Nicolos D.

Photography by Jessica Pentel

If you're reading this, you don't have to have it all put together.

I had a friend compliment me once...

“Nick, you have everything put together”

When I responded with a face akin to the Nick Young meme, laughing, she clarified-

“You seem like you’re so unbothered, that you are always sure of yourself”

....what?

You don’t know half of it.

Inside this quiet, yet somehow seemingly confident (I truly don’t know where she got that), person is someone who is often plagued with doubts about his worth, his place at this university, where he stands with other people, and his future capabilities, among so many other things. Someone who has struggled with processing and expressing emotions. Someone who has a serious issue with taking minor slights way too personally. Someone who has been wearing a mask long before we had ever heard of COVID-19.

My appearance in having everything “put together” is just that, nothing more than a special effects façade designed to keep people from getting too curious. A secret identity, if you will (sorry, big superhero nerd). One of the things superheroes struggle with as they go deeper into their hero careers is distinguishing between their secret identity life and their real, non-hero, life. They become so invested in keeping up the identity that they proclaim it as their “real identity,” and ignore the actual (and far more disappointing) reality they’re trying to leave. The confusion leads to an identity crisis for our heroes and soon leads to their tragic downfalls.

While I’ve spoken metaphorically about superheroes, the danger exists in real life too. We, as humans, are often disappointed at various points in our lives. Some people, like myself, maintain a curtain over the emotions that come with disappointment- anger, sadness, mourning. We do this to appear to put distance between us and the disappointment. We want to appear that “nothing is wrong with us” both to avoid the subject with our friends and in an attempt to convince ourselves that nothing is wrong.

I’ll give an example of my own struggles with my secret identity. In March of 2018, two of my friends from home were killed by a drunk driver. I got the call while studying for a calculus midterm, hung up after the phone call was over, and, because I didn’t know what else to do, went back to studying. All of this, maybe, within an hour. Nine months later, after news about the driver's prison sentence got back to me, it all hit me like a truck. The sadness and mourning for sure, but the guilt of studying for an insignificant calculus exam rather than properly acknowledge my complex feelings was almost unbearable. The mask almost sunk me, but I allowed myself to properly process what I had been holding in for all of those months. It wasn’t just that moment either, it was all the job rejections and academic struggles that had happened through that time that I hadn’t allowed myself to process. 

I had to stop losing myself and hiding every bad thing that went wrong. Because I had been hiding so much, it took weeks to accept my true feelings about it all. With the help of people I trust, I was able to pull myself, my real self, back up to the surface.

We all have gone through things similar to what I just described. Events where we simply act as if everything is okay and it is not (not at all, not even a little). Before we pull the curtain back for other people, we first have to pull it back for ourselves. It took me nine months to take this first step, but it is there to be taken, and more importantly, it doesn’t have to be taken alone. Just because you have to recognize that you need help doesn’t mean that someone cannot help you get it. People who walk with you through your own traumatic experiences make the journey much more worthwhile.

So, in the exclusively metaphorical sense, take off the mask. Stop the magic tricks and remove the façade that you have fooling everyone. You're not any less worthy or valued for not having it on. Reach out with how you feel; I promise you it’s worth it. Remove the weights that have been holding you down for weeks, months, even years. 

I say all of this as if I’m perfect today and that all of this was easy. As I previously stated, I am far from perfect, and it is certainly not easy. I still struggle with giving myself proper rest and time for my disappointments. I still sometimes desperately put on the mask to run away from the painful feelings of anger and depression. I have always been scared of expressing how I truly feel about anything, much less a tragic event. But the days where I pull back the curtain are happening more and more often. The days where I don’t have anything together are still happening at the same rate they always have, but they are much more visible to other people who can help me.

Lose the secret identity, it hides your real face, the one you shouldn’t feel ashamed to show. If you’re ever struggling with retiring your secret identity or struggling to have a friend walk with you, reach out to me, to someone, to anyone. 

Because you don’t have it together. And that’s okay, you don’t have to.

Nicolos D., University of Virginia ’22

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