25/10/2024
How many masks or masquerades did or do you have…..
I can only speak for myself but I had lots, my mind had a dressing up box of persona’s, personalities, traits, opinions, hobbies, attitudes, even looks, you name it I had something up my sleeve to complete the second skin I kept sliding over my own so that I fulfilled what my friends, family, co workers expected of me and fitted chameleon like into their world. For I never felt I fitted in, anywhere, however with my magic ‘suit of armour’ I could try and become what that role required. I even got really good at changing them within seconds, nobody ever saw the real me under there, maybe the odd flash as the mask was changed but not for more than a second. I knew my Me mask (which wasn’t a mask) wasn’t really acceptable or good enough back then, being into and riding motorbikes, doing powerlifting (and winning at national level) wasn’t considered feminine enough and I was asked multiple times why wasn’t I more ‘girly’.
I also followed a career for the entirely wrong reasons, I happened to be good at it, unfortunately with hindsight, and the more I progressed the more alienated and disassociated from my life I felt. Mental Health issues were swept under the carpet back then and I was told by quite a few people to ‘pull your socks up and look at what you’ve got’ and so I felt guilty.
ADHD was very rarely talked about back then and it wasn’t understood,(certainly not in my family circles and subsequent work situations,) that the way the mind works with ADHD is different to others. I grew up being told not to be so lazy, why did I never finish anything, I start something and don’t finish, I procrastinate, always a whirlwind, why can’t you sit still, the list is endless lol but all these negative elements were incorporated into my internal monologue which my addictive voice loved, and used against me. Often!
So, I became adept at switching masks, I had a mask for every occasion and it was all lubricated by alcohol. I knew I wasn’t being true to my-self but I didn’t know how to be Me without letting people down or upsetting them. All this inner turmoil created a massive inner dissonance and a grief that I wasn’t good enough, so to make things easier I used alcohol to numb the transitions. I wasn’t even allowing myself to think about being me, I was so busy trying to make up the fact that I wasn’t what I thought they wanted me to be.
Letting go of the masks is hard, learning how to be You is fun and exciting and HARD which is why it’s easy to don one of those masks which feels like a comfy blanket you can just snuggle in to and its hard to not take it.
Recovery is about allowing yourself to become you, setting boundaries so that that can happen, working through who you and who you are NOT. I wasn’t a useless lazy lump who didn’t pay attention, I had undiagnosed ADHD amongst other things, I had to unlearn everything I thought I knew about myself and evaluate whether that came from me or was actually somebody else’s opinion that I’d absorbed. The biggest freedom I ever felt was the freedom to be ME and not to make an excuse for why I was like I was. To go out in the world and feel I was as valid as anyone else and that my way of being is just as good as someone else’s. admittedly my way tends to be very exuberant, boisterous and ‘out there’ sometimes, but that’s ok. What isn’t ok is trying to become a clone of what you think is expected of you.
Alongside that was the freedom to say, out loud, ‘I’m an addict but I’m in recovery’. The poor check out girls at Asda, lol, every time I went through I always managed to get in the conversation I was in recovery, because I was proud of myself and the decision I had made. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, I’m not singing to ‘It’s’ tune anymore, I’m banging the beat to my own life thank you, literally as well as metaphorically lol and doing it without a mask in sight. Feeling Free.
Love 💜xx
