When Pretense Falls Short

By Van An Trinh ‘24

Back when the school year was still ripe with promise, my roommate and I planned our Wednesday evenings around each other and something fun. We thought of low-energy, high-company plans from the comfort of our hallway: movie nights, baking cookies, and the like. While those plans remain in limbo—life, schoolwork, and diverging commitments got in the way—we stumbled into the smaller habit of conversing before breakfast or bedtime.

Doing so has been a strangely domestic act for me, having grown up with parents who worked—or argued—late into the night. These conversations are something I appreciate about having a roommate, and about this one in particular. My friendship with Eugenie predates our choice to room together. When we’re alone amid our sparkling lights, I feel compelled to be radically honest with them, like I’m talking to an ancestral ghost. Like I’m talking to myself.

As with many things in my life, having this space feels like an unearned blessing. I tend to ramble my thoughts away, minutes at a time, about the small joys or annoyances I’d gone through that day. In recent weeks, this ethic of radical honesty has meant that I constantly say I haven’t been doing well lately, because I haven’t. Admitting this, even when asked, has been a growing source of shame—and it shows.

“Anyway,” I once said after a particularly long rant, “thanks for pretending to be interested in all of this. I know it’s a lot.”

Eugenie frowned and stared at me, their face almost stricken by hurt.

“Why do you always think that I’m pretending?”

I faltered.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Never mind. I guess it must have been some kind of joke in my head.”

“You know, Van An, sometimes I can’t really tell when you’re joking or not.”

“Oh?”

“You always sound so serious when you’re saying stuff like this; it’s kind of worrying.”

“I’m sorry.” I paused. “I obviously don’t want to hurt you, or anyone else, when I say these things. It’s just—almost—borderline automatic. I’m sorry. I’m working on it.”

I kept going. “And for the record, in all seriousness, what I genuinely, sincerely meant was to thank you for listening. Really.” My voice rushed and tripped over those words. “It really does mean a lot to me. And—just—sorry again!”

“That’s okay,” they replied, unplugging our string lights from an outlet by the wall. “Good night! Good luck with class tomorrow.”

I promptly sunk my face into my pillow.

•

Like many others, 2022 greeted me with a depression I wasn’t sure was merely seasonal. Getting a single thought out of my mouth felt like biting through stale bread. Speaking to others only drew my attention to the metastasising, hollow void between my ribs—which existed even through the best of times. Now that I spent my days rotting into my bed alone, it was downright easy to think this ache was everlasting.

I’ve always felt like I was a first draft of a person. Every environment I’ve been in has highlighted an unbridgeable difference between myself and the richness of others—like I should have contained a self, somewhere, that was lost in the gap between my actions and their bearing on who I was. As college students, we greet others with a standard introduction that’s damn near memorized in the back of our heads: name, pronouns (if desired), class year, and major(s). Sometimes we’ll talk about the places we call home, or frantically spit out a fun fact—one I find myself constantly searching for. Regardless, these introductions work because they assume that said characteristics roughly, but accurately, sketch out our full selves. They assume, not incorrectly, that our major choices and experiences say something about who we fundamentally are as human beings.

While any proxy measure is inherently imperfect, I find myself breaking down under their weight entirely. When I make myself known to others—Van An, Hong Kong, Political Science and CS-in-some-form—I find myself constructing a person with an implied cultural and academic depth to them, when I barely do or think anything all day. In short, I find myself pretending. I can’t reconcile myself with who I can factually claim to be. That hurts. It hurts worse when I deceive others by doing so, on paper, anyway.

Perhaps in response to this lack of self, I’ve always sought to imitate the friends and peers who inspire me. If I asked, they could tangibly cite specific awards and experiences that catalyzed their excellence. It was then natural for me to view my life as a bucket list, checking off credentials that others had proved themselves through. I primarily thought of myself as a lamer, knockoff version of my friends. On top of the stage, or the podium, or a class roster of perfect scores, they seemed divine while collecting their achievements.

In the end, no matter how I lived or didn’t live, I never seemed to capture the raw, effervescent humanity that I saw glowing in others. Theirs was an affect that shone in their brilliance, in their warmth, in the infectious humor and love that emanated from their presence. Conversely, the best I could muster up was a mockery of their personhood. When I received any form of academic accolade, I was relieved to keep pretending I was smart enough to hang out with them. When I finally found a group of classmates to eat lunch with during high school, I was relieved to save face, to not feel the humiliation of being alone.

