Becoming the mask

Wear the mask long enough, and it stops feeling like a choice. At first, it’s a shield, it’s protection from judgment, rejection, vulnerability. You put it on to be liked, to be safe, to be what the world expects. It’s light at first, almost playful, like costume jewelry. But day by day, it tightens. You forget how your real voice sounds underneath the practiced responses. The laughter you offer is measured, rehearsed. You smile on cue, even when your soul is aching. People fall in love with the version of you that isn’t quite real, and you let them, because it’s easier than being seen. The truth becomes inconvenient, a liability. Eventually, the mask stops coming off at night. It becomes muscle memory, it becomes your words, your gestures, your dreams shaped around its contours. Even in solitude, you wear it. And one day, without fanfare or warning, you realize: you’ve forgotten who you were without it.