Masks The Pain Quotes

You’re not weak because you can’t read. You’re weak because you’re afraid of people seeing your weakness. You’re letting shame decide who you are. […] It’s shame that lines my pockets, shame that keeps the Barrel teeming with fools ready to put on a mask just so they can have what they want with none the wiser about it. We can endure all kinds of pain. It’s shame that eats men whole.

The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt.

It was sadness, lostness, and the worst thing about it was the way it seemed like a default—like it was there all the time, and all her other expressions were just an array of masks she used to cover it up.

The hardest thing of all is when pain is hidden behind a mask of calm.

It's shame that lines my pockets, shame that keeps the Barrel teeming with fools ready to put on a mask just so they can have what they want with no one the wiser for it. We can endure all kinds of pain. It's shame that eats men whole.

...there's something magical about a mask, but I have never worn one - I want you to see my pain and know how your love affects me...

Dear Child, Sometimes on your travel through hell, you meet people that think they are in heaven because of their cleverness and ability to get away with things. Travel past them because they don't understand who they have become and never will. These type of people feel justified in revenge and will never learn mercy or forgiveness because they live by comparison. They are the people that don't care about anyone, other than who is making them feel confident. They don’t understand that their deity is not rejoicing with them because of their actions, rather he is trying to free them from their insecurities, by softening their heart. They rather put out your light than find their own. They don't have the ability to see beyond the false sense of happiness they get from destroying others. You know what happiness is and it isn’t this. Don’t see their success as their deliverance. It is a mask of vindication which has no audience, other than their own kind. They have joined countless others that call themselves “survivors”. They believe that they are entitled to win because life didn’t go as planned for them. You are not like them. You were not meant to stay in hell and follow their belief system. You were bound for greatness. You were born to help them by leading. Rise up and be the light home. You were given the gift to see the truth. They will have an army of people that are like them and you are going to feel alone. However, your family in heaven stands beside you now. They are your strength and as countless as the stars. It is time to let go! Love, Your Guardian Angel

The people you think are the happiest are usually the saddest; that's because they see more and feel deeper than others do. They are the sensitive and they see beyond the veil of what's tangible and what's not. They wear no masks and can see through the masks of others. The sensitive to life are few in number, which is why they feel so alone...because they are all alone.

All of these things, however, were but like methadone to a heroin addict. They only masked the withdrawal pains without satisfying the addiction. So even as they tried truly to break up many times, they always found their way back to each other.

A Gift for You I send you... The gift of a letter from your wise self. This is the part of you that sees you with benevolent, loving eyes. You find this letter in a thick envelope with your name on it, and the word YES written boldly above your name. My Dear, I am writing this to remind you of your 'essence beauty.' This is the part of you that has nothing to do with age, occupation, weight, history, or pain. This is the soft, untouched, indelible you. You can love yourself in this moment, no matter what you have, or haven't done or been. See past any masks, devices, or inventions that obscure your essence. Remember your true purpose, WHICH is only Love. If you cannot see or feel love, lie down now and cry; it will cleanse your vision and free your heart. I love you; I am you.

Pain, anguish and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed.

Does the open wound in another's breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own? Or does the blood which is welling from another man's side staunch that which is pouring from our own? Does the general anguish of our fellow creatures lessen our own private and particular anguish? No, no, each suffers on his own account, each struggles with his own grief, each sheds his own tears.

those who suffer intolerably learn to hide their afflictions, both necessary and unnecessary, because the world does not run on pain time but on happy time, whether or not that happiness is honestly felt or a mask for the blackest despondency.

--and then you're in serious trouble, very serious trouble, and you know it, finally, deadly serious trouble, because this Substance you thought was your one true friend, that you gave up all for, gladly, that for so long gave you relief from the pain of the Losses your love of that relief caused, your mother and lover and god and compadre, has finally removed its smily-face mask to reveal centerless eyes and a ravening maw, and canines down to here, it's the Face In The Floor, the grinning root-white face of your worst nightmares, and the face is your own face in the mirror, now, it's you, the Substance has devoured or replaced and become you, and the puke-, drool- and Substance-crusted T-shirt you've both worn for weeks now gets torn off and you stand there looking and in the root-white chest where your heart (given away to It) should be beating, in its exposed chest's center and centerless eyes is just a lightless hole, more teeth, and a beckoning taloned hand dangling something irresistible, and now you see you've been had, screwed royal, stripped and fucked and tossed to the side like some stuffed toy to lie for all time in the posture you land in. You see now that It's your enemy and your worst personal nightmare and the trouble It's gotten you into is undeniable and you still can't stop. Doing the Substance now is like attending Black Mass but you still can't stop, even though the Substance no longer gets you high. You are, as they say, Finished. You cannot get drunk and you cannot get sober; you cannot get high and you cannot get straight. You are behind bars; you are in a cage and can see only bars in every direction. You are in the kind of a hell of a mess that either ends lives or turns them around.

The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.

I mask my hate. I mask my pain. One thing that I can't mask is my dwindling grade point average." -Dreams, Smiles, and Bloody Tears

We hide our demons so good, that the angels we show, bare the shame on their faces.

tedium is the worst pain. the mind lays out the world in blocks, and the hushed blood waits for revenge. all order, i've come to understand, is theoretical, unreal - a harmless sensible, smiling mask men slide between the two great, dark realities, the self and the world - two snake pits.

Behind Joy and Laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind Sorrow there is always Sorrow. Pain, unlike Pleasure, wears no mask.

True pain can only come gradually. It is exactly like tuberculosis in that the disease has already progressed to a critical stage before the patient becomes aware of its symptoms.

The beautiful is hidden from the eyes of those who are not searching for the truth, for whom it is contra-indicated. But the profound lack of spirituality of those people who see art and condemn it, the fact that they are neither willing nor ready to consider the meaning and aim of their existence in any higher sense, is often masked by the vulgarly simplistic cry, 'I don't like it!', 'It's boring!' It is not a point that one can argue; but it like the utterance of a man born blind who is being told about a rainbow. He simply remains deaf to the pain undergone by the artist in order to share with others the truth he has reached.

The face of sin today often wears the mask of tolerance. Do not be deceived; behind that facade is heartache, unhappiness and pain. .. YOU be the one to make a stand for right, even if you stand alone. Have the moral courage to be a light for others to follow.

What is pain to a man? A privilege! Masking pain is the measure of a man.

In order to protect our emotional wounds, and because of our fear of being hurt, humans create something very sophisticated in the mind: a big denial system. In that denial system we become the perfect liars. We lie so perfectly that we lie to ourselves and we even believe our own lies. We don’t notice we are lying, and sometimes even when we know we are lying, we justify the lie and excuse the lie to protect ourselves from the pain of our wounds. The denial system is like a wall of fog in front of our eyes that blinds us from seeing the truth. We wear a social mask because it’s too painful to see ourselves or to let others see us as we really are. And the denial system lets us pretend that everyone believes what we want them to believe about us. We put up these barriers for protection, to keep other people away,

The voice of human nature is nothing but one prolonged cry.

Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.

Pain wears no mask .it makes man humble.

I used to think Romeo and Juliet was the greatest love story ever written. But now that I’m middle-aged, I know better. Oh, Romeo certainly thinks he loves his Juliet. Driven by hormones, he unquestionably lusts for her. But if he loves her, it’s a shallow love. You want proof?” Cagney didn’t wait for Dr. Victor to say yay or nay. “Soon after meeting her for the first time, he realizes he forgot to ask her for her name. Can true love be founded upon such shallow acquaintance? I don’t think so. And at the end, when he thinks she’s dead, he finds no comfort in living out the remainder of his life within the paradigm of his love, at least keeping alive the memory of what they had briefly shared, even if it was no more than illusion, or more accurately, hormonal. “Those of us watching events unfold from the darkness know she merely lies in slumber. But does he seek the reason for her life-like appearance? No. Instead he accuses Death of amorousness, convinced that the ‘lean abhorred monster’ endeavors to keep Juliet in her present state, her cheeks flushed, so that she might cater to his own dissolute desires. But does Romeo hold her in his arms one last time and feel the warmth of her blood still coursing through her veins? Does he pinch her to see if she might awaken? Hold a mirror to her nose to see if her breath fogs it? Once, twice, three times a ‘no.’” Cagney sighed, listened to the leather creak as he shifted his weight in his chair. “No,” he repeated. “His alleged love is so superficial and selfish that he seeks to escape the pain of loss by taking his own life. That’s not love, but obsessive infatuation. Had they wed—Juliet bearing many children, bonding, growing together, the masks of the star-struck teens they once were long ago cast away, basking in the comforting campfire of a love born of a lifetime together, not devoured by the raging forest fire of youth that consumes everything and leaves behind nothing—and she died of natural causes, would Romeo have been so moved to take his own life, or would he have grieved properly, for her loss and not just his own?

All too often, we mask truth in artifice, concealing ourselves for fear of losing the ones we love or prolonging a deception for those we wish to expose. We hide behind that which brings us comfort from pain and sadness or use it to repel a truth too devastating to accept.

Creativity connects me to my truest self and vulnerability. There is nothing more personally liberating, than reaching for my face and peeling off the social mask that hides my; shadow self, pain and weakness. When i produce from this place of truth, the results transform both creator and beholder.

To survive painful beliefs and feelings, we often mask them with anger. That way, we don’t have to feel the shame behind it.

The smile that covered a "multitude of pains" was no hypocritical mask. She was trying to hide her sufferings - even from God! - so as not to make others, especially the poor, suffer because of them. When she promised to do "a little extra praying & smiling" for one of her friends, she was alluding to an acutely painful and costly sacrifice: to pray when prayer was so difficult and to smile when her interior pain was agonizing.

Such an Ibisian scene: both their faces were formal masks, their posture correct, pain kept inside where it cut deeper.

When the tragedies of others become for us diversions, sad stories with which to enthrall our friends, interesting bits of data to toss out at cocktail parties, a means of presenting a pose of political concern, or whatever…when this happens we commit the gravest of sins, condemn ourselves to ignominy, and consign the world to a dangerous course. We begin to justify our casual overview of pain and suffering by portraying ourselves as do-gooders incapacitated by the inexorable forces of poverty, famine, and war. “What can I do?” we say, “I’m only one person, and these things are beyond my control. I care about the world’s trouble, but there are no solutions.” Yet no matter how accurate this assessment, most of us are relying on it to be true, using it to mask our indulgence, our deep-seated lack of concern, our pathological self-involvement.

Each happy chemical triggers a different good feeling. Dopamine produces the joy of finding what you seek– the “Eureka! I got it!” feeling. Endorphin produces the oblivion that masks pain– often called “euphoria.” Oxytocin produces the feeling of being safe with others– now called “bonding.” And serotonin produces the feeling of being respected by others–“pride.

Carla's description was typical of survivors of chronic childhood abuse. Almost always, they deny or minimize the abusive memories. They have to: it's too painful to believe that their parents would do such a thing. So they fragment the memories into hundreds of shards, leaving only acceptable traces in their conscious minds. Rationalizations like "my childhood was rough," "he only did it to me once or twice," and "it wasn't so bad" are common, masking the fact that the abuse was devastating and chronic. But while the knowledge, body sensations, and feelings are shattered, they are not forgotten. They intrude in unexpected ways: through panic attacks and insomnia, through dreams and artwork, through seemingly inexplicable compulsions, and through the shadowy dread of the abusive parent. They live just outside of consciousness like noisy neighbors who bang on the pipes and occasionally show up at the door.

It’s to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It’s what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy ... we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What’s left? What else is there that hasn’t been dealt out like a pack of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what’s shared – she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she’s everybody’s and it don’t mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it’s held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it’s gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil, a tangerine, a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb. Pain.

Pain anguish and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed. We will not pretend to say that Heaven always apportions to a man's capability of endurance the anguish with which he afflicts him...Suffering is in proportion to the strength which has been accorded in other words the weak suffer more where the trial is the same than the strong.

Real monsters don’t wear masks

A child without parents learns to survive: they work out early to mask what they feel and if the pain proves beyond bearing, to dig a cave in their head, and hide inside.

Please don´t drown into his fears, his concrete fists don´t let him again, break the bridge of your nose with his cruel born hits. Then disappear into that mask of misery.

…love is by definition free and if he choose to go when I would have him stay perhaps I'll die a bit but I'd rather so than taste his absent minded kiss and lie uneasy in a masked embrace

Our need to be "greater than" or "less than" has been a defense against toxic shame. A shameful act was committed upon us. The perpetrator walked away, leaving us with the shame. We absorbed the notion that we are somehow defective. To cover for this we constructed a false self, a masked self. And it is this self that is the overachiever or the dunce, the tramp or the puritan, the powermonger or the pathetic loser.

I was focused before - obsessed, really - with the appearance of perfection. But what did that ever bring me but pain? Pain and not seeing people for who they really are. If I ever get out of here, I'll look at people differently. I'll look for their true selves beneath the mask of their bodies. I'll look at soul.

Why are you doing this?" I asked as I turned and looked at her. "Because I can lay here and no one will know I'm crying," she said, looking up at the sky. I felt a pain in my heart when she said that. She was out here, in the pouring rain, to mask the tears that plagued her face.

The pain of losing Deborah still brings tears. And I cannot mask my profound disappointment that God did not answer yes to our prayers for healing. I think He's okay with that. One of the phrases we evangelicals like to throw around is that Christianity is 'not a religion; it's a relationship.' I believe that, which is why I know that when my faith was shattered and raged against Him, He still accepted me. And even though I have penciled a black mark in His column, I can be honest about it. That's what a relationship is all about.

The philosophies of men surround us. The face of sin today often wears the mask of tolerance. Do not be deceived; behind that facade is heartache, unhappiness, and pain. You know what is right and what is wrong, and no disguise, however appealing, can change that. Be the one to make a stand for right, even if you stand alone. Have the moral courage to be a light for others to follow.

RAINBOW VOICES I ask people of the world and children of light to start reflecting the stories of their souls to vibrate wisdom around the earth. Pick up a paintbrush or microphone. Press the inks of your pens to paper or tap words onto your screens, and start sharing what you know and have learned with the masses. Turn your personal painting into a piece of the earth's puzzle so that our unified assemblage of thoughts, experiences and lessons reveal common truths that cannot be denied. Imagine the changes that could happen if everyone suddenly stopped acting like someone else, became true to themselves, and celebrated the beauty of their uniqueness. Only after people have willingly removed their masks and costumes, and have begun pouring light from their hearts to reveal their vulnerability, dreams and pains, will we be able to see that beneath the surface we are all the same. After all, how can the world collectively fight for truth, if soldiers in its army are void of truth? We must first all be true by putting truth in our words and actions. And to do so, everyone must learn to think and react with their conscience. Imagine what Truth could do to neutralize the clutches of evil once this black and white world suddenly became embraced by a strong rainbow of loud powerful voices. We could put color back into every home, every school, every industry, every nation, and every garden on earth where flowers have been crushed by corruption.

For the laughable is a sort of error and ugliness that is not painful and destructive, just as, evidently, a laughable mask is something ugly and distorted without pain.

