The Masks We Wear

I so want to learn how to design my own blogskin. I have looked and hunted and searched and have actually found some beautiful things that I like but, they are not mine and I don't want to use them without other people's permission. I don't want their names all over my site, I want to add my own friends (which, I have added to btb, awsome writers that I'm ashamed to say, I've been too lazy to add untill today)

I want to put up some pictures. I need a "blogging for dummies" book. I can't find any sites that will show me how to do this. I mean, I can build websites, but, I can't change my own personal blog?! Ughhgh, I want to scream. Anyway.

I am glad to see so many of mty dear friends back to blogland. I have missed all of you and your wonderful words of wit and wisdom. This is for you.


THE MASK I WEAR

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 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, honestly
I 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
and every woman
who wears a mask.
Don't be fooled by me.
At least not by the face I wear.
-----author unknown and it has been published in a number of books.


This has been me for as far back as I can remember. A therapist I worked with at Western Acadamy gave me a copy and told me that as far back as he could remember, no one reminded him of this poem more then I do.

Nothing, yet, everything has changed since those days. No more am I a victim. No more am I a child at the whim of others. I will hold my own head up. I will claim my victories and my sorrows. I will love my children as I was never loved. I will protect them as I was never protected. I will hold them in the night when their dreams take on a dark tone, I will curl up around them and sing softly to them until they fall asleep. I will comfort them and laugh with them. I will punish them, yet, respect that they are people and don't deserve to be abused. No more am I without people who love me, respect me.

Yet, I am still afraid. I fear that one day I will wake up and it will all be gone. That I will be alone because I have pushed those I love so far away from me. It keeps me from loving, from forming friendships the way I want to. I want to belong, I want to be liked, but, not for what is seen, but, for who I am.

A hell of a place to put myself in huh?