The Fear of Being Known

He looks in my eyes like he knows me and isn’t satisfied with how little he knows. I look back in his eyes only because it’s polite, but I don’t know if I can be known the way he asks.

“Clarice,” he says, “you can be honest with me.” He says this as if I’ve just chosen not share part of myself. “You can tell me anything,” he says, as if I want to. Perhaps I’d like to – I’d like to imagine I’m honest with someone. Completely and unabashedly open.

“What’s on your mind?” he says. Everything, Jackson. Everything is on my mind. Would you really like to know or do you feel the need to ask me that? Is it because I look like something is wrong or is it because you feel bad if you don’t ask me that occasionally?

“Nothing,” I say. Because there’s nothing I can say that I can begin to share. Each time he tells me to be honest, I never think about little white lies I have to learn to be transparent about. I think about the evil inside me. I think about the times I wish I didn’t exist, the times I wondered if I could ever be loved – because if I told you this, Jackson, I don’t feel confident I’d be loved. Yes, everyone has their dark secrets, but they’re not mine. And, yes, other people do know mine, but they’re not you. And if you knew what my life was truly like, if you knew how many scars paint my body…

“I will always love you,” he says. For now, I think, until you find out more. It’s easy to allow yourself to be loved by someone when they only know as much as you want them to. It’s easy to love someone back when life is the same yesterday and today – but the moment tomorrow comes and something is different, I can’t guarantee my love will stay. Maybe that’s why I don’t know if you’d love me the same if you knew me the way you say you want.

There will always be that “sin” that you can’t ever know about me; and it’s not because I’m afraid of you, Jackson, it’s because I know what you think of me now. I know how you look at me, how you breathe my name, how you hold me in your arms, how you kiss me goodbye and tell me you love me. You can’t ever know that because I can’t ever let what you think of me change. I can’t let how you treat me change.

“Clarice,” you say, “I will never judge you.”

“I know,” I lie. “I trust you.” I don’t. It’s not anything you’ve done or said to make me think you aren’t trustworthy, it’s what I’ve done that will lose your trust. Losing our future together because of my past is too hard for me to believe rejection isn’t inevitable. If I knew this about someone like me, I may not love me anymore. I’m not sure if I do now.

“I feel like you’re hiding something from me,” you say. I am. Always. And I hate it. I despise that I can’t willingly share everything with you because it eats me alive each second I’m with you, knowing I love you in disguise instead of as myself. You love the Clarice I pretend to be and yet you’re asking for the real Clarice without knowing how broken I truly am. And, Jackson… I am so in love with you. And it breaks my heart over and over knowing I can’t open up to the love of my life. But it’s because you love me that I may always be too afraid to tell you who I am. I am overwhelmed that you love me – it’s impossible for me to understand someone like you could even consider someone like me. But now that you love me, and because I haven’t told you how much you mean to me, I feel that if I confess openly who I am that love will go. So I keep these maggots of shame to eat my soul so that I can let you continue to love me. And if I tell you now, too late to tell you, how much you mean to me… I know I’ll have to tell you everything. I wish you could know you’re the greatest to me.

“I love you,” you say. And it breaks my heart.

“I love you more.” I wish I could love you even more. But I may always be paralyzed by this shame.

Clarice wrestled in her mind the outcomes of confession. To offer the worst of herself to the man she loves is everything a person fears. For months she hid from Jackson in an effort to preserve what she cherished so dearly. His love was real, and so was hers, but it could not grow without her honesty. She could not love him more or be loved greater if she did not reveal the scars that bound her soul.

So she told him everything.

Jackson listened carefully and slowly to each word she spoke as Clarice admitted her life of guilt and the brokenness of her past. She wept for what Jackson only thought was from the pain of reliving these tragedies. Clarice wept because she knew he’d no longer love her. She wept because in her mind this was their last conversation together, and all her fears would come true. He’d abandon her and reject her

He hugged her tighter than he ever had in his life. He never let go. He loved her more.

“Thank you,” you said.

“For what?” I said.

“For being open with me.”

I’ll never understand why you didn’t turn away. I’ll never know why you love me the way you do. But to be known by you, inside and out – to be vulnerable about who I am, to tell you the reasons I hate myself – and you met me with an ever deeper love…

I love you more.