Ramblings:Inside the mind of a 16 yr old

When the world seems to be against you, friends and family turn their backs, you sit and wonder… You wonder what went wrong, what you can do to change it, who is truly on your side, who you can trust, and most of all you wonder who you really are. You wonder if that person you see in the mirror is you, or simply some mask that you put on every morning to hide your true face from the world. And then as the years go by you have to sit there each morning and think of which mask to wear, do you wear the brave one, the joyful one, the carefree, the sarcastic, the cautious? Which out of all the personas that you have managed to create in this short lifetime will you wear today? Or will you finally take that risk? Will you walk out the door without your mask; will you let the world see your true face?

Taking that first step is no small matter, you risk rejection, disproval, and even hatred. You risk the hatred of those that cannot accept who you are, who see in you parts of themselves, the parts that they pretend don’t exist. For they know that like you they put their mask on every morning, however unlike you they seem to enjoy their conformity, enjoy being accepted for what they can be instead of for what they are. They enjoy a world of possibilities that has nothing to do with reality; they have their dream world where everything and everyone is perfect. There’s no sadness, no depression, no difference, a world of sheep without a herder they simply exist. Existence replaces life, and man is thus condemned by his own fear to live that which is not real, to live in a world where everyone does what is expected of them and does not vary from the norm.

Anyone can walk down the street and see all the so-called “happy people”, but you have to wonder how many of them are truly happy? How do you know that they are not just like you? That they don’t sit in front of the mirror each day, just as you do, to decide which mask to put on, each day wearing a different one, to protect them from the world. Everyone has their mask, you will rarely meet someone who doesn’t, but when you do, recognise it, for that is a rare and beautiful thing to see. A person unafraid to show their true face to the world, one who defies what is “socially acceptable”. I’m not talking about the typical rebel, because rebellion is simply another mask, I’m talking about the type of person who doesn’t need to hide who they are, who doesn’t care about what people say or think because they are perfectly at ease with themselves. A person who can accept who they are, without question, taking the good with the bad and telling the rest of the world to deal with it, they’re not going to change. A rebel on the other hand cannot deal with who they are and therefore act out against the rest of the world, trying to break the rules and disrupt the norm, but in the end fitting in perfectly with the norm because they are playing their role in society. But the person who has taken off the mask, doesn’t try to break the rules or disrupt the norm, they don’t have to, simply because they don’t care to. They are happy with who they are, they don’t need to or want to change the world to fit them, they’re part of the world whether the world wants to accept it or not.

Everyone wishes they could be like that. But it’s hard, coming out of your shell, throwing away all those masks, abandoning the personas to show the real you. It requires a strong will to break down those walls of protection, those that separate you from all around you, those that even though they protect they require superhuman strength to keep up. You may think that you can simply take a mental sledgehammer to those walls and have them down in a matter of minutes, but it’s not that simple. These are not the simple walls of a house, these are the walls of an impenetrable fortress, walls with no doors, and such sheer faces that very few have ever been able to successfully scale. They will take more than a few minutes; they may take days, months, or even years. You will not be able to achieve this quickly, most people could spend their lives trying and only succeed at the very end, thus spending most of their years simply trying to take off the mask, break down the walls, and proclaim themselves free. Not free from oppression, or tyranny, but free from themselves, free from their thoughts and nightmares, finally able to accept who they truly are.

You may laugh, write this off as the ramblings of someone who should be locked up in some mental ward, put on medication and hidden from the world. Who knows, maybe I should be. Perhaps to the “normal” person I seem crazy, perhaps in their point of view I should be hidden away, if only to preserve the delicate balance of society. But then again, maybe not, maybe I am the sane one, and all the “normal” people should be kept under lock and key, closely monitored, and heavily medicated. Unfortunately, the majority rules, and one person cannot win against millions.
Conformity has become the creed of the world today; we must all wear the same or similar masks, simply to fit in. Though we claim to live in a free world, difference is still regarded as wrong. Norms, the rules of society, show us everyday what is right and wrong. They dictate what kind of mask you can put on, and therefore you are not allowed to make your own choices even in hiding. Even masks and personas are subject to the rules of society. Thus not only do we hide out of fear, we hide because we have to in order to “fit in”. If we want to be part of the world we have to cede to its demands, relinquish even more of ourselves to simply exist peacefully.

