The Voice of the Homeless

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 is 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 is calm, and I am 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 aloness. 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 is why I frantically create a mask to hide behind, a nonchalant - sophisticated facade to help me pretend, to shield me from a glance that knows.

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 is the only thing that can liberate me from myself, from my own self built prison walls, from the barriers I so painstakingly erect. It is the only thing that will assure me of what I can't assure myself, That I really am worth something.

But I don't tell you this. I don't dare. 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 loss of me and 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 is nothing, and nothing of what is everything of what's crying within me.

So when I am going through my routine, don't be fooled by what I am saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying, what I would like to be able 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 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 are 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, a honest to God creator of the person that is Me if you choose to.

You 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. Please choose to.

You 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. Please choose to.

Do not pass me by. It wil not be easy for you. A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.

The nearer you approach me, the blinder I might 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 these walls with firm hands , but with gentle hands for a child is 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.

I

Author Unknown

Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance.  Registered Charity 251549 (England & Wales) SC037754 (Scotland)