Why Do We Build Fake Things?
Why do we build fake things? I sit here, in an elective course, bored to tears, hating every part of my existence, my body, the way I speak, how I think about things, my writing, even the crappy project I just turned in to get the teacher off my back and I wonder why we build fake things. When you look out into the courtyard on a sunny day sure it looks nice, but that’s only with the thin veneer of life, radiance, and cheer the sun gives everything it touches. On a cloudy, rainy day like today, you really can see the total BS it is hiding behind a mask of happiness.
The courtyard is 20x20, with one or two doors leading into it that are policed with damn near gestapo-level efficiency. It’s got an orange road sign with black letters reading “Paw Path” and the ones below it reading “Tiger Trail” and a bench a few feet away with some memorial plaque that no one gets to read. The ground is covered in gravel and big heavy rocks surrounded by green overgrowth because no one but the occasional project-based class needs kids attends to it. When people see them in there, they laugh; anyone in the courtyard is an odd sight. Sure you have the occasional science research kid or two going in there to test the soil or something, but they won’t find anything. There’s nothing but the occasional bird living in there. Not even the trees in that little square are native to this part of New York and certainly wouldn’t be there had humans not planted them.
The realist thing in that courtyard is a green metal pole that someone put in there since before mine or anyone else’s Freshman year and that’s literally a metal pole made in a factory. At least it’s something you can imagine being there even if this wasn’t a school.
So I ask again, why do we create fake things?
I know why I’ve done it. I’ve been fake to hide things about myself. Created fake opinions, fake interests, fake things I enjoy; hell, even the name I go by is fake both in real life and what I published this under. I know why I do it. I do it to hide. I have to hide a lot. Hide myself, my name, my interests, my writing, my beliefs, my convictions. Hiding hurts, it really does, just kinda existing under the radar, pretending to be what you aren’t for the sake of others and how you worry they’ll react. No one wants to hide either. We do it because we have to. People just do that kind of thing for one reason or another, but eventually we all break down crying and from there we want desperately to walk out and say the truth, to stop hiding.
But we don’t.
No one ever does and I sincerely wish that I could say that I’m going to do something brave, that I’m going to use this as a stepping stone to something bigger and say “I’m going to reveal the truth I’ve been hiding.” But like I say, no one ever does and revealing it in this and publishing under my name and writing what I am is really something I’m not ready for. When say that, I mean that I’m not ready to decide that it needs to be released under something I want. I’m scared and tired of struggling and anything else would be too much for me to deal with so I just won’t. What I will do, is give some food for thought in case anyone reads anything on this site.