Known.

I've been thinking a lot lately about performance.

Not the kind on a stage.

The quieter kind.

The kind where you slowly become whoever you think people will love.

I don't know that I realized I was doing it at the time. When you're a child, you don't have language for things like that. You just notice what gets rewarded.

You notice what earns a smile.

What makes people proud.

What makes them stay.

When I was little, I learned to interpret love through performance. I became whoever I thought my parents wanted me to be because that felt safer than risking being exactly who I was. I don't think I knew I was doing it. I just knew I wanted to be chosen.

Then came pageants. Modeling. More smiles. More compliments.

People noticed my face before they noticed my voice.

They told me I was beautiful far more often than they asked me what I loved, what I was curious about, or what kept me awake at night.

No one intended to teach me that my value lived in my appearance.

But children are excellent students.

As I've gotten older, I've realized how much of my life has been spent wondering whether people wanted to know me or simply liked looking at me.

That's a painful question to carry.

Especially as you age.

Because if the thing you've always been told has value is your appearance, what happens when your face changes? When your skin softens? When time does exactly what time has always promised it would do?

I've found myself standing in front of the camera lately asking questions that have very little to do with photography.

The images where I lean into my femininity do well.

The ones where I feel beautiful.

Confident.

Strong.

And I genuinely enjoy creating them.

But sometimes afterward I feel something I haven't known how to name.

Not shame.

Not regret.

Just... sadness.

Because somewhere inside me there's a little girl wondering if she's doing it again.

Wondering if she's still trying to earn love by being beautiful enough before anyone gets curious enough to ask who she is.

Maybe that's why writing feels different to me.

Words don't have perfect lighting.

You can't contour a sentence.

You can't pose an honest thought.

Writing asks people to meet me somewhere my face can't go first.

Maybe that's why I keep coming back to it.

I've been thinking about the ocean lately too.

When the water is calm and the sun hits it just right, everyone stops to admire it. They take the photograph. They call it beautiful.

But the tide always changes.

The kelp washes in.

The water turns gray.

The surface gets choppy.

And suddenly people are looking for a prettier view.

I used to think that was the perfect metaphor for people.

That everyone loved the surface until life carried in the seaweed.

But maybe I've had it backwards.

The people who truly love the ocean know it isn't turquoise every day.

They know some mornings it's steel gray.

Some days it's wild enough to humble you.

Sometimes the tide brings in kelp, driftwood, and all the evidence that it's alive.

The ocean isn't less beautiful because the tide changed.

It's simply refusing to pretend.

Maybe people are like that too.

Maybe what I've been searching for isn't someone who loves the version of me that looks beautiful standing on the shore.

Maybe I'm searching for someone willing to swim.

Someone who wants to know me at the depth in which I live.

The woman who cries over strangers' stories.

Who stops for wildflowers.

Who takes the long way home because the light is better by the water.

Who asks too many questions.

Who has spent years learning that strength and softness can occupy the same body.

Who still has fears she hasn't entirely untangled.

I wish I could tell you I've figured it out.

That I've reached the age where I no longer care what people think. That I've completely separated my worth from my appearance. That posting a beautiful photograph of myself never stirs up old stories about what makes someone lovable.

But that wouldn't be true.

I'm still untangling it.

I'm still learning the difference between being admired and being known.

Maybe that's why this feels so uncomfortable.

Because somewhere inside me is a little girl who learned that love arrived when she was pleasing.

And this version of me is trying to believe something entirely different.

That maybe one day someone will fall in love with the way I think.

The questions I ask.

The things that make me laugh.

The stories I tell.

The depth at which I swim.

I don't know if I believe that completely yet.

But I want to.

Because I'd rather risk being fully known...than spend another lifetime being beautifully misunderstood.