text: Every day I paint a mask. The features shift and change with the tide of my own self-confidence but it’s always my face. The different masks of me, which I wear to avoid scaring my loved ones. I have a mask for strangers, a mask for friends, a mask for acquaintances, and one for family. I have masks for myself, depending on my mood, and sometimes they fight while I’m driving to work. These masks are not lies, merely a fraction of the truth. Every day I paint these fractions and every day I see the same face. It’s not until I show the canvas to someone that the image shifts into the fraction they find familiar. I’ve seen a carefully painted smile droop down into a stoic stare. I’ve seen an impotent scream blur into a smile so bright I don’t recognize it. I stare for hours at that smile and wonder how a painting of my own face could hold more joy than I’ve ever felt. Occasionally, I paint to try and grasp that joy. My friends ooh and ahh and compliment my smile. They go on and on about how impressed they are with my ability to pull such joy from myself. They bemoan how they are "forever tortured artists" and “full of emotion and anxiety”. I suppress the urge to tell them how I hope every day for anxiety, for anything. I say my polite goodbyes and take the painting home to inspect every line and crease in my face. I stare deep into the eyes, windows to an empty house. I try to find something that would send their impression of me into my heart but all I find is the same dying ember, an ember too dull to feel alive but still too scared of going out to extinguish itself. I hold onto it just to fill the space. I plummet into a dark abyss of existential dread. And just when I think it’s all for nothing I realize that it’s just another mask. A mask that protects me from failure. A mask that makes everything easier. And if it’s just a mask then it must be a lie. The portrait I paint returns to a smile. It’s not as brilliant but it’s real and the ember grows to a small flame. I take that flame and use the energy to explore. I leave my home and go out into the world. I see strangers helping strangers. I see families. I see lovers and friends. The beautiful coexistence that makes up life. I take it all in and acknowledge my unimportance. My problems are nothing in the grand scheme of the world. All around me are swarms of stories, big and small. People with their own masks that they just never put to canvas. I see a car rip down the road with no regard for others. I see a woman stop in the middle of the sidewalk to blabber some nonsense and block my path. The scream of a spoiled child. The barking of an untrained dog. None of them understand how small they are. They don’t realize that their petty problems are so very unimportant. My flame burns hot with annoyance and anger and the portrait I paint when I return is one of rage. I put it on my wall in the backroom so that only I can see it. I hold it for myself. I need it to be pure, unspoiled by the gaze of someone I know who could transform it back to that vapid grin. But even as I put it up on my wall the face turns back to an even stare. My flame has burned too bright and used up its fuel. I can now barely remember the rage that was there. My painting continues and the faces stay the same. I’ve added one for the frustration that was born from my efforts. My walls are covered in half-remembered paintings. I stopped inviting friends over as the number of canvases has worried them. I played it off as a joke and told them that I’ve just been inspired lately. They think I’m getting rid of them all in a week or so. I don’t intend to. I keep hoping that one of them sticks but they never do. All I get is flashes of feeling, little sparks of something that gets lost in the void. I once threw a can of paint on the canvas in a desperate attempt to see something new but the paint just slid down the front. I ripped another canvas to shreds and it reformed in an instant. Every night I walk to bed through a hallway of blank faces. I can barely remember the spark I once had. There’s no energy for rage. My pursuit is now an addiction, a madness. I thought I had a breakthrough several days ago. The face that appeared when I pulled back from the canvas was unfamiliar to me. It had a look of contentment, of satisfaction. It also wasn’t me. I had hoped to paint a new mask for myself but a new face was at least a change from the endless blank stares. Perhaps I could learn more about my own spark by painting others? I took the painting to my hallway, emboldened by my success, and put it up next to the others. I stood back and something in my head emptied out onto the floor. The painting was me. It had always been me. I just couldn’t recognize my own face anymore. I felt my consciousness float to the ceiling. I was looking down on myself from above. I’m still me, but I don’t know what me is. I watch my body go back to the canvas. I watch it pick up the paints and continue with another self-portrait. The quality is better than ever before. The strands of the shirt, the individual hairs on my head, and the pores of my skin are painted in vivid detail. The work is incredible but I notice that the portrait has no face. I wait for my body to finish but it just picks up the faceless painting and hangs it on the wall. Then it hangs another. And another. The blank stares and old emotions are replaced by an endless line of faceless nothings. And that’s where I am now. Watching from above as my body paints faceless self-portraits. I no longer want to find a new mask. I have no more masks. These are who I truly am. Nothing. An empty sack waiting to be filled. Eventually, my body requires food and so it leaves the apartment. My body talks to friends and it mimics their laughs. It hugs my family and tells them it loves them only after they say it first. I float above it and watch. Not happy. Not sad. Not scared. Not joyful. Not anything.