| Subject: Please Hear What I Am Not Saying |
Author:
Jeannette
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Date Posted: 08:23:07 09/26/03 Fri
Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear
For I wear a mask.
I wear a thousand masks,
masks that I'm afraid to take off
and none of them are 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 is my game.
That the waters's calm
and I'm in command,
and that I need no one.
But don't believe me. Please!
My surface may be smooth
but my surface is my mask,
My ever-varying and ever-concealing mask.
Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence.
Beneath lies the real me in confusion,
in fear, in aloneness.
But I hide this.
I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weaknessess
and fear exposing them.
That's why I frantically create my
masks to hide behind.
They're nonchalant, sophisticated
to help me pretend
To shield me from the glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation,
my only salvation,
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 that I so painstakingly erect.
That glance is the only thing that assures 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 to.
I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me,
that you'll laugh
and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afraid that deep down I'm nothing,
that I'm just no good and 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 parade of masks.
And my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that's 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.
Hear what I'd like to say
but what I can not say.
I dislike hiding.
Honestly.
I dislike the superficial game I'm playing
the superficial phony game.
I'd really like to be genuine and spontaneous
and me.
But I need your help, your hand to hold
Even though my masks would tell you otherwise.
It will not be easy for you.
Long felt inadequacies make my defences strong.
The nearer you approach me
The blinder I may strike back.
Despite what books say of men,
I am irrational;
I fight out against the very thing
that I cry out for.
You wonder who I am?
You shouldn't
For I am everyman
And everywoman
Who wears a mask.
Don't be fooled by me.
At least not by the face I wear.
By: Charkes C. Finn
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