Am I truly living or just merely breathing?

I find it hard to fathom where my days and nights go...I live such a life of repetition and rote. What happened to the child that was vibrant to her core...the young woman who LIVED each moment as she found it...where did I go?

I've spent twenty years wrapped...not as a present...layered to hide, protect, confuse and obscure myself to the point where I am not quite sure if anyone "knows the me." I don't even have the confidence to admit to the me that is inside. I started it all as a way to avoid being EVER EVER hurt/reliant on another person again. Andrew tore my soul out...and I gave him permission to do it. I couldn't trust MYSELF to go back out and possibly go through that emotional miasma once more. I had no strength.

So I packed up my dreams, desires, opinions, thoughts...all my "essences"were distilled down to mere tinctures of what they once were .... inner emotions dampened and replaced by impervious membranes...charlatans of the truth in me. I even changed the physicality of the form ... distrusting the compliment to the extreme point of ensuring the stilling of the voiced.

And, over time, it has BECOME the ME that humanity sees. I dance the dance. I don't shine the light of who I am...but play a game of smoke and mirrors. I am frightened that I can't hold it together...and I am in anguish because I am scared that I don't know who I am anymore.

At night, lately, I feel a struggle rising through me...it is visceral ...almost bile. I want to scream out my truths...I want recognition of ME...I am afraid I don't know what this angry me is. My protectant cocoon is growing colder and more dim...my path back has steel bars.

...I'm angry....I'm resentful....I'm fearful....

Can anyone say with certainty that they know me? Or is it my mask? Do they know my likes and dislikes? My favorite music? Pastimes? Vices? What causes my heart to soar? I feel now that I would wound those who care...they wouldn't "know" me as they were positive that they did. I don't want to cause them to doubt themselves...so I continue the deception. And I desperately need them...no matter if it is ME they see or not.

So I hug and clutch at the deception ... that stares back at me with lifeless eyes.