The Mask

Every time I smile I put it on. The Mask. If another man walked into my bedroom, put his hands on his hips and said “This looks like home,” I’d call him out as an imposter, an interloper, a thief. But am I any less than he? I stand behind the sandwich counter, smile at the customers. How are you they ask, doing well I reply. I may smile, but inside I am screaming that I don’t want to be here, but I have to be here because I have a life to live. I joke with my coworkers, laugh in way that just kills me, because it’s all fake. The Mask is painted with garish colours, because every other face I see is just as bright.

The Mask is safe. I have spent years creating a man that treats people like a gentleman. He doesn’t offend, he doesn’t rock the boat. The Mask comes on so very easily, and yet comes off with the greatest of efforts. The Mask even creates his own emotion, develops his own personality. When trouble comes he is someone I can hide behind and trust to protect me from—

Me. Why do I fear myself so much? Why do the words I harbor inside my heart take so much gumption to vocalize? It takes great emotion to wrest my true feelings out of my grasping hands, and anger is no way to express one’s deepest convictions. Anyway, why waste one’s courage on standing up when I can stand the Mask up in my stead?

And the Mask is not so much a barrier as a crutch. I have discovered that people see the Mask as my true self. I have worn it so often and for so long that the reflection has become the image. Instead of facing my fears and insecurities, I simply don the Mask and all is taken care of. I am a prisoner inside my own body.

And what terrifies me most is my own admiration for the Mask. I see him as so witty, self-confident, utterly free from the pressure of what people think of him. I am not only guilty of hiding behind the mask and shamed myself for depending on him, I have the humiliation of considering him better than myself. The creator becomes the tool of his creation.

Where do you run from yourself? The Mask becomes alive, so vivid, and I question whether or not his reality. I ask if I hide myself—or if I invaded another’s personality. I must be satisfied with the man I was created to be, yet I am neither content nor satisfied. Instead I play-act within my own skin. Is the world my stage? Perhaps. More accurately, I am my own stage. This one man production plays for an audience that neither knows nor cares about its existence.

But once in a while, I have the satisfaction of knowing I have done something as myself. I have said something, done something of worth and integrity, that came from inside, came out without anger or fear, in spite of anger or fear. The Mask lay at my feet, while I was free to act as though no one was watching me or judging my actions—

Because no one is. Every once in a great while maybe, but my biggest critics, my biggest haters are me, myself, and I. I put on the Mask because I don’t like the real me, or because I’m not used to exposing the real me.

I hate the Mask. I admire him, but I love myself too much to let him waltz into the bedroom of my soul, put his hands on his hips and say “This looks like home.” The Mask is fickle, insincere, one dimensional. This isn’t about me someday being rid of the Mask. This is about me setting the Mask down, if only for a moment, and letting the real me show. This is about me doing so a little bit every day, until the Mask’s paint fades, its material cracks and withers, and I leave it behind as a tombstone marking the grave of the man I never should have been.