A mask from authenticity, and authenticity from the mask

Being thrust onto the stage as a little girl in Germany, I was terrified of the people watching me sing and play guitar. Over time, I developed an intricate persona, a mask, which came with me onto the stage and represented me as I was not able to ‘simply be myself’ (which might be one of the hardest thing one could ever ask someone to be in such a situation). 

    The mask was a wonderful one. It kept me safe and I felt good with it. Yet at the same time, it never felt completely like me. It felt like a fragment of my imagination and therefore of me, yet a part was also missing. That authentic, loving part is stronger now, and it is calling out: ‘Be you... unapologetically you’. It says: ‘You have known me and felt so comfortable with me, yet you do not anymore. Be and live your authenticity more vividly right now.’ In this moment, the issue and the solution, the mask and the true Self become one, intertwined and loving each other in the dance of all these little bubbles of me coming together as an ocean, and I realize this wave and breath within me, from which I move and sway forward into the rest of my life. 

'What I do is me: for that I came'. - by Gerard Manley Hopkins