I didn’t expect a piece of old wood to take me back to myself. But here we are.

The photo was just an offhand moment, something I snapped while stepping outside, coffee in hand, watching the morning light catch the edges of my back deck. The boards were once a smooth slate gray, carefully painted to match the trim of the house. I remember choosing that color deliberately wanting everything to feel cohesive, elegant, and modern. The kind of home you’re proud to show guests, where even the deck doesn’t interrupt the aesthetic.

But a few years have passed. And the paint tells the story.

Now, the surface is cracked and peeling. The color, faded and chipped, has surrendered to time, the weather, and the dogs running up and down. You can see the brown wood peeking through in places, rough and uneven. The knots and grains that were once hidden under paint have resurfaced, unapologetically exposed. It’s easy to look at it and think “That needs to be redone.” But for me, standing there, it brought something else.

It brought memory. And then it brought metaphor.

Because I know exactly what it feels like to be painted over to match your surroundings. I’ve done it for most of my life.

I remember the day we painted that deck not just for protection, but to fit. The wood didn’t quite match the house. It looked… raw. A little too rustic. A little too textured. It stood out in a way that felt like it disrupted the image we were curating. And so we covered it. Layered it with color until it blended in, until it stopped drawing attention. It became “right,” not because it changed, but because it was no longer visible for what it really was.

And somewhere in that choice, I realize now, was the story I had been unconsciously living for years.

Like many neurodivergent adults, I learned early how to match the room. I learned that being myself often invited questions or criticism or awkward silence. So I learned to translate my energy, my ideas, and even my presence into something more palatable. I coated my raw edges in socially acceptable colors. I trained myself to pause before I spoke, to soften the sharpness of my thoughts, to rearrange my behavior into what looked most like belonging. And the better I got at blending in, the more the world affirmed it. Promotions. Praise. Invitations. Acceptance.

But it came at a cost. Because beneath the surface, the wood didn’t change. It just disappeared. I disappeared.

When I look at the deck now, I no longer see distress. I see endurance. I see a surface that has borne weight like the people, the weather, time, and silence. I see boards that have supported late-night conversations, dog paws chasing geckos, chairs dragged across them in celebration and frustration. That wood held life. And not once did it stop doing its job because its paint wore thin.

It makes me think about how often we measure someone’s value by the integrity of their surface. How often we reward polish and mistake it for strength. But it’s not the fresh coats that hold us up, it’s the structure underneath. It’s the wood that endures, even when we forget to honor it.

For a long time, I thought blending in was survival. And in many ways, it was. Masking helped me navigate a world that wasn’t designed for brains like mine. It allowed me to build a career, to lead teams, to be “the one who always has it together.” But the longer I lived as the painted version of myself, the more I began to forget what I looked like underneath. I got tired. The kind of tired that seeps into your bones. Not just from overworking, but from overperformance. From managing other people’s perceptions so carefully that I lost access to my own preferences, my own sensory needs, my own voice.

Eventually, the cracks began to show. I burned out. I stopped being able to perform at the level I had trained myself to maintain. I thought I was broken. But I wasn’t. I was just weathered.

And here’s the beautiful thing about weathering…it means you’ve lived.

It means you’ve stayed. Through seasons. Through storms. Through times you weren’t cared for the way you needed to be, and yet you remained present. You adapted. You endured. Like the deck, you kept holding weight and sometimes more than anyone realized.

We don’t celebrate that enough. We celebrate the refinished, the repainted, the rebranded. But we rarely honor the structure that never stopped doing its job, even when it looked a little worn, a little too real, or a little imperfect.

That brings me to this question I’ve been asking myself lately “What would it mean to stop repainting?” To let myself show up fully like chipped paint, rough edges, raw wood and all? To take pride not in how well I match, but in how solid I’ve become? What would it mean to stop trying to blend in… and instead invite the people around me to see the beauty of standing out? Because maybe the goal was never to match the house. Maybe the deck was never the problem. Maybe it was always meant to be the place that held life outside the lines. Maybe I was always meant to be that.

And maybe you were too.

If you’ve spent your life covering parts of yourself in order to fit into someone else’s version of “acceptable,” I want you to know that you’re not failing when the mask slips. You’re not falling apart when the performance cracks. You’re just finally allowing yourself to be seen.

And yes, it’s vulnerable. Yes, it’s terrifying. Yes, it’s not always safe. But it’s also the only path to freedom I’ve ever known.

The deck may no longer be pristine. But it’s honest.

In a world full of surfaces screaming for attention, maybe what we need more of are the things that simply stay holding space, holding weight, holding memory, unafraid to show the wear of what they’ve lived through.

​If this is where you are right now, unraveling, unmasking, unsure of who you are beneath the layers…then know this, you’re not alone. You don’t need to repaint yourself to be worthy of standing tall. You’ve held enough. Now it’s your turn to be held, exactly as you are.