This was a face such as I had never seen before, even in the most fanciful of dreams, a face that was, in its way, a work of art. For it was light and dark, night and day, this world and the Otherworld. On the left side, the face of a youngish man, the skin weathered but fair, the eye gray and clear, the mouth well formed if unyielding in character. On all the right side, extending from an undrawn mark down the exact center, an etching of line and curve and feathery pattern, like the mask of some fierce bird of prey. An eagle? A goshawk? No, it was, I thought, a raven, even as far as the circles about the eye and the suggestion of predatory beak around the nostril. The mark of the raven. If I had not been so frightened, I might have laughed at the irony of it. The pattern extended down his neck and under the border of his leather jerkin and the linen shirt he wore beneath it. His head was completely shaven, and the skull, too, was colored the same, half-man, half-wild creature; some great artist of the inks and needle had wrought this over many days, and I imagined the pain must have been considerable.

The character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance: When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): 'And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, 'Have ye saved all the women alive?' behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, 'kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women- children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.' Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters. Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings? In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear.

Too much twee emotional expression--too many claims like, "Everything is awesome," or "I just never really feel angry or upset," or "If you're just positive, you can turn that frown upside down,"--often masks real pain and hurt. These behaviors are as much red flags as brooding and anger are....Being all light is as dangerous as being all dark, simply because denial of emotion is what feeds the dark.

Hemingway never said any of this. It's all AI-generated bullshit. The hardest lesson I’ve had to learn as an adult is the relentless need to keep going, no matter how shattered I feel inside." This truth is both raw and universal. Life doesn’t pause when our hearts are heavy, our minds are fractured, or our spirits feel like they’re unraveling. It keeps moving—unrelenting, unapologetic—demanding that we move with it. There’s no time to stop, no pause for repair, no moment of stillness where we can gently piece ourselves back together. The world doesn’t wait, even when we need it to. What makes this even harder is that no one really prepares us for it. As children, we grow up on a steady diet of stories filled with happy endings, tales of redemption and triumph where everything always falls into place. But adulthood strips away those comforting narratives. Instead, it reveals a harsh truth: survival isn’t glamorous or inspiring most of the time. It’s wearing a mask of strength when you’re falling apart inside. It’s showing up when all you want is to retreat. It’s choosing to move forward, step by painful step, when your heart begs for rest. And yet, we endure. That’s the miracle of being human—we endure. Somewhere in the depths of our pain, we find reserves of strength we didn’t know we possessed. We learn to hold space for ourselves, to be the comfort we crave, to whisper words of hope when no one else does. Over time, we realize that resilience isn’t loud or grandiose; it’s a quiet defiance, a refusal to let life’s weight crush us entirely. Yes, it’s messy. Yes, it’s exhausting. And yes, there are days when it feels almost impossible to take another step. But even then, we move forward. Each tiny step is proof of our resilience, a reminder that even in our darkest moments, we’re still fighting, still refusing to give up. That fight—that courage—is the quiet miracle of survival.

He had hundreds of monsters inside him wearing his face as a mask. Screaming and trying to tear him apart and take his place. He always fought furiously to hold them back and it created an unending chaos inside him. Eventually, in the end, he lost all his strength and battles. He was dragged down into the abyss. He cried and fought hard to find his way back home. To get out from there again and to be himself. But among all these masks, the real he was lost forever. He never made it back again, and he was not himself anymore.

Care has nested in the heart’s depths, Restless, she rocks there, spoiling joy and rest, [645] There she works her secret pain, And wears new masks, ever and again, Appears

I find it funny that a smile can hide so many lies, that a mask of our creation can hide so many emotions, how carrying the pain and burdens of other can hurt you.

If we succumb to fear, we start holding back, and do that all-to-common dance of getting close, then pulling away. When we remember that our safe harbor depends on our awareness and honesty, we're less likely to make internal compromises, put on masks, or act like a chameleon to attract a partner or keep a hurtful relationship together. If we live by truth, we may have pain, but we will always rest securely in ourselves.

I failed to understand as a parent until it was too late: that anyone can be suffering and in need of expert care, regardless of how they act, what they say, or who they are. Those who are suffering can appear for all the world to be doing well, their private pain masked by accomplishments and triumphs.

It's amazing how much power a smile holds. It's contagious and brightens people's day. It's also the most powerful camouflage. For that person who seems to have it all together is merely masking the pain of drowning tears. Don't be so quick to assume.

FOUR HAPPY CHEMICALS Dopamine: the joy of finding what you seek Endorphin: the oblivion that masks pain Oxytocin: the comfort of social alliances Serotonin: the security of social importance

Many years later when I began training as a plastic surgeon, I understood something that I had not that day in the kitchen arguing for Thalia to leave Tinos for the boarding school. I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn't care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that. My patients knew this. They saw that much of what they were, would be, or could be hinged on the symmetry of their bone structure, the space between their eyes, their chin length, the tip projection of their nose, whether they had an ideal nasofrontal angle or not. Beauty is an enormous unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

I looked up. My eyes were wet. So many stars. The universe so vast. We’re s- so very small, in the end. The first bullet hit me from behind, where my mask offered no coverage, and I slowly toppled. The second hit me before I could fall, before there could be any pain.

In the future, Martin will recall this night as the first time -- and one of the only times -- he ever saw Germans crying in public, not at the news of a dead loved one or at the sight of their bombed home, and not in physical pain, but from spontaneous emotion. For this brief time, they were not hiding from one another, wearing their masks of cold and practical detachment. The music stirred the hardened sediment of their memory, chafed against layers of horror and shame, and offered a rare solace in their shared anger, grief and guilt.

What do I see? I see a man who has higher and thicker walls than I will ever have. I see a terrifying beast enveloped and hidden by a cleverly fashioned mask. I see tears that will never fall. I see blood and death. I see a heart that devours itself. I see the promise of a pain and deceit. I see a lot of things, Baltsaros. Many of them frightening,” Jon said. Baltsaros showed no surprise over Jon’s words. Instead, he leaned towards him, intrigued. “And you’re not afraid,” he said.

The reality is that physical or emotional pain, especially when it is chronic, has a way of stripping away the masks we tend to wear, leaving our hearts exposed and our self-sufficient ways of life threatened.

Whatever sex is, and it is at least a profound mystery, is easily misused. The primary psychological purpose of sex for those men who spend their lives in the cold, cruel world, and whose relationship with their own anima is frigid, is to reconnect with a warm place. Sex is a form of emotional reassurance, a narcotic to still the pain of the bruised soul. If life batters them, then sex, like drugs or work, may numb the wound. The sexual act offers a momentary transcendence. Orgasm can be an ecstatic experience; for the moment one may feel outside the iron confines of ordinary consciousness. It is the closest many men ever come to a religious experience. Thus the act of sex may mask a desperate search for acceptance, underneath whiсh lurks the mother complex.

What did you do to this?' he asked in a horrorstruck voice. 'It didn't want to come out of the dashboard.' 'So you felt the need to torture it?' 'You know how I am with tools. No pain was inflicted intentionally.' He shook his head, his face a mask of faux tragedy. 'You killed it.

THERE FOR YOU When it all went down And the pain came through I get it now I was there for you Don’t ask me how I know it’s true I get it now I was there for you I make my plans Like I always do But when I look back I was there for you I walk the streets Like I used to do And I freeze with fear But I’m there for you I see my life In full review It was never me It was always you You sent me here You sent me there Breaking things I can’t repair Making objects Out of thoughts making more By thinking not Eating food And drinking wine A body that I thought was mine Dressed as Arab Dressed as Jew O mask of iron I was there for you Moods of glory Moods so foul The world comes through A bloody towel And death is old But it’s always new I freeze with fear And I’m there for you I see it clear I always knew It was never me I was there for you I was there for you My darling one And by your law It all was done Don’t ask me how I know it’s true I get it now I was there for you

Your body can only feel one pain at a time. She was right. I've found that to be true. But instead of hurting myself to mask pain with more pain, tonight I learned something else. Hurting others is just as effective.

Self-discovery changes everything, including your relationships with people. When you find your authentic self, those who loved your mask are disappointed. You may end up alone, but you don’t need to stay alone. While it’s painful to sever old connections, it’s not a tragedy. It’s an opportunity. Now, you can find people who understand the importance of looking for truth and being authentic. Now, you can find people who want to connect deeply, like you’ve always wanted to, instead of constant small talk and head games. Now, you can have real intimacy. Now, you can find your tribe.

People with depression can't just snap out of it or "turn that frown upside down." Depression can be a painful and overwhelming state that makes one unable to function, to think clearly or reasonably, or to want to simply face another day. Many people suffer alone and in silence because they are scared or ashamed. They feel weak…or pitiful. How can a person be incapable of having joy? “Why can’t I just have a good time? Why can’t I get on with it?

It pained her that a few hundred words in an also-ran newspaper could get her kicked out. That damned article. And Rook. Her sharpest agony. She had invested in this guy. Waited for this guy. Felt something for this guy that went beyond the bedroom ... or wherever else they took each other. Nikki did not give herself easily to a man, and this betrayal by Rook was why. Heat reflected on her answer at the oral boards about her greatest flaw and admitted her reply was a mask. Yes, her identification with her job was total. But her greatest flaw wasn’t overinvestment in her career. It was her reticence to be vulnerable. Unarmed as she was-literally-she had been emotionally so with Rook. That was the gut shot that had blown clean through her soul.

What is death? A "tragic mask." Turn it and examine it. See, it does not bite. The poor body must be separated from the spirit either now or later, as it was separated from it before. Why, then, are you troubled, if it be separated now? for if it is not separated now, it will be separated afterward. Why? That the period of the universe may be completed, for it has need of the present, and of the future, and of the past. What is pain? A mask. Turn it and examine it. The poor flesh is moved roughly, then, on the contrary, smoothly. If this does not satisfy you, the door is open: if it does, bear. For the door ought to be open for all occasions; and so we have no trouble.

Happiness is a fortress. Because happiness is an enclosed space only a lucky few can enjoy, the lucky few who can turn a blind eye to people like you, people with pain and sorrow, who can turn a blind eye to poverty and hunger.

How many of us suffered to death? How many of them gained more wealth? How many of us mourned? How many of them earned? How many times we suffered such a pain? How many times they will do this again? They are Cruel but… We don’t have to be.

People stick hearts on Valentine's cards and get married in white dresses and give each other flowers. They think love is every-thing going right. That's not love. That's self-indulgence. That's good luck. Love is when you walk into the burning building. Love is when the person who means most to you in the world is breathing through a mask and pissing in a bag. Love is when they no longer know your name.

Neil studied his face, looking for a hint of the earlier fathomless anger and finding nothing. Despite Andrew's unfriendly words, his expression and tone were calm. He said these things like they meant nothing to him. Neil didn't know if it was a mask or the truth. Was Andrew hiding that rage from Neil or from himself? Maybe the monster was buried where neither of them could find it until Neil crossed another unforgivable line. "Good," Neil said at length. Tugging a sleeping dragon's tail sounded like a good way to die a painful death, but Neil would be dead before Andrew's protection wore off. "I want to see you lose control." Andrew went still with his hand halfway to the vodka. "Last year you wanted to live. Now you seem hell-bent on getting killed. If I felt like playing another round with you right now, I would ask why you've had a change of heart. As it stands, I've had enough of your stupidity to last me a week. Go back inside and bother the others now." Neil feigned confusion as he got to his feet. "Am I bothering you?" "Beyond the telling." "Interesting," Neil said. "Last week you said nothing gets under your skin.

If only I had cried, just once. I watched myself not crying. Jaw firm. Swallow. Break something. Quick. The mirror there, broken. And again. Smash your fist into it. A reassuring pain, masking the real one. The one that is not there. Which you force yourself not to feel. Sweep up the fragments. And away with them. To know, to know better, that not crying is crying. And yet you do not cry. Firm up the jaw. Swallow.

I hid my wound under my clothes. Nobody could see it, including myself, and I completely forgot about it. Then I met someone who, filled with love, held me tight in that point. The pain was devastating, and I hated him, o how much I hated him, the cause of all my suffering. Then I met someone, beautifully dressed, and I loved him so much, holding him tight with all my passion. And he suffered badly, and he hated me, o how much he hated me, the cause of all his pain. So the story went on till I met someone who undressed himself, standing completely naked, with all his horrible wounds. Hence I also undressed, and I saw my horrible wounds, which he could also see. Then...

Dominance and submission is an intimate binding. Those who submit must trust that those who dominate will never take more than they can give.” A sardonic smile twisted Ram’s lips. “Those who dominate must give those who submit everything they need but never more than they can endure.” “By your definition, the dominus has the harder role,” she whispered. “Perhaps. What is more difficult? To trust another so completely? Or to honor the responsibility to never betray such a trust once given?” “I guess that would depend on how much the dominus cared for his slaaf.” Ram shrugged. “I suppose it would.” Steffania saw a bleak pain in his eyes quickly masked. “Enough talking,” he said gruffly.

The pain never goes away, Eber. You can mask it, until the mask becomes more toxic for you than what you're covering with it.

Malin Strom was my beautiful downfall. And I would take any pain if it meant more of her. Ruin me. Brutalize me. Just give me her.

Somehow the disorder hooks into all kinds of fears and insecurities in many clinicians. The flamboyance of the multiple, her intelligence and ability to conceptualize the disorder, coupled with suicidal impulses of various orders of seriousness, all seem to mask for many therapists the underlying pain, dependency, and need that are very much part of the process. In many ways, a professional dealing with a multiple in crisis is in the same position as a parent dealing with a two-year-old or with an adolescent's acting-out behavior. (236)

Into the darkness of my mind, my soul, I stare. Nothing shall gather within the shadows. In the twisting nettles, the briars, the thorns, I feel the pain that makes me whole. Balm not the biting sands that sting my flesh, for in that sorrow is my joy. To suffer is to live.

He never understood, as I did, what she meant when she said that medication would only mask the pain, not make it go away, and what’s the point of that. He never understood when she said that if she went to a doctor, the doctor would only invent a disease that would explain why he couldn’t help her. And there was so much time between episodes. There was so much hope.

Most women do not have a relationship with God, as they are either unwilling to have one or unaware of how to have one, so they choose a human partner.” “It’s not about gender or age, nor even social conditioning, religious belief or other external preferences. To surrender as Love—in a feminine way—is to become vulnerable, fragile, soft, sincere, open hearted, and “wound-able” as a choice to the alternative of living miserably inside walls and masks, hiding from pain and Joy.

Self-discovery changes everything, including your relationships with people. When you find your authentic self, those who loved your mask are disappointed. you may end up alone, but you don’t need to stay alone. While it’s painful to sever old connections, it’s not a tragedy. it’s an opportunity. Now, you can find people who understand the importance of looking for truth and being authentic. Now you can find people who want to connect deeply, like you’ve always wanted to, instead of constant small talk and head games. Now you can have real intimacy. Now, you can find your tribe.

