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 seem 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'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'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 your 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
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 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,
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,
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 my 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 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 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.

niall rocks and has taken both

I was sitting at morning tea break with my bosses, as is usual on a Monday they asked what I got up to the weekend. Like always I said Friday was at search, yet again they asked what is search (having been told every week since I started). So I told them well it’s a community group I’m part of, which meets every Friday night. And they asked what you do at these meetings. I said, we meet up we sing some hymns say some prayers, sometimes we have speakers, or debates and just some craic. They joked ah that crack, need to watch that stuff, is it not more addictive than coke? So I said I wouldn’t no and I wont know seeing as I never have nor ever will try it. And they looked at me like I had two heads, you’ve never tried it, nope, you need to experiment you know sometimes.

Am I the only one on this planet with a clear sense of morals and right and wrong? You don’t do drugs, EVER, that’s it, no experimenting, no “oh just this one time”. Its been ingrained in me since I was a child drugs are wrong, alcohol is wrong till your 18. It seems everyone I know has cracked under, I don’t know, peer pressure or what have you. On Friday, was at search talking to A (will not state names) and was telling him bout my moral stance on certain things, to which he turned round and said “you’ve been brainwashed by the media” WTF!? For start haven’t been brainwashed by the media, second that’s effectively saying that my morals are wrong. They even admitted themselves to taking drugs, this person, who I thought was almost a younger version of me, with the same clear cut morals and beliefs.

This is completely messed up, when did the message of just say no disappear? When did friends become the people taking your hand and leading you down a path of addiction? Or are my morals wrong? Have I been brainwashed?

I’ve seen myself lose a friend to drugs. Oh he started “innocent enough” doing dope maybe once a week, then it was once a day, then 10 times, then 50, till it wasn’t the hit he needed anymore, and nothing normal like, I don’t know chocolate gave him the same feeling of reward that a normal person feels. He moved on to harder and worse things. And he always maintained, from the start, I can’t get addicted, I can drop it like that. Total Crap. He’s gone now and I don’t know were he is, and I don’t want to find him, cause I don’t want to see the state he’s in, or what he’s become, it would just be to painful.