"I seem to be, but I'm not, you see..."

It's fairly rare to go to a bar with friends and, depending on how many drinks it takes to make one sentimental, for someone to say of some song as it plays that "this song is about me."  I've said it myself many a time.  These days, I feel akin to the Platters classic "the Great Pretender".

Kurt Vonnegut's "Mother Night" tells the story of an American playwright living in Germany during the second World War that is recruited by American Intelligence to broadcast coded messages out of the country in the form of pro-Nazi propaganda.  Unaware of the content of the messages he's sending, as far as the playwright knows, he's just a Nazi spouting Nazi rhetoric and after the end of the war he is considered by everyone involved to be just another Nazi.  The closest the book offers in the way of a moral is that you have to be careful what you pretend to be, because in the end, you are what you pretend to be.

I have lost control of myself more times in this life than I care to admit.  I have lost jobs because of it, as well as severely strained relationships with friends and loved ones.  These lapses have cost me a lot, sometimes I think, more than I can bear.  It's only now, towards the end of my thirty-third year, that I ask myself "why?".

I once heard someone refer to these outbursts as "your mask slipping".  Is the loss of control the loss of strength required to create and maintain these masks?  These false senses of self?  

Heavy stuff, man.  

I think when I was younger, in high school and earlier, I just wanted to make everyone happy, proud, or generally satisfy the people around me.  At what point did that eclipse my desire to be honest?  At some point I rebelled a little, I guess, and tried to become a more self-gratifying version of the "me" I'd been thus far, but again, only now does it occur to me that I know so very little about myself.   

I fear questionnaires, as they always prove so hard for me to fill in.  I should know my favorite color, and I don't.  If I had a favorite flavor of ice cream and it changed, it wouldn't be the end of the world.  

Just who is Paul Sterling, anyway?

  
They don't write 'em like THIS anymore...