Masks

Sometimes I think I’ve forgotten who the real me is.  It’s been so long since I’ve seen her, since I’ve allowed her out to play so to speak. 

I don’t remember when I first started hiding, or what caused me to do so.  Maybe I need to have regression therapy and delve deep into my sordid past.  What skeletons would be uncovered? 

Actually, I think my skeletons are best left where they are, dead and buried at the back of my closet.

Sometimes I like being this other me.  Her life is easier, more fun, and I’m not saying that who I let people see doesn’t have some of the real me in her…just that there are parts of me I don’t think they would understand.

And then I met you.

For the first time in ages I found myself wanting to let someone in, to let them see what really being me is about, but at the same time petrified of rejection.

So I didn’t.

Instead I kept up the ‘life and soul of the party front’.  The ‘I’m one of the girls and happy about it’ illusion.  And the more you got under my skin the more I wanted to reveal.  To scream from the rooftops.  But still I don’t.   And all the while I’m dying inside, wanting to tell you what I feel, wanting to show you how lonely and miserable I really am.

But I don’t, and now it may be too late.

I’ve never met someone like you.  I want to tell my girlfriends about you, but when I try they just tell me they’ve heard it all before.  And those that don’t seem to glaze over.  I can’t blame them.  What I crave to hear from them they can’t give me and reading this makes it seem that I am ungrateful to them.  I’m not, I guess I just…I don’t know what I just.

I got the photos back…and I can’t bear to look at them, because when I do all I see is someone ugly and overweight, someone you wouldn’t give a second glance to.  I feel that way every time I get dressed or undressed too, and I know I am the only one who can do anything about it.  So why don’t I?  I convince myself that the pretence you showed to two certain people is also directed to me; that we were never friends and you’re just an Oscar standard actor.  I twist myself in knots; beat myself up.  And then I hate myself even more.  A self-flagellating bitch – I always thought that applicable to me.

I keep a secret diary…and in its pages are the things that I can never tell.  It is my confidant, but a shallow facsimile of one.  It can’t respond, give me guidance, a shoulder to cry on.  I wish it could. 

It’s been three days.  Hardly a lifetime is it, and yet I want to hear from you so much.  God, when did I become so pathetic?

Another day.  Another mask to hide behind.

When will I find the courage to take them off?