Almost Hidden

Por vezes lemos algo que pensamos "É mm isto...". Aconteceu-me isso com este texto da Danyela.

"It's hard to keep hiding behind a smile or a peaceful expression when inside of yourself everything's wrong, confusing, hurting. You think that's the way it should be, to look strong, you think it's the only way out of this inner nightmare of yours, but only those who just want to look at you will be the only ones to think of you as a strong person, and from those who want to see you, to know you, to look in you, it will be completely impossible to hide your fears and the war that's happening inside of yourself. Don't you agree?

Well, I am kinda living this right now. And I'm getting to see that this crazy and continuous try to hide is in fact useless.

I have suffered through a great part of my past, I have lived my own tragedies like everyone else, and standing here today, I find myself many times building a wall around me. I want to protect myself, I don't want any person to come near me until I let her.

I don't want to tell any person many things about my life until I see that that person is good enough to know me, and be sure that I'll never be hurt by her. I used to give all of me to everyone that appeared to be nice and kind to me. But the most part of those people were not so good as I thought, and when I finally realised it, it was already late, I had been used or hurt, and those persons who I thought my friends just kept going on their way laughing at my ridiculous naive way of being.

I keep telling myself, this is not a big deal, there's children starving out there, there's sick people with a few months left to live. This is nothing beside many other problems. But before I go on, I must change this way of life.

And now I'm always anxious to meet new people, but when I'm starting to talk to them, I usually just let them speak, and our only subject is what they choose to talk about. I guess people think i'm just shy. Yeah I'm a little, but the problem here is this wall around me. These persons usually give up on me, or just talk with me about the weather and stuff.

But, curiously, there's these different kind of persons that start to talk about themselves without any problem, and after it they insist with me (peacefully of course) to talk and to show a little bit of myself too, but my fear only lets me talk about some things of me that I think that don't have any interest. And then those persons after listening with a lot of attention, start slowly to tell me how I am, what they think I am. And mostly they're right! " It's amazing" - i think to myself.

But then again nobody has ever listened to these few words I have dared to let out so carefully. They did want to know me, they did want to see how I really am.

And yes I can't hide from these people for they're giving me a little bit of themselves just to know how I am. Then suddenly the wall becomes a wall of glass or a red and transparent veil from which I can't hide part of my soul and the rest of it I will only show if I want to. There's twoo little things here that are special to me: there's respect and freedom."

Danyela 28-08-04