I’m one of those people that used to scoff at the word ‘authenticity’. Every time the word came up I thought it was just one of those buzzwords used to market things without really mean anything.

That was until years later I was forced to face my own inauthenticity. My fear of expressing my deepest emotions led me to live my life so unaligned with who I really was that I found myself both mentally as well as physically so sick and tired of being sick and tired that I was forced to make a choice. A choice to either continue living life with this invisible weight, which was getting heavier and heavier by day, or to let go. But after living so long wearing a mask and not letting all of me be seen, letting go was really scary.

When you live life inauthentically, you get so accustomed to wearing a mask that you start doing everything with it – sleeping with it, bathing with it, doing anything and everything with it. You get so used to wearing it that you start thinking there is something wrong with your own face. And after all, wherever we go, masks are often all we see – parties we go to: masks, job interviews: masks, talking to the cashier at the shop: masks. So you start thinking that showing people your real face would be wrong; something shameful and weird, kind of like showing up naked – it’s not what you’re supposed to do. And that’s how many people seem to be living their lives, right? 

Until one day wearing the mask gets so uncomfortable holding it any longer to your face seems unbearable: the air inside the mask gets all stuffy from your breath, you can’t really even see that well from the eyeholes, and even your face is covered with pimples from all the sweat and bacteria that has been collecting underneath. 

So you take the mask off.

And finally, you feel free. You can feel the fresh air on your face, the wind as it gently caresses your cheeks. And you can even see better. See life in all its glory, without the limiting view from the plastic mask’s eyeholes.

You feel light, you feel whole. And the pestering weight you’ve been dragging with you all along is finally, suddenly gone. With nothing to hide you have nothing to hide. You don’t have to care whether your mask is sitting perfectly, or if someone can see a bit too much of your face. You don’t even have to care whether the mask you’re wearing is according to the latest mask-trend.

It's just your face.

It’s just your face.

And it’s beautiful as it is. No flaw or manufacturing defect. All uniquely made from organic materials. There is no other nose, no other pair of eyes exactly the same as yours.

So you decide you'll never put the mask on again.

Except maybe at a masquerade.