I think we can all agree the ability to put on a public face is a real asset as a functioning adult in society.

I know, that sounds all phony and false, but for real…sometimes things are falling to pieces around you, but life stubbornly requires your participation.  Simply put, there are certain activities that won’t fly while you’re sobbing into your elbow or screaming obscenities. Most of the ones in public, anyway.

So we all develop our public face.  The one we put on with our big girl panties when it’s time to suck it up and deal.  And it’s one of those life skills you really do need to develop.

The problem comes when your public face is so firmly fixed that people have a hard time seeing what’s really going on.

I developed a public face early on, one I’ve spent many years refining.  We were an intensely private family growing up – personal issues belonged at home and only at home.  I certainly wasn’t supposed to fall to pieces anywhere else, so I quickly learned how to look the part. Smart, responsible, athletic, friendly…these were my public face characteristics.  Letting them slip simply wasn’t an option.

Which was unfortunate because there were a few years in there when I really could have used someone to talk to.

But who would think to ask?  I was on the honor roll and a varsity athlete…held down a job and had good friends…I wasn’t tattooed or oddly pierced or falling down drunk at school, so my public face covered any part of my story that had turned ugly.  And I didn’t know enough to drop the act and reach out for help myself.

I’m in a very different place now, but there’s something that scares the hell out of me: how much of myself I see when I look at T-man.

T-man has a number of public faces, and he’s become very adept at using them.  Again, it’s a valuable life skill – I mean, you can’t go to school falling apart just because you got reprimanded after breakfast.  But still…

And it’s a big but…

His public persona is so firmly etched in place that people have questioned me when I’ve reached out for help.  Why?  For the same reason no one looked twice at me.  He doesn’t look like a kid in trouble.  Just the opposite.

T-man looks like the kid who’s got it all together – honor roll student, teachers like him, black belt, respectful toward adults.  (Yeah, I’D probably be all “WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?!” if someone brought him to me, too.)  And he never lets that public face slip.  Not when he’s outside the house anyway.

So I fight to get him what he needs.  I ignore people who try to brush me off, citing parent prerogative until they dig deep enough to see the real T-man.  Until they peel away the public face and look for what’s inside.

But I worry.  I worry that, like me, it will take him forty years to learn there are times when you have to push your public face aside to let someone truly see you.  Then I pray that he’ll eventually learn this, even if it takes forty years.