Mask's

Recently I have been thinking about the masks that people wear. Not the literal masks for a Halloween costume, but the figurative mask that we all wear. The masks, that make up different parts of who we are. How you act and speak differently to different friends depending how close you are, how much you trust them. Like the mask you wear when you talk to your family, your aunts, uncles and parents. Its all just slightly different, but a different part of you just the same. 

The only time we are without these masks is at 2 points in our lives. The first is when we are small children, the world seems so small and big, how everything is new and amazing. Yet that moment, which is different for each and everyone of us when life just turns around and slaps us full of reality. Is the day we donned our first mask. Our first different version of who we are. Even if it’s something so small as to pretend to have an interest in something your best friend likes, just because you want them to still be your best friend. It can be something that small. Or something so big that you even change who you are completely, for example you walk into work and your personality changes to a whole different you. Someone maybe more confident than you are outside of the workplace, maybe even you’re a manager and you must turn off being friends with these people you work with as you are in charge and need to enforce the rules you yourself used to hate. 

These masks are nothing to fear, as they are a part of you, big and small as that’s just how we protect ourselves. We make these masks because life slapped us full of harsh reality. When we meet new people, friend’s lovers etc, we chip away at the mask we first showed them, so that they start to see just a tiny but more of who you are. Think about it, think right back to your first partner, you put on a show, a personality, working so hard to keep them to like you, you know they do, but you think maybe they just like who you were, they liked the mask, so you chip away at it slowly, showing just a bit more of who you are. Then they leave, they hurt you badly, so you decide next time won’t be the same, you add back on the chipped away pieces and add on more, making the mask bigger and stronger for next time. Then you start again, you meet some one new. This time you think it’s going to be different and it is, but not the way you hoped, they are just like you they wear a mask, you realise what’s happening, but they chip away at their mask, the person they turn out to be is defiantly not who you thought they were, they hurt you in a whole new way. They could lie, cheat steal, physically and mentally hurt you. I hope that in that situation you can get out and be stronger for it. There are those that do. They will learn in their own way but that’s what happens. We all need to chip away at our masks over time to show who we really are.

These masks are used to protect you, strengthen you. That one time though is enough to break who you are. That one time is when you know with all your heart that the person you wake up next to is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, the person who means more to you than life itself. The person you truly and deeply love. This person has stuck around after your mask is gone, they still laugh with you and smile at everything, they make your world better. They’ve dropped their mask and you are truly happy. Then, life takes another slap, something, anything, can still mess it up. They make a mistake, you do, anything, and suddenly that mask that was chipped away slowly becomes a mask like fortress, impregnable, that is until someone else comes along and chips away at it. This person is the one you don’t chip away at your mask, but they do, they take a sledge hammer to it and tear it down because they can see just how much you just need to see someone for who they are and tell them its ok. Wither this person is a lover, or a friend or family. This is the person who will tell you something we all need to hear. That is simply, its ok just being yourself. Others might have hurt you in some way, but that’s then, this is now. Right now, is the moment of perfection where you are amazing just being yourself, the good, the bad, the weird, everything that makes up you being you is perfect.

Don’t be afraid to don your masks. Never be scared to take them off. They are as much a part of you as your mask less self is.

Now I’m not saying that this will happen to you in the same way, nor has it happened to me the same way, this was just an example, you could go through many friends and partners before finding that one person you can show your real face to, or you might be with them already. These were just examples.