This is My Mask

By J. L. Thurston

I know you feel like trash now, but just wait. It only gets worse.

The person who was part of your foundation will crack. She who taught you honesty is revealed to be the worst liar of everyone.

Which hurts, because the worst person you’ve ever met will look you dead in the eye and tell you nothing but truths.

You’re going to feel alone so much you’ll start to prefer it until those terrible moments when you don’t. But you won’t be alone. You have made your own family in which you are the foundation. And you are strong. You won’t crack no matter what pressure is put upon you.

You wear a mask. It gets heavier every day and when you’re alone it will fall off and every drive you take is silent because the music opens up wounds and you sit in the parking lot for ten minutes after turning off the engine because you’re still trying to get that heavy mask back on so your face won’t look red and your eyes will be dry when you go inside.

Put that mask back on. No one wants to see how ugly you are when you cry.

You’ll know years before her death that the time was going to come soon. What you won’t realize is how you’ll lose her before she’s actually gone.

She was your support. Your core. Like it or not she’s a huge part of you and all the lies and self-harm she commits will hurt you, too.

This will teach you a lesson you don’t want to learn. If you stand behind someone and they impale themselves the sword is going to go through you, too.

Maybe God wants this to happen to you because the more you suffer the better you treat everyone. The more pain you feel inside the more you try to convince everyone else you’re happy.

Use bolts to keep that mask on tight. By now it’s like wearing an ocean on your face.

But it’s also a shield. You need it.

You talk to her. Tell her about the cracks she’s caused in your foundation. She gets angry at you. Tells you she sees where this is all going. She tells you goodbye.

You know it isn’t goodbye. She needs you. She’s just angry. Hurt. Confused. Lying. She’ll come around.

When she does, she tells you how mean you’ve been. How you hurt her. How could you talk to her in such a way? How dare you? How dare you?

HOW DARE YOU?

You will finally be angry. You will finally feel the frustration you wouldn’t let yourself feel for years. Because of who she was, you had held back. But the layers of callouses have been peeled by her fingers. You tell her she’s selfish. She’s toxic to your life. You tell her a distant relationship is best.

Hell, it’s what your brother did. And you’ve secretly been envious of that freedom.

She’ll tell you goodbye again. Except this time has a final ring to it. She tells you this way she can go move in with the other guy. The one who’s a year younger than you. The one who’s done time for drugs. The one you were afraid would kidnap your daughter. Or do something worse.

What do you do when a grown woman acts like this?

You tell her to follow her heart and to be happy.

And you let her say goodbye as many times as she wants.