(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Forgiveness: Part Four – The Masks [1] ['Douglas Schonenberg', 'Greg Dworkin', 'Bill In Portland Maine', 'Winter Rabbit'] Date: 2026-07-27 On forgiving yourself for becoming the person that you needed to be. After sitting with the mirror for a while, Mylo quietly slipped it back into his backpack. Neither of us spoke. Some lessons do not need words to be spoken. Silence is sometimes the best teacher. After a while, Mylo reached over, picked up my backpack, and placed it between us. “You’ve been carrying this for a long time.” “I have.” “You’ve opened it.” “I did.” “You’ve stopped arguing with yesterday.” I nodded. “You’ve walked out of your prison.” “I think so.” “You’ve forgiven the man in the mirror.” I smiled. “I’m beginning to.” He looked at me for a long moment. “Good.” “Then there is just one more thing we need to discuss.” Without asking, he unzipped my backpack. I laughed. “You really have to stop going through my backpack.” He grinned. “You keep putting interesting things in there.” Instead of pulling out my memories, he began pulling out my old masks. One after another, he carefully laid each of them on the grass. The little boy who smiled after his father left. The teenager who pretended rejection didn’t hurt. The young husband trying to convince everyone he had everything under control. The father who believed he always had to be strong. The man who smiled and told everyone he was okay, while quietly wondering if he wanted to keep on living. The man who survived a traumatic brain injury, but kept pretending that he hadn’t lost anything. I stared at them for a long time. Then something occurred to me. At different moments in my life, I had worn each mask. Not forever. But for a season. Each one had carried me through something. Some protected me from rejection. Some protected me from disappointment. Some protected me from loneliness. Some protected me from pain. Some simply helped me survive. Each one had served an important purpose in my past. I smiled. “These masks were not a disguise that I was simply hiding behind.” “They were my armor protecting me from the pain in my life.” Mylo nodded. “Exactly.” There’s nothing wrong with wearing armor when you are fighting a battle. The danger comes when you keep it on when the battle is over. The danger is not wearing the mask. The danger is forgetting that you can take it off. I thought about my life. The little boy whose father left. The teenager trying to prove he was enough. The young husband trying to build a future. The father trying to protect his family. The man trying to survive a traumatic brain injury. The man who smiled and told everyone that he was okay while wondering if he wanted to keep on living. Every season of my life had asked something different of me. Every season of my life had asked me to wear a different mask. Not because I was pretending to be someone that I wasn’t. But because the mask was helping me to survive. For years, I believed that I had lost myself. Now I wasn’t so sure. Maybe I hadn’t lost myself at all. Maybe I had simply become whoever I needed to be to survive the life that I was living. I think that is true for all of us at one time or another. Maybe you have worn masks too. Maybe yours were not the same as mine. Maybe yours have different names. The Perfect Mother. The Provider. The People Pleaser. The Caregiver. The Class Clown. The Successful One. The Tough Guy. The One Who Never Cries. The One Who Never Asks for Help. The One Who Always Has Everything Under Control. We all wear different masks. Sometimes because we are afraid of being rejected. Sometimes because we are afraid of disappointing the people we love. And sometimes because somewhere along the way, we learned that simply being ourselves was not safe. So we became whoever the world seemed to need us to be. And after wearing those masks long enough, we begin to mistake them for our true identity. We forget what our real face even looks like underneath them. Maybe that’s why so many people reach middle age and ask themselves, “Who am I?” Not because they have changed overnight. But because they have spent decades becoming everyone else’s version of themselves. Maybe that is why retirement feels so scary for people who have worked all their adult lives. Why parents sometimes are unsure of who they are once their children leave home. Why divorce… Illness… Losing a career… Growing older… Or any other type of change can bring on a midlife crisis. Sometimes life does not just change what we do. Sometimes it changes who we believe we are. And that type of change can be terrifying. Some of the strongest people you will ever meet are wearing the heaviest masks, while pretending to be someone that they are not. The smile they wear may be hiding heartbreak. The confidence they project may be covering fear. The strength they show the world may be the only thing holding them together. We rarely know the battles that another person is fighting inside themselves. Sometimes we do not even recognize the battles that we are fighting ourselves. I had spent so much of my life trying to become what everyone else expected me to be, that I had stopped asking myself one simple question. “What do I need?” For years that question felt selfish. Today, I think it might be one of the most honest questions that we can ever ask ourselves. Because if we never ask that question, who will? Maybe that is why taking the masks off can feel so frightening. Without the mask we open up ourselves to criticism. Instead of striving to become the person that we want to become, we instead become the person the mask was trying to protect: The person who stayed silent. The person who always said yes. The person who forgot their own dreams. The person who hid their pain behind a smile. But maybe, instead of criticism, we deserve compassion for trying to become someone better. Maybe we were not weak. Maybe we were simply doing the best that we could at the time. Maybe we wore the mask because we needed its protection. Maybe we were simply so tired carrying everyone else’s burdens because no one had ever told us that we didn’t have to. Maybe we were simply wearing a mask so we could survive. You do not have to apologize for surviving. Forgiveness is not pretending that those years and those events didn’t happen. Forgiveness is not pretending that we had lost parts of ourselves along the way. Rather, forgiveness is looking back at the person that we were with compassion instead of criticism. And simply saying to ourselves, “Thank you.” Thank you to the little boy who waited by the window. Thank you to the young man who kept trying even when life kept knocking him down. Thank you to the man who smiled while quietly carrying more pain than anyone knew. Thank you to the man who survived. You carried me to this point. And now you don’t have to protect me anymore. I looked down at the masks that I had worn lying on the grass. For years, I thought that they had kept me from finding my identity. Now I realized that I was wrong. The masks had protected it. Without them protecting me, I might never have made it this far. I smiled. “Thank you.” Not because I wanted to wear them again. But because I no longer needed to. Mylo picked up each mask. He folded them carefully and placed them back inside my backpack. “Why are you putting them back?” I asked. He smiled. “They are still part of your story.” “They helped make you who you are now becoming.” “You just don’t have to wear them anymore.” I slipped the backpack over my shoulder. It didn’t feel any lighter. It didn’t need to. The backpack wasn’t meant to become empty. It was meant to remind me where I had been. The masks weren’t my identity. They were my survival. And there is no shame in surviving. Maybe you are still wearing one of your masks. Maybe, right now, you need to. There is no shame in that. So forgive yourself if you still feel like you need the mask. Forgive yourself if you are afraid to take it off. Forgive yourself if you have forgotten what your own face looks like underneath it. One day when the battle is over, when you finally feel safe enough, I hope that you will give yourself permission to take it off. Not because someone else tells you to. But because you are finally ready to do so. The light can feel blinding at first. After spending years behind a mask, the light of truth usually does. So forgive yourself for being afraid of that light. And when you are ready, step into it that light. Because underneath every mask you’ve ever worn… beneath every role you’ve ever played… beneath every version of yourself that simply tried to survive… your true self has always been there. Waiting patiently. Not to become someone new. But to finally be yourself. Thank you for sitting under the tree with me and listening to my musings. If you enjoyed this musing, please consider subscribing to my Substack, Musings Under the Tree. I write about empathy, personal growth, Being S.A.F.E., politics from time to time, and whatever else wanders through my mind while sitting beneath the branches. https://musingsunderthetree.substack.com/p/welcome-to-my-tree?r=1s6ofh [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/7/27/800075590/community/forgiveness-part-four-the-masks/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/