“You should dance with the skeletons in your closet.
Learn their names,
So you can ask them to leave.
Have coffee with your demons.
Ask them important questions like, “What
Keeps you here?”
Learn what doors they keep finding open,
And kick them out.”
-Tammy Ratzloff
I knew a man, once, that said he had so many masks in his life that he was afraid to take them off because he did not know which one was the real him. I have wondered if he finally had them off when he died and those last moments were the real him, and I missed it. Wearing masks is something we all do. It only becomes a problem when we lose our self in the roiling of our many demons.
I knew a young woman, once, who masked her emotions so well that, when she had her child, she could not teach her daughter how to show emotions. She had to unmask in order to teach her daughter how to express her feelings. The daughter threw awful fits of frustration because she had not learned, through parental conditioning, how to express authentic feelings. She had to teach her ‘tween’ and so the mother had to learn how to express them first. It was not an easy thing to unmask those demons.
If we have been hurt, we have learned to mask, and if
we learned it early in life, we stay stuck in the childhood trauma. The above characters are real. The man was caught in his childhood trauma
and he was part of my life for many years.
The mother was taught by me. I
have been digging into my closet of skeletons to find and remove those masks of
mine. It takes work because we have worn
them so long and our ego is very attached to such. I have huge difficulty in crying. I can cry a river for others. I, still, cannot cry for myself. Except at loss of parents but even more so at
loss of my soulmate, and that was as real as it got for me. I broke and I was raw and real then because life
had me take the final emotional mask off and it was well stuck on. We are simply trying to keep our demons at bay
We hide ourselves behind the mask of being socially extroverted. We love crowds. We love having others distract us from our authentic feelings. We are the loneliest of people, truly, but hide behind that mask of being that extrovert. We are lonely and exhausted, and our life is busy and has little deep meaning. We are to be pitied for our inability to be friends with ourselves and our demons.
And, on the other hand, we wear the mask of the introvert. Our deepest fear is that we fear abandonment and so we close ourselves off with the mask that hides that fear. We do not live full lives because we are too fearful of trying anything new. It is easier to fend people off, to actually control how others might interact with us and therefore we never really feel deep attachments to other people. We wear our masks and find other things to attach ourselves to. I often think of one of my greatest fears once being that I would live alone in a basement suite with bright orange hair, a cat and a dog, a cigarette and a loneliness so deep I cannot crawl out from underneath it all. And so I wear the mask of being an extrovert when, truly, beneath that mask is that fear of that demon of abandonment.
Some of us wear the mask that makes us seem the most kind, benevolent; a mask of denial, truly, that can have one seem strong and brave when we are not. Our emotions are packed tightly except when they are not. We take ‘it’ (whatever ‘it’ is) over and over and seem to have the patience of Job, until we don’t. All at once, the mask drops and we blow. I know this mask well and have put on masks of temperance and have worked very hard to show ‘it’ when I feel ‘it’. Usually, it is the smallest thing that gets in under the mask and we react way out of ‘character’. Oh, yes, I have worked hard since August 27, 2015, to unmask, and it confuses me as much as others when the mask slips and the demons escape.
Some of us wear masks of the comedienne. We are defensive and we mask it through being a 'smiler', a laugh-er, the funniest person you might know. We wear the armor of the comedienne and never really are able to show deep feelings about even ordinary things or have authentic relationships. This mask can be one of sarcasm and bitterness that you see in older people who have never learned to take off the mask that hides incredible pain and deep loneliness. We war our armored mask to keep people out, to keep people from knowing, how incredibly lonely and wounded and demonized we are.
Some of us wear the mask of the bully so we can control and manipulate others through bravado and overly-opinionated speech through that mask of ours. We are hiding deep demons of insecurities and self-doubts and feel the need to be right under any circumstance(s), even if we know we are wrong.
Some of us wear masks of the martyr. We want others to accept the mask that portrays how selfless, how much we have sacrificed, usually embroiled in drama. The dramatic mask is not about serving others, it is all about fear. Our fear-mask keeps us from having to make the decision to stand up for ourselves, to surrendering, to change for a more authentic life. It is easier to tell our sad story than to live our real life. This mask is one that shows insecurities and the wearer’s sense of ‘not enough’. This is the character that hurts herself before being hurt by others. She protects herself by wearing the mask of the misbegotten as a way of defense. She fears risk and therefore never fully lives her full life because she has already given up the fight. Because she never risks intimacy, she feels hollow and shows it in the mask she wears to hide such demons.
Some of us wear the mask of ‘____ aholism’. We are the workaholics and all the other ‘aholisms’ that are the perfectionists. We have to have tight control of ‘keeping it together’ because we fear everything falling apart. The more we control ourselves, the less likely things will go wrong. This is the mask of anxiety at its most manic. We are obsessive and possessive and live a life of that deeply-seated fear that only we can keep things going right if we work ourselves to the bone, until we can’t any longer and the mask falls off and you see the most vulnerable unmasked person you may have ever seen. We tend not to believe anything or anyone might be in control of any situation. We have the mask on tightly and as long as that mask is worn tightly, there is a sense of relief that nothing can wrong as long as we are in control. It is an exhausting mask to be sure. They trust no one, not even, really, themselves. If they fall apart, the world falls apart. They tend to not have deep relationships because the intimacy is not there. They are too busy with the mask that they cannot rest for fear. Control is their only security. They keep everything and everyone in their place. Their sense of responsibility for everything and everyone keeps them unable to deal with normal changes. They wear the mask of Power and resent the slightest deviation to their plans. This demon is, also, a hard one to mask.
We wear masks to protect ourselves; to be prepared to
defend ourselves; to ‘fit in’ with the others in our tribes; to keep from being
rejected because there is a sense that The Mask hides our woundedness, our
fears, and, only when we get to know what masks we wear, can we be
authentic. We will live a life of busily
hiding our true selves rather than living our true lives. I am sure, like me, you recognize the times
you have worn every one of these masks. Once
we name the mask, it falls off. We
recognize we are living a movie not our authentic selves and we may have not
even considered how it affects others when the mask drops, and they do
drop. I hope you discover what masks you
wear and name them. I hope we can work
through to all of the masks we wear and keep the ones that keep us authentic
and discard the ones that keep us from deeply living, loving, caring, allowing
others to live, love ,and care for us. Let's face our demons, fresh-faced and live life with purpose and peace as much as we can in a demonized world.
©Carol Desjarlais 8.24.21
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