For several years, starting in college, I was terrified to let people know me. In class, I felt needed to be a model student, and at work, a model employee. With casual acquaintances, it was most important for me to smile and be agreeable. Allowing my personality to bleed into my interactions seemed a gross and inappropriate intrusion. I felt sure that allowing myself to be me — whatever that might look like — would lead to rejection, humiliation, and catastrophe.
I haven’t left these bizarre and irrational sentiments entirely in the past. I still often find myself silent in social interactions, paralyzed by the thought of saying the wrong thing or revealing my human feelings. But in the past few months, my preoccupation with hiding behind my wall has subsided considerably.
As I reflect on why I’ve been able to let down these barriers, I keep coming back to one question:
What have I been so afraid of?
‘You Will Always End Up Here’
Yes — everything, unfortunately, does tie back to “Supernatural.” I know, I know. But that’s just how it is.
When I was in college, I went on a date with a guy I liked at the time. Things were going well; we’d grabbed a casual dinner on campus and were chatting about a class we had in common. I didn’t realize it at the time, but as we were talking, I was fidgeting with the ring on my left pointer finger. As we were getting ready to leave, the guy reached over and grabbed my hand.
“What’s KAZ 2Y5 mean?” he asked, peering at the ring’s inscription.
A healthy response, in my opinion, would have been to welcome the opportunity to talk about one of my passions. Instead, I blushed in shame, mumbled something vague about TV shows, and changed the subject.
I know I shouldn’t be ashamed of loving something, of being a fan. But you probably get it if you’re at all familiar with the Supernatural fandom. We don’t have the best reputation. You may also get it if you’ve ever tried explaining your deep involvement in something to a normie. It happens to all of us: I, for instance, am baffled by the lengths sports fanatics will go to in following and rooting for a team. But the sports fanatics may be equally puzzled as to why it’s important for someone to spend hours a day posting pictures of actors on a Tumblr blog that almost no one visits. Everyone’s weird in their own way.
I shouldn’t have been embarrassed, but I was, because Supernatural comprised practically my entire interior life. To know me was to know the show, I thought, and not everyone wanted to know the show (understandably!). It seemed pathetic to have almost nothing else to offer.
But even deeper than the shame was my certainty that people would recoil if they knew what, besides Supernatural, was behind the smiley façade. So much of me was rooted in fiction, but beyond that … there seemed to be only despair. A death wish. A deep, dark nothing. The only truth about myself that I could come up with — the only thing that ever came to mind upon hearing the dreaded “So tell me about yourself!” — was how much I did not want to be here.
So I moved through the world as if I were hiding a terrible secret, trying so hard not to let the shield slip. No one could know me, because there was nothing in me worth knowing.
A Well-Respected Woman
At 20, I abhorred the idea of growing up to be like Dean Smith. At least, I thought I was supposed to abhor it; the “real” Dean did. But at 27, that’s exactly where I find myself — and I’m the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been.
I work a 9-to-5 job. I follow the same routine every day, often down to the minute. I exercise regularly, eat healthily, and spend my free time reading, hiking, cross-stitching, cooking, and watching TV. I don’t drink or smoke, I don’t party, and I never stay up past midnight. (Even if I did, it’s hardly a crime.)
I spent so long trying to hide myself from the world (literally, at times) that I startled at the recent realization that I don’t actually have anything to hide.
If people want to know me — or, more simply, have a casual conversation with me — there’s plenty I can share.
I can talk about my dog’s boundless energy, and how he loves instigating the bigger dogs at the park so that they’ll chase him. I can share photos from the hike I went on last weekend, or the time I spent with my family over the Fourth of July. I can express my amazement at Colorado’s unusually rainy summer, or groan about needing to catch up on laundry and chores. My life is full of good things; my thoughts no longer begin with Supernatural and end with a yearning for death.
The idea that there’s a real human in here that some people might want to get to know still feels like a revelation to me. I have to consciously, regularly remind myself that the townspeople will not run away screaming if they get to know the real me. The real me is actually … incredibly normal and relatable. Even during the period of my life when I felt more like a black hole than a human, people probably wouldn’t have recoiled the way I feared they would.
In fact, a lot of them might have said, “I feel the same way.”
