Honesty about who we are and where we have been is sometimes a difficult task when the shame and the self-loathing that we feel is sometimes so overwhelming it threatens to suffocate us. It’s no wonder so many tack up a pretty façade and pretend that it’s always been there. We never let anyone get close enough to us to see what’s really underneath. I would think the strength it takes to continue to hold that heavy burden in front of you would require more stamina than most people possess.

But it’s understandable why people do it. We live in a world where bloggers race to be the first one to post an embarrassing photo of some celebrity mishap. Where reporters will spend months digging up every sordid detail of a politicians past life. We live in a world where college students think it’s funny to videotape a young man’s most intimate moment with another man and then post it on the internet for the world to see, leading him to jump off a bridge days later. Or high school students bullying a young woman to the point that she hangs herself in the front yard of her family home. We live in a world where an 8 year girl with cerebral palsy tried to jump out of a window at her school because she was teased, knocked off her crutches and kicked repeatedly in the forehead by a boy. Is it any wonder we hide behind that which is false to try to protect ourselves from the hurt that others are so eager to direct our way?

Living our lives in a bubble wrapped glass globe is not only impractical it’s a lonely way to exist. We all need human interaction. We need to be touched, hugged and spoken to with compassion and genuine love. The sad thing is that if you are holding up a façade in front of you others who do care can’t close enough to you give you what you need the most.

How do you gain the courage to put away the paper globes, the sheer curtains and the trappings of a false life long enough to open yourself up to others with the naked honesty of your true self? How do you look to the future when your present is so unbearable that the thought of living just one more day is more than you can take? I don’t really have the answers. We live in a fallen world filled with hurting people who are not content to keep their pain to themselves they must inflict it on others as well. Their mission in life seems to be infecting others with their own self-hatred leading others to hide behind that protective wall of self preservation. Or there are those, like Blanche, whose own bad choices continue to haunt them until they can no longer function. The only way to move forward is to recreate the past.　

It’s sad that we can’t accept people the way they are. If everyone was just like me I would no longer be unique. It’s our own individual uniqueness that makes the world an interesting place. I want you to love me as I am. The good, the bad, the ugly and the imperfections. We should not have to misrepresent things and tell half truths. Our truths are the muscle, sinew and bones that make up who we are, without them we would be nothing. Stop trying to make those that you fear, those that are different, those that are as strong as you into nothing. Instead embrace them. Embrace them until the brick wall that is protecting them crumbles to the ground.