A Twisted Little Man

He was a twisted little man on the inside. Horribly so. Unrecognizably so.

He wore a smile on the outside for all the world to see. It was a practiced smile; it appeared genuine. Most would never see through the façade. Anyone who could get past the façade would shrink back in horror. The contradiction between the facial expression and what was going on inside was grotesque.

He was a twisted little man on the inside. Gnarled, contorted, burned, ravaged, deformed. His essence had been hollowed out, the void filled in with disappointment, surprise, hatred, shame, hopelessness and fear. All bubbling like the most corrosive of acid, which in fact they were. Eating him out from the inside. An odor so acrid he could detect nothing else.

Still, no one else noticed.

He walked through the world with confidence, jokes, a sense of humor and a sense of the absurd. Everybody liked him. They liked him for the wrong reasons. They liked him for the part he played. A part he played superbly. A part rehearsed endlessly since he became a sentient being.

A long time. A very long time.

He did not like himself nor did he like the character he inhabited. Self loathing in his soul and on the stage. Yeah, add that to the list . The list of things that filled the void. Self loathing.

Talk about method acting. His life was a testament to method acting. He never broke character unless he was alone or sleeping. But there was a gulf between the part he played and the real him, as there must be with all things imaginary, and that gulf, that awareness was the spark, the acid, the destroyer that was slowly dissolving his insides.

He lived his life like an animal in a cage. A cage he carried around him always. Projecting effortlessness and grace of movement outwardly; stumbling, gasping and buckling inwardly. It felt to him like he was staggering, forever staggering, lurching about wildly from wrong destination to wrong destination.

Yet the smile persisted. The smile was a smoke screen magically transforming reality into a performance. A command performance enthusiastically applauded.

By others.

He wanted to get at the damage with a scalpel. Get inside and cut and scrape it all away. Leave room and nurturing ground for beauty and essence to re-bound and to flourish.

He suspected this was hopeless. Suspected he was in Stage IV of  the disease; a ruined and wasted life.

He desperately wanted to understand how he allowed this to happen; he wanted an answer. An answer from himself.

He couldn't pinpoint the origin of the disease nor could he fathom why he was never able to defeat it along the way. To throw it off course, to walk a different road.

No magic bullets for him. Not now. Not for the body. Not for the mind.

Although he was filled with poison, consumed by it really, he felt empty.

He was empty.