The big stage production called life

Dear Elizabeth,

you are the genuine article of strangeness. Sometimes, I cannot understand you at all.

Your feelings live a separate existence from you, pretty much like your personality does. You observe what is happening but very often you don't really identify it as your own. I doubt there is a single thing you identify as your life or you. Most of the time, you are trying to scrape an existence by mimicking behaviours considered acceptable. Like a person who has never learned acting does when they suddenly find themselves on stage. You keep glancing at what the other actors say and do and try to understand what is expected from you. You are too intelligent for your own sake and have managed to blend in so well that no-one has a clue that you are not an actor, or part of the show. They even find your moments of awkwardness or puzzlement endearing. You are doing such a good job you have almost believed it yourself. And day after day you go to the same place and do what is expected from you, but deep in your heart you hide the same panic of that first time you found yourself on stage. That sooner or later, someone will look at you and understand you're a stranger, an imposter that has no right to be there. You're not an actor. You're not part of all that. How come you're playing this role, you'll never understand. You're no part of it and you'll never be.

You form friendships and manage to make yourself irreplaceable. You know what to say and when. You manage to worm your way into their deepest secrets and the inner chambers of their hearts, and when you find yourself there, you don't know what you're supposed to do. You say to yourself that you care, and perhaps you do care after a fashion. But at the same time you know it's going to last as much as it is going to last and then game over. Nothing is forever, nothing is really important. Life is about change and endings and new beginnings, all of them as important and as trivial as the ones before them. You know it's all dust in the end. And you're not even certain you care about it.

You fall in love and the chemicals of your brain have a party with your glands and the rest of you. You desire, you crave, you want the other person's attention, you want to be one with them. You say to yourself that you want them, but lately I have the strong suspicion that you merely want to use them as anchors to this nonsensical reality. You know they're not really important, just what you need right now to advance in your learning, and afterwards... afterwards you'll get over them. The fast way or the slow painful way, you'll get over them. They are anchors, they're things to be used or to use you for as long as necessary. Necessary for what? Probably to feel that you're no different than the rest of the people you see around you. You have a life, friends, a love interest. Therefore, you belong somewhere. You are safe, and other such bullshit you don't really believe for one moment. You just need it for your disguise as a human.

You look at yourself in the mirror and you see your face and body change and really wonder who that person is. Yes, you feel familiar with your body in the same way someone would have felt familiar with a T-shirt they wear every day, but at the same time you often stare at it in bewilderment, in wonder, and with genuine restlessness. You wonder when you'll be allowed to finally shed it because it's faulty and uncomfortable and it cannot do half of the things you were used to. You don't hate it, just wear it in the same way an actor has to wear a really uncomfortable article of clothing for as long as the show lasts. And you wonder when the day will come that someone will come and smile and caress your hair and say to you, "it's over now. You don't have to do this anymore. We can go home." And you'll cry in their arms, and those will be the first genuine tears in your entire life.

You know Elizabeth, you truly make very little sense. But still love you so much that I'd kill anyone who dared look at you the wrong way...

Be brave, my little actress, and smile.

Smile as much as you can.

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