Unmasked...

I got out of a lifetime of HEAVY mask wearing, and shape shifting to survive and conform to the numerous systems of control & abuse. Systems whose main goal was to BREAK ME, and make me lose, ME. Systematically. Tragically, I let them have me. And use me. And confuse me.

I’ll never forget the day when all of the dots started to connect.  I was standing in a room, filled with empty boxes. I was getting ready to embark on helping my brother pack up his partners things. She had been murdered (*allegedly*) by her narcissist ex-husband, in broad daylight. Execution style. As she went to pick up her two young children from summer visitation.   She did everything right and was still a statistic.  Another victim to another system. 

There I was…standing in a room full of things representing her life. Past, present and all her hopes for the future, right at my feet.  As I sifted through pictures and packed up her clothes, I began to see the evolution unfold.  The once mousy and timid young girl, surviving from much trauma. 

Then. 

The woman who started to learn to love who SHE was. Not just what she was TOLD to be.  I remember taking down the tie-dye dress off the velvet hanger, she was wearing, just one week before she died… There was still a faint hint of fragrance… and I remember packing up her cropped spaghetti strapped shirts, and tighter fitting garments, grasping to comprehend the stark contrast of how she grew up, shown in the pictures strewn across the room, compared with the journey she had begun.  She had finally started discovering who she was … Learning to love, truly, and trust. Learning to stand up! And her fight became robust. She had already beaten so many insurmountable odds…But, in an instant that was gone.  She no longer had a choice.  

There I am, drowning in tears, while I try to pack her life up in a box…before she really got a chance to fully break out of the one she was placed in for so long. 

But I still had a chance to break out of mine. I HAD to decide.  

With a lump in my throat and tears streaming down my face… And piles of memories condensed down and taped… I would no longer conform . No matter the cost. 

That I would break free from that box.

I chose going forward, to be authentically me. I was never the same again. One by one I threw each mask on the ground and shattered it.  I got so good at breaking them I mastered it. Then one by one, I was shunned. I was stunned. And then dumped into deconstructing all the systems head first. It was so heavy, it physically hurt. 

Now, my reality looks like identifying, acknowledging and feeling the trauma instead of glazing it over and minimizing it. It looks like reparenting myself out of trauma, choosing freedom in spite of others discomfort. It looks like choosing healing instead of fake existing. It looks like learning to be your own best friend and trusting your intuition, while taking absolutely no shit from anybody. It looks like rediscovering who I am all over again without any of the masks. sometimes daily. It looks like life outside of the box. Perfectly imperfect. 

Just me. 

Learning to be.

Free. 

~Meg Priest