Heaven's Cattle Prod

You know that feeling when your heart jumps nine inches into your mouth and you're standing there with your heart pounding between your teeth, praying the other person doesn't see it, and trying to talk past the bloody, beating thing?

Some call it vulnerability. I call it heaven's cattle prod.

All my life I'd kept as far away from that feeling as possible, wrapping myself in layers of independence like fluffy down quits, insulating my fears with rationalizations, and ducking into shadows whenever authenticity threatened to shine its caustic beam on me.

The unexamined life is not worth living, yet I have always preferred that pointless existence to the sudden jerk of pain as the bandage is ripped from the wound. If the dressing is never changed, the wound will fester, yet we prefer to sit in the stink of our rotten sores rather than risk them meeting the stinging wind and the unrelenting sun.

The worst thing is when we convince ourselves that the wounds are no longer there, were never there. We mask them somehow and insist that we are whole, even as the gangrene sets in.

I wore a mask for a long time. The mask of not needing a mate, a lover, a boyfriend to hold my hand and give me chocolates. I convinced everyone around me that I was a complete individual who was happy in her singleness. I even convinced myself. But underneath, the sore festered.

The problem with masks is that you forget you're wearing them. Masks feel safe, but they are dangerous things to wear. Far more dangerous than walking around naked. After a while, we think we are the mask. We are self-sufficient, we are independent, we are strong, we are capable, we are put-together. We forget that we are weak, pale from lack of sunlight, and unknown even to ourselves.

But then the day comes when heaven's cattle prod shocks the mask right off your face, and you're standing—white and weak and oozing with infection—before an unmovable force. The truth. And you're not sure you'll ever be able to breathe again.