Another one of those days in which I wake up feeling despondent. I am unattached from myself and feel that I wear a masque. I have become the meme of a man hiding tears coursing down his face behind a crudely constructed mask bearing a neutral smile. Some days I manage to fool myself into thinking that I do feel whole, that I am engaged with the world around me, that I don’t feel like I’m floating listlessly in the ether. Or perhaps there is no trickery, no falsehood, maybe there are days in which I am a complete human being. Alas, today is not one of those days. I am making my weekly pilgrimage to the office to make my offering to the gods of petty politics and social status. My sacrifice is marginal, I only need to don the masque between the hours of 1200 and 1800. The string taught against the back of my head, slicing minute layers of me (?) every time I nod or smile or tense my face to ensure my look of utter revulsion isn’t too obvious. It is an act that I may very well be able to keep up indefinitely, and indeed, may have to. This is the act of “adulthood”. A younger me would have called it “selling out” working for no reason other than to feed the beast of consumerism. Current me would call it “buying in,” for that is precisely how I spend the majority of my conscious time. “How should I use my money?” It is to make me happy, yes? That’s the point of this whole experiment, to enable me (with my piles and piles of privilege) to force the hand of fate and ensure my unending and continuous bliss, yes? But despite this the things that make me happy are incompatible with this current system, yes? I have to sacrifice my time to complete tasks that I have, at maximum, a passing interest in and receive as little as the behemoth that controls my life can get away with giving me? My youthful ideals of justice and fair play eroded by the constant battering of failed brushes with counter-culture. I am no punk. The tentacles of gentrification have their way with me. Feed me artisanal breads, let me suckle on the teat of boutique coffee shops… save me from the guilt of ignoring the down-and-outs. The only drunkards I want to see are those of merriment and celebration not those of desperation and decay. The only drug addicts I want to be around are the ones in shirts in pubs not those huddled in doorways pleading with me to enable their next fix. The only destitution I want to experience is that of existential ennui; shield me from the horrors of systemic poverty that I am tacitly responsible for. And yet, looking back, perhaps my masque of neutral smiles and platitudes is merely an evolution of a previous masque. One worn in youthful rebellion. A masque of bravado and defiance. My neutral smile replaced an aloof sneer, my platitudes replacing shocking sensational statements. I may long for my old masque, but what about those around me? Is my dissonance exasperated by objectivity? To transition from the first person to the third? No longer and “I” but another character going through an arc? #sadness #dissociation #existential