I always enjoyed the metaphor of the mask. The mask we wear to hide our true selves, the mask we are afraid to let down.

As I've grown older it seems less of a metaphor. The many "masks" I have to wear and choose to wear are all me- they aren't masks at all- just different aspects of one more complex individual, as we all are.

It may be easier to accept the many, often contradictory personas of who I am with the metaphor of a mask, but in truth I am all these things. Maybe the frightening thing isn't that the mask hides our true selves, maybe the unsettling thing is that we are the mask. It is just another aspect of our true selves.