I wanted to support my mother, despite the complex emotions I harbored toward her. Perhaps it was because I could empathize with the experience of holding resentment against one’s parents and grappling with unresolved childhood trauma. I instinctively understood that unaddressed pain often perpetuates cycles of hurt, passing from one generation to the next. I’d never thought about it before, that even those who present a flawless facade to the world, like my mother, might be struggling with deep-seated issues that remain hidden from view. How their polished exterior can serve as a mask, concealing the inner turmoil and unhealed wounds that continue to fester beneath the surface.

I think dismissing female pain as overly familiar or somehow out-of-date--twice-told, thrice-told, 1,001-nights-told--masks deeper accusations: that suffering women are playing victim, going weak, or choosing self-indulgence over bravery. I think dismissing wounds offers a convenient excuse: no need to struggle with the listening or telling anymore. Plug it up. Like somehow our task is to inhabit the jaded aftermath of terminal self-awareness once the story of all pain has already been told.

Narcissists play a public game and a private game which makes it harder to understand. Expressing your concerns suddenly turns you into the ‘jealous one’ and they make you doubt yourself. He/she becomes cold and uncaring almost overnight, this is when the “mask falls” and you see the real person. They make excuses and if we don’t except these excuses then you are the ‘crazy’ one. They are managing down your expectations from constant contact to crickets this verbally and emotional abuse hurts.

Batwoman: "What was it like growing up with him?" Nightwing: "When I was a kid, I idolized him. Hell... I wanted to be him. But the older I got, the more I realized that I didn't know him at all. How could I? Bruce Wayne is as much a mask as Batman. And I think the only thing behind those masks is pain. A pain he refuses to share with anyone." Batwoman: "So what was it like?" Nightwing: "Lonely.

Using psychology for soul-care is like dressing cancer with Band-Aids. It may temporarily relieve the pain or even mask the symptoms, but it will never penetrate the issues of the heart like God’s Word.

Once Ed said to me, "For a very long time I didn't like myself." It was not said in self-pity but simply as an unfortunate fact. "It was a very difficult time," he said, "and very painful. I did not like myself for a number of reasons, some of them valid and some of them pure fancy. I would hate to have to go back to that. Then gradually," he said, "I discovered with surprise and pleasure that a number of people did like me. And I thought, if they can like me, why cannot I like myself? Just thinking it did not do it, but slowly I learned to like myself and then it was all right." This was not said in self-love in its bad connotation but in self-knowledge. He meant literally that he had learned to accept and like the person "Ed" as he liked other people. It gave him a great advantage. Most people do not like themselves at all. They distrust themselves, put on masks and pomposities. They quarrel and boast and pretend and are jealous because they do not like themselves. But mostly they do not even know themselves well enough to form a true liking. They cannot see themselves well enough to form a true liking, and since we automatically fear and dislike strangers, we fear and dislike our stranger-selves.

Symbolism is important. And freedom... You will not understand this, Princess Malini. But there is a subtle pain the conquered feel. Our old language is nearly lost. Our old ways. Even when we try to explain a vision of ourselves to one another—in our poetry, our song, our theater masks—we do so in opposition to you, or by looking to the past. As if we have no future. Parijatdvipa has reshaped us. It is not a conversation, but a rewriting. The pleasure of security and comfort can only ease the pain for so long.

I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it did not care a whit about the hopes and reams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.

The gym exposes deficiencies in our bodies’ strength and stamina—and appearance. You can wear all kinds of daytime clothes that hide or minimize aspects of your body that you would like to be less visible to the eye. But in the gym, you cannot hide them. There you and your coach (and unfortunately everyone around you) can see where you bulge where you shouldn’t. It’s an incentive to get to work. And so this metaphor tells us that when life is going along just fine, the flaws in our character can be masked and hidden from others and from ourselves. But when troubles and difficulties hit, we are suddenly in “God’s gymnasium”—we are exposed. Our inner anxieties, our hair-trigger temper, our unrealistic regard of our own talents, our tendency to lie or shade the truth, our lack of self-discipline—all of these things come out.

Since I am in this pain, the pain of having what is special taken from me, I look inside myself and I don’t like what I see: a man who is broken and alone. I think of all the time Lily and I spent together, just the two of us—the talks about boys, the Monopoly, the movies, the pizza nights—and I wonder how much of it was real. Dogs don’t eat pizza; dogs don’t play Monopoly. I know this on some level, but everything feels so true. How much of it was an elaborate construct to mask my own loneliness? How much of it was built to convince myself the attempts I made at real life—therapy, dating—were not just that: attempts?

Grace had begun to realize that she only really knew two ways to communicate with others. One was to wear a mask, and to lie and perform from behind that mask, as she had performed obedience to her mother, and love to James. The other way was to be honest, which she had only ever really done with Jesse. Even then she had hidden from him the things she was ashamed of doing. Not hiding, she was finding, was a painful.

Care has nested in the heart’s depths, Restless, she rocks there, spoiling joy and rest, [645] There she works her secret pain, And wears new masks, ever and again, Appears as wife and child, fields and houses,

I had a presentiment then that there is in this world a kind of desire like stinging pain. Looking up at that dirty youth, I was choked by desire, thinking, 'I want to change into him', thinking, 'I want to be him'.

A fleeting look of pain crossed Clarke’s face before she retreated behind her mask of steely resolve. She’ll get over it, Bellamy thought bitterly. She’d find someone else to go traipsing through the woods with her. “I

She leaned forward, and she kissed him. Call it an instinct or a moment of weakness. Call it her bleeding Gryffindor heart that hated to see someone so broken. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was in pain, and it was the only way she could think of to fix it. A band-aid, a temporary remedy, but a remedy nonetheless.

How the excitement comes upon me to tell it all! In the quest of writing, the heart can speed up with anticipation--as it does, indeed, during the chase itself of whales. I can swear it, having done both, and I will tell YOU though other writers may not. My heart is beating fast; I am in pursuit; I want my victory--that you should see and hear and above all feel the reality behind these words. For they are but a mask. Not the mask that conceals, not a mask that I would have you strike through as mere appearance, or, worse, deceitful appearance. Words need not be that kind of mask, but a mask such as the ancient Greek actors wore, a mask that expresses rather than conceals the inner drama. (But do you know me? Una? You have shipped long with me in the boat that is this book. Let me assure you and tell you that I know you, even something of your pain and joy, for you are much like me. The contract of writing and reading requires that we know each other. Did you know that I try on your mask from time to time? I become a reader, too, reading over what I have just written. If I am your shipbuilder and captain, from time to time I am also your comrade. Feel me now, standing beside you, just behind your shoulder?)

A lot of corpses woke up every morning from their graves. Stood in front of the mirror and wore the masks which made them look alive. Stuck in the vicious circle of death. Scared to break out and scared of falling into the infinite pit of darkness, they beat down their souls that were fighting for an escape, mercilessly every day. They walked out into the world with pain, only to return back to the home, which did not feel like a home anymore, again in the night. They removed their masks in front of the mirror, stared into those empty eyes and walked back to their graves silently, with the fear of waking up again next day and with nothing to celebrate in their heart.

...he knew of the innermost danger of all artists, he knew the utter loneliness of the man destined to be an artist, he knew the inherent loneliness which drove such a one into the still deeper loneliness of art and into the beauty that cannot be articulated, and he knew that for the most part such men were shattered by this immolation, that it made them blind, blind to the world, blind to the divine quality in the world and in the fellow-man, that--intoxicated by their loneliness--they were able to see only their own god-likeness, which they imagined to be unique, and consequently this self-idolatry and its greed for recognition came more and more to be the sole content of their work--, a betrayal of the divine as well as of art, because in this fashion the work of art became a work of un-art, an unchaste covering for artistic vanity, so spurious that even the artist's self-complacent nakedness which it exposed became a mask; and even though such unchaste self-gratification, such dalliance with beauty, such concern with effects, even though such an un-art might, despite its brief unrenewable grant, its inextensible boundaries, find an easier way to the populace than real art ever found, it was only a specious way, a way out of the loneliness, but not, however, an affiliation with the human community, which was the aim of real art in its aspiration toward humanity, no, it was the affiliation with the mob, it was a participation in its treacherous non-community, which was incapable of the pledge, which neither created nor mastered any reality, and which was unwilling to do so, preferring only to drowse on, forgetting reality, having forfeited it as had un-art and literarity, this was the most profound danger for every artist; oh how painfully, how very painfully he knew this.

Well -- there are two kinds of loneliness, aren't there? There's the loneliness of absolute solitude -- the physical fact of living alone, working alone, as I have always done. This need not be painful. For many writers it's necessary. Others need a female staff of family servants to type their bloody books and keep the their egos afloat. Being alone for most of the day means that you listen to different rhythms, which are not determined by other people. I think it's better so. But there is another kind of loneliness which is terrible to endure....And that is the loneliness of seeing a different world from that of the people around you. Their lives remain remote from yours. You can see the gulf and they can't. You live among them. They walk on earth. You walk on glass. They reassure themselves with conformity, with carefully constructed resemblances. You are masked, aware of your absolute difference.

It was useless. The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.

Self-care can also just be another thing you procrastinate on and feel shitty about not doing. It can be another bullet on our to-do list, or a mask—Think positive thoughts! Document your gratitude!—that hides our messiness from ourselves and others. It is also some shamey, disingenuous bullshit to be told that if we practice deep breathing or detox from sugar, we’ll find some ease when the pain and exhaustion we’re feeling is mostly perpetuated by our culture. Your getting in your steps doesn’t make the hardship of experiencing systemic oppression or the energy suck of capitalism go away.

I know of nothing in all drama more incomparable from the point of view of art, nothing more suggestive in its subtlety of observation, than Shakespeare's drawing of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are Hamlet's college friends. They have been his companions. They bring with them memories of pleasant days together. At the moment when they come across him in the play he is staggering under the weight of a burden intolerable to one of his temperament. The dead have come armed out of the grave to impose on him a mission at once too great and too mean for him. He is a dreamer, and he is called upon to act. He has the nature of the poet, and he is asked to grapple with the common complexity of cause and effect, with life in its practical realisation, of which he knows nothing, not with life in its ideal essence, of which he knows so much. He has no conception of what to do, and his folly is to feign folly. Brutus used madness as a cloak to conceal the sword of his purpose, the dagger of his will, but the Hamlet madness is a mere mask for the hiding of weakness. In the making of fancies and jests he sees a chance of delay. He keeps playing with action as an artist plays with a theory. He makes himself the spy of his proper actions, and listening to his own words knows them to be but 'words, words, words.' Instead of trying to be the hero of his own history, he seeks to be the spectator of his own tragedy. He disbelieves in everything, including himself, and yet his doubt helps him not, as it comes not from scepticism but from a divided will. Of all this Guildenstern and Rosencrantz realise nothing. They bow and smirk and smile, and what the one says the other echoes with sickliest intonation. When, at last, by means of the play within the play, and the puppets in their dalliance, Hamlet 'catches the conscience' of the King, and drives the wretched man in terror from his throne, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz see no more in his conduct than a rather painful breach of Court etiquette. That is as far as they can attain to in 'the contemplation of the spectacle of life with appropriate emotions.' They are close to his very secret and know nothing of it. Nor would there be any use in telling them. They are the little cups that can hold so much and no more.

We had struck a pact: Better not to know anything about each other. And this pact is what holds families together for generations. We wore masks. Our faces no longer recognizable underneath, for our masks had grown onto us. It hurt to pull them off. It hurt so much that the pain of never meeting face to face was bearable, compared to the pain of showing your true face.

Because wanton or venal lips had murmured the same words to him, he only half believed in the sincerity of those he was hearing now; to a large extent they should be disregarded, he believed, because such exaggerated language must surely mask commonplace feelings: as if the soul in its fullness did not sometimes overflow into the most barren metaphors, since no one can ever tell the precise measures of his own needs, of his own ideas, of his own pain, and human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity.

We are all hungry for genuine connection and caring, and we will not get this unless we find our Soul's tribe. If we don't find this, we'll kill ourselves, either by finding an addiction to mask the pain or by ignoring what we need to stay healthy.

From the moment little boys are taught they should not cry or express hurt, feelings of loneliness, or pain, that they must be tough, they are learning how to mask true feelings. In worst-case scenarios they are learning how to not feel anything ever.

We're like the teenager who "will die" if he or she can't go to a certain rock concert or see a certain friend. Because we tell ourselves it's absolutely crucial that [things should be a certain way right now] we create turmoil and anxiety. It's not [the way things are] that causes pain, it's the meaning we give to these events and our demand that such things not happen. While we can have preferences, the minute we start insisting that people and situations be different, we create internal turmoil - anger, hostility, sadness, and so on. It's our attachments that lead us to donning a mask, blaming others, or feeling incomplete.

When you come to understand that play you take part in, you will realize what a hypocrite you sound. You cannot see in your own world the real truths that exist on both sides; only when you join in on mine will you. There, I can reveal the awesome mysteries behind the tragedies. There, I can ease your pains because the ones you bear now will be trivial in comparison; my kind has suffered much more than you can imagine. But I can also show you the real boundaries of existence where pain from neither side can exist. Tonight I sense that you seek that place. But after tomorrow,” he grabbed his hat and mask from the bench, “you may only know death. Perhaps I had made a mistake on placing you in a situation such as this. You still have time; no human has survived as long as you.

Aloneness – that is what SM feels like to me. Isolated, alone, separated, left out as I silently stand by watching others experience life while the words freeze inside me, afraid to speak up or join in a conversation. Actually feeling the anxiety shaking inside my chest as I try to get up the courage to speak to someone or call or text a friend. SM feels like the child standing alone behind the door watching the other kids in the playground – afraid to ask, 'may I play?' It feels like the teenager standing silently against the wall, listening to classmates laugh and chat, invisible to everyone and wondering what it would be like to have a friend. It feels like the 50-year-old office worker, alone in her cube while others chat and laugh in the aisle, still left out. I live inside a shell, a mask that looks like me, but isn't me. I am in here, but it is really hard to let others see. I'm so grateful for the few dear friends I have now. Most people, though, only see the shell and assume I'm aloof and uncaring because I am quiet. I feel very deeply. I feel others' joy and pain intensely, yet they rarely know. I'm not quiet because I am uncaring. I'm silent because I'm afraid.

It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one’s face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain, and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.

Kossula was no longer on the porch with me. He was squatting about that fire in Dahomey. His face was twitching in abysmal pain. It was a horror mask. He had forgotten that I was there. He was thinking aloud and gazing into the dead faces in the smoke. His agony was so acute that he became inarticulate. He never noticed my preparation to leave him. So I slipped away as quietly as possible and left him with his smoke pictures.

The contraption was something V had bought but had never used: He’d kept it only because it had terrified him, and that was reason enough to own the thing. To be robbed of sight and hearing was the one thing guaranteed to make him lose his fucking shit—which was precisely why Butch picked the mask. He knew too well the buttons to push—physical pain was one thing . . . but the psychological stuff was so much worse. And therefore more effectual.

