I'm not a fake person

               I'm not a fake person. I never have been. And I've always despised fake people, or the thought of being fake. Faking smiles, faking laughter, pretending to be or to feel or to think any other way than the way you really are.

               It isn't me, and it never has been.

               I can think of a million things I'd rather be doing than having to pretend to be anything other than what or who I am for the sake of anything. Most especially for the sake of appearance or acceptance.

               We shouldn't have to be fake. We shouldn't have to pretend. But we do. Because we feel we have to. We live in a world full of beauty magazines and makeup and plastic surgery, of diet pills and bulk up powders and drugs, where we're judged on an almost constant basis by how we look, how we dress, who we're seen with, who we're sleeping with, our politics, our religion. We are judged on anything and everything about our lives from the moment we're born until we breathe our last.

               So we fake. We smile. We laugh. We pretend. And we judge ourselves by unattainable goals and ideals of perfection, and we put fake images on pedestals to give ourselves images to strive for.

               And even the ones we dream of becoming are not all that they seem.

               And as the years pass, younger and younger people in our society are becoming caught up in our obsession with perfection, and the unattainable, and they're killing themselves trying to become something to be fawned over, something to be admired, because they mistakenly believe that they're not already there, and that they always were.

               We're born, we smile, we laugh, we pretend. We open our eyes to the world only to close them against what offends our senses or what we believe to be unattractive by our cosmetic and scale-judging standards because it's easier than facing the truth about what we're becoming, and what we allow to continue.

               So we fake.