The Infamous Mask

How do you say when a person is sad? When she’s frowning? When she’s crying? How do you say when a person is happy? When she’s smiling?  When she’s laughing? How do you say when a person is mad?  When she’s scowling? When she’s shouting? How do you tell someone’s real emotion? We face these question every day. You see, life is like a big, deceptive Masquerade. Everyone is hiding their true feelings. Everyone is wearing a protective mask over their emotions. You never know whether that smile you see on a person’s face is just a lie or not. Maybe because right from the start, it has never been mandatory for us to reveal who we are, what we are to everyone we know. We have the liberty to decide to become who we want to be in front of others. That is the game of life. That is the game which I’m playing.

When it comes to concealing and hiding things, I can say that I’m one of the Elites--- those who were born to conceal and hide. I didn’t learn how to wear a mask. I was born with it. It was both good and bad, happiness and pain, Heaven and Hell. It always felt good to be able to show different ‘you’ to different people. I can be that bubbly, happy-go-lucky girl, or maybe that artistic musician, or that serious, snobbish book worm. There are countless possibilities as to who you can be. It was all fun to me. It was.

I thought that if I were like this, life would be easier. And it was, at first. I won many people’s heart and trust because I was that ‘friend’ that they wanted me to be. I was everyone’s Me Version. However, as time went by, I got tired of playing those parts for them I came to the point wherein I would look to the mirror and ask myself, “Who are you? I don’t know you anymore…” But hey, looking back, did I even knew who I really was? That’s the ugly truth about this charade of unspoken feelings and identity. When you get use to lying of who you are, when you get use to projecting something else rather than what you feel, when you get used to being someone you know you’re truly not, you lose the real you in the process to the point where you don’t know how to go back anymore. You are in a myriad of possibilities, what ifs, questions, circumstances and why’s. It’s a blessing and a curse to possess such a beautiful mask. An indeed remarkable mask that hides you from anybody else, yet destroys little by little after each passing moment until there’s nothing left to do but for you live for the mask, and the mask alone.