"Grow up."
"Get a life!"
"You're immature."
"You're so lame, you know that?"
"Get a clue!"
"Have you any idea of how lame and immature you are?"
As a matter of fact, yes, I am aware of those things. Unfortunately, there's no magic button to push, no special shrine I can go to, or creepy guru somewhere that can 'show me the way'. No one really can, because life isn't a matter of do 'a,b,c, and get results d,e,f'. Not when it comes to questions of maturity.
I'm well aware that my masks are of terrible quality. I know that when you meet me, you will see that line where the mask tries to hide the sad, sorry state beneath. Everyone I meet wants to get to know me, simply because they want to see beneath the mask. But please, believe me when I say you don't want to see beneath the mask. It doesn't look good with the mask, but the picture beneath the mask is far worse. I'd prefer it if all you saw was the naïve, sad young man who is laughing a bit too much as he uncertainly stumbles through his life, trying to keep everything in some semblance of order.
Under that mask is a little boy on a cold winter's night, shivering as he tries to warm himself by the dying embers of the fire of emotion. All that remains are the pale and dying embers of anger, fear, and confusion. Happiness, hope, joy…nearly everything else in the emotional spectrum has burnt out long ago.
You see my lack of desire to try new flavors of ice cream, and you think that's the problem, but really, it's hard to care, when the little boy inside is shivering beside the smoking embers of fear and confusion. You see my blind obsession with Star Trek, but you don't see that child, carefully trying to get the fire to come back to life. You see the way I'm so invested in it that sometimes, I'm more present on the bridge of the Enterprise than I am in the present day. You see me tapping on walls, speaking to myself, or making odd gestures in thin air, and you wonder if I've lost my mind. You don't see that I'm busier trying to save it.
You hear me making incessant jokes, and you wish that I'd grow up and get serious, but you never see that my smile never quite reaches my eyes, and fades far too fast. You don't see the child within, frantically piling on small piles of flammable debris, then hitting the ground by the fire so fast that the skin of his knees breaks from hitting the rocks so he can blow at the base, heedless of the pain.
You want so desperately to help me, get me to open up, and experience new things, and most of all, you want me to remove that mask. Unfortunately, when I do, your reaction will always be the same. You will come to the immediate realization that 'he's too damaged, there's nothing I can do to help him, he's past saving'. Then, without a glance back towards the pitiful weakness you see written inside, you will turn, and walk away.
You want to be with the beautiful people. You want to help the people with little problems, like not being willing to try new ice cream flavors. You want a charity case that isn't too damaged, just a tiny scratch in the side, near the bottom, where someone won't really notice anyway. You can't really stand seeing the burnt-out shell of something that may have been human, many years ago. You can't stomach seeing so much psychological damage, so you'll go fix someone else, someone who's damage is easily repairable with a small bottle of White-Out. And you won't look back. You will try to forget what you saw. You will move on.
Me? I'll still be here, trying to survive in the real world whilst trying to repair the damage within. Perhaps I'll succeed in keeping that fire from dying completely, or perhaps I'll die within myself. Perhaps I will outwardly succeed, maybe I'll crash and burn. One thing is for certain. I will put one foot in front of the other, and repeat the process until my inevitable success or failure, at which point, I shall choose a new direction. Still, the question bears asking: Would I truly be missed if I failed in my mission to survive? Would anyone miss me if I suddenly imploded in the middle of nowhere, a single corpse halfway down a snowy mountain, preceded in death by the soul it once housed?