What's Under The Mask

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/92/leave-the-mask-on

My family is super professional with our mask wearing. We don't talk about anything personal, we never actually talk about what we want to talk about, and we never, ever, share emotions with one another.

This year two of my dad's sisters have passed away. I was on the phone with my mom and I asked her, "How is Dad doing?" or something along those lines.

She didn't even try to respond with how he's doing. She skipped entirely over it, not given any response about my dad's mental condition with his siblings dying, and covered it all over with a mask. I tried to break through the mask and get to know them on a more personal level, like they're actually real people that have emotions with family members die, and nope, masks were up and there was no way I could get through.

Even considering the weird possibilities of what could come out, and even the potential of the icky details that might be discussed, I would love to somehow have a one on one with one of my parents (I don't trust them together, they'd start covering for each other and distracting from the topic at hand) and get some honest answers out of them. I have so amny questions for my parents, especially my dad, to try to figure out who in the world they are. I would love to get more details from him know more about his life and who he is, and I want to know all of it. The unfortunate side to this is that there's not that line of communication. I don't have any way to break trhough that mask. I have the ability to smile and nod at him, say things that are super fluffy like talking about lawn care, but actual person to person conversations where you talk about what you like and what you hate, or even your personal life, there's just nothing there.

A lot of people I know have this idea of calling their parents whenever they have questions. When in doubt, they call up Mom and Dad. Even when they don't have a reason to call their parents, they give them a call. To me, that is the weirdest thing in the world. I'm not going to call them just to chat. I'm not going to ask them for help. We don't have that relationship.

It's great and all to have a mask on from time to time, but it's frustrating at the same time when you keep those masks up around your family. It's sort of sad when I start to think about it how little I know about my family, and I'm not even talking about them as their personal histories, I'm talking about their individual personalities. We always avoided each other. We still avoid each other. I haven't spent time with my family since before I was a teenager, and so for all intensive purposes we hardly know each other and really don't get what's going on in each others heads because we never actually talk to each other.