What Am I Hiding?

Every person has an inner being of who they view themselves to be. In a ways, each person has a mask of how they portray themselves, and sometimes this mask is different from the person they believe themselves to be. Bruce Wayne perceived himself to still be the kid that knew innocence, that played with Rachel Dawes in the gardens of Wayne Manor. Yet his exterior has him as billionaire playboy. He also has his external mask of the Batman. To use that to leverage his darkness, his aggression, his guilt into something more. To transcend his humanity, to become a symbol of hope for others. A symbol or at least an ideal that I want to be. I want to be someone's protector. I want to be the protector. Do I have an unknown desire to be a hero? To have the heroics associated with my being? But even if I did something heroic, would I even allow myself to be known as my true self? Or would I too have a suit and a mask that conceals my identity? To make a symbol that it doesn't matter who the man is underneath. That there can be hope generated from anyone or anything.

In an Instagram post that I made a good while ago, say several months ago at this point (@dragonpupps for those who are interested), I posted a picture of my 24 oz Tervis LU insulated water bottle. In between the plastic layers, there's a LU patch, and then all across the exterior I have stickers of all shapes and sizes, of various things that I like. It started with just labels of my name on it, just so I never lost the bottle and someone thought it was theirs since it's a common item you could get from the bookstore. At some point, my bottle hit the ground and the external plastic layer got cracked. It still functions just fine, but in the Instagram post, I related the bottle in its entirety to myself. As a vessel that can be filled time and time again with water to quench my thirst. But unless I sought after the Living Water of God, I will always thirst once again. That on the outside it has all of the stickers of YouTubers that I watch, video games that I've played, or any cool sticker that I liked or just got for free because why not add more stickers since it adds to the uniqueness and decreases the likelihood of someone having the exact same water bottle.

Then on the Liberty Batman Instagram (@thelibertybatman), I posted a picture of 15 custom vinyl stickers that had the custom bat symbol my sister drew for me, since I wanted my own symbol and not something that I just took from already existing symbols. I mean I guess it wouldn't matter since the bat symbol is almost indefinitely copyrighted, but I still wanted my own take on it. Does that mean that DC or Warner Bros owns the Liberty Bat Symbol? Or do they not because it's just based off of their material and then the artwork of someone who is not associated nor affiliated with DC or Warner Bros?

For a good while, I didn't know what I wanted to do with all the stickers. You might be wondering why I bought them. Well it was because I saw an Instagram ad that advertised you can get 10 custom vinyl stickers for $1. That included the shipping, so I literally only paid $1. I'm not sure if it's because they couldn't count or if because my bat symbol sticker used less material than the 3" x 3" stickers you could've gotten and maybe they just had to use the entire sheet or whatever of vinyl, but I got 15 stickers.

So as you can see, I placed a sticker onto my water bottle. Mostly because I got a sticker from something I ordered and also found some random sticker that was free, so I stuck those on. So I figured that if I was adding more stickers, might as well throw a Batman one on there.

You can't really tell from the picture, but I did indeed place the bat symbol over the cracked exterior layer. You might be wondering what significance that has. In reality, absolutely no significance except for maybe the fact that it might help keep the rest of the bottle together since it kind of crosses over, I mean then again the crack hasn't widened, so I'd imagine the crack isn't going to increase or lead to further structural damage.

But linking back to my original post that I made for the water bottle, I stated that the crack could symbolize my brokenness. That I am a broken person, and that I could only seek and find fulfillment through Jesus Christ. I mean, great it's true, I can only find healing through my Lord and Savior. But if it also represents my brokenness and I put my version of the Dark Knight over the crack, am I making a mask out of the Batman? Is there something that I'm trying to hide under my belief or false ideas that I am actually the Batman? Do I believe that I'm the Batman, or is it just something I'm excited about and something I have a lot of fun managing on Instagram and Facebook. I mean going back to how I have an inner desire to be a protector, does this feed a dangerous cycle of believing I am Batman and fulfilling that desire to be a protector and a hero?

I suppose I should tread carefully, but what's going to stop me? The ball is rolling slowly, but is there a downhill that will cause for rapid acceleration?

Only time will tell what I actually do with something I started for fun on April 11th, 2019.