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 am afraid to take off, and none of them are me.
Pretending is an art that’s second nature with me, within as well as without, that confidence is my name and coolness is 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 seem 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 weakness and fear being exposed. That’s why I frantically create a mask to hide behind a nonchalant, sophisticated façade, to help me pretend, to shield me from 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, 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 that 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 that 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 façade of assurance without, and a trembling child within.
And so it 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. And I tell you everything of that is 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 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 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.
