in someone else's skin

There’s this person.

You probably know someone like them.

The kind of person who walks like the world opens for them.

Who speaks, and people listen.

Who exists, and it feels effortless.

I don’t want to be them out of jealousy.

It’s not about envy.

It’s about the way they wear their confidence

like a second skin—

and how I shrink

inside my own.

I watch the way they move,

how their words land without apology,

how they laugh like the world never taught them to flinch.

And sometimes—

just sometimes—

I wish I could slip into that body,

just to feel what it’s like

to be heard

without having to scream internally first.

But here’s the strange part.

I don’t want to stop being me.

I just want me to be enough.

I want to speak

and not be dismissed.

To enter a room

and not second-guess my every step.

To be seen

without having to wear a version of someone else.

But every time I try,

every time I show up as myself—

awkward, quiet, a little too much of something—

the silence that follows

is louder than anything they’ve ever said to me.

So I keep pretending.

A little straighter spine.

A voice rehearsed.

A smile borrowed

from someone braver.

I admire them.

I do.

But sometimes I wish someone

could look at me

the way I look at them.

And maybe say—

"You're not them.

You're you.

And that’s exactly who I was hoping to find."

But that never comes.

Not yet.

So I keep walking in shoes

that don’t quite fit,

while my real self waits—

quiet, patient,

still hoping

to be let in.