There's a photo of me from five years ago that I found while looking for something else. I'm at someone's kitchen table, mid-sentence, not looking at the camera. I look young and also more like myself somehow. Like there's more going on behind the face. More happening underneath. I've been staring at it trying to figure out what the difference actually is and I keep coming back to this: the person in that photo didn't know they were being looked at. They were just there, in the room, in the middle of saying something.

I know I'm being looked at now almost all the time. Not by people necessarily - by the idea of people. The account, the profile, the accumulated record. I've been composing myself for so long that I've lost track of what the uncomposed version looks like. The stranger's face in that five-year-old photo is actually the more honest one. I'd like to get back to it but I'm not sure I know how anymore. What does an uncomposed version of you look like? When did you last let someone see it?