facade

Facade
by: Saimone

     It's funny...It's funny how no one else can see the mask. The mask that says I'm the happy; I'm the joker; the whimsical one who plays with words. The attention lover. The public pleaser. The one who will change like the breeze to suit everyone around me.

      It is really funny. The mask is flawless and I have become flawless at wearing it. Not even my friends and family can see the difference anymore. I know. I've heard them talking when they think I'm not around.

     "Fame's changed him," they say. "He can't possibly be happy all the time...Can he?"

     "Who is he?"

     "What is he becoming?"

     They are wrong. So wrong. Fame hasn't changed me. Fame only has the power to effect the mask. The mask, now....the mask is what changed me. I put it on to shield myself from the world and now I can never be rid of it. Is it me or am I it?

     Happiness... What is happiness anymore? Does it really even exist? I know that it used to... I know that I used to be happy before....Before what, though, I don't know. I simply don't remember. The mask lies and tells the world I'm happy. It lies and tells the world that it is me. It isn't me. And I'm not happy.

     Who am I? What am I? Those are two very good questions that I wish I had an answer for. Normally, I'd say that I'm me. But what is 'me'? I wish I could give assurance that somewhere the old me still exists. There is no assurance because nothing is certain. Of that I am certain.

     It used to be so easy. So easy to be me, so easy to feel. If I felt good, I'd smile; if I was upset, I'd pout; happy = laugh; sad = tears. Simple. Natural. ME.

     But now? The public-pleaser has but one emotion--perpetual happiness. It screams, "Look at me for I live to please you. Mold me, make me, do with me what you will!" Emotions are nothing to the mask. They have no meaning. They are nothing but a waste of time.

     People once said that I feel too much. Again they do not see. Maybe at one point I felt too much, now I feel nothing. Correction, I feel dead. I am dead. A lesser known form of dead, but dead nonetheless. No, my corpse is not decaying under six feet of soil, nor have my ashes been scattered to the wind. No, no, my body still lives, but it is my soul that has died. My soul is dead and therefore I am dead with it and the only thing that lives on is the mask.

     God help me, I am buried beneath the mask...