Masks.

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are.
You trade in your reality for a role.
You trade in your sense for an act.
You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level.

It’s got to happen inside first.

You can take away a man’s political freedom and you won’t hurt him- unless you take away his freedom to feel. That can destroy him. That kind of freedom can’t be granted. Nobody can win it for you.”
— Jim Morrison

When we are very young, we are taught, by example, that the only way to survive is to put on a mask.

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So, we do
because we want to stay whole.



At first it it fun, and everybody knows that it is only make-believe.

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But our faces get mixed up, and sometimes (only sometimes) we aren't sure which mask to choose, we can't remember which one

is the real mask

isn't a mask at all.

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So we continue to grow and as highschool catches us in its web, we get confused- everyone does.

You look at masks for so long,
you forget what it is to look at a real face,
get to know a real person.

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Pretty soon everybody has a mask and you begin to think without one you might be outcasted, thrown away.
So you keep it on, even if it starts to feel wrong.

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You stop taking it off, 

instead wearing it obsessively.

Around your friends,

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Around those you care about,

  

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Until, shock.

Horror.

 

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You realise you've forgotten how to take it off.

Until the day comes when you look in the mirror, and don't recognise what you see,

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don't know how to get back what you've lost.

But don't give up, everyone has been, is or will be where you are standing now.

  Don't give up,

because you'll find that those moments when the mask lifts,

even if only by accident,

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are worth all the others combined. And eventually,

if you're lucky...

 you'll find someone who can see through the mask.

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“I keep expecting to come to my senses, but the pressure is lifting with each step I take. I’ve spent a lifetime keeping up my guard, watching my back, wearing my mask. Relief was never in sight until now.”

— Dexter - 2.11 - ‘Left Turn Ahead’