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-This is the original version of "Please Hear What I Am Not Saying"-<br />
<br />
Don't be fooled by me.<br />
Don't be fooled by the face I wear<br />
for I wear a mask, a thousand masks,<br />
masks that I'm afraid to take off,<br />
and none of them is me.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Pretending is an art that's second nature with me,<br />
but don't be fooled,<br />
for God's sake don't be fooled.<br />
I give you the impression that I'm secure,<br />
that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well<br />
as without,<br />
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,<br />
that the water's calm and I'm in command<br />
and that I need no one,<br />
but don't believe me.<br />
My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,<br />
ever-varying and ever-concealing.<br />
Beneath lies no complacence.<br />
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.<br />
But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.<br />
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.<br />
That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,<br />
a nonchalant sophisticated facade,<br />
to help me pretend,<br />
to shield me from the glance that knows.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope,<br />
and I know it.<br />
That is, if it's followed by acceptance,<br />
if it's followed by love.<br />
It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself,<br />
from my own self-built prison walls,<br />
from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.<br />
It's the only thing that will assure me<br />
of what I can't assure myself,<br />
that I'm really worth something.<br />
But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to, I'm afraid to.<br />
I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance,<br />
will not be followed by love.<br />
I'm afraid you'll think less of me,<br />
that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.<br />
I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing<br />
and that you will see this and reject me.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
So I play my game, my desperate pretending game,<br />
with a facade of assurance without<br />
and a trembling child within.<br />
So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks,<br />
and my life becomes a front.<br />
I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.<br />
I tell you everything that's really nothing,<br />
and nothing of what's everything,<br />
of what's crying within me.<br />
So when I'm going through my routine<br />
do not be fooled by what I'm saying.<br />
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying,<br />
what I'd like to be able to say,<br />
what for survival I need to say,<br />
but what I can't say.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I don't like hiding.<br />
I don't like playing superficial phony games.<br />
I want to stop playing them.<br />
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me<br />
but you've got to help me.<br />
You've got to hold out your hand<br />
even when that's the last thing I seem to want.<br />
Only you can wipe away from my eyes<br />
the blank stare of the breathing dead.<br />
Only you can call me into aliveness.<br />
Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging,<br />
each time you try to understand because you really care,<br />
my heart begins to grow wings--<br />
very small wings,<br />
very feeble wings,<br />
but wings!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
With your power to touch me into feeling<br />
you can breathe life into me.<br />
I want you to know that.<br />
I want you to know how important you are to me,<br />
how you can be a creator--an honest-to-God creator--<br />
of the person that is me<br />
if you choose to.<br />
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,<br />
you alone can remove my mask,<br />
you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic,<br />
from my lonely prison,<br />
if you choose to.<br />
Please choose to.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Do not pass me by.<br />
It will not be easy for you.<br />
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.<br />
The nearer you approach to me<br />
the blinder I may strike back.<br />
It's irrational, but despite what the books say about man<br />
often I am irrational.<br />
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.<br />
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls<br />
and in this lies my hope.<br />
Please try to beat down those walls<br />
with firm hands but with gentle hands<br />
for a child is very sensitive.<br />
<br />
Who am I, you may wonder?<br />
I am someone you know very well.<br />
For I am every man you meet<br />
and I am every woman you meet.<br />
<br />
Charles C. Finn<br />
September 1966<br />
<br />
<br />
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