Chapter 4 - Masks

Chapter 4  - Masks

There are moments in life when we realise that fitting in and belonging are not quite the same thing.

In this chapter, Drew reflects on faith, anxiety, identity and the roles we play for the world around us. From a crowded Salvation Army gathering to a supermarket aisle lined with tins of soup, these are stories about barriers, masks, fences and gates — and the quiet search for places where we can simply be ourselves.
Because perhaps the people who matter most are not the ones who expect us to fit in everywhere...
but the ones who accept us exactly as we are.

This chapter includes reflections on anxiety, mental health and a period of emotional difficulty experienced by the author.

This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Lewis Smith. And to everyone who loved him.

Transcript

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Hello and welcome. Each week I'll be sharing stories, stories drawn from real life, from people I've met and moments that I've witnessed. And sometimes they're remembered exactly as they were, sometimes, of course, they're softened by time. But they're all brought to you with kindness and care. Welcome to big skies and small ponds. Chapter 4. Masks. There are moments in life when you realise not that you're in the wrong place, but you're in a place where you don't fit in as well as the others around you. So what do you do if you want to try to fit in or appear to? Now there's a question and a half. For a short time I wore the uniform of the Salvation Army. I could tell you about playing in the band, about concerts and carol services, even marching on Remembrance Sunday, and learning a solo piece for a Sunday service. But when I look back, all the stories of that time are about the music, not about any deep commitment to the cause. And I suppose that tells its own story. There was one occasion, though, when my thoughts really crystallized about the salvation army, about faith and religion, and about how you can only fit in for so long in a place where you clearly do not belong. I'd been invited to attend a huge gathering. Salvationists were meeting from across the region, all coming together for what felt like something very important. It was one of the largest crowds I had ever seen at that stage of my life. There was music and hallelujah, like I had never heard before, preaching, praying, voices rising and falling, and you really felt like you might have been transported to one of those great events that General Booth himself had led. The music was amazing. It was powerful and uplifting, and I longed to be playing. Not sitting on a hard wooden chair at the back of this huge hall. Gradually, as the evening wore on, you could really feel something building in the room. It crackled with anticipation, and then the moment came. The call for those who wanted to give their lives over to Jesus. An invitation to come forward and be received into a life with God. And I waited. And all around me people were moving, young people heading towards the front of the auditorium, some quite visibly overcome, as though something had reached them, touched them, claimed them, and more and more stood, and more and more stepped forward, and the intensity in the room grew, and I just sat on that hard wooden chair, and I watched, and I began to wonder why I still felt nothing. Everyone else seemed to feel something certain, and I didn't. And I remember thinking, what's wrong with me? For a while, I thought there must be something missing. But I know now it wasn't God. Looking back, I don't think anyone got it wrong that day, not them, and certainly not me. It just wasn't where I was meant to find my place. And perhaps that was the first time I became aware of it. Not a wall exactly, but something quieter, a barrier of some sort. You don't always see it at first. You just begin to notice that others seem to be able to step across something, to feel something, to be certain of something, and you remain just the other side of it. That's a feeling I've known on many occasions. And of course, there were times when you still, having noticed a barrier, put on your best game face, the mask of self-deception, and end up standing where you really don't feel like you should be. And you ask yourself, is fitting in really that important that we'd hurt ourselves to do it? Big skies and small ponds with Drew Baxter. You know it's one thing to feel that barrier as something that keeps you out of someone else's space. But what about when it's a barrier that's keeping others and everything else out of your space? And what happens when it no longer holds? It was in a supermarket that I first really understood this can happen. No, actually, understood makes it sound too neat to considered. Can we just say this? An event has stayed with me that happened in a supermarket back in 1997. I'd been on a prolonged absence from my work as a police officer after what I can only describe as a major mental breakdown. Yes, the mask had completely slipped at that point, but that's a story for another time. But at this point on this day, I was fragile, very fragile. My world had shrunk almost to a bubble that only allowed myself and Mrs. B to spend time together. I'd withdrawn to protect myself. But the time was coming for me to start making my world larger again. Mrs. B thought it might be a good thing to get out of the house, get a change of scenery. For the best part of three months I'd become something of a recluse. But on that particular day we made the journey to our local safeway. Yes, safeway, that dates me, doesn't it? Anyway, we took a trolley, we'd got a list, and we made our slow and steady progress through the aisles. Nothing remarkable, just the sort of ordinary thing that people do, that we were doing. And we found ourselves standing in front of rows of