Pressure comes at you from all sides, and it never agrees. Pressure from family, friends, peers, teachers, each telling you how you should act, never noticing that all they achieve is to send you further into hiding. You put on thicker, stronger masks to simply fight against all that they are forcing you to become. The worst of it all, though, is that no single pressure agrees, each is trying to make you a different person, all socially acceptable, but none coming close to who you truly are. Each mask exemplifying what each group wishes you to be, showing you the ideal version of yourself, but also building, piece by piece a new wall for you to hide behind.

But, the sad thing is, no matter how many walls you build, you are still vulnerable. There are still people out there with the power to strike through those walls and straight into your heart. Those people do not have to be your enemies; they can be part of your family, your best friend, your boyfriend or girlfriend. They are the person that you let in, the one you gave the key to, the one who knows who you truly are. They may not even mean to hurt you, they may only have the best intentions, but they can still hurt you, they are the only people who have that power over you. It may seem strange to think that those you trust the most are those with the most power to hurt you, but you have to remember that those walls you strive to keep up are down around these people. They have the opening, and whether intentionally or not, they can hurt you.

The naïveté of childhood years is completely gone; no longer can you run home to mommy and daddy whenever things go wrong. The only one you can trust in the end is yourself, and though it is a hard and long lesson to learn, you do learn. Through trial and error, you test the reliability of those around you. No longer can you blindly trust in those around you, all are subject to the test, any one could pass or fail. This trust issue can end up driving you mad; always having to think twice about confiding in someone is tiring, and having to carry the burdens you are given without help can break you. And the feeling of being utterly alone is dreadful. Waking up each morning, alone, and not even feeling the bonds of those closest to you is enough to drive you to tears every morning.

As you grow, so does your mask, getting heavier and heavier with each passing year. Until it reaches the point that it can no longer be removed, you now become that which you hid behind for years, you lose track of who you truly are and become someone else. You no longer see yourself in the mirror each morning, but you see what you have become, a mere shadow of yourself, unable to truly connect with who you really are. Each morning you wake up and greet a stranger, but now you no longer feel the absence of those you love, now you feel them there, and you start to wonder… Was it really me they loved and cared for, or was it then and is it now only the mask? Did anyone ever really care for me, the person behind the mask?

Has your dependence on the mask finally turned you into that which you strove so hard to avoid? Have you now become that which you hid behind for so many years, and in a sense become that which you hate? You spend your life running away from that which in the end you become. Everyday you put on that mask, pull it down tight so that no one can even catch a glimpse of what’s underneath, never suspecting that one day, the mask won’t come off. After that day you will slowly become that which you hid behind for years, you lose who you truly are and make a cheap exchange for that which is acceptable. But, hey, that’s great right? Now you fit in, you are one of the gang, no longer on the outside you’re now part of everything. You are at all the cool parties, and you are part of the “cool group”, no worries, right? But then something happens, you realise that this isn’t you, you’re not the type to party all night, everything that you’ve been doing as part of the group is against what little of you still remains. That tiny, microscopic part that is still you, you could call it a conscience, screams out to you that this isn’t right. You weren’t born for this, this isn’t you, and now that which you’ve hidden for so long is slowly starting to emerge.

But of course people don’t like this, once you start showing who you truly are you are once again subject to all the pain and loneliness that you thought was in the past. Once more you are forced to find a new mask, a new persona, and once again hide. You’ve now learned that now matter how many times you try you won’t be able to be you, there will always be a mask to hide behind, simply because the different terrifies society. There may be the odd person who accepts you for who you truly are, but it will only be single people, for society as a whole will never accept the individual… It will always shun that which is different simply because it does not understand it. It cannot cope with that which does not fit in, that which is stubbornly determined to make its own path, different from everyone else’s.

So now, after listening to the ramblings of some poor lunatic, tell me, which mask do you wear? What do you hide behind each morning? And, how much time do you think you have until you become that which you hide behind?