The realization was sudden. I was laughing. Not because anything was particularly funny. The laugh simply occurred. It was the kind of laugh everyone had expected from me. Light, joyous, perhaps even a bit self-deprecating. When I heard it escape my mouth, I felt the strange sensation of being in the audience rather than on the stage. Yet no one around me seemed to notice.
Those in the café with me laughed along. They liked to laugh, especially Cynthia, who I was trying to impress. I wondered who taught it to me, that laugh which was so particular to me and me alone. Something happened just then. I went quiet. I’d become confused. Even Cynthia noticed the change.
Later, after I returned home, I stood before the bathroom mirror and tried to smile naturally. Different smiles appeared. One for strangers, another for women, like Cynthia, and one for friends, but strangely, neither one of them felt like mine. I stared into the mirror for a long moment, trying to figure out the face I no longer recognized staring back at me. It was quite unnerving.
I turned off the bathroom light and went into the living room. On the wall hung a cheap print by Picasso, a self portrait, full of fractured angles and complicated geometry. I had bought it years ago, shortly after moving into the apartment. It’s been hanging in the same spot since then, a little faded from sunlight, unprotected by a frame and glass. I’d simply pinned it to the wall with matching color coded pins. I stared at it for a long moment and wondered what Picasso was thinking when he painted it, how he saw himself in that stage of his life.
I had to look away, and when I did, my eyes fell upon a copy of Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo on the bookshelf, which I remembered buying around the same time as the Picasso print. I took it off the shelf and began leafing through it, noting all the passages I had underlined, particularly one: Become who you are. It was accompanied by a circled asterisk. I wanted to remember that for some reason, though I no longer remembered what it was. I closed the book and stared at the cover for a moment, then back at the Picasso print. Then I remembered the laugh, and the odd sensation which followed. It seemed fake, performed. What if there isn’t a true face?
When I went to bed that night, I kept thinking about that. It obsessed me. What Cynthia thought obsessed me. Surely she must have seen through it.
I had awakened the next morning with a feeling of extreme unease. The question still haunted me. I stared at my face in the bathroom mirror as I brushed my teeth and I no longer recognized who I saw looking back. Is that my face? Is that the same face the rest of the world sees, or is it one that only I see? To me, it looked like the same face I’ve seen since childhood, but is that truly my face or the face my consciousness allows me to see? The feeling of unease intensified and I could no longer look.
Over the course of the day, I watched myself carefully. Everything I did, every choice I made, how I chose to answer questions put to me, what I laughed at, what annoyed me. None of it seemed real anymore. It unnerved me. It was like a flawless performance, an actor upon a stage who thoroughly studied his lines, but just who was the audience? Become who you are… It followed me for the rest of the day, taunting me. Suddenly, I realized that those around me were performing as well. Everyone was playing a role, written by some unknown author. Become who you are… Who was that, exactly? The dutiful son? The caring friend? The jokester? The cynic? The hopeless romantic? It suddenly felt all these things were merely roles, written for me and not by me. For the first time in my life, I began to wonder if my entire life had been nothing more than a theatrical production, performed for an audience who never existed. And just like that, I no longer knew who I was.
. . . . . .
The following evening I had a date with Cynthia. It would be the second time we’d gone out alone, without our friends in tow. Part of me wanted to cancel, for the man she had expected to show up seemingly no longer existed. I went through the motions. I showered, shaved, got dressed, choosing the finest clothes I had. As I dressed, I felt as if I were in a backstage dressing room, getting my costume ready for the evening’s performance. I looked in the mirror. The man looking back appeared presentable, but who was he? That’s how it felt all day, and whenever I caught myself performing, I immediately stopped. When I was asked for my opinion on something, I admitted to not having one. When a joke came to mind, solely because I thought I would gain approval, I chose silence. When someone complimented me or my work, I resisted the urge to become the praised version of myself, for that was merely another role, another part written for me and not by me. There were moments when my coworkers seemed confused, some I would say were even disappointed. Yet the world did not collapse. Life went on. It mattered for nothing. In a strange way, each layer I peeled away felt strangely liberating, as if I were slowly disrobing at center stage.
The prospect of meeting up with Cynthia frightened me. Just who was going to show up? I no longer knew. Who was the man who asked her out? Not the man getting ready to see her. It worried me more that her expectations would not be met, not mine, for I didn’t even know what they were anymore. Again, I felt as if I were just playing a role, getting ready to perform the next scene, but the thought of going off script didn’t seem practical. I liked Cynthia a lot, or at least I thought I did. Was it I who liked her, or was it this elusive avatar? Who did she really want to meet? Was it me, or was it her image of me?
. . . . . .
