the Border

My friend Tom went crazy.  It seems to have happened overnight, but as information leaks out it's pretty obvious it was a long time coming and not the first time.  He's currently hospitalized until he stabilizes and is sent on to wherever the authorities decide to send him.
The signs were there all along although no one seems to want to deal with that.  He always had this "hey man, don't get so intense about it" attitude anytime the conversation got serious, which drove me to fucking distraction.  The problem was, his true self betrayed him, and in his various moments of weakness he showed that he was wound tighter internally than anyone.
I understand the complex nature of protecting ones inner-self with rough exteriors; I've spent the greater part of my life doing the same thing.  But I've gradually found in recent years the ability to let my guard down and show the soft underbelly that lies beneath what was once an impenetrable shell.  Although I'm not quite there, just showing a glimmer of something that's been hidden for so long, even from myself, has been and continues to be truly freeing.
For Tom, the depths of the facade are what in the end brought him down. The caricature he drew of himself for the public and for himself became so far removed from his true self,  that his mind could no longer keep the two in coexistence.  Like a rubber band, the distance between his outward expression of self and his inner, true self finally got stretched too far and snapped, sending him spiraling out into a land of internal confusion and even more troubling, into a public with no idea how to handle it. May this be a cautionary tale for all of us who play loose and fast with what we project onto the world.  Liars and charlatans, if not discovered by the world that surrounds them, will in time be discovered by their inner self. And the inner-self is in the end the true judge of who we are.