What's the F* Point?

Soft White Underbelly.

We're all walking around carrying the same secret: We're terrified of not mattering.

Behind every casual social media post, behind every carefully crafted email, behind every thing we put into the world, there's this whisper of doubt:

"Will anyone care? Does this matter? Do I matter?"

The truth is, we're all desperately hungry for real connection. Not the surface-level stuff – the likes, the quick comments, the "let's grab coffee sometime" that never happens.

We want someone to see us. Really see us. To look past our carefully constructed facades and recognize the mess of hope and fear and longing underneath.

But we also don’t. It’s risky, it’s scary.

To be truly seen, we have to risk showing ourselves. And that's terrifying.

It's terrifying because we all walk around with these internal highlight reels of our failures, our awkward moments, our rejected attempts at connection. We remember every time we reached out and got silence in return. Every time we shared something meaningful and watched it disappear into the void. Every time we tried to matter and the world seemed to shrug.

So we play it safe. We post the easy stuff. The vacation photos. The work wins. The carefully filtered moments that can't hurt us because they're not really us.

We hide our real thoughts, our real art, our real selves behind layers of acceptability and marketability.

Creating something meaningful feels like standing naked in a crowded room.

When you make something that actually matters to you – something real, something true – you're not just risking rejection of your work. You're risking rejection of your essence.

Oh, So Quiet

And the silence? The silence is the worst. At least criticism means someone saw you. Silence makes you question your own existence. Did anyone even see this? Did it even matter? Do I?

Here's the brutal truth about creating from your essence: You must be simultaneously vulnerable and bulletproof. Sensitive enough to feel deeply, to create from your truth, to let your work touch and be touched – yet tough enough to survive the silence, the rejection, the voices (both external and internal) that will try to shut you down.

Creating something real means dancing with your shadows. Every insecurity, every doubt, every fear you've buried will rise to the surface. They'll tell you to stop, to play it safe, to retreat back into the comfortable numbness of not trying. The only way forward is through. Through the fear, through the doubt, through the deafening silence of putting your work into the world and not knowing if it matters.

The irony is that we're all feeling this way, all the time. We're all sitting in our separate spaces, hearts full of things we want to say, art we want to make, connections we want to forge – held back by the fear that no one will care. That we'll be too much, or not enough, or just wrong somehow.

We're all waiting for permission to be real. For someone to go first. For some guarantee that if we show ourselves, we'll be seen. But that guarantee never comes.

The very thing we're most afraid to share is often the thing that would connect us most deeply to others. Our doubts, our struggles, our questioning – these aren't signs of weakness or unworthiness. They're proof of our humanity.

Every time you create something real, every time you share something true, you're sending out a signal to others: "You're not alone in feeling this way." Even if it seems like your signal disappeared into the void, someone out there caught it. Someone out there felt less alone because of it.

Maybe that's the point. Maybe the courage to create, to connect, to be seen isn't about guarantees. It's about faith. Faith that somewhere out there, someone else is feeling exactly what we're feeling. Someone else is waiting for permission to be real. Someone else needs to know they're not alone.

So maybe the bravest thing we can do is stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting to be chosen. Stop waiting for guarantees. Just create. Connect. Be real.

Because every time one of us finds the courage to be seen, we make it a little safer for everyone else to do the same.