Comparing your insides to other people's outsides (idea) by Pakaran

I saw the title of this node in the middle of a big gob of softlinks, and I just had to write something.

I feel like my life is so terrible, and everyone else is so happy, not realizing that they're hiding their problems just like I'm hiding mine.
That's one of the things I really love about E2. No matter what I'm going through, there's someone who's going through something worse, or something similiar, or at least who has. We don't need to hide anything, simply because we aren't faced with the threatening intimacy of being face-to-face.
The intimidating comparisons are gone, and, last night, I finally realized that other people don't live a charmed life.

Wouldn't the world be a much better place if we could all truly understand each other? If we could get past the outsides and see the pain we're causing one another? If we could really feel all of humanity as a group, really understand them, rather than just feeling for ourselves and being forever trapped in our own minds?

Trying to be weird is not enough	Some of your peers who seem happy, popular, and self-confident are miserable	Pretend you're not dying inside	It feels like my life is out of sync
Things I've yet to fully learn	We tend to judge people only on what we perceive them to be	Why aren't people real anymore?	What do girls think about guys who think about what other people think about girls and what they do?
a crying on the inside sort of clown	Little parts of you trapped inside other people	Apple-pie families and their flaming wreckage	The emotionally mature thing to do
self-defeating prophecy	What Do You Care What Other People Think?	What sort of impotent sorcerer are you?	This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time
Alcoholics Anonymous	Why is a raven like a writing desk?	Meat-hooks	12-step program