The Masquerade Life

A Masquerade ball in terms of what it is is pretty simple it’s a ball in which all the participants wear masks, one of the things that happened at these balls was, according to Wikipedia;

“Masquerade balls were sometimes set as a game among the guests. The masked guests were supposedly dressed so as to be unidentifiable. This would create a type of game to see if a guest could determine each other’s identities.”

This type of wearing masks to conceal ones true identity and instead appear different may seem like a game but how often are we guilty (or at least I am) of doing this in our own lives.

An example for me was during secondary school, in which it became apparent from about year 8 onwards that I was considered by my peers a quiet nerdy person who didn’t really say much, and when asked questions by my peers about more shall we say adult topics (as It seemed most guys in my classes were obsessed with as well as football) I said I didn’t know. However the truth was that although I am generally a quiet person I do enjoy making (or at least I consider them) humorous comments and these “adult topic” my peers quizzed me about I had a rough idea what they were on about so would have been able to make a fair guess, however I didn’t. I chose to wear a mask to hide my true identity because it was easier, I found that being my true self attracted a lot of unwanted attention mostly involving me having to repeat over and over what I had said and I’m not a jukebox. so I stopped and put on a mask.

It didn’t lead to a particularly enjoyable experience, but hey that’s the past so lets not dwell on it.

Nowadays I’m much less masked in who I am (probably helps I’m no longer a teenager so not full of hormones) but do have two separate friendship groups. Namely Christian and non-Christian and often wonder how they would describe me if they met. I would hope they would be broadly similar however with probably different accentuated characteristics depending on which group you asked.

So what was the point of me writing this?

I guess my reason for writing this is share my experiences on this subject, as it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. But I suppose most of all it is to encourage you to learn from my mistakes and be different. I personally solved my whole masked issue by when it came to moving on from secondary school to college. I moved to a college no were near where I lived in order to get a new start a, not entirely practical solution for most.

So reflecting on what I know now my only advice on unmasking is do it slowly, as it gives those around you time to adjust and for you it will be a little less daunting.