Behind the Mask

My mask is not fully painted. Several areas are exposed and bare, and the color theme is earthy and grounded. This reflects the ways I’ve grown and changed over the past several years since graduating college and spending three years on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. That place forced me to surrender to the weather, the harsh realities of the world that for so long I’d been protected from, and most importantly I was forced to reckon with the fact that I am grown now, and I must take all of the things I am learning to decide what kind of work I will do, what kind of person I will be, and where my place in the world will be.

I am trying to keep the parts of me alive that became calloused, and then softened through the winters in Rosebud. In the environment of medical school I am finding myself tempted to be caught up in the competition and selfishness that permeated my undergraduate education at Emory, even as I attend a school that prides itself on collaboration. It reveals to me how much of these attitudes we self-impose – and that if we are willing to actually open our eyes and look at what’s there, often the things we THINK are there, are in fact NOT. I am finding that the more I look (instead of assuming the environment that has been the norm for so long for me), the more I see opportunities to be my whole self with my classmates, and invite others to do the same. We all benefit from each other’s willingness to be bravely vulnerable. And we all need to be reminded that there is, in fact, room, for all of us.

It was cathartic to depict the mask I have learned to adopt while completing clinical rotations. Over the course of my medical education, I feel I have had to subvert my natural instincts. I have to remind myself that it makes sense that, as a learner, I feel uncertain of what I am doing. Yet, as a medical student, I feel pressure to feign confidence and composure. My mask is painted in the silver-gray, red, and blue of a superhero’s mask to illustrate this confident persona, the one who can rise to the occasion and take on more. But in contrast to the rest of the mask, the area around the eyes is painted in colors to reflect various skin tones, signifying humanity. These eyes are taking in the human experiences of the patients around her and reflecting a similar bewilderment and vulnerability.

My mask represents my identity as a healer and empath. Green is healing to me. The bright green side of the mask is the way I try to project for all my patients- bright, cheery, warm, and open. However, the dark side is how I feel the majority of the time, still a green healer, but dark, drained, and tired.  Something needs to change.

My mother’s struggle with bipolar disorder defined my childhood.  For weeks on end she was pure, joyous sunshine.  By day she frolicked with us with the energy of a child.  We put on plays, sang songs, and adopted pet snakes.  While we slept, she stayed up all night cleaning, cooking homemade teases and composing her own music to enjoy.  Mom’s effulgent jubilance burned like brushfire, shining brightly yet fizzling quickly to ashes.  Her rays of sunshine became tears. T he cold, angular reality pushed the sun away.

I feel like my personal successes and achievements (white line) are flanked by the sadness of my broken family (blue lines). Sometimes it makes me feel bitter and guilty.  Rather than view this dark pool of bitterness as a detriment, I view it as a fountain of empathy to understand my patients.  Indeed, the blue sadness gives me wisdom and the sunny days make me kind.  Despite the chaos my mothers mental illness caused, the sunny days burn brightest in my memory.  Mom made me feel loved, intelligent and beautiful.  I love her.

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Date unknown

Feb. 2015

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