Mask

We learn early on that to face the world, we must present ourselves. Our parents ask us to be and we become, and through that we learn to create our first mask.

As we grow, we find friends and then another mask is created.

Through time, we learn what is ok, what is accepted, what is expected and who we are allowed to be. And we begin to create a library of masks, that we use in the appropriate circumstances. Some times those masks become so fused, we no longer can distinguish our true face from one of our masks.

Maybe we go on like this forever. Me, I fell into that for a while, but then awoke and also realized, the masks I’d collected were a bit of poison for me. They hurt me because I had learned to accommodate the mask and bend my true self to fit into them, masks for family, masks for work, masks for friends, masks for the world. I also learned how to play and create new masks, using the mask as a way to trick the world, I made a game of it. I thought myself clever for my tricking masks.

But masks, all of them, they poisoned me. They hurt me, they made me bend my will, they gave me stress, they caused me to be unhappy. My masks became a burden I had to live with. My masks became a prison.

When I began to understand this, I attempted to remove the masks, to pull them back to unveil myself.