shelves, shelves and shelves of tin soup, dozens of them, at least fifty-seven varieties, and the plan was simple. Buy a tin of soup. Now that would be nice, wouldn't it? Soup for lunch. And then Mrs B asked me the question, which one would you like? And my wafer thin confidence was suddenly completely broken. Like dominoes falling. The first one went and I knew the next and the next would follow. A wave of anxiety came from nowhere. What soup did I want? How could I possibly decide? That choice, as simple as it might seem, was overwhelming, impossible in fact. The dominoes were rattling down in swift succession. Unstoppable panic followed. In that moment, standing in front of a shelf of soup, I realized I couldn't do it. I couldn't make the decision. I couldn't hold it together, and everything came flooding in. Whatever fragile sense of balance I'd been managing, whatever mask of normality I was trying to wear, well, it given way. We left the trolley in the aisle, and Mrs. B took me home. No soup that day. It seems such a small thing, a a tin of soup. A simple choice. But that was the moment I realised the barrier I had sensed before had not just been there to keep me out, it had been holding something in place, and now it wasn't. Again, looking back, there's no one to blame. I don't think there was any fault in any of it for anyone. Not in a room full of people who felt something I didn't, and not in a man who couldn't choose a tin of soup. It was never really about fault, just fit. And along the way, there have been people who quietly and without fuss who saw me as I was and accepted me exactly that way. And I think in the end that matters far more than fitting in everywhere. It turns out you don't need everyone to understand you, just a few who truly do. When you study drama, you inevitably end up trying on a wide variety of masks. Not just the mask of a character, but sometimes a literal mask. There's something fascinating about trying to project emotion when your face cannot be seen, hidden behind something which might even look grotesque in nature, and yet it can help hone many skills. You learn to communicate through the smallest tilt of the head, the tone of your voice, and those ever-precious pauses. Costumes too mask our usual appearance and can help bring a character to life. I remember fondly wearing a battered felt hat with two large ears attached, and somehow convincing an audience that I was a cart horse. The suspension of disbelief in theatre is paramount, of course. The mask of an accent, a change in physicality, adopting a stoop or a different gait when walking, these all come into play as we try to convince an audience that we have transformed into someone or something else, whether that be a lover, a rogue, or in my case, a farm animal. To be a good actor, you also have to let go of your defences. I recall how nervous I was about appearing on stage in my underwear. No, please don't picture it. But you learn to tell yourself something important. It's not you they're looking at, it's the character. And although it may not feel natural for you, it is for them. So I think we've established by now, theatre isn't the only place we wear masks. We do it all the time, not in a dishonest way, not to deceive. I don't mean to imply that at all, but because life seems to ask different things of us depending on where we are and who we are with. So we open a gate here and we close one there. We let this part of ourselves be seen, and we keep that part held back. We're constantly adjusting, shaping, becoming the person that the moment requires. It's a constant balancing act between being the person others need us to be and being the person we actually are. It's a quiet negotiation that rarely gets spoken about. Sometimes we wear a mask of strength because someone else needs to lean on us. Sometimes patience when inside we might feel anything but sometimes calm when everything beneath the surface is in turmoil. And we get used to it. So used to it, in fact, that we stop noticing when we've put the mask on. It just becomes what we do. But every now and then a question surfaces, a simple one but an important one. How often do we get to be us? Not the virgin that fits the room, not the virgin that makes other people feel comfortable, not any version that others desire of us to be, but just us. I'm not sure there's an easy answer to that. Because perhaps the truth is we are all of those things. The masks aren't false, they're just partial, different facets of the same person, shown at different times for different reasons. And maybe that's not something to resist, maybe it's something to understand. Because every now and then, if we're lucky, we find a place or a moment or a role where the mask doesn't feel like a mask at all. Where we don't have to open or close any gates or climb fences or worry about any barriers. We can just stand there as we are, and it fits. I've come to think of my old blue suit, the one I wear for funerals. It's sort of like a mask and a fence. It tells people who I am in that moment, or at least who I'm trying to be, someone steady, someone they can trust, someone who will hold things together when everything feels like it might fall apart, but it also protects me. Not by keeping people out, but by helping me manage what I take in. Because you can't stand in those moments day after day without some way of holding yourself together, and perhaps that's what it is not a barrier, but a gate. When I open when I need to and close again when it's time to step back. Not to stop feeling, but to enable me to carry on. Across the journey of my lifetime, there were too many occasions where I felt I didn't fit, but I know in my blue suit I fit. And do check the web page for previous chapters. You'll be very welcome the next time we meet. Until then, enjoy writing and living your own story.