Facade

I'm hiding. Hiding beneath the guise of my insipid nature. Smiles. Laughter. Music. Noise. The smile hurts – they told me when I was young that if I made a face long enough I would be stuck with it. They told me that I should get along with others – that I should be nice; I put a smile on and it stuck just like they said it would. Whenever I go near people I smile, laugh, joke – whatever. The expression stuck because if it didn't they would call me maladjusted. Breathe, maintain the facade.

I keep a gun in the back of a drawer at home. Not to use, but sometimes it's comforting to just take it out late at night and feel the weight of it in my hand. It's behind the neatly stacked pile of lingerie that I keep so that everyone will think that I am hip and comfortable with showing off my figure. Sometimes I imagine shooting myself and how, if I had one, my lover would come in and hold my frail little body as all of the fluids bled out of it onto him and the floor. My detached spectral form would hover over the scene looking on in pleasant silence and realize for the first time that it was more than the fashion statements and the petite figure and ostensibly warm smile that someone was in love with – it was the person beneath. It's about this time that I put the gun back and crawl off to sleep. Because if I did shoot myself no one would come in to hold me. No one would love me. My spirit would wander – forever alone.

Late at night when I can't sleep I sometimes get up and get the gun that I keep in the underwear drawer and just sit there on the bed and hold it. The idea is therapeutic – it's a comfort to just think in the silence of a full moon with a weight in one's hand. Mom, you couldn't love me because I couldn't meet your standards, as hard as I tried. Dad – you abused me, and showed me how terrible the people around me could be. I always see the worst, and try to find good as I do, there is always something waiting to jump out and ruin the image. I've learned very successfully to lie, to tell people that I like them, to go on dates and put on a face. In the end it's always the same though, I find out the worst of everyone, I'm frightened of them; I tell them, we're just not compatible, and then I go home and hold the gun. I remember that nobody cares; but I still keep searching. I want to be wrong; so badly.