The Facade

There is a reason why having a facade can be so helpful in so many ways. It keeps the outside world outside. Perfect for when you don’t want to explain why you are in a situation where you are feeling useless and helpless and undermined and unworthy. It helps you to believe that as long as everyone else sees and accepts that what you are portraying as “real”, that perhaps it can be real. Perhaps the facade and the reality may yet meet. It helps you to control your emotions and not cry and not feel sorry for yourself and not sit on that pity pot for hours or days or weeks.

It also means that as long as you keep others out, that they have a seriously decreased capacity to hurt you or let you down in anyway. I have ridiculously high expectations of people and perhaps it is better for them and me if they are not let in, as then they lose the opportunity to let me down (perceived or in reality) and I don’t have the opportunity to expect anything of anyone. There is also the aspect of being independent. If you stand alone, you fall alone. You don’t bring anyone down with you. They don’t expect anything of you either. You don’t have to make promises that feel impossible to keep on certain days. You don’t have to be anything except that facade. And that can be anything of your choosing.

Sometimes the facade causes you to feel lonely. On balance though, loneliness can be managed, whilst being let down feels a lot harder. Perhaps being let down is normal. I often struggle to define what would be considered as normal. Whatever it is, there are days I think that it is most likely highly overrated by therapists and all these other people living their lives in their normal bubbles. Who the hell has the right to say what is normal anyway? In a different paradigm, normal could be cannibalism or selfishness or mediocrity or a million other things.  I don’t know what normal people do. I don’t know if they all have a constant facade up or not. Maybe the majority is so bound by society’s constraints that in public they put up facades constantly that everything is fine and under control. Just like mine. And in case you are wondering, everything is fine and under control.