Why do we find it necessary to lock ourselves away inside, hiding who we really are from the world, from everyone? When we were young we didn’t care. What you saw was indeed what we delivered. Could it be that we were just too young still to fear being hurt? We didn’t know better yet. But then we all hit that age, that moment in our journey, when we’re struck with that fact like a hammer. The fact that opening yourself up is just a way of making yourself vulnerable to the world. And nobody wants to be vulnerable yet everyone wants their books to be read. The days pass and pass as the pages accumulate to a point of overflowing. The catalog of words that we call our memory, our past, seems but a waste if they are not to be put on display for some audience. We’re all crying for an audience, an interest, a reader. But we’re burdened with living out life as a paradox. Dying inside because we won’t allow our thirst for a reader to be quenched. Every pour soul fearing to open the vault all the way because of that one document that might slip out and expose them. Tortured by the very thought of another mind accessing a memory of who they really are. And who do we have to blame for this feeling of dismay? Constantly faking to be someone else and we’re too blind too see that we’re just building a wall and burying our book. With every image we seek to emulate, with every brush off of a lovers’ meaningful question, with every denial tainted word we lay another brick. This world will never see a shortage of mortar.

It’s such a beautiful vision, and yet a hopeless thought, when we think about all the pleasures and feelings that could come in a world with no fear. But this fear is not our fault. Like everything else it is hereditary. We’re all made with vaults. As perfect a dream as it may sound, it is an impossibility. Alone in this world of change that we’ll call evolution. Everything changes, always changing, to be something else, everything. Could this be because we will never be comfortable with who we are, we’ll never be complete?

Let’s take another route. Let me totally contradict everything that I’ve said above by exploring “what if”. There are millions, if not billions, of bible fanatics out there who believe that Satan gave us the word “if” to get us to stray and keep us from ever being content. Personally, I think that the only way you could be content and follow the bible to a tee is by making yourself into a fucking vegetable, but that’s a whole different essay. And now for the contradiction. I already told you that we’re just a bunch of paradoxes.

What “if” there are a select few out there who have found someone who they have allowed to read their every word. A “soul mate” who they have permitted to soak up their every memory. Chances are that this isn’t you or anyone you know or anyone that you’ll ever be, but someone else. Then we could go on to give this rare case a name. We could call it “true love”. True love, the total surrender of your mind, your treasures and fears, your total self. And the reception of the same from your companion. In all likelihood this is a fairytale or so rare that it might as well be. “True love” and “soul mate”, two phrases that we throw around so easily although they never have meaning. They might as well be adjectives for “temporary thrill” or “orgasm buddy”.