Oh! Halloween at last. A time in which people get to dress up as scary creatures, whoever they despise, or even whoever they aspire to be. Witches, vampires, firefighters, cops. You name it. I’m pretty sure that somewhere in the world there’s a costume for every single twisted thing your mind can come up with. Pretty baffling if you ask me. During Halloween, you get to be somebody you’re not, someone different; you might even wear a mask so that nobody recognizes you. With unrecognition and mystery, the greater the disposition to perform mischief since you get to protect and guard your true identity under it. This mask veiling even happens outside the context of Halloween. This is when my point comes into the picture. People might guard their true identities, their true selves, under a false one, one they might believe is more acceptable, better, for their current situation, or even to hurt or deceive someone. Today, I’ll be talking about the former, since that’s the case for most of us. Not one of us is inherently bad enough to be the latter, or so I would like to believe.
A facade is something that many people build to prevent getting hurt, judged, or even despised. The problem with it is that it is simply not okay to fake it, at least not all of the time. You can’t always “fake it ‘till you make it”, although it truly is a powerful tool and incentive to use from time to time, but that’s a topic we’ll leave for later discussion. Unconsciously, everyone has a mask on, sometimes even several layers of them. I am well aware that I have one, and I’m pretty sure you have at least one of some sort. Having a mask is something that many of us cannot help but have. It’s pretty much inevitable. You might be mad at a friend for talking behind your back, for example, but don’t feel like telling him/her how you feel because he/she’s done it before, and therefore you just keep going on with the relationship without addressing the issue. Seemingly, your relationship is as fine as it has always been, but deep inside you know that things have changed and that you do not behave the way you used to. Now you are faking your friendship, you are putting a mask on when you are with him/her, and that is wrong for so many reasons. The biggest problem for me is that since your heart broke off the relationship without obtaining any closure, it starts building hatred. This is what usually happens when you keep things to yourself for a long time. You start filling yourself with negative thoughts: remorse, resentment, sadness, anger.
What can be done to prevent this is to simply be yourself, unapologetically, as long as you don’t consciously and purposely hurt somebody else in the process. You might have a mask on, but it is up to you to decide if you want to do something about it and take it off. I know it’s cliche and everything, but we’re not perfect. No one is. Admitting your mistakes and accepting who you really are gets you one step closer to perfection. Embrace even the characteristics you don’t like about yourself, but have the willpower to change them.
Personally, a quality I despise about myself is that I’m an overthinker. Staying-up-until-2am-wondering-whether-it-was-right-for-me-to-choose-red-over-yellow kind of overthinker. Sometimes, I wear a mask in order to conceal this, to hide the fact that every single thing people say to me has a profound effect on me. This has affected not only my relationships with people, but also the relationship I have with myself. I am well-aware that this is a bad quality I have, but ever since I’ve realized this bad quality of mine, I’ve done everything in my hands to try to change it for the better. If I’m honest with you, sometimes I’m not able to retain this bad habit, sometimes I’m not able to control how I feel, but that’s okay. At least I try to do something about it, and I feel like that’s what truly counts.
A mask, whether a physical or an imaginary one, should never be worn to deceive. I mean, you wouldn’t trust a man with a clown mask walking down the street, so why would you trust a person with an imaginary one, someone that’s pretending to be somebody they’re not?
It might be okay for you to mask on during Halloween, but please don’t do it outside the purpose of the holidays. Mask off and face your fears, what’s the worst that could happen?
