It hurts when the inside does not match the outside. Seeing myself in my dreams then waking to find I'm not like I should be. This disconnect brings great pain on me and in the alone time it stalks me like a predator. Yet even with the pain of dying within its maw, I lie in the enthrall of its ravenous rapture. Loving the ecstasy of its hate, I'm then left discarded and broken and unsure. Facing the fork in the road, the known versus the unknown. The loving attention of my hate or the spectrum of possibilities in leaving it behind.