One day, we wake up to the narcissist’s cunning masquerade. We watch their fake mask slip off their face. Everything becomes crystal clear. We see right through their phony disguise. To anyone who’s dealt with the pain and torment of a narcissist, a silver lining is a sign of hope. Hope that someday you can break free from the abuse. Hope to rebuild a better life. Hope to find comfort and peace within. Hope to recover from your trauma. Hope to embrace a brighter future. We can no longer unsee their hideous charade. We accept how lethal a malignant narcissist is. We actively set healthy boundaries. We walk away from hurtful relationships. Like the Phoenix, we rise above the fiery ashes. We stand up, dust ourselves off, and march forward.

Are you unwell, Paige?” “Fine. My uterus is just confirming that it will not be growing a baby this month. With good reason,” I said, “since a tiny, defenseless human is not really what I need while I’m on the run from agents of tyranny.” “You are menstruating.” “I am menstruating,” I confirmed gravely. “I see.” His eyes darkened. “Is it very painful?” I considered. “I’ve never had to describe it before,” I said, musing. “I suppose it’s like having all my lower organs crammed right down into my pelvis, then soaked in boiling water, so they’re sore and swollen. It’s a heavy, aching…downward-ness. But then it also feels like I’ve been kicked in the back. And the stomach. And the legs. Oh, and I’ve got a splitting headache.” Arcturus had stopped plunging the coffee. “And you feel able to train,” he said, after a long pause. “While experiencing those sensations.” I rubbed the corner of my eye. “I’m grand.

What I feel? Like how I want to take your pain away and yet throttle you at the same moment? How your stupid dimples are infuriating, look for them every time you smile because I know that's a real smile. I don't know why I look forward to arguing with you, but I do. You're clever, and you are kinder than even you realise- even though I know you have earned the title of the Dark One. You are a puzzle I want to figure out, but at the same time, don't. And when I realised You have so many masks- so many layers, I kept wanting to peel them back, even though I fear it will only hurt more in the end.' I shook my head as I curled my fingers around the collar of my tunic. 'I don't understand any of this. Like how do I want to stab you and kiss you at the same time? And I know you said that I deserve to be with someone who didn't kidnap me, or someone I don't want to stab-' 'Forget I said that,' he said, closer to me when I looked up. 'I have no idea what I was talking about. Maybe I didn't even say that.' My lips twitched. 'You totally said that.' 'You're right. I did. Forget it.

I found a brief piece of by Antonio Vivaldi around this time which became my ‘Pinhead Mood Music’. Called Al Santo Sepolcro (At The Holy Sepulchre), it opens more like a piece of modern orchestral music, and although it it moves toward Vivaldi’s familiar harmonies, there is always the threat that it will fall back into dissonance. The piece progresses in an exquisite agony, poised on a knife edge between beauty and disfigurement, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. Perfect.

I will never cause you pain like this again. I will cherish your heart over my own. I will love you until the day I die, and then I’ll love you through eternity.

I find it funny that a smile can hide so many lies, that a mask of our creation can hide some many emotions, how carrying the pain and burdens of other can hurt you.

It has become such an automatic reaction to pain, for him to mask it with a grin. Oak, laughing all the time. Pretending nothing hurts. A false face hiding a false heart.

That smile was the most shallow, empty mask he wore. He was hurting—we all were—but when Lark was in pain, he built walls, keeping everyone out. His smile was that wall’s locked door.

He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the face of a dying fish, with fading eyes—he saw the face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying—he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person—he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword—he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love—he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void— he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds—he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni—he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of them died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face—and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips. And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great respect a hundred times. Like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones are smiling.

Getting in touch with our frozen grief can be a sacred act. Grief work is healing. Grieving allows us to make peace with the past and the present. Grieving helps us to come out of hiding and unravels our masks and false self. We grow stronger and wiser when we get in touch with our original pain. We are no longer chained to our traumatic buried feelings and memories—we are liberated.

AS LONG AS we follow a spiritual approach promising salvation, miracles, liberation, then we are bound by the “golden chain of spirituality.” Such a chain might be beautiful to wear, with its inlaid jewels and intricate carvings, but nevertheless, it imprisons us. People think they can wear the golden chain for decoration without being imprisoned by it, but they are deceiving themselves. As long as one’s approach to spirituality is based upon enriching ego, then it is spiritual materialism, a suicidal process rather than a creative one. All the promises we have heard are pure seduction. We expect the teachings to solve all our problems; we expect to be provided with magical means to deal with our depressions, our aggressions, our sexual hangups. But to our surprise we begin to realize that this is not going to happen. It is very disappointing to realize that we must work on ourselves and our suffering rather than depend upon a savior or the magical power of yogic techniques. It is disappointing to realize that we have to give up our expectations rather than build on the basis of our preconceptions. We must allow ourselves to be disappointed, which means the surrendering of me-ness, my achievement. We would like to watch ourselves attain enlightenment, watch our disciples celebrating, worshiping, throwing flowers at us, with miracles and earthquakes occurring and gods and angels singing and so forth. This never happens. The attainment of enlightenment from ego’s point of view is extreme death, the death of self, the death of me and mine, the death of the watcher. It is the ultimate and final disappointment. Treading the spiritual path is painful. It is a constant unmasking, peeling off of layer after layer of masks. It involves insult after insult.

Don’t take anything personally because by taking things personally you set yourself up to suffer for nothing. Humans are addicted to suffering at different levels and to different degrees, and we support each other in maintaining these addictions. Humans agree to help each other suffer. If you have the need to be abused, you will find it easy to be abused by others. Likewise, if you are with people who need to suffer, something in you makes you abuse them. It is as if they have a note on their back that says, “Please kick me.” They are asking for justification for their suffering. Their addiction to suffering is nothing but an agreement that is reinforced every day. Wherever you go you will find people lying to you, and as your awareness grows, you will notice that you also lie to yourself. Do not expect people to tell you the truth because they also lie to themselves. You have to trust yourself and choose to believe or not to believe what someone says to you. When we really see other people as they are without taking it personally, we can never be hurt by what they say or do. Even if others lie to you, it is okay. They are lying to you because they are afraid. They are afraid you will discover that they are not perfect. It is painful to take that social mask off. If others say one thing, but do another, you are lying to yourself if you don’t listen to their actions. But if you are truthful with yourself, you will save yourself a lot of emotional pain. Telling yourself the truth about it may hurt, but you don’t need to be attached to the pain. Healing is on the way, and it’s just a matter of time before things will be better for you. If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn’t walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.

His habitual melancholy was changing day by day into something more sinister. There were moments when he would desecrate the crumbling and mournful mask of his face with a smile more horrible than the darkest lineaments of pain. Across the stoniness of his eyes a strange light would pass for a moment, as though the moon were flaring on the gristle, and his lips would open and the gash of his mouth would widen in a dead, climbing curve

Universe, tell me about the time when the world was kind, when words didn't shatter the soul and leave people bleeding into the crease of their smile. tell me about the time when people wouldn't hide behind sarcasm or humor to mask themselves from dying slowly on the inside. Universe, tell me the names of all the stars in your sky, because I may have met one the other night. His presence in my thoughts, his touch in my heart and no longer a dream but laying next to me now. There are marks on my body from the energy of our light. He is broken, like me, a fallen star. Yet, aspires to soar and believes he can fly. I too believe in dreams. Universe, do you think you can do something about all the lonely souls? the broken? the fallen stars? There are so many of us. And what about the hurt? the pain? the restlessness? Or is this all part of something bigger, a lesson to be learnt? so we can become a part of you? Universe, it’s me, Please hear my soul speak, my heart beat, I've learnt my lesson. Forgive me. Offer me redemption or bring me back to you. Universe, are you there?

You’re not so different from Kiernan anyway. You both have lived long enough to lose friends—too long, maybe. Perhaps that’s why the Minstrel wears a mask and keeps people at arm’s length: he too knows the pain of loving too much.

Nate.” I moved to scoot closer, and he pinned me with a look that stopped me dead. “Don’t, Izzy.” He shook his head. “I have one weakness on this entire planet, and you’re feet away when you’re supposed to be halfway round the globe.” That mask he wore like armor fell away, and the pain in his eyes was enough to make me suck in a sharp breath. “So please, have some goddamn mercy on me for once in your life and just…” His eyes squeezed shut. “Just ignore it.

I rushed to the mirror and with difficulty watched through the mask the working of my hands. But for this the mirror had just been waiting. Its moment of retaliation had come. While I strove in boundlessly increasing anguish to squeeze somehow out of my disguise, it forced me, by what means I do not know, to lift my eyes and imposed on me an image, no, a reality, a strange, unbelievable and monstrous reality, with which, against my will, I became permeated: for now the mirror was the stronger, and I was the mirror. I stared at this great, terrifying unknown before me, and it seemed to me appalling to be alone with him. But at the very moment I thought this, the worst befell: I lost all sense, I simply ceased to exist. For one second I had an indescribable, painful and futile longing for myself, then there was only he: there was nothing but he... They did not spring forward to the rescue; their cruelty knows no bounds. They stood there and laughed; my God, they could stand there and laugh. I wept, but the mask did not let the tears escape; they ran down inside over my cheeks and dried at once and ran again and dried. And at last I knelt before them, as no human being ever knelt; I knelt, and lifted up my hands and implored them: "Take me out, if you still can, and keep me", but they did not hear; I had no longer any voice. I sank down and they went on laughing, thinking that was part of it. They were used to that from me. But then I had continued to lie there and had not answered. And their fright when they finally discovered that I was unconscious and lay there like a piece of something among all those wrappings, just like a piece of something.

He who has perceived the material out of which the Promethean tragic writers prior to Euripides formed their heroes, and how remote from their purpose it was to bring the faithful mask of reality onto the stage, will also be aware of the utterly opposite tendency of Euripides. Through him the everyday man forced his way from the spectators' seats onto the stage; the mirror in which formerly only grand and bold traits were represented now showed the painful fidelity that conscientiously reproduces even the botched outlines of nature.

Community, a place of healing and growth . . . When people enter community, especially from a place of loneliness in a big city or from a place of aggression and rejection, they find the warmth and the love exhilarating. This permits them to start lifting their masks and barriers and to become vulnerable. They may enter into a time of communion and great joy. But then too, as they lift their masks and become vulnerable, they discover that community can be a terrible place, because it is a place of relationship; it is the revelation of our wounded emotions and of how painful it can be to live with others, especially with some people. It is so much easier to live with books and objects, television, or dogs and cats! It is so much easier to live alone and just do things for others, when one feels like it.

Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature.

Dressed, she’s in front of the mirror. Armed. She puts her face on. In her case, not a matter of cosmetics, but will. How to make such a sad face hard? It took practice. Not in front of a mirror or in front of strangers, gauging her success by their expressions of horror, disgust, etc. She did it by lying in her bed, feeling and testing which muscles in her face pained under application of concerted tension. To choose the most extreme pain would be to make a fright mask. A caricature of strength. She achieved calibration one night while testing a small muscle attached to her upper lip hitting upon a register of pain a few inches below the high-tide mark of real pain. This register of discomfort became the standard for all the muscles in her face, above the eyebrows under the jaw, across the nostrils. She didn’t check with the small mirror in the janitor’s closet, didn’t need to. She knew she’d hit it.

It seems like everyone these days is putting on a mask to feel beautiful, trying to fit into some pre-established norms of how we should look. This isn’t only painful, it’s ignorant. Saying like we know, better than nature does, what is beautiful and what is not is like a two-year-old lecturing an old man about patience. Nature’s been creating beauty for millennia and you are part of that creation process. Stop the madness. Stop fighting who you are. Let the mask fall. It’ll be strange at first, yes. But, over time, you’ll see beyond the temporary discomfort of stepping outside social norms and learn to see the beauty you were born with, the beauty you’ve been taught to ignore and cover up. You’ll see beauty that will take your breath away, like a sunset. That’s how beautiful you are—like a sunset, like a forest, like a million fireflies on a calm warm night lighting up the sky. You are made by nature. Nature is wiser in the ways of beauty than cosmetics companies or magazines. Break the spell. Gain back your sanity. Go find that brilliant beauty within every single part of you. Go find the universe in your eyes. Remove that cloak that’s been pulled over your eyes and see yourself for who you really are.

Again, that eye watched him warily, temper flickering. But an animal remained. Aedion drawled, even as his relief began to crumble his mask of arrogant calmness, “The useless sentries in the watchtower are now all half in love with you,” he lied. “One said he wanted to marry you.” A low snarl. He yielded a foot but held eye contact with her as he grinned. “But you know what I told them? I said that they didn’t stand a chance in hell.” Aedion lowered his voice, holding her pained, exhausted stare. “Because I am going to marry you,” he promised her. “One day. I am going to marry you. I’ll be generous and let you pick when, even if it’s ten years from now. Or twenty. But one day, you are going to be my wife.” Those eyes narrowed—in what he could only call female outrage and exasperation. He shrugged. “Princess Lysandra Ashryver sounds nice, doesn’t it?” And then the dragon huffed. In amusement. Exhaustion, but … amusement.

Granted, Mr. Kent was also making somewhat of a spectacle of himself, tasting an unfamiliar pastry and attempting to get its name and ingredients from the poor vendor. Mr. Braddock wore a pained expression, trying to divert Mr. Kent, and Miss Chen seemed to be pretending she had no connection to either of them.

It’s her eyes that unnerve me. Hazel with flecks of gold and green. But it’s more what I see when I look into them that rattles me. Pain, anger, fear, mixed with strength, passion and lust. A chaos of emotions trapped behind a mask of self-inflicted rules. but I see it, something wild just waiting to be set free.

An important difference between overt and covert incest is that, while the overt victim feels abused, the covert victim feels idealized and privileged. Yet underneath the thin mask of feeling special and privileged rests the same trauma of the overt victim: rage, anger, shame and guilt. The sense of exploitation resulting from being a parent's surrogate partner or spouse is buried behind a wall of illusion and denial. The adult covert incest victim remains stuck in a pattern of living aimed at keeping the special relationship going with the opposite-sex parent. It is a pattern of always trying to please Mommy and Daddy. In this way the adult continues to be idealized. A privileged and special position is maintained; the pain and suffering of a lost childhood denied. Separation never occurs and feelings of being trapped in the psychological marriage deepen. This interferes with the victim's capacity for healthy intimacy and sexuality.

Orc. They're distantly related to humans. Most of them never speak. They always wear masks, but even then they're painfully awkward. Each one has some sort of gift that they're magically good at. Gretchen is a healer. Skippy is the best pilot in the world." Mosh was nodding thoughtfully in the dark. "So that explains the Stig.

I met Autistics who’d at first been diagnosed with things like Borderline Personality Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, or Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I also found scores of transgender and gender-nonconforming Autistic people like me, who had always felt “different” both because of their gender and their neurotype. In each of these people’s lives, being Autistic was a source of uniqueness and beauty. But the ableism around them had been a fount of incredible alienation and pain. Most had floundered for decades before discovering who they truly were. And nearly all of them were finding it very difficult to take their long-worn masks off.

