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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 is 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 lies 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 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,
an 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. I fight against the very
thing that I cry out for. 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.
Charles C. Finn |
