nested selves

who we become, what we perform, and the perfection we chase

By Cendrine Rovini

I was back on the bike this morning, in a post hot yoga daze, when I overheard a woman say, “I try to live differently so my daughter doesn’t have to go through what I did.”.

The line stayed with me. And maybe it was the ironic timing of my thoughts or the fact that I heard it in a fluorescent hallway, sweating and surrounded by women towel-drying their faces and scrolling through Instagram, but it unsettled me because I’ve heard it before. My mom’s said it. A lot of moms have. So I’ve started to wonder, does anyone ever actually manage that?

I don’t know if this brings me comfort or if it brings me fear. Fear that we don’t escape the things that shaped us. That we just rewrite them. Repackage them. And pass them on.

It echoed something I talked about yesterday. About the standard of perfection. How early we start trying to be good. Good students, good daughters, good girlfriends, good women. How quickly we learn to perform, to anticipate what’s expected, to earn love by being palatable. A friend of mine brought up how little room there is to just be flawed. He said it seems like so much of our culture, and so many of our relationships, operate on the false idea that people are supposed to be perfect. That we’re not fallen by nature, and that’s the word he used: fallen. He asked, “Do you think there’s anything outside of religion that offers people that same kind of comfort? That same permission to be human?”

I told him I think there is. For me, it’s always been girlhood friendships. That rare feeling when someone sees you at your most undone and loves you even more for it. I’ve found that kind of mercy in my female friends but also in water, in trees, in earth. In those quiet, nonverbal places that ask nothing of you. I think we’re all a little lost, craving that kind of gentleness. Especially now, when the world rewards polish and performance over honesty. When being real feels like a risk.

We both agreed that so much would change if we started from imperfection. If we walked into relationships assuming everyone is a little messy, a little lost, and still worthy of love. But I know that’s easier said than done. I can admit I’ve built walls in approaching new relationships, especially when I’ve been let down before. I’ve noticed myself scanning people for red flags, reading too far into small things, trying to protect myself by assuming the worst. I think that kind of hyper-vigilance creates impossibly high standards. Ones that are less about who the other person really is, and more about fear. This is something I think I need to unlearn.

Beginning with imperfection would make space for contradiction, for being in progress, for not knowing. But even that kind of space feels rare now. Which is ironic, because it’s the one thing that actually makes people feel seen. And when that kind of seeing is missing, it’s not just lonely. It’s disorienting. Because then what do you do? Who do you show up as?

Sometimes I think we’re just nesting dolls of ourselves. Each version shaped by who we thought we had to be, one layer holding the next. A polished outer self, protecting a fearful one beneath, protecting a child beneath that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how early we learn to curate. How quickly children figure out what version of themselves feels safest to others and how that version gets practiced until it becomes habit. A reflex. Even now, I catch myself in it. As we age, I think it settles into something deeper. More of an identity. But is it a real one? The truest one?

By smoothing ourselves out to stay safe, to avoid embarrassment or rejection, we learn quickly what version of us draws warmth and what version draws silence. And if we’re not careful, you start to believe the quieter parts of you that feel too intense or too sad or too much, are fundamentally wrong.

So how do we raise children to avoid that spiraling awareness?

That’s what stayed with me about this woman’s comment. That quiet insistence that she’s just doing her best, leading her life in a way she hopes will spare her daughter from something she had to endure. And I get that. I really do. The impulse to protect, to improve, to offer a bigger, softer life.

But I also think about how heavy that can become. How even with the best intentions, you could still pass along your fear, your vigilance, your self-consciousness. The over-intellectualizing. The hyper-awareness. The habit of turning every emotion into a story about who you are and what’s wrong with you. I don’t want to give that to someone new in the world.

And maybe that’s what scares me most. That there’s no clean slate. That no matter how much you try to do better, the things you carry might still leave a mark. That love can be enormous and earnest and still not save someone from becoming tangled in the same questions you tried to outrun.

This idea of living in a way that’s different from how you grew up, maybe in an attempt to offer your kid more freedom. But I wonder if it just ends up being a new kind of performance. A softer cage. A life still shaped by what you’re trying to avoid.

That’s something I circled back to in my conversation yesterday. About how even the sharp, constant noticing can start to feel like its own form of control. Like if I can name it, maybe I won’t repeat it. Maybe I can protect someone else from it. But I don’t think it works that way. Awareness helps, sure. But it doesn’t dissolve anything. It just teaches you the architecture of your fear. It teaches you how the walls were built. The language to piece together what brought you here. And god, am I fluent.

And that’s what scares me. That I could spend my whole life trying to unlearn the performance, the perfectionism, the over-identification with sadness and still end up passing down a new version of the same thing. Maybe a prettier version. A more articulate one. But still shaped by the same old things.

I think about that a lot. About how easy it is to become fluent in your own damage. About how hard it is to make sure that fluency doesn’t become your native tongue. Especially when you don’t want to be the reason someone else starts translating themselves into something safer, either.

It feels cyclical sometimes—at least for me—to notice how well I can speak and verbalize all the things I’ve learned and been through. To an extent, I feel this fluency is beneficial, but it’s easy to get trapped in wallowing. If you’re anything like I am, it seems too easy to take this and run with it.

Run very far with knowing.