Fake

Plastic at least can be molded to something

that it could’ve never alone become.

The problem with people is that maybe

they could be what they pretend to but

there’s always the chance that they’ll

snap back to form.

I imagine myself in a previous moment

to have been something more than just

an imperfect copy of the people

I’m trying to emulate.

But even in a single second of happiness

with what I am I always see in myself

the uncertainty

and the mismatched parts of the people I could

never really be,

even with practice, patch-worked into a joke of a soul.

I shouldn’t have to practice

to be what I am.

So I’m obviously nothing like

what I want to be and that feeling

drags down like depression.

It’s stupid to ask who I am.

If I could answer don’t you think

I would have? And even if I could

find someone to help,

they wouldn’t be able to know

better than I what I am

or could be. So no one knows.

So I’m going to become nothing.

I’m going to go through life always

searching. There will never really

be a me. It’s not debilitating, but

maybe disheartening to know

I won’t be an

individual.

Isn’t our entire childhood based

on that idea? The idea

of finding yourself and being an original

in a world of carbon copies?

My quest for self-knowledge

(the perpetual theme that,

along with loss of innocence,

is always the easy answer)

will never be fulfilled.

So, not sadness, but resignation

and I don’t want to go through life

resigned. Self-doubt

is normal and I blend in. The confident are

abnormal or special or they are termed

arrogant because they know

who they are and they know

what they are so they don’t try to hide

behind humbleness or baggy clothes

(you think they flaunt it—the ones

who flaunt are the insecure ones, I bet,

but what do I know since I don’t know

myself? And how can you tell the difference?).

Typical teenager.

If you aren’t special in a

distinct way, you’re special in the way

that everyone else is. That

sort of special that only your mom or dad

can see and that makes the kids laugh

when you tell them what makes

you so different, and it makes you just like everyone else.

I’m not different. I assimilate when

people look at me oddly.

So maybe my true self is the one

that no one can accept, the one

that I subconsciously keep from myself

for fear I’ll destroy it or, worse

let it out. So maybe I have a real soul.

But the real me might be the one that

(I don’t know) pretends to

abnormality that needs to be hidden

but which is actually only a device, overplayed.

So I really am fake.

Who isn’t fake in some way? Because I

want to be like them (so humorous).

Even this, this rambling, incoherent string of

pitiful self doubt

is unsure in its aim. What am I

doing here, with this, with these keys?

Am I pretending to significance I

can’t achieve?

I think that’s what it is.

Even this, with these keys, is

an uncertain enumeration of faults

I can’t really pin down and

just assume I have. Maybe they

just sound good on paper. Maybe

my problem isn’t one that can be

solved because it isn’t one that’s

tangible, visible; it’s invisible,

it’s hard to know just what is

supposed to be fixed if the only

thing I can say is that I’m not what

I want to be.

Or that I’m exactly what

I don’t want to be.