The fears well up within me, and yet I insist upon solitude and isolation. I long for companionship and comfort, yet I know that it will only leave me empty and bare in the end. Nothing lasts forever..pain is the sole endurer of eternity, and I have been forced to lie beneath the folds of it's falling sheets.

I can barely remember a time when I could smile and not know that it was all for the world. I live a continual, draining, monotonous lie.."You're always so happy..how do you do it?" ...if only they knew. The secret is in the lie. The ability to contort and conform all that I am to fit the mold... at least externally. Within, I'll never belong. My heart will never be categorized with the rest. Yet to survive, I must persist in maintaining that barrier, that distance, that shield. The world around may never see the world within me.

I contain it. I box it. I wrap it and place a bow upon it, make it presentable. But what does the package contain? Dust and ashes of a soul that has been burned beyond reparation. They need not see that, though. It remains wrapped up..and no one wants to know what lies within. They're all content staring at the beautiful wrappings from a distance..they don't care enough to venture beyond that, to discover what lies within. Because they might just find it. And then they have to deal with it.

Nobody enjoys facing reality.
Not even I.

I live behind this mask, this facade which grows duller and weaker by the moment..And despite all my efforts, I cannot maintain it at times..That's when I break apart. When I fall and there is no one to catch me. And how could I expect them to? It's so unlike me to fall apart..I'm always so happy..They just can't understand that the smile masks the pain..that when I crumble, it's not something unexpected and strange..it's the inevitable disassembly of all that I pretend I can withstand..all that I never could handle.

Supress what cannot be expressed..I need to keep it under wraps to maintain those friends I've attained..those who know nothing of who I am, and think they know it all..they haven't the slightest. The dark within me is hidden by the light I exude..but it's not my own light. A candle lit in the darkness does not destroy the dark..it overcomes it temporarily, it masks the dark with a false sense of life..Yet eventually, the candle burns out..the wax left behind is all that remains..hardened, cold..all that remains in the dark..The darkness is never defeated..only avoided, masked, and temporarily out of mind..never gone..never over. The candle lit darkness masks the dark..the dark corners still remain..the diversion of light may suffice for a while..yet in the end, all that will remain is the enveloping black.

I recite it in the confinement of my mind- I lie awake at night and mouth the words I wish the world could hear. I sit alone and speak aloud all that I bury within..yet it is all to no avail. Without a live body to sit close to and release all of myself to, there is no release. And even then, I wonder, will there be release? Or will the burden be simply passed on? Or spread out? Or solidified as reality once it is known?

The last possiblity scares me the most, and forces me to remain content in the shadows. What is hidden and unknown can only attack me from within- When it is exposed, I become vulnerable from all angles. The past several months can attest to that much. Now that it has died down, I realize it's utility..Pain forces us to grow, to face what we avoid, to contend with the spirits within ourselves and come to better understand who we have become and where we are going. Yet the process is painful... Perhaps pain produces prosperity and release in the end..But the process itself is often times enough to divert my attention, force me, in a sense, to hide beneath the reclusive branches of the lie. Life behind the mask may be superficial..the satisfaction of life may be sucked from the core of existence..But the absence of the unavoidable pain is often times more than enough to keep me from probing beneath the layers.

I wonder when all within me will align with what I allow the world to know of me... I live two lives, and at times I cannot distinguish between the two. I've become so convincing in each that my reality is blurred even in my own eyes. The inner self and the exterior have molded together to form a third state of existence, one which I cannot even begin to grapple with at the moment. The desolation of this third self I embody is excruciating. The original division is obselete in it's presence, and it pervaids nearly every moment I pretend to live. The confusion and the disillusionment of my reality overwhelms me. How can I say that I am genuine?

How can people say that they love me? They don't know me. I don't know me. You can not love what you do not know fully. I cannot love myself. I can love what I portray to be myself, but myself as a whole I must remain indifferent to. I cannot accept anyone's words as anything more than a resultant of what I portray..they reflect nothing of myself or of what they feel towards me, because they know nothing of who I am.

I keep it all concealed.

Last night, I made an effort..I made a futile attempt to fit myself into the mold, to be the normal person I've been expected to be, yet always failed at becoming. The evolution from bad to worse is evident in last night's escapade.

I got off work early. The day was nearing it's end, and I felt that all within me was falling apart..The hollow pit in my stomach, the gnawing, aching emptiness that precedes each digression into my slum of depressed existence. I remembered the advice that I had been so repetitively given..talk to someone, let someone know you're hurting, open up and trust...

I made the attempt.
It failed.

I arrived at her house, smoked a cigarette, went down stairs, watched tv... How do you even begin to tell someone that you're dying inside? How do you find the words to interrupt the apparently good mood between the two of you to say that your world is crashing down around you? Would they even care? Or would it just be a hinderance to their own pursuit of happiness?

I cannot be a hinderance, a burden... so I bury it all inside.

I left, and until today when I told her, she hadn't the slightest idea of how I was feeling..It's frightening, I've become that good at disguising it. I can supress it and mask it to the point where it can remain undiscovered. My motives were good..I had the thought in mind to break free from the confines of myself... Yet the darkness prevailed once more.

The candle is only a diversion.

- - 2009-02-16
- - 2009-01-22
Money Troubles - 2008-10-31
Missing - 2008-09-27
- - 2008-05-26