Your reality is not mine.

I do not live in your reality. I live in the minds of my inner demons, and even as they threaten to dredge up the past and tear my life apart, they are nothing more than my own personal puppets, twisting and distorting myself into a darker, and yet, more satisfying, self image.

It allows me to watch as my insecurities and pains creep up and over myself, engulfing me. I get to watch myself emerge. And I get to see who comes out the other side. It grants me two views: One is staring out the window of my physical self, while the other is the man behind the curtain.

It is all a game to me. I can immerse myself in agony, watching as another "me" combats it, and it is so satisfying to see how I fare against it. I don't think it would be fair to say if the man on the other side is "better" or "worse," he is simply different. Good or bad has no bearing, because that man is still alive, and because of it, he is wiser, stronger, and can accomplish more than before.

This makes things interesting, though, because the "physical" me never feels like the "real" me. He is nothing more than a social and mental experiment; an exercise in things that should not be tampered with. The only difference between myself and others is that we are on opposite sides of this window of a man.

The real me, the true me, is every insecurity I've ever had, every pain I've ever felt, every love I've ever lost. This is the corporeal self image I have, and it is who I am. I am my every waking moment, filled with all the pains of a lifetime, and for my own enjoyment, I release some of them upon my physical self, just to see what happens.

This does not mean I am a negative person, but quite the opposite. Because the image that I identify as my real self is an avatar of pure pain, it means I am aware of pure pain. When your dog dies, as sad as it is, you know his memory will live on, and you know you'll be okay. When your friend gets in an accident and is in critical care, you know that he is still alive, and that he can still recover. With every pain we feel, there is a silver lining. There is something we can reach out towards. And we always do, even when we don't notice it.

This is not true pain.

True pain is ultimate loss. It is the deconstruction of our identity to a dark and horrible image that we want to kill. It is the erasure of everything we cared about in ourselves. It breaks us down until the only thing left is me: The avatar of pain.

So when the physical me is in pain, it is infinitely better than what I know I can do to myself on a whim. When I am depressed or lonely, I can laugh, simply because I know that I could make it so much worse in a split second if I desired. I could turn my whole world to darkness, burn the memories of everyone who loved me, erase my friends from existence, and I'm sad because my manager at work is passive-aggressive towards me? It's so laughable.

This allows me to live in a perpetual state of happiness, simply because compared to true pain, anything else is so childishly trivial. It's similar to the idea that you will not know true happiness until you experience true loss, only much more entertaining, because with this "true loss," it is still seen as a bad thing. But why? Loss is who I am, and I can use that to toy with myself, evoke all kinds of emotions and memories, and then laugh about how petty it all is. When you embrace the negativity to this degree, all it is is a toy. Nothing more.

So your reality is not mine. Mine is the darkness of humanity, the horrors that we try to erase, ignore, forget. Don't forget them. Embrace them, love them, and remember that they are who you really are. Do this, and life will never seem dark again.