along at a seminar, donning athleisure at a breathwork retreat, or just engaging in the mundane and ubiquitous therapy. Working through your thoughts. Trying to be more…something. You’re not even sure what. But you’re certain whatever this is isn’t it.

I know this state, for I lived in it for too long. I tried to think my way out, but found myself only more deeply immersed in the watching, the rule-figuring-out, the performing.

I was the studious reader, the enrapt seminar attendee, the compliant retreat participant, the good therapy patient. I sussed out the rules, the frameworks, the expectations in every setting. I lived up to them. I researched and read and watched and emulated…and nothing changed.

I still felt lost. I still doubted myself. I still over-functioned while falling apart inside (but appearing eminently capable from the outside).

It took years for me to understand that it was never about doing things right. That there were no rules or frameworks or blueprints that would remedy the aching hollowness inside me. No Harvard psychologist nor spiritual guru held the solution. That these were simply more rules divorcing me further from myself.

Self loss can’t be resolved with conformity. The self you surrendered to the rules cannot be recovered by following more of them.

That man at Tractor Supply made an impression. I don’t know his story or why he decided to tattoo his face. What I do know is that he showed up, no shrinking, no hunched shoulders trying to disappear into the background, no glancing around nervously to see who was watching, no wariness about how he’d be perceived.

Just…living.

I can’t know what was inside his head. But watching him I felt awe. In retrospect, the awe was heavily weighted with grief—the anguish of having never been comfortable enough in my own skin, secure enough in my true desires, to show up completely as myself.

Always watching. Always guessing at the rules, the right way to do things, the acceptable path.

I got the straight A’s, the early college, the honors, the safety. And it cost me the self that didn’t need to scan the room before I could breathe. I spent decades learning to wear the identity that the room required and mastered it until I forgot who I was underneath.

I don’t know if you can unlearn the watching, the masking, the adaptation. And honestly, I’m not sure I would want to if I could. There were benefits. Ones I’d rather not trade.

But I can see the balance sheet now, and as I stood there in line holding plastic-wrapped shavings against my hip, I realized that following the rules had cost me the confidence to walk into a room playing my own song, regardless of who was listening.