I'm told that for most people, becoming an entirely different person depending on what group of people you're with feels natural and intuitive, but it's never felt natural to me. No matter who I'm with, I feel like I have to cut off parts of myself just to fit in. I know what people expect me to do, but whenever I do it I know that I'm lying just to be accepted, and the moment they find out that I'm not who I say I am, I'll be cast out. They don't care about me. They care about a carefully constructed illusion they live in that says that everyone else is like them. Someone who can only pretend to be them, but who looks perfectly human otherwise, is an affront to that illusion. By existing, I put their world at risk whenever I have to enter it, yet I'm not allowed to not live in it at all. I shouldn't have to lie in order to stay alive.