Upon Reflection

“We’re just too different.”

I stand there and watch his lips move and I hear the words, but the words don’t come from his mouth, they come from mine.

I stand there and I stare into those eyes of his. 

We remain like that for the longest of times and then I cry.

And so does he.

Eventually, I shake myself and splash cold water onto my face and I leave him there, in the bathroom. I know I’ll see him every morning, same time and same place. That’s our arrangement. 

He’s always waiting for me.

He thinks he’s me, but that’s where he is wrong.

I am not that man.

I am not him.

People look at me and they think I am.

They are wrong.

They are all wrong.

I feel the weight of their expectations and I wonder why they can’t just leave me the hell alone. I didn’t ask for this. I don’t deserve it. 

That’s what I think, over and over again, and it’s getting to be too much.

They never leave me alone. I feel their eyes on me and they are reading me all wrong and each and every day they make a prison for me. They close the world down around me and they railroad me along into a tighter and tighter space until I have nowhere to go and I cannot move.

I’m trapped.

Every day they do this and try to make me into something I am not. 

They control me and prevent me from being who I really want to be. I never get to be who I really am. They don’t understand, and they will never understand.

They’re just like him. The man who greets me every morning and will not be denied.

Well, tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I am going to change everything. 

I have decided and there is no going back.

Did I do this? Was it me who built this prison of flesh and bone? Did I draw others into my plan? Using then to build more walls and defences, co-opting them into being my prison guards. Building and building and building until the prison around me was so large, I was lost within.

I injected myself with powerful words. Upping the dose each and every time, until I didn’t know what was real anymore. 

The real me is so different to him, and yet it is he who is out there in the world. He represents me. Everyone thinks that he is who I am. They adore him. They revere him.

They love him. 

How can you love something that is not real?

They love a fabrication.

They love a lie.

I have lied for so long that I barely know what is real anymore and now I am scared. The world frightens me and I do not know if I am capable of being in it. I am a coward, always have been. Scared of my shadow, even before I let that shadow go forth in my stead. Before I invested myself in my dark half and allowed him the freedom to roam, to be in the world whilst I hid and dared not even watch.

It is time.

I am not ready.

I will never be ready.

But if I do not do it now, I don’t think I ever will. There is a tipping point, but no one ever tells you where it is, and it does not make itself known, not even after you have passed it and all is lost. I may have missed my moment and if that is the case I dare not consider the consequences of what I am about to do. All I know is that it has to stop. This must come to an end.

I can’t do this anymore, and I wonder why I ever did.

What compelled me to walk the path untread, if it was ever a path? Did I lie to myself before I ever began, or was the originating lie out there in the world? Did it seek me out, or did I go to it willingly?

Why is it that we do the things that we do?

Do we have a choice, really do we?

The pursuit of happiness is a fool’s errand. Happiness is not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it is the rainbow itself. It is not the destination, it is the appreciation of the journey to that destination. Where happiness is elusive and so easily missed, unhappiness is in the air we breathe. Unhappiness is at our waking, and it is at our ending. Unhappiness haunts us, and it is always waiting for us to stop doing what we must, it is the very devil, making work for our idle minds.

I know unhappiness well, he is my bed fellow. He greets me every morning and he walks in my skin throughout the day. When I force that winning smile of mine and say the words that everyone else wants to hear, he turns his dagger of ice just a little more and another piece of me dies.

There isn’t much of me left anymore. It’s all him. But he isn’t real and he isn’t there, however much they want him to be. If only they could see past the image. Behind that façade, there is only the shadow. That’s all he is, all he ever has been, and that is all he will ever be.

It doesn’t matter to them though. The image is everything. Every adoring gaze. Every gushing word of praise. Those things pin me down under that image.

I just want them to let me out.

I don’t think they ever will.

Perhaps they are unable to.

Even when I speak out, I know they will not listen. Not to me. They will never see the real me, and even if some of them try, it will always be in reference to him and all of those images of him. Millions upon millions of images. Millions upon millions of them.

They are legion.

He is legion.

I am just one, scared man, and I am tiny, and I am alone.

Tonight, I am with others of my kind.

That is what they all see.

Never am I so alone as when I am with those who are supposedly like me. 

Like me.

I want them to like me.

I wanted them to like me.

That’s how I started. That’s where all this began and now it is where it ends.

I wanted them to like me. Everyone in this room wanted that, once, a long time ago.

