"When Joy Feels Like a Lie"

"Some parts hold. Others quietly shatter."

The mirror reflects a face I do not recognize. It smiles, but the movement feels foreign, mechanical, rehearsed. The eyes glimmer with something I pretend is light, but behind the glimmer, there is nothing. Nothing that feels true. And I realize, painfully, that the world has never seen me as I am. They see the mask I wear, the performance of happiness, the polished fragments I allow to escape into the world. But beneath it, I am hollow, fractured, a collection of shadows that move independently, sometimes violently, against the semblance of joy I project.

I remember the first time I noticed it — the realization that the smiles I offered were not joy, but armor. That laughter was never for me, but for them, the ones watching, judging, expecting. The mask became a habit, a ritual, a survival mechanism. Each morning, I pulled it on carefully, adjusting its fit over scars no one could see, over thoughts too dangerous to share. And by evening, it had become second skin. By night, I could feel the hollow behind my chest, the tight coil of emptiness that no smile could ever fill.

"They see a smile. I feel the cracks."

Joy has always been a lie I tell myself to tell others. The words that should lift me only echo with futility. "I am happy," I say. "I am fine," I repeat. But inside, the contradiction is sharp, like glass against my ribs. I have learned to live in the tension between outward performance and inward collapse. I have learned to watch myself from the corner of my mind, noticing the disparity, the falsehood, the quiet, unbearable weight of pretending.

People tell me to smile more. They praise the cheerfulness they see, the optimism I display. They do not notice the tremor in my hands, the ache in my chest, the hollow stretch of my ribs where the truth of my emptiness lies. I have grown skilled at hiding it, at placing each fragment of self behind carefully constructed walls. Yet, even in hiding, it grows, it spreads, it waits patiently for the moments when I am alone, when the mask slips, when the lie is revealed. And in those moments, the hollowness is infinite, stretching to every corner of my mind, pressing against my consciousness until it threatens to fracture.

"Above water, I smile. Below, I sink."

I have come to understand that joy, as the world defines it, is performative. It is currency. It is something to be displayed, measured, validated. And so, I learned to manufacture it. The laughter I give is loud enough to convince others, soft enough to leave my soul untouched. The excitement I show is calculated, rehearsed, choreographed. And yet, no matter how convincing, no matter how polished, the emptiness remains. It is not diminished by the mask; it is only highlighted, the contrast sharper, crueler.

Even the things that should bring happiness fail to fill me. Achievements, compliments, ordinary pleasures—these ripple over the surface, fleeting, shallow, leaving no imprint. I watch others consume joy as if it is sustenance, as if it nourishes them at the core, and I envy the simplicity. I envy the authenticity of people who can feel and express without the weight of contradiction. But I cannot inhabit that world. I am imprisoned within myself, trapped in the discrepancy between appearance and reality.

"They don’t speak. But I hear them all the time."

I have tried to convince myself that joy is not necessary, that emptiness is not unbearable, that the mask is sufficient. But the truth is unavoidable. Every day, I feel the hollowness pressing against the thin walls I have built. Every interaction is an act of deception. Every smile, every laugh, every expression of happiness is a calculated lie. And the longer I maintain it, the more deeply I know that no one — not one soul — has ever touched the true weight of me.

Even when alone, joy remains elusive. The moments of quiet reflection are invaded by the knowledge of falsity, by the memory of the masks I have worn. I cannot even deceive myself completely. The hollow is always present, a shadow tethered to my ribs, a pulse beneath my skin that reminds me that joy, for me, has always been an imitation. It is a costume I wear, not a feeling I inhabit.

"I watch the world I can't feel."

The mind, in its dark clarity, notices everything. It catalogues the contradictions, the fractures, the failures to feel what others expect me to feel. It loops through memories, highlighting every time I have forced laughter, every time I have spoken words that did not resonate with me, every time I have smoothed over pain for the sake of others’ comfort. It does not rest. It does not forgive. It only observes, meticulously, the hollowness of my existence beneath the artifice.

