The Masks We Wear
Where in the depths the Air is Heavy, the Soul Sharpens
Descent Into Silence
There’s a specific kind of silence that settles after life punches you in the throat.
Not because of some dramatic upheaval you saw coming—but because you were just following the standard script. Skipping along the expected life path, hitting the cute little cyclical roller coasters handed to you. Work hard, show up, provide, repeat. Then the ex wants more. The kids need more. The world demands more. And somehow, the strongest ones—the ones who hold it all together—become the ones most exploited.
It’s like suddenly finding yourself in the Marana Trench—so deep that light doesn’t reach you, so pressurized that even your thoughts feel compressed, drifting further still into Challenger Deep. You didn’t dive into it; you stumbled. One minute you’re coasting through life’s routine loops, and the next, you’re submerged in something far darker.
At first, you might mistake the stillness for peace—some kind of eerie calm. But it's not. It's containment. The layers that surround you are not comforting; they're restraining the pressure that’s about to implode. That silence? It’s not peace—it’s pressure. A dangerous hollow, crushing stillness where you realize most people aren’t equipped to meet you where you are. They want your pain palatable. Your grief brief. Your breakdown clean. Not because they’re cruel… but because rawness terrifies them.
The Masks
So instead, you get masks.
Polite check-ins. Guilt-disguised distance. Comments that sound like empathy but feel like insulation. “Let me know if you need anything,” they say—knowing full well you won’t. “You’re strong,” they say—because the illusion of your strength lets them feel safe. "Hey, how you doing?" they ask—not to truly hear, but in hopes you’ll echo the same shallow rhythm back. A transactional mask disguised as connection.
But strength isn’t always stoic.
Sometimes it’s silent rage. Sometimes it’s numb survival. Sometimes it’s crying in a car while everyone thinks you’re on your way to something better.
And when you’re in that place—down in the trench—you start to see it all for what it is.
We wear masks to survive.
To lead. To love. To function.
The “rock” mask. The “provider” mask. The “I’m fine, don’t worry about me” mask.
And here’s the thing: you start to see through all of them. That’s both your gift and your curse. You hear the false tones in people’s voices. You spot the performance behind the concern. You even catch yourself slipping into autopilot just to survive the moment without shaking the ground beneath someone else.
But that doesn’t mean you’re fake. It means you’ve been adapting. Holding space for people who won’t—or can’t—do the same for you.
What you’re facing now is raw. There’s no script for this part. And that’s maybe the hardest, most honest thing about it: you’re finally too tired to wear the mask, and too wise to pretend others aren’t wearing theirs. Maybe it’s a gut punch that knocks the air out of your routine—or maybe it’s just the slow erosion of pretending everything’s fine. Either way, the mask falls. And what’s left is the truth you can’t unsee.
Over time, we forget we’re wearing them—until life tears them off, and we’re left standing in front of the mirror, unfiltered, wondering what the hell happened to the person underneath.
The Mirror Effect
The trench seems to expose all of this.
Not just your own face, but everyone else's too.
You start to notice patterns of how guilt is a performance, not a gesture. How discomfort masquerades as concern. How silence isn't always absence—it’s avoidance.
And you also realize this:
The world is more afraid of your honesty than your collapse.
Let that sink in. It's almost funny in a twisted way—everyone demands honesty, praises vulnerability, even romanticizes authenticity. But when faced with the real thing—raw, unrehearsed, and inconvenient—they flinch. They retreat. Because honesty doesn’t just reveal you; it reveals them, too.
Honesty—especially when it’s unpolished and inconvenient—threatens fragile systems. I've written before about the different types of leadership. Some individuals are elevated into positions of power with no real training, no self-awareness, no scars from the trench. So when they encounter someone who has lived through the fire, they flinch. They feel threatened by the grounded truth that experience brings, and sometimes retaliate in fear. When in truth, they should be holding on to that person—not out of defense, but out of reverence—for the chance to learn from the wisdom earned in the fire.
But it’s not just leadership. Friendships carry similar fragility. Families too. The people closest to you often struggle the most when you speak plainly. Because your honesty forces them to confront what they’ve been avoiding in themselves. And when that happens? Masks go up. Or worse—they turn away.
Because when you stop pretending, you hold up a mirror. And most people would rather comfort the mask than sit in the mess.
Self-Release
I find it interesting—almost absurd—that I think of everyone else before I even consider myself. I’ve spent so much time holding space for others, managing their comfort, absorbing their burdens. But the truth is, the only person who has the power to release the pressure is me. And maybe, just maybe, letting go isn’t selfish—it’s survival.
There’s no manual for what to do when your identity collapses—when you lose the role you thought defined you, or the job that gave you worth, or the ability to keep everything stable for everyone else.
But there is truth down there, in the trench. Not the kind you read in books or hear in Motivational Speeches—but the kind that only reveals itself when the noise of performance fades. Down there, you start to notice the patterns—what you do to protect yourself, who steps forward and who steps away, which voices echo from your past and which ones you need to finally let go. The trench doesn’t just strip you—it sharpens you. It shows you what’s real because everything false gets crushed by the pressure.
It’s not pretty. It’s not poetic. It’s the kind of truth that rips through illusion and says:
“You’re not weak for falling. You were just carrying too damn much for too damn long.”
That’s the moment when the real work begins.
Not rebuilding the mask—but letting go of the need for one at all.
Breathing After the Trench
We’re taught to rise fast. Shake it off. Get back to normal.
As a father, I always tried to model resilience for my kids. When they fell, we didn’t coddle or scold—we celebrated. We’d shout, “Hooray! You failed! Now you’ve leveled up.” Because falling isn’t the end. It’s how you learn where your footing actually is.
The trench has its own rhythm. Its own wisdom.
It slows you down. It strips away distraction. It shows you what’s true when there’s nowhere left to hide.
But make no mistake: you’re not meant to live there.
The lesson isn’t in staying buried—it’s in learning to release the weight you were never meant to carry.
The trench teaches you the need to breathe again. Not just as a survival reflex, but as a reminder that you've been holding your breath for far too long—managing others, wearing masks, bracing against collapse. It reminds you what your own breath sounds like when it's not filtered through someone else's expectations. To feel what’s real. To stop performing.
And then—to rise, not because you’re told to, but because you're ready.
Surfacing
And that is the point:
Falling isn’t failure. Masking without questioning is.
The trench doesn’t exist to trap you—it exists to teach you. To strip you down so you can finally feel the difference between the pressure you chose… and the pressure you inherited.
And once you’ve seen that, once you’ve heard your own breath again—unfiltered, unfaked—you don’t stay buried.
You rise. Not out of duty, but out of clarity. You rise lighter. Mask off. Weight shed. You rise honest.
Prajna. A word for wisdom—but not the kind that sits safely on a bookshelf. This is the double-edged kind. The kind that sears your illusions before it saves you. It cuts and clarifies. It strips and steadies. It doesn't make life easier—it makes life true.
Honestly, they should be teaching this shit in school.
Final Words
You’re not meant to drown in the depths.
You’re meant to surface—with lungs full of your own breath.
The trench won’t kill you.
But pretending might.
Let go.
Exhale.
And finally—breathe like you mean it.
It’s taken me nearly 50 years to even begin learning this.
And I’m still learning.
And anyone who tells you otherwise probably hasn’t sat in their own silence long enough to hear the truth echo back—while still wearing a mask.