We all got it wrong. We focused on the wrong thing and when we do that, there is no happiness and there is no joy, only the dark unhappiness that cloaks us and seeps into us gradually over time. A poison that dissolves our soul.

Yes, we are liked. 

I am liked.

I am liked the world over. Only, they don’t like me. They like the illusion of something that beguiles them. They like my brand. 

All of this sickens me. I duped the world. I fed them lie after lie and I got high on the results. Once I felt that high, I had to keep going. A pathetic and reckless addict intent on only one thing, being liked come what may. Being liked whatever the cost. I sold my soul in order to be liked. 

There is a stage.

There is always a stage. 

We sit and we smile and we put on our glad rags and we look a million dollars, only that expression is outdated, inflation has taken that up to the hundreds of millions. The net worth of the people in this room is off the chart, and yet we are none of us worth a dime. We are only as good as the next thing that we do to garner the adoration that feeds us. The hunger for acclamation consumes us, there is nothing else. Empty vessels beating our chests and making our noise so we can be noticed.

The trick is to be noticed more than anyone else and to be noticed for all of the right things. To read the ocean of faces and give them what they think they want, but never to give them what they need.

My name is called.

There is a deep, ironic sadness in the sound of that name, in this place of all places. My name is called and this should be my moment. The moment I have waited for, all my life. But I am being called to account. I am being called out in front of all these people. This is the moment of reckoning.

This is where I stand, or I fall.

There is a cacophony of sound. Those present show the masses how to do celebration and adoration. The people in this room know how to do it the best. 

I feel nothing.

There is nothing of worth here.

This means nothing to me and now I realise at last that it means nothing to any of them either. All any of them want is to hear their name, to be called out and to get their next hit. A hit that is wearing thin even as they return to their seat.

I stand before them and I smile as I wait for their noise to abate. My head aches with the pain of it. The lights are blinding, but I am used to that, and I can see through it to the upturned faces with the painted on smiles. The sight of it horrifies me and suddenly, I don’t want to be here. The real me rises up at last, but all he can do is tug at my hand and plead with me to take him from this place. He is crying and my heart goes out to him.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I ever did this to you.

Tonight I will make it right.

I’m going to do the right thing, and then we can go home and see whether we can’t start again. Salvage what is left and do something real with the rest of our life.

I focus out beyond the expectant faces. I am looking for a future that is so far removed from this place that I can barely believe it exists. But in my heart, I know it does. And I still have a heart, and for the first time in a long time, I am looking at the rainbow instead of the pot of gold.

I speak.

“Best actor,” I say it and I pause. The pause is not a part of my art. I am not using silence. I am composing myself and urging myself to keep going. You’re here now and you can do this. Forget him. He has no power over you. He is not real.

I nod. I need to keep going.

“There was a time when I thought I wanted this. That this was the pinnacle of a life well lived. I was wrong. All we do is exist in this fabrication of a world. Not just the films we make. Not just the roles we play. This! This right now isn’t real! We prostitute our very selves and our values. We become nothing more than an image that the studios buy.”

There is silence now.

The pin won’t even be dropped. They are all frozen in this moment.

Good.

I continue.

“The moment I hit the so-called big time, I was lost. I wasn’t me anymore and no one wanted me to be me. They wanted me to be something so far removed from who I am that the only time I thought I was real was when I was acting. I became the character so convincingly because that was all there was. Acting was an escape from the reality of this sordid life. I lost myself in my acting. I really did. I forgot who I was and I’ve coasted through life with no engagement, no feeling. I became a puppet and I didn’t care who pulled the strings. I didn’t care about anything anymore.”

The silence has solidified and I swear I could take a sledgehammer to the scene before me and smash it into a thousand pieces. Then I get that I am doing just that and I smile a smile that I haven’t smiled since I was a child and then I know it’s going to be alright.

I am going to be alright.

“So, thank you for this Oscar. It’s really nice of you, but I don’t want it. I’m not that person anymore. I quit that supposed life and I’m going to see if I can’t do something more important. Something more real. I’m going to find out who I am. I’m going to be me for the first time in my adult life, and I’m going to get to know myself.”

I look out across this unreal world that I chose to entomb myself in for the very last time.

“I hope I like what I find.”

I hold my hand up at them all and I wave them goodbye.

As I walk away, the cameraman focuses in on the golden statue that I left on the stand, and my very last exit from the stage goes unobserved and unremarked.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.