On Masking

I’m still unraveling what has been happening in me the last five years. There are the mid-life hormonal changes. When that estrogen drops, watch out. That change is like a truth serum. When all the nurturing and othering hormones shift, the real feelings rise to the surface. What we have stuffed and renamed and dismissed comes into clarity, and the feelings that accompany need to be felt. Resentment, anger, grief, incredulity. What you see and feel are real and require honesty. But note: that honesty is brutal for you and those around you. None of us really want the truth. And the real truths are threatening.

I was known to be a very honest person as a child, teen and 20-something. You always knew where I stood on things, whether people or preferences. My face hid nothing. When I dove deep into evangelical Christianity, pursuing full-time ministry, I learned that my honesty was not welcomed. I watched as it threatened other’s egos and their ways of parenting and the way they used people to build platforms. If I saw bullshit, I called it. Until I stopped. I learned that to be honest was to be lonely. In general, the Christians that I was surrounded with didn’t welcome curiosity, differences, real wrestling. It wasn’t safe to live outside the box or believe outside the box or do a damn thing outside the box. And you know who I didn’t want to hurt with my honesty? My husband and children. I knew that they wanted inclusion, to not rock the boat, to not be weird, to fit in, to be respected (which in that world, to be respected is to follow the rules, spoken and unspoken, really really well).

I tried to keep my autonomy in as many small ways as possible, but in the end, I tried to mold myself into the communities we found ourselves in. I masked. I doubled-down on everything I was told that God wanted and needed from me. Compliance. Service. Hospitality. Generosity. Laying down my damn life. As days turned into years, I found myself increasingly exhausted. Crying out. “I’m not made for this. I don’t know that this is how I am wired. I feel so confused and wonder if I put my ladder on the wrong wall.” But silence. I bought into the narrative that life is suffering, and that the plan for Aimee is to suffer. Read more missionary biographies. This is your lot in life. And so I soldiered on, ever doubling down and getting more creative on how to accept my days with joy and gratitude. I certainly used gratitude lists as a way to gaslight myself. LOOK AT HOW GOOD THIS IS, AIMEE.

And finally, the mask cracked. I couldn’t pick it up and put it on anymore. I hated the mask. I resented all the ways I had been abandoned and had abandoned myself. My reflections on my compliance allowed for deep rage to come up inside of me. And sadly, I felt that I had no safe spaces to release it in. My journals were fraught for decades with words like “trapped”, “smothered”, and “disillusioned”. It’s difficult to get honest with yourself, and when you are looking at another possible 30 years on earth, your body asks, "do you really think we can continue like this?” And I knew I couldn’t.

To be clear, our history is not black and white. There were so many good and beautiful things along the way. This is not me going “all bad” on my life. The big-picture themes and intrinsic drives are deeply unhealthy and sad and it will take me a while to heal and get clear on all of it. I am in no rush. I feel safe and I am loved, and when you feel those things, you can unpack anything. The most beautiful and meaningful parts of my life are the ways in which I loved my children and sought to give them what I believed that they needed. Tears stream down my face right now even talking about it. Every bit of myself that I gave to them will forever be what I find beauty and joy in. I showed up for them in millions of ways that they will never comprehend, and those that watched from the outside know that that is true. I held that ship together, and built a life of stability and grace and beauty, imperfectly and immaturely, but with a huge heart and certain intention.

I am bare-faced. I walk in authenticity. It is loved by some and despised by others. But I am walking in more integrity than I ever have. I am living out what I feel is right and good for me right now. It’s messy to try to live in truth and not hurt others. I know I have messed that up. I am a beginner. I know that I suck. And I know that I am great too. I am accepting myself for who I am and where I am right now. And I do the same for others. I seek to provide safety and acceptance for others wherever they find themselves. It’s rare to find others who offer that, but when I have found it, it has kept me alive. Giving real kindness and real love despite another’s story is one of the greatest gifts of being human. What I have experienced is that love often comes from the very gritty and messy humans, not from the ones with well-ordered, pretty, and “obedient” lives. They are too busy defending their faith and keeping it from being contaminated to actually love someone without condition. Outcasts know love in ways I had never really seen or known. Life on the margins is full of surprises.

I write all of this down because it was the online confessions of others along with memoirs that helped me feel less alone. I know there is a woman reading this who resonates with the themes of this. I don’t know the right answers for anyone and would never pretend to know. I think YOU know the right answers for you. That’s one of the greatest gifts my therapist gave me: the courage to believe myself. I believe you. And I believe in you to figure it out. And whatever is in your heart and in your mind and in your body, I accept you. The dark and the light. And sometimes the “light” in you is actually dark, and the dark is the space where you find the warmth of candlelight. A slow and gentle burn that doesn’t clamor or demand, but invites the softest parts of you home, unmasked, tender-faced, and real.