Their social media posts about you always carefully avoid showing your face. At first, you didn’t think much of it. The world of social media is a curated gallery, after all. A shot of your intertwined hands on a hiking trail. A beautifully plated dinner you cooked together, with the caption, “Lucky to have a personal chef!” A picture of the skyline from a restaurant, noting, “Amazing night with my favorite person.” The comments are always a chorus of heart-eye emojis and “Couple goals!”
But as months turn into years, the pattern solidifies into something you can no longer ignore. You are a ghost in their digital world. A presence felt, but never seen. A silhouette, never a portrait.
Your mind, that faithful scribe of insecurity, begins to write the obvious, painful story. You are being hidden. You are not quite good enough to be presented to the world. Perhaps they are embarrassed by how you look, or by your age, or your background. Maybe there is someone else in their online orbit they don’t want you to know about. The digital erasure begins to feel like a slow, soft form of annihilation. You exist in their physical life, but you are a secret in their digital one.
You finally muster the courage to voice the fear that has been gnawing at you. “Why don’t you ever post a picture of my face?”
They look startled, then their expression softens with a sadness you didn’t expect. They don’t offer excuses. Instead, they say, “Come with me.”
They lead you to their home office, a room you’re rarely in. On the wall, amidst their degrees and professional accolades, hangs a small, framed print. It’s a social media post, but not from their account. It’s a screenshot, enlarged and printed on high-quality paper. The caption reads, “Four years cancer-free today. Grateful for every moment.” The photo is of a woman, beaming, her head bald, her eyes shining with fierce joy. She is unmistakably their mother.
“That post,” they say, their voice quiet, “was shared over twenty thousand times. It was picked up by news outlets. For months, strangers all over the world felt they had a right to comment on her body, her illness, her faith, her survival. They called her an inspiration; they called her a sinner. They used her image, her most vulnerable and triumphant moment, as a battleground for their own agendas.”
They turn to you, and you see not secrecy, but a fierce, protective love in their eyes.
“My mother’s face became public property because of one post. And I watched what it did to her. I watched her feel exposed, raw, and violated by a world that felt it owned a piece of her story simply because it had passed through their feed.”
They take your hand.
“Your face,” they say, “your smile, the light in your eyes when you laugh… that is the most precious thing in my world. It is not for them. It is for me. It is for us. I post about our life because I am proud of it, because I want to shout from the rooftops that I found you. But your face? That is my treasure. I will not put it in a digital museum for millions to graze past with a casual, scrolling eye. I will not risk a single cruel comment, a single moment of objectification, a single instance of your image being taken and used without your consent.”
The shame of your assumption washes over you, followed by a wave of profound humility. You had been measuring their love by the metric of digital visibility. You thought you were being hidden, when in fact, you were being guarded. You were not their secret; you were their sanctuary.
Their social media posts about you always carefully avoid showing your face because they are building a fortress around your privacy in a world that has forgotten what it means. The cropped photos and the hidden features are not acts of exclusion, but the highest form of reverence. They are saying, “What we have is too sacred to be consumed. My love for you is not content. It is a country, and I am its sole citizen, and I will protect its borders with my life.”
You realize then that the most profound love in the modern age isn’t the one that is shouted from the digital rooftops. It is the one that is whispered in the quiet of a room, the one that is carefully, intentionally, and fiercely protected from the noise. They aren’t hiding you from the world. They are hiding the world from you. And in that, you have never felt more seen.