Over the past few months, I’ve been getting to know my off-stage self. You see, I was raised to be an actor, thrust onto the stage and handed a script from the womb. I had a role to play that was to strike the perfect balance of pious humility and driven accomplishment. The role was a privilege, I was told, granted to me by divine prophecy. A destiny that to choose me meant that others were damned. So I’d better not waste the gift I was given. It was a heavy burden.
While some take to stage life with vigor, I came trembling and with so much fear. A constant low-grade tension accompanied all my days, which I leveraged to shoot for perfection. Much like a tight-rope walker, I knew that one misstep could end it all. And I was praised as I kept up the role and even turned my missteps into ways to strengthen my character’s persona.
My role was shaped by public opinion, and I learned to scan my surroundings from childhood to see how I was supposed to perform. A sensitive amateur, I had a gift for intuiting implicit messaging and it served me well. I edited my character’s likes and dislikes through the mere glances of the critics. I learned the superpower of shrinking my large self to fit in very tight places and discovered that gave me much more access, even if it meant that not all of me could show up. I discovered how to selectively see what fit within the script and to let go of the rest.
Over time, I’ve developed amnesia in which I have equated my role in the stage play to who I am. It’s hard not to do that when that’s all I know. When it’s more convenient for everyone around me to interact with me as the character in the play that they are a part of. When the complexity of my humanity is not wanted. When it gets in the way of efficient image management.
Sidelined from the stage, I’m discovering that the persona I know isn’t really me. And it feels devastating to my ego. Dare I say that I don’t even know the contours of my own inner geography? I’m embarrassed to admit I’m sometimes repulsed by the creature that I am. That I like my character’s role more than who I really am.
I remember my grandmother going through dementia and the anguish on her face when her mind played mean tricks on her day after day. And yet sometimes, I feel that anguish too when I discover that what I thought was a feature of my true self is simply a line from a pre-written script. A trick of selective memory that edits out what is deemed “bad” so that I can be “good”.
My masks have been slipping lately and though I have exerted so much effort to keep the shiny outfit in place, it’s starting to vanish like a golden mirage. And I’m left naked. I feel vulnerable and weak. Uncertain if my persona will survive this exposure.
I’ve spent much of my energy over the past few months finding projects to busy myself so that I don’t have to sit in the quietness and view my unmasked self. I know that the primal panic that fuels this activity is real and yet the more I run, the more the pain comes back with a vengeance. I knew that I was being invited to return to my loving life rhythms as an intentional practice during Lent, but instead I often chose distraction. In the moments when I allow God to lead me towards seeing myself through God’s eyes through contemplative prayer, breath prayers, journalling, walking and sitting meditation, and examen prayers, I find that my capacity to love my off-stage self grows.
And yet, if I’m honest, I still don’t fully love myself. A product of capitalistic perpetual improvement culture, I fixate on what I wish were different more than what I love about myself. It’s messy and complicated to own both my shadow and my spotlight. My inner saint and my inner sinner. The paradox of longing for holiness and knowing the unholy parts of me. And I realize that I like the idea of who I am much more than I actually like myself (whoever I am).
But it’s not all doom and gloom. I’m also experiencing freedom in ways I never knew before. For as I have less to lose, I have more to gain. I’m learning to look at my true self and my persona / ego with lovingkindness and compassion. I’m finding that God loves, even likes, my true self.
Reading Falling Upward by Father Richard Rohr, I find comfort in the reminder that the journey to integration and holiness is precisely through the downward path of falling, failing, and missing the mark. It doesn’t compute with the stage script I’ve depended on, but it resonates with the Living Word within my heart. As I fall over and over and over again, I’m discovering the heights of ecstasy that I have longed for since eternity past.