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tinhuvielartanisFor one who collects them, has made some, and admires masks in the extreme, I grow weary of people who wear them for no other reason but to hide their ugliness. I neither support nor appreciate dishonesty, nor can I abide by it in the manner in which I was forced when working for BMG. If you can't be up front with me about things, if you can't be who you are wherever you roam, be it in the real world or on the Internet, I don't have the patience or place for you in my life. I'm far from perfect, but I can say that I'm honest. I'm open perhaps to a fault, and that's a fair amount of what ends up getting me hurt in the world. You try to approach others with open palms, honesty, and a wry sense of humour, there's pretty much only one thing of which you're guaranteed for your trouble: an emotional, mental, and sometimes a physical beatdown.
If you can't be honest with others, how can you ever hope to be honest with yourself? What exactly are you trying to hide anyway? What's your malfunction?
We all have malfunctions. I'm at the head of the line when it came to god handing out malfunctions. At least I admit it, try to work around it or through it, and try to help others along too. Or at least I did. One of my new years resolutions is to avoid contact with people who set off my User Alarm. Despite my knowing how humanity works, despite my piss-poor experiences with people in the past, I found myself being stupid enough to set all that to one side to help someone who apparently doesn't give two shits if I help them or not. And I continued to help even after it was obvious I was less than appreciated and even reviled by other people on the team to supposedly help the cause. For every effort I made, I found myself pushed further out into a state of Pariahdom. I have not done anything to deserve the treatment I've gotten except to be stupid enough to place myself in a position to be treated as such. That's my fault. I'm a moron for having had ever trusted anyone, especially someone who set off such dreadful alarms in my psyche.
If you're willing to sell out a friend for your own benefit, then you are capable of anything. I should have gotten out early on while I still had very little invested in the project. I should have just run as far away as possible, leaving the evidence of betrayal for the important people to find. But I was too emotionally invested already...and too stupid for my own good.
Something happened to me during my long illness though: I had the world, life, and people put into perspective for me. When I woke up from my sickness, the things that had been bothering me, plaguing me in a way, were no longer important. It seemed that, no matter how hard I tried and how much I worried about this person, the only thing that would come from it would be that I'd be labeled as a crackpot and a weirdo, despite my good intentions. So I released it to the the winds and embraced those things in my life that have long been pillars of strength in my reality: my music and my writing. As if answering my beacon for moral support, my friend Barry wrote to me and filled me with that strangely comforting feeling of fright and poetry for which I've oftentimes been so very grateful. And this time was far from an exception. When a dark star lights your path, you know your true friends by the feel of their hands in yours as they lead you along to your common destination.
We all wear masks. Some of us wear masks to accentuate the exotic nature of ourselves. Some of us wear them to hide the grim truth some are still too blind to see for fear their perfect world might be shattered by a reality they refuse to acknowledge. Most of the time, there's nothing wrong with masks. It's how humanity has helped to tell stories over the course of our collective history. Sometimes, though, the usage of masks and the act of hiding behind them serve only to confuse and confound. Less honest people use a tried and true tradition to their own dread advantages. It isn't simply hateful; more importantly, and more profoundly, it's just plain sad, just like the people who practice such deception. I won't lie and say I don't harbour hatred for such people, but I'll go a step further and say I feel more sorry for them than anything else. And I'll be even more honest in admitting that I hope my pity infuriates them. If they're even capable of such emotion.
If you can't be honest with others, how can you ever hope to be honest with yourself? What exactly are you trying to hide anyway? What's your malfunction?
We all have malfunctions. I'm at the head of the line when it came to god handing out malfunctions. At least I admit it, try to work around it or through it, and try to help others along too. Or at least I did. One of my new years resolutions is to avoid contact with people who set off my User Alarm. Despite my knowing how humanity works, despite my piss-poor experiences with people in the past, I found myself being stupid enough to set all that to one side to help someone who apparently doesn't give two shits if I help them or not. And I continued to help even after it was obvious I was less than appreciated and even reviled by other people on the team to supposedly help the cause. For every effort I made, I found myself pushed further out into a state of Pariahdom. I have not done anything to deserve the treatment I've gotten except to be stupid enough to place myself in a position to be treated as such. That's my fault. I'm a moron for having had ever trusted anyone, especially someone who set off such dreadful alarms in my psyche.
If you're willing to sell out a friend for your own benefit, then you are capable of anything. I should have gotten out early on while I still had very little invested in the project. I should have just run as far away as possible, leaving the evidence of betrayal for the important people to find. But I was too emotionally invested already...and too stupid for my own good.
Something happened to me during my long illness though: I had the world, life, and people put into perspective for me. When I woke up from my sickness, the things that had been bothering me, plaguing me in a way, were no longer important. It seemed that, no matter how hard I tried and how much I worried about this person, the only thing that would come from it would be that I'd be labeled as a crackpot and a weirdo, despite my good intentions. So I released it to the the winds and embraced those things in my life that have long been pillars of strength in my reality: my music and my writing. As if answering my beacon for moral support, my friend Barry wrote to me and filled me with that strangely comforting feeling of fright and poetry for which I've oftentimes been so very grateful. And this time was far from an exception. When a dark star lights your path, you know your true friends by the feel of their hands in yours as they lead you along to your common destination.
We all wear masks. Some of us wear masks to accentuate the exotic nature of ourselves. Some of us wear them to hide the grim truth some are still too blind to see for fear their perfect world might be shattered by a reality they refuse to acknowledge. Most of the time, there's nothing wrong with masks. It's how humanity has helped to tell stories over the course of our collective history. Sometimes, though, the usage of masks and the act of hiding behind them serve only to confuse and confound. Less honest people use a tried and true tradition to their own dread advantages. It isn't simply hateful; more importantly, and more profoundly, it's just plain sad, just like the people who practice such deception. I won't lie and say I don't harbour hatred for such people, but I'll go a step further and say I feel more sorry for them than anything else. And I'll be even more honest in admitting that I hope my pity infuriates them. If they're even capable of such emotion.
