Bratty Girl

Sometimes when I walk among the world of the two legged, I see and hear many things. Often I have noticed that people get so caught up with their lives that they tend to miss out on the simple things that bring great joy, peace and a feeling of well being. The world and the events that take place around them cause them to become faint with worries and as they slowly lose themselves and become completely consumed by the things going on around them, they forget the simple things that bring inner peace and happiness.

Things such as feeling the gentle breeze upon their exposed flesh and as it blows through their hair gently tossing it from side to side. The sounds of the birds as they welcome the rising sun and the fragrance of the flowers after a gentle rain. I look around me and I see things great and small. I realize that they're a part of me and that I, too, am apart of them. We exist together for we are apart of all that is and all that remains. I walk hand in hand with my life mate and we have come to learn that if we lose ourselves in the fears and worries of the events that are so readily pushed upon us, we also lose track of who we are and where we're going.

Sometimes we must just stop and take time to smell the rose. We need to catch our breath and to just enjoy life and its simple pleasures. Today I walked into my back yard and though I could hear the siren of a police car and also that of an ambulance, I listened to the wind blowing through the palm trees and the birds as they sang. I watched the clouds as they drifted endlessly by on the bluest sky. Inside me I felt the flutter of my heart as it became as one with my surroundings. I felt the air rush into my lungs and for just a brief moment I heard my heart sing.

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 is me. Pretending is an art that’s second nature with me. I give you the impression that I am secure, that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without, 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 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.

I know that such a glance is my salvation. I know that if it is followed by acceptance, if it’s followed by love, it’s the only thing that will assure me of what I can’t assure myself – that I am worth something, that I am lovable.

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.

Charles C. Finn