“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.”
Patrick Rothfuss – The Name of the Wind-
 
 
She pushed the limits.  Always hiding, the depths of her remained uncovered, remained buried.  She had many masks; she played many people, like an actor, she let herself fade into the background, but never let go. In a day she could wake up and stare into the mirror at herself, disgusted and angry that she should be this way.  She would turn and see the scars crisscrossing her thin, white arms and something would shrivel inside her until she couldn’t bear to hear her own thoughts. Then, she would choose a mask. 
She had many that had accumulated over the years of living alone.   Colorful and brilliant, they hid the dull lifelessness that she repressed.  With that, she would square her shoulders and walk outside, confident and proud in the sight of all.  She never changed, never wavered, and never seemed weak. But the emptiness battered the smiling cage that it was hidden behind and she stomped it down. 
Her family saw her as so perfect, so confident, so responsible.  She held onto her mask throughout everything and she hammered it onto her face like a false bottom of a deep chest never to be opened.  Nobody knew, and the ones who caught a glimpse of the real darkness underneath turned away quickly and forgot. Every day that she hung on she felt like her mask slipped just a little until she was grasping at the edges of it, trying to hold it in place with sheer force of will.
 And then one day she couldn’t anymore.  Everything that she tried to hide spread like wildfire, consuming the illusion that she lived under every day.  Though she tried to salvage the identity and her purpose, hiding became impossible as her mask fell, breaking into tiny pieces and smashing onto the dark concrete of her true self, never to be recovered.  No more hiding. 
She stayed inside, unable to face anyone.  Nobody came around, nobody asked for her; nobody seemed to even notice that she was gone.  And so she stayed away for three days, terrified and broken.  She thought that crying would be inevitable, but she remained dry eyed.  Even the release of tears was denied her, as if the fragments of her mask were forming a dam to block the flood of tears. 
When she immerged, she was broken and her soul was dead. Her family called her strange. They got angry with her for not being okay. They suggested doctors and therapists and counselors, and they asked her what was wrong.  But how could she explain that a part of her is not whole and that all of their words were knives slashing into an open wound?   How could they understand?  So she remained wordless.  She tried the drugs, the counselors and the doctors, but none of it filled her.  And the wound got deeper and crueler until it pained her to even think.  They asked her what changed, but they didn’t understand that it wasn’t her that changed, it was their perception of her.  It was the breaking of the mask that kept the real her from their sight. It had been weak and fragile, but they had left it, never daring to dig past it until it was gone. 
When it finally became too much, she left.  She erected new walls, created new masks and begun again, and again, and again. She never stayed in one place for long, never gave anyone the chance to see her darkness.  But she never healed.