It doesn't, but she is well-rehearsed ...

#brianwestlake

I am her again.
Hungry and filled with hate.
I almost choke with every mouthful.
I am gulping: air, food
Swallowing rage.
Trying to hide the truth from myself;
In quantity.
Tasting only blood
From the wounds of the starving.

Rain.
The drops dry out on the pavers as soon as they land.
I am sitting in the waiting room listening to an aria as the first rain falls amidst a state-declared drought. It's a dramatic scene, the detail is perfect, and I am moved by the moment.
Always ready to add something, I think about stepping in as the character who goes out to dance in it. 
I resist.

I am waiting to see the psychologist.
I’m going to tell her my story.
Or what I think is my story;
I can’t be so sure anymore.
​Truth and fiction have blurred.

​"That there
That's not me"

​The only way to find myself, is to shed myself entirely.
Remove myself from everything I have ever known. For over the course of my life to date, I have moulded myself in ways that I barely recognise. The performance has now become so second nature, so surreal. I know I am not myself here.
Not how they know me.
They don't know me.
And while I continue to walk these same streets and talk to the same people, the performance will stay the same.
Who am I if you take all of this away? If you remove me from the same environment I have lived in for over 20 years - the props, the characters, the set, the same tired old script.
​I am deconstructing my constructed self.

I have been censoring myself for far too long.

Concerned about the perception of just about everyone I know - family, friends, lovers, ex-lovers, people I went to school with - all of them being able to readily find me and read me and make what they will of my words.

For far too long, people have twisted my words into ammunition, or confessions, characterising me in ways that are not indicative of who I actually am. 

This has inhibited my writing no end. 
No  more, I say!

This is a space to spill my words freely.
​Unfound, by them, and their judgements.

​​I watched as her tired show reel dissolved into celluloid decay,
​From too many reruns and the damages of time.
All that remains now is her essence.
Fluid. Ethereal.
No longer contained.
​She is finally free.