A Flux of Emotions

I can't take it off...

There is a mask.....
　　　　that just won't come off.

I don't know how to get rid of it. It's been there for as long as I can remember. It wasn't always this way so why can't I go back to living my life without it? Why?

I feel like I'm always hiding. Always lying. Who am I really? Do I even know?

I don't want to wear it anymore but I don't know how to take it off....

Good Morning, I'm fine and you? Good Afternoon, I'm fine and you? Good Evening, I'm fine and you? I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fi-

I'M NOT FINE!

How are you today? That's great. I'm fine. Thank you for asking. Rinse and repeat.

Everyone else is fine so why should not feel fine? Just smile, you're having fun remember, just smile, just smile, just smile, just smile, just smi-

"I'm not happy; today is a really bad day." DON'T you DARE say that. How dare you ruin everyone's day with your pity party. You're FINE. Remember? Don't cry, you're just fine. You're always fine, nothing is ever wrong. Such sweet words. If only they were true. THEY ARE TRUE. Aren't they?

How are you today? I don't know....

I have a mask...

It tells people that I'm fine and it smiles even though I'm not. I just want to take it off but I don't know how. I feel so fake. Are my friends even really my friends? Please just let me take it off for one day.

I want to go home and lock myself up. I don't want to come out. I don't want to see anyone. Please, just leave me alone.

LEAVE ME ALONE!

How are you today?

I'm fine.

Author's Note / Passage Explanation

If you want to understand the passage better, feel free to read. These go into more detail so TWs apply. ⚠️: depressive moods

So this particular piece was never physically written. It was something I longed to talk about to someone in hopes that I would feel some sense of relief from the negativity. Eventually, I did but, as always, I downplayed it as if it were really nothing, and in the end, I didn't feel any relief. I only felt more like a liar than before.

To be more specific, this built up overtime but in senior year of highschool, I started to feel like I had been wearing some sort of mask that had been on for so long that, unconsciously, I would start to act a certain way to appease people and hide how I was really feeling.

To backtrack a little bit. I no longer wanted to go to school, I didn't want to do anything but sleep my days away. Which was hard because I have insomnia and if it's one thing that does not come easy, it's sleep. However, I felt like I couldn't tell anyone how I was feeling.

A lot of this, of course, ties into being unable to trust my family with this or even my friends, and because of that history, I had developed this guilty conscious over the years where I physically felt sick or felt like crying if I even thought about telling someone. Because in my mind, I would have been placing an unwanted and unnecessary burden on them (annoying them) with something insignificant and an utter waste of time (this was how I viewed my feelings at the time). So, I began to feel obligated to be happy for everyone. So I would be energetic, smile, crack jokes and every time someone asked me "How are you?," or "How was your day?," I would say "I'm fine," or "It was good," whether it was the truth or not.

And there lies the mask I felt I couldn't take off.

When I tried to be more honest with myself and my friends I realized that I couldn't or if I did I would immediately regret it and play it off as a joke. As a result, I started to feel afraid that I was unable to be myself and that I would be stuck in this appeasing and happy persona. So it made me want to completely isolate myself. However, once again, I felt obligated to be this fun outgoing person hanging with my friends, eating out, and overall being the comedian of the group.

I was stuck in this horrible cycle.