Nov 2, 2022
What mask are you wearing?
The prompt said we wear many masks. The prompt asked which one are you wearing now?
Fear.
Fear is my mask. It clings like a second skin and keeps things in. It’s a strange material because the inside of it is so clearly fear, but it doesn’t always appear so from the other side.
You might see my mask and think I’m confident; you might see my mask and think I’m hard to read; or you might see my mask for what it is. I can only tell you how it feels.
It can feel soft, like the duvet you love to crawl under, feels safe and familiar and smells like lavender. This fear is the comfort zone. It can keep you from things, but it does so by luring in with pillows and candy.
It can feel hard like armor. A metal barrier that doesn’t let anything through. This fear may appear like a thing you chose and believe in. Its survival instinct solidified. It’s a fear that can feel necessary, like it keeps us from harm.
It can feel sticky like walking through a cobweb and spending the rest of your walk trying to brush it off, feeling you almost got it all but not shaking the feeling it’s still on you. It’s a fear you think you’ve worked through, but it keeps pulling you in.
It’s a chameleon of a mask, every time you think you’ve figured it out, it’s different again. It makes it that much harder to pull it off. Trust me, I’ve been trying. I can see the things it keeps me from, I can see how it distorts my voice, I can mostly see how it blurs my vision. It’s hard to pull it off because you actually can’t. Not completely. A human without fear is a psychopath. So you test the seams, you stretch the fabric, you pull off different bits at different times to see what it’s like.
You tell people about it. Talking about fears is a little like telling people about your dreams; they don’t always make sense outside of your own head. There are some which are shared by many and some that feel like they’re shared by none. Because it’s hard, you don’t actually show all of it to one person. It’s more like selfies from different angles sent to different friends. This is my mask, sort of. This is what it covers, partly.
The prompt said we wear many masks. The prompt asked which one are you wearing now?
Fear.
It’s a barrier I can both embrace and hate. I wasn’t sure if I was going to publish this one. Unsurprisingly, I was a little scared to do so, but here we are.
Written in response to What Mask Are You Wearing Now?
