Masks

Decluttering today, I found an old high school journal full of old poems I wrote, many from darker days that reflected the sense of isolation and hopelessness I felt then. But that is not what caught my attention. In the midst of ramblings and writing is a poem that made me stop and sit for a bit.

I remember this poem, about the masks we wear and how hard it is to take them down. I remember the significance and symbolism it held for me. The hope and pleading that it represented for me.

I remember being on a class service trip right before I switched schools, to St. Helena Island, I believe. They told us to pick something that we brought with us, something that meant something to us. We were to bring it to a group exercise and share it with everyone. 

It is a reminder to me that, even in my darker days, I chose authenticity. At least to the extend I was capable. Which, in so many ways, was limited, but it was there. Even then I desperately wanted to be seen.

I brought this poem. I kept it folded up and carried it everywhere with me. I would read it, trying to gather some idea of what it might mean to drop my masks, and muster a bit of courage to act on that idea. And in a moment of deep vulnerability, I shared it with that group, comprised of classmates I felt inexplicably connected to in that moment. I don't remember if I said why I shared it, but know I must have been begging someone to read into it and see my heart crying.

A few weeks later I switched schools, taking on a new version of my masks. My drinking was already heavy so there were many cracks in the veneer. I spent the next year and a half hustling for my worth in so many ways, keeping the smile on the outside, all the while sinking into despair in the inside. 

There were many harder, darker days after high school. They took me to a place where I was faced with a choice to fully succumb to the despair or completely surrender to the idea that there was a different way.

If you are sitting here, reading this, you know what choice was made. And I am so grateful. Beyond anything words could adequately express.

Recovery gave me the tools I needed to both get an idea of what it might mean to drop my masks  - and a set of tools for actually doing it. Finding people who shared their experience with doing so, and who were safe touch points to doing it, ever so slowly and tentatively, was so crucial. 

For nearly 22 years I have worked on dropping the masks. It is an evolving process, one I have learned to embrace with hopeful anticipation, specifically because I have had sensitivity and compassion, the power of understanding and love, and, most importantly, celebration of both the discovery and display of the person being uncovered in the process. So the dance of dropping the masks continues, and will until I am ushered to the next life.

So, as I read that poem and reflected on it, I felt the pull to write about it, and to share my experiences with it. The poem itself is really not the point. The fact that I clung to it, knowing it held wisdom I needed and was desperately trying to unlock, was what is sticking out in my memory today.

I pray that anyone reading this will find the hope needed to start reckoning with the idea of what it might mean to finally drop the masks - and find that ounce of courage to start the process.