Where, then, do we find the truth? We find it in the body, in the woods, in the water, in the soil. We find it in music, dance, and sometimes in poetry. We find it in a baby’s face, and in the adult’s face behind the mask. We find it in each other’s eyes, when we look. We find it in an embrace, which is, when we feel into it, being to being, an incredibly intimate act. We find it in laughter and sobs, and we find it in the voice behind the spoken word. We find it in fairy tales and myths, and the tales we tell, even if fictional. Sometimes embroidering a tale enlarges it as a vehicle for the truth. We find it in silence and stillness. We find it in pain and loss. We find it in birth and death.

Waiting for the world to shed tears for your pain was like waiting for a statue to speak. So you filed the reports, you answered the emails. You carried on as best you could. And if you were like Titus, if you wore a badge on your chest, you promised you’d do all you could to find the Last Wolf and peel off his mask. Show the world the face of the monster.

her fists. A sharp pain in the shoulder quickly put the hammering to an end, but she continued to call out. When she was certain that she had been heard, she put her eye back to the crack in the door. The four soldiers stood silently before the door, each in full combat armor, complete with face masks. The first was speaking calmly with her captor while the others looked on. They made no motion toward the door. She strained her ears to hear what the two were saying. Only the soldier spoke loudly enough to hear. "The one who touched the sword? We are charged with her return, as well as that of the sword," he said, in response to the kidnapper's unheard comment. The sinister figure pulled a bundle from inside the cloak and

Once this is over,' he says, 'there are some things I want to tell you. Some explanation I have to give.' 'Like what?' I ask, keeping my voice low. He looks away, toward the edge of the pine forest. 'I let you believe- well, something that's untrue.' I think about the feeling of Oak's breath against my neck, the way his fox eyes looked with the pupils gone wide and black, the way it felt to bite his shoulder almost hard enough to break skin. 'Tell me, then.' He shakes his head, looking pained, but so many of his expressions are masks that I can no longer tell what is real. 'If I did, it would serve nothing but to clear my conscience and would put you in danger.' 'Tell me anyway,' I say. But Oak only shakes his head again. 'Then let me tell you something,' I say. 'I know why you smile and jest and flatter, even when you don't need to. At first I thought it was to make people like you, then I thought it was to keep them off-balance. But it's more than that. You're worried they're scared of you.' Wariness comes into his face. 'Why ever would they be?' 'Because you terrify yourself,' I say. 'Once you start killing, you don't want to stop. You like it. Your sister may have inherited your father's gift for strategy, but you're the one who got his bloodlust.' A muscle moves in his jaw. 'Are you afraid of me?' 'Not because of that.' The intensity of his gaze is blistering. It doesn't matter. It feels good to pierce his armour, but it doesn't change anything.

Tucked in the back of one of the shelves is a small bottle, rounded with a short neck and closed with a matching glass stopper. He picks it up carefully. It is heavier than he had expected. Removing the stopper, he is confused, for at first the scent and the sensation do not change. Then comes the aroma of caramel, wafting on the crisp breeze of an autumn wind. The scent of wool and sweat makes him feel as though he is wearing a heavy coat, with the warmth of a scarf around his neck. There is the impression of people wearing masks. The smell of a bonfire mixes with the caramel. And then there is a shift, a movement in front of him. Something grey. A sharp pain in his chest. The sensation of falling. A sound like howling wind, or a screaming girl.

He began as a minor imitator of Fitzgerald, wrote a novel in the late twenties which won a prize, became dissatisfied with his work, stopped writing for a period of years. When he came back it was to BLACK MASK and the other detective magazines with a curious and terrible fiction which had never been seen before in the genre markets; Hart Crane and certainly Hemingway were writing of people on the edge of their emotions and their possibility but the genre mystery markets were filled with characters whose pain was circumstantial, whose resolution was through action; Woolrich's gallery was of those so damaged that their lives could only be seen as vast anticlimax to central and terrible events which had occurred long before the incidents of the story. Hammett and his great disciple, Chandler, had verged toward this more than a little, there is no minimizing the depth of their contribution to the mystery and to literature but Hammett and Chandler were still working within the devices of their category: detectives confronted problems and solved (or more commonly failed to solve) them, evil was generalized but had at least specific manifestations: Woolrich went far out on the edge. His characters killed, were killed, witnessed murder, attempted to solve it but the events were peripheral to the central circumstances. What I am trying to say, perhaps, is that Hammett and Chandler wrote of death but the novels and short stories of Woolrich *were* death. In all of its delicacy and grace, its fragile beauty as well as its finality. Most of his plots made no objective sense. Woolrich was writing at the cutting edge of his time. Twenty years later his vision would attract a Truffaut whose own influences had been the philosophy of Sartre, the French nouvelle vague, the central conception that nothing really mattered. At all. But the suffering. Ah, that mattered; that mattered quite a bit.

It’s the photos that hit me the hardest, though. A woman cradling her husband’s limp body. A crowd looking on, emotionless, as police shine a flashlight on a woman’s bloodied corpse. A couple, half on the ground and half tangled in their moped, their blank faces turned toward the camera and sprays of blood on the pavement behind their heads. Sisters gathered around their baby brother’s body lying in its small casket. A body with its head covered in a dirty cloth left in a pile of garbage on the side of the street. Grayish-green corpses stacked like firewood in an improvised morgue. There’s even a short video of grainy security cam footage in which a masked motorcyclist pulls up next to a man in an alleyway, shoots him point-blank in the side of the head, then drives away. In high definition, I see the victims’ wounds, their oddly twisted limbs, their blood and brain matter sprayed across familiar-looking streets. In every dead body, I see Jun. I want to look away. But I don’t. I need to know. I need to see it. These photographers didn’t want to water it down. They wanted the audience to confront the reality, to feel the pain that’s been numbed by a headline culture.

You play at altruism, Miss Wyndham, but the truth is that you decided your sister was more important than my brother. What you don’t understand is that you don’t just ‘help people.’ Any choice to help someone, hurts someone else. You want to help Britain? Then take from Egypt. You want to heal someone? Then you leave someone else in pain, waiting. You want to save your sister? Then you kill my brother.

The collar of Lars of Tassla fell away and clattered onto the tiles. katriana felt unable to breathe. Her neck, so long encased with the symbol of Lars’ ownership of her, seemed paradoxically to be suddenly constricted. She felt naked. Naked and abandoned. Her head sank down to lie across the hardness of the anvil. Her entire body shook uncontrollably as she felt all security evaporate from her world. How many minutes she lay there she could not with any certainty say. Yet, eventually she became aware of one tiny point in the cruel world surrounding her. It was a scent. His scent. It entered her. It stroked inside her. It pulsed against her pain until she acknowledged its presence. Her eyes flicked open. And then she saw him there, sitting quietly beside her, watching her with all the intentness that she loved so much in him. His face was still set in the neutrality he reserved for formal times but his eyes were flashing with…with some emotion kept hidden behind his Master’s mask. katriana struggled to read the look flowing from deep inside his eyes. She awkwardly rose to kneel before her former Master. Her body and her breasts were offered. She could not do otherwise whether or not she wore his collar. (A Master's Dilemma, eXtasy)

Control: February 15 Sometimes, the gray days scare us. Those are the days when the old feelings come rushing back. We may feel needy, scared, ashamed, unable to care for ourselves. When this happens, it’s hard to trust ourselves, others, the goodness of life, and the good intentions of our Higher Power. Problems seem overwhelming. The past seems senseless; the future, bleak. We feel certain the things we want in life will never happen. In those moments, we may become convinced that things and people outside of ourselves hold the key to our happiness. That’s when we may try to control people and situations to mask our pain. When these “codependent crazies” strike, others often begin to react negatively to our controlling. When we’re in a frenzied state, searching for happiness outside ourselves and looking to others to provide our peace and stability, remember this: Even if we could control things and people, even if we got what we wanted, we would still be ourselves. Our emotional state would still be in turmoil. People and things don’t stop our pain or heal us. In recovery, we learn that this is our job, and we can do it by using our resources: ourselves, our Higher Power, our support systems, and our recovery program. Often, after we’ve become peaceful, trusting, and accepting, what we want comes to us—with ease and naturalness. The sun begins to shine again. Isn’t it funny, and isn’t it true, how all change really does begin with us? I can let go of things and people and my need to control today. I can deal with my feelings. I can get peaceful. I can get calm. I can get back on track and find the true key to happiness—myself. I will remember that a gray day is just that—one gray day.

The denial system is like a wall of fog in front of our eyes that blinds us from seeing the truth. We wear a social mask because it’s too painful to see ourselves or to let others see us as we really are. And the denial system lets us pretend that everyone believes what we want them to believe about us. We put up these barriers for protection, to keep other people away, but those barriers also keep us inside, restricting our freedom.

The people in whom CFS often takes a hold are those driven, workaholic, goal driven, perfectionist, 'never say die' characters. This is because these people ignore the normal cues that make us stop striving - they continue despite symptoms of fatigue and pain in order to achieve. The achievement is at the expense of their health. Furthermore, these personalities are more likely to turn to addictions to mask symptoms in order that they can keep going.

You will not understand this, Princess Malini. But there is a subtle pain the conquered feel. Our old language is nearly lost. Our old ways. Even when we try to explain a vision of ourselves to one another—in our poetry, our song, our theater masks—we do so in opposition to you, or by looking to the past. As if we have no future. Parijatdvipa has reshaped us. It is not a conversation, but a rewriting. The pleasure of security and comfort can only ease the pain for so long.

I ask people of the world and children of light to start reflecting the stories of their souls to vibrate wisdom around the earth. Pick up a paintbrush or microphone. Press the inks of your pens to paper or tap words onto your screens, and start sharing what you know and have learned with the masses. Turn your personal painting into a piece of the earth's puzzle so that our unified assemblage of thoughts, experiences and lessons reveal common truths that cannot be denied. Imagine the changes that could happen if everyone suddenly stopped acting like someone else, became true to themselves, and celebrated the beauty of their uniqueness? Only after people have willingly removed their masks and costumes, and have begun pouring light from their hearts to reveal their vulnerability, dreams and pains, will we be able to see that beneath the surface we are all the same. After all, how can the world collectively fight for Truth, if soldiers in its army are void of truth? We must first all be true by putting truth in our words and actions. And to do so, everyone must learn to think and react with their conscience. Imagine what Truth could do to neutralize the clutches of evil once this black and white world suddenly became embraced by a strong rainbow of loud powerful voices. We could put color back into every home, every school, every industry, every nation, and every garden on earth where flowers have been crushed by corruption.

He feels sick. And sicker still when his mouth curves unconsciously into a smile. It has become such an automatic reaction to pain, for him to mask it with a grin. Oak, laughing all the time. Pretending nothing hurts. A false face hiding a false heart. He can’t blame her for saying what she did. Probably something should have said it to him much sooner. And how could he have ever supposed she would come to care for him? Who can love someone who is empty inside? Someone who steals love instead of earning it?

As he left the room, Lord Henry's heavy eyelids drooped, and he began to think. Certainly few people had ever interested him so much as Dorian Gray, and yet the lad's mad adoration of some one else caused him not the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy. He was pleased by it. It made him a more interesting study. He had been always enthralled by the methods of natural science, but the ordinary subject-matter of that science had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he had begun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others. Human life—that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature. And, yet, what a great reward one received! How wonderful the whole world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional coloured life of the intellect—to observe where they met, and where they separated, at what point they were in unison, and at what point they were at discord—there was a delight in that! What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a price for any sensation.

Medications have helped many people deal with very real symptoms of depression and anxiety—but for others, those same medications can conveniently mask the discomfort that could have pushed them to get help. Even cell phones can mask the pain behind obsessions: people don’t have to stay home and become uncomfortable waiting for him or her to call—they can bring their phone and their obsessions with them and act them out anywhere, anytime. We’ve learned to become therapeutically correct and cover our insecurity with all the right lingo.

My sense of humor developed because it helped me compensate for my pain. If I felt insignificant inside, which I did during my childhood, I learned if I can make someone laugh, it feels like they value me. And if they value me, then it means I’m significant. And if I’m significant because I just made them laugh, then I don’t feel the sense of insignificance that I’m relentlessly trying to escape from. I became addicted to making people laugh. It was my survival strategy. The good thing about that was it helped train me to become a black belt of comedy.

But the young Count insisted on the Beauty selecting a flower for him. He was waiting impatiently for her second present, the promised kiss — her first kiss. The Beauty looked at the flowers. Once again her face was darkened by a delicate shade of sadness. Suddenly, as if prompted by some strange will, she quickly stretched out a hand, so exquisite in its naked whiteness, and plucked a many-petaled flower. Her hand hesitated, and she bowed her head, and finally with an expression of shy indecision she approached the Count and placed the flower in a buttonhole of his cloak. The powerful and pungent scent wafted into the young Count's face, which grew pale as his head reeled in languid impotence. Indifference and tedium overcame him. He was scarcely aware of himself, he hardly noticed that the Beauty took him by the arm and led him into the house, away from the fragrances of the wondrous Garden. In one of the rooms of the house where all was bright, white and rosy, the Count came to himself. A youthful vitality returned to his face, his black eyes were aflame with passion once again, and he felt the joy of life and the surge of desire anew. But already the inescapable lay in wait for him. A white hand, bare, slender, lay on his neck; and the fragrant kiss of the Beauty was tender, sweet, long. The two blue lightnings of her eyes flashed close to his eyes and were masked with the subtle mystery of her long eyelashes. The sinister fires of some sweet pain swirled like a whirlwind about the heart of the young Count. He raised his arms to embrace the Beauty — but with a soft cry she stepped away and softly, quietly, ran away, leaving him alone. ("The Poison Garden")

You Englishmen are all the same, when you first learn of us, you treat us like goddesses. You revere us, humbly ask for blessings, and weep with joy when you’re bestowed the smallest token. Until you want more. Until you decide that we were put on the earth to serve you, to fulfill your every request, to raise you up higher than the rest. Then, any mistake you make becomes our fault. Any deficiency you have is due to our cruel selfishness. Any pain you suffer means we’re to blame. And in the end, the best we can hope for is to not be punished for knowing you.

Something they seem to omit to mention in Boston AA when you're new and out of your skull with desperation and ready to eliminate your map and they tell you how it'll all get better and better as you abstain and recover: they somehow omit to mention that the way it gets better and you get better is through pain. Not around pain, or in spite of it. They leave this out, talking instead about Gratitude and Release from Compulsion. There's serious pain in being sober, though, you find out, after time. Then now that you're clean and don't even much want Substances and feeling like you want to both cry and stomp somebody into goo with pain, these Boston AAs start in on telling you you're right where you're supposed to be and telling you to remember the pointless pain of active addiction and telling you that at least this sober pain now has a purpose. At least this pain means you're going somewhere, they say, instead of the repetitive gerbil-wheel of addictive pain. They neglect to tell you that after the urge to get high magically vanishes and you've been Substanceless for maybe six or eight months, you'll begin to start to 'Get In Touch' with why it was that you used Substances in the first place. You'll start to feel why it was you got dependent on what was, when you get right down to it, an anesthetic. 'Getting In Touch With Your Feelings' is another quilted-sampler-type cliche that ends up masking something ghastly deep and real, it turns out. [178: A more abstract but truer epigram that White Flaggers with a lot of sober time sometimes change this to goes something like: 'Don't worry about getting in touch with your feelings, they'll get in touch with you.’] It starts to turn out that the vapider the AA cliche, the sharper the canines of the real truth it covers.

