I have spent
My entire life
Trying to figure out
How to be everybody else
To the point where
I don’t even know who I am anymore

I am not a book
I am not a poster
I am not someone you can read
I am not someone who shows her emotions.

I have a constant battle in me
I have a voice in my head saying “You got this!”
I have another voice saying “You’re worthless!”
I have a tornado of emotions that will not stop spinning.

You have seen me
You have heard me but
You have never known me.

I hide in dark corners
I hide from you
I hide from them
I hide from myself.

What am I afraid of?

The truth
The love
The pain
The judgment
Or maybe all of it.

With truth comes judgment and
With love comes pain.
So I hide

I bury everything
I bury sadness
I bury happiness
I bury loneliness
I bury anger
I bury joy.

But when it gets to be too much it bursts.

Everything and anything that stands in the way of that explosion gets demolished

My relationships
My friendships
My mind.

I am a broken person
I am a ticking time bomb
I am not a book.

Copy yourself,
make something other
a binary you,
in a world
of starships and code
and the fact that death
doesn’t really mean anything here.

Right here,
we don’t need
oxygen or food,
in this world
of falsity and fantasy
and the sweetness of hallucination
that aches behind your body.
Stand still,
headset firmly on
and breaths calm,
a new world awaits your better self
where you forget the depersonalisation
of still always being human.

Copy that,
you’re the captain
of false starships,
hurtling through uncertainty
with virtual reality comforting
you when you realise that
you’ll never be like this.

Another you,
version fifty-three
in a chain,
never changing yourself
or becoming something better
only sticking in mistakes
and pretending like it’s improvement.

Copy yourself,
make another other
for another self,
forget your body
and transmit human signals
to other fake-people
who tell themselves aching stories

of a reality
that we daren’t change.

Soft skin, marred,
jagged cheekbones
cutting into blank white;
suffocating plastic sweats
against the mouth of the thing.

A moth-swarm of faces,
of sickly hospital white
plastic; mouths gasping
for air and everyone drinking spirits
like the world is about to end.

The façade of a masquerade,
pearl whites with jagged oysters
creaking underneath, all botox
and sloppily revisited youth;
death is passed as a disease.

One within, too prideful
for a mask, yet pale faced
enough to spend the night
in the quagmire and relive
the quicksand underfoot forever.

Hard, wrinkled women
ruining themselves,
asphyxiating slowly in the crushing
pressure of plastic on sweat on skin
right down to the bone.

Still, the white-wind, bare, ghost
lingers in the after-party,
picking up the discarded masks
with smooth, youthful fingers;
resignedly exhaling down into sinking earth.

A smile is on my lips,
While a hole is in my soul;
I'll laugh for the moment,
But cry when I'm alone.

My mask is perfect,
Deceiving all who see.
They think I am content,
Cannot hear my silent plea.

If I am hurting,
You will never know.
My mask is unwavering,
Blow after blow.

Today, I know what it's like
To be a Russian nesting doll.
Putting a mask over my mask
That masks how I'm really feeling inside.
But you know what?
They're not all bad.
Masks can be beautiful.
And remember, at the end of the day,
You're still you underneath it all.

The compass inside me has always been fragile, broken. Do you know what happens to a child with no direction? They wear your face. I knew the grownups didn’t love me the way I was. I’ve never been loved. Not when I wore my own face.

She told me, “I think you think this”
and I said, “I don’t.”
and then I said, “I know why I thought that.”
and I thought, “I only said I thought that because I knew she thought I did.”
I thought, “I did my best to never let myself think that.”
I thought, “I’m not interested in thinking about this anymore. I’m tired. I’m just so scared of this. Always so scared.”
I thought, “I’ve done what I understood was expected of me in order to be loved. It used to be the only way I could communicate with others.”
I thought, “I want nothing more than the thrill of experiencing myself.
I thought, “I want nothing more than to be as genuine as I can be. I wish I could fix it now. I wish I could give myself to people. I wish I could be bare today.
“But I think,” I thought, “I think that will have to wait.”