The Mask

I've always known I was different.

Not in the quirky “main character” way others like to romanticize. More like, everyone else got a script for being human, and mine got lost in the mail. Or shredded. Or never existed.

I learned early how to pretend. How to laugh when others laughed, even when I didn’t get the joke. How to hold eye contact just long enough to seem normal, but not so long that it gets weird. How to nod and say “I’m good” even when my chest feels heavy and I can't stop thinking about how itchy my sweater is.

They call it masking. I call it surviving.

Every day, I put on the same invisible costume: the right tone, the right posture, the right smile. And no one notices the girl underneath. The one who counts ceiling tiles to stay calm. The one who scripts conversations in her head before they happen. The one who feels like she’s studying humans, not being one.

Sometimes, I look at the people around me—laughing too loud, knowing what to say and when to say it, and living like the world doesn’t make them want to rip their skin off—and I wish I could trade places. Just once. Just to know what it feels like to exist without editing every part of myself.

But since that can't happen, I sit. Fingers rubbing together. Headphones in. Brain loud. Mouth quiet.

And I keep pretending.

Day in and day out, the cycle continues. Wake up. Mask on. Practice conversations in my head. Match their energy. Match their words. Match their everything until I forget what mine even is.

I walk through the world like I’m underwater. Everything muffled, distorted, too much and not enough at the same time. I nod in the right places. I laugh on cue. I say “I’m fine” like it’s my job—like I get paid for passing as normal.

And maybe I do.

Maybe the reward is invisibility. The kind that keeps me safe, but also kind of kills me.

Because no one sees the effort. The calculations behind every sentence. The way my heart races before speaking. The way I replay every conversation after it's over. Analyzing every pause, every blink, every "what if I sounded weird again?"

But I keep going.

Because if I stop—if I take the mask off—what’s underneath might not be acceptable. It might be too much. Might be too real.

And people don’t like real. They say they like real. But what they really like is comfort. Because people like me? We make people like them uncomfortable.

So I keep pretending.

Because pretending hurts less than rejection.

For someone like me, rejection is inevitable. Over time, you just get used to it.

You stop expecting people to stay. You learn to never get too close, so it won’t hurt as bad when they leave

You learn to shrink yourself just enough to fit inside their comfort zone—never too loud, never too honest, never too you.

But sometimes, I mess up. I falsely believe that, at times, it might be okay to just let the mask slip

Other times, it's an accident.

Just little moments. A fidget I forgot to hide. A reaction too strong. A silence that lasts a second too long.

And in those moments, I see it.

The flicker.

That judgmental look in their eyes saying exactly what I've been fearing all along.

"You're weird."

And they never say it outright. They just...fade.

Stop texting. Stop smiling back. Stop seeing me at all.

So I retreat.

Back into my routines. My safe spaces, my quiet corners.

Back into me.

And maybe that’s okay.

There are times I think maybe being different isn’t something to fix, hide, or scrub away until I’m bland enough to blend in.

Maybe being different just is.

I’m not there yet. I'm not ready to rip the mask off, and I don't know if I ever will be.

But I’m trying to understand that I deserve to exist exactly as I am, even if the world isn’t ready.

And maybe—just maybe—one day I’ll find someone who sees the real me, and doesn’t flinch.

Until then, I’ll keep surviving.