Mask
The whole world is divided over this innocuous little scrap, of cloth or plastic or some space age material, its purpose simply to cover our mouth and nose. Some complain they can’t breathe in it, others exhort everyone to be kind and wear one, still others claim God’s word to suit one or the opposite, but almost everyone has an opinion.
But I know of those who will never be drawn into this argument – we have been masked for too long and too effectively to draw attention to ourselves now. Our masks are invisible, slipping over eyes and faces with only an imperceptible tightening of the jaw or narrowed eyes. The mask is usually a smiling one. It isn’t often that a person feels the need to hide a deep happiness behind a frown. I secretly admire these grumpy happiness hiders. For most of us mask wearers, the reverse is too often the sad truth.
Everyone tires of tragedy. At some point, it becomes embarrassing to labour the point. Often, strong hints are dropped by the sensitive ones, and articulated harshly by the rhino-skinned, to drop it, move on, get a life. No one wants it more than us, bearers of endless grief. To forget, to forgive, to leave the death, the heartbreak, the loss behind. It’s a bit like being thrown into a rough ocean and told to grow a pair of gills. Easy-peasy. No one wants that pair of gills more than the drowning person. Perhaps if a way could be found to stay afloat long enough, these might miraculously appear. But the lungs are fast filling and the discovery is yet to be made.
When faced with these ultimatums from friends and foes alike, we discover masks. Some masks start out as two invisible strings, tipping up the corners of the mouth to the world. Soon, this partial cover is not enough. There are still some people left in the world who judge a smile not from the mouth but from the eyes. So the mask creeps upwards. It erases the frown lines that come from worrying and waiting, or simply reflects a light from eyes that would much rather not see too much. Fake laugh lines, painted over the rictuses, eyes that shine brightly, that never glaze over like thin ice. This is a good mask. It can last for years, sending fine tentacles into the skin so that it is impossible to remove without causing considerable damage.
The tentacles take root over the years. They penetrate to the brain and entwine with the ganglia there. The mask is no longer a physical entity. Now it is a deeper cover, hiding thoughts and feelings, masking the things we cannot bear behind the façade the world demands to see.
All goes well in the early years of the mask. We smile and love and think happy thoughts. We ignore the anger building inside.
Somehow, all of life’s pleasures are never enough to kill the anger. We grow older, sometimes wiser, more often resigned. The mask is taking its toll. It tightens its grip inexorably. And then…trouble in paradise. In the middle of a good life, on a seemingly ordinary day, we can’t bear the invisible mask any longer. Breathing becomes difficult, not because our nose and mouth are covered but because our hearts and minds have been suffocating for so long now. When the constant tugging at the corners of a slack mouth hurts. The urge to rip off the mask, to show our howling, ugly, real face to the world consumes us and we want nothing more than to claw it out, rip off this sham, this farcical smile, this heartbreaking happy face. It isn’t possible at first. The tentacles have taken too fast a hold, they are almost indistinguishable from the neurons and ganglia that carry our memory and everything that makes us, us. To unravel this mass is asking for trouble. For who can say, at the end of this pain and pressure, that it will be worth it?
It is a momentary madness, this urge to lay bare our gaping, rotting wound-like minds. Some of us overcome it, bury the anger, subside once more under the weight of the mask. We give in, allow it to consume our real self, creeping slowly across the years of our lives like some flesh-eating bacterium. To give in to its facile ease, to admit defeat to the pretence brings so much relief. Now we say, now, finally the grief will go away, our lives will be perfect. It’s a simple exchange after all – the mask becomes our face, that awful face we hide from the world will never be seen again and we can pretend none of it ever happened, nothing of the past is real.
But there are some of us who wake up that morning, having never really slept at all, ready to wage war against the mask of years. We risk seemingly happy lives, and stable homes and the future itself. We grit our teeth and prepare to show our faces to the sun again. The mask fights back, tempting, teasing, threatening. As it comes off, bit by bit or in one great ripping action, its hideous everlasting smile finally cracks and it snarls in despair. We dare? To remember the pain? To nurse the anger? To acknowledge the grief? The mask finds its usefulness at an end. It will punish us for rejecting its protection. We throw it away all the same, ready to be vulnerable, to be stupid, to be sane again. We expose our bleeding selves to the sun and dare the world to turn away. Here is our true face – can you still love it, empty of pretend happiness and fake smiles?
Those masks, the little scraps of cloth or space-age stuff, that you complain about? The ones that stifle our breath and hide our smiles. And save our lives. These masks will one day be discarded, easily, painlessly. Don’t wish these away just yet. And pray that the little scrap of cloth will be the only masks you’ll ever need.