Am I still masking?

The person is reflecting on their experience of wearing a different kind of mask when they are with certain people. They feel like a better version of themselves and are able to be more compassionate and present. They enjoy spending time with this family and are able to be spontaneous and helpful. However, they acknowledge that this is still a kind of mask and not their true self. They used to wear masks to fit in and be accepted, but now they prioritize being honest and listening to others without judgment. They feel like they are shifting into a parallel reality where they can be more loving and empathetic. They find value in being helpful and useful to others. The rest of the time, they live in their own world, observing their habits and filling their time with activities they enjoy. I realize I am still masking, but it is a different kind of mask to how it used to be. Because I spend most of my time alone, there's no need to mask. But when I'm with Kay, Eliza, Steve, I recognize that there is still a mask involved. It is a higher mask, in a sense. I feel like I am better, a better version of myself. I feel very positive, contented, happy to be involved in this family. And it causes me to raise my game. I am more compassionate. I feel that I am able to listen. I've always been good at that, but I'm able to listen to what I hear. I feel like I really care and can show it in how present I am with them. The attention I can give, the willingness to be there for them in whatever way they need. Because of my simple lifestyle, I can literally, at the drop of a hat, do something when asked. And that spontaneity is a real gift for someone whose life is very structured and requires planning and putting in the diary and finding time and a small slot. Because I don't experience any of that, I am able to give something that they cannot give in return. It's not needed in return, but it's my gift. 4K. But I realize that it is still a kind of mask. And it may be a positive mask in the sense that it makes me feel like I am raising my game, being more than I would otherwise be. I don't need to be him alone in the van. I feel differently when I'm not there. But as soon as I am there, it doesn't really matter sort of what's been going on or what I've been experiencing. As soon as I arrive, there is a raising of vibration, of emotional state. There is... While... I don't... It's not an attachment as such. But I often stay longer and am invited to, and often will, when we're finished, and usually when whatever's being done is over, very shortly they're leaving anyway for whatever comes next. Sometimes it's just to walk up into town. And often I'll walk up into town with them and just wander with them for a while, which they seem happy to have. I'm often invited. Do you want to wander? Yeah, I'll be wandering. And it's just nice to hang out in a moving situation, reminding me of what I used to do many, many years ago with my partner and my daughter. And would just wander around with them while they went shopping, without needing anything particularly for myself, but just enjoying doing these things, seeing things I wouldn't otherwise see going into places I wouldn't otherwise go. And also, we talk, Kay and I, and Eliza, and there is a feeling of connection that I like. So I'm happy to have more of it. And then at some point it is time to end, and we say goodbye, and I'll see them again shortly, soon. I return back to my solitary world. I can feel my vibration, my energy frequency lowering back to a more usual state. It's not a great deal lower, but it is definitely lower, because it isn't needed. I have to have a reason to express that feeling, and it's only in their company that I do. Kay's in particular, but when I'm also with Eliza, she is so strange and different, that it causes me to have to raise my game to deal with her, and we have become connected in our own way. I don't get to see Steve, her partner, as much as very often, and Steve was who I knew first. And when we are together, we talk about all kinds of things that are going on in the world, and it's interesting to have that kind of a conversation with him. But as I don't see him very often, it's mostly the experience I have with Kay. And it's not a possessive thing, it's not a desirous thing, that I want more of her, more from her, something I don't have. I don't have that. It is just simply feeling so present in the presence, in how she is, in how I am around her, that I feel it's very good for me. And I think it's good for her too, because I can help her in ways that she can't. Graphic design, technical technology, and how I am able to support Eliza in situations that give her freedom and space to do something she needs to do. And no one else can really do that for how they are with Eliza, and how Eliza is with me, and the spontaneity of that request. I never say no. There's no reason to say no. Unfortunately, I never have to. It would be a very rare moment, perhaps a hospital appointment, doctors, or something like that, that might clash, but it wouldn't really be a problem because it's worth it. Yeah, so I started this talking about the idea of still masking. I've always felt that the masking experience that I've had for a great deal of my life, while on one level was a protection mechanism, in a sense, was in fact ultimately a negative thing in many ways, because while it did protect me and help me to fit, it helped me to fit in an illusory way, so that who was fitting, fitting in, wasn't me. It was a version of me that the mask filtered through that made me more acceptable. And it seemed at the time that just being acceptable was good enough, not how I was being accepted, not for who I actually was. I didn't know who I was. It didn't seem important that I did, only that I was accepted in a way that made sense to me. Now, I can see how important it is for me to be myself, whoever that actually is. I don't need to be accepted for anybody else. I don't need anyone to see me in any particular way. Even the idea of who I am isn't easy to see. But I feel like I'm more of who I am around Kay and Eliza, Kay