I occasionally wonder what I look like to other people, from the external eye so to speak. I try not to think about this too much. I know that I must look and sound like a total dork. I've seen the videos, and they make me want to hide indoors and never show my face in public again. The disconnect between what I think and the inadequacy of how I'm able to express it in speech (nowhere near as well as I can in writing), the way I feel and the face I present to the world (it seems blank, cold, robotic even when I don't feel that way, or otherwise, caricatured in its extremity), the gap between my inner identity and my external presentation is so wide that I don't feel like I can bridge it.

And I am desperate to share my true self with someone, and to truly know them, but there's this hideous shell around me, and I hate it. I wish I could shed my stuttering, awkward, inept ways like a carapace or an old skin, even if only for a few minutes or days, just long enough to matter, just long enough for someone to see I'm not really this ugly. My heart breaks within these confines, condemned to a solitary existence.