The Girl Who Waited

There are many masks that adorn our faces, like the shoe collection of an addict who slips on a different pair whenever the fancy takes them. Writers wear them to determine how different characters would behave, they may even wear the “I’m confident I know totally what I am doing and yes my book is almost finished” one when they meet their publisher for the first time. It is the same in life. You might not even realise you are wearing one but you do. Does anyone ever see the real us? That person we keep hidden from view. I know I hide the shy, quiet girl I know is still in there behind the mask of an outgoing crazy one because, well I am always afraid that the shy one is too boring to be around.

The girl who would rather be at home with her nose in a book or playing a game on her computer doesn’t really sell herself as being fun to be around. So the mask descends.  It was the same when I was younger. The girl who waited on those rare occasions she was asked out by people only for them never to turn up, the ones who thought it hilarious to then swear blind that they had called and that her doorbell couldn’t have worked. Only it did work and they never came. How could she be certain? Because she spent the entire time looking out the window…waiting. That “I don’t mind” mask was the toughest one to keep in place. The one that tried not to show how much comments hurt. Let the bullying just wash over her like a waterfall.Desperately looking for acceptance, a friend.  I don’t really remember what was the point when I decided to keep any kind of mask on my face and not let anyone passed that barrier. I guess I got tired of waiting, waiting for people to notice me, notice the tear stained cheeks and the lonely eyes.

Masks protect us from the outside world, so much so they become a permanent fixture. Sometimes that mask of strength sticks and becomes no longer a mask but a belief. In my case it became me. Perhaps masks are what saved me from the darkness that threatened to envelop me some 22 years ago. That mask of “I don’t care anymore, I give up” that first threatened to be my downfall suddenly became my savior. It took on a new stubborn meaning. “I don’t care anymore, I am me so there!” I was done waiting for others to like me, to be one of the cool gang, the fashionable ones. Now I just think who cares what is the ‘in thing’, who wants to be a clone of the next person, how boring is that?

There are still scars left over from those days, I still think twice before accepting an invite anywhere just encase I turn up and no one else does but now I am no longer the girl who waited. I am the girl who made a promise to herself never to wait again.