I Wear A Thousand Masks (re-boot)

 This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2018 at 8:45 pm


I WEAR A THOUSAND MASKS
(Charles C. Finn)
I hope you won’t be fooled by me for I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks, masks that I’m afraid to take off, and one of them is me.
I am likely to give you the impression that I’m secure, 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 I hope you won’t believe me.
My surface may be smooth…beneath I dwell in confusion, in fear, in aloneness. But I hide this. I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear of being exposed. That’s why I frantically create a mood to hide behind, a nonchalant, sophisticated façade to shield me from your understanding. But such understanding is my salvation. My only salvation. And I know it.
If I don’t keep the mask in front of myself I’m afraid you’ll think less of me, that you’ll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.
So I play that game, my desperate pretending game, with a façade of assurance without, and a trembling feeling within. And so my life becomes a front. I idly chatter to you in the suave surface tones…I tell you everything that’s nothing, and nothing of what’s everything, of what’s crying within me. So when I go into my routine, I hope you won’t be fooled by what I’m saying. I hope you listen carefully to hear what I’m not saying.
I dislike the superficial, phony game I am playing. I’d really like to be open, genuine and spontaneous. I want your help in doing this. I want you to risk approaching me even when that’s the last thing I seem to want, or need. I want this from you so I can be alive. Each time you’re kind, and gentle and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care, my courage to risk sharing myself with you increases.
I want you to know how important you are to me, how you can be a creator of the person that is me if you choose. But it will not be easy for you. A long conviction of worthlessness leads me to maintain distance.
The nearer you approach me, the blinder I may strike back. It is self-defeating but at the time it seems the safest thing to do. I fight against the very things that I cry out for. But I am told that empathy is stronger than walls and therein lies my hope. I desperately want you to understand me in spite of my distancing tactics.
Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well.
I am every man and every woman you meet.

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