Masquerade Quotes

“Never let the bad days make you forget that the good ones are waiting for you across the horizon, just as you are waiting for them.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“every time i try to make sense of the disconnect between who i am on the inside versus who i am on the outside, i am interrupted by a voice that only repeats the same line: you are broken. you are broken. you are broken. and that is all it takes to send me back within myself, to make me deny every single question i’ve ever been bold enough to ask out loud. maybe i am broken, but nobody will ever know how broken i am.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“the world may reject you today, but with time comes understanding. give it that time, but do not be silent. let every footstep, every word, and every breath be an act of revolution. the world might not be ready for you, but that doesn’t mean you’re not ready to create the tomorrow you deserve.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“i will not fit myself into a box to meet your expectations. i will not twist myself into a knot to earn your appreciation. the moon’s resistance the sun tells the moon that her place is at night with the stars, but still, she hangs defiantly in the midafternoon sky, refusing to have her place dictated by another’s expectations.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“If they tell you to change who you are, be yourself but even louder.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“earthquake
society has a way of bending you until you break, no matter how strong you think you are or how hard you try to fight back. it will try to fold you on top of yourself and shape you into something new—something prettier, smaller, less you and more them. but it doesn’t realize that by doing so, it’s creating a warrior out of you, one strong enough to sink mountains and raise tides. strong enough to reach inside the earth and shake it to its very core. strong enough to leave your mark on what’s tried to leave its mark on you.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“uncaged
it’s easy to push people away to retreat into yourself to give only the bare minimum. it’s much harder to take that risk to splay open your chest to peel each rib back one by one and bare your heart and soul to a world that might not handle them with the care they deserve. but when you find a person whose mind complements yours, you’ll see the reward was well worth the risk.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“the only one
with you, there is no pretending. you see me like nobody sees me. you know me like nobody knows me. you accept me like nobody accepts me.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“Some days I hate my body for what it is. Other days I hate my body for what it isn't.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“linked
imagine wearing a mask for so long that the skin beneath learns its shape and begins tracing its edges, blurring the lines between person and persona. imagine the searing realization when you try tearing it off for the first time, unaware of just how much of your life you have allowed this act to become. imagine the patience and the precision needed to delicately sever the bond and pull the skin away from the mask to remove the facade from the flesh. imagine the confusion when you see yourself for the first time without it, and the face looking back at you is one you no longer recognize as your own.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“smokey eye eyeliner as defiance. eyeliner as a statement, a declaration, a fuck you to a society that shames people for expressing themselves the way they feel the most at home, the same society that labels everything from toys to toothbrushes “boy” and “girl” rather than letting individuals cultivate their own identities. eyeliner as a call to arms. eyeliner as a weapon, a raised fist, a shield from judgmental expressions and microaggressions disguised as questions, from the insults and slurs shot out of car windows like bullets in a drive-by because i dare exist in a way they don’t and refuse to understand.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“misplaced
i was a piece of a puzzle lost in the box of another. no matter where you tried to put me, which way you tried to turn me, there wasn’t a place for me in the big picture, and i got tired of trying to fit into places i didn’t belong.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“every once in a while, you’ll experience a moment where you know your life will never be the same again. there will be no light, no sign that you will be forever altered, just the aching realization that you are now someone one new. not completely new. no, you’re still you, maybe more you than you’ve ever been, but different than before. i’ve spent so many years trying to squeeze myself into places i didn’t fit that i had convinced myself there wasn’t a place for me, but over the span of five days, that place i had been searching for found me. The place i had been searching for wasn’t a place after all but a group of people who accepted me for the person i’ve finally found the courage to be. here is where i belong. here, in this moment. here, with these people. and goddamn, is it good.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“take
sometimes, being a little selfish is the biggest act of self-love we can give ourselves. expanse you are not just a person, and you don’t simply exist. you are a culmination of everything you’ve ever seen and heard, loved and hated, feared and not. you are the sum of every action and reaction, failure and success, mistake and apology, every interaction with another, like and unlike yourself. we are all complex beings with our own stories and our own perspectives. and we all deserve to love and be loved just the same.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“better late than never
the problem with me has always been that I waste too much time looking for the validation of others, when the only validation I needed was my own. I might not be all the way there yet, but one day, I will be. And so will you.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“I could fall 1,000 times and still consider myself the luckiest person in the universe, because I know every single time I do, it'll be your hands reaching for mine, helping me back to my feet.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade

“whatever happened to the one whose hands could take pencil to paper and turn imagination into reality? whose feet could walk out the backyard door and into another world? the one with eyes ready to swallow the sky whole and a heart ambitious enough to do it? whatever happened to the one who raced from dawn ’til dusk, waving in the wind on wings of wax to wrap their fingertips around the sun, yet cowered from the glow of streetlights? the one who decided even the sun wasn’t enough and pocketed entire galaxies instead? whatever happened to the one whose dreams were so grand the universe itself had to expand to keep up the pace? the one who refused to be contained and became a universe themself? the one you’re thinking about right now? skull kid childhood is the time when one reaches toward the sky and grows into the person they were meant to be, but my childhood was the time when i reached toward fictional faces and buried my roots within a flawless facade. my childhood was the time when i rejected my own growth to mirror the growth of others because i wasn’t sure who i was supposed to be.”
― Cyrus Parker, Masquerade