The Costume
Slow it down, make it stop
Or else my heart is going to pop
'Cause it's too much, yeah, it's a lot
To be something I'm not
I'm a fool out of love
'Cause I just can't get enough
- The Show, Lenka
You see the message. You don't reply. A week later: "Sorry, been so busy!" You weren't. You just didn't know how to say you didn't want to respond.
You find yourself telling a story that isn't quite yours; you've sanded down the rough edges, added a punchline that lands better, removed the parts that made you look weak. By the third telling, you almost believe this version happened.
You adjust your posture when certain people enter the room. You speak differently to the house help than to your colleagues. You laugh differently with your family than with your friends than with your boss. And you laughed even though nothing was funny.
Just like your profile picture where you tilt to your better side, you angle yourself in every room you enter. You wear the mask that displays you perfectly; humble, confident, diligent.
You tell half-truths, omit pieces of information. You placate and over-promise. You withhold your anger, mask your envy, hide your indignant, and let resentment grow in the dark.
You don't end it when you know it's over. You violate agreements you made together. You gaslight them until they question their own sanity. Not your responsibility, you say. But when it happens to you? You scream at the gods. How could they?
You can't apologize for what you did, so you double down. Anything to protect the image. You know what you did was wrong. You just can't let them see that you know.
You say sorry when you weren't wrong. Anything to keep the peace. And in that moment, you kill the part of you that trusts yourself.
You say you're interested when you're not. Maybe that will make them like you. Of course you love jazz. Of course you've been meaning to try acid and LSD and the psychedelic mushroom that grows once every 13 months. Of course you worship the same ancient primordial gods they do. Of course your parents are cool with you spending a fortune on a ugly shoe.
That's why you change your persona, speak in their terms, do things you know aren't quite right. Anything to fit in. Anything to belong.
Enthusiastically, you do things no one asked for, hoping to get what you want. You dig yourself into a ditch of expectations. Then you call upon the ancient gods to rescue you out of your misery.
You say they're lucky. Whoever "they" are; the successful people, the happy people, the people who seem to have it figured out If only you had the right parents, right city, right year; then you would do the right thing too. But you won't. The circumstances were never the problem. You were. And you refuse to accept it.
Because accepting means taking responsibility for your emotions, your day, your life. Who's ready for that? So you blame everyone. The gods, the absent parents, the untrustworthy friends, the undeserving spouse, the misaligned stars, the fascist government, the blind-faith religion. Everything. Anything.
When you become someone else, when you slip into the skin of who you wish you were, you strap yourself to endless performance. How heavy is the costume? So heavy you've forgotten you're wearing it. Do you even remember what you felt like before; the lightness of simply being?
You hold up a mirror to the world asking: don't I look pretty? aren't I special? You rage when someone refuses to entertain your delusion. And you giggle like a madmen; when someone accidentally does.
Your closet is full of costumes for a play you never auditioned for. Your vocabulary is borrowed. Your gestures, secondhand, from a book, movie or a person you saw.
And you can't remember what your real voice sounds like anymore. And somewhere beneath these tiny miniscule million layers of deceit, there's a person you haven't met in years, locked away, asking if you're still care.