You Think…

You think you know me but you don’t.  I am the ultimate performer.  The consummate actress!  I remember telling somebody how I am going through life with a multitude of masks and personas, one to suit every person with whom I interact.  I suffer no delusions that any person wishes to know who I am or what I do.  It is what they believe they see that will matter.  Show them what they want to see and there will be no further questions.  Ever!

Do you really believe you know me?  Can you tell me, you can hear past the words I speak?  Can you decipher the gleam in my eye or sense when my smile falters?  Do you hear the catch in my breath when I tell you I KNOW that in your life, I will always be second?  I am you first true love for sure, but your life’s great passion, for sure am not.

Do you know I’m numb?  I get this strange pang inside my chest, where I think a heart beats for the sake of fulfilling the medical definition of alive, but for intents and purposes I don’t believe I’m better off than a corpse buried six feet deep under earth.  Am I alive?  I feel nothing but duplicity and overwhelming disappointment in all I am and all that I know I am.  That disappointment wells up inside till it has consumed me.  Failures plague me as does my own ineffectualness at getting past them.   I’m not human enough to suffer for my failings.

I have no wish to live.  Life means wanting to feel too much.  To dream.  I don’t remember a time when I ever had dreams.  I was beyond that.  Everything I wanted was something attainable whereas I defined dream as something abstract, half real that could exist only when my eyes closed, shutting out all that was real.  For me, all was measurable, real.  It was there and all I ever needed to do was reach for it.  I lived the impossible with the least possible effort.

But I died…  There is nothing here now.  No laughter, no tears.  Echoes, yes of sounds that can sound like rapture bouncing of the walls.  Yet, look into my eyes and see that they are empty.  My smile will tell you I believe all you say, yet look past it and you’ll know that I am waiting for the day when I’ll tell you it was all a lie.  It’s not even my mind that says it.  The voice comes from within.

Do I see deception because that is what I expect?  It’s all I see.  My life is a mockery.   And I don’t care…

I always believed being indifferent meant you won’t hurt any more…  I was wrong.  Being indifferent just means you’ll let yourself die silently a little more, every time you hurt!!!

I feel violated.  As if something vital has been stolen from inside me.  There are wide, empty spaces… not the kind that show you potential to be filled with colours and bright coloured knick knacks but the kind that are just empty gaps that will allow darkness to seep in and make a home within you till you can no longer see light…

I wonder sometimes if things I thought about were too extraordinary… too miraculous.  And I realized today, that all I wanted were simple ordinary things so perfect, they would stand out like that first bright star in the night sky…  And on realizing it, I wished for it, wanted it…

It hurt…  Dear God!  It hurt!