There are many ways to erase something. You can tear it up. You can burn it. You can throw it into a river. But perhaps the most insidious way—the one that feels the most like a betrayal—is when something isn’t destroyed, just hidden. Painted over. Disguised.
I return again and again to Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, not just because of its quiet beauty, but because of what it once concealed. For centuries, art historians and admirers saw a spare, luminous interior: a young woman lost in private thought, sunlight filtering through an open window, a fruit-laden table, a thick green curtain dividing the intimate from the viewer. And behind her—an empty wall. At least, that’s what we were told to see.
Then in 2017, conservators began a painstaking restoration and discovered what had been painted over: a large painting of Cupid, standing with a raised arm, declaring himself boldly. A clear symbol of love, of romantic intent, of passion no longer hidden. Someone—whether Vermeer or a later owner—had decided that this Cupid didn’t belong. That it didn’t suit the mood, or perhaps the morality, of the time. And so it was covered. Disguised. Made to disappear.
How many of us have done the same?
There’s a moment in many lives—sometimes early, sometimes late—when we feel that who we are, or what we love, doesn’t quite fit the room we’ve been placed in. Maybe we are too loud, too tender, too intense. Maybe we fall in love in a way that others find inconvenient or unpalatable. Maybe we carry grief that makes people uncomfortable. Maybe our wounds take up more space than others are willing to give.
And so we paint over.
We smile when we want to scream. We nod in agreement when we ache with dissent. We marry who we’re supposed to, pursue the job that “makes sense,” hide the poems we write, the softness we feel, the person we love, the anger we carry. We learn which parts of ourselves are acceptable and which parts cause friction. Over time, we become curators of our own public self, and with each adjustment, each brushstroke of adaptation, we lose sight of the original canvas.
What’s devastating about Vermeer’s Cupid is not just that he was removed—it’s that the composition didn’t look wrong without him. The girl still looked complete. The light still fell with grace. Viewers still found meaning and beauty. But something essential was missing. Something true.
That is how trauma often works.
Not every trauma is loud. Some are quiet, slow, cumulative. They happen in the small, daily ways we learn to disappear. They happen each time we are told—explicitly or implicitly—that our full selves are too much. That our love is improper. That our hurt is an inconvenience. And so, like that Cupid, our boldness is concealed beneath a neutral tone. Not erased. Not healed. Just hidden.
It’s worth noting that the decision to cover the Cupid may have had nothing to do with Vermeer’s original vision. It could have been the choice of a later owner, a restorer, a person of taste who felt the painting would be more refined, more moral, more “marketable” without the god of desire looming over the girl’s shoulder. It may have been an act of censorship, of aesthetic preference, or of shame. We don’t know. But the fact that it stayed hidden for centuries tells us something important: that what’s acceptable is often dictated not by truth but by taste.
And taste changes.
Which is both the tragedy and the hope.
Because when taste changes, we sometimes get the chance to peel back the paint. We get the chance to look again. And what was once considered too much, too raw, too explicit—suddenly becomes vital. Restorers did not add the Cupid; they uncovered him. He was always there, waiting.
Maybe that’s true for us too.
Maybe the parts of ourselves we buried—the dreams we deferred, the voices we quieted, the love we refused to name—are still there. Still intact. Waiting for us to remove the layers placed over them by fear, by judgment, by the passage of time.
The restored Girl Reading a Letter tells a new story now. She is no longer just a solitary figure lost in reverie. She is a woman engaged in an act of private connection, perhaps romantic, perhaps forbidden, with love quite literally behind her. A presence once erased is now essential. The painting did not lose beauty when the Cupid reemerged—it gained truth.
And so might we.
To reclaim ourselves is not always an act of rebellion. Sometimes it’s an act of restoration. Slow, careful, reverent. Sometimes the most radical thing we can do is uncover what we once hid. Let the Cupid back in. Let the wall speak its full story.
Because the truth is: we were never too much. We were only too honest for a world that preferred a quieter version of us.
But taste changes. And we are still here.