This is just a mask I wear.
This is who I am when I want to be like everyone else. They look at me and see this pretty mask that looks like them and acts like them and think I am one of them.
They don't look deep enough. They never meet my eyes.
You can only wear a mask so long. I can't keep it up all the time, sometimes, I feel the mask crack and some of the real me comes through.
The real me isn't like everyone else. The real me doesn't like everyone else. He doesn't like anyone else.
He's also the demonstrative sort. Ya know, he likes to show people how much he dislikes them.
I always pull it back, put my mask back on and people sigh and pat my shoulder and say, don't worry, that's not you.
But it is. It is me. And what they touch and hug and laugh with is something else, something I wear so that they don't hunt me.
I'm not sure that I like me. But it's who I am.
My mask has pretty hair and a soft face. My mask smiles at the girls and competes with the boys. My mask walks down the street and doesn't punch people when they frustrate him and doesn't rip guns out of the hands of the guards and turn them back on their owners.
World, meet my mask. And the World says hi and smiles and so does the mask.
I call my mask the pretender.
Everyone else calls him Jak.