Eating Disorder Poetry
My Life Story
Please Hear What I'm Not Saying
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 gave you the impression that I was secure
That all is sunny and unruffled with me
within as well as out,
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. Please!
My surface may be smooth, but my surface is my mask,
My ever-varying and ever-concealing mask.
Beneath it lies no smugness, no compliance.
Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness.
But I hide this.
I don't want anyone to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear exposing them,
That's why I frantically create 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, 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 that I so painstakingly erect.
That glance 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 an illusion of confidence outside,
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 tunes 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 not saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear
what I'm not saying
Hear what I'd like to say
but what I cannot say.
I dislike hiding.
Honestly.
I dislike the superficial game I'm playing
the superficial phony game.
I'd really like to be genuine
and spontaneous
and me.
But I need your help, your hand to hold
Even though my masks tell you otherwise.
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 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.
