Masks

The subject of discussion at girls' group last night was removing our masks and being real with one another.  Or that was the plan.  There was little discussion, and any masks being worn were decidedly not removed.

There are six or eight families represented in this group, most in various degrees of fracture.  Honestly, they run the gamut from "strong, well-parented, and healthy" to "I quit".  There are masks aplenty.

 I hope the girls, average age 15, have adults they trust, who give them wise advice or just a compassionate ear and shoulder.   I get barely twenty minutes a week with them so of course they aren't going to confide in me; they don't know me, and don't believe I know them.

I don't know them individually on an intimate level, but I know them better than they imagine.  I have at various times of my life been most of them.  One great advantage of being old is that one has many lives and personalities to look back on and draw from.  I also have the advantage of being friends, or friendly, with many of their parents.  Their mothers, WHO WOULD NEVER BETRAY THEIR CHILDREN'S CONFIDENCES (yes, I am yelling) do turn to other mothers for advice and comfort.  This is what mothers do, beginning with "is this normal" and "what is this rash" and ending -- never.

I did not have much hope that masks would fall during the evening.  Two of the three adults sponsoring this group also have daughters in it.  In this situation there are two possibilities:  either there is already open communication and things are okay in the relationship; or one of the pair, most normally the daughter, is surviving by clutching that mask and hoping to ride it out until freedom arrives in some form or other.

It has never before been so clear to me that sometimes the masks we wear are foisted upon us by other people.  We are pounded and pummeled with expectations and demands and the absolute refusal by the other to believe that we are in any way outside the box they have constructed for us.  This is frustrating at best, and at worst leads to "unexpected, unexplainable" rebellion, and desperate demonstrations of autonomy that may bear tragic lifelong consequences.

I don't know all these girls well, but I know their situations well enough to speculate that some of the ones in the harder places will come through with banners flying, and some of the ones with the best looking "boxes" are in real danger.