Dearest Readers,

This week I want to get real with you because I’ve been struggling. There’s no sense in not letting this challenge become a lesson for me, and hopefully for you, so here goes.

Who is your truest self – unrestrained, unrestricted, unedited? I’m sure she’s marvelously complex and beautifully simple. I’m sure she’s filled with passion, has big dreams, and a whole lot of courage. I’m also sure of one thing because it’s true for me too: she has wounds and she has made mistakes. She’s stood valiant at the peak of troubles, but she’s pushed things under the surface that make her feel weak. When we keep pushing these things beneath the surface, we move outside of our True Self- our beautifully simple, marvelously complex True Self. And we become Fake Me.

Don’t espouse an image of you with glistening hair, a bright smile, and a killer hair day. I’m referring to the you who is great at small talk, cracks a solid one-liner, and raises her hand in class every day. I’m talking about the girl who puts her best foot forward always, who is always speaking kindly, who is always living positively no matter what. She’s tough as hell, but right now I want you to forget her.

I want you to think of who you are with your best friend when you stumble into the room, face sticky with dried tears reaching out for a hug. I want you to think of the you who calls your mom from the bathroom stall at school when you get a bad grade, the you who has had her heart broken, the you has convinced yourself at some point that you’re not enough—not smart enough, not pretty enough, not thin enough, not tough enough. Got her? OK, me too.

I live in my fake self a lot and last quarter, I thrived in my fake self. I was working three jobs, earning A’s in difficult classes, spending time with the people who matter most to me, exercising every day, eating well, and somehow sleeping. I didn’t realize until the other day that I was overlooking something major: I was not doing “awesome.” In fact, I was really struggling.

I booked my days from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. to try to avoid thinking about how I was actually doing. I was living in my fake self because I was pushing something really big underneath the surface, my health. I have an autoimmune disorder and about once every other year it flairs up really, really badly. This fall was the year.

It causes me to lose hair and makes my skin unrecognizable and ruined. It makes me feel an unbearable amount of shame, and it makes me hide. I sit on the edge of my bed after a shower where I lose clumps of hair and I cry the biggest, ugliest heaving sobs. I cancel plans when I can’t make myself feel better about it, and I spend minutes in front of the mirror trying to make sure nobody else can tell.

I overcompensate by buying cute outfits, saying the right things, and living so thickly in my fake self that I can’t connect with people the way I want to anymore. And it’s dangerous to me, and it’s dangerous to the people whom I love the most.

And readers, what scares me the most about this is that it causes me to lose people because I’m too scared to just be vulnerable. It’s so hard to admit to ourselves when we’re struggling with sometimes and it’s even harder to put aside feelings of shame and open up.

But here’s the truth: vulnerability is the best measure of courage, bravery, and fortitude. Only through exposing the muck-filled parts of ourselves can we find true, deep connections with people. The longer we wait to be vulnerable, the longer we push into our fake me, the more the relationships that matter most in our lives struggle to stay afloat.

So, dear readers, open up. Even if it means you’re going to cry ugly tears until your muscles shake and you’re grasping for air. Because guess what? That’s not weakness, that’s courage .