What Meets The Eye

I've noticed lately that people are never what they seem to be. It's like behind every smile there's a scar, behind every tear there's a hidden agenda. Behind every "hello", there's a "goodbye" waiting just around the corner.
Some people put up a false pretense, feigning who they really are as if afraid that their true personality might somehow ignite the wrath of their companions. This type of people is pretty abundant I guess. They can be found in every soul and every body. Even within you and I.
None of us have perfect lives and few are able to acknowledge and accept this fact. In our minds, there is always something we want to hide. Some thing we need to hide.
Maybe it's a wad of bill you took from a stranger's desk. Maybe it's that one time during your teenage years when you were working part-time in some fast food restaurant and you had the misfortune of stumbling upon a horrible customer so you decided to get revenge by spitting in his food. Maybe it's the test you cheated, the results you faked or the little white lie you told your parents concerning your academics. Maybe it's that deep resentment towards your siblings that plagues you. Or maybe it's the time you stabbed a colleague in the back to earn yourself a promotion. In some extreme cases, maybe it was a crime of passion that happened in the spur of the moment.
Most of the things we keep in the closet aren't even big issues. In most cases, they were just blown out of proportion by our own fears and insecurities. But some times, we keep those issues in the closet just for the sake of having something in it. What good would a closet be if it were empty?
It feels rather gloomy doesn't it? If your life were to be like an open book, every aspect of it open to public viewing, every speck of dust displayed to every soul who might be interested. What happens to your sense of privacy then? What happens when everyone thinks they know exactly who you are and start to form expectations of what you might do? By expectations I don't mean something huge like discovering the cure to cancer. Maybe it might be something as simple as knowing you would order a cup of iced coffee at the cafe every morning. But still, people start seeing and reading you like a book in the library and suddenly, you lost yourself.
You stop seeing yourself as who you really are but instead, your life starts to revolve the way others dictate it too. Don't get me wrong, by no means am I saying that you become a doormat. But when you no longer have something about yourself that you can keep a secret, it just seems that the process of losing who you are supposed to be seems awfully possible and probable.
And then there are those who are trying with all their might to escape being stereotyped by others. They aren't punks or goths, just average people who are trying to remain who or what they are. Some would just refuse to share some parts of their lives with others and beg for their understanding.
But not everybody is that strong. Under dire circumstances, the weaker ones chose to cut the Gordion's knot. Unable to reject people everytime they delve deeper into their private affairs, they chose to live a life void of any secrets or private matters at all. Or that's what the people around them are told. A smile to disguise last night's heart break. A grin to shadow the expression of disgust. A nod in agreement when they're voice fails to convey their opposition.
From dawn to dusk, they plaster a mask of happiness to deflect the weary fingers of strangers waiting for another dose of gossip. Let's face it, not many of us are interested in happy people, are we? The plight of a man who has lost everything and is currently just straining to live on is always more attractive then that of a happy and contempt man who is about to stumble upon a breakthrough in science. At least to the common people.
So they fake their happiness, they fake their smiles, they fake their laughter until one day, they themselves are no longer able to differentiate what's real and what's not. It feels like every time they laughed, their heart will ache. It hurts just to be happy even when something good happens. Nothing seems to be enough yet at the same time, everything no longer matters. All they want is for somebody to understand that they are not all cheery and roses after all. But how can that happen when everybody thinks this is just another girl without any agendas in life?
Others fake their personality to run away. Maybe that girl who's always running her mouth and who always talks without thinking isn't the gossip queen you always thought she is. Maybe she's just putting up this fort so people will stop bothering her with their personal problems. Think about it, who would reveal their deepest, darkest secrets to the news reporter of the class? Well, maybe she really is a gossip queen. Who knows? I don't, do you? Why don't you just think about it. Have what she said ever hurt anybody's reputation or harmed anybody's image before? And what kind of prejudice is it, for me to assume that a gossip queen must be a "she"?
Maybe that boy who's always crapping and who always have some witty, sarcastic remark to throw at others isn't that jerk we all think of him as. Maybe he isn't as dumb as his results show him to be. Have any of us ever seen what's underneath his skin? What if we found that in truth, he's just another sensitive teenager who isn't able to articulate his heart, will we accept him as he is then?
And so we hide. And so we put on a mask. And so we run away, running away from the truth, running away from the pain, running away from responsibility.
We continue our lives, unaware of our friends and companions suffering in silence beside us. Occasionally, an innocent child might wonder why that stranger looks so worn out, but nobody stops long enough to realize the agonizing pain that's killing them from within.