Blogging Contest : Who Am I ?

Hey All, I decided to enter in this Blogging Competition and the Topic was Who Am I ? So readers, here is my entry and feel free to comment on it. :)
Cheers, Paula

Who Am I?


Who am I, you may ask – I am I. I am a granddaughter, a daughter, a sister, an acquaintance and a friend. I am the type of person who wears many different masks. These masks come adorned in different shapes and sizes. Tuesday through Saturday, I am Paula Phillips – Community Librarian specialising in Children’s and Teen Services. Sunday and Monday, I am Paula Phillips – relaxed, chilled out, working hard, reading and most of the time doing my assignments. We each have hats that stay with us for the rest of our life – granddaughter, daughter, sister, acquaintance and friend, but underneath those hats are the masks that hide us away, hide our true selves from the world. My masks contain a reading mask – I am addicted to books, I find within the pages – a whole new world of comfort, experience, joy as I relate to the characters and can find myself imagining what my life would be like If I lived in that story. I have a writing mask – where I find comfort in writing, it is my passion, something that I could enjoy forever- It is a mask that I have come to love and rely on so much that I would not know what to do with myself if it was to one day disappear, it would be like a part of me was missing. I have the “I’m alright” mask, this is the one where we hide all our insecurities, our hurts and pains – the one where we are so afraid of being hurt that we hate to show the world, so we paste a smile on our face. I have the nightly mask of “The Phantom Paragrapher” – a mysterious world of reading, writing, meeting new authors and discovering new books. This is the mask that I thrive on, it is what keeps me entertained and keeps my writing and reading mask going forth. I have my “dark mask” , it’s the mask where I like supernatural’s especially Vampires and Demons , it’s the mask that keeps my head in tuned with books like Vampire Diaries, True Blood. It is the side of me that loves Horror movies and Crime Shows. I have a slight spontaneity side, it’s the side that I can go with the flow, a side where I can be me and I don’t have the slightest care in the world, though that side is hardly ever shown as my side of rejection overpowers it – it hinders me as I make it hard to make friends, go on dates, it’s the side that needs encouragement and the side unfortunately that lets itself get hurt over and over again. It’s the side that where’s its heart on its sleeve. Who Am I really, nobody knows and if they thought they did – then they only know the side I want them to see. Whenever, I think about Who I Am? There is a poem that comes to my mind written by Charles C. Finn, I read the poem in a Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul Book.


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, 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 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.


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 meif 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.


By Charles C. Finn