I am not a very open person.

I can fake it really well. I will talk to anyone about anything… well, almost anything.

That has more to do with the soecially retarded personès lack of a sense of socially acceptable boundaries. than anything else, but I still count it as a virtue.

But realistically, the real dirty little secret behind my seemingly being an open book is that I figured out, at a very early age, that when you are hiding something, your first line of defense is to erase all signs that you are hiding something.

You can then put said thing in amongst a huge number of similar but not identical things amd then open the doors tgo the public, knowing that the odds of them finding the thing you are hiding, which would take a number of very specific steps, are next to nothing.

And even if they did, they would find it blocked off.

Because if someone was to ask the right questions and breach my defenses, I can always just say that the subject is private and the threat is over.

And because I am otherwise such an open book, people will back off immediately and not give it a second thought. After all, itès just one small thing in a sea of readily available information. So what’s the big deal?

And the secret behind that secret is that alll those people out there browsing the displays amd reading the pamphets think they have gained entry to the real me.

But they haven’t. Nobody gets access to that. It is in a sub sub basement and hidden behind a secret panel and protected behind an ice-cold stainless steel wall ten feet thick, and the access code for the vault door is a billion numbers long, and if you get even one oif them wrong, a huge plexiglass wall comes down to further seal it off.

But if, somehow, you get through all that and gain illegal access to the real me…

God, I hope that never happens, Because I don’t know what I would do then. But it could be… bad.

Very very bad.

And that’s why I need to have the museum above, where the public can view a highly realistic version of the real me.

But it’s only a hologram.

Returning from my metaphor once more, what I am trying to get across is I have realized that I never actually let people in. I can’t. Not yet, anyhow. And that is why I have so much trouble connecting with most people.

My antenna’s not broken. I deliberately turned it off a long long time ago. And I will not be switching it back on any time soon.

When I was sexually assaulted at the age of three, a vitally important part of me went offline, and it hasn’t been online since. It was the central linkage between my myself and my id, and from that point on, everything had to reroute through the ego in order to stay connected with my consciousness.

And the ego just ain’t up to the job. A lot of very important communication between myself and the world is lost and it makes me feel like I am all alone in the world, that nobody loves me, that everyone I associate with does so out of pity for what a fucked up loser I am, and that I am doomed to wander the tundra naked till I die.

that’s how I ended up so brilliant and so damaged. My vital energies – what I call the stuff of life or life-force – got re-directed through this amazing brain of mind and powered it up to absurdly high levels while starving my soul.

In fact, my soul is so malnourished that it doesn’t work right at all.

And its malfunction is called “depression”.

And nobody gets in. I might seem like I am getting close to someone. I might fool the both of us into thinking that said person is really getting somewhere with me. That we are already so close because I have shared a lot with them and they have shared a lot with me. And I seem to know them so well and understand them very deeply.

But it’s all a trick, boys and girls. I do it all from a box behind the stage, where I pilot a very lifelike version of myself while remaining hermetically safe from everyone.

And all those layers of defenses you have seen me lower? That’s just to convince you that you are getting close. After all, you’ve passed through so many doors!

But you still have infinite space, cold and dead and inimical to anything living, to cross.

And I can always add more doors.

Being the Wizard of Oz, manipulating my puppets from behind the curtain, is what makes me so awkward on every level. It’s all being done by remote control, with a badly rewired brain holding the remote.

I can try as hard as I can to get good at piloting my robot self, but I am always going to be at a severe disadvantage compared to people actually living their lives in realtime.

I can produce all the brilliant illusions I want, and fool both the people and myself, but until the real me steps on stage, it will always be nothing but a show.

I can even do miracles and demonstrate powers far beyond the reach of mortal man, and I will still be frozen in my cage and dying from lack of oxygen.

Nothing will change until can finally unlock the door and let someone in. Or at least pull back the curtains and open a few windows to freshen up the place.

That’s my goal now : to open up that door. To unfreeze my connection to the world and thus let more of my lifeblood make it to my heart. To repair the damage done by a random pervert 41 years ago and rescue that little three year old boy from the dark and dreadful realm that put him in.

Maybe then, I will feel the sunshine on my soul.

Maybe then, I can live again.

Maybe then, I can know what it’s like to be people.

Maybe then, I will know what it’s like to be alive.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.