Content note: This post includes a brief mention of a suicide attempt.

There’s a version of me that most people know. The builder. Twenty years of shipping software, doing consulting, working on open source projects. Calm, capable, in control.

That version is real. But it’s not the whole story. And the distance between what I’ve been showing and what’s actually there has shaped more of my life than I’ve ever talked about.

The mask

For most of my life, I’ve been performing.

As a kid, I never had a group where I felt like I could just be myself. I was always adjusting. Reading the room, figuring out which version of me was most likely to be accepted, and becoming that. Not because I was manipulative. Because I was desperate to belong somewhere. Anywhere.

At home, things were harder. I grew up in a household where conflict was constant and I learned early that the safest strategy was to make yourself small. Don’t be a burden. Don’t take up space. Perform being fine until the storm passes.

That pattern followed me into adulthood. Into relationships where I kept looking for safety but never quite found it, partly because I didn’t know who I was without the mask. Into a life where responsibilities stacked up faster than I could carry them. Into a long, slow spiral where every day cost more energy than the last, and the distance between what I showed the world and what I actually felt kept growing.

I was living behind a mask. Performing control while everything inside was falling apart.

The cost

A few years ago, I was going to end my life.

That’s not a figure of speech. I had a plan. I had a letter. I was ready to go through with it. At the very last second, I pulled back.

What followed wasn’t a clean recovery. There was no epiphany. There was shame. Confusion. Months of carrying what had almost happened as my biggest secret, while the world around me saw nothing.

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But underneath all of that, something had shifted. A realisation that was sudden and absolute: I could not keep living this way. The mask had almost killed me. Literally.

The search

What started after that is still going. A search for who I actually am. What I care about. What I want my life to look like. What I refuse to tolerate anymore.

It’s not a dramatic transformation story. There was no single moment where everything clicked. It’s been slow, messy, full of wrong turns. I’m still in it. I’m increasingly convinced it never ends. Somewhere along the way, I started seeing that as a good thing rather than a failure.

But one thing did become clear, gradually and then all at once: I am done pretending. Done performing fine. Done showing a polished version of something that isn’t real underneath.

The connection I didn’t see

For a long time, I kept the personal stuff and the work stuff in separate compartments. The search for myself was private. Work was work.

Then, a few weeks ago, I pulled a product launch at the last minute. I’d written about it as a strategic decision. And it was. The product wasn’t ready for the promise the writing had been making.

But the reason it hit me so hard wasn’t strategic. It was personal.

I looked at the gap between what I was about to present and what actually existed, and I recognised something. The pattern. Showing something polished while the reality underneath doesn’t match. The mask, dressed up as a product launch.

That’s when the wall between personal and professional cracked. The consulting work that pays my bills is stable, respected, comfortable. But it’s someone else’s. The product I’m building is uncertain, fully mine, possibly wrong. Every day I spend on it is a bet that what I believe matters more than what’s safe. And I couldn’t launch it behind a mask. Not after everything. Not even when the stakes are just a product instead of a life.

What “real” actually costs

“Build something real” is easy to say. The cost is harder to talk about.

It means I’m still consulting to pay the bills while I build the thing I actually believe in. It means I don’t have a launch date. It means watching others in the same space ship faster, market louder, claim territory I could’ve claimed.

It means sitting with the discomfort of having a vision that’s clearer than ever and a product that isn’t there yet.

And it means writing this. Being honest about where I am instead of waiting until I have a success story to tell. I don’t have one yet. I have a direction, a foundation, a conviction and a lot of unfinished work.

That’s the real version. No mask.

I’m still building. The product. The brand. Whatever this version of myself turns out to be. I don’t know exactly where it goes. I know I’m not going back behind the mask.