Are we Keeping it Real ?

​Do people who say they're real honestly mean it, or understand what it represents ?  I would love to know this, too.  Is it just something that a few people say ?  Or does it actually stand for something ?  Does it even matter ?

Sometimes I doubt myself in this respect, just as I doubt others around me.  I fight myself every day, battling inside for my own sake.  The world outside of me has one answer about who and what I am inside.  I fight for my soul, my true nature, but my mind is flawed and weak.  Every positive thing that I achieve daily is discounted and taken as a lie; all perceived failure, a reason why I don't deserve to exist.

"The whirling dervish of the world surrounds, but my heart still bleeds with the curse of needs."

I wrote that lyric in one of my least hopeful songs.  All that I can deduce, from all that I experience daily, is that I need to feel emotional heartache when I am out among my fellow human beings.  It's the one thing that restores my peace, my sense of wholeness.

Is that what it means to be real ?