People are selfish. Self-centred and self-involved. Apathetic. Indifferent.

But you? You feel differently, somehow. You aren't like all of the others. You're a thinking, feeling, analytical person. Adaptable. Considerate. Intensely empathetic. Expressive. Creative. Passionate. A mind with a heart.

So you will be chewed alive. Swallowed and then spat out, covered in the slime and dregs of the world. Your soul crushed. Your mind in tatters. Defeated.

This begs the essential question of how to survive. You can't switch off. You can't cancel it out. So what do you do to protect yourself? Because hey, self-preservation is key here. And the fittest are the ones who survive.

Simple.

You fake it till you make it. Put on an act for the world and pretend to everyone else, that you are like them. You know you can get them to believe you. You've observed them, seen how they are. And you're smart. So you'll be able to blend in perfectly with your perfectly fitted mask and your elaborate deception.

Make it your personal pantomime with the world as your audience.

Pretend so hard that eventually, that brilliant analytical mind of yours learns to fool itself. So that every empathetic muscle you have atrophies through disuse. Do it long enough and well enough and then eventually you won't be trying. No act anymore. It'll become unconscious. Subconscious even.

A word of warning though. It will be hard. Your mind will turn on itself. It will turn on you. And you will hate yourself. With a vehemence you did not know you possessed.

But if you keep at it, in spite of the hate, that lie you keep telling the world, won't even be a lie. It will have turned into the truth, the one you created for yourself. The mask a part of who you are. Because you tell the same lie long enough and you will believe it. Your carefully created persona will be who you are, because you believe it as the truth.

Congratulations! You are now part of the world. Unfeeling. Indifferent. Apathetic.

Sure hope it was worth it.

An illusion of change can sometimes be more devastating than the actual change itself.

What it does is lull you into a sense of security. You rebel in the beginning but then you train yourself to get used to the change. And when you are finally used to it and have let your guard down and accepted it in its entirety, that's when the illusion fails. Like a reflection in a pond, disturbed by the slightest movement, the illusion caves in.

And that is when you see that what you grew to believe was nothing but a shadow, a lie. Nothing really changed. The illusion was just too strong, too beguiling, too seductive. And you were taken in. A lamb to slaughter. A willing participant to your own destruction.

Mute. Cooperative. Hopeful.

Change can be a cruel mistress. Its illusion, even more so.