Today was another difficult day. I woke up with the nausea that had been hounding me for weeks, preventing me from getting the sustenance I needed to feel happy. Everything felt off from the beginning, as it has been, as I am again afraid it will be forever. You see, the darkness has become ever more painful because my life is filled with light. I’ve done the things I’m supposed to do, become the man I’m supposed to be… I am living unmasked…
I am living unmasked?
I am living another lie.
After yet another argument with the love of my life, I came home to a beautiful home that felt broken, trapped in a healthy body that feels like it’s dying. Lying on the bed and scrolling Facebook for a desperate dose of serotonin, I came upon a beautiful article written by a dear friend, Alexandra Nyman. In this article, she thanked me for inspiring her to live unmasked, and as soon as I read those words I realized my life had become a lie.
I am not unmasked. I am in an iron mask, a liquid-metal mask that contorts and suffocates and knows every crevice of my heart and face. While telling myself I am unmasked, I realized I had slipped again into a cycle of self-deprecation and victimhood, confusing unmasking my mind for bearing my soul. Thinking that saying I’m not fine when someone asks if I am was enough. I cry out for support and warmth to the depths while all the people I love are beside me, throwing life preservers I can’t see because I am staring into darkness. I am drowning, trapped in a mask that takes the form of a wicked smile when the ones I love ask me if they can help, and I say, “no.”
Even as I write I am wondering how to end this piece of prose with hope, I am wondering how to turn around my lament and convince you, dear reader, along with myself that everything is OK; that everything is going to be OK.
I am struggling…
And perhaps therein lies the answer.
There are Psalms in the bible filled with lament, terror, frustration, longing, hopelessness…but they are there. I have a God that knows how I think and feel, a God that knows that even though I have all the tools I need to be happy and healthy, I will eschew them for reasons that rarely make sense. I have a God that gives me a beautiful home that I am too wrapped up in life to appreciate, a body that can walk and breathe and feel and dream. I have a God that gave me a fiancee worth fighting for, even though I only focus on the wounds from the fights. I have a God that loves me even though I fail Him every single day, even though I will never be good enough to be worth the life He has given me. I have a God that gave me friends like Alexandra.
I have a chance now to rectify the lie that my life has become and make another commitment to living unmasked, to bearing my soul and not my mind so that in this crazy adventure we call life maybe -just maybe- all the suffering I endure can cause someone else to endure a little less and live a little more. The lie has seen the light, and in the light, I can begin my work to undo all the harm that I, once again, have inflicted upon myself.
At this moment I am hopeless, but I am blessed enough to know from experience that if I cling to my Higher Power, and cling to the beautiful relationships I have in my life, that everything will be OK in the end.
And most importantly, I know that if it’s not OK then it is not the end, that if it’s not OK, I have to take off the mask.
By Contributor: Andrew Littlefield
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