I was talking to some friends about a film that we had watched. Dutifully, they shared their opinions – good, bad, indifferent – and then they asked what I thought. I made some general statements, I liked this and disliked that. Rightfully so, I was called out by a friend that I didn’t tell them anything but observations, what did I think about it? I told my friend: I can’t explain what I felt about it, language fails us all at times and I am no exception.

I lied.

I could explain it, succinctly or in a twelve hour monologue.

I just didn’t want to.

I presume a lot of people have done the same thing at some point. We find something we deeply love, a piece of media that touches our soul and etches itself into our hearts such that we cannot understand ourselves without it anymore. When asked what we think about it, we avoid an answer because no language could encompass this essential change we have undergone.

Because, if we do tell about this, we are giving and entrusting them with a piece of ourselves, our essence, we become vulnerable, and that is mortifying.

“It’s one thing to be looked at, and another to be seen.”

Caleb Izumah Nelson, Open Water (88)

When I refuse to share something that has a personal influence on me, it’s not because I assume others are below me, unable to grasp my right interpretation of this piece of art, there is no normativity to my deception. Rather, it’s because I’m terrified of being seen since I’ve been looked at my entire life.

The experience of not being seen, being looked at is universal. It’s deeply frustrating when expressing concerns to find them trivialised, to be told a crush only sees you as a friend and so forth. The experience creates tension, you show yourself to the world and it rejects you. It doesn’t condemn, merely refuses to acknowledge, it denies you.

The tension builds, and then it stops, deflates and occasionally scars. You rethink and change, or try again and the world does affirm you this time, and that is all. Maybe you forget it ever happened, maybe it scars and haunts you, either way the moment has transpired and you are seen again. Recognised. Life continues.

Being seen, then, is the positive action against being looked at and the assumed default. Which is why it terrifies me so much. The assumed default is just another assumption: that we can expect recognition from others in our shared humanity.

Experience is everybody’s teacher and it has taught me that being looked at must be my assumed default. That is why I felt my body tense when my friend asked my thoughts, the notion of being seen is terrifying, no matter how beautiful such an affirmation of humanity is. The mortifying ordeal of being known.

Sometimes, this anxiety is in fact fuelled by an inflated sense of ego, and I am hardly infallible to the human tendency to believe in the uniqueness of my experience and the importance of my existence. My refusal to share why I liked a film – because I inevitably saw myself in and as the genius protagonist and felt sure I too, would reach such levels of greatness – was childish, but my usual refusal to let myself be seen is deeply rooted in a lifetime of experience, the experience of denial.

In most cases being seen is not scary because my friends laugh and bruise my ego, being seen is scary because it means danger.

My lack of normalcy is noticed, and when I cross my eyes with someone who sees my deviancy my body freezes, sweat dampening on my brow as a whirlwind of possibilities about what the other might do cross my mind, and I consider my options after careful study of the other: fight or flight. I am not allowed to contain an infinity.

I am fortunate enough that being seen has seldom led to physical encounters yet the listing out verbal remarks would require the universe to expand its length. And all of that, just for being seen. For being recognised in my entirety as a human, and the reaction, that abnormal humans aren’t human enough and too human all at once. And that abnormality must be fought, reduced, made to disappear.

“You didn’t fit in the box he has squeezed you in.”

Caleb Izumah Nelson, Open Water (59)

but that never mattered.