There's something special about learning to be real.

It's not an easy process, for sure, but dropping the pretenses many of us adopt for approval and/or our idea of survival has been freeing for me.

I learned as a young student in American public school what many students learn - present your best self and gain the acceptance of your teachers, adults, and hopefully even your peers. The results of my efforts were mixed.

We earn reputations from a young age - it is in our nature as humans to stereotype, after all. We label each other to stay safe, to find a companion, to avoid danger. Especially when we are young and learning the world, the labels we're given are often the labels that stick. After all, they are part of how our peers understand the world around them.

My efforts to be the "best me" could bring me a good label, or so it seemed. I was the good guy, willing to help anyone. By the time I finished high school, I had earned a new slew of labels, from homecoming king to all-state football player. But the good guy label stuck, and I kept working to live up to it. The same thing happened to me when I started my undergraduate studies at West Virginia Wesleyan College.

On the surface, this might seem the ideal situation - I had earned a positive label, the respect of many of my peers, and had even become a leader in various social circles. But as a wise peer once told me (and as I failed to take to heart at the time), "when you're the rock for everyone else, it can be hard to find your own rock."

Maybe you can relate. If you can, you might guess that Inside me raged a measure of inner turmoil. With the appreciation of others, I had learned that people probably didn't want to hear about my problems. The truth was, I faced depression, I faced temptation, I faced battles that I could not overcome on my own.

I was so self-reliant and focused on helping others that I didn't even take time to earnestly share my issues with God or even myself.

When you put on a mask long enough, it feels so comfortable that you forget it's there. Nevertheless, a person still exists under that mask, and when you stop paying attention to it things can go bad.

Under my mask, that depression and temptation went on. I determined to fix myself, but I was petrified to ask others for help even though my resources were plenty. Asking for help, I thought, might push away my friends and ruin the image of the person I wished to be.

The sad reality that I learned, and the reason I write this article, is that hiding our problems to care for others ends with us hurting the people we care the most about. People want us to share with them, to be real with them, and to hear them as well. We just can't make it a one-way street.

I don't fully know what "real" looks like, and that's okay. But I've been learning what it looks like for me. I'm not a good or bad person, I'm just Wilson, and I do good things and sometimes mess up too.

That wouldn't be okay were it not for grace. I thank God that I am a Christian because it is Christ on the cross who says that I am enough to come as I am. To be real about it. It doesn't matter what others think of my scars, the dark corners of my soul, my good and bad. What matters is that Jesus says I'm okay the way I am and then shows me the way to live the best life I can, the way God designed it.

I'm not great at being real yet; sometimes I still wear a mask. But I can admit that, and that's a big step in the right direction.