Plexiglas

I was a Very Bad Girl today.

I skipped out on my shrink, cause instead I wanted to put my creepy black hoodie on and sit at a bar drinking sake and reading a graphic novel about an unrepentant assassin. Cause. You know. That's totally a better way to spend my time.

Truth is, I couldn't face myself today. At least not my real self, if you can dig that. 

Each morning I reconfigure myself. Not as a response to prior destruction, but as a ritual and a small step toward adaptation. And I know I'm no fucking unique snowflake, so I'm sure you get me. And if you don't get me. Well. At some point I know you have *gotten* me.

It goes like so:

I wake up. I wipe the fog off of the window between dreaming and reality. I coerce myself from my bed. I shower and try to remember, then forget my dreams. Then I put on the Mask.

The Mask is the bit of me that gets me through each day without cussing most people out. It allows me to be professionally subordinate to people that I see as equal to me in terms of skill and experience. It keeps me from bitch slapping meter maids. It helps me to be polite to people who have the power to spit in or otherwise sabotage my food. 

And those are just the basics.

It also helps me get fly before a special outing. Charm strangers. Outshine gaggles of frat boys to flag down taxis and towncars on late nights. Discuss socioeconomic stratification with white men from the United States and black men from Nigeria without losing my cool. Read comic books in crowded places and not feel even a little bit self-conscious.

Basically. The Mask helps me cope. And it really is the whole reason that I'm alive and reasonably successful today. And there are some days when I understand that I simply cannot deal with taking it off.

So I leave it on. I invest in this luxury. This hiding from sanity. 

I pay for my therapy session, but instead spend that time reading The Killer at Kirala, ordering 2 bottles of hot sake and wasabi chicken that burns my sinuses so much that I look like I'm crying over my tales of murder and mayhem.

And I don't give a fuck. For a few minutes or a couple hours I really just Don't Give a Fuck. 

Ask any hit man: middle fingers cost a lot. I feel blessed that I haven't lost mine yet.