It felt good to scrub my skin, as if I was removing everything that felt dead about me. I was the "queen of skin care." Who knew that simply exfoliating my skin until raw (which I knew better than to do but now couldn't resist) would one day be what was left of my skin care regimen? My daily cleansing and moisturizing, weekly hydrating and purifying masks, along with monthly photo facials, glycolic peels, or microdermabrasion, was down to "super-scrub Saturdays." Pampering was a thing of the past. No more sunscreen applications to guard against the "UVAging" rays that were out to get me 365 days a year. No more weekly Epsom salts hot baths to detox my body, or lathering up with my favorite vanilla-scented moisturizing cream. No more applications of extra virgin olive oil to the ends of my hair to prevent splitting. I didn't even treat myself to my bedtime chamomile tea. All that had been replaced by a new nightly ritual of passing out on the bed, face down, which went against my cardinal rule of youth maintenance. Before the deep hollow pain was born inside me, I slept on my back, at the perfect thirty-degree angle to ensure proper circulation and prevention of any unnecessary creasing or wrinkling.

Pain doesn't strike at once, as one might think. It's organic. From the moment you fall in love with someone, your pain begins. You just don't feel it yet, but it's there. The silence beneath your laugher. The shadows behind an embrace. Tranquility before the storm. The deeper you fall in love, the pain follows like a ghost, waiting for the perfect time to strike. Could take an entire lifetime, or just a couple short months. Pain has no concept of time, and when it arrives, you're never ready for it. But it's always been there, hiding behind a mask of denial, deceiving you into thinking there's such a thing as eternal happiness.

The words seemed, as I spoke, to be my own thoughts that I owed to no one, only to some memory in my soul; but when I looked beyond the Stadium, to where they were kindling the lights on the High City in the falling dark, I saw the lamps of Samos shine through a doorway, and the wine-cup standing on the table of scoured wood. Then the pain of loss leaped out on me, like a knife in the night when one has been on one’s guard all day. The world grew hollow, a place of shadows; yet none would hold out the cup of Lethe to let me drink. “No,” I thought, “I would not drink it. For here he lives in the thing we made: the boys down there, dancing for Zeus; people watching in freedom, their thoughts upon their faces; this silly old man speaking his mind, such as it is, with none to threaten him; and Sokrates saying among his friends, ‘We shall either find what we are seeking, or free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.’” I looked down the benches, and saw him in conversation with the wine-seller, from whom Chairophon was buying a round. The flambeaux had been kindled ready for the race, showing me his old Silenos mask, and Plato and Phaedo laughing. I touched the ring on my finger, saying within me, “Sleep quietly, Lysis. All is well.

Human life -- that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature. And, yet, what a great reward one received! How wonderful the whole world became to one!

Outside, the floorboards creaked from the weight of a person walking, as if complete silence were a cloak the enemy could wear and discard at will. The treading of heavy boots came closer and closer. The doorway filled, blacking out the faint light from the hall, and a tall, incredibly tall, figure stepped inside. A thin line of blood trickled from its throat, as if it had been beheaded and glued back together. A dress of green silk billowed underneath the wound. Its face was a white mask, and its eyes were monstrous streaks of red. Trembling, Kuji raised his blade. He moved so slowly it felt like he was swimming through mud. The creature watched him swing his sword, its eyes on the metal, and somehow, he knew it was fully capable of putting a stop to the action. If it cared to. The edge of the dao bit into his opponent’s shoulder. There was a snapping noise, and a sudden pain lashed his cheek. The sword had broken, the top half bouncing back in Kuji’s face. It was a spirit. It had to be. It was a spirit that could pass through walls, a ghost that could float over floors, a beast impervious to blades. Kuji dropped the handle of the useless sword. His mother had told him once that invoking the Avatar could safeguard him from evil. He’d known as a child she was making up stories. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t decide to believe them right now. Right now, he believed harder than he believed anything in his life. “The Avatar protect me,” he whispered while he could still speak. He fell on his behind and scrambled to the corner of the room, blanketed completely by the spirit’s long shadow. “Yangchen protect me!” The spirit woman followed him and lowered her red-and-white face to his. A human would have passed some kind of judgment on Kuji as he cowered like this. The cold disregard in her eyes was worse than any pity or sadistic amusement. “Yangchen isn’t here right now,” she said in a rich, commanding voice that would have been beautiful had she not held such clear indifference for his life. “I am.

From the moment little boys are taught they should not cry or express hurt, feelings of loneliness, or pain, that they must be tough, they are learning how to mask true feelings. In worst-case scenarios they are learning how to not feel anything ever. These lessons are usually taught to males by other males and sexist mothers. Even boys raised in the most progressive, loving households, where parents encourage them to express emotions, learn a different understanding about masculinity and feelings on the playground, in the classroom, playing sports, or watching television. They may end up choosing patriarchal masculinity to be accepted by other boys and affirmed by male authority figures.

His booted feet pounded out an insane, frantic rhythm underneath him as he raced into the cavern across from Baba Yaga’s den at a dead sprint. Pieces of dragon dung flew off him and hit the ground behind him in miniature chunks. He didn’t dare look behind him to see if the dragon had risen from the ground yet, but the deafening hiss that assaulted his ears meant she’d woken up. Icy claws of fear squeezed his heart with every breath as he ran, relying on the night vision goggles, the glimpse he’d gotten of the map, and his own instincts to figure out where to go. Jack raced around one corner too sharply and slipped on a piece of dung, crashing hard on his right side. He gasped as it knocked the wind out of him and gritted his teeth, his mind screaming at him to get up and run, run, run. He pushed onto his knees, nursing what felt like bruised ribs and a sprained wrist, and then paled as an unmistakable sensation traveled up the arm he’d used to push himself up. Impact tremors. Boom. Boom. Boom, boom, boom. Baba Yaga was coming. Baba Yaga was hunting him. Jack forced himself up onto his feet again, stumbling backwards and fumbling for the tracker. He got it switched on to see an ominous blob approaching from the right. He’d gotten a good lead on her—maybe a few hundred yards—but he had no way of knowing if he’d eventually run into a dead end. He couldn’t hide down here forever. He needed to get topside to join the others so they could take her down. Jack blocked out the rising crescendo of Baba Yaga’s hissing and pictured the map again. A mile up to the right had a man-made exit that spilled back up to the forest. The only problem was that it was a long passage. If Baba Yaga followed, there was a good chance she could catch up and roast him like a marshmallow. He could try to lose her in the twists and turns of the cave system, but there was a good chance he’d get lost, and Baba Yaga’s superior senses meant it would only be a matter of time before she found him. It came back to the most basic survival tactics: run or hide. Jack switched off the tracker and stuck it in his pocket, his voice ragged and shaking, but solid. “You aren’t about to die in this forest, Jackson. Move your ass.” He barreled forward into the passageway to the right in the wake of Baba Yaga’s ominous, bubbling warning, barely suppressing a groan as a spike of pain lanced through his chest from his bruised ribs. The adrenaline would only hold for so long. He could make it about halfway there before it ran out. Cold sweat plastered the mask to his face and ran down into his eyes. The tunnel stretched onward forever before him. No sunlight in sight. Had he been wrong? Jack ripped off the hood and cold air slapped his face, making his eyes water. He held his hands out to make sure he wouldn’t bounce off one of the cavern walls and squinted up ahead as he turned the corner into the straightaway. There, faintly, he could see the pale glow of the exit. Gasping for air, he collapsed against one wall and tried to catch his breath before the final marathon. He had to have put some amount of distance between himself and the dragon by now. “Who knows?” Jack panted. “Maybe she got annoyed and turned around.” An earth-shattering roar rocked the very walls of the cavern. Jack paled. Boom, boom, boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom, boomboomboomboom— Mother of God. The dragon had broken into a run. Jack shoved himself away from the wall, lowered his head, and ran as fast as his legs would carry him.

He knew what was waiting for him there; saw it, indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands his burning lids as though he would have robbed the very brain of sight and driven the eyeballs back into their cave. It was useless. The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks. Then, suddenly, time stopped for him. Yes: that blind, slow-breathing thing crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, time being dead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its grave, and showed it to him. He stared at it. Its very horror made him stone.

Cal stares at me, eyes full of accusation. And longing. This time he takes me by surprise when he steps closer, and I fall back on my heels. “Did your mother destroy you entirely? Is there anything left of you?” he asks, searching my face. “Anything that isn’t hers?” He won’t tell me what he’s looking for, but I know. Despite the walls my mother built around me, Cal always manages to weasel through. His hunting eyes fill me with sorrow. Even now, he thinks there’s something in me left to save—and to mourn. There is no escaping our fate, not for either of us. He must sentence me to die. And I must accept death. But Cal wants to know if he’s killing his brother along with the monster—or if the brother died long ago. Cut for cut, my mother whispers, louder now, taunting. The words slice like a razor. It would hurt him deeply, wound him forever, if I let him glimpse what little is left of me. That I’m still here, in some forgotten corner, just waiting to be found. I could ruin him with one glance, one echo of the brother he remembers. Or I could free him of me. Make the choice for him. Give my brother one last proof of the love I can no longer feel, even if he never knows it. I weigh the choice in my heart, each side heavy and impossible. For one terrifying moment, I don’t know what to do. Despite all my mother’s fine work, I can’t find it in myself to land that final blow. I drop my gaze, forcing a detached smirk to my lips. “I would do it all again, Cal,” I tell him, lying with such grace. It feels easy, after so many years behind a mask. “If given the choice to go back, I would let her change me. I would watch you kill him. I’d send you to the arena. And I’d get it right. I’d give you what you deserve. I’d kill you now if I could. I’d do it a thousand times.” My brother is simple, easy to manipulate. He sees only what lies in front of him, only what he can understand. The lie does its job well. His eyes harden, that undying ember in him almost extinguished entirely. One hand twitches, wanting to form a fist. But the Silent Stone affects him too, and even if he had the strength to make me burn, he could not. “Good-bye, Maven,” Cal says, his voice broken. He isn’t really speaking to me. The farewell is for another boy, lost years ago, before he became what I am now. Cal lets go of him, the Maven I was. The Maven I still am, somewhere inside, unable or unwilling to step into the light. This will be the last time we speak to each other alone. I can feel that in my marrow. If I see him again, it will be before the throne, or beneath the cold steel of the executioner’s blade. “I look forward to the sentencing,” I drawl in reply, watching him flee the room. The door slams behind him, shaking paintings in their frames. Despite all the difference between us, we have this in common. We use our pain to destroy. “Good-bye, Cal,” I say to no one. Weakness, my mother answers.

Whereas the man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds thereby in warding off misfortune, is unable to compel the abstractions themselves to yield him happiness, and strives merely to be as free as possible of pain, the man of intuition, standing in the midst of a culture, reaps directly from his intuitions not just protection from harm but also a constant stream of brightness, a lightening of the spirit, redemption, and release. Of course when he suffers, he suffers more severely; indeed he suffers more frequently because he does not know how to learn from experience and keeps on falling into the very same trap time after time. When he is suffering he is just as unreasonable as he is when he is happy, he shouts out loudly and knows no solace. How differently the same misfortune is endured by the stoic who has learned fro experience and who governs himself by means of concepts! This man, who otherwise seeks only honesty, truth, freedom from illusions, and protection from the onslaughts of things which might distract him, now performs, in the midst of misfortune, a masterpiece of pretence, just as the other did in the midst of happiness: he does not wear a twitching, mobile, human face, but rather a mask, as it were, with its features in dignified equilibrium; he does not shut, nor does he even change his tone of voice. If a veritable storm-cloud empties itself on his head, he wraps himself in his cloak and slowly walks away from under it.

The modern food and drug industry has converted a significant portion of the world’s people to a new religion—a massive cult of pleasure seekers who consume coffee, cigarettes, soft drinks, candy, chocolate, alcohol, processed foods, fast foods, and concentrated dairy fat (cheese) in a self-indulgent orgy of destructive behavior. When the inevitable results of such bad habits appear—pain, suffering, sickness, and disease—the addicted cult members drag themselves to physicians and demand drugs to alleviate their pain, mask their symptoms, and cure their diseases. These revelers become so drunk on their addictive behavior and the accompanying addictive thinking that they can no longer tell the difference between health and health care.

I would never say it- never let her hear that, even if she killed me. And if it was to be my downfall, so be it. If it would be the weakness that would break me, I would embrace it with all my heart. If this was- For though each of my strikes lands a powerful blow, When I kill, I do it slow... That's what these three months had been- a slow, horrible death. What I felt for Tamlin was the cause of this. There was no cure- not pain, or absence, or happiness. But scorned, I become a difficult beast to defeat. She could torture me all she liked, but it would never destroy what I felt for him. It would never make Tamlin want her- never ease the sting of his rejection. The world became dark at the borders of my vision, taking the edge off the pain. But I bless all those who are brave enough to dare. For so long, I had run from it. But opening myself to him, to my sisters- that had been a test of bravery as harrowing as any of my trials. 'Say it, you vile beast!' Amarantha hissed. She might have lied her way out of our bargain, but she'd sworn differently with the riddle- instantaneous freedom, regardless of her will. Blood filled my mouth, warm as it dribbled out between my lips. I gazed at Tamlin's masked face one last time. 'Love,' I breathed, the word crumbling into a blackness with no end. A pause in Amarantha's magic. 'The answer to the riddle....' I got out, choking on my own blood, 'is... love.' Tamlin's eyes went wide before something forever cracked in my spine.

Seconds turn into minutes and minutes into hours. It is all still the same. Or it no longer is. If I were to ask what has changed, perhaps nothing, but conceivably everything would be the befitting reply. I no longer feel the same. Loss preceded me, alienating my soul from the body. I feel I am gliding through an alley making a journey from the known towards the unknown. There is a deep abyss inside where sometime back, my heart used to beat and a noisy, rusty old machine has replaced my mind; solitarily creating useless noise. I don’t remember what day it is and since when have I been lying here. It must have been yesterday… or was it day before. I cannot recollect anything except the dull throbbing pain inside my brain. I can see the time, almost 9: 45, difficult to say which time of the day it is. The bigger hand is soon going to overshadow the smaller hand. It looks like a game of cat and mouse; the bigger hand chasing the smaller one. Anyone stronger in terms of physical appearance, money, power, fame or name tramples upon the weak ones - that is the rule of the world. There are only two possible reasons behind it, love or hate. When you love someone you want to control everything that person does and hence, sometimes, knowingly or unknowingly you squash them like melons. While on the other hand in the case of hate, there is no need to specify the reason for walking over someone like that. Hate is a strong reason in itself. I am confused as to what crushed me, was it love or hate? I somehow don’t like the sound of it – love, it in itself smells of treachery, for love is not a pure emotion. Lust and hatred are the only pure emotions. Love is camouflaged, for needs and desires. Desires – they are magical in their own way. They can be innocent. They can be monstrous. But they exist, no matter what, and many such needs and desires make us helpless slaves of the same. We hide these desires either in the realms of our mind or in the dusty corners of our hearts for we are scared…what if someone finds out what we desire. We give them identities so as to not let the real thing show. The only thing visible on the front is a mask we wear to deceive people or that’s what I thought. For I was deceived while I believed I am the deceiver. Or was I not? I debated as my mind once again tried to enter a sleep-induced trance.

