My Mask

I was reading Kare Kano Manga today. It made me suddenly occur that what the main characters experienced at the beginning was very similar to me in everyday life. The story follows the female protagonist who on the surface seems to be a refined, intelligent, well-behaved, good tempered and pretty looking girl. Underneath, she is just a normal high school student who wants to be selfish and lazy. But because she loves being praised and admired by all those around her, she continues the facade and ends up losing her true self, so that she never has any true friends she can turn to. Besides her family, there are no other people who know what her true nature is like until one person accidentally reveals this, which forces her to confront herself.

In truth, what happened to her is very much similar to me. Since I was little, I had always never been very clever and was always constantly in trouble. Compared to my cousin who was like the model student at the time, I always felt so useless compared to her, and I envied how all the adults used to praise her, all the kids gathered around her. Even my parents would always use my cousin as a comparison to me, saying "Why did you do this? Look at Sally. She would never..." and the lecture would carry on.

However, along the line, I suddenly woke up one day and decided that I had had enough of being looked down upon. So I studied hard, worked hard in everything just so I could be the model student in my parents eyes, in my teachers eyes and in my friends' eyes. Eventually, I got what I had wanted. But I found myself being extremely depressed: there was nothing in my life that I had truly done for myself, everything was done for someone else, and what people percieved of me was not the real me. I felt extremely lost and frustrated, and there was a feeling of despair, as though I had fallen into an endless pit.

Even for the person I like. I strove to be what that person would like, what that person wanted and in the end, I was not myself. I suffered for acting out the part of the girlfriend that wasn't me, and because I was doing things that I did not want. I also suffered because I was trying to meet all their needs and none of mine were ever met, leaving a hollow feeling inside me. What was worse was that person liked something that I had made up; only liking my shell but not the pearl I was harbouring inside.

As the old saying goes, habits are hard to change! Facades are also hard to break. I have tried and tried to get rid of this outer me and reveal more of my true self. Along the way, I admit that I lost some friends, gained some true friends; I went through some sad times, but I gained many happy memories. All of which have been encouragement to me to keep on doing this until the day I can truly say: "I live for myself and I do everything for myself!"