I can have a week of nothing but utter angst and depression and the whole world should just die in a hole in the remotest corner of the universe

but then those moments, and they're brief, never lasting more than a blissfully high day

where my feet no longer touch the ground, the smile makes my cheeks hurt, and I wonder just what I did to deserve this feeling of being alive and it's just oh so wonderful.

but it's fleeting. Like a cloud you capture in your hand, or the butterfly that flits during spring, or even like the cotton candy that leaves nothing but air after dissapting in mind numbing sweetness. 

It's not a mask. It's not even a split personality. It's me. I thought I was having identity issues. Because of the contradicting attitudes I put forth. Until I realized that the mad, the bad, the sad, the happy, the wonderful, the contradiction of these opposites is me.

but that's a strange concept, that I'm still not sure I have completely figured out. 

I've been putting forth an effort to be the person I'd like to be. She would be kind. She would be funny. She wouldn't be afraid to ask the millions of questions that littered her mind but never slipped past her lips. She would be remembered as something more than "oh, you were there? Weird, I don't remember...What's your name again?"

But in that effort, I've lost sight of the person I was...and she wasn't a bad person at all. She was nice and shy and random and didn't care about anything other than what she was going to eat later. Sometimes, I wish I was her again. So ignorantly carefree. 

Wouldn't it be nice to pretend? Like when we were children and we could be the prince, or the dragon, or the knight in shining armor? 

But that's refuting reality. And I don't try to put forth a false mask consciously mostly because they would figure it out in time and the effort would be pointless. And I don't like wasting unnecessary energy, I barely have enough to make it through a a day.  

Most people don't like the apathetic expression I walk around with but that's my face; I'm not trying to be unfriendly but I also don't put that extra effort to be friendly. I don't like smiling at random people because it freaks me out when people I don't know smile at me. It makes me feel like I had forgotten something. Even the random greeting makes me have to grudge out a smile that I know looks insincere, because it is.

But what choice did I have left besides putting forth that painful pulling of my lips upward? Apparently, it's considered "rude" to not acknowledge the greeting in some way. I've done it before, greeting with blinks, and their unhappy faces leave me feeling uncomfortable.

I'm a people pleaser. 

But I don't want to be.

I hate that they have control over me like strings pulling an unwilling puppet. I've tried to chop the strings, only to be left in a lonely world without people and that's just not funny and also not good for my sanity. Living for myself is meaningless. I have to be me but I also have to be the me that poeple want me to be...right? 

But Me...

Who am I?

If only it was as simple to discover you as it was playing a game of hide-and-seek. There's no time limit, and the hiding places are endless. 

But me...where in the world are you? Must you hide away somewhere I can't find but traces of you?