my only warning is the language. Hence the rating.

Those who know me well enough will know I do introspective pieces. Only this is the first introspection I have done that is not just me dumping my emotional baggage.

This is basically Aizen thinking more eloquently on pretending to be the nice guy every day for god knows how many decades. Though this really isn't my best work...

But who knows, maybe you will see some of me in this.

God this one is angry. Or maybe I'm just angry at everything. Well, I was by the end of it anyway.

I want to draw Aizen de-masking now…

Of masks and masquerades

They say masked balls are a chance to hide ones true face and pretend to be another person, another creature of the night or day perhaps. It is a form of escapism, as writing is to writers and painting is to painters. But not all masquerades are as extravagant as those balls. Sometimes the cleverest forms of masquerade are those we see before us every day. It is that betrayal you do not see which is the cleverest and most eloquent, unlike all of those parties with the literal painted masks the people wear, which although are quite pretty, are very easy to see through. As is their deception that they are not who they say they are.

So ironically, the less extravagant the mask and the less obvious the disguises, the less obvious the deception is. I laugh though. I laugh at the irony of how I looked so normal to them when I went around masquerading that they never even noticed who I really was until it was too late. Maintaining my mask was hard though I must admit, as my true self despised hiding, but it was doable. I hated not being able to openly talk about my goals and my ambitions, my worries and fears; because it meant that it would expose me. Break open my mask and let everybody see who I really was. And I was somebody that did not conform to their ridiculously high standards, so I had to masquerade around them. After all, those who did not conform were punished, and often severely. So what choice did I have but to make myself a mask? What choice did I have but to let them see what they wanted to see?

No choice. I had no choice.

I did not conform. And it was either conform or be killed.

That was my choice.

And until I had the power and the resources to reshape the very earth itself and wipe history clean with one swipe of my hand, I conformed for them. Until that time came, I wore my mask for them and I planned. I planned and I planned until my head and my heart were sore and aching. I set the wheels in motion and then I waited. I waited for decades upon end with no news, decades alone with no other soul. Decades until I could break free of the chains they had imposed forcibly upon me. And when I finally was granted the power to do so, when I finally could muster up all the courage ad power within me to defy authority and all who stood before me to belittle me, I did so. And I cast away the mask I had been wearing for the centuries and decades I had long ago lost count of. And I truly felt alive when that mask – and those hideous glasses - came off.

Because you don't know how it is to not live how you want, you do not know how it feels to have nobody to relate to, you don't know how it feels to be belittled over and over again and forced to submit to rules you don't believe in. You don't know how hard it is to appear happy when inside you are far from it. No, you don't. You don't know, just as you know absolutely nothing about me. You may know my mask intimately, but you don't know me. You know fuck all about the real me. But that's just how good I am at lying through my teeth, how good I am at masquerading at this ball you call life.

You don't know my anger, my passion, my love, my hate, my yearning for the stars, my joys, my heartache of loss… you know nothing of the me standing before you now. I am just another stranger - the me you thought you knew never existed. He died, long ago. He was killed. Killed by people like you, killed by rejection, killed by the hatred of this world, killed and murdered and made to surrender by you and your impossible rules that obliterate the diversity and freedom you swear to protect.

It was a death that shouldn't have really happened, but it did. And now I have to pick up the pieces. The ideals you squashed, the hopes you destroyed, the dreams you crushed. This new me has to pick up the pieces of the old me. It sickened me inside, made me sick to my stomach.

It makes me fucking vomit, even now I feel sick.

Just as it makes me vomit at how I had to pretend to be who I was not. Pretend to believe in ideals that make my skin crawl, pretend…. Just pretend. That's all it ever was, every single day for days, months, years, decades. Pretend, pretend, pretend. Taking crap from people, putting up with all of their shit day after day, being their lapdog… well, no more. And I am doubtful it will ever change without any interference.

But tomorrow that will all change. I tore off this godforsaken mask to reshape the world into a utopia, and change things. I defied gravity itself to do so. Because masquerading and allowing them to clip my wings just killed me. And I just couldn't keep my mask together to let them see what they wanted to see any more.

Simply put, I had just had enough of pretending to be who I am not.