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 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. 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.
source:
“Healing the Child Within”
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