think I answered my own question.

The question being, why am I unable to maintain the 'fiction(s?)' that seem to serve so many people so well?

Answer: It doesn't serve me the way it does them.

Or maybe a more accurate way to put it is that the standard illusions seem, for whatever reason(s)? not to meet my most basic needs.

Why? I have no effing clue. If I *knew*, I wouldn't be perpetually rattling around here in this cyberspastic (??) cage of mine. I'd be out there flauntin' it with all the rest, my

shiny
illusory
self.