The Layering of Masks

I wandered aimlessly, lost, having lost my body. I found my way to my high school choir room that I had loved ever so much in life. I went as far as calling it my home. It had since been repurposed for storage as it was the basement of the school and they built an addition with a new choir room near the auditorium and the rest of the music department. When I arrived as my spirit self to what I knew was storage it didn't look like that. The room seemed stuck in time during a lunch of my senior year of high school. I remembered these well- this was not one of them. Everything was wrong. My stuff was in the wrong places, there were no lights on, and worst of all that version of me was wearing one of those character heads. Let me explain: I'm a creature of habit and always put my things in the exact same places, I never would have been able to access the room with no lights on because my teacher had to be there and would have had a light on, and the most obvious issue is I have a phobia of those costumes. I don't like the heads they sell at the store either, and never would have worn one at school anyway because for most of my time the policy was no hats no hoods and I don't break rules. I am neurodivergent and never sat still in a chair the way one is expected to sit in a chair. I also always had the volume of my phone off when I used it at school because I worried about ads being too loud. This monster was sitting completely still in the expected sitting position in one of the chairs playing some kind of video game I never would have been able to play let alone wanted to at full volume for everyone that could have been around to hear. Now that you're up to speed I will continue. I was curious whom else I would see if I waited around. My choir teacher from the correct time period came into the room. To me she seemed exactly as should have been. This was confirmed when she seemed to expect other me to be spinning (a stim of mine I did during every lunch period that entailed me spinning in circles in one area of the room) and to notice when she came in the room and greeted them. This was my standard practice that year, but the monster didn't seem to notice her at all. I was heartbroken seeing her so terrified of what she thought to be me and made the decision to yank the stupid head off of the creep. I did and saw her relief as she figured out I was me and not the freak in the chair. What I found under the head is what made me understand the point of this exercise I was doing. It was me if I was neuro-typical, cis, straight, and fit every other box of "perfection". This version of me wasn't poor and was an absolute jerk. Those two things were unrelated, but both true. The point of this all was to prove to me that my "flawed" existence was way better than the one society wanted me to have. The monster's second mask was a fully perfected neurodivergence mask. Under it all I was there somewhere, but I would have been miserable. The people that care about me and those I care about the most cared for me in life because of who I really am not for the neuro-typical mask I often felt I had to wear. Once I was aware I tried my best to turn off the mask when I could, but still struggled to believe people would like the person under all the figurative masks I wore (not to mention the literal face masks). My mask was a very mature person surpassing their years in many ways. The real me never got the chance to mature with that mask because I was too busy making my mask as good as I could to put the necessary effort into improving myself. The mask, unlike those worn for costumes, is a part of me. It isn't not true to me, but it isn't the entire story either. The worst part of this exercise, for me, was that it was done in the place and during the time there that I was truest to my unmasked self in life. Some other choir members seemed to have entered the room at some point while I was distracted, these being the only other people to understand and get the real me. I found them terrified of the monster and not sure what to think of the scene overall. The freak was altogether uninterested, which made it easier for me to explain everything. In the end we kicked the creature out and I organized my things it had misplaced as they should have been. They were all glad I was me and not that prick. Oh, and don't worry, I made sure the thing took that awful character head with it.