I think about the way joy is celebrated as if it is proof of life, and I am confronted by my own absence of it. I am alive, certainly, but not in the way the world defines it. The lightness others feel is a language I do not speak. Their laughter, their delight, their enthusiasm—these are signals I have learned to mimic, but never to embody. And in that realization, there is both clarity and despair. I am not broken in a way that can be fixed. I am intact, but hollow. Whole, but empty.

"So close to life, and yet untouched by it."

The mask is exhausting. Every interaction, every smile, every semblance of joy, requires energy I do not possess. It is a performance without end, and the audience never leaves. I am trapped in the theater of my own creation, performing for invisible eyes, for expectations, for standards that exist only in the minds of others. And when the performance ends, when I am alone again, the mask is heavy in my hands, and I feel the hollowness more sharply than ever, knowing that the lie is not just for them — it has become a lie I tell myself, an act of self-deception that cuts deeper than any external observation.

Sometimes I wonder if the hollowness will ever end, if the mask will ever feel like skin, if joy can ever be authentic. But these are questions without answers, because I have learned that for me, joy is a foreign land, a language I cannot speak, a rhythm I cannot feel. I move through life as a ghost, observing but not inhabiting, performing but never truly participating. 

Even when I attempt small pleasures, I am haunted by the awareness of performance. Eating a favourite food, hearing a song, seeing something beautiful—these moments are hollowed by consciousness. I am always aware that I am acting, that the enjoyment is an illusion, that the mask remains in place even when I think it has fallen. And this awareness is its own torment, a self-imposed reminder that joy is not for me, that I am bound to the performance, to the hollow imitation, to the empty reflection of life that I carry within myself. I speak sometimes to the mirror, sometimes to the shadows, sometimes to the quiet witness of the moon outside my window. But no answer comes, no comfort, no absolution.

 Only reflection. Only observation. Only the unflinching recognition that joy is not mine, that I do not inhabit it, that I cannot allow myself to feel it even if I wanted to. I am alone with my own awareness, and it is a weight beyond measure. 

The mask, the performance, the hollow smiles—they have become my reality. I have internalized them so deeply that even the rare moments of true feeling are suspect, scrutinized by the mind, catalogued as potential deception. I cannot distinguish performance from authenticity, action from reflex, smile from survival tactic. The mind dissects itself endlessly, each revelation sharper than the last, until the hollow is all that remains visible.

Even when night falls and the world sleeps, I remain awake with the awareness of emptiness. The mask is removed, but the hollowness persists, a ghost tethered to me, following me through the dark, through the silence, through the stillness. It is relentless, inescapable, intimate in its constant presence. I am never without it. I am never free from it. I am hollow, and the hollow is me.

Perhaps the cruelest truth is that the world does not demand the mask, but I cannot stop wearing it. It has become inseparable from my identity, fused to every gesture, every thought, every breath. Joy has never been mine. It has only been a costume, a performance, a lie repeated until even I forget that it is false. And in that forgetting, the hollow feels deeper, sharper, more absolute, because it is layered beneath the imitation of life, buried beneath the echo of a happiness I cannot claim.

  

"Joy was never mine—only its imitation."

I do not want comfort. I do not want hope. I do not want healing. I want recognition, acknowledgment, the understanding that joy has never been mine, that I have moved through the world with an artifice that conceals emptiness, that I have survived through mimicry and repetition while hollow beneath it all. The mask is not optional. The emptiness is not optional. They are inseparable, defining the shape of every moment, every breath, every thought I carry inside myself.

And when I look at the mirror one last time before sleep, or before the night fades, I see it all. I see the hollow, the mask, the performance, the lie. I see the space inside that no joy can fill, the fractures that no smile can hide. And I accept it, not with comfort, not with reconciliation, but with recognition: that for me, happiness has always been imitation, and imitation is all that I will ever inhabit.