Like you and everyone else, I wear a mask to the world. Like you and everyone else, I also hide a vulnerable side from the world. These sides judge each other, but I learned how to become more nonjudgmental and accepting of both of them, and come to greater peace with both sides through the help of a psychotherapist.
She is an art therapist and asked me to draw an image, and I did not realize I was drawing myself until I was almost finished. I drew a man, in which his right side is in blue marker—a symbol of one side of myself, and his left side is in green—a symbol of another.
The right side of the man was drawn in smooth and swift lines and his right hand tipped his elegant hat. This is my mask, how I present to the world. The left side of the man was drawn with a green marker, with weak, wobbly, and broken lines. He looks away to his left in pain and sadness. This is my vulnerable side, what I hide from the world.
The man’s right hand is blue, belonging to the blue right side. His right hand not only tips his blue hat with finesse, it also simultaneously tries to hide his green face, to prevent others from seeing his pain. This is how my mask acts like.
The man’s left hand is green, belonging to the green left side. His left hand is quite bloated and sickly in appearance in comparison to his graceful and healthy right hand, and it grasps haplessly onto his blue right arm, as if begging it to stop trying to hide away the vulnerable left side. This is the inner experience of my vulnerable side.
After drawing the left and right sides, I realized that the drawing represents these two aspects of myself, my mask and my vulnerable side, struggling with one another. Then I noticed that the two sides are not even touching; there is a gap in the drawing between the blue and green sides. They want nothing to do with each other.
In a spontaneous feeling of compassion for myself—I took a graphite pencil and added buttons and lines to the man’s shirt to connect the two sides together, bringing the blue and green sides together.
There is no better side. There is no truer side. Each side has its meaning and its own truth to speak of. My blue side wants not just to protect myself but also others. This part of me is what brings my smile and good humor to the world, hoping people can feel alright. It tries to be put together, in fear of burdening others with myself.
My vulnerable green side wants to break down—it is lonely, it wants to be acknowledged, it is calling out to me. And yet, by doing so, it makes me all the more human, and thus it allows me become sensitive to others in a way that no intellectual knowledge can let me know how. My vulnerable side wants me to not just become aware of who I am at a deeper level, but to allow myself to become more aware of others at a deeper level—of the universal human condition.
The blue side wants the green side to go away, so that it can always bring its “A-game” to the world. The green side would like to left alone, and is tired of the external pressure of the blue side, my outer personality. Yet when I button the two sides together, I find they can act collaboratively.
For how can I ensure others feel alright and unburdened as my outer personality wants, without understanding how pain is experienced as my vulnerable side knows at too well? How can my outer personality bring out its best to the world if it does not understand myself as fully and wholly as the vulnerable side does?
How can I find reprieve from loneliness as my vulnerable side wants, without connecting with others as my outer personality strives to do? And how can light can be shed upon the human condition, if only the outer personality is allowed to bring out the light?
