It’s a feeling of unfolding, letting yourself be seen. A level of vulnerability, unprecedented. You’re bare, out in the open. No obstacles bar them from your truth. But with every layer you shed, a twinge of resentment sets in. 

The indefatigable correlation between exposure and rejection. The more you share, the more your nuances fester, manifest. 

With that, the all-encompassing and self-defining flaws that make you, you. The ugliest parts. The parts you wish were not your truths, which make them even more so. 

And the longer you hold your fully revealed Self under a lens, the more you fall in love with your image, ugliness and all. But will they? 

Is it possible to recalibrate their understanding of you in relation to them, now that the beauty is anything but conventional, anything but familiar?