Taking off the Mask

What a week it has been, a wonderful one at that. I started helping do some media for the church that I attend and that was a blast. We got to shoot a couple of videos for a conference coming up this weekend and I got to edit them both. It is so nice to finally do something with my skills, I felt like they were going to waste. I started to reconnect with old friends and work on friendships with some new ones. This friday was a blast, a friend of mine was celebrating her end of chemo with a party of a lifetime. She decided to have Karaoke party and I felt like I had really come out of my shell.
In the past week just chatting with my mom, I started to have some revelations about myself. I realized that as open as I may appear actually I am not. I will easily let people into the surface part of my life but beyond that I am very closed off and guarded. For so many years (even before my past relationship) the people that I came to be so close to would hurt me. I thought that I was forgiving those people but I still held on to that hurt. I became a people pleaser, I only said and did what people expected me to do and say. The more those people would hurt me, the more I would try harder in thinking that "If I try harder, they won't hurt me". Because of this I gained a lot of superficial friendships on my part. Only the friends that dug harder and harder at the truth would I reveal it to them, but even then it wasn't my truest of true feelings. At one point in my life when it got really bad I began to convince myself of those lies.
Long ago, I started putting on a mask to cover all the hurt and pain, and as that hurt and pain began to build I took off that mask less often until one day I stopped taking it off all together. During that time I began to fear time to myself because I felt like I was sitting in a room with a person I didn't know and wasn't sure if I would like. I tend to get in a comfortable place in my life and stay there, refusing to go beyond that. I was comfortable in my mask. The recent events have created such a huge crack in my comfort zone that it has allowed me to take off my mask and to really allow me to see me. I have grown to love the woman that I am, all parts of me. That mask had deceived me into believing that I was defeated and I am not.
This weekend I had fun and I didn't have any of my comfortable crutches to hold onto, it was just me and of course this massive group of people. My friend's party taught me a lot. I let so many opportunities to celebrate life pass me by and I don't even think twice about it. I had forgotten what it was like to love life, to live life. I am tired of letting those moments pass me by unappreciated. I can't sit in comfort anymore, I just can't. I am so happy and I am ready to live again, unafraid and uncomfortably.