sometimes these eyes forget the face they're peering from

That one hit closer to home than I expected.

All these pretty moments when I open up and my eyes twinkle and I laugh are the moments when I feel the least alive. These are the times when I feel the most hollow--like a piñata or a blow-up pool toy. It's the moments when the darkness settles around my shoulders like a permament disease and I retreat into the depth of my self that I feel most alive, most authentic.

Overly gothic? No, just a bit nonplussed. It seems at those moments when I'm smiling and laughing and playing along my brain submerges itself in a cool, simmering pool of needlessness. I'm so used to playing the fool that it requires no energy or thought. I can just let him play and float along in the tunnel of ignorance.

But when the fool is put away, and the stage darkens or the limelight moves away from me, my mind is removed from its puddle of frigid anesthesia and begins to process my more 'public' moments with a sort of silent shame and reproach. I feel as though my intellect looks at my charisma and shakes its head, peering over the top of a pair of spectacles as if to say "how could you degrade us like that? Honestly, you're a disgrace. Why we must have such a loud and garrulous persona is beyond me."

It's an awkward life. I guess I'm tripping over my selves?