THE MASK THEY KNOW

I learned early how to be okay.

Not the real kind of okay, the kind people earn after healing, but the practiced kind, the kind you wear like a uniform, Crisp, Polite, Untouchable, I perfected it so well that even I began to forget where it ended and where I began.

They say I am rude.
They say I am a bully.
They say I do not care.

I let them.

It is easier to be judged for what you pretend to be than to be wounded for what you truly are.

The person they see walks with steady steps and sharp words, their eyes don’t linger, their voice doesn’t tremble, they laugh at the right moments and stay silent when silence is safer. That person does not need help. That person does not break. That person is survivable.

But the truth lives are quieter.

It lives in the pauses between breaths, in the moments when the room is empty and the mask finally loosens. It lives in the ache of not recognizing your own reflection, in the strange grief of missing yourself while still being alive.

Sometimes I try to remember who I was before the pretending became necessary. The memory is blurry, like a dream you wake from too fast. I know that version of me felt deeply. I know they cared too much. I know that somewhere along the way, caring has become dangerous.

So, I hardened.
I adapted.
I survived.

They think they know me because they know the version I show them. But that is only armor, only a story I tell the world, so it doesn’t ask harder questions.

Still, beneath it all, there is a quiet certainty I hold onto when the nights grow long: this is not the end of me. The mask is not my face. The silence is not my voice.

One day, maybe not today, maybe not soon, I will remember how it feels to be me again, and when that day comes, the world will learn that they never truly knew me at all.

But I did.
And that will be enough to begin.