There's a word that gets misused. hiding.
You don't hide parts of yourself because you're ashamed. You hide them because one day, in a place where someone should have seen you, no one did. Or worse, they saw and used it against you. And your psyche did what any living thing does when there's a threat: it covered. It put a veil over what was too much to show.
And that veil saved you. That's no small detail. it saved you. You managed to keep existing in a place where that part of you didn't fit.
Only then you grew, and the veil stayed.
It's not a mask
A mask you know you're putting on. You feel its edge against your face. You decide when to wear it and when to take it off.
A veil is different. You can't even remember putting it on. You no longer know it's there. You look at the world through it and swear that what you see is the real world.
And that's why so many paths that seemed so clear start to hurt for no reason. It's the veil. It doesn't protect you from the world. It protects you from a version of yourself that you no longer need to hide, but that you haven't yet allowed yourself to revisit.
What you do with a veil
You don't tear it. Those who tear veils hurt themselves, and hurt what was underneath trying to come back to the light.
You remove it slowly. One corner at a time. In safe places, with witnesses who know what they're looking at.
Moving through a veil isn't violence. It's a return.