Please Hear What I’m Not Saying
By Charles C. Finn
Healing the Child Within
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. Don’t believe me. My surface may seem smooth but my surface is m 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 and fear being exposed. That’s why I frantically create a mask
to hide behind, a nonchalant sophisticated facade, to help me pretend,to yield 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;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 I so painstakingly erect, it’ the only thing that will assure me of
I can’t assure myself that I’m really worth something.
But I won't tell you this. I don’t dare. I’m afraid to. I’m afraid our glance will not be followed by acceptance,
will not be followed by love. 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 that 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 glittering but empty 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. 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 to hide. I don’t like to play 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 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, very feeble 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, ow you can be a creator--a 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 my shadow-world of panic and
uncertainty, from my lonely prison, if you choose to. Do not pass by . It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls. The nearer you approach to me the blinder I
may strike back. It’s irrational, but despite what the books say about man, often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing that 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 to be 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.