SELF: why do I hide my face?

 

I've had a number of people - past and present - asking me why I hide myself in my self portraits - almost always a partial face and no body. I tend to pass it off as - I like arty photos, I like the mystery - but simply put, I have always hated the way I look - the way I imagine that I look to others - ever since school. Why didn't I look like others, why did I look so young, why so skinny, pale, why blonde... it goes on, and still goes on. It took me a long time to get up the courage on social media to post any self images - always made excuses not to. So when I did, I made sure, as I do now - that I am in shadow, that my face is partially shown, that I am covered in filters - all to manage to hide myself from myself, I suppose. To post selfies is my form of half-therapy in a way. That's as much as I can do. Sometimes we get past our jangling insecurities - and sometimes we don't. Of course, this all sits on other stuff - not liking myself, believing that others pretend to like me, but don't really - how could they?