On visibility and being known

If I died tomorrow, what would people say about me?

Bit of a morbid thought, but it raises another question:

"Who is Connie?"

I'm still trying to figure that out myself.

Because for a good chunk of my life up until maybe 2 years ago, I thought I knew who I was. I thought I knew the type of life I was going to lead and what I was driving towards. I only ever thought, this is my life. What else is there for me to know?

And then 2 years ago, I had to start questioning everything I ever knew about my own life—who I was, what I liked and disliked, what made me rage. So much of what I thought I knew about my own identity got upended almost overnight, and I had to go through the painstaking process of collecting the scattered pieces of my old life, some pieces still whole, others completely shattered.

But if I had to do it again, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Because this version of me that sits here now, typing this page years after the last time I wrote and published anything on this site, feels like double-concentrated Connie. You're not going to get a purer version than this.

Because up until 2 years ago, I spent a lot of my life shying away from being my true self. I spent a lot of my life suppressing the parts of me that made me me, all for the sake of ensuring harmony.

Who I was didn't matter. My dreams didn't matter. My emotions didn't matter. And it's not something I blame anyone for, it's just how I navigated a lot of my relationships with other people. I took my responsibility of not being a burden so seriously, that I ended up making myself small and unseeable and without desire, because to be big and to be seen and to want meant I was being too much. To have that attention, to be seen like that, meant I was failing my responsibility as the well-behaved kid, the well-behaved friend, the well-behaved spouse.

I remember talking to my ex-husband about how I didn't really like being known as, "the nice friend". Because was there anything else that our friends knew about me? Was there anything else that they would say about me? To explain who I am? And I remember him saying that I am in the top 5% or 10% of nice people. Thinking back on it now, it feels still an incomplete picture of who I am.

But I'm sure that others would probably agree with that assessment, that I'm a nice person.

Let's revisit that first question I raised, "If I died tomorrow, what would people say about me?"

"She was nice," is an okay answer, but it's not an unfair answer if I've not done enough to let people see those parts of me that would allow them to say something about who I am rather than how I am in relation to others.

Being known as nice or easy to talk to or generous is in relation to others, whereas the things that I am trying to make more visible are aspects of myself that just simply describe me. For example, I love funky fashion and writing character-driven science fiction. There's so many more interests that I can list out, but we'd be here for ages.

If only you all knew what went on in my head, because it's a cabinet of curiosities!

But that's on me, isn't it? To know that there are these other aspects of me that largely stay in my brain, in my mind palace that I don't often express outwardly, and to try to close that gap between what's in my brain with what is shared externally. Because how would other people know what they don't know? I can't expect people to read my mind or to pay attention to all the little possible tells that might signal to someone of what might be going on in my brain.

So this is the part where I am trying to step up and be more visible, not because I need the external validation to assess my own value, but because I want to insist upon my own existence.

You might ask, why does that matter at all to you, Connie?

Well, we are eight billion people on this planet. Each day that passes means eight billion days of life pass. That's no small feat as humankind.

And so for me to insist upon my own existence, I'm waving my hand to say, "I'm here! I matter!"

Because it proves that I was alive, here on this Earth, at the same time you were. And that is a beautiful coincidence.

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Main image taken by me. Japan, October 2025.