The Mask

Do any of you remember this poem? I stumbled across it today. The words are not exactly as I remember them but I'm sure the poem has been changed here and there (as occurs from time to time on the net).

The Mask (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,
and none of them are 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.
Please.

My surface may be smooth but my surface is my mask,
My ever-varying and ever-concealing mask.
Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence.
Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness.
But I hide this.
I don't want anybody to know it.

I panic at the thought of my weaknesses and fear exposing them.
That's why I frantically create my masks to hide behind.
They're nonchalant, sophisticated facades 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 is, if it's followed by acceptance,
and if it's followed by love.
It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself.
From my own self-built prison walls.

I dislike hiding, honestlyI dislike the superficial game I'm playing,
the superficial phony game.
I'd really like to be genuine and me.
But I need your help, your hand to hold.
Even though my masks would tell you otherwise.
That glance from you is the only thing that assures 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 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 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 parade of masks,
The glittering but empty parade of masks, and my life becomes a front.

I idly chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that's 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.
Hear what I'd like to say but what I can not say.

It will not be easy for you, long felt inadequacies make my defenses strong.
The nearer you approach me the blinder I may strike back.
Despite what books say of men, I am irrational;
I fight against the very thing that I cry out for.

You wonder who I am?
You shouldn't.
For I am every man you meet
And every woman you meet
And I am you, also.

--unknown--