On masks, and good company

Yesterday morning, while trimming my beard, there was an incident with the scissors. The beard had gotten a little unruly, and I was trying to trim it back to something more orderly, less like an aspiring Mountain Man. The first pass went smoothly, stray whiskers were brought into the fold. The second pass went just as well, as I mimicked the motions that I've seen hair stylists make when trimming what little hair I have left up top. I should have left well enough alone, but no, I decided to go big. I moved a little closer to my chin and tried it again, and was shocked to discover on the third pass that the hair on my chin was much, much more sparsely arrayed than I had thought. That thin spot had been hiding behind the surrounding whiskers as camouflage. With a single *snick* of the scissors, I undid a years worth of growth, and kicked a hole in the thin plaster veneer that I had been erecting in the mirror.

The goatee had become a mask. Originally started to appease someone else, the more it grew in, the less I felt that I looked like the old me. The me that had wasted so many years, that had neglected so much, that had been so foolish. The childish me, and not the new man. "Fake it til you make it!" they say, and the goatee had been helping me, I thought, fake "it". Granted, it wasn't some magical, all powerful totem that symbolized my increasing good looks, but it was, I thought, a good look for me, and hid alot of things that I didn't like. It symbolized my distance from the man that I was.

The initial damage done, I had to plow ahead and finish the job. The beard went, followed by the mustache. The amount of hair in the sink was shocking. And there I was, weak chin framed by a double chin. Weak lips in a pouty mouth, too small for the wide face that it had been planted in. Hair cut too short to effectively frame my head. There was nothing there that I found pleasant to see, and I spent the rest of my day brooding on it. I skipped lunch, determined to punish myself for not having come further, for not being more. I took stock of who I was, and found so many reasons to be so disappointed in myself.

Over dinner, after a movie, I poured my insecurities out to Dawn. I spoke of my fear, that my constant fear of failing in my life would become a self fulfilling prophecy. I shared my doubts over my ability to become the man that I should be. And found, after a series of insightful questions, that I don't really even know who that man is. I can't define what it is that I hate about myself. I just know that I'm not who I should be, when compared with other people of better station at my age. I should be doing more, showing more evidence of growth, demonstrating my value. If I'm not succeeding, I'm failing. Instead of acknowledging that I could be set out on the right path, that I could be worthy of something good in my life, I raise the bar of my self expectations higher until I find a place in which I'm lacking, and then flagellate myself over it. I set myself up for failure by allowing myself no room for error, no room for growth.

All of this, triggered because I took away the mask that I had been hiding behind. Well, not really. That implies that these issues were ever far from the surface even when I had the goatee. They were always preying on my mind, but now I felt that my deficiencies were out in the open, on display for all to see. That everyone who saw me would be as disgusted with me as I have been in myself. That I would be "found out", exposed for the unworthy man that I am. We talked about all of this, over some really good food that I had initially been reluctant to order. It was, I'm sure you can imagine, a pretty emotional conversation. I felt as though I were releasing some bitter poison, lancing a boil and venting to this wonderful woman who has been so amazing to me. She then, methodically, rationally, logically dismantled my self loathing. Cut through it with insight sharp as a scalpel, dissecting the root of my fears, and showing me where the reality diverged from my expectations. With the strength of her belief in me, her unconditional love for me, she reinforced how lucky I am. She is committed to me, and to seeing me become as happy as I can be with the man that I am.

I've decided to start a program of some kind, and am looking into options, so that I can learn to begin seeing the man in me that everyone else sees. I'm still growing the goatee back, though. Now I know why it's a favorite look for chubby guys with double chins.