Unmasking Is Weird
For most of my life, I’ve felt fake.
Not dishonest. Not deceptive. Just… performed. Like every interaction came with a script I didn’t write but had to memorize to survive. Smile here. Ask that. Tilt your head just so. Don’t talk too much. Don’t talk too little. Don’t stim. Don’t fidget. Don’t correct someone’s mistake even if you’re absolutely sure they’re wrong. And whatever you do—don’t be weird.
The instructions were always clear, even when they were unspoken.
And I followed them. As best I could, given that I was just parroting behavior.
Because I wanted to belong. Because I wanted to be liked. Because no one told me I didn’t have to.
And then came the kicker:
“Just be yourself.”
Usually said by the same people who, moments earlier, told me to stop being too much, too intense, too quiet, too loud, too sensitive, too analytical, too literal, too much of whatever version of me had slipped through.
Be yourself. But not like that.
It’s no wonder I didn’t know who I was.
I wasn’t living—I was interpreting.
Reading the room. Reading the rules. Reading people’s faces for signs of approval or annoyance like it was a second language I had to be fluent in. Every interaction was a translation. Every gesture, a guess.
Like Friday—when I went to my favorite local coffee shop and saw the barista wearing a Rollins Band t-shirt—deep cut. She looked about my kid’s age, which made the whole thing even more unexpectedly heartwarming. My whole brain lit up. How many Rollins Band shows have I been to? How many Henry Rollins spoken word gigs? Even the Black Flag reunion tour. I wanted to tell her. I wanted to ask if she enjoys watching him play himself as a character with a different name in all those mid-’90s movies. I wanted to know if she knew he’d written several books. That his mind might be even louder than his music.
Instead, I took a selfie and captioned it:
“Also doing my best not to info dump about Henry Rollins to the nice barista in the Rollins Band shirt.”
Because I didn’t want to “back in my day” her. Because I wasn’t sure if that moment was welcome.
So I stuck to my incredibly specific coffee order—which she wrote down perfectly—though the barista on the machine made it wrong anyway.
So yeah, unmasking is weird.
Because the mask was never just a disguise—it was how I knew to function.
And now, I’m trying to peel it off.
Slowly. Gently. With as much grace as I can manage.
Letting myself speak plainly. Letting my face do what it wants. Letting silences happen. Letting the real me—the one who was buried under 30 years of adaptation—actually show up.
It feels like learning to walk in my own body again. Unsteady. New. Exposed.
Sometimes it’s freeing.
Sometimes it’s fucking terrifying.
Sometimes I catch myself mid-performance and have to stop and ask: Who am I doing this for?
And sometimes I don’t catch it until hours later, when I feel the headache, the shutdown, the hollow space where my energy used to be.
But I’m learning.
Unmasking isn’t about being brave all the time.
It’s about being real some of the time.
It’s about trusting that maybe I was never too much—just too honest in a world that prefers filters.
And if that makes me weird?
Good. I hope it makes me unforgettable, too.
What’s one band t-shirt you’ll always stop and talk to someone about, even if it makes you feel a little too much?
(Or maybe… especially if it does.)
CamiKaos 