If I’m out, I’m wearing a mask—one of those easter egg blue surgical ones.

Its Monday. I walk down the frozen food aisle of the local grocer. A mother pulls her children away from me, pulls them away from the guy who must have some  horrific disease or he wouldn’t be wearing that thing. I laugh to myself, if they only knew—I’m protecting myself from you and those kids..

Its Wednesday and I’m standing in line, waiting to  buy a shirt. A two year-old is staring at me, wide eyed.

“Why are you wearing that on your face?”

His voice raises just a bit at the end of the question, void of  everything but clean curiosity.

His older sister, or maybe young mother apologizes—he’s so sorry, and gives a two year old a dirty look. I smile knowing, he’s just asking what  you, the check-out-clerk, and everyone behind me is wondering.

I tell her no problem. Laugh aloud, tell a  two-year-old boy  “my immune system is suppressed, so I’m protecting myself from possible illness, just to be safe.”

Everyone nods their heads, except the toddler who asked the question.

It’s Friday. I’m stop off at the grocery store again, this time to pick something before heading to a friends. I walk in the automatic doors, I see someone I used to work with is walking out. I say hi. They just stare. I start to talk, they have no clue who I am. Must be the mask, I pull it down. Now their confused and scared of what I’ve exposed them too. I start explaining my situation a million miles an hour to help them, to help me.

“I have aplastic anemia—-and my bone marrow failed, and we were hoping for a transplant, but my brother wasn’t a match—so I underwent a horse serum treatment called ATG, its purified horse blood basically…where hoping it stops my immune system from attacking my marrow…..”

I’m not making sense. This is awkward. This mask is a burden that I don’t want right now.

They pretend they remember me all the sudden, and say through a grin  “wow, you have a really good memory.”

Who could blame them, some clown that worked with you four summers ago runs up to you with a surgeon’s mask on, babbling about bone marrow failure and horse blood. Well played, Matt.

I leave the mask off for the remainder of my time in store. It’s pathetic, I’m shook, I care what other people think right now—I know it’s sad, I know it’s weak, you don’t have to tell me. A few days ago women where ripping kids away from me in a frozen food aisle and it made me smile, rolled right off the shoulders. Things change. I’m not that guy at this moment, even if I’m in the same store wearing the same easter egg blue mask. Life’s funny I guess.

It’s Saturday. I’m at the gas station. On my way  to the cashier a guy screams from his car, “Swine Flu!!”

Clever. I keep walking, smiling under my mask.

On the way out he’s sitting there, filling his tank. Yells it again. And then again. One more time just to make sure I heard.

I get in my car. I drive over to him, ask him to roll down his window. I’ll play this cool. Calm. He needs to be informed.

I start.  I’m good, but I lose it fast. Say a few things I don’t mean, and a few  I think I do.  He stares at me blankly, maybe I slip in one curse word. Like I said, playing it cool.  I drive off, heavy on the gas pedal. I feel no better, continue to drive, feel worse. Worse that I said something, worse that someone else got to me. Worse, that I allowed myself to crumble to what’s around me  instead of stand with what’s in me.

It’s Sunday morning, I’m in church. In the back where hardly anyone else is, where I watch a monitor that broadcasts an altar in another room. I’m away from people, away from the coughs and the handshakes, wearing my mask. I listen, I ask for help. Ask for perspective and  for understanding, ask for the strength to lose the mask.

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