While meeting my husband, I need a mask that tells him that he is a real nice, caring spouse and he does knows everything about me. While meeting my parents, I need a mask that tells them that they were right in their every parenting decision, including arranging my marriage. While talking to the siblings, yet another mask that makes them feel secure and protected by their big sis. Yet another mask for co-workers and acquaintances (well I don’t have friends, Let me rephrase it, I never HAD any friends) to make them like me. Sometimes, I feel I need a mask just to look in the mirror. Don’t take me wrong, I am a well-read and well-educated person, doing PhD, part time job and taking care of my home. Still, I hate the person that stares back at me from the mirror.
My only respite comes when I lock myself in my bath. I can cry, hurt myself (of course in places which usually are kept hidden, Don’t wanna let my hubby feel pity for me) and, in general, let myself be. It is the only time when I can accept that I am a failure. I know I am a failure as a wife, my husband deserves a lot better. I know I am a disaster as a daughter. My parents wanted a genius, who could make them proud and got saddled by me, always an average student. In fact, I have been stuck in my PhD for 6 moths now with no progress and ultimatum from both my supervisors that I am gonna be the first student that fails in second year. On top of that, my boss hates me. He doesn’t even look at me when he talks, in fact, he looks past me and talks to all my colleagues, like I am invisible. But no one sees this. No one sees the student loan, the credits due, the expectations, the daily struggle to prove myself worthy of my husband’s care.
People look at me and just see a PhD scholar, with a job, living abroad with ‘such a supportive husband’. They don’t understand why am I not happy? “I mean if you are stuck in studies, duh study more!!!” Also, “You don’t know your capabilities, you are good enough. Just get your act together and work harder.” And the best one, “You don’t know what struggle is. I had to work 18 hrs a day to earn food, you have it so easy.” So I am obligated to show them the mask they want to see. I don’t know if I am just plain stupid that I need these masks rather than actually feeling happy, but I am just fed up. And if living requires me to wear these masks day-in-day-out, then is it such big surprise that I prefer dying???
8 comments
enuf, being an academic is definitely not easy. Supervisors and advisors often kick around their students, from what I’ve heard. Most professors are arrogant, self centered jerks that think they’re kings of the world just because they happen to know a lot of things. That’s what disillusioned me from going down the PhD track.
I think wearing a mask is one of those things that is necessary to function in society, so I don’t really know how to help you. That being said, my mask is slowly slipping off, and as expected the results are showing in every facet of my life. Increased isolation, a dip in performance. But I think this despair in my heart may be worth the failures. Such a sharp emotion.
Anyway, don’t know. My advice? Keep wearing your mask until it falls off, and when it falls just sit back and enjoy the ride. There’s something incredibly refreshing about being yourself, even if it is for a short while, and knowing that you tried your best.
Mordred, Thanks for ur advice. I think you really understand the war that goes on within a person when the respite of a mask becomes a prison. I am worried that hiding behind these masks, I lost myself. I don’t know if being myself is even possible for me now. And I am scared of the thing that would come out from behind these masks. Maybe this is why I don’t want to wait around and just leave, surrender to the nothingness.
I will continue, as u said, to give it my best shot. lets see if that is worth anything.
You don’t write like someone who has lost himself, enuf. You know you are wearing a mask, which means you are in touch with what is underneath, at least on a feeling level. Who can tell what is behind a mask? I think the question of “who am I really” is very similar to asking “who is God”, or “what happens after death”. These things don’t have an answer. Behind the mask is many things. Things that we may never know, and things that we may never need to know.
If you dislike your mask, then there is something beneath the mask that wants to be worn. You don’t need to take off the mask; without the mask, there is just chaos. Just find the right pieces to add.
The scary part comes when the masks can no longer be found. It must suck having to play pretend, but like you said, it is necessary to function. I can’t pretend anymore and all my masks are gone. You still have your life together so please keep going while you can.
Brokenandbent30, I admire ur courage to go on without these masks. I am not sure, how many hours I will survive the pain, humiliation and pity in everyone’s eyes after my masks fail. I am pretty sure it would not take me more than a couple of hours to just surrender to death’s embrace and be nothing. And do you know what, I think I may not have to wait a lot before I find out how much courage I have left.
@Hd_enuf: This morning I would like to take the mask out of your hand. You are not the reflection of those around you. I think of myself as a spy for myself. I am undercover in all these situation, undercover agent at work, home, at fucking trainwreck PTA meetings…(which mind you are actually battle lines with moms and dads lined up taking upperclass craptastic pot shots at each other). Undercover agent.
Here is your new mask. Your undercover agent mask. You are an undercover agent for change. It starts with you today, one woman, mom and soul in this world. What do you want in this world? Not what does your husband, Phd adviser or parents want for you, what do you want for you, because ultimately that is all that matters. Either we are here doing what ultimately makes us human or we are leaving, having either emotionally checked out year ago or in the process of physically checking out by rope, he or gun.
So what is the worse case scenario if you just do what makes you human? You won’t go to jail for being broke, unless you don’t pay taxes no one can take your freedom away for that. What price is sanity? Can you strip yourself of everything walk away and just rebuild what is essentially you, what is, deep down, the human you that you wake up to each and every morning.
Life traps us with stuff. I need a degree, I need new bathroom tile, I need to make sure I look good for that fucking PTA lady that constantly ignores me trying to volunteer for a fucking worthless school website.
In the end that website doesn’t matter, those tiles don’t matter, even what my husband thinks of me doesn’t matter. In the end I am the human I wake up to. This year I began the process of stripping it all away. On Friday it almost ended me, but I’m pretty close to being at what is essential to being a human, my only human that I wake to.
So what is stopping you? Faced with death many people run or fight, are you running or fighting? What you chose will ultimately set the course for you becoming your own kind of human.
Hazy Day Sunflower, the scariest thing is, I Do Not Know what my purpose is. I never knew what I wanted out of life. It was always what my parents wanted. Then, what my husband wants. Even when I broke down, I could not figure out what is it that I crave? That was one of the reasons why I did not put much of the fight against these masks in the first place. Now when I feel frustrated by them, I am scared what will I become when they come off. I am faced with the choice of ‘fight or run’, as u said, and right now, all I want to do is, GIVE UP.
But, and this is the core, you have not discovered who you are. Change is terrifying. Especially when we rely on others to define who we are. You are at a glorious time in your life, even if you are so close to the fence all you see is out of focus brown.
You have a handle in front of you, it opens the fence door. Outside is who you are, the person you are that no one bothered to define, that only you can define. And it may not be anything you expect. Instead of giving up, why not open the door and walk through. You can always kill yourself later, but why not at least give your self a chance to begin the process of discovering who you are, who you can ultimately define yourself to be?
Absolutely nothing to lose.