It’s to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek, knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It’s what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy… we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What’s left? What else is there that hasn’t been dealt out like a deck of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what’s shared — she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she’s everybody’s and it don’t mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it’s held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it’s gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil, a tangerine, a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb. Pain.

And so he had begun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others. Human life—that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one’s face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature. And, yet, what a great reward one received! How wonderful the whole world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional coloured

Day after day, in the “Advice to the Lovelorn” columns of the newspapers, one would read the complaints of women who had been deceived into marriage by a mask—(they would not mention their own). However, the answers would be just as irrelevant and irresponsible: “The insincerity of not once showing his face during the engagement is deplorable. But you are still thinking in terms of a life with a real face. The mask does not deceive and is not deceived. How about putting on a new mask, turning over a new leaf, and starting another life? On these days of masks, we can put on a new look unconcerned with yesterday or tomorrow.” No matter how great the deception, it’s the inconvenience that would be discussed; the pain of deception would never outweigh the pleasure it provided. While there would be many conflicts, the fascination with masks would be predominant.

So, my dear…” She faced him with thudding heart, the crystal piece clutched desperately in her hand, but she was hardly aware that she even held it. “… You say I have let another man into my bed.” Erienne opened her mouth to speak. Her first impulse was to chatter some inanity that could magically take the edge from his callous half statement, half question. No great enlightenment dawned, however, and her dry, parched throat issued no sound of its own. She inspected the stopper closely, turning it slowly in her hand rather than meet the accusing stare. From behind the mask, Lord Saxton observed his wife closely, well aware that the next moments would form the basis for the rest of his life or leave it an empty husk. After this, there could be no turning back. “I think, my dear,” his words made her start, “that whatever the cost, ’tis time you met the beast of Saxton Hall.” Erienne swallowed hard and clasped the stopper with whitened knuckles, as if to draw some bit of courage from the crystal piece. As she watched, Lord Saxton doffed his coat, waistcoat, and stock, and she wondered if it was a trick of her imagination that he seemed somewhat lighter of frame. After their removal, he caught the heel of his right boot over the toe of the left and slowly drew the heavy, misshapen encumbrance from his foot. She frowned in open bemusement, unable to detect a flaw. He flexed the leg a moment before slipping off the other boot. His movements seemed pained as he shed the gloves, and Erienne’s eyes fastened on the long, tan, unscarred hands that rose to the mask and, with deliberate movements, flipped the lacings loose. She half turned, dropping the stopper and colliding with the desk as he reached to the other side of the leather helm and lifted it away with a single motion. She braved a quick glance and gasped in astonishment when she found translucent eyes calmly smiling at her. “Christopher! What…?” She could not form a question, though her mind raced in a frantic search for logic. He rose from the chair with an effort. “Christopher Stuart Saxton, lord of Saxton Hall.” His voice no longer bore a hint of a rasp. “Your servant, my lady.” “But… but where is…?” The truth was only just beginning to dawn on her, and the name she spoke sounded small and thin. “… Stuart?” “One and the same, madam.” He stepped near, and those translucent eyes commanded her attention. “Look at me, Erienne. Look very closely.” He towered over her, and his lean, hard face bore no hint of humor. “And tell me again if you think I would ever allow another man in your bed while I yet breathe.” -Christopher & Erienne

Something they seem to omit to mention in Boston AA when you're new and out of your skull with desperation and ready to eliminate your map and they tell you how it'll all get better and better as you abstain and recover: they somehow omit to mention that the way it gets better and you get better is through pain. Not around pain, or in spite of it. They leave this out, talking instead about Gratitude and Release from Compulsion. There's serious pain in being sober, though, you find out, after time. Then now that you're clean and don't even much want Substances and feeling like you want to both cry and stomp somebody into goo with pain, these Boston AAs start in on telling you you're right where you're supposed to be and telling you to remember the pointless pain of active addiction and telling you that at least this sober pain now has a purpose. At least this pain means you're going somewhere, they say, instead of the repetitive gerbil-wheel of addictive pain. They neglect to tell you that after the urge to get high magically vanishes and you've been Substanceless for maybe six or eight months, you'll begin to start to 'Get In Touch' with why it was that you used Substances in the first place. You'll start to feel why it was you got dependent on what was, when you get right down to it, an anesthetic. 'Getting In Touch With Your Feelings' is another quilted-sampler-type cliche that ends up masking something ghastly deep and real, it turns out. [178: A more abstract but truer epigram that White Flaggers with a lot of sober time sometimes change this to goes something like: 'Don't worry about getting in touch with your feelings, they'll get in touch with you.’] It starts to turn out that the vapider the AA cliche, the sharper the canines of the real truth it covers.

Martin looked at Alejandra with a pained expression. How he detested that face of hers, her boutique-face, the one that she seemed to put on deliberately in order to play her role in that frivolous world; a face that seemed to linger on once she found herself alone with him, its abominable features fading away only very slowly, as there gradually emerged one or another of the faces that belonged to him alone, a face he waited for as one awaits a beloved traveler amid a repulsive crowd. But as Bruno said, the word person means "mask", and each of us has many masks; that of father, professor, lover....But which is the real one? And is there in fact one that is the real one? At certain moments Martin thought that the Alejandra that he was now seeing there before him, laughing at Bobby's jokes, was not, could not be the same Alejandra that he knew, and above all could not be the more profound, the marvelous and fearsome Alejandra that he loved. But at other times (and as the weeks went by the more he began to be convinced of it), he was inclined to think, as Bruno did, that all these Alejandras were real and that that boutique-face was genuine too and in some way or other expressed a sort of reality inherent in Alejandra's soul: a reality--and heaven only knew how many others there were!---that was foreign to him, that did not belong to him and never would. And then, when she came to him still bearing the faint traces of those other personalities, as though she had not had the time (or the desire?) to transform herself, Martin discovered--in a certain sarcastic grin on her lips, in a certain way of moving her hands, in a certain glint in her eyes--the lingering signs of a strange existence: like someone who has been around a garbage dump and still retains something of its foul stench in our presence.

Depression, that is,” I continue. “People who’ve never experienced it think it’s a mask, but it’s not. It’s a curtain. And when it falls, it shuts you off from your life, plunging you into complete darkness. There you stand, arms flailing around you, reaching for anything to find your way back. But after exhausting yourself, grasping at only more darkness, you give up and drop to the floor in resignation. “And so you sit. You and the blackness. You and the accusations. You and the self-hatred, the lies that become truth, the failure and pain and hopelessness and black thoughts that twist through you, impaling you to the floor. There you bleed, alone in your black hole, convinced the audience on the other side of the curtain has given up and gone home. The show is over. “Before you know it, you realize the curtain has turned into a cement wall, and you couldn’t escape the darkness even if you wanted to, but by now you don’t care anymore. What’s the point? There’s nothing waiting for you on the other side, and even if there was, you’re such a useless waste of space that you wouldn’t dare to contaminate the world outside with your cancer anyway.” I stop, my eyes burning, my voice heavy in my throat. “You feel like crying all the time but you rarely do. Depression isn’t sadness; it’s numbness. You don’t have the energy for sadness. You can’t sleep. You don’t eat. You have no desire for the things you used to love, but it doesn’t matter because you can’t love anyway. You feel nothing, just a dull, heavy ache that makes it hard to breathe sometimes, let alone get up to start the search again. You fantasize about disappearing, just erasing your pointless existence and sparing the Earth from your toxic presence. By now you’re so exhausted just from the effort of living that there’s nothing left to live it.” I

— and then you’re in serious trouble, very serious trouble, and you know it, finally, deadly serious trouble, because this Substance you thought was your one true friend, that you gave up all for, gladly, that for so long gave you relief from the pain of the Losses your love of that relief caused, your mother and lover and god and compadre, has finally removed its smily-face mask to reveal centerless eyes and a ravening maw, and canines down to here, it’s the Face In The Floor, the grinning root-white face of your worst nightmares, and the face is your own face in the mirror, now, it’s you, the Substance has devoured or replaced and become you, and the puke-, drool-and Substance-crusted T-shirt you’ve both worn for weeks now gets torn off and you stand there looking and in the root-white chest where your heart (given away to It) should be beating, in its exposed chest’s center and center-less eyes is just a lightless hole, more teeth, and a beckoning taloned hand dangling something irresistible, and now you see you’ve been had, screwed royal, stripped and fucked and tossed to the side like some stuffed toy to lie for all time in the posture you land in. You see now that It’s your enemy and your worst personal nightmare and the trouble It’s gotten you into is undeniable and you still can’t stop. Doing the Substance now is like attending Black Mass but you still can’t stop, even though the Substance no longer gets you high. You are, as they say, Finished. You cannot get drunk and you cannot get sober; you cannot get high and you cannot get straight. You are behind bars; you are in a cage and can see only bars in every direction. You are in the kind of a hell of a mess that either ends lives or turns them around. You are at a fork in the road that Boston AA calls your Bottom, though the term is misleading, because everybody here agrees it’s more like someplace very high and unsupported: you’re on the edge of something tall and leaning way out forward….

He was walking down a narrow street in Beirut, Lebanon, the air thick with the smell of Arabic coffee and grilled chicken. It was midday, and he was sweating badly beneath his flannel shirt. The so-called South Lebanon conflict, the Israeli occupation, which had begun in 1982 and would last until 2000, was in its fifth year. The small white Fiat came screeching around the corner with four masked men inside. His cover was that of an aid worker from Chicago and he wasn’t strapped. But now he wished he had a weapon, if only to have the option of ending it before they took him. He knew what that would mean. The torture first, followed by the years of solitary. Then his corpse would be lifted from the trunk of a car and thrown into a drainage ditch. By the time it was found, the insects would’ve had a feast and his mother would have nightmares, because the authorities would not allow her to see his face when they flew his body home. He didn’t run, because the only place to run was back the way he’d come, and a second vehicle had already stopped halfway through a three-point turn, all but blocking off the street. They exited the Fiat fast. He was fit and trained, but he knew they’d only make it worse for him in the close confines of the car if he fought them. There was a time for that and a time for raising your hands, he’d learned. He took an instep hard in the groin, and a cosh over the back of his head as he doubled over. He blacked out then. The makeshift cell Hezbollah had kept him in in Lebanon was a bare concrete room, three metres square, without windows or artificial light. The door was wooden, reinforced with iron strips. When they first dragged him there, he lay in the filth that other men had made. They left him naked, his wrists and ankles chained. He was gagged with rag and tape. They had broken his nose and split his lips. Each day they fed him on half-rancid scraps like he’d seen people toss to skinny dogs. He drank only tepid water. Occasionally, he heard the muted sound of children laughing, and smelt a faint waft of jasmine. And then he could not say for certain how long he had been there; a month, maybe two. But his muscles had wasted and he ached in every joint. After they had said their morning prayers, they liked to hang him upside down and beat the soles of his feet with sand-filled lengths of rubber hose. His chest was burned with foul-smelling cigarettes. When he was stubborn, they lay him bound in a narrow structure shaped like a grow tunnel in a dusty courtyard. The fierce sun blazed upon the corrugated iron for hours, and he would pass out with the heat. When he woke up, he had blisters on his skin, and was riddled with sand fly and red ant bites. The duo were good at what they did. He guessed the one with the grey beard had honed his skills on Jewish conscripts over many years, the younger one on his own hapless people, perhaps. They looked to him like father and son. They took him to the edge of consciousness before easing off and bringing him back with buckets of fetid water. Then they rubbed jagged salt into the fresh wounds to make him moan with pain. They asked the same question over and over until it sounded like a perverse mantra. “Who is The Mandarin? His name? Who is The Mandarin?” He took to trying to remember what he looked like, the architecture of his own face beneath the scruffy beard that now covered it, and found himself flinching at the slightest sound. They had peeled back his defences with a shrewdness and deliberation that had both surprised and terrified him. By the time they freed him, he was a different man.  

He had been always enthralled by the methods of science, but the ordinary subject-matter of science had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he had begun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others. Human life,--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. There was nothing else of any value, compared to it. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, or keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature. And, yet, what a great reward one received! How wonderful the whole world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional colored life of the intellect,--to observe where they met, and where they separated, at what point they became one, and at what point they were at discord,--there was a delight in that! What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a price for any sensation.

No one will understand your pain but you, you feel trapped , you want to find someone and share your pain but no one cares. As you sit there and stare your heart racing, your anxiety level is through the roof your stomach is sick because of your anxiety, you feel numb . You don’t know what to do or what to say. Your mind is blank can’t think of anything ,can’t think clearly your mind is foggy. You have plans for the New Years but you’ve lost the momentum to even sit and focus on your plan. You feel so lost , no one understands you, no one realizes that you are in pain because you mask it so well. You feel like you are failing as a mother your daughter doesn’t listen to you when you speak to her. Your husband doesn’t care much about your feelings anymore. You feel like your life is falling apart all you want to do is scream, but you just sit there silently not knowing what to do or what is yet to come. Please help me lord I feel helpless and afraid. You feel that your husband is hiding secrets from you , you feel as if he as a secret identity, he as a fetish for big buttocks that makes me feel less of a woman to him , I feel like I am not within his standards my body is not enough for him but he doesn’t see that he is hurting me

You already know what you know, after all—and, unless your life is perfect, what you know is not enough. You remain threatened by disease, and self-deception, and unhappiness, and malevolence, and betrayal, and corruption, and pain, and limitation. You are subject to all these things, in the final analysis, because you are just too ignorant to protect yourself. If you just knew enough, you could be healthier and more honest. You would suffer less. You could recognize, resist and even triumph over malevolence and evil. You would neither betray a friend, nor deal falsely and deceitfully in business, politics or love. However, your current knowledge has neither made you perfect nor kept you safe. So, it is insufficient, by definition—radically, fatally insufficient. You must accept this before you can converse philosophically, instead of convincing, oppressing, dominating or even amusing. You must accept this before you can tolerate a conversation where the Word that eternally mediates between order and chaos is operating, psychologically speaking. To have this kind of conversation, it is necessary to respect the personal experience of your conversational partners. You must assume that they have reached careful, thoughtful, genuine conclusions (and, perhaps, they must have done the work tha justifies this assumption). You must believe that if they shared their conclusions with you, you could bypass at least some of the pain of personally learning the same things (as learning from the experience of others can be quicker and much less dangerous). You must meditate, too, instead of strategizing towards victory. If you fail, or refuse, to do so, then you merely and automatically repeat what you already believe, seeking its validation and insisting on its rightness. But if you are meditating as you converse, then you listen to the other person, and say the new and original things that can rise from deep within of their own accord. It’s as if you are listening to yourself during such a conversation, just as you are listening to the other person. You are describing how you are responding to the new information imparted by the speaker. You are reporting what that information has done to you—what new things it made appear within you, how it has changed your presuppositions, how it has made you think of new questions. You tell the speaker these things, directly. Then they have the same effect on him. In this manner, you both move towards somewhere newer and broader and better. You both change, as you let your old presuppositions die—as you shed your skins and emerge renewed. A conversation such as this is one where it is the desire for truth itself—on the part of both participants—that is truly listening and speaking. That’s why it’s engaging, vital, interesting and meaningful. That sense of meaning is a signal from the deep, ancient parts of your Being. You’re where you should be, with one foot in order, and the other tentatively extended into chaos and the unknown. You’re immersed in the Tao, following the great Way of Life. There, you’re stable enough to be secure, but flexible enough to transform. There, you’re allowing new information to inform you—to permeate your stability, to repair and improve its structure, and expand its domain. There the constituent elements of your Being can find their more elegant formation. A conversation like that places you in the same place that listening to great music places you, and for much the same reason. A conversation like that puts you in the realm where souls connect, and that’s a real place. It leaves you thinking, “That was really worthwhile. We really got to know each other.” The masks came off, and the searchers were revealed. So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.

