On masks, maybe-friends, and the quiet exhaustion of trying too hard for too long.

I used to think friendship was binary. That story—the one about flower bracelets and a life-sized doll—was where I started. It set the tone, the standard, the shape of what I thought friendship was supposed to feel like.

Then everything got more complicated.

After losing the one person who just got me, I stopped looking for connection and started performing for approval. I didn’t find another Cheri—just expectations, pressure, and a gnawing fear of being too much or never enough. So I became palatable. Polished. Pleasant. And eventually, painfully, I disappeared under the weight of it all.

So when a close friend and I had a painful breakup in my early 30s, it spun me out. The timing was trash: my mom was about to visit, birthdays were stacking up—mine, my daughter’s, my mom’s—and everything else in my life was already teetering. Then that happened.

I thought I’d been collecting friends. Turns out, I’d been collecting lovely acquaintances who thought they were my friends—people who needed more of me than I was willing (or able) to give. Their fault? Not really. Mine? Absolutely.

I fought hard not to fall apart. I wanted to crawl back into the safe binary I believed in before I met Cheri: the world is made of friends and not-friends. Simple. Clean. Manageable.

In that version of reality, everyone liked me. I knew everyone. No one knew me.

I had masked myself into being a stranger to everyone I loved.

And worse—I had masked myself out of knowing who I even was. I longed to return to my box. My neat, black-and-white box. But it didn’t fit anymore. I’d been paying attention. I’d started understanding my value, bit by bit.

And everything changed.

I flipped it all upside down—like Alice, curious on the way down the rabbit hole. I should have feared the landing. Instead, I was fascinated by the fall. It felt like my last chance to rebuild myself from the ground up—just like I used to when we moved every few years. I could be someone new.

Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger.

I tried. But it didn’t feel authentic. It felt like armor. Like the only path forward was to get tough, steel myself, and pump up the emotional jams. But that path? It reeked of sadness. Isolation. Loneliness disguised as strength.

So I chose something else.

And wouldn’t it be great if I told you I chose the softer, truer path? That I found a therapist, took a break, gently unraveled everything, and gave myself space to heal?

That would be a lovely story.

Instead, I chose everyone.

All the people. All the time.

And I made so many friends. People I still love and worry about. (Worrying is one of my love languages.) I think of them. I wonder: Are you eating enough? Drinking water? Letting yourself rest? Are people treating you with the kindness you deserve?

It wasn’t a new mask—it was my oldest mask, now juiced up on performance-enhancing people-pleasing. I had started dropping the walls I’d spent a lifetime stacking like sandbags. And at my core? I care. I care so deeply it makes my ribs ache. I always have. So I let myself care about everyone, all at once, like it was my job. Like it was the only thing holding the universe together. 

It was the mask I’d been building my whole life—before I even knew what a mask was. The carefully crafted persona of a little girl trying to make everyone like her… while hoping no one would look too closely and see what she didn’t want them to see:

That for someone who championed individuality, I was far too many individuals.

This is probably where the hugging thing started.

There are a lot of things I do when I’m masked, but two in particular upset me. They’ve stuck around, even as I’ve tried to unlearn them.

The first is hugging.

If I’ve ever hugged you, I want you to know this: it doesn’t mean I don’t care. It doesn’t mean I regret it. But there’s also a decent chance I didn’t really want to.

I don’t like being touched. Not usually. Not by most people.

There are exceptions, of course—my partner, my kid, my two besties (yes, it still sounds like a sitcom), a former coworker who gives perfect hugs, and a few old friends whose arms feel like home. And there are newer friends, too—people I feel deeply connected to. People I do want to hug sometimes. But only when I want to. Only when I choose to.

Like a lot of women my age, I was socialized to defer to the preferences of others. To make people comfortable. To be warm, welcoming, physically accessible—even when it cost me something. Even when it felt like I was performing intimacy instead of experiencing it.

That’s the hardest part about hugging for me. It’s not just the touch. It’s the pressure. Even being asked to hug can feel like I’m suddenly on stage, expected to smile and meet someone else’s emotional need before I’ve checked in with my own.

So if you’re someone I’ve hugged, please don’t take this as a rejection. If anything, take it as context.

And if you ever encounter a Cami in the wild, here’s a tip: don’t assume. If I want a hug, I’ll let you know. If I don’t, that doesn’t mean I don’t like you. It just means I like to be asked without expectation—and maybe not asked at all.

The second thing is laughing.

I love to laugh. Real laughter—the kind that sneaks up on me and breaks through without permission. The kind that leaves me breathless and maybe even crying a little. That kind of laughter feels like truth.

But most of the time? My laughter is learned.

I laugh when I’m supposed to. When a pause in conversation begs for it. When someone needs to know I’m okay with them, or that they’re okay with me.

I grew up with sitcoms and laugh tracks. With the unspoken rule that girls who laugh are easier to like. I learned that men—especially—don’t respond well when you don’t find them funny. That some get pushy, defensive, even angry.

So I laughed. Even when I didn’t want to. Even when I didn’t find it funny. Even when I was uncomfortable or quietly offended.

It became reflex.

Now, I sometimes catch myself laughing at things I don’t agree with. At moments that don’t deserve it. Not because I’m amused, but because I’ve been taught that laughter keeps things smooth. Keeps me safe. It’s like muscle memory—but emotional.

And I’d like to stop.

Not because I want to laugh less—but because I want to laugh honestly. I want the sound to come from joy or surprise or connection… not obligation.

Both the hugging and the laughing were just extensions of the mask—ways I tried to be lovable, safe, acceptable. Tiny performances stitched into every interaction. And for a long time, I thought that was friendship: being whoever someone needed me to be, as long as they didn’t look too closely at who I actually was.

But eventually, I had to admit that connection built on performance isn’t connection at all. And the friendships I’d stretched myself thin to maintain weren’t really built on mutuality—they were built on fear. On utility. On the exhausting belief that if I stopped pleasing, I’d stop mattering.

I wish I could tell you I had it all figured out by then. That I found a neat conclusion, tied it up with a boundary-colored bow, and rode off into a sunset filled with balanced, beautiful relationships.

I didn’t.

What I found instead was the gray area. And I still didn’t know what to do with it. I couldn’t live in it comfortably yet—but I also couldn’t pretend it wasn’t real.

And here’s the twist I didn’t see coming:

That so-called gray area? It’s not even gray. It’s a whole damn spectrum. And—as it turns out—I’ve been on one the whole time.