Don't Be Fooled By Me

I wish I could take credit for this one. 

It's been around for over 50 years and 

it still holds true for so many of us. 

Take your time as you read this and 

re-read it again and again.  

Take Care,

Norma 

Don’t Be Fooled By Me

by Charles C. Finn

Please 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 is 

second nature to me, but don't be fooled, for God's sake 

don't be fooled.

I give you the impression I'm secure and that all is sunny 

and unruffled with me, within as well as without, that confidence

is my name, coolness my game, that water is calm and I'm in command 

and that I need no one, but don't believe me, please don't believe me.

My surface may be smooth, but my surface is a mask - my every 

varying and ever concealing mask.  Beneath it dwells the real 

confusion, fear and aloneness. Beneath lies my smugness, my complacently, 

but I hide this - I don't want anyone to know it.

 

I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear being exposed. 

That's why I frantically created a mask to hide behind-- 

nonchalant sophisticated facades 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 and from the 

barriers that I so painstaking erect.  It's the only thing that will assure 

me of what I cannot assure myself, that I'm really worth while, but 

I don't tell you this, I don't dare--I'm afraid to.

I'm afraid that your glance will not be followed by acceptance 

and love.  I'm afraid you'll think less of me and you'll laugh and your laugh 

will kill me.  I'm afraid that deep down, I'm nothing and that I'm just no 

good and that you'll see this and reject me.

So I play my game; my desperate pretending; with the facade of 

assurance  without and a trembling child within. And so begins the parade 

of masks, the glittering, but empty parade of masks and my life becomes 

a front. I idle chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk. I tell you 

everything that's really nothing and nothing of what's everything and 

what's crying within me.

So when I'm through 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, but for survival I need to say, but what I can't say.

I dislike hiding, honestly, I dislike the superficial game I'm playing, the superficial

 phony game. I'd really like to be genuine, spontaneous and me, but you've got to 

help me, you've got to hold out your hand, even when it's the last thing I seem

 to want or need.

You can help wipe away from my eyes--the blank stare of grieving dead. 

You can help call me into aliveness each time you're kind, 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. If you choose to, please choose to. You can help break down the

 wall behind which I tremble. You can encourage me to remove my mask.

You can help release me from my shadowed world of panic and 

 uncertainty. From my lonely prison.

So do not pass me by-- please don't pass me by.  It will not be easy for 

 you.  A lone conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.  The nearer

 you approach me, the blinder I may strike back.  It's irrational, but despite

what books say about man, I am irrational.  I fight against the very things

 that I cry out for, but I am told love is stronger than strong walls.

In this lies my hope, my only hope, please help 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 women you meet.