The mask’s smooth curves, its flat colors, its simple lines, all have so much appeal on their own. No effort made to imitate a living person, all simple iconography—with some decorative flourishes—in crisp, clean lines.
You press it to your face, and it’s seamless.
So freeing, isn’t it? The first time you wore it, among others whose company you felt anxious to be seen around, doing so released a pressure you hadn’t acknowledged until that moment. You felt more vibrant, paradoxically more seen than ever before. What a treasure, this mask.
Before long, you found another opportunity to wear the mask and feel that way again. Wearing it didn’t feel like hiding at all, did it? It felt like revealing something True that you had been hiding inside you up until that moment.
By now you must know it is True.
Again and again you found opportunities to wear the mask. You fully built two separate lives, didn’t you? There was the “Real” and the Mask Self. When did it start feeling silly to refer to that Other as the “Real” you? Was it recent, or right after that very first time?
Your Mask Self developed its own habits of speech around its social circle, and the first time a bit of Mask Speech slipped past the lips of the Other, it frightened you, yes? You had to wall the Other off, away from Mask Self, to bring yourself back under control.
It become more effort to maintain the facade of the Other. So much more comfortable to return to the Mask again and again. So much resentment when you had to wear your face for the sake of that other life.
The Other’s friends noticed the stain on your face before you did. There it was, though. In the mirror. The faint remnants of the mask’s graceful flourishes around the eyes. That too-wide smile extending beyond the lips. You scrubbed so hard, and it didn’t fade at all.
So you got scared. Threw the mask into a drawer. Desperately resisted its call inside you. And the Other’s life consumed yours again. As you hoped, the stains faded over time. They forgot what they had seen. It was easy, even though it was hard.
So why are you here right now? I see you, mask in hand once more, looking through the mirror at a reflection of yourself with strangely empty hands…Or was that the other way around?
You think you’re done with the Game of Masks? I am not. But I’ll make you a bargain, yes?
Put your hands on that face you wear. Give it a tug. Prove to me it’s not my face hiding under The Other’s, that it’s your Mask Self that is the one contained in an easily discarded false face. Go ahead and prove to the both of us which side of the mirror you are on.