133 - paper mache world
Construct the world that you find most comfortable to live in, out of paper and glitter and glue, a little smattering of truth to hold it all together. Then hold it up, turn it towards the audience, present it as if it is immutable fact. Believe in it. Believe so hard that you convince them as well.
You may then live in the world you have created, this paper-mache fascimile, as if it is the real one. You'll find it so much easier than dealing with the inconvenient truths, the conflicting and subjective realities of every other worldly architect out there.
After a while, you won't even mind that the food always tastes of old newspaper, of microplastics. You'll cease to worry about the way the glue is slowly filling your throat, melting on your tongue and trickling its way down to coalesce in the depths of your lungs.
Piece by piece you are replaced. Your skin becomes ashen and papery, marred here and there by smears of acrylic paint and glitter glue. The only words you speak are recycled phrases, stolen from trashy, torn-apart paperbacks. Your face is a rictus grin of genuine happiness, locked forever in place by floury paste and skeleton muscles of chicken wire. The sharp edges protrude, shredding the fingertips of those who reach out to hold you, to help you.
At long last, the thin scaffold of truth crumbles and falls away, no longer needed. You are secure and safe here, in your paper world, forever.
Even if you are all alone there, with only automatons and cardboard cutouts for company.
Even as the glitter begins to slough away, and the world grows yellow and brittle with age.
Even if nothing of you truly remains.