Masks. They've always held a strange sort of fascination for me.

People think that masks are about concealment, hiding something. But that's not what they're about at all. What they're for is transformation. To put a cover over something and change it into something else, no matter how temporarily.

This subject has been done to death. Masks hold they're powerful sway over many. But today I walk talk about anything, anything, to keep my face blank and stoic.

No, sneering, confident, and merry. While I am all those things on the inside, there is more to it than that. All those things are a difficulty won prize, in a battle that goes on forever, always walking a knife's edge, a sword point dance, between joyful recklessness and screaming fits.

One day I just know I'll start screaming, or laughing, or crying, and I'll never stop, until I'm forced into an unnatural sleep. But if wore to ever awake, I'd begin screaming all over again.

So I'll go ahead and chew glass and smile when they walk by and say "Again? What'ja do this time?" or something along those lines. And I'll say casually "Yup. Hit somebody-read in class-chewed gum-kissed a boy-called a girl a bitch-whatever" with pride.

Some just look at me with fearful awe as they pass by, the look of sheep who see, to their astonishment, one of their own tearing out the throat of an encroaching wolf.

And the teachers. You thought you confounded them, got to them, bothered them. But lately it seems like all you've inspired is a kind of hopeless pity, which you can't stand. You are not an object of pity. You are tough as nails, iron, a board, whatever's tough. You can walk through fire and come out unsinged, run in front of cars and never get hit, you will always, always survive.

What makes me carry on? Why do I do the things I do, the silly, pointless stubborn things that always breed trouble and discord, and never seem to bring gain or fulfillment, happiness or people's fondness?

A crazy, self-destructive urge? Poke the sleeping dragon in the snout and see what happens? Dance gleefully when he chases you?

Some kind of useless, unheard protest against a meaningless, random life?

What makes me go is that someday, someday, I know I'll be safe. Then I can get my shit together and my head on straight.