There is an invisible barrier that collapses the moment the door closes behind us and the sound of the latch marks the beginning of solitude.
In that second of silence, the «persona» we carry through the world like a well-pressed garment is hung on a coat rack, and beneath it remains the rest: the raw truth, unpolished and, at times, terrifyingly free.
In society, we are all architects of our own image.
We construct our gestures, chisel the phrasing of our sentences, and adjust our smiles according to the light reflected by the eyes of others.
We are the sum of our parents‘ expectations, our bosses‘ demands, and the unwritten norms of the street.
But who is the one who remains when the audience has gone home and the spotlights have dimmed?
When no one is watching, we become authentic through banality.
We are the person who eats straight from the pot, the one who cries at a mediocre commercial, or the one who dances absurdly in the middle of the living room—without rhythm, but with a wild joy.
In the absence of another’s gaze, the body relaxes, and the social mask—that permanent tension of the facial muscles—melts away.
Solitude is the only laboratory where we can study our own core.
When no one is watching, thoughts are no longer censored by the fear of being judged.
In those moments, we are our own witnesses.
Some of us fear this encounter, filling the silence with the television or infinite scrolling on a phone, precisely because the one we are «in the dark» is a stranger we are afraid of.
Others, however, find a form of sanctity in this space—a return to a state of grace where we have nothing to prove to anyone.
When no one is watching, we have permission to be incomplete.
We can let our shoulders drop under the weight of the exhaustion we mask all day with an «I’m fine!».
We can stare into the void for minutes on end, letting time flow past us without «investing» it in productivity anymore.
Who are we, then?
We are that spark of vulnerability that survives beneath the armor.
We are the internal dialogue we will never utter out loud.
We are, in essence, the only version of ourselves that does not need validation to exist.