On Sunday 3/25/2007 08:35 PM, Pat Ferguson said:
>Please Hear What I'm Not Saying
>
>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's second nature to 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, Please!
>
>My surface may be smooth, but my surface is my mask, my varying
>and ever-concealing mask.
>
>Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence.  Beneath it dwells the
>real me, in confusion and fear, in aloneness, but I hide this.  I
>don't want anybody 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 if it's 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
>pains-takingly erect. It's the only thing that will assure me of
>what I can't assure myself, that I'm really worth something.
>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 love.
>I'm afraid that you'll think less of me, that you'll laugh.
>And your laugh would kill me.
>So I play my game, with a 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 idly chatter to you in the suave tones 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.
>Honestly, I dislike the superficial game I'm playing, the
>superficial phony game;
>I'd really like to be genuine and spontaneous and me......
>But you've got to help me.
>You've got to hold out your hand, even when that's the last thing
>I seem to want or need.
>Only you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the
>breathing dead.
>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 feeble wings, but wings.
>With your sensitivity and 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 a creator of the person that is me, if you choose
>to.
>Please choose to!
>You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
>You alone, can remove my mask, you alone can release me from my
>shadow 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 long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
>The nearer you approach to 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 strong walls.
>In this lies my hope,
>My only hope.
>Please try to beat down these 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.
>I am every man you meet,
>I am every woman you meet.
>
>Author Unknown.