Appearances...
...Are deceiving.
An old adage. Yet so many seem to forget this; it is indeed frustrating.
I am nearly nothing like what my packaging would have you believe. And often, with the exception of very few lucky people, my personality is either carefully tailored to most fit each situation, or entirely artificial to cover my own personal flaws and fears. For to fear is to be feared, and to be flawed is to be hated.
Every twitch of ear and flicker of snarl needs to be covered; every word I speak and every action I make must be perfect for each instance. It is exhausting, and on occasion is harrowingly depressing in its hollowness, this necessity to be charming. But I would not be where I am now if I did not work so hard. All the world is a stage, and I am not content to be but a minor actor. I demand my main parts and my acolades, and for this I must be very careful about who is shown to whom, and how much. I've learned that if I want great things out of life, if I refuse to cheat I must at least be whoever is most likely to win. If that isn't me, I make it appear to be.
This is not to say that millions of people do not do this every day. None of us are to our parents who we are to our best friend, nor are we that person to our partner or our coworkers or our bosses. At least subconsciously, everyone alters themselves to suit their surrounding societal needs. I just happen to be very aware of my artificiality due to the many years of practice I have done to make it as convincing a cover as possible. It is distinctly necessary that general society never sees me as I am, if only for public safety.
If you are one of the few special people who is allowed to see what of me is able to be expressed, you are lucky. If you have been shown and told who and what I truly am, you are indescribably rare.
It saddens me. There are people who have known me for years who still managed to turn on me when some detail or other of the real me became apparent, be it therianthropy or transgenderism or the myriad other details which often seemed small to me. These same people had often said that they liked me for who I was and didn't care about how I looked.
The hypocrisy of humanity sickens me.
Beware of those that will say they love you for who you are without thinking first. That lack of pause often indicates a lie; or at the very best, well-intentioned use of cliche. Those that truly do love you for who you are, if you are anything like what I am, are very few and far between.
It is in writing this that I am reminded that not a soul has witnessed me snap and hurt someone for three years. As I have said to Dorian before, no one in this city has ever seen me lose my temper. And oh, I do crave it so. But again; this would not be generally acceptable, this wouldn't be perfect.
And I must be perfect, mustn't I...
How tiring it is. How rarely I can set down this shield that I foolishly crafted so heavily. I find myself pacing the floor yet again, purely from restlessness. I have been told I should excercise more, but this misses the basic point.
So much training and despair and fire and rage went into this hunger, so early. No amount of suppression would undo it now. And how good it would feel, just for once, just one time to give in. Just for a while. Only three minutes and it would be enough, if I could move with enough speed. These bones are old before their time and the muscles I used to have are starved and atrophied, but the memory of action is still there. As are all my teeth.
And what to say, then, upon the return home, with my face streaming blood and a limp or clutched shoulder? Would they see the peaceful, satiated relief in my eyes, the soft smile, the looseness in my movements? I think they would miss that. Or ignore it. See only damage done to the packaging, talk of lawsuits and police and "what happened?" and "you should have called" and "you did what?!"
Missing the point. Again. Of course. Such value attached to the packaging, the way a car is most valuable when it's showroom-cherry and drops down to scrap metal once the body has enough dents. The parts could be substandard or the engine entirely unsuited, but if it looks pretty enough it will sell like hotcakes, at least for a while. Until word gets around about the ghastly inner parts, of course.
This outward illusion of perfection, like endlessly waxing and buffing the hood of a '58 Chevy with no engine.
Showroom cherry is not a state that is meant to be lived in long. So why is it expected of us?