Don't be fooled by ME.
Don't be fooled by the mask I wear.
For I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
Masks that I'm afraid to take off and none of them
are ME.
Pretending is an art that is second nature to 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,
But don't believe ME.
My surface may seem smooth,
but my surface is my mask,
my ever varying and ever concealing mask.
Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence.
Beneath lies the REAL ME ,
in confusion, in aloneness, in fear.
But I hide all this.
I'm afraid to let anyone see.
I panic at the thought of 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,
if followed by acceptance,
if followed by love,
is the only thing that can liberate ME from MYSELF.
From the only thing that will assure ME
of what I can't assure myself
that I'm really worth something,
that it's all right to be ME.
But I don't tell you this;
I don't dare. I am afraid to.
I'm afraid your glances will not be followed by love
and acceptance.
I'm afraid that if you really know ME you'd laugh,
and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afraid that deep down I'm nothing, I'm just no
good, and that you will reject ME.
So I play my game,
my desperate pretending game,
With a facade of assurance without,
but a trembling roar within.
And so begins the 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,
What I'd like to say, what -- for survival -- I need
to say,
but what I'm afraid to say.
I dislike hiding, 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 it's the last thing I seem to need or want.
Each time you're kind and gentle and encouraging,
Each time you try to help and 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 power of understanding,
you can breath life into me.
You can help ME to be 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 who 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 and release me from my
shadowed world of panic and uncertainty,
from my lonely prison,
and let ME be ME.