Masking Questions

Strange times make stranger people, and people strangers. Some of us have been hiding behind masks for years, and now that it's so commonplace, what once made us outcasts now unites us. They tell us these masks are for safety, but weren't the ones we were wearing before for safety, as well? Who will we be when they tell us that it's time to show our faces again? Will you remember? Will I? Do we even want to be those people again?

Isolation has never been fashionable per say, though it has made legends of men and women alike. Why do we hide? Of what do we construct our masks? Are they bulletproof? Smileproof? Hurtproof? Masks are crafted, usually of pain, but ultimately of hope; hope that we can keep the inside and the outside apart, for better or worse, and also the hope that one day we won't need the mask any longer. We embellish our creations to draw attention from the fact that they are built from the darker emotions, to protect what fragile peace we have. Instead, we are praised for the beauty and distraction we have created. The better the mask, the less we are recognized. But what happens when we no longer recognize ourselves? What happens when we love the mask more than our real face? Pain is an inimitable architect, but it can only build hollow structures devoid of light.

We bury ourselves behind screens and books and doors and show so little of our faces now. I'm tired of being encouraged to be lonely. I fought those battles years ago and I never thought the same old enemies would appear again, asking for more power than they deserved. The difference between being alone and being lonely is the most graceful of grey lines. I ache for those people who were just starting to love the sun, only to be told that the light is dangerous. We are trending towards bending and blending in to the shadows. Who will come look for us when it is safe to be warm again?

The dark is only as fashionable as the light that defines and limits it. We don't need the masks that have grown into our second skins; the parasites that rob us of our pair of sights that look outward and inward simultaneously. No one who runs from themselves ever escapes, we only become victims of our masks and our bondage. Yet there is always infinite hope, even through the cracked and smudged lenses of defeat and abuse. Most of us are so afraid to succeed that we never begin, and we blame fear of failure when, ii reality, it's the opposite fear. Loss is familiar, it's comfortable; what would we do with success? Crumble in our weakness, we worry. Success is a sword too hefty to wield, and too unfamiliar to be seductive. But that's the mask talking, whispering, and deceiving. Someone has to be the hero of the day: why not you? Why not me?

I hope that when it's time to remove the coverings we use to protect ourselves and others from the pandemic, we can remove the other mask that holds as prisoners and fugitives, to and from ourselves. The real pandemic is that hope is dying, and that so many of us have grown comfortable in our castles of insensitivity. Let us destroy those foundations, and build new strongholds of empathy, unity, and community. The trend I'm most yearning to see extinguished is our fear of what's inside of us, and then we can begin dismantling the fear in the world... one mask at a time.