Please Hear What I'm Not Saying by Charles C. Finn : Part 1

Many years ago I was introduced to part of this poem while working as a therapist in a psychiatric hospital.  The patients in my groups found the poem to be very personal and healing for them.  I happened to come across it again thought I would share with you.

Don't be fooled by me.

Don't be fooled by the face I wear

For I wear a mask, a thousand masks,

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 am 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 maybe 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 exposed.

That's way 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 is followed by acceptance, if it is followed by love.

It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself,

From my own self-built prison walls from the barriers that

I so painstakingly erect.  It's the only thing that will assure me

Of what I can't a assure myself, that I'm really worth something.

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

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 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, I tell you

Everything that's really nothing, and nothing of what's everything.

Part II to come

Amen