There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an "overjoyed hero," counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty. Whenever, as was perhaps the case in ancient Greece, the intuitive man handles his weapons more authoritatively and victoriously than his opponent, then, under favorable circumstances, a culture can take shape and art's mastery over life can be established. All the manifestations of such a life will be accompanied by this dissimulation, this disavowal of indigence, this glitter of metaphorical intuitions, and, in general, this immediacy of deception: neither the house, nor the gait, nor the clothes, nor the clay jugs give evidence of having been invented because of a pressing need. It seems as if they were all intended to express an exalted happiness, an Olympian cloudlessness, and, as it were, a playing with seriousness. The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions. And while he aims for the greatest possible freedom from pain, the intuitive man, standing in the midst of a culture, already reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer, and redemption—in addition to obtaining a defense against misfortune. To be sure, he suffers more intensely, when he suffers; he even suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch. He is then just as irrational in sorrow as he is in happiness: he cries aloud and will not be consoled. How differently the stoical man who learns from experience and governs himself by concepts is affected by the same misfortunes! This man, who at other times seeks nothing but sincerity, truth, freedom from deception, and protection against ensnaring surprise attacks, now executes a masterpiece of deception: he executes his masterpiece of deception in misfortune, as the other type of man executes his in times of happiness. He wears no quivering and changeable human face, but, as it were, a mask with dignified, symmetrical features. He does not cry; he does not even alter his voice. When a real storm cloud thunders above him, he wraps himself in his cloak, and with slow steps he walks from beneath it.

Then I came back to Christine. She was waiting for me..." Erik here rose solemnly. Then he continued, but, as he spoke, he was overcome by all his former emotion and began to tremble like a leaf: "Yes, she was waiting for me... waiting for me erect and alive, a real, living bride... as she hoped to be saved... And, when I... came forward, more timid than... a little child, she did not run away... no, no... she stayed... she waited for me... I even believe... daroga... that she put out her forehead... a little... oh, not too much... just a little... like a living bride... And... and... I... kissed her!... I!... I!... I!... And she did not die!... Oh, how good it is, daroga, to kiss somebody on the forehead!... You can't tell!... But I! I!... My mother, daroga, my poor, unhappy mother would never... let me kiss her... She used to run away... and throw me my mask!... Nor any other woman... ever, ever!... Ah, you can understand, my happiness was so great, I cried. And I fell at her feet, crying... and I kissed her feet... her little feet... crying. You're crying, too, daroga... and she cried also... the angel cried!..." Erik sobbed aloud and the Persian himself could not retain his tears in the presence of that masked man, who, with his shoulders shaking and his hands clutched at his chest, was moaning with pain and love by turns. "Yes, daroga... I felt her tears flow on my forehead... on mine, mine!... They were soft... they were sweet!... They trickled under my mask... they mingled with my tears in my eyes... they flowed between my lips... Listen, daroga, listen to what I did... I tore off my mask so as not to lose one of her tears... and she did not run away!... And she did not die!... She remained alive, weeping over me, with me. We cried together! I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer!" And Erik fell into a chair, choking for breath: "Ah, I am not going to die yet... presently I shall... but let me cry!... Listen, daroga... listen to this... While I was at her feet... I heard her say, 'Poor, unhappy Erik!'... And she took my hand!... I had become, no more, you know, than a poor dog ready to die for her... I mean it, daroga!... I held in my hand a ring, a plain gold ring which I had given her... which she had lost... and which I had found again... a wedding-ring, you know... I slipped it into her little hand and said, 'There!... Take it!... Take it for you... and him!... It shall be my wedding-present from your poor, unhappy Erik... I know you love the boy... don't cry any more!'.... She asked me, in a very soft voice, what I meant... Then I made her understand that, where she was concerned, I was only a poor dog, ready to die for her... but that she could marry the young man when she pleased, because she had cried with me and mingled her tears with mine!..." Erik's emotion was so great that he had to tell the Persian not to look at him, for he was choking and must take off his mask.

I’m the living dead. I feel no connection to any other human. I have no friends and I don’t really care much about my family any longer. I feel no love for them. I can feel no joy. I’m incapable of feeling physical pleasure. There’s nothing to ever look forward to as a result. I don’t miss anyone or anything. I eat because I feel hunger pangs, but no food tastes like anything I like. I wear a mask when I’m with other people but it’s been slipping lately. I can’t find the energy to hide the heavy weight of survival and its effect on me. I’m exhausted all the time from the effort of just making it through the day. This depression has made a mockery of my memory. It’s in tatters. I have no good memories to sustain me. My past is gone. My present is horrid. My future looks like more of the same. In a way, I’m a man without time. Certainly, there’s no meaning in my life. What meaning can there be without even a millisecond of joy? Ah, scratch that. Let’s even put aside joy and shoot for lower. How about a moment of being content? Nope. Not a chance. I see other people, normal people, who can enjoy themselves. I hear people laughing at something on TV. It makes me cock my head and wonder what that’s like. I’m sure at sometime in my past, I had to have had a wonderful belly laugh. I must have laughed so hard once or twice that my face hurt. Those memories are gone though. Now, the whole concept of “funny” is dead. I stopped going to movies a long time ago. Sitting in a theater crowded with people, every one of them having a better time than you, is incredibly damaging. I wasn’t able to focus for that long anyway. Probably for the best. Sometimes I fear the thought of being normal again. I think I wouldn’t know how to act. How would I handle being able to feel? Gosh it would be nice to feel again. Anything but this terrible, suffocating pain. The sorrow and the misery is so visceral, I find myself clenching my jaw. It physically hurts me. Then I realize that it’s silly to worry about that. You see, in spite of all the meds, the ketamine infusions and other treatments, I’m not getting better. I’m getting worse. I was diagnosed 7 years ago but I’m sure I was suffering for longer. Of course, I can’t remember that, but depression is something that crept up on me. It’s silent and oppressive. I don’t even remember what made me think about going to see someone. But I did and it was a pretty clear diagnosis. So, now what? I keep waking up every morning unfortunately. I don’t fear death any more. That’s for sure. I’ve made some money for the couple of decades I’ve been working and put it away in retirement accounts. I think about how if I was dead that others I once cared for would get that money. Maybe it could at least help them. I don’t know that I’ll ever need it. Even if I don’t end it myself, depression takes a toll on the body. My life expectancy is estimated to be 14 years lower as a result according to the NIH. It won’t be fast enough though. I’m just an empty biological machine that doesn’t know that my soul is gone. My humanity is no more

STAY AN ORIGINAL WORK OF ART In this short lifetime, Why not be -- True to your own voice, Your own story, Your own truths, Your own style, Beat and drum -- Instead of reflect the words, Songs and march of another? Why not use your soul's own Unique language, Instead of constantly try to toot something Not true, suitable or intended For your own instrument, Painting, Song, Or story? Why create an image you cannot produce? And if you can create a brilliant mask, How long will you really be able to hide your true soul Behind it Until its colors and plastic Begin to fade and melt with Time? Do not speak about truth when there is no truth in you. Do not speak about being yourself when you are trying hard to be someone else. Do not keep crying about your pain when you you have no shame creating pain in others. Do not step on truth, or someone else's truth, or someone who fights for truth -- And think there will be no repercussions; For there is more danger in silence, And for every action there will always be a reaction Of opposite or equal measure. Treasure integrity, Treasure your own story and truths. How will people remember you when you want to be an imitation? How will people remember your voice when you want to sound like another? Be so different that everybody will remember you. Be yourself because an original is worth more than a copy. Be true to yourself or your heart will never forgive you; For once you silence the music from your own instrument, Your true purpose and intended path will begin to fade. There is no greater crime Than ignoring your conscience And the truths intended For you to live, learn, And share. So Stay TRUE to YOU In everything You do. That itself is the purest And truest Art.

STAY AN ORIGINAL WORK OF ART In this short lifetime, Why not be -- True to your own voice, Your own story, Your own truths, Your own style, Beat and drum -- Instead of reflect the words, Songs and march of another? Why not use your soul's own Unique language, Instead of constantly try to toot something Not true, suitable or intended For your own instrument, Painting, Song, Or story? Why create an image you cannot produce? And if you can create a brilliant mask, How long will you really be able to hide your true soul Behind it Until its colors and plastic Begin to fade and melt with Time? Do not speak about truth when there is no truth in you. Do not speak about being yourself when you are trying hard to be someone else. Do not keep crying about your pain when you you have no shame creating pain in others. Do not step on truth, or someone else's truth, or someone who fights for truth -- And think there will be no repercussions; For there is more danger in silence, And for every action there will always be a reaction Of opposite or equal measure. Treasure integrity, Treasure your own story and truths. How will people remember you when you want to be an imitation? How will people remember your voice when you want to sound like another? Be so different that everybody will remember you. Be yourself because an original is worth more than a copy. Be true to yourself or your heart will never forgive you; For once you silence the music from your own instrument, Your true purpose and intended path will begin to fade. There is no greater crime Than ignoring your conscience And the truths intended For you to live, learn, And share. So Stay TRUE to YOU In everything You do. That itself is the purest And truest Art. Suzy Kassem, "Stay An Original Work of Art" Copyright 1993, The Spring For Wisdom

this thing—his thing—still well and alive inside me. # I dreamed of clawed hooks and sexual abandon. Faces covered in leather masks and eyeliner so dark I could only see black. Here the monsters would come alive, but not the kind you have come to expect. I watched myself as if I were outside my own flesh, free from the imprisonment of bone and conscience. Swollen belly stretch-marked and ugly; my hair tethered and my skin vulnerable. Earthquake beats blared from the DJ booth as terrible looking bodies thrashed, moshed and convulsed. Alone, so alone. Peter definitely gone, no more tears left but the ones that were to come from agony. She was above me again, Dark Princess, raging beauty queen, and I was hers to control. The ultimate succession into human suspension. Like I’d already learned: the body is the final canvas. There is no difference between love and pain. They are the same hopeless obsession. The hooks dived, my legs opened and my back arched. Blood misted my face; pussy juice slicked my inner thigh as my water suddenly broke. # The next night I had to get to the club. 4 A.M. is a time that never lets me down; it knows why I have nightmares, and why I want to suspend myself above them. L train lunacies berated me once again, but this time I noticed the people as if under a different light. They were all rather sad, gaunt and bleary. Their faces were to be pitied and their hands kept shaking, their legs jittering for another quick fix. No matter how much the deranged governments of New York City have cleaned up the boroughs, they can’t rid us of our flavor. The Meatpacking District was scarily alive. Darkness laced with sizzling urban neon. Regret stitched up in the night like a black silk blanket. The High Line Park gloomed above me with trespassers and graffiti maestros. I was envious of their creative freedom, their passion, and their drive. They had to do what they were doing, had to create. There was just no other acceptable life than that. I was inside fast, my memories of Peter fleeting and the ache within me about to be cast off. Stage left, stage right, it didn’t matter. I passed the first check point with ease, as if they already knew the click of my heels, the way my protruding stomach curved through my lace cardigan. She found me, or I found her, and we didn’t exchange any words, any warnings. It was time. Face up, legs open, and this time I’d be flying like Superman, but upside down. There were many hands, many faces, but no

Perhaps I ought to stuff up these sleeping things and go to bed. But I’m still too wide awake I’d only writhe about. If I had got him on the phone if we’d talked pleasantly I should have calmed down. He doesn’t give a fuck. Here I am torn to pieces by heartbreaking memories I call him and he doesn’t answer. Don’t bawl him out don’t begin by bawling him out that would muck up everything. I dread tomorrow. I shall have to be ready before four o’clock I shan’t have had a wink of sleep I’ll go out and buy petits fours that Francis will tread into the carpet he’ll break one of my little ornaments he’s not been properly brought up that child as clumsy as his father who’ll drop ash all over the place and if I say anything at all Tristan will blow right up he never let me keep my house as it ought to be yet after all it’s enormously important. Just now it’s perfect the drawing room polished shining like the moon used to be. By seven tomorrow evening it’ll be utterly filthy I’ll have to spring-clean it even though I’ll be all washed out. Explaining everything to him from a to z will wash me right out. He’s tough. What a clot I was to drop Florent for him! Florent and I we understood one another he coughed up I lay on my back it was cleaner than those capers where you hand out tender words to one another. I’m too softhearted I thought it was a terrific proof of love when he offered to marry me and there was Sylvie the ungrateful little thing I wanted her to have a real home and a mother no one could say a thing against a married woman a banker’s wife. For my part it gave me a pain in the ass to play the lady to be friends with crashing bores. Not so surprising that I burst out now and then. “You’re setting about it the wrong way with Tristan” Dédé used to tell me. Then later on “I told you so!” It’s true I’m headstrong I take the bit between my teeth I don’t calculate. Maybe I should have learned to compromise if it hadn’t been for all those disappointments. Tristan made me utterly sick I let him know it. People can’t bear being told what you really think of them. They want you to believe their fine words or at least to pretend to. As for me I’m clear-sighted I’m frank I tear masks off. The dear kind lady simpering “So we love our little brother do we?” and my collected little voice: “I hate him.” I’m still that proper little woman who says what she thinks and doesn’t cheat. It made my guts grind to hear him holding forth and all those bloody fools on their knees before him. I came clumping along in my big boots I cut their fine words down to size for them—progress prosperity the future of mankind happiness peace aid for the underdeveloped countries peace upon earth. I’m not a racist but don’t give a fuck for Algerians Jews Negroes in just the same way I don’t give a fuck for Chinks Russians Yanks Frenchmen. I don’t give a fuck for humanity what has it ever done for me I ask you. If they are such bleeding fools as to murder one another bomb one another plaster one another with napalm wipe one another out I’m not going to weep my eyes out. A million children have been massacred so what? Children are never anything but the seed of bastards it unclutters the planet a little they all admit it’s overpopulated don’t they? If I were the earth it would disgust me, all this vermin on my back, I’d shake it off. I’m quite willing to die if they all die too. I’m not going to go all soft-centered about kids that mean nothing to me. My own daughter’s dead and they’ve stolen my son from me.