LIES OF THE MIRROR
That tiniest moment after someone shakes your hand and before you introduce yourself - world of possibility. There are so many ways to tell you who I am (admitted, many lies, and only a few truths). Maybe that doesn't even really matter, because the story I tell you will say something about who I am as a person, and more importantly, who I choose to become. Do I tell you of the darkness? If I tell you, you will only see me as a shadow, a woman reduced by oppression and by suffering. Do I tell you of the doubt? If I tell you, you will see me as a broken thing, cracked under the pressure, not worthy of repair. Do I tell you of the anger? If I do, you will think me to be ungrateful and negative and caught up in emotion. Can I tell you of the sadness? But how could you, who have known none, understand that depth of purposeless lethargy where you want to do no more than staring at the moving stars as the minutes pass and the nights go and the months change.
There is no other way than throwing the anger and the doubt and darkness in a dungeon where they cannot be found or freed. No one wants to meet your darkness; there is only access to the shiny people club if you wear your smile daily and radiate happy thoughts and general hope. I never wanted in on the glamorously happy club, but then again, there is darkness like this one, and there is the black hole vacuum of those who fell in love with their cherished suffering, nurturing themselves in richest self-pity until dehydration forces them to stop crying - I do not want that, either. So forget about the truth, if the truth will hurt more than a handful of white lies. I can be happy, truly (- even if only in your eyes, in that tiny moment as you shake my hand, before we both move on).