Only recently have I begun to see this as a cognitive distortion, instead of a plain truth that was naturally consequent from my own inabilities. Self-loathing was, irrationally, a linchpin on my worldview. When I felt like I didn’t belong, those feelings seemed to confirm my lack of humanity. When I did feel happiness or belonging, I hated myself for it. Surely no one cared about me in return, when my presence was an eyesore that was too impolite to evict. To this particular self of mine, being seen meant being hated. Remaining unseen meant being left for dead. No wonder I barely spoke to anybody.

In the depths of my isolation, I fell into a rabbit hole rereading the conversations I had, via text or in my memory, during my mental health crises. Without saying too much about them, understand that these crises happened over the course of months, and I faced them mostly alone. Throughout them all, however, I am grateful to have had people, no matter how distant, who professed to care for me regardless. Reading their memes and text messages created bearable moments in an everyday life that was largely consumed by depression and paranoia.

It’s hard to reconcile these messages with who I thought I was at the time. “I am always in awe of you,” a friend once told me. “You do deserve good things,” another said, “because you are a beautiful person.” Though I still look back upon that past self with shameful pity, it was incredibly heartening to know that the people in my life, in all of their brilliance and love, once saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. In doing so, they helped construct a version of myself that shifted who I genuinely thought I was. I don’t hold a monopoly on who I am. We are how we are perceived, just as we are how we perceive ourselves.

It is still frightening to grant others any power to define me when I have spent a long time presuming their worst intentions. Operating otherwise feels naive, even when I rationally know that I’m justified in doing so. It reeks of a coping mechanism. However, the humanity that I aspire to is of a fundamentally relational quality. It is difficult to be kind or exuberant without people to show that kindness or exuberance towards. It is difficult to find passion in new things without seeing anyone who embodies that passion. This helps explain why I primarily think of myself as perceptive and neurotic: those are the qualities I express most when I’m alone. My assessment isn’t necessarily wrong per se—just incomplete. Identity is largely shaped by context, and I want to be more than a walking apology. I want to be more than a confession in human form. Doing so is an inherently collaborative process: it necessitates that I trust the honest feedback from the people who know me best.

In some ways, I have always understood the power that others have over me. Perhaps that’s why I have a photographic memory for praise; I bottle compliments like fireflies on a summer night. There is power in clarity. There is power in explicit recognition. My chest clutches when I see others address me directly, without pretense, their words sharp with electricity: I love you. I want to see you again. I’ll always be proud of you for trying. Crucially, these words carry their fullest potential when they strike during moments of frank, radical sincerity. I’ll listen to you when my guard is down. In a quiet meal, or a late-night walk, or a call running long past midnight, I can’t be anyone but my honest self. Those moments are framed, in my mind, with the tenderness of a museum antique. As they happen, I can’t help but be moved by the basic empathy of others—not when it has been so glaringly absent in the way I see myself.

My self-disappointment will not fossilize anytime soon. That’s okay. A change in ethic, radical honesty or otherwise, can only be a starting point in my recovery from an eventful, tumultuous adolescence. This recovery will probably last for the rest of my life.

•

Here is an unspoken contract of many conversations: I will be my candid self with you, and you will tell me the truth about who (you think) I am. Where others see it as default, this pact feels fresh and intentional in my eyes. It is the root of a political ethic of vulnerability—where solidarity is built upon an understanding of the struggles we share—but is also deeply personal. Within my own life, this promise is evident in how I foolishly, failingly try to care for others and the world while showing all of my own dimensions.

As I write this, I have the room to myself. Eugenie fell ill with Covid; they’re recovering in the hotel over the next five days. Even in absence, when I am alone on a Friday night, I can feel their humanity inside a space that we cultivated together. I want to tuck it, for safekeeping, between my heart and my spine. To channel it as I cultivate my own personhood. To carry it with me when I write, or speak, or create new spaces of my own.

This piece was an invitation. I’m most myself when I am with you. Come watch me break, with no mirror in sight, into a smile I’ll never see.

Van An Trinh ‘24 (vt100) has finally found a fun fact about herself – and, no, you are not allowed to know what it is. From the March/April 2022 issue.