Please Hear What I'm Not Saying

  
  Please Hear What I'm Not Saying





  Don't be fooled

  by me.

  Don't be fooled by the face I wear.

  For I wear a

  mask, a thousand masks,

  masks that I'm afraid to take off,

  and

 none of them is me.

  Pretending is an art that's second nature

  with me,

  but don't be fooled.

  For God's sake don't be fooled.

  I

  give you the impression that I'm secure,

  that all is sunny

  and unruffled with me, within as well as without,

  that confidence

  is my name and coolness my game,

 that the water's calm and

  I'm in command,

 and that I need no one.

  But don't believe
  me.

  My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,

  ever-varying

  and ever-concealing.

  Beneath lis no complacence.

  Beneath

  lies confusion and fear and aloneness.

  But I hide this. I

  don't want anybody to know it.





  I panic at the thought

  of my weakness and fear being exposed.

  That's why I frantically

  create a mask to hide behind,

  a nonchalant sophisticated facade,

  to

  help me pretend,

  to shield me from the glance that knows.

  But

  such a glance is precisely my salvation.

  My only hope and

  I know it.

  That is, if it's followed by acceptance,

  if
  it's followed by love.

  It's the only thing that can liberate

  me from myself,

  from my own self-built prison walls,

  from

  the barriers I so painstakingly erect.

  It's the only thing

  that will assure me of what I can't assure myself,

  that I'm

  really worth something.

  But I don't tell you this. I don't

  dare. I'm afraid to.

  I'm afraid your glance will not be followed

  by acceptance,

  will not be followed by love.

  I'm afraid

  you'll think less of me, that you'll laugh,

  and that your

  laugh would kill me.

  I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing,

  that I'm just no good,

  and that you will see this and reject

  me.





  So I play my game,

 my desperate pretending game,

  with a facade of assurance without

  and

 a trembling child within.

  So begins the glittering but empty

  parade of masks,

  and my life becomes a front.

  I idly chatter

  to you in the suave tones of surface talk.

  I tell you everything

  that's really nothing,

  and nothing of what's everything,

  of

  what's crying within me.

  So when I'm going through my routine,

  do

  not be fooled by what I'm saying.

  Please listen carefully

  and try to hear what I'm not saying,

  what I'd like to be able

  to say,

  what for survival I need to say,

  but what I can't

  say.





  I don't like to

  hide.

  I don't like to play superficial phony games.

  I want

  to stop playing them.

  I want to be genuine and spontaneous

  and me,

  but you've got to help me.

  You've got to hold out

  your hand

  even when that's the last thing I seem to want.

  Only

  you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the breathing

  dead.

  Only you can call me into aliveness.

  Each time you're

  kind and gentle and encouraging,

  each time you try to understand

  because you really care,

  my heart begins to grow wings,

  very

  small wings,

  very feeble wings,

  but wings!

  With your

   power to touch me into feeling

  you can breathe life into me.

 I

  want you to know that.





  I want you to know

  how important you are to me,

  how you can be a creator a honest-to-God

  creator

  of the person that is me

  if you choose to.

  You

  alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,

  you

  alone can remove my mask,

  you alone can release me from my

  shadow-world of panic

  and uncertainty, from my lonely prison,

  if

  you choose to.

  Please choose to. Do not pass me by.

  It

  will not be easy for you.





  A long conviction

  of worthlessness builds strong walls.

  The nearer you approach

  to me

  the blinder I may strike back.

  It's irrational, but

  despite what the books say about man,

  often I am irrational.



  fight against the very thing that I cry out for. (my emphasis)

  But

  I am told that love is stronger than strong walls,

  and in

  this lies my hope.

  Please try to beat down those walls

  with

  firm hands

  but with gentle hands

  for a child is very sensitive.





  Who am I, you may

  wonder?

  I am someone you know very well.

  For I am every

  man you meet

  and I am every woman you meet.


Author Unknown