in particular, but it is still a kind of mask. You know, they say the expression, fake it until you make it. I mean, it's not exactly faking it, but because it is a kind of mask, it's not exactly who I am. It is a version of myself that is, in a sense, in the future. It is not someone I am actually all the time experiencing myself as. But in the right situation, in the right circumstances, around the right people, I'm raised up to feel what it's like to be a higher, a better version of myself, a more, I don't know how to describe it, I don't know how to describe it, because I'm not full of belief. I'm not identifying with those ideas and beliefs that I find I experience as I learn about, as I hear what gets said. I'm not agreeing and changing who I am to fit in. That's what I used to do. And it would be, I would do it so authentically, so convincingly, that I would believe it myself, because I would have to in order for it to be something that I could recognise. And it would become me. I would become it until such time along the way when I realised that it was something I had adopted because it suited me, because it gave me something I thought I needed. And in the process I got to experience something from the believing state, which eventually showed me that it was just a belief and it wasn't something I had to continue believing. But I don't do that now. If I come across an idea, a perspective that isn't something that I naturally feel, I don't just reject it or invalidate it. I can allow it, I can consider it, but I don't get attached to it. I don't just jump in and become it just because it would make it seem as if I am more similar, the same family, the same kind of person as the other. I used to think that that was essential in order to be accepted. And I suppose on some level it makes sense because the more like you are the other, the more likely you are to get on and spend time and for them to want to spend time in my company because they know that I like the same things they do, that I think about things in the same way they do. But in many instances that wasn't exactly true. It was a fakery, a masking, not to deceive or to hurt, but just to feel like I was acceptable. Now, it's more important that I am honest in my dealings with people, but I can recognise that it is still being filtered through a mask. But it's not a mask of protection. I don't think it's a protection mechanism anymore. I think it is a facilitator because it's not important for me to express my opinions or views or perspective. I do a little bit, but it's not important. It doesn't matter. I don't need to be agreed with or I don't need to educate or inform I'm actually more interested in what the other thinks and feels and hear it without judging. It's okay, whatever the other thinks and feels is okay because we're all entitled to think and feel what works for us, what is, what we've experienced. It's not for me to decide that just because I've come to feel a certain thing that their life experience isn't just as valid in how they've come to see a certain thing. There isn't one truth. There isn't just one version of Earth, of how we live. We are constantly shifting and I feel myself shifting into a parallel reality, you might say, where I am seen a certain way, I get to be a better version of myself, more loving, more compassionate, more empathetic, but less knowing, less knowledge. It's sort of there and it comes out when I'm communicating with Steve, for example, but that version of me that comes out with him isn't there present with Kay. I don't need to be someone who is knowledgeable, although there are times when I might have some insight into something and certainly when it comes to the technology I have more insight in it than she does by quite a long way and can bridge the gap by doing things for her or explaining something to her in a way that she can get. It causes her panic, it causes her brain to shut down otherwise. So I'm helpful and I need to be helpful, I need to feel like I am of use and it makes me feel like I am useful, I have value, just a small amount here and there, once or twice a week maybe for a few hours here and there and the rest of the time I'm just living in my own strange world, noticing my habits and patterns, looking at whether they are helpful and good for me, letting go of them if I can, if they're not, seeing what's going on, filling time, you know, watching things, reading things, this and that, I know how to fill up time, I've had a lot of practice doing it, I have a lot of time that others don't call on. That's why I don't mind dealing with Kay in whatever way she feels she can best use me spontaneously or otherwise because there's some, there's real value in it without having any kind of future agenda about what I may get from it or what may come from it or what I want from it or any of that. That exists. I don't expect anything. I just try to be as present as I can, as real as I can, as helpful as I can, as loving as I can, as connecting as I can, as friendly as I can until that's no longer required. So I don't know if it is a mask as such or if it is a version of me that's so much closer to day by day by day that there's not a great shifting so if it is a mask it's only thin but there is a difference and I've always entertained the idea and of course it may just be an idea that there should be or will be or could be a single version of me a core version of me that is always me. No matter what the situation is it doesn't matter how the situation changes who I'm with what's going on there is an integrity in the core me that deals with it the same way regardless. I'm closer to that idea perhaps but I'm not there yet. There are differences it still is dependent on what's going on and who I'm with as to how I feel about how I can be in this moment. So there is still this idea of a version different versions of me I'm a fragment I'm still fragmented from that core the understanding of some kind of core original self which is what I would aspire to connect with to reunify the fragments or the fragmenting mechanism into a homogenous whole if that makes any sense.