Of Facades, Windows, and Masks

Everyone wants to be their best.

Maybe that's why we go into different mode of personalities whenever we enter a situation which requires us to. It's innate and we are all subconsciously, preconsciously or consciously doing it

But how come, some people do it in extreme measures?

Hiding.

Providing Pseudonyms.

Creating a Grandiose Biography.

Narrating tales higher than Burj al-Khalifa.

You see what I mean?

We want to be someone, that is absolutely true, but it doesn't mean we have to be someone we're not.

Are facades really necessary in order to portray a person of great charisma, character and strength?

Are masks adequate to play a you that is but of someone?

Or we can be the one, the genuine one, the true one, the real one?

One of the main reasons why we do it is to leave a footprint, an irremovable one, something that could define us as who we are. 

I couldn't blame them for hiding though. When tough situation calls for it, the best thing to do is to hide behind a velvet curtain.

I can still remember a guy I dated... 

Stewie was telling me all these stories that he is a local flight steward. He would spontaneously be texting me at the middle of the day just telling me that the plane already landed in Davao or Cebu or Iloilo or wherever he really is that time. Sometimes, he would be texting me early morning just to tell me that he's already on his way to the airport and quite pissed because he barely had enough sleep. Other times he would ask permission if he can turn off his phone because the flight will take place in a few minutes. And of course I believed him that time because, well, I was giving him the benefit of the doubt.

That person is really someone.

A very good narrator. I have to applaud him the next time I see him again. If I see him.

That was April last year. 

Then about December of last year, someone was sending me messages in FS, a guy named Toffer, a Medical Representative from a Multinational Company. What caught my attention was not his face, nor body, nor what his friends had to say about him but how he is connected to Stewie. I still quite couldn't connect the pieces of the puzzle. 

That made me think hard, hard-on. I asked him about it and told me that the guy is his cousin.

Cousin? That made me scratch my head.

Two gay guys in a clan? Forbidden but delicious! :)

But of course, the overly suspicious me doesn't wanna believe him, call it gut feeling, or man's instinct. So I asked him again and this time he confessed that Stewie was his ex. 

I swear I wanted to do a double somersault plus a back flip right then and there.

A supposed flight steward courted and then here comes his ex who wants to court me. My long hair flowed like a virgin waterfall out to purify the people bathing under the current.

Of course me asking him about his ex was inevitable, a few questions and interrogations led me to answers that shocked me for a while.

Apparently, Stewie is really a Medical Representative, he never was a Flight Steward in all his life. So that made me think, then what were those texts? All fraudulent and deceitful? It made me realize that Thank God I didn't give in to temptations, although, we spent a night together. 

Note: spent the night not slept with him the whole night.

So the whole time that we were communicating, was it all a lie? A cover-up on who he really is? For what? So that I would get attracted to him more? I seriously wanted to ask him WTF?!

I wanted to get back at him and ask him things to blow his cover up but I didn't think it was needed. Maybe he has his selfish reasons. Maybe he has his unselfish reasons. Maybe he has no reasons at all.

Truly, truly astounding, he made me believe his stories, his narration, his anecdotes on everyday living when all the while, he was really not doing those, or maybe he is, but I don't care anymore. That alone says I had enough of him and his world.

Maybe it's an ego boost for most us since the people that we meet anonymously don't really know us and it's a good way to conceal experiences that we don't really want to blurt out or is just not worth blurting out but weaving a series of delusional stories to cover up who we are? Aren't we too desperate to do that? If I had known any better I would categorize you as a schizophrenic and not in a genius kind of way.

Seriously, the only time I used my pseudonym was for an HIV Test, I have never created stories for the sake of people or a person getting more interested in me. What you see is what you get. I may not have the best decisions, the best philosophies, the greatest coping mechanism, the best personality, the greatest attributes, the perfect skills but you do get someone true to himself, albeit in an imperfect, incomplete package.

Placing your best foot forward is different from placing someone's best foot forward.

Part 2