I know it's more acceptable to grin & bare it. Deal with it. Keep in to myself. Hide behind a mask of smiles & pleasantries. Drown in pharmaceuticals or self-medicate for the sale of other's comfort. 

But I believe in embracing the suck. Owning the despair.  Letting the pain empower me & embolden me to speak out and speak up. I don't begrudge anyone their happiness or coping mechanisms should they too not be happy. I'm saying that for me, lying about being happy; about my place in the world; about my loneliness & about the demons that haunt & plague me on the daily - It's exhausting, humiliating & debasing. A soul crushing, life sucking thousand ton monster pinning me down, digging it's talons into my chest.

In this agony, isolation & chaos, there is a dark beauty. A blank canvas woven of isolation, sadness and fear that holds the colors in a wistful tapestry broader & deeper than that of surface vibes. This is where I create. My pallette: everything that I feel deeply & sincerely. 

My lens is where things bend a bit. Mental illness does skew the optics & bend perspective. It also has made everything intensely raw. I used to push it all down, hide from the suck & mask its effects on me. Humor was my smoke screen. Keep them laughing and they'll never see my tears. Work the room. Move through it gliding on sparkling conversation & witty repartee. The more laughter, the less chance I'd actually have to talk about myself. And even if I did, there was always self-deprecating humor.

That was exhausting. In order to survive & not alienate everyone, I still have to play the game. But now I try to avoid ever putting myself in those positions & I gift myself the grace, peace & mindfulness that comes with expressing myself through writing & the arts. 

I don't find that anything I do is good. Or meaningful, save for to myself. It's all just release valves for the boiler room & a way to be open & honest about my feelings to the world & myself. 

Not important, not deep.