This Mask I Wear
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The masks we wear are but a fragment of who we truly are.
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Do you know me?
Can you see beneath this mask I wear?
Do you see the truth?
No -- what you see is but an illusion, a façade built on lies and hurt.
Built on the need to at least pretend -- to dream -- that I'm not broken.
At dawn the mask goes on. I hide behind it -- an impenetrable wall of happiness. Love. Care.
Does it ever crack? Do you ever wonder why, for a moment, I seem so lost?
Only when the night comes -- when I am curled next to the only one who ever cared for me -- do I allow the mask to fall. Allow myself to cry.
Allow myself to remember.
And he understands. We both know it -- the pain of loneliness, the feeling of growing unloved and uncared for, of crying for those who are gone.
Living without knowledge of anything other than pain, fear, and darkness. Of any other name than worthless.
Of any other world than one painted in shades of black and red.
He destroyed my word -- and he built it up again. He took me to this place, where I can wear this mask and pretend to forget.
We braved it all together, despite being nameless in a world where names are everything.
He is my everything -- he made me who I am, and stayed by me, even when the mask shattered, and fell.
In the end, this mask I wear is but a fragment of who I truly am -- and yet, it is all that I am, for it keeps away what I was (am), and taunts me with everything I wish I could be.
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A/N: Yeah, yeah, another depressing Bleach fanfiction. This is Yachiru-centric, because honestly, with her childhood, there has to be some angst under there, right?
This story, and the ones coming in the next half-hour or so, are my attempt to post something before the New Year. I've had these in a notebook forever -- now I'm posting them.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Bleach.
New Year!
--Erin
