Unknown author
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 a second nature to me. Don't be fooled, for God's sake don't be fooled.
I give the impression that I am 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 is calm and I'm in command and that I need no one, but don't believe me, please.
My surface may be smooth, but this is my mask, my varying and ever convincing mask. Beneath lies no smugness, no complacency. Beneath it dwells the real me in confusion and fear and loneliness, but I hide this, I don't want anyone to know it. 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 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, from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
I idly chatter to you in the suave tone 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, please don't be fooled by what I'm saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying and what I'd like to be able to say. What, for survival, I need to say, but what I can't say. 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 fragile wings, but wings.
With your sensitivity and your sympathy and your power of understanding, 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 the creator of a person that is me, if you choose to, please choose to.
Don't pass me by, it will not be easy for you. A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls. The nearer you approach me, the blinder I may strike back. It's irrational, but despite what the book says about man, I am irrational. I fight against the very thing I cry out for, but I am told that love is stronger than walls. in this lies my hope... my only hope.
Who am I, you may wonder. I am someone you know very well. I am every man you have ever met in time, I am every woman you have met in time.