It's more than a 'mask'...

Just because, "Where else can I share this that people might actually understand?"
I have an image of myself as a version of ’The Terminator’ - I look like a regular human being, but under the ’skin-suit’ I’m a red-eyed robot made of chromed razor-blades and spikes…
I wear the skin-suit to protect the people around me from the blades and spikes but I suffer the cuts they inflict on the inside.
If I get knocked around and some of the skin-suit is damaged you may get a glimpse of the machine beneath and recoil in horror.
In extremes, the whole skin-suit is lost and I’m revealed in my full hard, cold, glittering, dangerous ‘glory’...
...and as terrifying as that may be for others, there’s a sense of relief/freedom for me - no longer constrained by that skin-suit I wear for other’s protection and which is such a painful, exhausting effort to maintain…
  • I am recently diagnosed at the ripe old age of 47...

    It is scary to be more 'authentic' and go with my own flow as some those around me seem keen to make me keep swimming against the current.

    Trying to suppress what's within me takes effort and pain and ultimately it bursts through anyway and is far uglier and damaging to those around me than if I had been allowed the space, time and safety to 'be myself'...

    I regulate through exercise but that's not always possible.

    I'm working to blunt the spikes and dull the blades, as that will be better for me as well as those around me.

    Self-awareness is the first step to self-improvement.

    If I could become a quicksilver T-1000, mirror-bright and fluid, that would be perfect...

  • Wow. Are you diagnosed OP?

    Authenticity is the only way forward. You will learn that these cuts are moments that caress your body and deliver you information. You think you are hiding but you are not well hidden, so I say away with the falseness and learn about yourself. If you've always tried to be in control of something you feel you are inherently not.. You have been going against your own flow... Which maybe you have no idea where it will really go

    What do you think? Is that scary? 

  • I definitely find it easier to write about my feelings than talk about them. I find poetry is a great outlet.

  • Thanks!

    I really struggle to verbalise things sometimes - writing doesn't trigger an emotional response in myself, it feels more 'detached' which allows me to 'polish' my thoughts.

    I think being a very strongly visual-thinker also makes it harder to put my thoughts into words... it gets a bit 'stream of consciousness' and I feel my sight turns inward to the extent I literally don't 'see' my surroundings...

  • First of all, I love your writing.

    I agree - the skin-suit is definitely difficult to maintain. It's exhausting trying to hide who you really are every day.