it hadn't been easy. it had took him years of observation and sometimes humiliating processes of trial and error to understand how he was supposed to behave and react so as to fit in even on a moderate level. but slowly he had, and as he had taught himself the proper ways of the world it had allowed him to build this role, this facade; it was the shell inside which he cocooned himself so that he could be left alone. he saw his body react, function in the life that he had made his own, and the detachment he felt to it was the final proof of his success. this part, this man - it was not him but on him, like a coat or a hat or a mask, completely separate from his true experience; and yet it was all that people saw when they looked at him.
and this he considered to be a true mastery of the craft he practiced.
he was aware, of course, of the risks involved. he could feel it sometimes as he withdrew inside the man he had created how it ate away from what he was hiding; how every word spoken with the mouth of the character that was him silenced his own voice ever so slightly. but on the other hand, the role was his armour against the world, and he could only sigh with relief as things that he himself could never have endured, things that were necessary and required in order to be accepted, seemed to be a child's play to the man around him.
but sometimes, in the middle of the night when he was the only one in the house awake, he allowed the man to go to sleep and himself to emerge; and as he inhaled the air around him, experienced the reality that was not really his, he often felt a streak of panic - a suffocating pressure on his chest that made him suspect that things were terribly, horribly wrong and that what was happening to him was a mistake of the most severe kind.
but then the man woke up and he knew how to deal with the anxiety; and he himself would withdraw and let him handle it.
he did, after all, know better.
