Don't be fooled...

Many thanks to Amy Long who submitted this poem, which she had read many years ago, and she was reminded of it when reading "The Divinity We Represent" post on this blog a few days ago.

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,

every-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 façade, 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 allowed by acceptance, if it’s allowed 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 façade of assurance without and a trembling child within.

So begins the glittering by 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 think 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.

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.

 

 

(This was taken from the book, “Healing the Child Within” by Charles L. Whitfield, M.D.  The poem’s author is Charles C. Finn.)