The Person Underneath
The full, unedited self that exists beneath the performance: the one with opinions, desires, limits, volume, and the complete humanity that years of self-erasure have suppressed.
The person underneath is the full, unedited self that exists beneath the performance. The one with opinions, desires, limits, volume, and the complete humanity that years of self-erasure have suppressed.
Not a new person. Not a different person. The original person, before the training began its revisions. Present the entire time, underground. Recoverable. Not exactly as they were before the training began, because growth is not reversible. But integratable into who the person has become.
What They Are Not
The person underneath is not an idealized version of the self, the person who has no wounds, no patterns, no adaptations. They are the self with all of those things intact, plus the full range of humanity that was edited out in the service of the performance. The anger is there. The desire is there. The opinions, the volume, the particular way they would have taken up space if space had been available.
The Reclamation
The reclamation does not create this person. It uncovers them. The work is not constructive. It is excavation. The clearing of what was layered on top. This is why the process of reclaiming the self frequently involves grief: the grief for the years lived in the performance, the grief for the desires that were not pursued, the grief for the relationships that were built on the edited self rather than the actual one.