Don't Be Fooled By Me

My first speech contest was in Grade 4 when I joined the
Elocution Contest. This was my piece. Very adult for
a nine-year old girl. My mom coached me on the piece.
I won first runner-up.
Never understood the piece back then,
like I do now, as a 33-year old woman.
Now I am too familiar with the pain and angst
of wearing a mask of nonchalance,
& yet being a ticking bomb waiting to explode inside.
Don't be fooled by me.
I may look happy, but I have been in the pits of despair.

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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, honestlyI 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 everyman
and everywoman
who wears a mask.

Don't be fooled by me.
At least not by the face I wear.