My go-to question to ask to any stranger, and what I personally believe reveals a slightly intimate side to them, is: “What’s your biggest fear?”

I’ve heard all sorts of things: not succeeding in life, drowning, clowns, bees, dying alone, losing loved ones, circular objects; the list goes on.

Mine? Being perceived.

Cruelly ironic, this innate and inescapable facet of existence — to be seen and registered in someone’s, anyone’s gaze — becomes a performance for me. I soften the blow of any misjudgement by perfecting who I want to be seen as: I’ve been at this for years.

To exist in the minds of people outside of myself is to surrender to a narrative I cannot control. I’m being coerced into accepting that my identity is potentially reduced to a single characteristic, which could potentially define how someone permanently views me.

To combat the inevitable, I have small-talk queued up in my brain, I perk my posture up a few more inches (even if it becomes uncomfortable) and meticulously ensure each of my movements are calculated and calm.

I never apply lip gloss in the wind, or eat a sandwich while walking. I make sure I hold an appropriate volume during conversations and maintain eye contact. Soft smiles, fading into the background. Shoulders back, light steps.

Despite what I’m doing in public, a quiet line of dialogue sings in the back of my mind like a melody at all times: Relax your shoulders. Is your shirt wrinkled? Unclench your jaw. What does that group of people see when they look over at you? What do you think they’re thinking about you?

I spend so much time inferring how people perceive me when I’m trying to exist in public, that I would actually be more productive if I just stayed asleep in my bed.

Each Saturday morning, like clockwork, I snuggle into a bench at Handlebar Coffee in downtown Santa Barbara to work on my thesis. I lug about five pounds worth of literature with me, along with the mandatory post-it notes and pens, and I hunker down for about four to five hours. Within that time, I’ve looked up and around my environment about every 10 minutes to wonder how people are perceiving me.

Good or bad? Or not at all? Do they like my shirt?

I turn my gaze to my right to see a man, similar in age, also working on his laptop with an iced coffee beside him. Across the room I see two more laptops and their owner’s eyes drifting away from the screen.

I’m dodging eye contact, but my wonder still lingers. I’m trying to focus on my work, but the melody gets louder. And the heart of the paradox hits me.

Isn’t that why we’re all at the coffee shop? To be perceived?

So that ideally, someone would approach us and ask what we’re working on, and if it’s going well. And we would watch their eyes light up with interest as we talked about whatever project is loaded on our screen. Is it more about not wanting to be perceived, or rather about longing for human connection and just being scared to reach out and grab it?

This constant and ongoing attempt to hide my authenticity and fullness as a person is instead creating a disingenuous version of my true self. The courage it takes to be disliked has to be stronger than my trepidation of being misunderstood.

For why do I seek recognition in the first place, and where does my need to be praised by others come from?

Sometimes I wonder if I am instead trying to recognize myself by trying on potential comments from strangers who have no currency in my life. I am trying to translate myself, not in words but in belief. What doesn’t fit right, I hate into something better.

I am constantly curating and changing elements about myself, making my being an unreadable labyrinth of fervor. The devastating truth about perception, however, is that it is not up to me — I am not in control. No matter how much time I pour into my self-image and who I want to be, it is only ever as powerful as the interpretations of those who observe me.

Therein lies the fear of misinterpretation and misunderstanding: What if they see me wrong? What if they take the worst parts of me and make them whole? What if, despite my attempts of control, I am doomed to be misunderstood?

No one sees anything as they are, we instead see things as we are. There is both comfort and terror in knowing that.

As much as I try to control the narrative of self, people use me as a mirror into their own insecurities and worldview. I nuzzle in between the space between who I believe myself to be and who others perceive me as. Oftentimes, the latter takes the front seat and drives me into my reputation: I become whatever the hot breath on a stranger’s tongues says I am.

And there is something uniquely painful in that — being misunderstood. There’s helplessness behind a deceived perception, as we fear being perceived but pray to be desired and understood. It is like a game of chess, we cannot have one without the other and we cannot have the other without risk.

When perception turns against me, it leaves my feet wobbling and the ground unsteady. If no one sees me as the way I intend, then who am I, really?

However with that question, the power lies back in me now, like a game of ping-pong. The power is me saying: So what?

The greatest act of self-preservation is to relinquish the need to control perception. I am accepting to be misunderstood by most, understood by few. That who I am will be processed a thousand different times in countless ways, creating a semi-realistic portrait of all the versions of me. And I make space for them.

To be human is to be misperceived, but I would rather be viewed wrongly than not viewed at all. To be human is to exist as a multiplicity, an everchanging reflection in the eyes of everything I’ve ever touched and everyone I’ve ever known.

Saturdays at the coffee shop are for constantly slipping up and catching myself trying to fit into someone’s gaze. Trying to dilute myself and depollute my thoughts while milk spins around my espresso. Saturday evenings are for bubble baths and washing away what I thought that lady said about me in her head.

Sundays are stained glass and I am delicate for a little while. I can pick up trash from the street without wondering who is thinking about it. I can wonder why the moon follows me like I always wondered when I was a young girl.

I’ve spent so much time observing my thoughts that I forgot about the integrity of my soul.

How freeing is it to both metaphorically and literally exhale? To let fallibilities become a part of the stitching of my cloth? For if we only existed on what we did right, we would each only be half of a person, half of ourselves.

Our biggest fears are our imperfections in play, and maybe I seek comfort in knowing that everyone else has imperfections, too.

Kira Logan wrote this in Handlebar Coffee, wondering what the guy next to her thinks about her new shirt.