I started forming my shell long ago.
A protection against the world.
My defense against a false love named fear.
It started pre-memory,
I’m sure.
Yet innocense left room for possibility.
A possibility that turned into defeat.
There was no space for my tears.
In high school, on my dresser,
I hung up a poem,
about a mask.
The mask I wore,
but no one could see.
They had mistaken it for me.
Eventually,
I believed it too.
I got lost in the identity of my mask,
and left myself behind.
Still, she called to me.
The little girl without a voice.
But I had forgotten how to listen,
my heart, boxed up and tucked away.
My shell turned into armor,
and I became untouchable.
Disconnected from myself,
and all of you, too.
No hug could pass through.
I wonder,
If someone knew…
If someone like me…
Would have seen…
Would have loved..
Would have said “you’re okay”…
“You are meant to be here”…
“You are meant to be a light in the dark.”
I wonder,
What life would be like,
if I had had me.
To love me.
To instruct me.
To give myself a voice.
Yet I know I am exactly where I am meant to be,
and the opportunity still exist.
To love myself back to the beginning.
In the armor and beyond the shell.
In the pain and through the fear.
To find myself again,
and be exactly who I am,
innocent, wise, and whole.
******
The two poems on masks have been taped on that dresser for 20 years. TWENTY years!
But even before that, I tried to simultaneously mask up and numb out…below is my 7th grade basketball picture, not long before I ended up at Rainbow Babies & Children’s hospital to be treated for anorexia, just before Christmas. Did my smile hide the fading body that didn’t know how to be in this world?
It was recently brought to my attention through a podcast, reading, and experience, that empaths and highly sensitive people tend to protect themselves more with their masks than others who are not so sensitive, as it is a survival skill to live in an insensitive world. The painful part is that deep down, they know its a mask…
Reparenting comes in loving each wounded part. For me, because I have worn masks for so long, it took years and years and lots of, unconsciously, re-identifying with my masks, making the journey of letting go quite painful at times. It’s also a re-training. I’ve always felt either armored or weak in my sensitivities but have discovered the strengths of feeling so deeply. I have come to understand that if I tap into the energy inside myself and allow it to be expressed outward, I can both keep other’s energies out and help others feel there emotions while allowing them to de-mask. (Link to part 1 of my 2-part Sensitivities as Superpowers series: https://www.instagram.com/p/C0w0H6RPgd5/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MjJkMmIyYzQxYw==.)
While I can’t physically go back in time and give my younger self “me” to love her, I can mentally and emotionally go back in time while also using my imagination to insert myself in challenging memories. I can still give her/me, what I needed, thereby healing old wounds. In healing, I no longer have to live from a wounded place, but from a place of wholeness.
A Dog and Her Girl 