I had been performing myself for so long that I had forgotten what the original looked like. Daisy seemed to know, somehow. She kept looking at me like she was waiting for her to show up.
There is a version of yourself that exists before the world gets its hands on you. Before you learn what is acceptable, what is too much, what needs to be hidden. I lost track of that version somewhere in my twenties. I’m not sure exactly when. It was gradual, the way all the important losses are.
Daisy arrived when I was very good at being the performed version. I had the right answers. I knew how to seem fine. I was, by most external measures, doing well. Inside I felt like a building with a very convincing facade and nothing behind the windows.
“Dogs don’t respond to facades. They respond to something underneath.”
Dogs don’t respond to facades. They respond to something underneath — some frequency of self that bypasses the performance entirely. Daisy would look at me sometimes with an expression I can only describe as patient. Like she was waiting for the real one to come out.
I started writing these essays partly to find out who that is. The real one. The one Daisy seems to be waiting for. I don’t have a complete answer yet. But I have more of her than I did.