Cynthia kept smiling at me. She smiled as though she saw someone worth smiling at, as though the man sitting before her actually existed. I should have been happy, thrilled even, for I longed to spend some time alone with her, apart from our usual social circle. In the days leading up to this meeting, I mentally rehearsed how every moment should play out. I carefully chose the outfit I would wear, rehearsed my intended jokes, studied up on her interests, nearly everything pre-planned long before I arrived at the restaurant, which was also pre-planned and specifically tailored to make an impression. It all seemed so fake, so contrived. She had to know this, right? Then it occurred to me that perhaps she went through her own regime of rehearsals and planning, so the whole matter seemed like an absurd joke — on both of us. Who were we both, really? Who were we beneath these pre-written roles we were expected to play for this particular scene? I wanted her attention, and I received it, even better than I had expected. I wanted to receive affection, and judging by that smile, it seemed I was to receive that as well. So why did I feel like a fraud sitting in someone else’s chair? The conversation continued, perfectly scripted: What kind of music did I like? What kind of books did I read? What were my favorite films? My first instinct was to rattle off whatever I thought would make me sound interesting, and I did, but after the words left my mouth, I realized that perhaps it wasn’t really me who uttered them. It was my character, the one who prepared for this particular scene on the stage. For nearly a week, I made sure I learned all my lines and found the correct ‘motivation’, to make it as convincing as possible. Yet I felt hollow inside, transparent, and in many ways, so did she. I listened to her, laughed awkwardly at her jokes and her witty banter, at her unusual observations. The subject would change, ricocheting from one topic to the next. Her smiles flickered, as did mine, this pantomime, this performance, continuing unabated as the evening progressed. Then she asked me, what did I want to do with my life? There it was, the crack, slowly splitting open the space between us. I felt exposed, with absolutely nothing to say. I hadn’t expected the question, had no time to rehearse it. I didn’t really know, I answered. Then came the awkward silence, that pregnant pause I had always detested. Suddenly, the room seemed too bright, the sound of the silverware and the clattering of the plates and the surrounding chatter became unbearable. I nervously looked around. Everyone seemed so sure of themselves, so confident of who they were, or at least pretended to be. I was no longer sure. Perhaps all of them were merely extras in our prefabricated scene. I felt myself collapsing beneath the weight of her question, a question that even a child could answer without hesitation. Yet I didn’t know, and perhaps never knew. Just who am I, I wondered?
Cynthia noticed something was wrong now. ‘Are you okay?’
I didn’t even know how to answer that simple question. Are you okay? Who was you? The mask wasn’t merely slipping. It was dissolving, right before her eyes. Every version of myself slowly evaporated into the ether. All of them intangible, ghosts in carefully constructed costumes, indulging in half-baked performances. She just looked at me, her eyes full of confusion and concern. I didn’t know what to say. This was not part of the play. I was terrified. I felt exposed, every ounce of my being slowly disappearing before her. I thought, you spent your entire life in conversation with yourself only to discover that you never actually met the speaker. I wanted her to like me, but which me? Was it the one from a week ago? Last month? Ten years ago? I felt dizzy, flush. If identity was merely a performance, repeated long enough, what happens when the performance ends? Who stands in the silence after the applause?
When I collected myself, she seemed more frightened than concerned and I couldn’t blame her. Then again, perhaps that was exactly the part that was written for her to play. She tried to speak but I no longer heard her words, only the repeated refrain in my own mind — Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?
. . . . . .
I couldn’t sleep that night. In the early hours of the morning, well before sunrise, I got out of bed and went into the bathroom, turned on the light, and returned to the mirror. A face looked back at me but I was no longer sure who it belonged to. It didn’t look any different in a lot of ways, yet I no longer recognized it, as if I were viewing a Venetian mask hanging on the wall. I could no longer bear looking at it. I turned off the light and went back into the living room.
Picasso was still there, looking back at me in all his fragmented glory. Nietzsche was still there, too, right where I left him. Picasso understood that the self was many things. Nietzsche insisted that it must be created. Neither one of them guaranteed that authenticity awaited on the other side of the veil, only that the masks we wear are not true self portraits. I saw no real truth in my own reflection. No true identity. Just a face, which very well may have been a mask pulled from a prop trunk hidden away in some dusty corner backstage, entangled in cobwebs, untouched and forgotten, waiting for the right head to fit. I was just a young man, standing alone in his living room. The audience had gone home. Or did it? Perhaps my living room had also a stage, just another set which was part of the whole. I no longer knew what role to play. I could seemingly pick and choose, and in a strange way, again, it felt kind of liberating. Just Picasso, Nietzsche, and me — whoever that was.
New York City
June 2026