I am someone you know very well

So the following are not my words, but they are. Original author unknown, yet many claim this author's fame (or insight into our psyche). If anything, these words speak from the roots of my being. Why be narcissistic about about it? They more likely speak the unspoken in all of us:

Don't be fooled by me. Don't be fooled by the mask 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 is second nature with me, but don't be fooled. I give the impression that I'm secure, that all is sunny and unruffled with me, that the waters are calm, and that I'm in command, and I need no one. But don't believe it. Please don't. My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask. Beneath lays no smugness. Beneath dwells the real me, in confusion, in fear, in loneliness. But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.

I panic at the thought of my own weakness being exposed. That's why I create a mask to hide behind, to help me pretend. To shield me from the glance that knows. I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by love and acceptance, I'm afraid that you'll think less of me, that you'll laugh, and that your laugh will kill me. I'm afraid that deep down inside I'm nothing. That I'm just no good, and that you'll see and reject me.

So I play my games, my desperate pretending games, with the facade of assurance on the outside, and trembling child within. And so my life becomes a front. I idly chatter with you in the suave tones of surface talk, I tell you everything that's really nothing. Nothing of what's crying within me. So when I'm going through my routine, don't be fooled by what I'm saying. Please listen carefully, and try to hear what I am not saying, what I would like to be able to say. What for survival I need to say, but I can't say. I dislike the hiding. Honestly I do. I dislike the superficial phony games I'm playing. I'd really like to be genuine. I'd really like to be genuine, spontaneous and me.

Can you help me? Help me by holding out your hand, even when that's the last thing I seem to want or need. 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 sensitivity and sympathy, and your power of understanding, I can make it. You can breathe life into me. It will not be easy. A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls. But love is stronger than strong walls, and therein lies my hope.

Please try to take down those walls with firm hands, but with gentle hands. For a child is very sensitive, and I am a child. Who am I you may wonder? I am someone you know very well. I am every man, every woman, every child, every human you meet.