9/20/11

Letting go

This is the most difficult thing to do, at the moment. I hope I can survive this ordeal... I know my friends would be there to support me no matter what but I am too ashamed to admit any thing or to ask for help.

I am devastated but all I can do now is to accept whatever comes. It will be a really hard journey from now on. I know I'm not alone, I know I can have all the support I need. I just can't ask...

I need to accept this. There's nothing I can do. I am sad. I'm not who I used to be before, someone who can turn off all her emotions in one second. I don't think I can be like that this time around...

I need time... I need good friends... I don't need unnecessary attention from people I don't trust.

To my friends, don't ask me what's making me sad personally. I will cry even if I'm in a public place... I'll try to look normal out side... just don't ask me yet. Don't hug me yet, I might break down and cry. This is something I know I can't deal with please be patient with me.

I'll be putting on a mask for a while... This is something I need to do until I recover... but don't be fooled...

This was one of my favorite poems when I was a troubled younger version of myself...





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, 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 be 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 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 is followed by acceptance, 
If it is 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 to. 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
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. 
So begins the glittering but empty parade of Masks, 
And my life becomes a front. 
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 hiding.
I don't like playing 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,
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 the shadow-world of panic,
from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
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 me 
the blinder I may strike back. 
It's irrational, but despite what the books may say about man 
often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing 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.

       By Charles C. Finn



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