DIANNE

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 aloness.
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 am 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 will 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
face 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 same suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that's really nothing,
and nothing of what's really 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 uncertainy, from my lonely prison if you choose to.
Please choose to. Do not pass me by.

A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you appraoch to me, the blinder I may strike back.
It's irrational, but despite what the books may 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 these walls
with a firm hand but with gentle hands,
for a child that is very sensitve.

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 ~