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It’s odd, really, how one never realizes that they know themselves until they all of a sudden do. I sometimes feel that I don’t have a self to know, but by being self aware of my flaws, that is the only self I have. It’s a paradox. I know myself in that I know I don’t have a self. I wonder if many people feel the way I do. I wonder if they do and simply aren’t aware enough to realize. It’s in this that knowledge is a curse and ignorance is bliss. I’d be a much happier person if I was stupid enough to think I was a real person.
But I’m not. A real person, that is.
Sure, I have flesh and bones like the rest of you. But buried in my mind and my soul is a cesspool of…nothingness. It’s just empty. I am a blank canvas that I hurriedly paint every time I am around someone new. The colors are muddled and half-done, a caricature of what I think the other person wants to see. I am constantly terrified that one day someone is going to see past the false colors and realize that I really am nothing at all, a fraud. I parade this farce every day, play the good subordinate, the strong boss, the dangerous made man, the polite protection collector, the savior to whatever child I’m manipulating this week. Perhaps that’s why I love theatre, I do nothing but perform every day.
But beneath that, when im all alone in the dead of night, trying to fall asleep? When I use the restroom? In the in between moments where there is no one around at all to try and please?
I am alone. And I am nothing.
This was supposed to be about a defining moment in my life, something that explains who and why “I am”. Instead, I must come to terms with the fact that I don’t have a defining moment. All my memories have blurred together so much that I can’t pick particular instances out. There are certain fleeting moments, of course.
Me holding on to my mother’s legs so she can’t leave us again and disappear for another week, months before the divorce.
The sound of banging behind closed doors.
The spill of wine against her prized carpet.
Glass shattered across the floor.
The drip of blood on someone, one or all of these boys I keep taking in and stealing the childhoods of.
My voice murmuring, “Yes, Capo” to a man I know I despise.
The smell of vodka.
My arm falling off of my body, thudding against the floor with a particular numbness.
The tip of a knife against my flesh, the release that comes with it.
The list goes on and on. There’s not really one that has changed me. I’m pretty resilient, I bend more than I break. I suppose all of them together have changed me little by little. Still, I wonder if my tendency to change my entire personality comes from my insessant desire to right my numerous wrongs or as a defence mechanism to avoid conflict.
It doesn’t really matter.
No matter where I go or what I do, what community I join or belong to, I feel like I don’t belong. Like I was let in because they pitied me, like I’m the member that everyone side-eyes when they try to contribute to the conversation. Im on the outside looking in, on the outskirts, the fringe, and I will never be “enough” to be in that community.
I know that I don’t belong anywhere. I am an outlier, a deviant, and there is not a place in the world that I belong.
Maybe I want to fit in somehow, somewhere, and this is the community I’ve chosen to take advantage of this time. I am a black sheep everywhere I go, the wrong amidst many rights that I know I know I will never compare to.
I ache with the need to belong, to matter. For my life to have any positive effect on anything or anyone. And it is a privilege so many take advantage of that I will never have.
Because if it was for nothing at all? If I cant save anyone, if all I’ve done is hurt and kill and lie and ruin and destroy in the name of wanting to be good, then what am I? I’m no better than the rest of them. Having good intentions and wanting to be better doesn’t give you points in the afterlife if all the bad you’ve done doesn’t cancel out.
I am self-satisfying. I fake it every day, the whole “being a good person” thing, because really the only reason I do anything good at all is so I don’t feel this crippling guilt for all the bad I do.
(I feel it anyway).
But you know what the worst part is? When you are so self-aware of ALL of your flaws that you can’t help but look in the mirror and despise what comes back to you. Instead of your face you see a black hole shaped like a human. It has created many faces, each one more terrible and imperfect than the last, but the one thing it craves is perfection so it will never stop making these masks. And as its need for attention and validation from everyone grows stronger and stronger, it sucks the life out of everyone it claims to love, but knows it manipulates instead.
And there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. It’s all you know. The only thing you can do, really.
So you punish yourself. You get angry and enjoy the tip of the knife once again because at least the pain reminds you that you are made of blood like the rest of them. Then you smile and move on like nothing happens and you push all of these thoughts down and pretend pretend pretend that you’re okay, that you’re normal, that you’re a real person, and you hope hope hope no one sees how much you’re dying on the inside, little by little, especially yourself. Because the minute you look back inside and see that gaping hole in your chest is the minute it’s all over. So you smile and pretend until you get angry again, feel the tip of the knife, and move on.
And you can’t help but feel like every time your mask cracks just a little bit more.