The Face.

Now let's try to hide behind the face, the face that never blinks, laughs or cries. The face that is forever young with a marble white complexion. It has no real eyes, just two black holes to look out of. Let's hide behind the face, let's go deep, deep beneath the face where the world can't find us, where it's warm, where you can hear the rush of real blood, and not the rasp of false, slithering skin, away from the glint of sheathed claws.

The world cannot touch us here.

This face is a very public face. It smiles and laughs at the right moments, and when the time comes to mourn the holes that the world thinks are eyes leak salt water. But they are not real tears, because real tears contain a pinch of Sorrow. What hides underneath has no control whatsoever over this public face, because what it wants does not agree with the public face, and thus is suppressed. Whatever hides beneath is very lonely, insecure, and very afraid that one day the protective face would be taken away, and that it would be left to be exposed to the world. It has lost it's identity to the face, and now the face is it's identity. It's name no longer exists; it is just a Lie, having lost itself in the labyrinth of rules that govern the face. Illogical, restraining rules that drive even the best minds to madness.

This madness is just barely detectable, being a fairly subtle form. It manifests itself in various ways. While maintaining a fairly normal front (noting of course that in this context, normal should be taken to mean the situation of the majority group), the persona is free to operate using several different profiles which are better known as alternative masks. However this often leads to a loss of identity. The original self, if it even exists still, can no longer be discerned from the scores of other profiles and faces that other people see. Each one is crafted uniquely, like a fingerprint, in reaction to something or someone. Each time something sparks off a new reaction, yet another facet is formed. Like The Mask. Except these can never be removed...just changed and added to. And more is not necessarily better.

The more layers, the deeper the original self hides. And the persona dies, while the mask lives on.