Sometimes, I feel like a fraud; like I’m not really me. I’m operating myself at a distance and ignoring everything on the inside. I’m ignoring everything that’s true and real.

Once, I was idealistic about the world. I’d be true to myself, and everything would be okay. I grew out of that fairly quickly. You can’t just be yourself, much as you’d like to. People are mean, and the world is filled with realities that soon burst any bubble of self that doesn’t conform well enough to the norm.

So you grow up learning to hide your true self. You change your clothes. You change your hair. You change the way you walk and speak. You stop doing what you want to do. You start doing what you don’t want to do. You become an adult when you want to remain a child. You crawl up inside yourself and don’t let any of your secrets out for others to prey on.

You get so good at hiding yourself that you sometimes forget it’s even there. But it always is. If you listen, you can still hear it. It’s the little part of you that sings in the sunshine, the little part of you that sobs in the darkness.