Please Hear What I am NOT Saying
August 11, 2006
catesbool
(Thoughts from the book "Healing the Child Within" by Charles L.
Whitfield M.D. submitted by a survivor of years of abuse, abandonment,
divorce and despair. )
Don’t be fooled by me. Don’t be fooled by the face I wear. For I wear a
mask, a thousand masks, masks that I’m afraid to take off, 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’m 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 may seem 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 and
fear
being exposed. 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 hope 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. 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 your glance will not be followed by acceptance, will not be
followed by love. 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,
that I’m just no good, 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, 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, do not be fooled by
what I’m saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I’m not
saying; what I’d like to be able to say, what for survival I need to
say, but what I can’t say. I don’t like to hide.
I don’t like to play superficial phony games. I want to stop playing
them. I want 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. 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 power to touch me into feeling, 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 - an honest-to-God creator - of the person
that
is me if you 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, if you
choose. Please choose to. Do not 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 books say about man, often
I
am irrational. I fight against the very thing that I cry out for. But I
am told that love is stronger than strong walls, and in this lies my
hope. Please try to beat down those 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. For I am every man you meet and I am
every woman you meet.
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