At first, it was like dress-up everyday, and she made a game out of it. How many people could she fool? How cleverly could she mask her true self? How elaborate could her disguises get before they fell apart around her? At first t was fun, but then the game grew tiresome, and she began to wish she had never played in the first place. But she knew she couldn't stop now, and that was when the game turned into more of a chore. She wanted to stop pretending, and yet at the same time she knew she could not. The more she understood that the more she wanted to stop, and she more she wanted to stop, the harder it got to hold up her mask over herself. But by then she became so good at it, so skilled in pretending that after a while her disguise felt like a second skin, and it became no effort at all. And she knew that she should feel glad for the ease of which she could wear her costume, but instead she was scared. Because now- how could she take it off?