POKER FACE

“As babies… we were easy. One cry meant you were hungry, another you were tired. It’s only as adults that we become difficult. We start to hide our feelings, put up walls. It gets to the point where we never really know how anyone thinks or feels; without meaning to we become masters of disguise.”—Grey’s Anatomy

Sometimes it is so easy to pretend a feeling does not exist. Sometimes it is so easy to pretend a problem does not exist. You sit there in denial while the elephant in the room stares at you square in the face.

There are people in your life that make you walk on egg shells. You aren’t sure whether or not to tell them the truth for fear of setting them off. There are people in your life that don’t sugar coat it—and sometimes that is exactly what we need.
If we all lived live like Horton the elephant, maybe the world would be better off…”I said what I meant and I meant what I said an elephant’s faithful one hundred percent.”
             Sometimes without meaning to, or maybe deliberately meaning to—we wear disguises…the work disguise, the friend disguise, the family disguise. Some we have mastered—some we still fail at. Why do we still continue to put on masks? Like I said earlier, it is easier to pretend that something does not exist that to own up to what you feel. We pretend. We hide. It is easier to feel nothing than to feel everything.
I used to be a master at putting up walls—hiding from life, hiding from what I felt. I was the perfect actress—or so I thought. Eventually, the walls I built broke and all the secret and lies came spewing out like lava. Therapy became my refuge, and it has helped me to clean up so much of what I destroyed in hiding.

 A wise seven year old struggling with progeria once told Barbara Walters, “Be fabulous. Don’t let one thing ruin your life.”

Put away the mask. Hide the disguise. Own up to what you feel. Tear down the wall. Just be. Love fiercely. Allow yourself to feel—you’re not ridiculous. Someone somewhere has felt what you have felt at one moment or another. Take risks. Take chances.

Save the poker face for poker.