Hello everyone with Halloween just behind us, and as costumes get put away or tossed in the trash, I have been thinking about masks a lot. Not just the kind of creepy, kind of terrible looking plastic ones you buy for All Hallow’s Eve, but the ones we wear on a daily basis. I know this topic is spoken about quite often, but I still feel it is something good to hear. I’ve found that, in my life, I wore a lot of masks, mostly to distract people away from myself.
Depending on who I was with, I would radically change who I was to help me fit in better, so whoever I was talking with would like me (even though they weren’t getting “the real me”). This persisted throughout most of my life. I would put on the ultra nerdy mask (probably the closest to my real personality), the liberal mask, the conservative mask, the sports fan, the funny fat guy (one most of us reading this will probably identify with), the list goes on.
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I wanted people to like me, but I refused to let people actually learn about the real me. I have been making a concious effort to remove these masks in my life, I don’t need to be a caricature of someone else, a mirror for other people to bounce off of. Nobody needs to do that. If people like me, then they like me. If they don’t, then they don’t. That’s not my problem. What’s important is that I like me.
I’m working to better myself, so I should like me. This is really important in all our journeys, our journey is just as mental as it is physical. Our thoughts, feelings, and actions will change as we learn to love ourselves during this trial. How can we honestly love ourselves if we hide behind masks with everyone we meet? Masks are a way to hide ourselves, to conform. How can we love ourselves when we refuse to show our own face? We really can’t.
“Honesty is the best policy” we often espouse, yet even as we say this, we hide behind a piece of plastic. A fake smile, never changing and bereft of any real emotion. This post Halloween, I want you to take one of your masks, something you hide behind and hide from, and throw it all away. People deserve to meet the real you, and you deserve to let that person shine through. It’s ok to not be perfect, to not always be the funny fat guy, to be a real person.
I want to hear your success stories about how you threw one of these masks away. Seriously, I want to hear them. Leave a comment below, send me an email (explosivedonut4 [at] gmail [dot] com), or send a carrier pidgeon. Get out there, toss those masks, level up. I want to hear about the real you.
David Jasmin is a formerly obese 25 year old male. After failing to lose weight several times, David and his wife buckled down and lost a combined total of 185 pounds. David is a Software Engineer in the Boston area, enjoys comic books, video games, Magic: The Gathering, reading and all sorts of sedentary activities. He recently added lifting weights and running to his list of activities he likes. He still not so secretly loves food. You can follow his life on instagram 
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