I wear a thousand Masks - Annonymous

I wear a thousand masks
I hope you won’t be fooled by me for I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks – masks that I’m afraid to take off, and one of them is me.
I am likely to give you the impression that I’m secure, 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 I hope you won’t believe me.
My surface may seem smooth…beneath I dwell in confusion, in fear, in aloneness. But I hide this. I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear of being exposed. That’s why I frantically create a mood to hide behind, a nonchalant, sophisticated façade to shield me from your understanding. But such understanding is my salvation. My only salvation and I know it.
If I don’t keep the mask in front of myself, I’m afraid you’ll think less of me, that you’ll laugh and your laugh would kill me.
So I play the game, my desperate pretending game, with the façade of assurance without, and trembling feeling within, and so my life becomes a front, I idly chatter to you in suave surface tones… I tell you everything that is nothing and nothing of what is everything, of what’s crying within me, So when I go into my routine, I hope you won’t be fooled but what I’m saying, I hope you listen carefully to hear what I’m not saying.
I dislike the superficial, phony game I’m playing. I’d really like to be even, genuine, and spontaneous. I want your help in doing this I want you to risk approaching me even when that’s the last thing I seem to want or need. I want this from you so I can be alive, each time you’re kind and gentle and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care, my courage to risk sharing myself with you increases.
I wan to you to know how important you are to me, how you can be a creator of the person that is me if you choose, But it will not be easy for you. A long conviction of worthlessness leads me to maintain distance.
The nearer you approach me the blinder I may strike back. It is self-defeating but at the time, iit seems the safest thing to do. I fight against the very things that I cry out for. But I am told that empathy is stronger that the walls and there in lies my hope. I desperately want you to understand me in spite of my distancing tactics.
Who I am you may wonder, I am someone you know very well. I am every man and every woman you meet.