Masquerade

The rain is handy, sometimes. When all your tears are spent, the sky does the crying for you.

I get so exhausted, pretending to be jolly and happy, funny and robust. The Me inside is crumbling but there is no one i can refer this to. People won't love the energy-sapping, maudlin, heavy gravity that I feel, so I switch it off. I have no right to burden them with it. Those who love me know of my sadness, but I disguise the extent of it. I'm never being fully myself though.

It feels wrong to talk about loneliness when you have people who love you, but I feel lonely in my suffering. The masks I put on are the classic clown: I make people laugh, smile, whoop with glee at my foolishness, but inside I tear my heart to shreds. Sometimes it feels like no one will ever know the real me, because I hide the hard parts. Over time I have learnt to do this masterfully. I reduce myself by putting other people first but bitter experience makes me aware that so-called "negativity" or even honesty sends people away in droves. So I dance, naked and ludicrous for their entertainment when I long for them to touch me, hold me.

The lure of chronic illness is to lose yourself in the illness and forget yourself. Or give up, commit psychic suicide. I find it hard to think of myself as well. From the point of view of total exhaustion, the lives of well people seem far too busy, far too hectic, far too removed from the peace I have to have. It seems unimaginable that that level of involvement in life will ever be mine again. Thus it seems that - for all intents and purposes - my life is over. This causes a great pain when everyone around you is fulfilling their dreams.

Of course, this is only some of the time. I let depressions be, watch them come and go, learn from them, there is no fight back. But the wells of sadness seem to tap deeper and deeper over time. And this is confounded by the fact that I don't talk about them. The loneliness and isolation feels greater each time, because I am travelling this journey alone. The distance between me and them grows and grows as I hide myself in my masquerade.

Could it be that I am being over-cautious? Maybe one day someone will be able to love the sad me too, maybe they already do and I am not secure enough to realise. Until I find this, I refuse to let my mask slip.

Goddamnit rain, why are you being so uselessly half-arsed? I want to be drenched!